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(And I mentioned it in a novel.)

The deer stand was one of Zack Tutweiler’s best thinking places. The rain had masked the sound of his climbing up the tree’s nailed-on steps and into the plywood box an hour before dawn. The blind’s roof sheltered him from the rain. For as long as seventeen-year-old Zack had been allowed to go hunting by himself, the blind had been a place he could go without be-ing hassled for choosing solitude. He brought home enough meat that no-body bitched about his disappearing with his compound bow into the forest. Now there was nobody left to bitch at him for anything. He was the last one still living at the end of Bear Trail Road, the last inhabitant of their refuge from the world.

The Tutweilers had hidden very well, but not well enough. The troubles of the world had sought them out in spite of their preparation, their camouflage and their faith. All the praying in the world had not prevented the flu from choking the life out of his twin sisters Becky and Annie last winter, the winter of the hurricane floods and the great earthquakes. Becky had died first and Annie a day later, both drowning in their own lung fluids. Zack and his family had prayed continuously, to no effect.

And praying hadn’t stopped the raging infection from killing his eleven-year-old brother Sammy last September. He’d gashed his knee with a hatchet while helping to trim the branches off their winter firewood. The most powerful antibiotics in their family medicine chest couldn’t stop that infection, and poor Sammy had died in horrible pain. Zack had helped teach Sam how to use the ax, but he had not taught him well enough. And now his little brother was buried in the cold ground forever.
After Sammy died, the praying had stopped, even Mom’s praying. This was some months after Mom had run out of her blue pills, the ones for her depression. These days when pills ran out, they ran out for good.

All along Mom had been waiting for the Rapture and praying for the Rapture, and in the end it was all for nothing. “We sure got the tribula-tion,” she’d often say, “But when, oh when, are we getting the blessed Rapture?” It wasn’t long after Sam died that she took the baby up to the bridge. “Rapturecide” is how Zack often thought of it.

Dad said she must have had an accident, probably baby Sarah had slipped and Mom had tried to save her, the river all swollen and running fast…but in his heart Zack had never believed this. He didn’t know if Dad believed it either, but he’d never challenged his father on the issue. It would have brought nothing but pain, and pain they already had to over-flowing. They found Mom stuck in the rushes along the bank, but they never did find little Sarah. Dad said it had to have been an accident, but even he didn’t sound convinced.

But Zack knew what had happened, in his mind he knew. It was Rap-turecide. He’d heard the term whispered at the swap market, at the cross-roads town of Walnut, Mississippi, a half-hour bike ride away. Sometimes whole families had gone that way, in their exhausted desperation challenging God to put up or shut up,