Chapter 21

Bethlehem

The First Day

The bells were a surprising addition to the frenzy. First there came the loudest horn ever blown, followed by screams and an earthquake. Diners dove for cover, screaming into the cacophony, their voices lost in the rising tide of hysteria.

Tony thought he heard his mother's voice, for just a second and then nothing. His heart leaped but then he remembered she was dead and clamped an iron control on his emotions, lest they run away with him. In this crisis, it would be disaster to lose focus, thinking about a long dead relative and Heaven. As the seconds passed, he calmed down, employing a lifetime of military training to concentrate on the immediate, not allowing any other thoughts to distract him.

As the world around him shook, he never considered prayer. His heart so closed to the One who created him, he was steadfast, ignoring the eternal invitation. For just a second he almost listened, but he managed to block out the words as fast as he discovered them, amid the destruction of the Last Chance.

He took a silent inventory of the diner. Eddie the Rat and Tiny were right where they had been when the whole thing kicked off. This caused Tony to doubt his sanity for a moment. A couple that had been sitting near the back wall were definitely gone though. He remembered the older guy walking past and asking the young woman if it would be OK to join her and her baby.

The three amigos—the Iranian, or whatever he was, and the other two that always came in with him—were ... together. The terrified looks on their faces pretty much matched the way he was feeling.

He heard the door open and turned to see the Accountant hurrying out, still fumbling with the buttons on his coat. It looked like someone was after him, the way he raced out of there. Maybe he was ... being chased.

Maybe they were all being chased. If so, it looked like whomever or whatever was chasing them had gotten several and then gotten lost before anyone noticed.

That pretty woman who had been sitting by the front door was gone. He had thought about making a move on her, though he hadn't screwed up his courage yet, so he knew right where she had been sitting when things went wrong.

Carl was missing, as was a waitress. He thought her name might have been Darla. She had been serving Crazy Beau, the lunatic that babbled TV tag lines all the time. He had been sitting right where he always sat, babbling like a mental case, as usual. One minute he was there and the next, GONE. Carl had vanished right before his eyes.

Looking around, Tony realized there couldn't have been an earthquake. How could the diner be undamaged, as it was, if there had been an earthquake? The doors were where they belonged, snugly closed, and outside the streetlights still lit the falling.

People were shaking off the fright and looking around, trying to get a handle on the last few minutes. The silence began to be enlivened first with broken whispers and then with halting conversations. Those speaking were attempting to get back to themselves by pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

It wasn't working.

That was when Tony realized that the old man was gone and so were his wooden box and white sign.

What had that sign meant? he wondered. "The End is Here." So what? The end might be near but I'm still here, and that's a lot better than whatever happened to the rest of them.