The Rapture (34 page)

On the satellite picture we looked at back at the farmhouse, the geography of south-eastern Britain - the hump of Norfolk and Suffolk, the grey-brown dotting of urban conurbations, the chiselled roads, the snaking gut of the Thames - seemed dream-like, its obliteration a hypothetical scenario you might idly fabricate on a screen if you had the software and the destructive urge. But here at ground level, with the sun's glint giving the air the translucency of a troubled onion glaze, amid the rearing high-rises and paint-flaking retail outlets and towering cranes, the pornography of disaster springs all too readily into vivid technicolour: the flagellated trees, the crying children, the splintered road-signs, the human bodies, bobbing like swollen tubers. Once upon a time, I think, kings would plant oak forests for wood which could be felled in a hundred years to make ships to attack their enemies. They knew they would never live to see the resulting armadas but it wasn't about seeing: it was about vision. What has happened to us? How is it that we, the inventors of devices that fly across oceans, hurtle to other planets, burrow underground, and kill from a distance; we, the atom-splitters, the antibiotic-discoverers, the computer-modellers, the artificial-heart-implanters, the creators of GM crops and ski-slopes in duhai, have failed to see five minutes beyond our own lifetimes?

The storm has rinsed the air but there's still a cloying smell of decay. Has a whiff of rotten eggs crept into the organic reek, or has my imagination been hijacked?

'In case of the Rapture, this vehicle may be unmanned,'
says Frazer Melville, pointing to the bumper sticker on the car ahead of us. To our left, the Thames has darkened to black, its surface flecked by quills of white foam. He looks pensive. 'Turn to the God Channel.' I fling a blanket across Bethany and zap until I hit
The Worship Workshop,
a studio discussion in which it's clear from the aggressive way the guests are eyeing each other that a ferocious argument has erupted in response to the news. A thickset man in a well-cut suit is speaking animatedly, waving a Bible at his neighbour, a rangy preacher with sunburnt features and a great outdoors look.

'The answer is in this book! It's called the Holy Bible and it's all in here! So with respect, to refute your argument, Marlon, and I appreciate your sincerity and don't doubt your love of Jesus, I say this is a time for Bible study, and for a careful reading of the word of the Lord as it is laid down here. Let's not go making inter- pretations on the hoof, in response to all this! Let's stick to the basics. Let's not get swept up in this is-it-or-isn't-it until we have studied exactly what the scriptures say! And that's going to take time -'

'Which is exactly what we don't have!' explodes a young black woman, splaying her hands wide. 'I don't know what your clock's doing, but mine's ticking very loudly right now!'

Another man, older, cuts in. His voice is slow and measured. 'We're forgetting something here. There will be no warning. Jesus told us
it will come like a thief in the night.
That's the beauty of the Rapture. We do not know when it will happen. We cannot know, Christine. We cannot know!'

'True words, Jerry,' agrees the craggy-faced man. He too is clutching a Bible. 'But what about saving our brothers and sisters? We have a Christian duty to help these people. If what we've heard here today on the news is true ' We have a Christian duty to help these people. If what we've heard here today on the news is true -'

'And who did we hear it from? Planetarians! Atheists!' protests Marlon.

'Their facts are confirmed by other scientists who are not Planetarians. Kaspar Blatt among them, and he is a man of God whom I respect. Frankly, Marlon, I can't imagine, short of all-out nuclear war, what could be a clearer signal of the End Times being on their way, apart from the other very clear signal we already have, which is the war in the Middle East! This is a wake-up call. We're not just talking about one tsunami in the North Sea, my friends. We're talking about sudden global warming of up to four or even six degrees. Let me quote to you Zechariah, chapter fourteen, verse twelve:
their flesh will be consumed from their bones, their eyes burned out of their sockets, and their tongues consumed out of their mouths while they stand on their feet
. I say we should all be taking action here. Think of your loved ones who have not yet found Jesus! Bring them to the Lord before it's too late, so they may be raptured too!'

The black woman opens her arms wide, as if embracing the whole studio. 'Yes! We should be rejoicing! We should be rallying people to celebrate this event in God, because the hour is coming!' She breaks into a glorious smile, and tears fill her eyes. 'What's up with you guys? I mean, I've waited all my life for this day! I feel so
blessed!'

The panel's mediator interrupts. 'Well, there's one congregation that agrees with that sentiment. We're going live now to Birmingham, where the Temple of God has already decided on its own reaction.'

The image switches to a young preacher addressing a crowd of worshippers, many still arriving through the doors. A choir in long shiny blue robes is swaying behind the preacher. 'We're celebrating, people!' he roars, thumping the air with his fist. 'We're mobilising!' The crowd roars back its applause. There are wolf-whistles and cheers. 'We're celebrating the good news which the elders here have interpreted for us! We're celebrating the triumph of the Faith Wave and the coming of God's Rapture! Long have we waited! But now, praise God, the hour is at hand! Now let's have all you people back home head on down to your neighbourhood church, just like we've done here!' The congregation whoops its support. 'You know what we're doing here in God's name? We're staying and praying! So join us! Stay and pray! Join the stayers and the prayers, mobilise alongside the righteous!' He addresses the camera. 'Bring your loved ones to God today. Tell them it's not too late to find salvation. Come and get blessed, hand your soul over to Jesus, and be part of the Rapture!'

'OK,' says Frazer Melville heavily. 'I think we get the picture.' I switch off the TV. The cars ahead of us have slowed to a crawl.

When we stop at traffic lights a few kilometres from Stadium Island, the streets are beginning to vibrate with activity. Animated groups have gathered on corners. Young men predominate. Stores are closing their doors and locking up, and it's soon apparent why. From our left side comes an abrupt smash, followed by a tinkle of glass, as a youth lobs a brick through a huge windowpane and ducks inside. The looting has begun. On the pavement ahead an overweight middle-aged man in a tracksuit is waving his arms, trying to flag down a car, his features frozen in a grimace of anxiety. We drive past him and on, using the sat-nav to weave through back roads, avoiding the chaos of the high streets as much as we can. The business districts are quiet, almost dead. But in all the commercial and residential zones we pass through, men and boys are heaving laden rucksacks out of stores, or jerkily shoving shopping trolleys piled high with plundered goods - not just food, but plasma TVs, microwave ovens, DVD players, golf clubs. Every now and then we swerve to avoid someone rushing across streets littered with thrown rubble and smashed glass. In a side-alley, two drunken girls in short skirts and impossibly high heels stagger out of TGIF's, clutching one another and shrieking with laughter. They stumble past an elderly couple struggling to load three battered leather trunks into the boot of a white Renault, and totter into a subway, their hoots reverberating from the stairwell.

On the back seat, Bethany sleeps on, oblivious. The TV news reports that the government has repeated its condemnation of the scare, calling it 'a cynical hoax designed to disrupt the entire country'. The Home Secretary has appealed for calm. The Prime Minister will address the nation shortly. There's speculation that a state of emergency will be declared within the hour. The mayor of London has insisted he will 'stay at my desk and stay sane'. But in Norway, where the alert is being taken seriously by the authorities as well as the population, whole communities have evacuated the coasts and headed into the mountains. Denmark, northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Atlantic coast of France are in gridlock. Still heading east into London, we pass squat malls, tattered trees, ransacked food outlets. Everywhere, buildings are emptying. The TV news bursts at us in disjointed fragments. Some of the images mirror what we can see with our own eyes from the car, while others reflect the flow chart of chaos that Ned drew up back at the farmhouse: inundated airports, violent skirmishes and arrests, cities haemorrhaging people, traffic jammed, sailboats hijacked, ferries and aeroplanes changing course. I can feel my breath becoming more shallow and strained. I need all my concentration to keep full-blown panic at bay. But I'm losing the fight, because as we drive on through thickening traffic in the direction of the stadium, a new fear has been massing energy like a geyser about to blow.

'Are you wondering what I'm wondering?' I ask Frazer Melville. I'm looking at the cars around us. He nods miserably. His hands are clutched tight on the wheel, his profile pale and strained.

I zap through the channels, then stop and freeze when I see Bethany's face grinning back at me from the family photograph that I saw in her file at Oxsmith. The cheesy smile, the braces that fill her entire mouth. The image zooms out to show her parents. 'In a new development, the abducted teenager Bethany Krall has been linked to the disaster alert.' We exchange a look of dismay. I glance at the back seat: she is still curled up in the blanket, fast asleep.
'Her father, the Reverend Leonard Krall, and her former therapist Joy McConey say the teenager predicted the catastrophe that Professor Modak says is imminent. They're urging anyone who sees Bethany to treat her with extreme caution. They're also asking the public to look out for her two abductors, Dr Frazer Melville, a research physicist, and Gabrielle Fox, a former employee at the high-security facility where Bethany was confined.'
Abruptly our faces - unflattering portraits from ID cards - fill the screen.

'When it comes to sixteen-year-old Bethany Krall, there are more questions than answers at the moment,' says a young female reporter. She is standing outside Oxsmith. Sheldon-Gray's rowing machine, Newton smashing Bethany's globe, the parched institutional lawn, Mesut's striped hot-air balloon hanging from the ceiling in the art room: mental snapshots from a lifetime ago. 'First, could it be that the young killer, until recently an inmate here, is behind a huge global hoax? Some charismatic church leaders have expressed the belief that she predicted the massive global disaster Harish Modak's team have warned of. Her father, the Reverend Leonard Krall, has even declared he believes his daughter is the embodiment of a satanic force. Bethany's so-called prophecies have been uncannily accurate in the past, according to her former therapist Joy McConey. But is the teenager really a modern-day Nostradamus? What are her claims based on? As for the girl who stabbed her own mother to death: where is she now?' Around us, the traffic is slowing down. But it shouldn't be. It doesn't make sense. We're not heading out of the capital, but into it. Then Leonard Krall appears. He's standing in front of a huge outdoor screen flashing the message
Are you Rapture ready?

'As a Christian, I'm praying for Bethany,' says the man who tipped me out of my wheelchair and left me helpless in a church car park. 'I'm a father as well as a believer. I love my child. And I love the Lord too. And when two great loves are not compatible . . .' His lip quivers, his eyes shine with passion. But a corner of my mind is preoccupied with something else: why are so many other cars headed in the same direction as us? 'If our church elders are correct in believing that this is a sign the End Times are here, I am praying that she too will be raptured along with the righteous,' continues Krall. 'But I fear that will not happen.' He shakes his head, as though too upset to continue, then regains his grip. 'My daughter has chosen another kind of future.' And why do these cars have no roof racks or trailers? No obvious luggage? Why do the families inside them look thrilled with life, instead of scared out of their wits? 'If Bethany were here now I would say to her, stop doing the Devil's work and return to your true family, which is the family of Jesus Christ. I will be praying for her here today, along with many thousands of others, as we await the glory that shall be ours.'

And why do so many of them have Christian bumper stickers?

When the camera pulls out, and we see where Leonard Krall is standing, Frazer Melville says quietly, 'Oh fuck.'

Which more or less sums things up.

I turn my head away from the screen and blink. It can't be.

But it is.

The Olympic Stadium has been transformed into a huge, impromptu worship centre.

I whip round. Bethany is still sleeping. Did she know all along that this would happen? Did she engineer it?

'Leave her. It doesn't matter. We'll find another place,' says Frazer Melville. 'Quick. Call Ned and tell him.'

I punch at the phone in mounting panic. But there's no connection. I try again. And again. The line is blocked.

'If the government's declared a state of emergency, the phone lines will be down,' says Frazer Melville. He has seen my panic and probably shares it. But he's hiding it well.

With cruel efficiency, a plughole opens up inside me and hope drains out.

A tiny brown spider is making its way along the dashboard. Sometimes, as a young child, I'd squash small creatures, from a mixture of boredom, sadism and curiosity. Following its stumbling progress towards the air filter, and contemplating what I could or could not do, at this moment, to radically alter the course of its tiny, unaware life, I realise the extent of my mistake in accepting the grandiose notion that Earth's plight is man's punishment. That all we have wished for in modern times, and engendered in the getting, is an affront to some invisible principle of ethics. Nature is neither good nor motherly nor punitive nor vengeful. It neither blesses nor cherishes. It is indifferent. Which makes us as expendable as the dodo or the polar bear.