Arrived

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Mark was overwhelmed by the words and felt a sense of hope. “I have to know if my friends are okay. Can you tell me?”

  The angel stood. “Your actions and the actions of friends far away enabled them to escape. They are safe.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man turned. He was only inches away from a Peacekeeper, but the GC soldier kept sleeping.

  Mark wondered if the angel had caused the others to sleep. “Do you have to go?”

  “We will see each other again before the end.” He leaned toward Mark and with a twinkle in his eye said, “‘The Lord is my strength, my shield from every danger. I trust in him with all my heart. He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.’ ”

  The angel turned and walked toward the bus driver. Mark pulled himself up for one more glimpse, but the angel was gone.

  The bus driver slammed on his brakes and shouted, “Hey, take care of your prisoner! He’s gotten his handcuffs off!”

  “How did you get out of those?” a Peacekeeper said, pouncing on Mark.

  Mark just smiled and held out his hands. He remembered Vicki’s favorite chorus that the group had sung at the first hideout in Wisconsin and began singing.

  Laughing, crying, and singing to God.

  It was a song of joy and thanksgiving.

  Lionel watched news reports from the United North American States alone. Using codes Chang had given him, he was able to tap into a live feed from an unnamed prison.

  The female reporter began with footage of the night before when a camera crew had caught the action in Minnesota. As far as Lionel could tell, these were militia members and not believers, though the reporter labeled them “suspected Judah-ites.”

  “Another raid early this morning brought the arrest of a high-level member of what the Global Community called a rebel youth movement responsible for many deaths and destruction of Global Community property.”

  “We’re looking forward to interrogating our prisoner,” Commander Fulcire said with a wink.

  “Why aren’t you going to execute him for not taking the mark?” the reporter said.

  “Normally we would, but we believe this prisoner has valuable information. What we have here is a troubled young man who has been brainwashed to believe our lord Carpathia is evil. I’m not making excuses for his crimes, but if we can go inside his head and get information about other members of this dangerous group, we’ll be that much closer to the kind of world peace we’ve been striving for the last few years.”

  The camera cut to a shot of Mark being led off a bus, handcuffed and shackled at the ankles. He saw the camera and started to say something, but the Peacekeeper behind him hit him on the head with the butt of his rifle and Mark fell.

  Lionel closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. The reporter parroted the GC’s lies. If they knew the truth about Mark and the others in the Young Trib Force … He shook his head. No, if they knew the truth, they’d still report lies because they’re under the control of the biggest liar of them all.

  The woman concluded her report and threw it back to the anchor at the Global Community News Network. Lionel kept watching the live feed, wondering if she would say anything once she was off the air.

  “How did that come off?” the woman said. “Did you get a shot of the guy yelling about Jesus?”

  “Yeah,” someone said from behind the camera. “But we cut the audio out of his Jesus line. The producer didn’t want anyone saying that name.”

  Though GC officials tried everything to get Mark to give his name and information, he kept silent. He didn’t want to be traced to Nicolae High School and his friends in the Young Trib Force.

  After they processed him, Mark spent hours waiting in an interrogation room. He finally got so tired that he put his head on the table and went to sleep.

  His dreams the past few years had been filled with nightmares of GC raids and fires, huge, dragonlike creatures chasing him, and the one repeating dream of being caught by Nicolae himself. But this time he dreamed of golden streets filled with light, love, and laughter.

  Mark awoke to a slamming door and looked at the clock. Had he really been asleep six hours, or had they changed the clock?

  Commander Fulcire placed a plate of food on the table and sat. Chinese. One of Mark’s favorites. He tried not to look hungry, but his stomach growled.

  “I heard you wouldn’t tell us your name,” Fulcire said. He took a mouthful of fried rice, chomped into an egg roll, and wiped his mouth. “I know you think we’re evil, but we can be quite nice to people who give information.” Mark was determined not to say anything that would hurt his friends, and he didn’t want to talk at all, but he couldn’t resist this chance. “My mom always taught me not to talk with my mouth full.”

  “She did? And what was your mother’s name?”

  Mark stared at him.

  “Let me tell you something about this facility. There are isolated cells where you’d be alone, and there are general population cells where we put you with other … how should I say this? … criminals like yourself. These aren’t nice people. They don’t believe in much of anything other than their own survival. We put a nice young man like you in with them, and who knows what awful things could happen.”

  Mark sat back and thought of what the angel had said. God was going to use him in some way.

  “Tell us your name or you’ll go into one of those cells.”

  Mark stared straight ahead.

  “Suit yourself,” Fulcire said. He finished the meal, scraping every piece of rice from the plate, and walked out of the room.

  When he was gone, Mark bent over and tried to lick some of the sauce from the plate, but that only fueled his hunger.

  A round man in a green sweater walked in with another plate of food. He glanced through the window on the door, put the plate in front of Mark, and took Mark’s handcuffs off.

  “You need to hurry and eat that,” the man said. “They could be here to get you any minute.”

  Mark grabbed a plastic fork and pushed some fried rice into his mouth. He was so hungry he almost inhaled the food. The man seemed fascinated with how quickly Mark could eat.

  “Why are you helping me?” Mark said.

  The man shook his head. “Can’t stand the way they treat people. I don’t care if you don’t have Carpathia’s mark, you’re a human being.” He held out a hand. Mark shook it and kept eating.

  “Fulcire is a decent man. He just wants to know some information so we can process—”

  “So he can process my neck with the blade,” Mark said.

  “We’re getting information from the others who were staying with you.”

  Mark smiled. “You didn’t catch anyone because there wasn’t anyone to catch.”

  “I’m just trying to help. I don’t want to see you suffer any more than you have to. If there’s something you’d like to talk about, tell the guard you want to talk to me—”

  The door opened and Fulcire barged in. “Cummings, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I was just—”

  Fulcire swatted the half-eaten plate of food from the table, and rice flew onto the walls and floor. “Get him out of here!”

  A guard rushed in, seized Mark, and took him through a series of doors. Another guard released Mark’s feet and pushed him toward a row of cells. The room stank, and Mark thought he would throw up at the smell. The guards took him to the largest cell where at least five people slept on cots pushed against the walls. They handed Mark an energy bar, shoved him inside, and slammed the door.

  Two large men stood and approached him. One was bald, and Mark guessed he weighed three hundred pounds. The other was a smaller black man with a stubbly beard.

  The bigger one pulled something sharp from his pocket and held it out. “Give me that food or we’ll cut you!”

  23

  JUDD and Vicki sat in their home, wondering what Mark was going through. They
had seen the video report Lionel had recorded and read the messages Commander Fulcire had written. No doubt the GC was gloating about this new arrest.

  Judd felt confident that Mark wouldn’t tell the GC anything important, and even if he did, their friends were headed to safety. The two prayed for Mark again, asking God to help Mark be strong.

  “Do you think they’ll torture him?” Vicki said.

  “They’ll do anything to get information.” Judd took Vicki’s hand. “You know how this is going to end.”

  Vicki nodded and tears welled in her eyes. “I hate this. We all know it can happen after watching Chloe. I still remember the feelings I had when they caught Pete. You hope something miraculous happens, you pray that God will step in, but deep down you know your friend is as good as gone.”

  Judd sighed. “I can’t imagine what Buck is going through after losing Chloe.”

  “I talked with Priscilla Sebastian earlier. She’s watching Kenny when he’s not with Buck or Rayford. She said Buck basically spends his waking hours taking care of Kenny or writing.”

  “Makes sense. Staying busy probably keeps him sane.”

  “I’ve volunteered to watch Kenny whenever they need a break.”

  “He really likes you,” Judd said. “You’d make a good mom.”

  Vicki grinned. “I don’t know. It seems like such a huge responsibility.” She paused. “But if that’s what God has for us, to be parents, I’m up for the challenge.”

  Judd touched her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about all that time before the Rapture. My parents wanted me to become a godly man—I didn’t even know what that meant, didn’t care. I think I want the chance to pass God’s love on to other people, kids. And maybe they’re not ours. Maybe they’re kids without parents like you’re talking about.”

  Vicki smiled and hugged him. “Sometimes I see my mom’s face in my dreams. She loved me so much, and I didn’t even know it.”

  “I remember catching my mom praying for me one night. I’ve never told anybody about it. I was coming home late from some party that I shouldn’t have gone to, and I slipped in without anybody hearing me. I thought they’d all be asleep, but when I passed my parents’ bedroom, I saw my mom in her reading chair, the light on behind her.”

  “What was she doing?” Vicki said.

  “Crying. And she was whispering a prayer—I heard my name. I always felt bad that I didn’t tell her I was home. I just went to my bedroom.”

  Vicki groaned. “It makes me so sad to think what I was like before all this. It’s almost like I wasn’t alive—I was just a shell looking for something to numb myself even more, so I drank or smoked or did stuff to help me not feel anything.”

  Judd nodded. “I guess if you don’t have God, you don’t want to feel anything because it’s so scary. You’re all alone.”

  “Yeah, and that’s what makes being a believer so great. You can finally be alive. I think about the verse that says the evil one comes to steal and kill and destroy but Jesus came to give real life.”

  “That’s what I want. Even though life can bring a lot of pain and can really be awful, I’ll take living it with God’s help rather than being a spiritual zombie.”

  Mark nervously handed the larger man his energy bar. “I’m not really that hungry.”

  The man tore it open, broke it in half, and gave some to the bearded man. They ate, then retreated to their bunks.

  Mark looked for an empty cot but found none, so he went to the corner and sat on the floor.

  A young man, Mark guessed he was in his thirties, slept nearby. The man opened his eyes. “What’d they get you for?”

  Mark shrugged. “Guess I didn’t want to cooperate with their rules.”

  The man lifted his head and stared at Mark. “Hey, you don’t have Carpathia’s tattoo.”

  “Don’t like tattoos. Especially the GC kind.”

  The man smiled, showing missing teeth. “Same here. I dodged it for as long as I could, then got caught and thrown in here yesterday. Sure seemed like the GC was in a hurry with something big. I guess they’ll make us take the thing or chop us sometime today.”

  “What did you do wrong?”

  “Sure are nosy, kid,” the bearded man said from across the room.

  “Lay off him, LeRoy.” He turned back to Mark. “I’m Steve. We were doing a little relocation of goods when the GC found us.”

  “Problem was, it was the GC’s goods we were relocatin’,” LeRoy said.

  “What do you mean?” Mark said.

  “We got caught taking some electronic equipment we wanted to sell,” Steve said. “Some stuff out of a GC warehouse a few miles from here. That was LeRoy’s idea that I said was too risky—”

  “We’d have gotten away with it if you could have kept your big mouth shut,” LeRoy said. “This is the last place I wanted to wind up.”

  “He was in before for murder,” Steve said. “Got loose during the big earthquake. Been on the run since.”

  Mark looked at LeRoy, remembering Lionel’s story about his uncle being killed by a man named LeRoy. “What’s your last name?”

  “Banks. What about it?”

  That’s it! This is the same guy! “Nothing,” Mark said. “The name just sounded familiar.”

  “Well, you can forget it because I’m gettin’ out of here and away from this deadwood of a partner you’re talkin’ to. He’s going soft on me anyway, talking about that Ben-Judah guy.”

  Mark looked at Steve. “You’ve been reading Dr. Ben-Judah’s Web site?”

  Steve nodded. “Had a lady talk to me about God and tell me I should read it. I did, but I didn’t understand it.”

  Mark glanced at the men in the next cell. “Are there others here who don’t have Carpathia’s mark?”

  “I don’t know. Ask ’em,” Steve said.

  Mark stared down the row of darkened cells. He had no idea how long he had before the GC came back for him. “Excuse me,” he began nervously. “I don’t mean to wake you, but how many of you—?”

  “Shut up!”

  “We’re trying to sleep, stupid!”

  Others cursed him and threw things at the cell bars.

  Mark took a breath and kept going. “Just give me a minute and answer this. How many of you in here don’t have the mark of Carpathia?”

  “Shut your yap, jerk!”

  Steve hurried over to Mark. “You’d better watch yourself. These guys’ll turn on you fast.”

  “I don’t know how much time I have left in here. I have an important message, and if I don’t talk now they may never hear what I have to say.”

  “Your funeral,” Steve said.

  Mark continued. “If you haven’t taken the mark of Carpathia, I want you to listen. You still have a chance to believe the truth.”

  A handful of men rolled from under their blankets and looked at him.

  “What do you mean, the truth?” Steve said.

  “I think some of you are ready for what I’m about to say. God’s been working on you.”

  “I’m going to work on you if you don’t shut up,” someone said. “LeRoy, take care of this kid.”

  “Shut up and let him talk,” LeRoy said. “I got a feeling he won’t be here much longer.”

  Mark nodded at LeRoy and turned to face the men. “When the disappearances happened, did any of you lose friends or family members?”

  “Of course we did,” a man said. “Everybody did.”

  “Okay. Now think about those people. Were any of them religious? Did they talk a lot about God and go to church?”

  “My mother-in-law vanished and it made me religious,” a man said. “I thanked God for a whole year!”

  The others laughed.

  Mark studied the unmarked men. “The reason those people vanished is because God came back for his true children. They were immediately taken to heaven, which is where they are today. That means every one of us in here didn’t know God. Anybody who was left behind missed the truth.
”

  He took a step to his right. “You might have gone to church or grown up hearing stories from the Bible. I know a lot of people who lived good lives but were left behind. The truth is, everyone still on earth never asked God to forgive them, and they never turned away from the bad stuff they’d done.”

  Mark lowered his voice and explained the prophecies about Antichrist and how each of the plagues the world had seen had been predicted thousands of years earlier. Then he spoke of the prophecies concerning the Jewish Messiah who would come not just to save Jewish people but all who believed in him.

  “That man’s name is Jesus,” Mark said. “He was God in the flesh, and he lived a perfect life and died in your place on the cross.”

  “Why would God have to die to let us go to heaven?” a man said.

  Mark paused, trying to think of a way to explain. “God is the great judge of every person, and because he’s holy, he can’t let anyone into heaven who’s not perfect. Is there any one of you who’s done everything right?”

  “My wife always thought she was perfect,” a man said, and the others laughed.

  “Everybody falls short of God’s standard,” Mark said. “We’re all guilty and deserve to be separated from him forever. But instead of punishing us, the judge himself became a prisoner, lived a perfect life, and then took our sentence.”

  “What’s this got to do with us?” LeRoy said. “This ain’t church.”

  Mark focused on the few men standing who had no mark. “God is offering each of you a key to unlock the cell that’s holding you. That cell is sin. It traps us and keeps us from following God. In the end it will kill our souls if we don’t ask to be forgiven.”

  Someone in the back moved and a cot creaked. That was the only sound Mark heard.

  “What about those of us who took that mark?” a man said from a few cells away. “I didn’t want to take it, but they made me.”