The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins

nearly slipped into a dream. If the dream was from God, he prayed he would return to it. If it was merely some sleep-deprived fancy, Tsion prayed he would have the discernment to know that too.
    That the passage had gone on to reference the heavenly wonders and blood, fire, and smoke the world had already experienced also warmed Tsion. He had been an eyewitness when the sun had been turned into darkness and the moon into blood.
    He read the passage to Chloe and reminded her, “This is ‘before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.’ I believe that refers to the second half of the Tribulation, the Great Tribulation. Which starts now.”
    Chloe looked at him expectantly. “Uh-huh, but—”
    “Oh, dear one, the best is yet to come. I don’t believe it was coincidence that the Lord led me to this passage. Think of your father and our compatriots overseas when you hear this: ‘And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls.’ You know who the remnant is, don’t you, Chloe?”
    “The Jews?”
    “Yes! And in Zion, which is Israel, and Jerusalem, where we know some of our own were, if they call upon the Lord, they will be delivered. Chloe, I don’t know how many of us or if any of us will survive until the Glorious Appearing. But I am claiming the promise of this passage, because God prompted me to find it, that our beloved will all return safely to us this time.”
    “In spite of everything?”
    “In spite of everything.”
    “Is there anything in there that says when the phones will start working again?”
    Leah Rose had landed in Baltimore and pondered her next moves. Finding Hattie Durham in North America was like pawing through the proverbial haystack for a needle someone else had already found. The GC was on Hattie’s trail and clearly hoped she would lead them to the lair of the Judahites.
    If Leah could get her phone to work, she would call T at Palwaukee and see if that Super J plane she had heard so much about was still at the airport and ready for use.
    On the other hand, if she could get through to T, she could have gotten through to the safe house and sent them running. Did she dare fly commercially to Illinois and rent a car under her alias?
    She had no other choice. Unable to communicate except locally, her only hope was to beat Hattie to Mount Prospect. Finding the woman and persuading her to mislead the GC was just too much to hope for.
    “How close can you get me to Gary, Indiana?” Leah asked at the counter, after waiting nearly a half hour for the one airline clerk.
    “Hammond is the best I can do. And that would be very late tonight.”
    Having misled the young man about her destination, she switched gears. “How about Chicago? O’Hare and Meigs still closed?”
    “And Midway,” the clerk said. “Kankakee any help?”
    “Perfect,” she said. “When?”
    “If we’re lucky, you’ll be on the ground by midnight.”
    “If we’re lucky,” Leah said, “that’ll mean the plane landed and didn’t crash.”
    The man did not smile. And Leah remembered: We don’t do luck.
    David lay in bed with his laptop, knowing he would soon nod off, but perusing again the abandoned buildings and areas in northern Illinois that might provide a new safe house for the stateside Trib Force. The whole of downtown Chicago had been cordoned off, mostly bombed out, and evacuated. It was a ghost town, nothing living within forty miles. David rolled up onto his elbows and studied the list. How had that happened?
    Hadn’t the earliest reports said the attack on Illinois had been everything but nuclear?
    He searched archives, finally pinpointing the day when the GC ruled the city and surrounding areas uninhabitable. Dozens had died from what looked and acted like radiation poisoning, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in