Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama Of Those Left Behind (4 page)

Chloe looked up. “And that actually signals the beginning of the seven-year period of tribulation.”

“Exactly.” Bruce looked at the group. “If that announcement says anything about a promise from Carpathia that Israel will be protected over the next seven years, it officially ushers in the Tribulation.”

Buck was taking notes. “So the disappearances, the Rapture, didn’t start the seven-year period?”

“No,” Bruce said. “Part of me hoped that something would delay the treaty with Israel. Nothing in Scripture says it has to happen right away. But once it does, the clock starts ticking.”

“But it starts ticking toward Christ setting up his kingdom on earth, right?” Buck asked. Rayford was impressed that Buck had learned so much so quickly.

Bruce nodded. “That’s right. And that’s the reason for this meeting. I need to tell you all something. I am going to have a two-hour meeting, right here in this office, every weeknight from eight to ten. Just for us.”

“I’ll be traveling a lot,” Buck said.

“Me too,” Rayford added.

Bruce held up a hand. “I can’t force you to come, but I urge you. Anytime you’re in town, be here. In our studies we’re going to outline what God has revealed in the Scriptures. Some of it you’ve already heard me talk about. But if the treaty with Israel comes within the next few days, we have no time to waste. We need to be starting new churches, new cell groups of believers. I want to go to Israel and hear the two witnesses at the Wailing Wall. The Bible talks about 144,000 Jews springing up and traveling throughout the world. There is to be a great soul harvest, maybe a billion or more people, coming to Christ.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Chloe said. “We should be thrilled.”

“I
am
thrilled,” Bruce said. “But there will be little time to rejoice or to rest. Remember the seven Seal Judgments Revelation talks about?” She nodded. “Those will begin immediately, if I’m right. There will be an eighteen-month period of peace, but in the three months following that, the rest of the Seal judgments will fall on the earth. One fourth of the world’s population will be wiped out. I don’t want to be maudlin, but will you look around this room and tell me what that means to you?”

Rayford didn’t have to look around the room. He sat with the three people closest to him in the world. Was it possible that in less than two years, he could lose yet another loved one?

Buck closed his notebook. He was not going to record the fact that someone in that room might be dead soon. He recalled that during his first day at college he had been asked to look to his right and to his left. The professor had said, “One of the three of you will not be here in a year.” That was almost funny compared to this.

“We don’t want to simply survive, though,” Buck said. “We want to take action.”

“I know,” Bruce said. “I guess I’m just grieving in advance. This is going to be a long, hard road. We’re all going to be busy and overworked, but we must plan ahead.”

“I was thinking about going back to college,” Chloe mused. “Not to Stanford, of course, but somewhere around here. Now I wonder, what’s the point?”

“You can go to college right here,” Bruce said. “Every night at eight. And there’s something else.”

“I thought there might be,” Buck said.

“I think we need a shelter.”

“A shelter?” Chloe said.

“Underground,” Bruce said. “During the period of peace we can build it without suspicion. When the judgments come, we wouldn’t be able to get away with anything like that.”

“What are you talking about?” Buck asked.

“I’m talking about getting an earthmover in here and digging out a place we can escape to. War is coming—famine, plagues, and death.”

Rayford held up a hand. “But I thought we weren’t going to turn tail and run.”

“We’re not,” Bruce said. “But if we don’t plan ahead, if we don’t have a place to retreat to, to regroup, to evade radiation and disease, we’ll die trying to prove we’re brave.”

Buck was impressed that Bruce had a plan, a real plan. Bruce said he would order a huge water tank and have it delivered. It would sit at the edge of the parking lot for weeks, and people would assume it was just some sort of a storage tank. Then he would have an excavator dig out a crater big enough to house it.

Meanwhile, the four of them would stud up walls, run power and water lines into the hole, and generally get it prepared as a hideout. At some point Bruce would have the water tank taken away. People who saw that would assume it was the wrong size or defective. People who didn’t see it taken away would assume it had been installed in the ground.

The Tribulation Force would attach the underground shelter to the church through a hidden passageway, but they would not use it until they had to. All their meetings would be in Bruce’s office.

The meeting that night ended with prayer, the three newest believers praying for Bruce and his weight of leadership.

Buck urged Bruce to go home and get some sleep. On his way out, Buck turned to Chloe. “I’d show you my new car, but it doesn’t seem like that big a deal anymore.”

“I know what you mean.” She smiled. “It looks nice, though. You want to join us for some dinner?”

“I’m not really hungry. Anyway, I’ve got to get started moving into my new place.”

“Do you have furniture yet?” she asked. “You could stay with us until you get some. We’ve got plenty of room.”

He thought about the irony of that. “Thanks,” he said. “It’s furnished.”

Rayford came up from behind. “Where’d you land anyway, Buck?”

Buck described the condo, halfway between church and the
Weekly.

“That’s not far.”

“No,” Buck said. “I’ll have everybody over once I get settled.”

Rayford had opened his car door, and Chloe waited at the passenger door. The three of them stood silent and awkward in the dim light from the streetlamps. “Well,” Buck said, “I’d better get going.” Rayford slid into the car. Chloe still stood there. “See ya.”

Chloe gave a little wave, and Buck turned away. He felt like an idiot. What was he going to do about her? He knew she was waiting, hoping for some sign that he was still interested. And he was. He was just having trouble showing it. He didn’t know if it was because her father was there or because too much was happening in their lives right now.

Buck thought about Chloe’s comment that there wasn’t much use in going to college. That applied to romance as well, he thought. Sure, he was lonely. Sure, they had a lot in common. Sure, he was attracted to her, and it was clear she felt the same about him. But wasn’t getting interested in a woman right now a little trivial, considering all Bruce had just talked about?

Buck had already fallen in love with God. That had to be his passion until Christ returned again. Would it be right, let alone prudent, to focus his attention on Chloe Steele at the same time? He tried to push her from his mind.

Fat chance.

“You like him, don’t you?” Rayford said as he pulled the car out of the parking lot.

“He’s all right.”

“I’m talking about Buck.”

“I know who you’re talking about. He’s all right, but he hardly knows I exist anymore.”

“There’s a lot on his mind.”

“I get more attention from Bruce, and he’s got more on his mind than any of us.”

“Let Buck get settled in and he’ll come calling.”

“He’ll come calling?” Chloe said. “You sound like Pa on
Little House on the Prairie
.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, I think Buck Williams is through calling.”

Buck’s apartment was antiseptic without his own stuff in it. He kicked off his shoes and called his voice mail in New York. He wanted to leave a message with Marge Potter, his former secretary there, asking when he could expect his boxes from the office. She beat him to the punch. The first of his three messages was from Marge. “I didn’t know where to ship your stuff, so I overnighted it to the Chicago bureau office. Should be there Monday morning.”

The second message was from the big boss, Stanton Bailey. “Give me a call sometime Monday, Cameron. I want to get your story by the end of next week, and we need to talk.”

The third was from his old executive editor, Steve Plank, now Nicolae Carpathia’s spokesman. “Buck, call me as soon as you can. Carpathia wants to talk to you.”

Buck sniffed and chuckled and erased his messages. He recorded a thanks to Marge and an I-got-your-message-and-will-call-you to Bailey. He merely made a note with Steve’s phone number and decided to wait to call him. [_Carpathia wants to talk to you. _]What a casual way to say, [_The enemy o f God is after you. _]Buck could only wonder whether Carpathia knew he had not been brain-washed. What would the man do, or try to do, if he knew Buck’s memory had not been altered? If he realized Buck knew he was a murderer, a liar, a beast?

Rayford sat watching the television news, hearing commentators pontificate on the meaning of the announcements coming out of the United Nations. Most considered the scheduled move of the U.N. to the ruins of Babylon, south of Baghdad, a good thing. One said, “If Carpathia is sincere about disarming the world and stockpiling the remaining 10 percent of the hardware, I’d rather he store it in the Middle East, in the shadow of Tehran, than on an island off New York City. Besides, we can use the soon-to-be-abandoned U.N. building as a museum, honoring the most atrocious architecture this country has ever produced.”

Pundits predicted frustration and failure in the proposed outcomes of the meetings between both the religious leaders and the financial experts. One said, “No single religion, as attractive as that sounds, and no one-world currency, as streamlined as that would be. These will be Carpathia’s first major setbacks, and perhaps then the masses will become more realistic about him. The honeymoon will soon be over.”

“Want some tea, Dad?” Chloe called from the kitchen. He declined, and she came out a minute later with her own. She sat on the other end of the couch from him, her slippered feet tucked up under her robe. Her freshly washed hair was wrapped in a towel.

“Got a date this weekend?” Rayford asked when the news broke for a commercial.

“Not funny,” she said.

“It wasn’t meant to be. Would that be so strange, someone asking you out?”

“The only person I want to ask me out has apparently changed his mind about me.”

“Nonsense,” Rayford said. “I can’t imagine all that must be on Buck’s mind.”

“I thought I was on his mind, Dad. Now I sit here like a schoolgirl, wondering and hoping. It’s all so stupid. Why should I care? I just met him. I hardly know him. I just admire him, that’s all.”

“You admire him?”

“Sure! Who wouldn’t? He’s smart, articulate, accomplished.”

“Famous.”

“Yeah, a little. But I’m not going to throw myself at him. I just thought he was interested, that’s all. His note said he was attracted to me.”

“How did you respond to that?”

“To him, you mean?”

Rayford nodded.

“I didn’t. What was I supposed to do? I was attracted to him, too, but I didn’t want to scare him off.”

“Maybe he thinks he’s scared you off. Maybe he thinks he came on too strong too soon. But you didn’t feel that way?”

“In a way I did, but down deep it was right. I thought just being open to him and staying friendly would make the point.”

Dad shrugged. “Maybe he needs more encouragement.”

“He’s not going to get it from me. Not my style. You know that.”

“I know, hon,” Rayford said, “but a lot has changed about you recently.”

“Yeah, but my style hasn’t.” That made even her laugh. “Daddy, what am I going to do? I’m not ready to give up on him, but couldn’t you see it wasn’t the same? He should have asked me out for something to eat, but he didn’t even accept our invitation.”

“
Our
invitation? I was in on that?”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to ask him out by myself.”

“I know. But maybe he didn’t want to go out with me around.”

“If he felt about me the way I thought he did, he would have. In fact, he would have asked me first and left you out of it. I mean … I didn’t mean it that way, Dad.”

“I know what you meant. I think you’re being a little too gloomy too soon about this. Give him a day. See what a difference a night’s sleep makes.”

The news came back on, and Chloe sipped her tea. Rayford felt privileged that she would talk to him about things like this. He didn’t remember that she had even talked to Irene much about guys. He knew he was her only port in a storm, but still he enjoyed her confidence. “I don’t have to watch this if you want to talk some more,” he told her. “There’s nothing new here since what Bruce told us.”

“No,” she said, standing. “Frankly, I’m sick of myself. Sitting here talking about my love life, or lack of it, seems pretty juvenile at this point in history, don’t you think? It’s not like there’s nothing to fill my time even if I don’t go back to school. I want to memorize Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation for starters.”

Rayford laughed. “You’re kidding!”

“Of course! But you know what I mean, Dad? I never would have dreamed the Bible would even interest me, but now I’m reading it like there’s no tomorrow.”

Rayford fell silent, and he could tell Chloe was struck by her own unintentional irony. “I am too,” he said. “I already know more about end-times prophecy than I ever knew existed. We’re living it, right here, right now. There aren’t many tomorrows left, are there?”

“Certainly not enough to waste pining away over a guy.”

“He’s a pretty impressive guy, Chlo’.”

“You’re a big help. Let me forget him, will you?”

Rayford smiled. “If I don’t mention him, you’ll forget him? Should we get him kicked out of the Tribulation Force?”

Chloe shook her head. “And anyway, how long has it been since you called me Chlo’?”

“You used to like that.”

“Yeah. When I was nine. ‘Night, Dad.”

“‘Night, sweetheart. I love you.”

Chloe had been heading toward the kitchen, but she stopped and turned and hurried back, bending to embrace him, careful not to spill her tea. “I love you too, Dad. More than ever and with all my heart.”