Tyndale House - The Mark - The Beast Rules the World

"Kaboom, Zeke."

"Bingo."

"Call you when I get there."

"Her name is not in our system, David," Nurse Palemoon said. He tried to sit up and she shushed him. "That doesn't have to mean the worst."

"How can you say that? The sun is coming up, and I haven't heard from her. She'd communicate with me if she could!"

"David, you must calm down. This room is empty but not secure. Your friends are on their way, but you can't trust anyone else."

"Tell me about it. Hannah, you have got to get me out of here. I can't stay here another few days. There is so much I have do before leaving New Babylon."

"I can supply you with extra meds and dressings and try to make sure you're set, but you're going to be sore."

"I'm not worried about that. Will you-" His throat caught and he couldn't say it. "Ah, would you-"

"You want me to check the morgue?" She said it with such compassion that he nearly broke down.

He nodded.

"I'll be right back. If your friends get here while I'm gone, remind them there are ears everywhere."

Rayford and Albie and their human cargo from Colorado put down at a tiny airstrip near Bozeman, Montana, rather than try to get back to Kankakee without sleep. Albie bluffed and blustered the tiny GC contingent at the strip, who bought his story of transporting a criminal and let the three of them borrow a jeep to get into town.

Such as it was. Bozeman had been left with few amenities, but one was a nearly deserted motel where they rented two rooms. "I don't guess we have to worry about you bolting," Rayford told Hattie.

"Compared to Buffer," she said, "the new safe house sounds like heaven."

"You'll be in for the pitches of your life," he said. "There are more of us, and you're going to be our prime target."

"I might just listen for once," she said.

"Don't say that lightly." "I don't say anything lightly anymore." Hattie had a million questions about Pinkerton Stephens, but Rayford and Albie told her only that "he is one of us." Then she wanted Albie's story, and he told of becoming a believer after a lifetime as a Muslim. "You know who I mean when I mention Tsion Ben-Judah then?" he said.

"Do I know?" she said. "I know him personally. Talk about a man who loves the unlovable…"

"Are you speaking of yourself, young lady?"

She snorted and nodded. "Who else?"

"Let me tell you something. I was unlovable. I was no kind of husband or father. My whole family is dead now. I was a criminal, and the only people who cared about me paid me well to get what they needed for illegal acts. I began to justify my existence when my black marketing was used to oppose the new evil world ruler. But I would not have called him Antichrist, would not even have known the term. I was in the same business when the world was merely chaotic, not so evil. My god was cash, and I knew how to get it.

"When Mac and Rayford needed my services, I took some comfort in the fact that they seemed to be good people. I was no longer just helping criminals. I watched them, listened to them. They were outlaws in the eyes of the Global Community, but to me that was a badge of honor.

"When all the predictions Mac and Rayford had told me began coming true, I could not admit to them I was intrigued. More than that, I was scared. If this were all true, then I was an outsider. I was not a believer. I began monitoring the Internet messages of Dr. Ben-Judah without telling my friends. I was full of pride still. What struck me hardest was that Dr. Ben-Judah made it so clear that God was the lover of sinners. Oh, I knew I was that. I just could hardly accept that anyone would love me.

"I downloaded a Bible to my computer and would switch back and forth between it and Dr. Ben-Judah. I was able to see where he was getting his information, but his insights! Those had to come from God alone. What I was learning went against everything I had ever heard or been taught. My first prayer was so childish that I would never have prayed it aloud in front of another living soul.

"I told God I knew I was a sinner and that I wanted to believe that he loved me and would forgive me. I told him that the Western religion-for that is what it sounded like to me-was so foreign to me that I did not know if I could ever understand it. But I said to the Lord, 'If you are really the true and living God, please make it plain to me.' I told him I was sorry for my whole life and that he was my only hope. That was all. I felt nothing, maybe a little foolish. But I slept that night as I had not slept in years.

"Oh, do not misunderstand me. I was not sure I had gotten through to God. I was not sure that he was, in fact, who Dr. Ben-Judah and the others believed him to be. But I knew I had done all I could. I had been honest with myself and honest with him, and if he was who I hoped he was, he would have heard me. That was the best I could expect."

Albie sat back and inhaled deeply.

"That's it?" Hattie said. "That's all?"

He smiled. "I thought I would pause and see if I had bored you to sleep yet."

"You two are the ones who were up all night. Tell me what happened."

"Well, I awoke the next morning with a feeling of expectancy. I didn't know what to make of it. Before I could even eat, I felt a deep hunger and thirsting-there is no other word for it-for the Bible. I believed with my whole being that it was the Word of God, and I had to read it. I pulled it up on my computer and read and read and read and read. I cannot tell you how it filled me. I understood it! I wanted more of it! I could not get enough. Only after midday, when I was weak from hunger, did I realize I had not eaten yet.

"I thanked God over and over for his Word, for his truth, for answering my prayer and revealing himself to me. Occasionally I would break from my Bible reading and check to see if Dr. Ben-Judah had posted anything new. He had not, but I followed some of his links to a site that walked the reader through what the rabbi calls the sinner's prayer. I prayed it, but I realized that it was what I had already done. I was a believer, a child of God, a forgiven, loved sinner."

Hattie appeared unable to speak, but Rayford had seen her this way before. Many had told her their stories of coming to faith. She knew the truth and the way. She simply had never accepted the life.

"There is a reason I wanted to tell you that story," Albie said. "Not just because I want to persuade you, which I do. Those among us who have found the truth long for everyone else to have it. But it was because of what you said about yourself. You said Dr. Ben-Judah was one who loved the unlovable. He does, of course. This is a Christ-like quality, a Jesus characteristic. But then you referred to yourself as unlovable, and I identified with you.

"But more than that, Ms. Durham, if I may use a phrase of Dr. Ben-Judah's. Often he will say that this or that truth 'gives the lie' to certain false claims. Have you heard him say that, and do you know what it means?" She nodded. "Well, it applies to you, dear woman. I have just met you, and yet God has given me a love for you. Rayford and his family and friends speak often of you and their love for you. That gives the lie to your claim that you are unlovable."

"They shouldn't love me," she said, just above a whisper.

"Of course they shouldn't. You know yourself. You know your selfishness, your sin. God should not love us either, and yet he does. And it is only because of him that we can love each other. There is no human explanation for it."

Rayford sat praying silently, desperately, for Hattie. Was it possible she was one who had for so long rejected Christ that God had turned her over to her own stubbornness? Was she unable to see the truth, to change her mind? If that were true, why did God plague Rayford and his friends with such a concern for her?