"Forward a bit! Forward... Okay!"
Judd untied the towing cable and waved to the soldier who'd helped him bring the improvised trailer in. The soldier saluted; everybody there was too tired and sleep-deprived to correct her on the matter. She was probably fresh from induction; her uniform was a mixture of old US camo fatigues, bits of Global Community dress uniform, and a white shawl with a red lozenge pattern. It looked military enough, and the AK47 removed any possible doubts. Like pretty much everything, it was a jumbled mess, but it would have to do.
"It's a start." The dilapidated, earthquake-stricken building that had been a strip mall and its attending parking lot had been roughly enclosed on the three open sides by a collection of army tents, semi-derelict caravans and RVs, containers with windows hastily cut by angle grinders, and a rare, precious double-wide prefab in decent condition. It was likewise a jumbles mess, and just in the same way, it would have to do.
Judd started to screw what passed for a water main - formerly an armored vehicle refueling hose - to the tank's outlet. Vicki took a few seconds to start helping.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"Just..." Vicki waved a hand at the motley collection of dwellings that the couple and their friends had managed to assemble. "This looks like the trailer park I used to live in. Except this is worse. Seven years, seven years of fear and oppression and plagues and... here I am again, full circle!"
"Hey, cheer up. You got me. You got... us. And... technically, you got all this, you're in charge of the whole compound."
"Compound. It looks like a cheap sci-fi set." Admittedly, the boiling plasma clouds behind Vicki did add to that impression. She chuckled to herself, bitterly at first, then sincerely. "Any moment now a cardboard UFO is going to land right here in the middle."
Vicki joined her husband in finishing the water system setup; thank God, they'd already arranged for power, and the sewers in this area were still in decent enough shape to support a small population. A scavenging trip to O'Hare airport, courtesy of Rayford Steele's help, had turned up a ram air turbine from a disabled airliner; Lionel had a plan to turn it into a wind generator as soon as they could erect a mast and carve longer blades for it.
"What should we call it?"
Only a fraction of the Earth's population had survived the Tribulation and the Glorious Appearing into what most Christians around the world chose to call the Kingdom. "How many children of the Tribulation must there be," Vicki said, "who still have to choose Christ over living for themselves?"
"Children of the Tribulation," Judd said. "I like that."
"God has been impressing on me that Kenny will be only one of many children in our charge."
"Me too, Vicki. I find that amazing."
Throughout the evacuation of Jerusalem, Judd and Vicki had ended up looking after the son of Buck and Chloe Williams; the assent of the child's uncle and closest living relative had made the matter easy, considering that the Rayford Steele technically had next-of-kin authority and, more importantly, knew how to fly an airliner and by force of necessity had a say over passenger loads.
The last trans-Atlantic flight had been a week ago; not enough fuel, too much wind, too dangerous now. After the Glorious Appearing and the events that followed, the Earth had been reshaping itself, sometimes violently - the old mountains had come back in a matter of hours, islands reemerged from the deeps, massive ion storms scorched the skies from the twin releases of immense quantities of electrostatic charge that had occurred. It was summer, and yet mornings and evenings were a biting dry cold. The storms showed no intention of calming down.
Vicki got Kenny out of the car; the four-year-old had fallen asleep, and was heavily bundled in a multicolored scarf that almost covered him head to toe. The young couple walked into the double-wide, and took solace at a moment of normality - the lights came on when a switch was flicked, the water flowed when a faucet was opened. Test complete, they quickly turned both off, to conserve resources.
"I cannot imagine the havoc unbelievers could wreak in this new world. I hope God grants us the strength to do with them what He wants."
"Oh, you know He will."
"So... Children of the Tribulation it is?"
"Yes. It's accurate, and it makes a point, I think."
The last chore that Judd wrapped up before locking up for the night was painting the name of the new ministry on a piece of plywood at the new entrance for the compound, over the hastily sprayed ham-radio code that indicated a mustering point under private management. The lettering was a little shaky, but there'd be plenty of room for improvements later; the ichtyos following them, on the other hand, Judd would want to keep for a long time.
The last chore that Vicki wrapped up before curling up with her husband - husband, she reminded herself, he was hers and she was his, and nothing that had happened since could change that - had been to contact the local administration via modem, and tell them that the facility was ready for operation. Transportation was fast becoming a luxury, power was a scarce resource except for hospitals and control hubs, even food and water could be hard to find at times... but communications worked almost perfectly.
Years ago, Carpathia had collected the world's best engineers and builders and put them in charge of setting up a network, Cellular-Solar, intended to one-up the Arpanet and be proof against anything that man, Devil or God could throw at it; it had to keep humanity together, no matter what, even come the Apocalypse.
The system had worked through the Glorious Appearing; those men and women had delivered on their contract with ultimate precision. Any threat to the network's integrity had been neutralized, circumvented or contained, with algorithmic efficiency and endless layers of redundancy. Any threat at all.
Vicki jolted awake from almost-slumber, gave Judd a gentle poke - don't start snoring on us now! - and, before again hugging her man under the blankets, reached upwards and gave a gentle push to Kenny's crib; following a medieval trick she'd read about, Vicki had suspended the crib from the ceiling, for quick access and so that the baby could see and hear his parents without risk of getting squished. Of course, Kenny wasn't their biological son, but... did it matter, at this point?
Before falling asleep, Vicki thought about Jesus. AND KNOW THAT I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS; YES, TO THE END OF TIME, He had said to her, soundlessly, when she last saw Him. Not the end of the world - that had come and gone - but to the end of time itself.
Despite the crazy situation that everybody she knew - including Jesus - were now in, she found the thought comforting enough to fall asleep to.
Author's Note: Since I've been asked several times, let me make it clear - NO, Buck and Chloe did NOT go to Hell. Buck is a remarkably detestable character, but he is a Christian, which means that in this 'verse, he wouldn't ever go to Hell. Chloe is generally a competent, caring person (at least when she's not around Buck, but I guess she's just that smitten), AND a Christian, so the same rule applies. If you want to find out what happened to them in this AU... read on.