Nicolae: The Rise Of The Antichrist (39 page)

There seemed no diminishing of the motion of the earth. These were not aftershocks.

This thing simply was not going to quit. Buck drove slowly, the Range Rover’s headlights jerking and bouncing crazily as first one side and then the other dropped and flew into the air. Buck thought he recognized a landmark: a low-slung restaurant at a corner three blocks from the church. Somehow he had to keep going. He carefully drove around and through destruction and mayhem.

The earth continued to shift and roll, but he just kept going. Through his blown-out window he saw people running, heard them screaming, saw their gaping wounds and their blood. They tried to hide under rocks that had been disgorged from the earth. They used upright chunks of asphalt and sidewalk to protect them, But just as quickly they were crushed. A middle-aged man, shirtless and shoeless and bleeding, looked heaven-

ward through broken glasses and opened his arms wide. He screamed to the sky, “God, kill me! Kill me!” And as Buck slowly bounced past in the Range Rover, the man was swallowed into the earth.

Rayford had lost hope. Part of him was praying that the helicopter would drop from the sky and crash. The irony was, he knew Nicolae Carpathia was not to die for yet another twenty-one months. And then he would be resurrected and live another three-

and-a-half years. No meteor would smash that helicopter. And wherever they landed, they would somehow be safe. All because Rayford had been running an errand for the Antichrist.

Buck’s heart sank as he saw the steeple of New Hope Village Church. It had to be less than six hundred yards away, but the earth was still churning. Things were still crashing.

Huge trees fell and dragged power lines into the street. Buck spent several minutes wending his way through debris and over huge piles of wood and dirt and cement. The closer he got to the church, the emptier he felt in his heart. That steeple was the only thing standing. Its base rested at ground level. The lights of the Range Rover illuminated pews, sitting incongruously in neat rows, some of them unscathed. The rest of the sanctuary, the high-arched beams, the stained-glass windows, all gone. The administration building, the classrooms, the offices were flattened to the ground in a pile of bricks and glass and mortar.

One car was visible in a crater in what used to be the parking lot. The bottom of the car was flat on the ground, all four tires blown, axles broken. Two bare human legs protruded from under the car. Buck stopped the Range Rover a hundred feet from that mess in the parking lot. He shifted into park and turned off the engine. His door would not open. He loosened his belt and climbed out the passenger side. And suddenly the earthquake stopped. The sun reappeared. It was a bright, sunshiny Monday morning in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. Buck felt every bone in his body. He staggered over the uneven ground toward that little flattened car. When he was close enough, he saw that the crushed body was missing a shoe. The one that remained, however, confirmed his fear.

Loretta had been crushed by her owp car.

Buck stumbled and fell facedown in the dirt, something gashing his cheek. He ignored it and crawled to the car. He braced himself and pushed with all his might, trying to roll the vehicle off the body. It would not budge. Everything in him screamed against leaving Loretta there. But where would he take the body if he could free it? Sobbing now, he crawled through the debris, looking for any entrance to the underground shelter. Small recognizable areas of the fellowship hall allowed him to crawl around what was left of the flattened church. The conduit that led to the steeple had been snapped. He made his way over bricks and chunks of wood. Finally he found the vent shaft. He cupped his hands over it and shouted down into it, “Tsion! Tsion! Are you there?”

He turned and put his ear to the shaft, feeling cool air rush from the shelter. “I am here, Buck! Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Tsion! Are you all right?”

“I am all right! I cannot get out the door!”

“You don’t want to see what’s up here anyway, Tsion!” Buck shouted, his voice getting weaker.

“How is Loretta?”

“Gone!”

“Was it the great earthquake?”

“It was!”

“Can you get to me?”

“I will get to you if it’s the last thing I do, Tsion! I need you to help me look for Chloe!”

“I am OK for now, Buck! I will wait for you!”

Buck turned to look in the direction of the safe house. People staggered in ragged clothes, bleeding. Some dropped and seemed to die in front of his eyes. He didn’t know how long it would take him to get to Chloe. He was sure he would not want to see what he found there, but he would not stop until he did. If there was one chance in a million of getting to her, of saving her, he would do it.

The sun had reappeared over New Babylon. Rayford urged Mac McCullum to keep going toward Baghdad. Everywhere the three of them looked was destruction. Craters from meteors. Fires burning. Buildings flattened. Roads wasted.

When Baghdad Airport came into sight, Rayford hung his head and wept. Jumbo jets were twisted, some sticking out of great cavities in the ground. The terminal was flattened. The tower was down. Bodies strewn everywhere.

Rayford signaled Mac to set the chopper down. But as he surveyed the area, Rayford knew. The only prayer for Amanda or for Hattie was that their planes were still in the air when this occurred.

When the blades stopped whirring, Carpathia turned to the other two. “Do either of you have a working phone?”

Rayford was so disgusted he reached past Carpathia and pushed open the door. He slipped out from behind Carpathia’s seat and jumped to the ground. Then he reached in, loosened Carpathia’s belt, grabbed him by the lapels, and yanked him out of the chopper.

Carpathia landed on his seat on the uneven ground. He jumped up quickly, as if ready to fight. Rayford pushed him back up against the helicopter.

“Captain Steele, I understand you are upset, but-”

“Nicolae,” Rayford said, his words rushing through clenched teeth, “you can explain this away any way you want, but let me be the first to tell you: You have just seen the wrath of the Lamb!”

Carpathia shrugged. Rayford gave him a last shove against the helicopter and stumbled away. He set his face toward the airport terminal, a quarter mile away. He prayed this would be the last time he had to search for the body of a loved one in the rubble.

“
WHEN
He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.

“So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.”

Revelation 8:1-6