In Rome, Prime Minister Sophia Clattenberg takes the podium inside the Palace of Justice on behalf of the E10 leaders. “These are tumultuous and frightening days, which call for rational thinking and global cooperation,” she says. “There can only be peace across the globe as we are willing to offer peace to our brothers and sisters around the world. We must tear down the walls of animosity and hatred in Africa, in North and South Korea, in Iran, Pakistan, China, India, the United States, South America, and in the Middle East as we come together as a unified globe, extending the hand of help and belief to one another. Our thoughts go out to the people of Syria for their great loss, but this is not the day of vengeance. There can and there must be peace and safety, or our days will be marked only by destruction. We cannot care for the citizens of the earth without global stability.”
Reporters yell above one another for clarification, and the E10’s counsel secretary, Victor Quade, steps beside Clattenberg, bending closer to the microphone on the podium. “As we lock arms together in our new world, we will be stronger together. We must tear down the borders of hatred and bitterness, anger and vengeance, and replace them with help and hope, kindness and generosity. The great citizens of our world will survive, but only as we unify ourselves together. We are one world with one goal: peace. It is within our reach, and we must strive for it as never before. The E10 has begun a dialogue with North and South Korea and with many leaders in Africa, China, India, Pakistan, and other counties to stop all wars. The members have reached out to Israeli prime minister Ari and to the presidents of Syria, Lebanon, and leaders with the Hamas government and the Fatah government of Palestine, and we are dialoguing with the president of Egypt and with the king of Jordan to help us bring all fighting in the Middle East to an end. Without a strong, unified, and stable Middle East, we cannot be a strong, stable, and unified world. Peace is on our horizon. We will have peace. And we will have it together.”
Quade steps away from the podium, and for a moment, hearts seem to swell with belief around the world.
CHAPTER 32
Queens, NY
Since the disappearances, millions of people have crossed the southern border of the United States into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California looking for housing and food. Trucking and rail companies have been figuratively derailed, and many farms and ranches have been shorthanded, making food scarce and with fewer ways to transport it. Farms struggled prior to the vanishings to stay in business, many farmers exhausting their savings to keep their farms afloat and many more taking their own lives at two times the rate of veterans. How could the farming industry in America endure this? Factories have shut down; train engineers, barge crews, and truckers are missing. The demand for food has gotten greater but the supplies and the ways to get it to people are limited like never before.
Between looting, price gouging, and a run on the banks, Emma and Kennisha have reason for concern. The vanishings, unemployment, and rising inflation have thrown the country into a depression. The food on Kennisha’s shelves won’t last long, and the loss of electricity has ruined the perishables in her refrigerator and freezer. Water is now coming out of the pipes in spurts, and they know it’s just a matter of time before it stops running altogether. Food lines have been created throughout the city, but the food is in short supply right now and the prices are too high for them to afford the most basic of items. They had not thought about getting their money out of the bank when the upheaval occurred, and now, due to the run on banks throughout the city, they’re all closed (not that a big wad of money would help anyway, with store shelves looted and bare). They have to come up with a plan for what to do next, and come up with it soon. Kennisha has worked at the front desk of a hotel in Manhattan for the last four years but hasn’t gone back since her sister and niece disappeared, too afraid to leave her apartment. She doesn’t even know if the hotel is standing anymore.
“I’m going to see Micah’s dad, and then I need to go to Thrive to see if it’s still standing,” Emma says. “Maybe there’s the possibility of some work. We need money and food.”
“I’ve been thinking that too,” Kennisha says, sitting on the sofa next to her. “We can’t stay in the city much longer.”
“I agree,” Emma says. “But where could we all go?”
Kennisha shakes her head, her face clouding over. “If Kaala was here I’d ask her,” she says, looking down at her hands.
“What would she say?” Emma asks.
“She would say ask God for wisdom. She would tell me that it was about time that I grow up and start making hard decisions like an adult.” She smiles, glancing up. “Kaala never minced words.”
Emma sighs. “We’ve all been pulled into this, and we’ll all make the hard decisions together. And we’ll all learn to pray.”
“Now I really wish Kaala was here because that woman could pray!” Kennisha says, laughing as she cries.
“Kennisha,” Emma says, pondering how to best ask the question weighing on her mind. “What if Micah’s dad can’t take care of him? What if he still…”
“Then he’ll stay here,” Kennisha says, bobbing her head. “That was an easy decision.” Emma nods, gets up, and grabs the keys. “Be careful, Emma.” The door closes and Kennisha jumps up to lock it, praying as she does.
As Emma approaches Micah’s apartment building, she feels a knot in the pit of her stomach at the sight of her own apartment window across the street. She wonders if Matt is standing at the window, but pushes that thought out of her mind as she runs into Micah’s apartment building and up the stairs. She knocks on the door and discovers that this time, the door is locked. She keeps pounding until she hears someone on the other side. The door opens, and a drawn-looking woman of about thirty glares out at her. She reeks of smoke and her eyes are glassy, trying to focus on Emma.
“I’m here to see Micah’s dad.” The woman doesn’t respond. “I need to talk to his dad. Is he here?” The woman acts as if she’s trying to wake up from a thick dream. “Hey!” Emma shouts in her face. “Go get Micah’s dad!”
Instead of closing the door and fetching Micah’s dad, the woman opens it, letting Emma inside. Emma covers her nose at the smell. She walks down the small hallway that leads to the living room and looks at the same wasted faces who have been here during her prior visits. “Which one is Micah’s dad?” she asks the woman behind her.
The woman points at a man splayed out at the end of the sofa. His shirtless body reveals ribs sticking out from his lanky frame. His frizzy black hair hasn’t been washed in days. Emma walks to the curtains and throws them open before stepping over two people who move more like zombies than human beings as she gets closer to Micah’s dad.
“Wake up!” she says in his face. “Hey! Wake up!” She jostles his shoulder, yelling louder. “Wake up!” She feels anger begin to fan across her chest and she pats the man’s face. “I need to talk to you. Wake up!” She slaps harder and realizes she doesn’t care how hard she’s hitting him. “Hey! Hey! Wake up!” The man moans and his eyes begin to flutter open. “Look at me! Can you hear me?”
He covers his eyes, shielding them from the light in the room.
“Are you Micah’s dad?” Emma shouts. He nods. “Do you know where he is?” He strains to see her through the fog, pointing toward another room. Emma shakes her head. “No! He’s not in there. He’s not been here for days. Do you even know that?” She’s so infuriated she can feel herself shaking. He tries to sit up but is unable. “Do you know where he is?”
“No,” he whispers.
She looks at his face and around the room at the others who have kept themselves stoned since the mass disappearances, and her tone changes. “He’s been with me. I’ve been taking care of your son. I can’t bring him back here. No one should live like this, especially a little boy. Do you want me to continue to take care of him?” The man nods. Emma looks in his eyes, small and black and unfocused. “Did you understand what I said?”
“You asked if I w
anted you to take care of Micah.” He nods again. “Yeah. I can’t.”
For the first time since she arrived, Emma doesn’t feel rage; instead, she feels like crying. “I can bring him back in a few weeks to see if you’re straightened out.”
The man shakes his head. “I can’t do it.” He points to the other room. “His things are in there.” He rests his head on the back of the sofa and closes his eyes.
Emma watches him for a few moments before stepping back. Her stomach churns with nausea and she steps over the same two people again as she heads toward the bedroom. There she finds two people on a mattress on the floor half awake or half dead, she’s not sure which; she steps over them and begins to open drawers. She finds a plastic bin that is partly filled with miscellaneous toys and throws underwear, socks, shirts, and pants into it. A tote bag that was probably given out at a school event sits empty on the closet floor; she fills it with the rest of Micah’s clothes and his shoes.
A picture of Micah and his dad sits on top of the plastic chest of drawers, and she picks it up. Micah looks only a year or two younger and is wearing his backpack in front of a school. His dad looks healthy and strong, and is wearing a suit and nice shoes, with a leather briefcase over his shoulder. He’s kneeling beside Micah with his arm around his shoulder and both are beaming in the picture. Emma can’t take her eyes off the man in the photo. He wasn’t always like this, what she sees in this apartment. He was a good dad who walked Micah to school and took the time to take a picture on the first day. Somehow, something went wrong, life spiraled downward faster than he thought, and now he’s turning his son over to a stranger.
Emma looks around the room for anything else that might be Micah’s and spots a backpack crumpled in the corner. In it are a notebook and a couple of schoolbooks. She reaches for the last few Legos that are scattered on the floor, throwing them inside. She pulls the backpack straps over her shoulders and sets the tote bag on top of the plastic bin as she leaves the room. Stepping into the living room, she notices that Micah’s dad is watching her. She pauses, waiting for him to speak, but he doesn’t say anything. Her mouth edges up a bit in a sad smile before she heads toward the door.
“Take this.” Emma stops and turns to see the woman who had answered the door. She’s holding two grocery sacks. “These were some things that Micah liked to eat.”
Emma thinks about refusing the sacks because she is already so loaded down, but there is no way she can refuse food. “What about you and the others?”
“We don’t eat much.” Her face is sharp and angular, and her eyes look like nothing more than small beads in large sockets.
“You have to eat or you’re going to die,” Emma says with urgency in her voice. The woman doesn’t say anything, and hands the grocery sacks to Emma, who is still talking. “This isn’t the time to give up. You need to…”
“Thanks for taking care of Micah.”
Emma pleads with the woman. “Don’t do this. Don’t give up.”
The woman shuts the door and Emma stands there, breathless, listening to her heart pound in her ears. She hurries to the end of the hallway and stops, staring at the stairs and wondering how she’ll manage to get down them and walk the few blocks to Kennisha’s apartment.
“Are you taking care of the little boy?”
Emma jumps at the voice and turns to see a man about thirty or so with dark skin, hair, and eyes. “Why are you asking?”
“I’ve seen him by himself. Long before all of this. He’s by himself a lot. It’s good what you’re doing…if you’re going to take care of him.”
On a normal day, Emma would think this man was handsome in a boyish way, but this isn’t a normal day. He reminds her of Mrs. Ramos’s son, Luis. “Are you from Puerto Rico?”
“Guatemala,” he says, extending his hand. “Lerenzo. My parents and I came here ten years ago.”
She shakes his hand. “Emma.”
He looks at her load. “Can I help you get to wherever you’re going?” He notices her hesitation. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to walk through the streets carrying all of that.” She isn’t taking him up on it. “I’m an honest person.” He pauses. “Honest!” She hands him the bin. “We all have to watch out for each other, you know,” he says, following her on the stairs.
“Did you know anyone who was snatched away?” she says, looking over her shoulder.
He stops outside the door. “Why did you say snatched away?”
He looks eager for her response, and she knows he understands. “Because Christ snatched His followers…”
Lerenzo reacts with excitement and surprise. “You have family who were followers?”
“My mom.”
“My grandmother in Guatemala is gone, but my parents are here along with my brothers and sisters.”
They begin to walk on the street toward Kennisha’s apartment. “Did your grandmother try to tell you?” Emma says.
“Yes. It was just crazy talk to me. Some old lady insanity. But as soon as the shock wore off that day, I knew.”
She stops. “Right away?”
He nods. “I’m a truck driver. The highway was a mess. Empty cars and trucks. Or a passenger left without a driver, or a driver without passengers. It felt like everything was taking place in slow motion as I walked along the road, but deep down, I knew what had happened.”
The pain in his voice is as real as her heartbreak and she gets a lump in her throat as she listens to him. “What did you do?”
“My knees gave out. I fell on the road and sobbed.” He shakes his head. “I’d never cried like that in my life. I became a follower right then. All my family too. We finally found each other, and every single one of us became followers.”
As with the people in her apartment building, Emma wishes she had met and gotten to know Lerenzo earlier. She needs him as a friend, and she believes he needs her friendship too.
“Can we keep in touch?” he asks.
CHAPTER 33
Ashdod, Israel
After Zerah leaves his parents’ house he makes his way to Dr. Haas’s home in Ashdod. The doors are locked; it appears as if no one has been inside the home since the disappearances. Zerah manages to get in through an unlocked window; it doesn’t take him long to find what he had come for. He opens the Bible that is sitting on a bedroom nightstand and discovers it had belonged to Dr. Haas.
“You would never believe what I’m standing here looking at, Miriam,” he says aloud. He glances around the rest of the small home and regards for a final time the face of his longtime colleague looking out at him from pictures. “Thank you for this,” he says, looking at her bright face surrounded by her husband and two children on vacation at the sea.
Through his life, Zerah has read the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, many times. He begins his reading today beyond Deuteronomy in the Old Testament and devours the New Testament as well, nearly finishing both in two days. He reads again from Daniel and flips to Revelation. The very Spirit of God leads him, teaching and guiding him from one book to another. As he listens to thunderous explosions taking place all across the country and as missiles shriek toward his beloved nation, he prays again that he will be prepared.
The E10’s talk of peace has further fueled outrage from the nations engaged in war with Israel; they have fired on her relentlessly, but Israel holds off each attack, fighting for her life. Israel’s laser-guided missiles, which have a strike accuracy of twenty-three feet or less, hit armament locations in Lebanon; giant explosions are felt for miles as enormous fireballs blaze into the sky, devastating the armament supplies, much of it provided by Iran.
Fighter, bomber, and remotely piloted aircraft conduct strike after strike, destroying terrorist headquarters in Lebanon and Syria and taking out mortar systems, tanks, artillery systems, command and control nodes, bomb-making facilities, and terminating or suppressing several tactical units. Israeli fighters drop air-to-surface missiles on military fortifications, air bases,
and airports in Syria where Iran has stored munitions, while Israeli soldiers and snipers target and kill militants in Palestine and terrorists who have infiltrated Israel.
As the war is broadcast around the world and casualties reach into the thousands, the media applauds the Arab coalition’s ceaseless pounding of Israel. Yet Israel’s defense has been so swift, so strong and unyielding, that it has caused her enemies to stagger and left the media speechless. As missiles are launched at Israel, destroying life and land, Israel’s antiaircraft and antimissile defense systems intervene, saving her and her people, but she has no ally to offer help, and the brutality of the war is taking a toll on the tiny nation.
The cry from her enemies to “Drown the Zionist pigs in the sea” and the data newly retrieved by satellites has left Israel with no other choice. The Jewish nation will launch two long-range ballistic missiles fitted with nuclear warheads and fire them toward Iran, knowing that a monstrous giant is coming together against them.
To discover more about the biblical facts behind the story, read Where in the Word? on page 269, or continue reading the novel.
CHAPTER 34
Queens, NY
Upon returning to Kennisha’s apartment, Emma finds Micah eating cereal from a box. He eyes his belongings and moves to claim them, looking up at her. “Was my dad there?”
Emma nods and leads him to the sofa. Micah sits with the box of cereal on his lap, looking uncertain and afraid. “I talked to him,” she says. His eyes are wide, waiting. “He said he can’t take care of you.” Micah’s brown eyes look intent as he ponders what this means. “He asked if I would, and I said yes.” She puts her hand on his knee. “I realize we don’t know each other very well and if you are uncomfortable, I understand. Do you have any other place you want to go?”
The Time of Jacob's Trouble Page 14