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Left Behind: Apollyon Chapter 7
Buck peeked in on Chloe before heading out with Chaim. She appeared sound asleep. “Do you mind driving?” Chaim asked. “It has been so long since I was allowed.”
“Allowed?” Chaim smiled wearily. “Once you become, how shall I say it, a personality in this country, especially in this city, you are treated like royalty. I cannot go anywhere unescorted. I was not even famous when first you did the cover story on me.”
“You were revered, however.” Chaim checked with his gateman, Jonas, for the latest word on Jacov. “Stefan?” Buck heard him say. Then something urgent and frustrated in Hebrew. Chaim directed Buck to the last stall in the garage, and Buck slid behind the wheel of an ancient sedan. “I don’t want everyone to know I am coming. The Mercedes is well known. You drive a stick shift, do you not?”
Buck feathered the throttle and quickly caught on to the vagaries of the manual transmission. He worried more about the bald state of the tires. “Any idea where we’re going?”
“Yes, I am afraid I do,” Chaim said. “Jacov is an alcoholic.”
Buck shot him a double take. “You have an alcoholic as your driver?” “He’s dry. Recovering they call it. But in times of crisis, he reverts.”
“Falls off the wagon?”
“I do not know that expression.” “It’s an old Americanism. Early in the twentieth century the Women’s Christian Temperance Union would roll the Temperance Wagon into town, decrying the evils of alcohol and calling on offenders to give it up and get on the wagon. When a sober man went back to drinking, it was called falling off the wagon.”
“Well, I’m afraid that is what has happened here,” Chaim said, pointing where Buck was to turn. As they moved into smaller neighborhoods with houses and buildings closer together, Buck began noticing things he hadn’t seen on the drive from Chaim’s to the stadium. Jerusalem had grown seedy. How he had loved to visit this city just a few years before! It had had its rundown areas, but overall it had been kept with pride. Since the disappearances, certain types of crime and lewd activity had sprung up that he never expected to see in public here. Drunks staggered along, some with their arms slung around ladies of the evening. As Buck drove farther into the city he saw strip clubs, tattoo parlors, fortune-telling shops, and triple-X-rated establishments. “What has happened to your city?”
Left Behind: Apollyon Chapter 7
Left Behind: Apollyon Chapter 7