Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘As a Christian, I’m praying for Bethany,’ says the man who tipped me out of my wheelchair and left me helpless in a church car park. ‘I’m a father as well as a believer. I love my child. And I love the Lord too. And when two great loves are not compatible…’ His lip quivers, his eyes shine with passion. But a corner of my mind is preoccupied with something else: why are so many other cars headed in the same direction as us? ‘If our church elders are correct in believing that this is a sign the End Times are here, I am praying that she too will be raptured along with the righteous,’ continues Krall. ‘But I fear that will not happen.’ He shakes his head, as though too upset to continue, then regains his grip. ‘My daughter has chosen another kind of future.’ And why do these cars have no roof racks or trailers? No obvious luggage? Why do the families inside them look thrilled with life, instead of scared out of their wits? ‘If Bethany were here now I would say to her, stop doing the Devil’s work and return to your true family, which is the family of Jesus Christ. I will be praying for her here today, along with many thousands of others, as we await the glory that shall be ours.’

And why do so many of them have Christian bumper stickers?

When the camera pulls out, and we see where Leonard Krall is standing, Frazer Melville says quietly, ‘Oh fuck.’

Which more or less sums things up.

I turn my head away from the screen and blink. It can’t be.

But it is.

The Olympic Stadium has been transformed into a huge, impromptu worship centre.

I whip round. Bethany is still sleeping. Did she know all along that this would happen? Did she engineer it?

‘Leave her. It doesn’t matter. We’ll find another place,’ says Frazer Melville. ‘Quick. Call Ned and tell him.’

I punch at the phone in mounting panic. But there’s no connection. I try again. And again. The line is blocked.

‘If the government’s declared a state of emergency, the phone lines will be down,’ says Frazer Melville. He has seen my panic and probably shares it. But he’s hiding it well.

With cruel efficiency, a plughole opens up inside me and hope drains out.

A tiny brown spider is making its way along the dashboard. Sometimes, as a young child, I’d squash small creatures, from a mixture of boredom, sadism and curiosity. Following its stumbling progress towards the air filter, and contemplating what I could or could not do, at this moment, to radically alter the course of its tiny, unaware life, I realise the extent of my mistake in accepting the grandiose notion that Earth’s plight is man’s punishment. That all we have wished for in modern times, and engendered in the getting, is an affront to some invisible principle of ethics. Nature is neither good nor motherly nor punitive nor vengeful. It neither blesses nor cherishes. It is indifferent. Which makes us as expendable as the dodo or the polar bear.

‘Drive one kilometre to destination,’ says the sat-nav.

‘Did you know your father would be at the stadium?’ I ask as levelly as I can manage when Bethany wakes, her face plastic with sweat. Despite the huge bruise and her tied wrists, she looks oddly serene, as though she has slept for hours rather than minutes. She inhales deeply and breathes out slowly, as though somehow, along the journey, she has studied yoga and it has nourished her.

‘Sure,’ she smiles. Her voice is measured, almost thoughtful. ‘Along with thousands of other people. All expecting the Rapture. I saw it.’

A current of fury sweeps through me. Frazer Melville swings round, his face red. ‘So you led us — deliberately — to the worst place we could possibly go!’ he yells. ‘And we can’t change the plan because we can’t get hold of Ned!’ He thumps the wheel.

‘The helicopter’s landing there,’ I say quietly. My mouth is dry: I have to force the words past my tongue. ‘Right in the middle of it. And there’s nothing we can do but go there. Did you see that, too, Bethany?’

She smiles sweetly. ‘Yup. Into the lion’s den.’

I’m remembering my calamitous meeting with the Reverend Leonard Krall. Paranoia is like a fast-growing crystal. Blink and it has sprouted a whole new section.

You’re being manipulated, Ms Fox, he said. And you can’t even see it.

‘Hey, there it is!’ yells Bethany. She is pointing ahead, her whole face alight with excitement. She looks almost innocent. ‘0 come all ye faithful, for the Lord himself will descend from Heaven with a shout! Halle-fucking-lujah!’

I stare.

It’s like contemplating a mirage.

The colossal ziggurat rears up from its man-made island, the shiny, tilted cliff of its outer wall dwarfing the crowds that swarm across the footbridges and filter inside, sucked through the porous skin of its flank.

We have arrived.

I’d forgotten its epic scale, its amalgam of practicality and grandeur, its seemingly endless capacity for absorption. A stadium is a shell into which human flesh must be poured before it can spring to life. Fathoming that complex, unassailable dynamic was part of what shocked me out of my misery when I watched some of the Para-lympics in rehab with a group of fellow-patients, all of us spinal injured, all in mourning for what we had lost. The neuropathic pain that racked my lower back and my dead limbs was so violent I knew it would tip me over the edge if I didn’t get a grip. That, and the open wound of my grief — for Alex, for Max, and for my legs — was vivid enough to turn every day into an inner conference on suicide. But during the few hours I spent watching other wheelchair-users barrelling along the track in a shining spin of metal, something happened to eject the pain from my consciousness. Afterwards there was a cruel reflux of anguish, and the days returned to their routine. But the experience led to an inner shift. Those athletes had offered some kind of hope, an idea to aspire to, concrete proof that the unimaginable was possible and that life could continue in some wholly different form. That the spirit might thrive. I knew enough to grab it like someone drowning, and cling on.

Somehow, that day changed me.

As for this one—

If I believed in God, I would request his help at this juncture.

As we enter the East car park, thin shafts of sunlight pierce the clouds and glitter on the roofs and bonnets of a thousand vehicles, refracting off them in kaleidoscopic fragments. From the distance, the acoustic thrum of prayer-music emanates from the stadium’s deep cradle, relayed on the giant screens illuminating its exterior walls. Droves of smartly dressed worshippers are surging towards the wide footbridges that cross the waterways encircling the island, their chatter lending the atmosphere the geniality of a friendly sports tournament. There are smiles and winks, whoops and waves, shouted blessings. A pretty woman in a yellow uniform with navy epaulettes directs us to follow a line of cars to a distant bay of the car park, and calls out after us, ‘May Christ be with you!’

We park, and I glance back at the concourse: the screen shows the banked tiers of seats within the stadium are filling steadily while five or six white-clad preachers, working as a team, are engaged in a vigorous warm-up on a raised white stage at one end of the stadium. On another screen nearby, BBC News 24 is running images under the heading Britain in Chaos , scenes which are duplicated in miniature on our car’s dashboard TV. I pass Frazer Melville the bottle of water. He takes a slug and hands it back.

‘If we want the helicopter to reach us, we have to go in,’ I say. The sensation of confinement has been building like a slow torture. If I don’t get out of the car soon, claustrophobia will win. Frazer Melville is still pale. I can see the journey has taken its toll on him too.