The two men relaxed on wooden chairs in the yard near the cooking station. They kept a licking fire going, and although it lacked the charm of a campfire, the light was welcome against the unfamiliarity of the land. The boy had gone to bed in the tent some thirty minutes earlier. John had offered Daniel a place in the tent that he shared with the boy but it was from politeness only and Daniel declined it with a plan to sleep in the barn. The two men were satisfied with the arrangement and, the evening’s business concluded, sat in thoughtful silence before the fire.

Daniel was the first to break the quiet. “Can I ask you…” His voice travelled off. He considered the questions he wanted answered, and the possibility that he didn’t want to know. “You said this place belonged to friends,” he switched. “Will you stay here?”

John regarded him as if he was picking through an assortment of words like puzzle pieces, seeking specific pieces: the corner pieces, or the edge pieces.

“Don’t know much about what happened,” John began, answering the real question. “I missed most of it: all of it really. The boy is the only person I know of so far that wasn’t sick through it, and he’s hardly said a word since. He won’t talk about it if I ask him, and because I don’t blame him, I haven’t pressed. If he has something to tell me about it, I guess he will… in his own time.”

“You were sick, too?”

“I was,” John answered. “For quite a stretch of days.” John began a methodical and patient telling. “Wife got it first. She was feverish in the morning as I left home. Stayed in bed all day while I went to work. Lot of call-ins that day, nine people at work out of thirteen. It was Friday. When I got home she was asleep on the couch, feverish and damp, nothing alarming at that moment. I got her a cool towel and made dinner for the children and sent them off to bed all. The two older kids were cranky and I’d had enough of them by the end of the meal. Wife wouldn’t get up to move to the bedroom and I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her – seemed unkind to. Didn’t even turn the television on that night. Went on to bed feeling ill myself: aches and pains, stuffy head. Not unusual for me in spring to have hay fever. I didn’t wake up again for days. It was the ninth when I knew my surroundings again – Thursday! Wife gone, two children gone in their beds.” John paused and breathed deeply. The fire crackled absently. Daniel held his silence. “When I was well enough to stumble around the house I found my boy…” John looked over his shoulder to the tent behind him, his elbows were on his knees and his hands wrapped around one another – clasped in prayer. “…in the backyard in his pajamas. He was…” John’s voice hitched suddenly with emotion. The two men passed some minutes in silence. “Boy never got sick,” John finally contributed. Daniel ignored his eyes that were full and red. “He sat by and watched as the Good Lord took my wife and my other children. Watched all of mankind and everyone he knew get taken away.” His voice tailed off. John struggled to compose himself. Time passed.

“I don’t even remember getting sick,” Daniel finally injected. “I simply came slowly around after days of it. Took me days to even get my mind around the fact that something was really wrong. I haven’t talked to a soul until now. So I have no idea what happened. No television, haven’t seen a newspaper yet. Was at a truck stop that had a newspaper stand, but the headlines were about random local events and it didn’t enter my mind to take one.”

John looked searchingly at Daniel. He seemed to be holding back his message. Finally he spoke. “I hope you don’t mind if I tell you Daniel that I believe that God called his people home.” He let the sentence hang in the air with the night.
“The Rapture?”

“I believe it,” John returned confidently. “I believe that the Rapture occurred and God has called his faithful home. That those of us who remain now face the Tribulation, the time when the Devil will rule the earth for seven years.”

Daniel sat quietly, pondering. He knew he would not be able to support an argument against John’s claim. He thought of the killing on the highway, the sudden disappearance of nearly every being, and lack of plausible alternatives. These things would lend themselves to John’s conclusion. But in his mind the Rapture was a simple impossibility.

“I know you are skeptical, Daniel,” John comforted. “I know that you do not accept that Jesus has come down to the earth and called home the faithful. But I would tell you to seek Him and allow Him to come into your heart. It is you and I that He calls for now: those who are well meaning and good but who haven’t opened their hearts to Him.”
Daniel forced a smile for John’s benefit. He did not intend it to be condescending, but it was so. He considered his words. He had appreciated John’s generosity. “I know you are a good man, John,” Daniel began. “I think maybe you have seen some, or enough, evidence to support what you say as right. For my part I know I have already witnessed evil. But I am not convinced that we have seen the Rapture. I won’t deny that, in the end, I may have to change my mind. The evidence may present itself, but the evil I witnessed was not the work of the devil but rather the kind of cruelty that exists in some people who thrive when there is a collapse of authority. People who cannot govern themselves properly and can project only suffering.”

“You only need to look around you, Daniel.” John had a hint of pleading in his voice. Daniel paused, not answering him. “Tell me,” he continued, “What reasons would you have to doubt Him, at this time, and under these circumstances. Even without using the word ‘Rapture’ you can hardly ignore the profound spiritual implications of what’s happened.”

“Don’t you doubt?”

John flinched. “I have doubted, Daniel,” He carried on. “It is why I am here, I think.” He dropped his eyes and gathered himself together. “My wife was a good woman and she had a strong faith. She took our kids every Sunday to church while I stayed home and mowed our lawn and ran errands. Fixed things.” He looked to Daniel – an appeal. “I’m not at all unlike you, Dan. I doubted. I put forth little effort for religious things. I believed, you understand, and in my heart I felt that I believed truly, but I wasn’t committed. I gave no real effort but to things I could touch.” John stroked his face, covering his eyes in a downward sweep of his hand. “Everything is changed for me. I know that I was left behind on purpose. I don’t know what that purpose is yet. But I believe that my soul hangs in the balance for it. Maybe the soul of my boy as well.” John paused in the firelight and seemed to try to draw himself together from the darkness.

“I believe that I have some role to fill.” He went on. “I am afraid of it. I am afraid that I will fail, that I will fail the boy, or that I will fail my wife. I am afraid that I will fail God.” John was talking to himself now. “I woke up one morning to find the world and nearly everyone in it had died in the night. The bible says that Jesus will take his followers like a thief in the night. I believe that’s what happened. Maybe not just like the bible said.” He paused. “You see, I had teased my wife sometimes about her faith. The bible says 144,000 will be called home in the rapture. I used to tell her. Hell, there are 250 million souls alive in America alone! If the rapture came,” I reasoned, “You’d no more notice one hundred forty four thousand than you would notice the day-to-day wear on the souls of your shoes!” John huffed out an embarrassed laugh, remembering. Daniel returned a sympathetic smile.

“’You don’t know everything, John’, she used to tell me. ‘Don’t question the mind of God.’” John watched the licks of fire, his mind on distant memories. The two men sat quite a while in silence.

“So what will you do?” Daniel finally asked him.

John glanced quickly at him with a serious eye. He placed his hands together flatly and gently rubbed them north to south against each other in thought.

“I will take my boy and walk into the wilderness, Daniel. I will turn my back on the world of things and of men and turn towards God. I know how to live off the land, and right now I feel like we are in this mess because we forgot about the land. We forgot how to be IN the world He designed for us and instead lived ON it; making it over in a way that suited us and was in no way similar to the way He intended.”

“So why not stay here?” Daniel wondered to him. “It is a farm after all, and you could set up to live pretty well, I would think.”

“Have you ever noticed that in all the bible stories anything of consequence happens either in the mountains or in the desert? Noah lands the Arc on a mountain. Moses gets the commandments. All these happened in the mountains. Moses wanders the desert for forty years. Jesus is tempted? What ever happened in a city? The Passion and crucifixion? The money changers in the temple? Those are all terrible things. Mankind has failed God, and God has rendered a judgment. I can’t do anything about mankind. The world, I believe will run according to the prophecies that have been laid out for it. I can only answer for myself.” John turned his head around towards the tent again as if he needed to acknowledge the presence of his son. “He and I – my boy and me – have failed Him in some way that is as deep as the ocean and I feel that God will guide me if I allow it and my faith in Him will reach a place where I can regain salvation. I want eternal life, Daniel, and what these events have proved to me is that our God is a powerful and fearsome force, but I know also that He is a just and loving God. I have been a fool in my life because I worked for a lawn free from weeds, a nice car and a wide screen TV.” John held out his hands. “In the face of this kind of power? I used to let my life revolve around making payments: mortgage, car loan, taxes. What does God have to do with those things? I owe it to my boy, and my wife and children that the Lord feels we’re ready to join by His side, as they were. My eyes have been opened, and I am ready to look into the light.”

Daniel eyed him in silence. There is nothing to say to a man who knows what he believes, and knows the course of action he needs for himself. He pursed his lips and gave John a nod.

“Why don’t you come along with us, Dan?” John asked finally. It was a heartfelt and an honest request. “You would be better to stay away from the madness that’s about to descend on the world.”

“I have to find out about my own family,” Daniel answered him. “And they are a long way from here, and nowhere near either a mountain or a desert.” He smiled, refusing John gently. “I agree with you that the world, what’s left of it, will come across troubled times, but I also know that I believe that evil consumes itself. I’m more afraid of stupidity. What I need, right now, is to know the condition of my family. I have a daughter who is just becoming an adult and she will need me. Hell, I need her. She’s my family; it’s all that I have left.”

John nodded to him sympathetically. The two men fell into silence.

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Wax Dragon