A Pale Horse

by Wendy Alec

  The voice of the Sovereign of all sovereigns: authori- tative, noble, and valiant, yet filled with grace and exquisite tenderness.

  It was one voice, yet as three.

  And it was three, yet it was one.

  It was the voice of Yehovah.

  “Nicholas . . . ” the voice pealed. “Nicholas . . . ”

  Nick started to weep, overcome. The lightning struck and the thunder grew in intensity. Finally the voice spoke once more.

  “Nicholas . . . of the Race of Men.” The voice itself sounded as though it was weeping.

  “You, my beloved, you—who I created to be my fellowship. Come . . . Come to me.”

  Nick began to tremble violently, as an incredible joy rose from the very core of him.

  He rose to his knees, then stumbled to his feet and placed one foot slowly in front of the other and walked toward the center of the swirling black cloud.

  Suddenly the thunder and lightning subsided, and the wind decreased to a gentle, balmy breeze.

  The darkness cleared and straight ahead of him, Nick saw a huge golden throne half enveloped by swirling white mists.

  A hand stretched out toward him from the throne.

  Tears streamed down his face, as slowly Nick raised his head.

  The mists cleared. Nick looked up directly into the eyes of Yehovah.

  Oh indescribable love. Acceptance. Humor. Laughter. Omniscient. Omnipotent.

  Yet all embracing.

  It was as though Nick felt every atom on his body had found its home.

  This was where his heart would rest forever.

  It was here, in His presence that all earthly pain evaporated.

  Here, in His presence, that all earthly sorrows were transformed to joy.

  It was here, in His presence, that all fear fled.

  That all questions were answered.

  That the raging storms were hushed.

  And as he gazed into Yehovah’s eyes, it seemed that all things, that lay dark and were only seen through a cloud darkly, were suddenly understood and made plain.

  Where even the most tired battleweary heart could be refreshed.

  And as Nick took Yehovah’s outstretched hand, an inexpressible incorrigible joy welled up within him.

  This was truly heaven. This was the reason for his whole being.

  Every tear he had ever shed.

  Every battle he had ever fought.

  The tapestry of Nick’s life had finally become complete.

  . . . Here in the arms of his Father.

  Yehovah.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Internment Camp, Chelsea Pier Underground Jail, Level 10

  Forty-eight Hours Later

  “Who is more afraid: the child who is afraid of the dark, or the man who is afraid of the light?”

  Jason struggled to breathe. The strange voice inside his head grew louder. Where had they taken Julia? Drenched in sweat, he tossed from side to side in the dark, hands over his ears.

  “Who is more afraid: the child who is afraid of the dark, or the man who is afraid of the light?”

  He heard the keys turn in the lock of the steel door.

  “Get up,” a voice whispered piercingly in Jason’s ear. “Get up!” The voice was more insistent.

  Jason sat bolt upright, trembling, in complete darkness. He was shoved to his feet, and a burlap sack was thrust over his head.

  A strong pair of arms grasped him by the shoulders and pushed him out the doorway and into a corridor. More voices.

  Marching . . . more corridors.

  Marching.

  Suddenly, the rush of freezing New York winter air hit him like a jackhammer. Zero degrees. He was outside.

  Oh, God, they were going to shoot him. This was it. The end. He had never thought it would be like this.

  More voices. Foreign voices. Shouting. Gunshots.

  He was suffocating under the burlap.

  Sounds of turbine engines. Rotors.

  He was pushed roughly up more stairs.

  Into a helicopter. He had ridden in enough of them to know.

  He sat paralyzed with fear. They were moving him. To God knows where. Where was Julia?

  The turbines intensified to a scream.

  More sounds of automatic gunfire.

  The helicopter accelerated upward.

  The sack was pulled off his head. Sitting to his right was General Hamid Assaf.

  He stared ahead in shock.

  Seated directly opposite him, looking like hell . . . Was Alex Lane Fox.

  “Drink this,” the general said, handing Jason two bottles of water.

  Hands trembling from dehydration, he slugged down the first bottle, then the second.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, still staring at Alex in utter disbelief, then looked back at General Assaf.

  Slowly he turned to his left.

  Leaning against the window next to him, asleep under a blanket, was Julia. Her face was bloodied and bruised, but she was alive.

  Jason sighed in relief. “Thank you,” he rasped.

  “The plan was to rescue you both,” Assaf said softly. He nodded to Julia. “Which we did.”

  “And Polly Mitchell.”

  “We were too late for Polly,” Alex snapped.

  Julia’s eyes flickered open. She tried to sit up.

  “They took Polly away,” she whispered. “She was sick, Alex—very, very sick. The plague. They took her to the quarantine hospital.”

  Julia’s head fell onto her chest like a dead weight.

  “We gave her a mild sedative,” General Assaf said softly. “She’ll be awake by the time we arrive. Just over ninety minutes.”

  “Arrive where?” Jason asked.

  “Kansas. Safe house. We’re keeping to the plan, just a bit behind schedule. Kansas and Missouri are governed by resisters. A military plane is refueling at the Lawrence airport. We’re safe under the radar—totally blacked out.”

  “You all right, son?” Jason asked, turning to Alex.

  Alex stared grimly down at his clenched fists. “If it costs me my life, I’ll hunt down whoever did this to Polly.”

  Jason looked down and saw that Alex’s left hand was handcuffed to the seat. He raised his eyebrows to General Assaf.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. De Vere. After he arrived back from Saudi Arabia and found out that Polly was dead, he wanted to take on Chessler and the entire military unit single- handedly. I was left with no choice.”

  Jason leaned over and grasped Alex’s shoulder. Alex recoiled.

  General Assaf opened his briefcase on his lap. “From one of our inside men in the detention centers.”

  “Can I borrow your glasses, General?”

  The general smiled and passed Jason a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, then patted his pocket.

  “Oh, before I forget, Mr. De Vere . . . ” He held out the platinum wedding ring that Jason had given him for safekeeping when they were aboard the Hercules transport plane. In his other hand were Jason’s wallet and his Breitling watch.

  Jason took the wallet and watch, then stared down at the thick platinum wedding band. “Thank you, General.”

  Alex watched as Jason took the ring from General Assaf and slid it carefully onto his finger, put on his watch, then put the glasses on and took the first document from General Assaf.

  “The warrant for Polly’s arrest,” Alex mumbled in a monotone. He pointed to the top document.

  “It’s a directive,” Jason muttered. “She was assigned to the detention center. The East Pier.”

  “That’s where they take the Blacklist,” Assaf said calmly. “It’s a containment center twelve floors underground.”

  “Resisters. A list that is held in the core. The ones who won’t take the Mark.”

  Jason frowned. “But we . . . ” He turned to Julia, who was in a deep stupor. “We had to take an antidote, or the DNA rewriting program in the Mark wou
ld have worked anyway, even against our own subconscious. All they had to do was inject Polly.”

  Alex sighed. He looked straight into Jason’s eyes. “She was a Christian, Uncle Jas. A committed one.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jason said.

  Alex shook his head at Assaf. “He won’t believe it. Calls it nonsense.”

  Assaf looked directly at Jason.

  “The seal is an indelible mark—a symbol, if you will. Invisible in this dimension, but visible and enforced in a parallel dimension.”

  “It’s worn by the Christians, Uncle Jas. Not the lip- servers—the ones who really believe.”

  Jason started to retort, then stopped himself.

  “They’re marked in that dimension with an invisible seal,” Assaf said. “Our great ancestor King Aretas of Petra taught the Nabataeans this fact. He was a follower of the Hebrew. It was King Aretas who took the Christ child and His mother to safety in Egypt. He hid them in the monastery.”

  “The monastery . . . ” Jason frowned. “In Alexandria?”

  “I have personally seen the seal in operation,” General Assaf said quietly. “It seems to affect the bearer’s own DNA. It grants a protection against the rewriting program. Immunity. Resisters who wear the seal are immune to the effects of the Mark. The only way Polly could suffer the effects is if she recanted her allegiance.”

  “To Christ?” Jason said softly.

  Assaf nodded. “Only if, by an act of her own will, she recanted, would the Mark have effect.”

  Assaf handed Jason the remaining pages of the report.

  “Polly would never recant,” Alex glared at the general. “She was stripped naked, her head shaved. Locked up without food or water. Water boarded constantly.”

  Alex’s hands trembled with rage.

  Assaf turned the page. “Tortured. Raped,” he continued evenly. “Then taken to Area Subzero. “The guillotines.” Jason looked up from the papers, appalled. “She was guillotined at twenty-three hundred hours, Tuesday, December eighteenth.”

  General Assaf sifted through the documents on his lap. “Death Certificates. There are two.” He handed them to Jason.

  Jason scanned the first document, issued by the State of New York. He read aloud. “‘Cause of death: plague. Place of death: Lincoln Memorial Hospital, New York City.’”

  He picked up a second document. “Issued by the EU Headquarters: ‘Dissident. Militant. Blacklist. Reason for Detention: Terrorist acts against the state. Death by guillotine.’”

  A small handwritten note was clipped underneath the report.

  Jason removed the scrap of paper and read each word methodically. “This is something strange, though: ‘Guards in paranoid state, the blade fell, then . . . ’”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand it. There must be some kind of error.”

  “What do you mean, error?” Alex asked.

  “It says she was beheaded, but then . . . ” He looked at Alex strangely. “ . . . then she disappeared. Dematerialized.”

  Alex grabbed the lined piece of paper with his free hand and studied the handwritten notes. “What time does the second death certificate give?” he asked. “The precise time of death.” Alex stared strangely at General Assaf, who studied the death certificate.

  “Eleven-o-seven p.m.”

  Alex put his head in his hands, then started to laugh. He looked almost drunk with euphoria.

  Jason looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Get a hold of yourself, Alex, son,” he said softly.

  “You don’t understand, Uncle Jas,” Alex whispered, a strange smile spreading across his lips. “Eleven-zero-seven p.m., Eastern Standard time . . . ” Alex turned to the general.

  “ . . . is exactly six-zero-seven a.m. in Saudi Arabia.” He put his hands to his face. “Seven hours’ difference. She defeated them!”

  Jason shrugged. “I really don’t get it.”

  “But he does!” Alex turned to General Assaf, who nodded silently.

  “She disappeared, General! Polly disappeared—just like Jotapa and Ni—”

  General Assaf glared at him, furious. He shook his head in warning.

  Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, Nick?” he snapped. “Nick’s back with Lawrence St. Cartier, in Petra.”

  Assaf glared at Alex, who stared sheepishly down at the floor. “I can assure you, Mr. de Vere, that your younger brother is quite safe,” he said.

  Alex pushed up his shirtsleeve. “Look,” he said. “My watch stopped precisely when the Saudi incident happened. There was some kind of electromagnetic interference. The hands—they won’t budge.”

  Jason stared at Alex, ashen.

  “What do you mean, the Saudi incident?” He looked down at Alex’s watch.” The hands were stopped at precisely 6:07 a.m.

  “Nick and Jotapa.” Alex paused. “There was an incident.”

  Jason could hardly form the words. “You’re saying they were . . . they were killed?”

  “No, Uncle Jas,” Alex said evenly. “I was there. I saw everything firsthand. It was all going precisely to plan. We were about to leave, to take them back to Petra on the Hercules. Then Nick told me he wasn’t coming back with us. Then he and Jotapa disappeared. Right in front of us. The electromagnetic field was so strong, my watch stopped, and it’s never worked since. General Khalid is a witness.

  “It’s the same time they disappeared, General. You had confirmation from the Jordanian special forces.”

  The general nodded.

  Jason reached over and grasped the general by the shoulders, shaking with fury. “Where is my brother?”

  General Assaf sighed. “Your youngest brother accompanied our special forces to liberate Princess Jotapa and the crown prince from Mansoor in Saudi Arabia.”

  “I’m fully aware of Nick’s trip to Saudi,” Jason replied. “He was to get Jotapa out, then return to meet Lawrence St. Cartier at the underground base in Petra. Jordanian special forces were accompanying him.”

  “That was the plan, yes,” said Assaf. “But there was an incident. Your brotherand the princess . . . they disappeared. In front of seventeen witnesses.”

  “What do you take me for!” Jason spluttered. “They can’t just disappear. It’s impossible! You’re telling me that my brother just vanished. For God’s sake, man, he wasn’t even a . . . a Christian!”

  There was a long silence.

  “Oh, yes, he was, Uncle Jas. Nick was a Christian. Your brother disappeared. Vanished into thin air.”

  “Jotapa . . . ” Trembling, Jason released the general.

  “The royal princess also disappeared.”

  Jason looked from General Assaf to Alex. “What’s going on, General? General Macgruder said he had over a thousand witnessed and documented disappearances.”

  The general looked at him in silence.

  “Lawrence St. Cartier has been informed of the ‘incident’?” Jason asked.

  Assaf nodded. “The esteemed professor wanted to tell you face-to-face, but it seems events have conspired against us.” He shook his head at Alex.

  “We have sworn statements from seventeen witnesses. They all correlate precisely. General Khalid—a lieutenant general. Three captains, the special forces team, the crown prince. And Alex. Your brother and the Jordanian princess disappeared at precisely six-o-seven a.m., December eighteenth.”

  “The exact time on Polly’s death certificate.” Alex looked up at Jason in wonder. “Don’t you get it, Uncle Jas? Don’t you realize what it means? The Rapture—it actually happened.”

  Jason snatched the paper from Alex and studied it. He was silent for a long moment.

  General Assaf turned to a tall soldier behind them. “Relay this to Petra. Get the reports: both state issue and EU Headquarters issue.”

  The lights dimmed.

  Julia stirred. “Where are we?” she murmured.

  “We’re entering Kansas airspace,” Assaf said, “We’ll be landing in twenty minutes.

&nbs
p; “By the way, Alex, this is yours, I believe.” The general opened his briefcase. “It was one of our intelligence officers that swept the building. You asked him to check behind a certain painting in your study, I believe.”

  He unlocked Alex’s handcuffs, then held out a white linen envelope.

  Alex stared at the distinctive bold writing on the envelope, then tore it open.

  It was from Polly.

  * * *

  First Heaven

  Polly stared around her at the dazzling lilac and turquoise horizons, trying to get her bearings.

  Everything had happened so fast. One minute she was facing death, staring up at the guillotine; the next, she was here, still clinging to Jesus’ hand. She turned to him. Very gently, he let go of her hand.

  Polly ran like the wind over the emerald green grass of the vast meadow. She bent to pick a bunch of dazzling white lilies. As she picked them, more lilies instantly grew in their place. She laughed in wonder.

  “Everthing’s alive!” she cried.

  Jesus stood watching her in delight.

  Polly felt something rub against her legs. She looked down, then dropped to her knees.

  “Mr Smithy!” she cried. She looked up into Jesus’ face. “He died when I was five. This is incredible!”

  She laid the lilies down on the grass and picked up the enormous purring tabby cat in her arms. He rubbed his face against hers in affection. “He was the only pet I ever had.”

  “Why . . . ” She gazed up at Jesus. “It’s just like going through the wardrobe in Narnia,” she murmured in wonder. “It is like Narnia?” she whispered.

  Jesus smiled brilliantly. He nodded. “Yes, beloved Polly. It is very like Narnia.”

  He laid his hand very gently on her cheek.

  “C. S. Lewis saw many things. He was a seer. And he was our friend. He was born into the earth for the very purpose of writing what you could call ‘letters from home’—to remind those who love us, amid their earthly struggles and human failings, that earthly life and death is not the end. Indeed, it is just the beginning of a wondrous eternal story.”

  Jesus smiled again at Polly with infinite tenderness.

  “You may meet him later, if you like.”

  “And you?” Polly grinned. “You are Aslan?”

  “Yes.” Jesus threw his head back and laughed in amusement. “You could say I am Aslan.” He gazed at Polly with eyes that radiated living streams of love.