“I’m telling the truth,” Judd said. “If those things get inside the plane, they’ll sting everybody.”
“Everybody but you?” the attendant said skeptically.
“I’m not a target. I can’t explain right now why—”
“Then get to your seat. We’re responsible for your safety and if you can’t explain—”
“Okay,” Judd said. “Since I believe in Jesus, those locusts won’t bother me. They’re only after people who … who don’t believe in God.”
“You’re one of those people,” the woman said. “I believe in God, but I don’t follow that crazy rabbi.”
The plane stopped. Judd put a hand out to steady himself. “You’ve got to believe me.”
Passengers whimpered and cried. They were too frightened to retrieve their things from the overhead bins.
“Wait here,” the attendant said.
A few moments later she returned with a member of the flight crew. “Linda said you’ve volunteered to go outside and help with the ramp,” the pilot said. “All of our personnel are down.”
Judd nodded. “If you can get me out of here without letting any of those things in, I can help. But if even one of them gets inside the cabin, it’ll sting all the passengers.”
Lionel felt sorry for the worker trapped outside the door, but he knew he couldn’t risk opening it and letting the locusts inside. Besides, Lionel knew that once the man was stung, there was nothing anyone could do.
Lionel ran to a security worker. “You’ve got to seal off the terminal!”
The man seemed dazed. He nodded, then lifted his radio. “Seal off all the entrances to the terminal!”
Lionel found Sam, and they watched Judd’s plane taxi toward the terminal. The smoky cloud that had hung over them for days was gone, but the spread of the demon locusts was as thick as the cloud had been. The locusts flew into the window, piling on top of each other to get a look inside.
A worker on the tarmac screamed and beat his head against the concrete. Lionel shook his head.
“He’s going to kill himself,” Sam said.
Lionel stared through the thousands of demons looking straight at them. “‘In those days people will seek death but will not find it,’” he said, quoting the verse from memory. “‘They will long to die, but death will flee away!’”
Mark peered through the car window, knocking away the locusts that kept coming. The car was covered with the beasts now, and he couldn’t see Carl.
Mark raced to the other side and opened the door.
“Are you crazy?” Carl said.
Mark smiled. “Get out.”
Carl’s eyes darted from Mark’s face to the locusts buzzing around his head. Carl slid out of the car. “They’re not stinging me.”
“They won’t,” Mark said, pointing to his forehead. “See this?”
“It’s a cross,” Carl said. “I didn’t notice that when I first met you.”
“You have one just like it. Come on,” Mark said, “I want to get you back to meet the others. And I want to hear John’s story.”
Vicki checked on Janie later in the day. The girl thrashed and moaned. She shivered as if it were the middle of winter.
Conrad brought some cool cloths and stood by Vicki. “We gave her every chance.”
Vicki nodded. Finally, Janie relaxed enough to speak. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We tried,” Vicki said. “You wouldn’t listen.”
“Why would God do such a thing to me?” Janie said. “I can’t stand the pain.”
“Give your life to God now, Janie,” Vicki said.
“Will it make it stop hurting?” Janie said.
“I don’t think so, but—”
“Then what good is your God anyway?” Janie yelled. “Get out! Both of you, get out!”
Conrad followed Vicki downstairs. They had closed every opening in the house and still the locusts were finding their way inside.
Vicki had prepared enough food and water downstairs to keep people alive for a few weeks. At some point they would need to get more supplies, assuming the locusts continued their attack. Vicki couldn’t wait to log onto the Web and see what more Tsion Ben-Judah had to say.
Someone screamed. Darrion and Shelly were calling for help.
“Can you clear these bugs off the stairway door?” Vicki said.
“I’ll do my best,” Conrad said. He grabbed the piece of firewood and started whacking. There were at least a hundred locusts chewing, biting, and scratching to get inside. A few minutes later the locusts lay in a heap, stunned.
Vicki grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen and opened the stairwell door. She ducked inside and slammed it behind her, inspecting the basement as she walked downstairs. Locusts scratched on the walls, but none were inside.
She raced to the secret entrance to the room below. She lifted the trapdoor and gasped. Charlie, Melinda, and Lenore cowered in one corner of the room. Shelly and Darrion stood by the tunnel door, their feet planted firmly in the dirt.
“They’re digging through the mud underneath the door,” Darrion shouted. “We can’t hold them much longer!”
Vicki raced back to the room above and grabbed a loose board. Shelly screamed again. “One of them’s getting through!”
“Come up here!” Vicki shouted, motioning for Charlie, Melinda, and Lenore to follow her.
The three scrambled up the stairs into the room. Shelly and Darrion struggled to keep the locusts from working through the mud. One of the demons clawed its way through and showed its ugly head. Shelly was terrified. She jumped back from the doorway just as Vicki brought the board and slapped it on the ground.
But it was too late. One of the demons flew into the room, its teeth bared, looking for a victim.
Lenore screamed from above, “My baby! Don’t let it hurt my baby!”
Vicki glanced down into the corner at the makeshift crib Charlie had made. Tolan was awake and thrashing under the covers.
The locust glanced at Vicki, Shelly, and Darrion, then darted for the corner. It hovered over the crib, its teeth dripping with venom.
“No!” Vicki shouted.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jerry B. Jenkins (www.jerryjenkins.com) is the writer of the Left Behind series. He owns the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild, an organization dedicated to mentoring aspiring authors. Former vice president for publishing for the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, he also served many years as editor of Moody magazine and is now Moody’s writer-at-large.
His writing has appeared in publications as varied as Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts, in-flight magazines, and dozens of other periodicals. Jenkins’s biographies include books with Billy Graham, Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Luis Palau, Walter Payton, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan, among many others. His books appear regularly on the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists.
Jerry is also the writer of the nationally syndicated sports story comic strip Gil Thorp, distributed to newspapers across the United States by Tribune Media Services.
Jerry and his wife, Dianna, live in Colorado and have three grown sons.
Dr. Tim LaHaye (www.timlahaye.com), who conceived the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center. He also recently co-founded the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Liberty University. Presently Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S. and Canada, where his current prophecy books are very popular.
Dr. LaHaye holds a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and a doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For twenty-five years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. It was during that time that he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school syst
em of ten schools, and Christian Heritage College.
Dr. LaHaye has written over forty books that have been published in more than thirty languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His current fiction works, the Left Behind series, written with Jerry B. Jenkins, continue to appear on the best-seller lists of the Christian Booksellers Association, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Times.
He is the father of four grown children and grandfather of nine. Snow skiing, water skiing, motorcycling, golfing, vacationing with family, and jogging are among his leisure activities.
Stung Page 26
