Apollyon

by Tim LaHaye

  “I feel such compassion for you,” Tsion said, “such a longing for you to come to Jesus.” And suddenly he could not continue. His lips trembled, and he could not form words.

  Hattie raised her eyebrows, staring at him.

  “Forgive me,” he managed in a whisper, taking a sip of water and collecting himself. He continued through tears. “Somehow God has allowed me to see you through his eyes—a scared, angry, shaken young woman who has been used and abandoned by many in her life. He loves you with a perfect love. Jesus once looked upon his audience and said, ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’

  “Miss Durham, you know the truth. I have heard you say so. And yet you are not willing. No, I do not consider you a lost cause. I pray for you every bit as much as I pray for Chaim. Because Jesus went on to say about the hard-hearted people of Jerusalem, ‘I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”’

  “I look at you in your fragile beauty and see what life has done to you, and I long for your peace. I think of what you could do for the kingdom during these perilous times, and I am jealous to have you as part of our family. I fear you’re risking your life by holding out on God, and I do not look forward to how you might suffer before he reaches you.

  “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, but you asked.”

  Hattie sat shaking her head, and Rayford had the impression she was more surprised than embarrassed. She did not respond except to go from shaking to nodding. “What time is that news thing?” she asked.

  “Right now,” Chloe said, and everyone cleared his own dishes.

  Buck settled in front of the television in Jerusalem with his notebook, fascinated by the foreboding dusk at dawn. He was grateful that both Jacov and Stefan were off and had showed up to watch the press conference with him.

  “Press conference” was a misnomer, of course, now that the Global Community owned the media. Only in underground publications like Buck’s did readers get objective substance. That was what made Chaim’s appearance so intriguing. If he had the guts to follow through on what he told Buck he would say, it would be the most controversial thing on television since Tsion’s startling testimony. No, Rosenzweig had not become a believer, at least not yet. But he had clearly grown tired of being used by the GC regime.

  The program began with what had become the obligatory fawning over the panelists. It seemed every time the GC wanted to persuade the populace of some cockamamie theory, it paraded pedigreed know-it-alls before the camera and buttered them up.

  The host introduced the head of GCASA, the head of GCP&L, various and sundry scientists, authors, dignitaries, and even entertainment personalities. Each luminary had smiled shyly during the recitation of his or her litany of achievements and qualifications.

  Buck snorted aloud when the host actually used the phrase “And last, but certainly not least.” The camera panned to the tiny Albert Schweitzer–looking man on the end, and the scrolling legend along the bottom of the screen bore his name. Chaim looked neither shy nor humble, but rather bemused, as if this whole thing was a bit much.

  Chaim tilted his head back and forth as if mocking himself as the plaudits rambled on and on: former professor, writer, botanist, winner of the Nobel Prize, honorary this, honorary that, speaker, diplomat, ambassador, personal friend and confidant of His Excellency the potentate. Chaim drew circles with an open hand as if they should wrap it up. The host finished, “Once Global Weekly’s Man of the Year and inventor of the formula credited with making Israel a world power, Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig!”

  There was no studio audience, and even the GC press corps was against applauding. So the energetic intro died a conspicuous, awkward death, and the show moved on.

  The host first read the entire GC statement while the text scrolled on the screen. Buck’s tension mounted when—as he feared—the host began by asking for the opinion and comment of the first expert on the left. He would continue in the same order they had been introduced. Buck worried that viewers would lose patience and nod off from boredom by the time they got around to Chaim. One advantage to the GC-controlled media: Despite five hundred channel choices, this was on every station.

  Buck had to remind himself that even for millions who ignored what they considered the ravings of a madman like Tsion Ben-Judah, the sudden darkness was frightening. They tuned in for answers from their government and likely considered this the most important program they had ever watched. Buck only hoped they would stay around for the last guy. The payoff would be worth it.

  Everyone on the panel, of course, praised the fast and efficient and thorough work of the GCASA and assured the public that this was a minor event, a temporary condition. “As alarming as the darkness is,” a woman on the management staff of Global Community Power and Light said, “we agree it will have negligible impact on the quality of life as we know it, and it should correct itself in a matter of days.”

  When at long last they got to Chaim, Buck felt a sense of community with his people in the States. The idea that they were all watching the same thing made the miles shrink momentarily, and he longed to have his wife cuddling next to him.

  “Well,” Chaim began dramatically, “who am I to add to or detract from anything said by any of these brilliant aficionados of interplanetary galactic astronomical phenomena? As for the dear woman who promises this will have no impact on our quality of life, let me say how disappointed I am. Our quality of life the last few years has been nothing to write home about.

  “I am but a simple botanist who happened upon a combination that turned out to be magic water, and suddenly my opinion is sought on everything from the price of sausage to whether the defiant preachers at the Wailing Wall are real or make-believe.

  “You want my opinion? OK, I will give it to you. To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I don’t know who turned the lights out, and I’m not sure I want to know who the two gentlemen are at the Wall. I just wish they would bring back the pure water and let it rain once in a while. Is that too much to ask?

  “But let me tell you this, now that I have your attention. I do have your attention, don’t I?”

  The camera, panning back to the speechless host, exposed the shocked expressions of the other guests. It was clear they thought Rosenzweig had finally stepped off the edge.

  “As should come as no surprise to anyone, I am not a religious man. A Jew by birth, of course, and proud of it. Wouldn’t have it any other way. But to me it’s a nationality, not a faith. All that to say this: Many, myself included, were horrified to hear what happened to the family of my beloved protégé and former student who grew up to be the respected linguistic and biblical scholar, Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah.

  “I confess, in my heart of hearts I had to wonder if he hadn’t brought this on himself. Condone the killings? Never as long as I live. But would I advise a man to go on international television, from the very land where the name Jesus Christ is anathema to your neighbors, and tell the world you had become a turncoat? A Christ follower? A believer that Jesus is the Messiah?

  “Madness.

  “I was doubly horrified when he became a fugitive, exiled from his own homeland, his life worth nothing. But did I lose respect for him? Admire him less? How could I? Knowing such risks, taking such stands!”

  “Thank you, Dr. Rosenz—,” the host began, obviously getting instructions through his earpiece.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Rosenzweig said. “I have earned the right to another minute or so, and I demand that I not be unplugged from the air. I just want to say that I am still not a religious man, but my religious friend, the aforementioned rabbi, has spoken to the very issue we address today. Now you may rest easy. I have come back to the point.

  “Ben-Judah was ridiculed for his beliefs, for his contentions that scriptural proph
ecy could be taken literally. He said an earthquake would come. It came. He said hail and blood and fire would scorch the plants. They did. He said things would fall from the sky, poisoning water, killing people, sinking ships. They fell.

  “He said the sun and the moon and the stars would be stricken and that the world would be one-third darker. Well, I am finished. I don’t know what to make of it except that I feel a bigger fool every day. And let me just add, I want to know what Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah says is coming next! Don’t you?” And he quickly added the address of Tsion’s Web site.

  The host was still speechless. He looked at Chaim, brows raised.

  “Go ahead now,” Chaim said. “Pull the plug on me.”

  Rayford was frustrated that he had not made it to Palwaukee that day. And he wouldn’t make it the next day either, or the next. The reduction of solar power affected every facet of an already difficult existence including the transmission of Tsion’s lessons. Dr. Rosenzweig’s endorsement of Tsion’s teaching resulted in the most massive number of hits on what was already a site ten times more popular than any other in history. And yet broadcasting Tsion’s daily messages became an arduous chore that forced Rayford to delay any other activity.

  Repeated failures on the Internet were blamed on the solar problems. Believers all over the globe rallied to try to copy and pass the teaching along as necessary, but it became impossible to track the success of that effort.

  Chloe’s efforts at building a private marketplace in anticipation of the mark of the beast nearly ground to a halt. Over the next several weeks, seasons were skewed. Major Midwest cities looked like Alaska in the dead of winter. Power reserves were exhausted. Hundreds of thousands all over the world died of exposure. Even the vaunted GC, having conveniently ignored adjusting their initial assessment, now looked for someone to blame for this curse. Confused in the tragic panic surrounding the crisis was the role of Ben-Judah. Had he predicted it, as Rosenzweig had asserted, or had he called it down from heaven?

  Peter the Second decried Ben-Judah and the two preachers as reckless practitioners of black magic, proving it by showing live shots of the Wailing Wall. While snow swirled and drifted and Israelis paid top dollar for protective clothing, stayed inside, and used building material for fuel, there stood Eli and Moishe in their same spot. They were still barefoot! Still clad only in their loose-hanging sackcloth robes, arms bare. With only their deeply tanned skin, their beards, and long hair between them and the frigid temperatures, they preached and preached and preached.

  “Surely,” the self-ascribed supreme pontiff railed, “if there is a devil, he is master of these two! Who other than deranged, demonic beings could withstand these elements and continue to spout irrational diatribes?”

  Nicolae Carpathia himself was strangely silent and his visage scarce. Finally, when the Global Community seemed powerless, he addressed the world. During a brief season of solar activity at midday in the Middle East, Mac was able to place a call to Rayford, who answered a cell phone with ancient batteries that had been recharged by a generator. The connection was bad, and they couldn’t talk long.

  “Watch the potentate tonight if you can, Ray!” Mac shouted. “We’re warm as toast even in the snow here because he has marshaled all the energy we need for the palace. But when he goes on TV he’s going to be wearing a huge parka he had shipped in from the Arctic.”

  Mac was right. Rayford and Floyd worked to store as much energy as they could from various sources so they could watch on the smallest TV in the safe house. The whole lot of them huddled to watch and stay warm, Hattie continuing to maintain, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m only getting what I deserve.”

  Tsion said, “My dear, you will find that none of the sealed of the Lord will die due to this judgment. This is an attention-getter aimed at the unbelievers. We suffer because the whole world suffers, but it will not mortally harm us. Don’t you want the same protection?”

  She did not answer.

  Buck, shivering underground with Stefan and Jacov, could not find the power to watch Carpathia on TV. The group listened on a radio with a signal so weak they had to hold their collective breath to hear him.

  In Mount Prospect, Rayford, Tsion, Chloe, Floyd, and Hattie watched as Carpathia came on TV in a bare studio, clapping his mittens and bouncing on his toes as if freezing to death. “Citizens of the Global Community,” he intoned, “I applaud your courage, your cooperation, your sense of loyalty and togetherness as we rise to the challenge of enduring yet another catastrophe.

  “I come to you at this hour to announce my plan to personally visit the two preachers at the Wailing Wall, who have admitted their roles in the plagues that have befallen Israel. They must now be forced to admit that they are behind this dastardly assault on our new way of life.

  “Apparently they are invulnerable to physical attack. I will call upon their sense of decency, of fairness, of compassion, and I will go with an open mind, willing to negotiate. Clearly they want something. If there is something I can bargain with that will not threaten the dignity of my office or harm the citizens I live for, I am willing to listen and consider anything.

  “I shall make this pilgrimage tomorrow, and it will be carried on live television. As the Global Community headquarters in New Babylon naturally has more power reserves than most areas, we will record this historic encounter with the hope that all of you will be able to enjoy it when this ordeal is finally over.

  “Take heart, my beloved ones. I believe the end of this nightmare is in sight.”

  “He’s going personally to the Wall?” Buck said. “Is that what I just heard?”

  Stefan nodded. “We should go.”

  “They won’t let anybody near the place,” Jacov said.

  “They might,” Buck said. He suggested the three of them bundle up as thickly as possible and find a location with a clear view of the wrought-iron fence. “We can build a shelter there that looks like just a wood box.”

  “We’re down to our last few sheets of plywood for fuel now,” Stefan said. “That green stuff in the cellar.”

  “We’ll bring it back with us,” Buck said, “and use it for fuel later.”

  The plan proved his most foolhardy yet. His face was still tender in spots and numb in others since getting the stitches out several weeks before. He had not expected to have to deal with frostbite in Israel. He and his two compatriots found a stairway that led to an abandoned building with a sealed door, fewer than a hundred yards from the Wall. With Carpathia expected at noon, they built their shelter in the pitch-blackness of the morning. If others ventured out in the howling blizzard, Buck and his friends didn’t see them.

  They were raw and cold by the time they climbed into their rough-hewn box with slits for viewing. Buck, ever the journalist, just had to see what the thing might look like to a passerby. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “You’re going out in this again?” Jacov said.

  “Just for a minute.”

  Buck jogged a hundred feet from the staircase and tried to make out the box in the blowing snow and low output from a nearby light pole. Perfect, he thought. It would draw no one’s attention. As he trudged back, he squinted in the darkness toward the Wall, knowing the witnesses were there but unable to see them. He detoured to get closer.

  From what he could tell, they were not by the fence. He drew closer, confident he could not surprise or frighten them and that they would know in their spirits he was a believer. He stepped as close to the fence as he had ever been, recalling one of the first times he had ever conversed with them from just a few feet away.

  A break in the wind allowed him to see the two, sitting, their backs against the stone building. They sat casually, elbows on knees, conversing. They were not huddled, still impervious to the elements. Buck wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. They didn’t seem to need encouragement. They didn’t seem to need anything.

  When in unison they glanced up at him standing th
ere, he just nodded with his stiff neck, like a kid in a binding snowsuit, and raised both fists in support. His heart leapt when he saw them smile for the first time, and Eli raised a hand of greeting.

  Buck ran back to the shelter. “Where you been, man?” Jacov said. “We thought you got lost or frozen or something.”

  Buck just sat, wrapping his arms around his knees, hunching his shoulders, and shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said.

  GC troops kept crowds several blocks away, once the motor coach arrived bearing Nicolae and his entourage. The wind and snow had stopped, but the noonday sun hardly warmed the area.

  Carpathia remained on the bus as TV personnel set up lights and sound and cameras. Finally they signaled the potentate, and several of his top people, led by Fortunato, disembarked. Carpathia was the last to appear. He approached the fence, behind which the two witnesses still sat.

  As the world watched on television, Carpathia said, “I bring you cordial greetings from the Global Community. I assume, because of your obvious supernatural powers, that you knew I was coming.”

  Eli and Moishe remained seated. Moishe said, “God alone is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.”

  “Nonetheless, I am here on behalf of the citizens of the earth to determine what course we might take to gain respite from this curse on the planet.”

  The witnesses stood and stepped forward. “We will speak to you alone.”

  Carpathia nodded at his minions, and Fortunato, clearly reluctant, led them back to the motor coach.

  “All right then,” Carpathia said, “shall we proceed?”

  “We will talk with you alone.”

  Carpathia looked puzzled, then said, “These people are merely television technicians, cameramen, and so forth.”

  “We will talk with you alone.”

  Nicolae cocked his head in resignation and sent the TV crew away as well. “May we leave the cameras running? Would that be all right?”