not allowed to pass by anyone whoâs trying to flag us down on the way.â
âAnd a lot of people are doing that?â Vicki said.
âI had three other rides before I got here,â the cabby said. âAnd I even told another guy to wait for another cab. He wanted to pay me to take him all the way to Wisconsin.â
âWow!â
âYouâre telling me! I donât think he could have afforded it anyway, but I donât have to take somebody that far when Iâve got acall-in. You kids arenât really going to OâHare, are you? You know thereâs nothing flying out of thereââ
âIâm just going to try to get my car out of there,â Judd said.
âThatâs gonna be no picnic either, son,â the cabby said.
âI know. But I have to try. Iâve got nothing else to do.â
Vicki was amazed to see so many fires as the cab snaked its way through the remains of car wrecks, traffic gridlocks, even fights. It was clear there would never be enough local police to go around. So this is what itâs like at the end of the world, she thought.
Where were all these people going? All Vicki had noticed near the church were sirens in the distance and the glow of distant fires on the horizon. Now she could see that those fires were not so distant. âWhy is everything burning?â she asked.
âYou donât know?â the cabby said. âNobody knows yet how many people disappeared late last night, but any of them who had anything on the stove just left it there. You leave something on the stove overnight, eventually the food burns up, the water turns to steam, the pan gets hotter than blazes, and before you know it your kitchenâs on fire.With nobody there to fight it or report it, boom, there goes your house.â
Vicki saw looks of jealousy on the faces of people waving at the cab from street corners, disappointed to see that it was already hired. What a mess. Were all these people just trying to find somewhere, anywhere, that wasnât turning to rubble?
As the night grew dark and the cab slowly picked its way through side streets and back roads toward Interstate 294, Vicki noticed that Judd had seemed to lose interest in talking. He sat with his chin resting in his hands. He had turned away from her and appeared to stare out the window as they slowly rode along. When would it sink in? she wondered. When would she feel her own fatigue and exhaustion and finally be able to sleep? And how would all this feel when she finally woke up and realized it was not a dream, not a nightmare, but reality? How do you go from being part of a family to becoming an orphan overnight? She sighed. She hadnât even liked being in her family. She didnât like it when her parents were loud drunks, and she liked it even less when they became Christians.
Now she realized, of course, that for at least the last two yearsâsince her parents had become believersâshe herself had beenthe problem. She had somehow realized that her life would not be her own if she became a Christian like her parents. They had told her and told her that she didnât need to clean up her life before she came to Christ. âJesus accepts you just the way you are,â her mother had told her. âHeâll start showing you what needs to be changed and will help you change.â
The problem was, Vicki knew her mother was right. She simply didnât want to change, whether she herself was making the changes or God was. She had liked her life just the way it was because it was just thatâher life. Why had it taken this, something so huge, so cosmic, so disastrous to show her how foolish she had been? She had been such a rebel, so mean to her parents and even to her sweet little sister, Jeanni.
And what was with this dolt sitting next to her? Judd Thompson seemed like a nice enough guy, having made the same huge life-and-death mistakes she had made.