"Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins - Left Behind Series 4 - Soul Harvest" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

edge of a new crevice. The mangled car rested atop a water main twenty feet
beneath the earth. The blown tires pointed up like the feet of bloated roadkill.
Curled in a frail ball atop the wreckage was the Raggedy Ann-like body of Loretta,
a tribulation saint. There would be more shifting of the earth. Reaching Loretta's
body would be impossible. If he was also to find Chloe dead, Buck wished God had
let him plunge under the earth with Loretta's car.
Buck rose slowly, suddenly aware of what the roller-coaster ride through the
earthquake had done to his joints and muscles. He surveyed the damage to his
vehicle. Though it had rolled and been hit from all sides, it appeared remarkably
roadworthy. The driver's-side door was jammed, the windshield in gummy pieces
throughout the interior, and the rear seat had broken away from the floor on one
side. One tire had been slashed to the steel belts but looked strong and held air.
Where were Buck's phone and laptop? He had set them on the front seat. He hoped
against hope neither had flown out in the mayhem. Buck opened the passenger door
and peered onto the floor of the front seat. Nothing. He looked under the rear seats,
all the way to the back. In a corner, open and with one screen hinge cracked, was his
laptop.
Buck found his phone in a door well. He didn't expect to be able to get through to
anyone, with all the damage to cellular towers (and everything else above ground).
He switched it on, and it went through a self-test and showed zero range. Still, he
had to try. He dialed Loretta's home. He didn't even get a malfunction message from
the phone company. The same happened when he dialed the church, then Tsion's
shelter. As if playing a cruel joke, the phone made noises as if trying to get through.
Then, nothing.


Buck's landmarks were gone. He was grateful the Range Rover had a built-in
compass. Even the church seemed twisted from its normal perspective on the
corner. Poles and lines and traffic lights were down, buildings flattened, trees
uprooted, fences strewn about.
Buck made sure the Range Rover was in four-wheel drive. He could barely travel
twenty feet before having to punch the car over some rise. He kept his eyes peeled
to avoid anything that might further damage the Rover—it might have to last him
through the end of the Tribulation. The best he could figure, that was still more than
five years away.
As Buck rolled over chunks of asphalt and concrete where the street once lay, he
glanced again at the vestiges of New Hope Village Church. Half the building was
underground. But that one section of pews, which had once faced west, now faced
north and glistened in the sun. The entire sanctuary floor appeared to have turned
ninety degrees.
As he passed the church, he stopped and stared. A shaft of light appeared between
each pair of pews in the ten-pew section except in one spot. There something
blocked Buck's view. He threw the Rover into reverse and carefully backed up. On
the floor in front of one of those pews were the bottoms of a pair of tennis shoes,
toes pointing up. Buck wanted, above all, to get to Loretta's and search for Chloe,
but he could not leave someone lying in the debris. Was it possible someone had
survived?
He set the brake and scrambled over the passenger seat and out the door, recklessly
trotting through stuff that could slice through his shoes. He wanted to be practical,
but there was no time for that. Buck lost his footing ten feet from those tennis shoes