The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (221 page)

Buck had the advantage of knowing, really knowing, this house. He feared he might be walking into a trap. He didn’t think the GC knew he was in Israel, but one could never be sure. Maybe they lay in wait for Chaim or even Jacov. It was possible Jacov’s death had not made the GC databases yet, though that was unlikely. But where was everyone else?

Buck found the back door unlocked, and he slipped in. A rechargeable flashlight was usually plugged into a socket near the floor, behind the food preparers’ table. Buck felt for it and found it, but he didn’t want to test it until he was confident no one was waiting to ambush him. He took it into the pantry and waited until he shut the door to turn it on. Then he felt foolish, reckless. He’d never been comfortable with the role he had been thrust into, still part journalist but also freedom fighter, raconteur. What kind of a swashbuckling Trib Force veteran backs himself into a closet with nothing more to defend himself with than a cheap flashlight?

He tried the light switch on the pantry wall. Nothing. So the power had been cut. Buck flipped the flashlight on, then off quickly. Something in his peripheral vision froze him. Did he dare shine the light that way? He let out a quavery breath. Who would lie in wait in a pantry?

Buck aimed the light that direction and turned it on. Just an unusual arrangement of boxes and cans. He doused the light and moved quietly to the door. Creeping through the kitchen into the dining room, the parlor, and then the front room, Buck held the flashlight in front of him as if it were on, but it served more like a blind man’s cane. As his eyes began adjusting to the darkness, he became aware of pinpoints of light from the street, and he still heard sirens in the distance.

Later Buck would wonder whether he had smelled the blood before he heard it. Yes, heard it. He knew something was wrong as soon as he reached the front room. It was in the air. Heat? A presence? Someone. He stopped and tried to make out shapes. He felt his own heart, but something reached his ears more insistently even than that thumping. Dripping.
Drip, drip,
pause,
drip-drip,
drip.
From two sources? Part of him didn’t want to know, to see. He turned his back to windows at the front, pointed the flashlight toward the sounds, and braced himself, ready to defend himself with bare hands and the flashlight, if necessary.

He turned on the light but immediately shut his eyes to the horror. He dropped to his knees, the wind gushing from him. “Oh, God,” he prayed. “No! Please!” Was there no end to the carnage? He would rather die than find his friends, his comrades (someday his own family?) like this. In the split second he had allowed himself to take in the scene, it became clear that two victims sat side by side in wood chairs, Hannelore on the left, her mother on the right. They were bound and gagged, heads tilted back, blood dripping into pools on the floor.

Buck did not want to reveal himself to anyone outside. Plainly, this scene was created to “welcome” someone home; certainly the perpetrators had no idea
he
would stumble upon it. Buck knelt before the chairs, repulsed by the sound of the drips. He knew if either of the women had survived, their respiration would have been noisy with their heads in that position. Still, he had to make sure. He lodged the flashlight between his knees, angled it toward the women, and turned it on. As he reached to check for Hannelore’s pulse, the flashlight slipped and illumined her ankles, tied securely to the front legs of the chair. As he angled the light up again and tightened his knees to support it, he noticed her wrists tied behind her. A smallish woman, Hannelore’s torso was stretched to allow her hands to go around the back of the chair. Great gushes of air rushed past Buck’s gritted teeth.

He grabbed the flashlight and moved behind the chair to feel her wrist, but that put his arm in line with the blood dripping from her head. And though her wrist was warm, as he feared, there was no pulse.

Hannelore’s mother, less than a foot away, was bound in the same position. A squat, heavy woman, her arms had been yanked into contorted positions to allow her wrists to be tied. She too was dead.

Who could have done this? And wouldn’t Stefan, his Middle East maleness coming to the fore, have fought to the death to prevent it? Where could he be? Buck wanted to pan the light back and forth along the floor toward the front, but that might have been suicidal, he would be so obvious from the street. It was all he could do to keep from calling Stefan’s name.

Chaim had not been home when Buck had talked with Hannelore on the phone. Did this massacre mean Chaim had arrived, or that he hadn’t? Had Chaim himself been forced to witness this? Buck’s first task was to locate Stefan, his second to check the entirety of the huge house for Chaim. If Chaim had not returned and this was all meant as a warning for him, could the place be staked out, surrounded? Perhaps it was.

Buck feared he would find not just Stefan’s body, but also Chaim’s. But how would Chaim have gotten there? Who might have caught him, rescued him, or helped him off that platform? And what was the purpose of murdering these innocents? Had they been tortured for information and eliminated once they provided it, or because they had not? Or was this simply vengeance? Chaim had been vitriolic in his revulsion of GC Peacekeepers, of the breaking of the covenant between the GC and Israel. Though he had never been a religious Jew, he expressed horror over the intrusion of the world government into the very affairs of the temple. First the Jews had been allowed to rebuild; then they were not allowed to conduct themselves the way they wished in the new temple.

But do you extinguish the household of a statesman, a national treasure, for such an offense? And what of the man himself? Buck’s head throbbed, his chest felt tight, and he was short of breath. He was desperate to be with Chloe and Kenny and felt as if he could hold them tight for three and a half years. He knew the odds. Each had only a one in four chance of surviving until the Glorious Appearing. But even if he, or they, had to go to heaven before that, he didn’t want it to be this way. No one deserved this. No one but Carpathia.

It had been a long time since David had suffered such carping. On the way to his office from the palace hangar, past a full-dress color guard of pallbearers and a heavily armed ring of security personnel, his phone had signaled a top-level emergency message. The call could have originated only locally, of course, but this sort of a code was reserved for life-and-death situations. He did not recognize the callback number but knew it was located in the palace proper.

Normally he would have called back immediately, fearing danger to Annie or himself, but he took a moment to trace the number against the personnel list and found that the call came from the Arts and Sciences wing. He had been there only once, knew virtually no one there, and had been so repulsed by what was considered artistic that he recalled rushing back to his quarters feeling soiled.

Wanting at least one more clue before replying, David called his own voice mail, only to be met by the foul, nasty rantings of a sassy
artiste.
David had not heard such profanity and gutter language since high school. The gist of the message: “Where are you? Where could you be at a time like this? It’s the middle of the night! Do you even know of the murder? Call me! It’s an emergency!”

David’s phone vibrated again—same number. He waited ninety seconds and called his voice mail again. “Do you know who I am? Guy Blod?!” The man pronounced
Guy
as
Gee
with a hard
G,
the French way, and
Blod
to rhyme with
cod,
as if Scandinavian. David had seen him scurrying around a few times but had never spoken with him. His reputation preceded him. He was the temperamental but lauded painter and sculptor, Carpathia’s own choice for minister of the creative arts. Not only had he painted several of the so-called masterpieces that graced the great hall and the palace, but he had also sculpted many of the statues of world heroes in the courtyard and supervised the decorating of all GC buildings in New Babylon. He was considered a genius, but David—though admittedly no expert—considered his work laughably gaudy and decidedly profane. “The more shocking and anti-God the better” had to have been Blod’s premise.

Part of David wanted Guy Blod to have to wait for a callback, but this was the wrong time to start puffing his anti-GC chest. He would take no guff from Guy Blod, but he had to remain above suspicion and ingratiated to Fortunato. He dialed Blod as he settled behind his computer and began to program it to record directly from the morgue on a sound-activated basis.

As Blod answered, David noticed a list of messages on his computer. “This is Guy,” he announced, “and you had better be David Hassid.” He put the emphasis on the first syllable.

“It’s
hah-SEED,
” David said.

“That should be easy enough to remember, Mr. Hayseed. Now where have you been?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been trying to call you!”

“That’s why I called you, sir.”

“Don’t get smart with me. Don’t you know what’s happened?”

“Nobody tells me anything, Mr. Blod.” David chuckled. “Of course I know what’s happened. Did it occur to you that that might have been why I was difficult to reach?”

“Well, I need stuff and I need it right now!”

“What do you need, sir?”

“Can you get it for me?”

“Depends on what it is, Blod.”

“That’s Mr. Blod to you, sweetie. I was told you could get anything.”

“Well, almost.”

“I have nowhere else to turn.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You’d better. Now come to my office.”

“Excuse me?”

“Is this a bad connection? I said, come . . . to . . . my . . .”

“I heard you, sir, but I have many things on my plate tonight, as you can imagine, and I can’t just—”

“You can do as you’re told. Now get your tail over here, and I mean right now.”
Click.

David hung up and checked his messages. Most alarming was one from Rayford: “Our botanist reports the bird has flown. May need new real estate soonest. Signed, Geo. Logic”

David squinted at the screen for several seconds, wishing he could call someone at the safe house, or Rayford. He was tempted to put the satellites back in operation just long enough to do it, but he knew someone would discover that and he would have to answer for it. So Hattie was gone and the safe house was in jeopardy. He deleted the message and hacked his way into the mainframe database of abandoned, condemned, destroyed, and/or radioactive buildings in the Midwest. He looked at his watch when the phone rang. Six minutes had passed.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Is this David Hayseed?”

“This is Director Hassid, yes.”

“Do you know who this is?”

“Yes! It sounds like Minister Blood. Haven’t talked to you in ages. Good to hear from you again—”

“That’s Blod, and did I or did I not tell you to get over here?”

“Is this multiple choice? I believe you did.”

“Then why are you not here?”

“Let me guess. Because I’m here?”

“Agh! Listen here, you! Get over here this instant or—”

“Or what? You’re going to tell my mom? I don’t recall being subordinate to you, sir. Now if you have something you need me to procure for you, and you have clearance from the Supreme Commander—”

“A purchasing agent is not subordinate to a cabinet minister? Are you from Mars?”

“Actually Israel, sir.”

“Would you stop calling me
si
r
?”

“I thought
you
called
me
, sir.”

“I mean quit calling me that!”

“What?
Sir?
I’m sorry, I thought you were male.”

“You stay right where you are, Director. I’ll be right over.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it, Guy? I mean, it’s you who wants to talk with me, not the other way ’round.”

Click.

Rocketing over the Mediterranean in the middle of the night, Rayford had about a two-hour flight to Greece. For the first fifteen minutes he monitored the radio to be sure he was not being pursued or triangulated. But the radio was full of merely repetitious requests for more aircraft to help evacuate Jerusalem in light of the earthquake and the assassination. There were also countless calls for planes available to cart the mourning faithful to New Babylon for what was expected to become the largest viewing and funeral in history.

When the Gulfstream was far enough out over the water, local tower radio signals faded. Rayford tested that by trying to call his compatriots, to no avail. He switched off phone and radio, which left him in virtual silence at thirty-one thousand feet in a smooth-as-silk jet, most of the noise of the craft behind him.

Rayford suddenly felt the weight of life. Had it really been a mere three and a half years ago that he had enjoyed the prestige, the ease, and the material comfort of the life of a 747 captain for a major airline? He’d been no prize, he knew, as a husband and father, but the cliché was true: You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Life since the Rapture, or what most of the world called the disappearances, had been different as night and day from before—and not just spiritually. Rayford likened it to a death in the family. Not a day passed when he didn’t awaken under the burden of the present, facing the cold fact that though he had now made his peace with God, he had been left behind.

It was as if the whole nation, indeed the whole world, lived in suspended mourning and grief. Everyone had lost someone, and not a second could pass when one was able to forget that. It was the fear of missing the school bus, losing your homework, forgetting your gym clothes, knowing you’d been caught cheating on a test, being called to the principal’s office, being fired, going bankrupt, cheating on your wife—all rolled into one.

There had been snatches of joy, sure. Rayford lived for his daughter and was pleased with her choice of a husband. Having a grandchild, sobering though it was at this most awful time of history, fulfilled him in a way he hadn’t known was possible. But even thinking about Chloe and Buck and little Kenny forced reality into Rayford’s consciousness, and it stabbed.

With the Gulfstream on autopilot nearly six miles above the earth, Rayford stared into the cosmos. For an instant he felt disembodied, disconnected from the myriad events of the past forty-two months. Was it possible he’d, in essence, lived half a lifetime in that short span? He had experienced more emotion, fear, anger, frustration, and grief that day alone than in a year of his previous life. He wondered how much a man could take; literally, how much could a human body and mind endure?

How he longed to talk with Tsion! No one else had his trust and respect like the rabbi, only a few years older than he. Rayford couldn’t confide in Chloe or Buck. He felt a kinship with T Delanty at the Palwaukee Airport, and they might become true friends. T was the kind of a man Rayford would listen to, even when T felt the need to rebuke him. But Tsion was the man of God. Tsion was one who loved and admired and respected Rayford unconditionally. Or did he? What would Tsion think if he knew what Rayford had done, starting with abandoning both Leah and Buck, but worse, wanting, intending, trying to murder the Antichrist, then perhaps doing so by accident?

Something about the altitude, the coolness he allowed in the cockpit, the tension he could postpone until overflying Greece, the comfort of the seat, and the artificial respite he enjoyed from his role as international fugitive, somehow conspired to awaken Rayford to what had become of him.

At first he resisted the intrusion of reality. Whatever comfort he had found in the buffering quality of life on the edge was stripped away when he allowed raw truth to invade. He told himself to stay with the program, to keep himself as well as his plane on autopilot, to let his emotions rule. What had happened to the scientific, logical Rayford, the one who had been left behind primarily due to that inability to accede to his intuitive side?

When he heard himself speaking aloud, he knew it was time to face the old Rayford—not the pre-Rapture man, but the new believer. He had wondered more than once during the past few months whether he was insane. Now talking to himself in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? Much as he hated the prospect, introspection was called for. How long had it been since he had indulged, at least honestly? He had questioned his sanity the past few months, but he seldom dwelt on it long enough to come to any conclusions. He had been driven by rage, by vengeance. He had grown irresponsible, unlike himself.

As Rayford allowed that to rattle in his brain, he realized that if he pursued this, turned it over in his mind like the marshmallows he had tried browning evenly as a child, it would not be himself he would face in the end. It would be God.

Rayford wasn’t sure he wanted the blinding light of God in his mental mirror. In fact, he was fairly certain he didn’t. But the hound of heaven was pursuing him, and Rayford would have to be thoroughly deluded or dishonest to turn and run now. He could cover his ears and hum as he did as a child when his mother tried to scold him. Or he could turn on the radio, pretending to see if the satellites had been realigned, or try the phone to test the global system. Maybe he could take the plane off autopilot and busy himself navigating the craft through trackless skies.

Down deep he could never live with himself if he resorted to those evasive tactics, so Rayford endured a shudder of fear. He was going to face this, to square his shoulders to God and take the heat. “All right,” he said aloud. “What?”

Buck straightened to relieve the aching in his joints from kneeling to check the lifeless women. Standing in the darkness of his old friend’s sepulchral home, he knew he had never been cut out to be a hero. Brave he was not. This horror had brought a sob to his throat he could not subdue. Rayford was the hero; he was the one who had first come to the truth, then led the way for the rest of them. He was the one who had been rocked only temporarily by the loss of their first spiritual mentor but stood strong to lead.

What might Rayford have done in this same situation? Buck had no idea. He was still upset with the man, still puzzled over his mysterious self-assigned task that had left Buck and Leah on their own. Buck believed it would all be explained one day, that there would be some sort of rationale. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that Rayford had grown testy and self-absorbed. Look what he had lost. Buck stubbornly left him on the pedestal of his mind as the leader of the Tribulation Force and as one who would act honorably in this situation.

And what would that entail? Finding Stefan, of course. Then challenging whoever was watching this house of death, fighting them, subduing them, or at least eluding them. Eluding didn’t sound so heroic, but that was all Buck was inclined to do. Meanwhile, the most heroic he would get would be to finish the task inside—finding Stefan and Chaim, if they were there—and then running for his life.

The running part was the rub. It would be just like the GC—even decimated by population reduction, busy with the Gala, pressed into extraordinary service by the earthquake, and left in a shambles by the assassination—to dedicate an inordinate number of troops to this very house. It would not have surprised Buck an iota if the place was surrounded and they had all seen him enter, watched him find what he found, and now waited to capture him upon his departure.

On the other hand, perhaps they had come and pillaged and slaughtered and left the place a memorial husk.

Feeling ashamed, as if his wife and son could see him feeling his way in the dark, fighting a whimper like a little boy rather than tramping shoulders-wide through the place, Buck stepped on flesh. He half expected the victim to yelp or recoil. Buck knelt and felt a lifeless arm, tight and muscular. Was it possible the GC had suffered a casualty? They would not likely have left one of their own behind, not even a dead one.

Buck turned his back to the windows and switched on the flashlight again. The mess the enemy had left of Stefan made Buck’s old nature surge to the fore. It was all he could do to keep from screaming obscenities at the GC and hoping any one of them was within earshot. Revolting as it was, Buck had to look one more time to believe what he saw. Stefan lay there, his face a mask of tranquility, eyes and mouth closed as if he were asleep. His arms and legs were in place, hands at his sides, but all four limbs had been severed, the legs at the hips, the arms at the shoulders. Clearly this had been done after he was dead, for there was no sign of struggle.

Buck dropped the light, and it rolled to a stop, luckily pointing away from the windows. His knees banged painfully on the floor, and when he threw his palms before him to break his fall, they splashed in thick, sticky blood. He knelt there on hands and knees, gasping, his belly tightening and releasing with his sobs and gasps. What kind of a weapon would it have taken and how long must the enemy have worked to saw through the tissue of a dead man until he was dismembered? And why? What was the message in that?

How would he ever tell Chaim? Or would his dear old friend be his next discovery?

At four o’clock in the afternoon Friday in Illinois, Tsion sat near the TV, trying to sort his emotions. He was still able to enjoy, if that was an appropriate word anymore, the ceaseless curiosity and antics of a one-year-old boy. Kenny cooed and talked and made noises as he explored, climbing, grabbing, touching, looking to his mother and to “Unca Zone” to see if he would get a smile or a no, depending on what he was doing.

But Kenny was Chloe’s responsibility, and Tsion didn’t want to miss a second of the constant coverage of the assassination. He expected news of Carpathia’s resurrection and allowed himself only brief absences from the screen. He had moved his laptop to the living room, and his phone was close by. But his main interest was in Israel and New Babylon. It would not have surprised him if Carpathia was loaded onto his plane dead in Jerusalem and worshiped as he walked off under his own power in New Babylon.

Tsion was most upset at hearing nothing from other members of the Trib Force, and he and Chloe traded off trying to raise them, each of them, by phone. The last word they had heard from overseas was that Leah had not seen Hattie in Brussels, that she had told Buck Hattie was gone, and that she had not been able to communicate with Rayford. Since then, nothing.

Worried about the ramifications, Tsion and Chloe left most of the lights off, and they double-checked the phony chest freezer that actually served as an entrance to the underground shelter. Tsion normally left strategy and intrigue to the others and concentrated on his expertise, but he had an opinion on the security of the safe house. Maybe he was naive, he told Chloe, but he believed that if Hattie were to give them away, it would be by accident. “She’ll more likely be followed to us than send someone for us.”

“Like she did with Ernie and Bo.”

Tsion nodded.

“And who knows whom
they
might have told before they died?”

He shrugged. “If she was to give us up just by telling someone, she would have done it before she was imprisoned.”

“If she
was
imprisoned,” Chloe said. And suddenly she was fighting tears.

“What is it, Chloe?” Tsion asked. “Worried about Cameron, of course?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “Not only that,” she said. “Tsion, can I talk with you?”

“Need you ask?”

“But, I mean, I know you don’t want to miss anything on TV.”

“I have DVR. Talk to me.”

Tsion was alarmed at how much it took for Chloe to articulate her thoughts. They had always been able to talk, but she had never been extremely self-revelatory. “You know I will keep your confidences,” he said. “Consider it clergy-parishioner privilege.”

Even that did not elicit a smile. But she managed to shock him. “Maybe I’ve been watching too much TV,” she said.

“Such as?”