Survivors Page 6

  If God is real, he reasoned to himself, then God has the right to ask people to leave their families, their jobs, and their possessions to prove their faith in him. It must have been a decision like that which had freed Reinhard, Francisco, and Martin to do what they were doing now. They would never grow in numbers if others like himself did not make a similar decision. Rayford could see that talk of faith in Jesus that ignored his rules for his followers was not faith at all. But what was he going to do about it?

  Circumstances had already taken his home and his family. All that remained was his job. Yet the job was his lifeline to his family, and his hope of getting another home one day.

  "Please God," he prayed. "I can't just desert Chloe. She's counting on me."

  "God knows vat is best for you," Reinhard said finally, as though reading Rayford's mind. "It is safer to take him too seriously zan to treat his vords too lightly."

  Rayford was starting to sweat. He was standing at God's eternal crossroads and he knew it. He continued to pray secretly. "Help me, God. I don't want to do something stupid. There's too much at stake. What about Chloe?"

  Again Reinhard spoke as though reading his mind. "Ve don't have zee control vat ve sink ve have," he said. "In a minute God can take avay. And in a minute he can give back. If you vant his best, zen you must let go! Let God say vat is best for you, and for zuh people vat you love."

  Rayford Strait's analytical mind quickly weighed up the truth in what Reinhard was saying. He had told the Canadian authorities all that he knew about his family's whereabouts. Apart from that, he was powerless anyway. The real issues were the status and respect, the money, and the freedom to travel between England and Canada that his job represented. A lot to forsake, but still nothing if it was really what God wanted. The events of the past few days had moved him profoundly... caused him to see just how fleeting life really is, and how transient are our greatest dreams. If he said "no" to God now, he felt certain that he would be saying no to any hope he ever had of eternal life. Rayford had been shown the truth of his spiritual condition by these men, in a way that he had never seen it before. Now he had to act on it.

  Through all that had happened since the bombings, Rayford had not cried once. Perhaps it was denial, or perhaps it was just his total concentration on the matters at hand. But tears began to form in his eyes now, as the truth of God's role in his life came home to him. He searched for the courage to do what his conscience told him he must do.

  His thoughts turned to the options he had for quitting his job. Should he give notice? Should he just fail to turn up? He realised then that he had, in fact, made up his mind to do it… to forsake all for God. It was just a question of how... and when.

  Rayford lifted his head and smiled broadly as the first tear overflowed and ran down one cheek. His companions picked up the meaning of the tear, and especially the smile that went with it. Francisco, who was sitting opposite Rayford, jumped to his feet and reached out to shake his hand. The handshake quickly turned into a hug. Martin and Reinhard waited their turn to welcome him with an embrace and a few quiet tears of their own.

  Rayford phoned work on Monday, to give notice. He was told that the British Army would not allow him to leave his job. It would be months before the airlines could return to normal routings, but for now every pilot and every plane was being used to maximum capacity in the evacuation.

  The four men discussed the situation and agreed that Rayford's state was that of a slave… at least for the moment. He had resolved to quit his job for God, and yet circumstances had given it right back to him. He would wait until he was allowed to quit, and he would use his position in the meantime to continue to seek help for his family. While in London, he would stay with his spiritual brothers and help them get their literature out on the streets.

  Over the next few weeks, in the midst of their concern for American suffering, Pan-Con staff also took note of a change in Rayford Strait. Rayford Strait had got religion, and had joined up with some Jesus freaks. His involvement in volunteer emergency services in Toronto was reasonable enough, but in London, he would be met at the airport by the strange young men in the Daf van and return in it a few days later, in time for his next flight out. His usual social contacts had ceased, and there was word that he was living on the streets and begging from the public.

  Zion Ben-Jonah Writes

  G.K. Chesterton once said, "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It is just that people knew it would be difficult, and so they never tried it."

  The problem in the church world today is that so few people have been willing to try the simple (yet infinitely challenging) rules that Jesus laid down for his followers. We have so many religious leaders prepared to tell us what we want to hear, that we do not take time to listen to the Master himself. If the true definition of a 'Christian' is a follower of Jesus Christ, then it can hardly be said that the church is Christian, despite its generally recognised authority on religious matters.

  Take time to study the fourteenth chapter of Luke, verses 25 to 35. It may be that Jesus never meant for us to take those verses literally. But it may also be that he did. So much hangs in the balance that it behooves us to pray deeply and seriously before we dismiss the implications of those verses.

  When it comes to belief in a miracle of the magnitude that eternal life represents, you can be sure that we will not be able to cheat on the rules and still be able to actually experience it.

  One day soon God will be asking you to lay down your life for him. Is it too much for you to give him your family, your job, and your wealth if he is asking for that now?

  (Table of Contents)

  7. Refugees

  Despite overwhelming tiredness, and several stops for nausea, Irene Strait made good time on her drive north from where she had left the other pilgrims in North Dakota. She drove straight through the night, arriving at the border just before noon on Saturday.

  Canadian authorities were taking details from refugees as they crossed into the country, and directing them to appropriate holding camps. Tom, Betty, and their grandchildren were deemed to be in greater need of medical attention than were Irene and Raymie, so they were put on a bus and taken to Regina, where they could be given better care.

  Cross-country travel was being restricted throughout Canada. Irene was totally broke, and her pleas for official help in getting to Toronto were turned down. Toronto, according to the authorities, had more than it could handle already. Irene and Raymie were, however, taken to a holding camp on the highway between Regina and Winnipeg. (They had to abandon the Lincoln at the border.) The camp was one of many being set up on farmland all over southern Canada.

  Irene and Raymie would have to wait there until the situation eased in Toronto, or until they could get airlifted directly out of Saskatchewan. They were both losing hair and suffering from dehydration from so much vomiting, but they were not as sick as some others in the camp.

  The refugee camp consisted of thousands of twelve foot by twelve foot tents, housing eight people apiece. Every four tents had one porta-potty and a small portable shower between them. Buckets inside the tents were used when the queues were too long at the toilets, or when the weather was bad. The farmland where the camp had been set up was a quagmire from recent rains and from so much pedestrian traffic.

  Refugees were told to stay inside the tents to minimise further contact with fallout. Food, water, and medication for nausea, diarrhoea, and infections were brought around twice a day by untrained volunteers. Only the worst cases were referred to the understaffed medical centre on the perimeter of the camp. Two doctors supervised a small team of nurses there. Life at the camp was rough, but it was rumoured that conditions there were better than they were at many other camps.

  Pan-Continental Airlines was notified by the authorities about Irene and Raymie's location and condition, and Pan-Con passed the word on to Rayford.
The family had little choice but to wait on official clearance for a reunion.

  For the time being, Irene and Raymie took comfort in the fact that they had safe food and water, and a tent with bunks, in which to sleep and rest, and hope. There was no way for Rayford to contact them directly, and only the most urgent outgoing calls were allowed at the camp.

  Any other time, Raymie might have been whining about the conditions. They were worse than any jail in North America. But for the first two weeks he was too sick to do much more than groan as he tossed on his bunk. Only when his strength began to return did he start to complain, and even then, it was nothing compared to his old self. Irene sat pretty heavily on his complaints, reminding him again and again of how lucky they were to be alive. But Raymie was genuinely trying to break old habits too. It was like his spirit had simply been waiting for Irene to get the courage to exercise authority over it. Of, course world events were such that everyone had been sobered about much that they had previously taken for granted. All in all, Raymie had been forced to do a lot of growing up in a very short period of time, and he was quickly warming to his new self-image as a disciplined and responsible adult.

  The eight residents in each tent passed their time lounging on the bunks, talking, and doing various chores and calisthenics if they were strong enough. Much of the talk centred around each person's interpretation of what had transpired, and where it was all to lead, for them and for their loved ones. Virtually everyone was grieving over the loss of immediate friends and relatives, though most could only guess as to whether people outside their immediate household had survived the attack.

  Normal communication links within the U.S. had totally broken down shortly after the bombings. Although there were no newspapers at the camp, some volunteers had access to news at home and they passed on what they knew when they arrived at the camp. From there, news would spread quickly, just by word of mouth.

  The residents learned that the United Nations had taken over co-ordinating relief operations. In just a few weeks much of the surviving population of America was to be dispersed around the globe from the many holding camps in Canada and Mexico, and from airlifts within the United States… airlifts, that is, from those few places where aircraft could still come and go.

  Weather patterns had been favourable, blowing most of the fallout out over the Atlantic. An Arctic cold front three days after the attack pushed air southward and kept most of the fallout away from Canada. Even so, radiation levels in southern Canada were still far above normal. Canadians had been cautioned to stay inside as much as possible. The rest of the world, apart from islands in the Caribbean, and some parts of Mexico, was assured that the radiation threat to them was minimal.

  Russia's attitude toward the war was to act as though it had never happened. As soon as her bombers had completed their missions, blowing up military installations and other key centres of transportation, power, and communication, they had returned to their bases. From that point on, Russia had offered as much aid to the survivors as anyone else.

  The U.S. and England had both been officially expelled from the U.N. just days after the attack. America was dropped because it ceased to exist; but almost no explanation was given for dumping England. Despite protests from the British, there was hardly any objection from other member nations. U.N. Secretary General Xu Dangchao, with strong backing from Russia and China, was able to push things through with the ease that world leaders always have in the face of disasters. The expulsion had not been accompanied by any sanctions against Britain, and the Brits themselves were so preoccupied with assisting Americans that they did not have the necessary heart to take on the U.N. in the face of inexplicable indifference from the rest of the world.

  Loss of American trade was a threat to the economy of many smaller nations, but the U.N. started to work immediately on programs to reclaim land owned by American interests, and to re-cultivate it so that it could carry products which would better meet the needs of the local populations. The same thing was being done with American industrial interests. Secretary General Dangchao promised to actually increase wealth for the Third World; and the World Bank was surprisingly co-operative with his proposals.

  An economic summit was being planned to consider various proposals for stabilising the world economy. Talk of a single currency was a key issue on the agenda.

  One U.N. project that was not getting as much media coverage as the economic and political changes, was a plan for a world religious summit. The masses of the world longed for reassurance that the U.S. disaster was not going to be repeated; and religious leaders had been shocked into overlooking differences that had previously divided them. They too wanted to play their part in promoting worldwide co-operation… co-operation with one another, as well as co-operation with the quickly evolving world government. In times of crisis people turn to religion for comfort and direction; so it was important for the government and the churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples to provide a unified (and unifying) image of hope and peace.

  No word had been received at all from President Fitzhugh, who, with his family and aides, had been trapped under the White House when it was bombed. Hopes were fading that they had survived the blast, even though a series of tunnels existed under the building, and it was believed that he had been rushed there several minutes before the bomb hit. Under normal circumstances there would have been a system for appointing a replacement for the President, but the Vice-President and several other potential successors were dead or missing, along with a sizeable proportion of the Senators and Congressmen who would have to oversee such a decision. Most of those who were alive, were little more than refugees themselves. Truly, America had ceased to exist as an independent nation.

  The U.S.'s unwavering support for Israel had been that country's mainstay for many years. The tiny Jewish state, surrounded as it was by Arab nations, was understandably nervous about the shift in power. But Dangchao surprised the world and gained respect for his sense of fair play by putting peace talks between Israel and the Arab states high on his priorities. It was rumoured that Jewish influences in the World Bank were what really won Dangchao over. He was getting many billions of dollars in support from the World Bank for his Third World plans. In exchange, the U.N. was taking a decidedly pro-Israeli position in the peace talks.

  But, sadly, for the millions of Americans still struggling to escape the death and destruction that had ravaged that country, developments in world politics were incidental to their daily quest for survival. Tens of thousands were continuing to die each day from injuries received in the initial blasts, some of them dying without any medical aid at all. Many had been left where they fell, to suffer for days before finally succumbing. A few had been carried away, only to die on the road, in refugee camps, or in hospitals. Burials were rare. Cremations were faster. But, in most cases, bodies were left to rot, and disease was left to spread, as survivors had fled the scene.

  For people like Chloe, still waiting for help to reach her, the threat of catching cholera or typhoid was now the biggest worry.

  Zion Ben-Jonah Writes

  Two symbols are used for America in Bible prophecy: A prostitute named "Babylon" and the Eagle's wings on the back of a Lion (the Lion being the symbol for England). (See notes at the end of chapter 2.)

  In Daniel 7:4, the Eagle's wings are plucked, and the Lion (i.e. England) ceases to be a "beast" (or world empire) as a result. In Revelation 17:16-18, and all of Revelation 18, we read of the fall of Babylon, and how it affects the kings, merchants, and shipping companies of the world.

  Remember, however, that the term "Babylon" not only refers to America. It is a symbol for all of the empires of man. And so the title will eventually pass on to the new centre of world economics, under the new world order.

  The rise of a single world religion may or may not be assisted by the United Nations. Moves toward ecumenicalism have been underway for some time no
w; but disasters always have a way of bringing the masses back to thoughts of religion, and of bringing religious leaders together with one another.

  America's obsession with Israel is usually explained to the masses (thanks to the churches) on the basis that they are God's "chosen people" (despite the fact that they rejected God's Son... their Messiah!). However, interest in Israel at government levels has always had more to do with their control of world banking.

  (Table of Contents)

  8. Reunion

  Chloe had worked hard at making her stay in Prospect Heights both safe and stable. She arranged to turn the satphone on for just a few hours each week--the times when her father was most confident of being able to contact her. She increased her water supply by retrieving water from the toilets upstairs. When that was depleted, she made her first and only venture outside, to get water and food from two neighbouring houses which had been deserted shortly after the attack. She moved out of the basement in the second week and back into the rooms on the ground floor. But she continued to use the basement as her latrine. Because there were no deaths in her immediate vicinity, she was safe from disease as long as she did not travel too far afield. Overall, she spent her last week at Prospect Heights in relative comfort.

  Just three weeks after the attack, a rescue bus pulled up in front of the house and offered Chloe a lift to a ferry that would take her and hundreds of other survivors up Lake Michigan to Port Elgin, on the east side of Lake Huron. From there, they were taken by bus to holding camps near Toronto.

  Chloe was only in the camp for two days before she was taken to the airport. She had not heard from her father for five days, but she was not surprised when she was issued with a ticket on a Pan-Con flight to London. She was also not surprised when she found her father waiting for her after she had passed through airport security … but she certainly was excited. They embraced and rejoiced, backing off so that they could look at each other before embracing again. The stress of the past weeks erupted in profuse tears for Chloe. But she sensed that her father was still holding something back.