Great White Throne (19 page)

“Where will we go?” Aisha asked.

“There’s only one real option.” The angel turned to me. I felt bare under his gaze, like he was looking at me from the inside out.

“We can’t go east,” Aisha said. “It’s desert for miles, and beyond that will be only contaminated land. My people’s land.”

“What if we followed the river north?” Naomi asked. “It’s the Jordan, after all. We’ll have water, and the order used to have a small base by the Sea of Galilee.”

“Elijah?” Gabriel’s eyes had never left me. “Tell them what you’ve seen.”

“You mean a dream? I’ve had many lately.”

“You know which one I mean.” Gabriel sounded patient and calm, but I felt like he was channeling my mind toward an answer. Kind of like Azazel, but much gentler. Naomi and Aisha watched me, waiting.

“It was a couple weeks ago,” I began. “I was an infant, carried into a smoldering city. Towers were all around me. They were like spokes up into the sky with little eggs stacked on their sides. But the eggs were empty. The streets were empty. I went to the Dome of the Rock.” I glanced at the angel, and he nodded. “I passed Gabriel on the way. He was wearing the most dazzling white. But the darkness over the Dome was greater. The dragon was perched there.”

I looked to Aisha, then to Naomi. They weren’t going to like this, but with Gabriel beside me, I felt like I had no choice but to continue. I closed my eyes, seeing it again.

“The dragon watched me approach. It held my uncle Jacob in one of its claws, and Aisha in the other.”

“
Me
?” Aisha asked.
 

I kept my eyes closed. I continued.

“I was crying. The dragon bowed its neck down, revealing Don Cristo. He grabbed me and dangled me in front of the dragon’s eyes. The dragon stretched out its jaws and swallowed me whole. I slid down its throat and into its belly. Inside was another child. It was Naomi’s son, glowing with dazzling light. Then everything exploded.”

“You never told me that last part.” Naomi’s voice trembled. “What do you mean it exploded?”

I opened my eyes. “I don’t know. It just exploded. Everything ended after that.”

“You think this will happen?” Naomi asked, staring at Gabriel.

“I do not know all God’s reasons. But I deliver all his messages.” The angel’s eyes settled on me. “Your dreams frighten you. They test you, and you have not run from them yet. You find your way into them.”

As clear as an angel could be
. It had to mean we were on track to reach Jerusalem, to face the dragon. “When we go to the city, will you come with us?”

“Yes. You have prayed for our protection. You will have it. Friends of yours are waiting there.”

Friends
. For some reason the word made me think of school, of Adam and Hoff and the others. I hadn’t seen them since the sailboat. They would have gone to Babylon. Now where would they be?
 

Aisha’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Your dream. It was Jerusalem?”

I looked from her to Naomi. “Yes.”

Naomi tilted her head down at her sleeping child, clutched tight to her chest. “To Jerusalem,” she whispered. “It all ends in Jerusalem. God, please give us strength.”

WE BROKE CAMP at sunrise. The light streamed over the low cliff on the opposite side of the river, making even the dry brown land around us seem golden. Gabriel was standing at the river’s edge, his face toward the sun. Laoth held Aisha and was helping the other women into the back of the truck. Dumah started the engine.

“It’s time!” Laoth called out.

Gabriel turned and began walking to her. His face was radiant, glorious. As he passed, he glanced at me knowingly, no doubt seeing the wonder in my eyes. “Let the Lord shine His face upon you, too. Come on, you’ll ride in the front with Dumah and Naomi.”
 

“What about you?” I asked, following after him to the truck.

“I’ll be on top.”

Right
, so he’d just cling to the roof.
 

He ignored my skeptical look. “Comfort Naomi,” he said softly. “She is afraid, though she won’t admit it. Even with her strong faith, she can have doubts. And speak up if you see anything dark. Do you understand?”

“Got it.”

“Good.” He opened the passenger door. “Hop in. I’ll bring Naomi.”

I climbed inside. Dumah was sitting behind the wheel, huge and silent as always.

“Good morning.”
 

He nodded. No words.

“So, how’d you get the truck to work?”
 

He didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. He reached over to me, put his powerful hand on my shoulder, and gave it a light squeeze. Was that a tiny curl of his lip? Maybe he thought it was funny. But then he put his hands back on the wheel and looked out the windshield. So much for talking to Dumah.

Naomi joined us soon after that, holding the baby. “Good morning.”

“You look beautiful.”

She laughed. “Must have been that sweet beauty sleep. I found a great spot between a few rocks.”

 
I slid over to the middle of the seat. “Where have you been?” I asked as she climbed in. Her makeshift bed had been empty when Laoth woke me.

“Praying.” She pointed outside the truck, up a hill to the right. “There’s a magnificent view. You can see where the Jordan meets the Dead Sea, and the desert stretches as far as you can see to the east. The sun rose over the barren hills and dunes into the distance, making them yellow and amber and pink. We’ve taken our sunrises for granted.”

“You think this will all be gone soon?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s all going to be replaced. It’s going to be far better. I want to remember the beauty here, so I can fully appreciate the difference.”

“You mean the new heavens and the new earth? I read something about that.”

She nodded. “Think of what we’ve seen. Angels of the Lord, here with us. I have faith in His Word. He will come again, and soon.”

“Like today soon?”

A tap on the top of the truck interrupted us. Gabriel’s head appeared, upside down, in front of us. He motioned to Dumah and pulled his head away. Dumah slammed his foot on the gas. We surged forward over the rough terrain. I pressed back against the seat and put on my seatbelt. Naomi did the same, then hugged the baby at her chest.

With Dumah’s hands on the wheel and foot on the pedal, we dodged a thousand boulders and cracks in the hard ground. It wasn’t long before we reached a road. We wheeled left onto it, heading west. A sign said something in Arabic, but at least it had a number I could read: “1.” The road into Jerusalem.
 

The jarring bumps ceased. The truck’s tires churned smooth pavement. “Why so fast?” I asked, finally able to speak without my jaw shaking.

Dumah of course gave no answer. “I think Gabriel told him to hurry,” Naomi said. “Another angel visited him early this morning. There must have been a message.”

“Another angel? How do you know?”

“I saw him beside Gabriel, and then an instant later he was gone, like a flash of light.”

I remembered something like it on Patmos months ago. “What if it was Jesus?”

“It could have been,” she said, excited. “You asked if I thought today might be the last day, and I’ve been thinking about it. This really could be it. Why not?”

“The earth has had a lot of days. Today is, what, something in late December? What’s so special about that?”

“Think about Don,” she said. “You’re always telling me he’s trying to take what God created and twist it. Wouldn’t he want to make Jerusalem his last stand?”

“There are a lot of prophecies and theories about the city.”

“No, it’s not that. God cares about everything, not just one city, not even Jerusalem. The order thinks the end could happen anywhere, and actually, that it will happen everywhere.”

“So why would Don set himself up in Jerusalem? Why would my dream have been there?”
 

“All who believe in God revere the city. We have the cross—it’s the city where Jesus died and rose again. The Jewish people have the Western Wall. The Muslims have the Dome of the Rock, where they think Muhammad rose to heaven. What better place for Don to try to declare, once and for all, that he is god of the earth?”

“Maybe,” I said. There was a logic to it. “But you think Jesus will come again here just because Don is here?”

“I think the Lord will come everywhere, all at once.”

The truck swerved hard right, swiping past a burnt-out car on the side of the road. I saw figures far ahead. People walking along the road. It made me think of the dream with my Mom, of the bodies piled up below the towers in Jerusalem.

“What about the baby?” I asked. “What do you think my dream means?”

Naomi didn’t answer at first. She looked down at her son, and he looked up at her. “We all have our role. I never expected to have this precious boy. I still think his innocence holds some answer to Don’s plans. Don doesn’t know God’s plan, but we don’t exactly know it, either. I’m praying that God will show me my role, and that I will have the strength to do it.”

The truck began to slow.

I looked ahead as more people came into view. The brownish-white hills steepened around us, and the dark figures became all the more clear. I saw the people wore scraps for clothing, or nothing at all. Their heads were shaved bald, like Alexi’s. Most of them had nothing on their backs. Not a weapon was in sight.

One man carried a little girl on his shoulders. The bottoms of her feet were black and bloody. I imagined those little feet submerged in fluid, trapped in a capsule, while the girl’s mind flipped about in childish fantasies for weeks—chocolate and candy, princesses and ponies—until her impulses drove her deeper and deeper in her quest for satisfaction. However far her mind had descended, yesterday her dreamworld bubble must have popped. The capsule would have opened, and the little girl would have somehow climbed down a tower until her pale and pruned feet touched the ground. Those little feet were no match for this black pavement.

Blank stares met us as we passed. Men and women continued in the opposite direction and looked as if they wanted nothing to do with the city we approached.
 

Eventually I closed my eyes, unable to bear what I saw. “It makes no sense. They’re not even trying to stop us.”

“They’re broken … defeated,” Naomi replied.

My eyes opened. I winced at a sight on the left side of the road. Two bodies, a child’s beside a woman’s, facedown on the pavement, with black birds flocking around them. I tried to keep my mouth shut, hoping Naomi wouldn’t notice. She was gazing out the other side of the truck.

“This is the apocalypse,” she whispered. “It’s not chaos, not fighting. It’s despair, souls robbed of their will to live. Don did it. He hauled them into his virtual world, he harvested their bodies.” Tears had filled her eyes. “Just look at them.”
 

We passed a family on the right. The father held a motionless child. The mother clung to him, on her knees, while four naked children huddled behind her.

“We have to do something.” Naomi turned to me, wet streaks down her face. Her eyes passed to Dumah. “Please, can’t we stop and help?”

The angel’s fists were tight on the wheel, but he turned his head just a fraction toward us. Tears streamed from his eyes, too. He shook his head once, then looked ahead again.
 

“Please Lord,” Naomi prayed, “come soon.”