“I asked him about that, and he still thinks the fact that more plagues are coming means God still wants people to repent. Most won’t and will curse God, but Tsion supports our efforts to find the remaining undecided.”
“Then I want to be part of it. And I’ll bet there’s a bunch of people in Wisconsin who would too and some here in Ohio.”
“Let’s see what the morning brings,” Rayford said. “In the meantime, call Vicki and tell her the good news.”
“You know about us?”
“Chloe told me. My guess is you two will be back together within a couple of days.”
Judd couldn’t help but smile as he hung up. He had tried to stay reserved with Captain Steele, but he was sure some of his excitement had come through on the phone. He quickly dialed Vicki’s number.
Vicki awoke with a start. She couldn’t tell how long she had been sleeping. Was it an hour? two? The moon had moved little in the window, so she guessed she hadn’t been asleep long.
Something outside had startled her. Or had it been a dream? It sounded like Marshall’s van, but who could be taking it this time of night?
For the first time in a long while, Vicki worried about the Global Community. What if they had discovered the remote camp? She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, grabbed a flashlight, and tiptoed outside.
The ground was wet with dew, and the crisp temperature raised goose bumps on her arms. She headed for the main cabin where the others usually gathered and saw footprints heading toward Josey and Tom Fogarty’s cabin. When she pointed the flashlight at their front door, she noticed it was open a few inches.
Someone stirred inside, and a light came on.
“Mrs. Fogarty?” Vicki whispered.
A shriek pierced the night.
Vicki rushed toward the cabin as Tom Fogarty swung the door open. “Where is he?”
“Where’s who?” Vicki said.
Josey bounded to the door behind him. “He’s gone! Ryan’s gone!”
32
VICKI rushed inside the cabin and saw Ryan’s empty bed. On Ryan’s second birthday, Zeke had given the boy a toddler bed in the shape of a car. The child’s blanket was gone and a stuffed bear lay on the floor.
Tom Fogarty had run out the door as soon as Vicki arrived. Josey shook while she ran around the room, looking under the bed, checking in the closet. “Sometimes he’ll play hide-and-seek and I won’t find him until he laughs, but he’s never run off at night. Ryan started sleeping at night, you know.”
Vicki took Josey’s arm and gently pulled her onto the bed. “Tell me what happened.”
“We just woke up and he was gone! It’s so chilly outside, and the little thing didn’t have shoes on.”
“I saw footprints outside, but they didn’t look like a child’s.”
Tom Fogarty ran inside breathing hard, his face pale. Marshall followed him in.
“Did you find him?” Josey said.
“We checked Cheryl’s cabin,” Tom said. “She’s not there.”
“Look in the other cabins,” Josey said. “Check the meeting place or—”
Marshall held up a hand. “Ma’am, the van’s gone. I usually keep the keys hidden, but somehow she must have found them.”
“You think Cheryl … ?” Josey’s voice trailed off, and her eyes fluttered. Suddenly she locked eyes with Tom.
“Then we have to go after him. We have another car—”
“Hang on,” Marshall said. “We’re going after her and Ryan. Zeke and Mark have gone for the car. She’s gotten a head start, but hopefully she hasn’t gone far.”
While Tom tried to calm Josey, Vicki followed Marshall outside. “Let me go with you. When we catch up to her I can—”
“We’ve already decided you need to go,” Marshall said. “Get dressed and meet us at the car.”
When Judd didn’t get an answer in Wisconsin, he emailed Vicki and told her the latest news. Then he checked on the latest from the Global Community.
At first, the GC posted all the grisly pictures. Traffic cameras set up near busy intersections showed melting car tires and people jumping from their vehicles. The people just as quickly tried to get back inside, but the door handles were so hot they couldn’t touch them. Frantic, drivers rushed for shade or nearby buildings. Shots from these cameras didn’t last long because the cameras themselves went blank after a few seconds.
Reporters standing on rooftops showed the slow-moving arc of the sun as it came over the horizon. When the rays reached houses, they began smoking and smoldering. As the sun rose higher, homes caught fire.
Reporters ran for their lives inside buildings, which eventually collapsed from the heat. Judd found one camera shot from a famous university. The view was shielded by trees and looked out on a fountain in the middle of the campus. As the sun beat down, water bubbled. Soon it was boiling and steam rose.
On a gentle slope nearby, a student lay in the shade holding a book, his head propped up on a backpack. He sat up when the water boiled. Suddenly, as trees caught fire and smoke rose, the boy grabbed his backpack and stood.
“Get out of there,” Judd whispered to himself.
The boy ran but made the mistake of rushing toward the sunlight. Like a vampire caught in daylight, the boy turned, shielded his face from the hot rays, and fell. First his backpack, then the boy’s clothes caught on fire. Finally, he became part of the burning landscape, with trees, bushes, and even the grass igniting.
Judd clicked to one of his favorite sites, which showed famous beaches. The only cameras operating were those where the sun hadn’t yet risen, but reports stated the blood was boiling in rivers around the globe.
Everywhere the sun reached, people, animals, plant life, buildings, cars, bridges, and homes were affected. The world had become the wick of a candle that was quickly burning up, and Judd wondered how many could survive another year before the Glorious Appearing of Jesus Christ.
Judd wrote his friend Sam Goldberg and asked for a report from Petra. He wanted to know exactly what to expect when the sun came up over Ohio.
Vicki rushed to her cabin and dressed, then met Tom, Marshall, and Mark. It took a few minutes for them to back the small four-wheel-drive vehicle from its hiding place. As different people had traveled to the hideout to see Zeke or join the group, one problem Marshall and the others had to deal with was the extra vehicles left in the woods nearby. The group decided to keep the van handy and hide the others. A few cars had been driven into the Mississippi River.
Vicki and Mark climbed in the back, Marshall driving and Tom Fogarty beside him. Vicki thought Tom was perfect for the trip since he had been a former police officer, but she wondered how he had convinced Josey to stay behind.
“Cheryl’s obviously been planning this for some time,” Tom said. “Vicki, you’ve talked the most with her. Has she ever said anything about leaving?”
Vicki shook her head. “These past few weeks we haven’t talked about much at all. She’s been so grouchy that I’ve had to leave her alone.”
The car bounced along the rutted dirt road. When they reached a paved road, Tom got out and inspected the area. “Go left,” he said.
Mark reached for the phone and dialed the hideout. He turned on the speakerphone and asked Conrad to search the computer for anything Cheryl might have written.
“Be right back to you,” Conrad said.
“I can’t imagine what that little guy’s going through right now,” Tom said. “Hopefully he’ll sleep through this whole thing until we catch them.”
Conrad called a few moments later. “I found a deleted message from Wanda, the midwife who helped deliver Cheryl’s baby.”
“What’s it say?” Mark said.
“She was actually writing to Mrs. Fogarty.”
“What?” Tom said. “Josey hasn’t had any contact with her in months.”
“Let me read you the letter,” Conrad said.
“Dear Josey,
“I’m sorry to hear thing
s have gone so badly with little Ryan. Babies can be a handful, especially if he has an illness like you described. If there’s anything I can do from this end to help, please let me know. Otherwise, your plan to send Cheryl here with him sounds good. I’d be glad to keep them with me until they can make other arrangements. Be advised that I’m in a different location. I’ll include a map on this e-mail, and you can let me know what you want to do. There’s plenty of room to park the van, so don’t worry about that, but be careful of the GC as you hit town.
“No matter what happens, know that I’ll be praying for you and your husband and Ryan through this difficult time. Remember, we serve a great God who can indeed work miracles.”
Vicki ran a hand through her hair. “Cheryl wrote to Wanda pretending to be your wife and lied about Ryan being sick!”
Tom shifted in his seat and pursed his lips. “Conrad, are there any other deleted messages there?”
“I’m checking.” Click. Click. “Okay, found two. The first one looks like … yeah, this is the one where she describes Ryan as having an illness and that she wants permission for Cheryl to take Ryan to Wanda’s house.”
Marshall rolled to a stop at a major road and turned off the headlights. “I’m assuming Wanda is in the same general area where we found her last time?”
“Yeah, I’ll give directions in a minute,” Conrad said. “Just head toward her old place.”
“What’s the next message say?” Tom said.
Click. “Oh, boy … here we go.”
“Dear Wanda,
“Thanks for your kindness and prayers. The situation with Ryan has gotten even worse since I last wrote. Would it be possible, if we can work it out with Marshall and the others, to have Cheryl come alone with Ryan and stay at your place? We would send her in the van.
“I agree with you that God can work miracles. I would like nothing better than to have Ryan back, but all the crying and sleepless nights have Tom and me at the end of our rope. Cheryl has been so good to help us. I don’t know what we’d have done without her. We’re all praying that God will heal Ryan on the way to your place. You pray with us and we’ll look for a good report once Cheryl is there.”
“She signs the letter, ‘Yours in Christ, Josey.’ ”
Tom slammed his fist so hard on the glove compartment that Vicki thought he had broken his hand. Marshall drove as fast as he dared, using the moonlight to navigate. Conrad read the directions to Wanda’s house, and Mark took notes.
“Vicki, you have a new message here from Judd,” Conrad said. “And it looks like I’ve missed a couple of his calls.”
Vicki smiled. “I’ll read it when I get back.”
“Hang on. Zeke has something to say to you guys,” Conrad said.
“How’s my wife doing?” Tom said.
“As well as can be expected,” Zeke said. “She tore out of the cabin when you left. Took three of us to get her back to her room and settled down. Shelly and Darrion are with her, and I’ve got Charlie standing watch to make sure nobody bothers her.”
“What did you want, Zeke?” Marshall said.
“Well, you know I’m not into bad feelings and that kinda stuff, but I gotta tell you I’m worried about you guys and little Ryan.”
“We’re going to catch her, believe me,” Tom said.
“I know, but there are GC in that area. I just looked at their list of arrests in the past two weeks, and they’ve made a bunch of surprise raids. Cheryl could be leading you guys right to the enemy.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” Mark said, “but I don’t think we’re going to stop until we find Ryan.”
Judd heard a blip and noticed Sam was sending a video message from Petra. Judd turned on the small camera above the screen and saw his friend. Sam wanted to know how Lionel was doing.
“He’s adjusted pretty well, but he still has some pain,” Judd said. “If we can ever get to Wisconsin, there’s a guy who’s been working on some kind of contraption he thinks Lionel will be able to use.”
“I suppose you’ve heard what’s going on here if you’ve written at this hour,” Sam said.
“Tell me about it,” Judd said.
Sam was inside the communications building, but he had someone open the door behind him and Judd could see rock formations in the background. Sam wiped sweat from his forehead. “It’s crazy. Some of us noticed it was getting a little warmer, but we had no idea there was a plague until about ten this morning. We heard screams and rushed to see what it was.
“There were some stragglers just outside the camp, undecideds who didn’t see the miracle worker. They were literally burned alive where they stood. That’s when the reports began coming in from all over the world. We heard from China that everything is dried up, burned, or melted. No one is on the street, except for believers. Some GC apparently tried to use fireproof suits and boots and helmets, but they didn’t get very far. One of our sources says believers found piles of burning material on the street.”
“So it’s kind of like the locusts—the believers can move around without fear they’re going to be burned. But one thing still bugs me.”
“What’s that?”
“If all these buildings are falling in and cars are exploding because of the heat, how do the believers get around? If they walk, they won’t get very far. But if they try to use a car or a plane, won’t they burn?”
“I don’t know how God’s doing it, but it seems like the vehicles believers use are immune to the heat. Just like the clothes we wear and our shoes. The same with the hideouts of believers and the supplies.”
“Amazing.”
“Dr. Ben-Judah just called for prayer that God would give wisdom to the Tribulation Force about how to use this opportunity.”
“Great. But you don’t feel anything more than just being a little bit warm?”
“Wait a few hours. You’ll feel what it’s like soon enough.”
Judd closed his eyes and smiled. For the first time in months, things would be reversed. Now the GC would hide during the day and be out at night, and the Young Trib Force would move around during the day and sleep at night.
33
VICKI suggested they call Wanda and warn her about Cheryl, but Marshall reminded her that Wanda didn’t use a phone. Marshall asked Conrad to send an urgent e-mail to Wanda detailing what they knew.
As they bounced over back roads, Vicki thought about all they had been through in the past few years. The disappearance of her family would have been enough change, but with the earthquake, the plagues, and Nicolae Carpathia hunting down and killing believers, Vicki had little time to think about the past. Survival was a full-time job, and reaching out to those who didn’t know God was her main mission.
Still, hardly a day went by that she didn’t think of her family, her friends who had died, and the way things could have been. Vicki’s nineteenth birthday had come and gone without anyone remembering. Not even Judd. She didn’t blame anyone, but she still ached for things to return to normal. Before the disappearances, she had dreamed of going away to school. She thought a college degree might help her get a good job, and who knew, maybe she would find some rich guy and settle down in a Chicago suburb in a real house instead of a trailer. But her parents didn’t have the money to send her, and Vicki wasn’t scholarship material, at least back then.
Vicki wasn’t proud of the way she had lived before the disappearances. She had made bad choices in friends and in the way she lived. She had put partying above everything, and she knew she had to tell Judd about some of those things. Maybe he had skeletons too.
Before the vanishings, Vicki hadn’t thought of her life in the long term. If something sounded fun, she did it. If she thought something would make her happy, she’d try it. If someone suggested a tattoo or a piercing, she only thought of what people would say the next day at school.
The vanishings and Vicki’s new belief in God had changed all that. Suddenly, the truth about Jesus and what he had done for her, the reali
ty that God wanted her to dedicate her life to him, and the fact that there were only seven years until the return of Jesus made her want to change. God himself transformed the hopes and dreams of a normal teenager.
Vicki could never have dreamed what God would do in those first few years. She recalled a quote that summed up her feelings: “The world has not yet seen what God can do with one person who is totally committed to him.” As Vicki became more aware of God, his power and love and how much he wanted to help Vicki, she had grown more confident. In spite of her weaknesses, God was using Vicki.
She mulled these things over as they drove into the night, knowing the others at the hideout would be praying. She wondered about Judd’s e-mail and felt sad she hadn’t asked Conrad to read it to her. It couldn’t be anything embarrassing because Judd and Vicki had agreed they wouldn’t use e-mails to talk about things that were too personal. When they were on the phone, they discussed their feelings, but in e-mails they stuck to the latest news and happenings. If one or the other did want to say something personal they wrote private in the subject line.
Mark handed Vicki a stick of gum, and she thanked him. Vicki couldn’t remember the last time she had had a mint or gum. Mark had kept a stash of candy from their trip to the GC warehouse and doled it out at appropriate times. Mark loved giving Ryan candy, and he had become one of the child’s favorites.
Vicki stuffed the gum in her mouth and thought of her parents. Her dad had chewed this type of gum on Sunday mornings. She remembered him walking into her bedroom with a fresh minty smell on his breath, asking, pleading with her to come with them to church.
“Sun will be coming up in another hour or so,” Marshall said, breaking the silence in the car.
“How much farther to Wanda’s place?” Vicki said.
Tom studied Mark’s notes. “Wanda didn’t give mileage, but from where her place used to be, we have to be close.”
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