“You’re a hard man, Deputy Walter Purcell,” Delroy said in a cold voice. “I suppose I’ll tell you thank you for your hospitality and find my own way from here.” He reached for the door release.
“Yes, sir, I suppose that I am a hard man. Been called a lot worse from time to time. Sometimes even had friends call me those things. If I’d told my wife what I planned to do today, she’d have flat give me what for. But I just can’t help myself and I knew better’n to tell that woman I was gonna be so harsh with a preacher. No, sir, she wouldn’t have stood for it.” Walter sipped his coffee. “But I’m gonna tell you something else, Chaplain. If you take a step outside that door before I tell you that you can, I’m gonna arrest you and lock you up.”
“For what?”
“General stupidity. And don’t think I won’t do it. You may be big, Chaplain, but I’ve fought hard and long all my life. And when I figure I’m fighting for something I believe in, I won’t quit. You’d have to kill me to make me quit. Giving up on something has never been in me. That’s why it hurts me so much to see quitting in you. Me and you, I don’t figure we’re cut too much apart from the same cloth. But somewhere along the way, you lost something real important to you.”
My father. My son. My wife. My God. Delroy thought all those things, but he didn’t say anything.
Walter let the tense silence drag on for a while; then he broke it. “I’m going to show you one other thing, Chaplain. Then I’m gonna get you to that car lot and leave you there if that’s where you want to go.”
“Do it,” Delroy said flatly. “The sooner the better.”
Without a word, Walter took his foot from the brake and left the quiet neighborhood filled with bleak houses and fearful faces.
In less than a minute, Delroy knew where Walter was taking them. He looked at the deputy and felt panic growing in him. “Don’t do this.”
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 0937 Hours
Talking to teenagers about the Tribulation wasn’t as easy as Megan had hoped. Too many of them lacked even the basic grasp of the book of Revelation, and the ones who seemed most familiar with the concept of Armageddon appeared to have learned details from horror movies. Most of these kids had been to Sunday school and church socials, but even these selected leaders lacked any real understanding of what would happen after the Rapture.
Megan stood in front of the group of twenty-nine kids she had handpicked. They sat at desks in the schoolroom where geography and political science were normally taught. World maps hung on the walls. A shelf to the right held dozens of books on countries around the world.
Eight of the teens had come from Camp Gander, which made them more or less a captive audience because Megan had awakened them, fed them breakfast, and loaded them into Goose’s pickup to get them here. The other twenty-one had come because their friends had come, or because they’d wanted a chance to see and talk to the counselor who’d nearly convinced Leslie Hollister to kill herself. There were even rumors that Megan put “death messages” in her counseling sessions. Those lies had hurt Megan the most, but she had tried to ignore the bulk of the gossip.
Megan knew that the teens—and the post—still talked about that night. She continued to get looks while she was in the commissary. That night seemed like a lifetime ago now, but Leslie was still in the hospital. She was doing fine, according to the reports Megan was given, and responding well to treatment. There was even some talk of letting her out of the hospital in the next couple of days if an adult could be found to take custody of her until Sergeant Benjamin Hollister returned from service in Turkey.
Trembling a little, afraid of the course of action she had set for herself, Megan resisted the impulse to cross her arms. Body language like that would have distanced her from the kids.
Devon Snodgrass frowned. She was a redhead who had a rebellious streak and had been a constant source of trouble for her mom, an army helicopter pilot currently assigned to the post. Megan had chosen Devon because, if she came around to Megan’s point of view, the young girl could be a firebrand, a natural leader.
“The world is going to end in seven years. That’s what you’re telling us?” Devon sounded completely skeptical about the information.
And that, Megan knew, was the problem in dealing with teenagers who didn’t want to hear what was being said. They painted everything in black and white, in yes and no, and in doing so, they stepped away from any kind of receptive mode.
“Yes.”
“How is the world going to end?”
“Jesus Christ will return and take all the believers and set up a kingdom that will last a thousand years,” Megan said. Even as she started answering the first of the questions, she hated how fantastical those answers sounded. But she was trapped by the very concepts of heaven and immortality. If heaven were a lot like the world around them, how was it any different? If a person could live forever, why didn’t he or she just do that now?
“Jesus,” Devon repeated with a note of sarcasm. “I have to ask you, Mrs. Gander, what is Jesus going to do with all those people whose religion doesn’t talk about Him or the Rapture or the Second Coming?”
Megan sincerely wished she had a chaplain
