by Mick Farren
"How big are those things?"
"I heard that they were over a hundred feet high."
"Why can't we go out and see them?"
"You want to be down in among those people?"
"They don't look too bad."
Indeed, at that moment the crowd was orderly and quiet, simply staring up at the huge images.
"Crowds can change very quickly. A mob like that may look okay, but there's always a proportion of criminals and sickoes in among them."
"What about the roof? Why can't we go up to the roof and watch things from there?"
Longstreet was quick to squash that idea. "The images are being projected from the roof. There's too much equipment up there for it to be safe."
"The real question, Deacon Longstreet, is how long do you intend to keep us cooped up in here?"
The vocal leader of the complainers was the president of Good Shepherd Inc., whose fat wife was now feeding canapes to the Yorkshire terrier. Cynthia figured that he had probably been planning to dump the wife and dog and go to see his mistress. That was no doubt why he was so agitated. Longstreet's amiable concern was showing signs of strain. He started enunciating his words very carefully, as if he were explaining to a fractious child that he could not have his own way.
"All I know is that people much more important than me have decided that we'd be better off staying where we are. I think the best thing we could all do is to go along with them."
"You deacons have to remember that you don't run everything."
An irresistible nastiness was starting to twist Longstreet's bland, public smile. "Oh, we do, sir, we do. Except, in this instance, we're doing our best to protect your lives and health."
"But there's nothing going on out there."
"Actually, there is."
Everyone turned. The voice belonged to the rather strange figure in the voluminous cowled overcoat who had come in with Matthew Dreisler. When Dreisler had left, a few minutes after the rest of the deacon brass, he had taken his aide and bodyguards with him, but for some inexplicable reason he had left the tall, thin individual there. This was the first time that he had spoken. The other guests looked from him to the monitor screens.
"He's right."
People were running past the camera. It shook and went out of focus as the camera car was jostled. Then there was the sound of gunfire. The ground-level crew were down with their micro-cams and pushing toward the source of the disturbance. The screen was streaked with afterburn from the lights. Suddenly the cameras were jerked aside as a squad of police pushed through. The president of Good Shepherd Inc. was immediately demanding answers from Longstreet.
"What the hell is going on down there? Why doesn't somebody tell us? Why's there no voice-over?"
Longstreet was happier when he had something to explain. "What we're seeing here is the direct feed to the network. The voice-over isn't put on until the raw input is processed."
He did not add that this footage would be processed straight into the garbage. The censors would never let anything so inflammatory reach the domestic screens.
The guests fell silent as they watched the deteriorating situation on the monitor screens. Cynthia was near the back of the crowd, helping herself to more champagne than was strictly good for her. The man in the cowled coat came up beside her.
"Am I right in thinking that you're Cynthia Kline?"
Cynthia looked up in surprise and not a little alarm. "That's right. That's me."
For the first time she had the chance to get a good look at the face beneath the cowl. There was something almost biblical about the deep-set eyes and hollow cheeks. He had the look of a genuine ascetic, a rare animal in that day and age.
He smiled slightly. "I've been asked to give you something."
"You have?"
Cynthia felt extremely uncomfortable. The man in the cowled coat glanced pointedly at where Longstreet was once again on the phone, trying to get additional information about the disturbance that was boiling up on the streets outside. She could only assume that the strange man was making a deliberate show of checking that they were not being observed. When he seemed satisfied, he took a small plastic pouch from his sleeve. She assumed that it contained some kind of software diskette.
"Please take this quickly."
Cynthia looked at it as if it were a venomous insect, but took it anyway. Refusing to touch the thing would not save her from whatever was going to happen next.
The cowled coat made a slight bow. "You will treat this as wholly confidential."
He quickly moved away, mixing in with the knot of people gathered around Longstreet. His timing was impeccable. Long-street was just hanging up the phone.
"They're going to send the STG in to clear the streets."
The president of Good Shepherd Inc. grunted. "It's the only way to deal with this rabble."
Carlisle
The woman's arms were windmilling, clawing at anything that came within reach as she stumbled along blindly. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was sobbing a revolving litany about how the Seventh Seal was broken and everyone was going to die. All around, there were hundreds like her taking simultaneous leave of their senses. The Four Horsemen towered above them all as if they really were presiding over the fall of civilization. Carlisle himself was not too far from believing that the end of the world had come. He tried to push backward, but the crush would not let him. The woman lurched straight into him and grabbed him round the neck. Her eyes did not even focus. Carlisle ducked out of her clutching embrace but, in so doing, momentarily lost his footing. He was starting to get frightened. He was in the middle of an escalating, milling panic, and if he was knocked to the ground, his badge or gun or all of his training would not do him the slightest bit of good. He could be trampled just like anyone else. He took advantage of a brief eddy in the crowd to get his breath and bearings. His tracy was flashing. He touched the receive button.
Parnell appeared on the tiny screen. "Where are you?"
"I'm on Eighth, in the middle of a hundred thousand maniacs."
"Get out of there. Right now. The deacons have ordered in the STG. Unrestricted pacification. They're going to clear the streets the hard way."
The Special Tactical Group was the last resort when it came to urban disorder. Based on the British and French models, it was an independent, paramilitary force under the direct control of the deacons. They used it like a blunt instrument. Once they were let loose in a situation, there was no stopping them. They went at their target with a single-minded, mad-dog brutality.
"The STG? Has everybody gone nuts?"
"Quite possibly."
"The deacons had a crack at Proverb, but they missed him."
"We know. They had a couple of tries, but he beat them. They picked up the car in the forties, but he'd already switched vehicles. But listen, Harry, you don't have time to talk. Get the hell away from there. The STG is coming. It's going to turn into a massacre and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it."
"Okay, I'm going. Which direction will they be coming from?"
"Straight down Eighth from the north. They're grouping at the U-Tran terminal. The Herods will come through first laying gas."
"They're using gunships? You were serious about a massacre."
"Just get out of there."
He signed off. Carlisle tried to push his way down the avenue, but right at that moment a surge of people decided to go in the opposite direction, and he was carried backward.
Mansard
Charlie Mansard was on the roof when the STG arrived. He was not aware of them at first. He was standing in the very center of the complex of laser projectors, staring up at the sky and admiring his creation. It was impossible to see the image from that angle, but he was quite content to just gaze up at the pillars of light seemingly going straight to infinity. It was like being inside some radiant cathedral, a cathedral that he had designed and created himself, the biggest skywalker ever staged. He la
ughed out loud in pure delight.
"It's alive!"
He felt like Victor Frankenstein as the lightning energized his monster. In his case, though, the lightning itself was his monster.
"God, it's beautiful!"
The first he knew about the trouble on the street below was when a Herod gunship cut clear through the image, disrupting the columns of mist with its rotors and producing a temporary hole though Famine and Pestilence. Mansard had heard some noise and shouting down on the street, but he had not paid any attention to it. Crowds were like that. The helicopter, on the other hand, was a direct affront.
He turned angrily in the direction of Jimmy Gadd. "What the hell was that?"
Gadd was over on the other side the roof, running the control board. "It's an STG chopper, chief. There's two more coming down Eighth Avenue. I think there's trouble in the crowd."
Mansard quickly picked his way through the snaking complex of cables to the parapet. Gadd was right. There were two more choppers coming slowly down the street. They were the urban combat model, the kind with the ultra-short rotors that could operate down between the buildings. Below them, on the ground, a dozen or more armored personnel carriers were rolling forward with blazing searchlights mounted on their front turrets. The choppers kept pace with the armor until they were opposite the old New Yorker Hotel, then suddenly accelerated and swung up and over the crowd outside the Garden. A second chopper cut through the image of the Horsemen, punching a hole through Death.
Mansard cursed after it. "What do you think you're doing?"
He got a firm grip on his fear of heights and peered down at the crowd. They were milling in chaotic confusion. What had spooked them? Surely not his Horsemen? The first line of armor had halted at Thirty-fourth Street and was disgorging dark, disciplined squads of men.
Gadd had come up beside him. "This looks like it's going to turn ugly."
"Is there anything we can do?"
Gadd sighed. "Not much. Not unless…" Mansard looked at him suspiciously. "Unless what?"
"Unless we kill the image. It might minimize the confusion." Mansard was outraged. "Take down my Four Horsemen?"
"We'd have to shut it down soon. It won't be long before the fog generators start overheating."
The STG troops were spreading out over the entire width of Eighth Avenue. Even from where Mansard sat it was possible to see the light reflecting off their Plexiglas riot shields. The Herods had turned around and were heading back up town in a wide loop that took them close to the Empire State Building. Their first pass had obviously been a dummy run. Presumably they were turning around to come back for the real thing. "This is going to be very unpleasant." The lead chopper was coming back down Eighth Avenue at high speed with its nose lights blazing. It could not have been more than twenty feet from the ground. It zipped over the lines of STG and barrelled toward the crowd. People started to run, but there was nowhere to run to. Trails of white vapor arrowed from beneath the gunship's stubby wings. It pulled quickly upward as the rocket canisters hit and bounced end over end, spewing clouds of EZA riot gas. The second and third Herods followed suit. When they had made their runs, the whole area in front of the Garden was awash with the incapacitating gas.
While the helicopters hovered over the post office, the front ranks of the STG ground force started jogging on the spot. There was a sinister rhythmic drumming sound. They were beating on their shields with their electric clubs, working themselves up for the attack.
Mansard turned away. "What do they think they are? A goddamn Roman legion?"
Jimmy Gadd looked at him questioningly but did not say anything. The STG was moving forward, gas masks sealed, closing on the hysterical crowd.
Mansard shook his head. "Kill the image. We're not a part of this."
Anslinger
First it had been a dream and then it became a nightmare. There had been moments, back inside, during the service, when she had been frightened. She had been scared to death during the dark part when the demons had moved among them, but then the Reverend Proverb had made the golden light come and everything had been all right. They had gone out of Madison Square Garden chanting, all together.
"Go outside, look to the skies."
On the outside, Maude Anslinger had looked up and seen the terrible Horsemen towering over her. The first sight of the huge figures had turned her heart to ice. What was this? Had Judgment Day really come? Would the graves really give up their dead? Would George be coming back to her? She had a sudden vision, like one of those old movies: the living dead walking through the night, lost and confused. She was lost and confused herself. It was so hard to think. The Jesus Waves made her mind cloudy and hard to focus. Perhaps she should go to the cemetery in Queens were George was buried; perhaps she should go and find him. Thinking about George helped clear her head a little and calm her fear. There was no way that she could get to Queens. The important thing was that she was safe. No harm was going to come to her. The Horsemen were not coming for her. She believed in Jesus. She had signed the pledges; she had sent what little money she had. It was not much, but she did not have much. Jesus knew that. She would receive her golden crown and be reunited with George.
Some of the people in the crowd did not seem to share her calm faith. They screamed and shouted and dropped to their knees to pray. There was pushing and shoving. She was repeatedly jostled. She began to worry that she would be knocked down when the crowd made one of its wild surges. Over on the other side of the street, some people were climbing the big flight of stone steps in front of the post office, using them as a vantage point. She decided to follow suit. On the steps she would be out of the main body of the crowd and high enough up to see what was going on. She made her way toward them, avoiding the rowdier sections.
After determinedly easing her way through the crush, she eventually found herself on the third step from the top, looking out over the massed heads. Another woman, roughly her age, was standing next to her. The woman wore small, round, old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses and seemed to be staring transfixed at the Four Horsemen. Maude Anslinger remembered her own initial fear and put a hand on the woman's shoulder.
"There's no need to be afraid. They won't hurt us. They're here for the sinners."
The woman shook her head. There was something a little strange about her eyes. "It's only an apparition. The Day hasn't come yet. It's just a vision to show the sinners what to expect."
The woman seemed a little crazy, but Maude smiled pleasantly anyway. "I sure hope you're right."
The woman nodded. "The voices told me. They tell me everything."
"I don't hear voices."
"You're lucky. There are times that I wish they'd go away." She put a hand quickly to her mouth. "I suppose I shouldn't say that."
There seemed to be a lot of noise coming from the direction of Thirty-third Street. A violent rush of running people caused a huge ripple in the crowd at the foot of the steps. There was a lot of shouting and screaming. Maude Anslinger frowned. The crowd was huge, and it did not seem to be calming down. If anything, it was getting more agitated. The people on the steps shuffled uncomfortably. It was as if everyone sensed that, somewhere on the other side of this sea of people, something was very wrong. When the shots came, the feeling was confirmed. Everyone was looking for a way out. Like all the others, Maude failed to see one. There were more shots and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.
Maude Anslinger was seriously frightened. A surge of humanity broke over the bottom of the post office steps like a crashing wave. Dozens of people fell in an extended tangle of arms and legs. She knew that if she went down, she would never get up again. A new thought danced into her fear. If anything happened to her, who would take care of Theodore? The cat would starve.
The helicopters screamed past with their blazing lights. The noise was so loud that Maude clapped her hands to her ears. It was all going so fast that she could not really absorb it. People like her watched helicopters on
TV. They did not stand in crowds of people who were going mad. There had to be some way out. She looked behind her. People were hugging the pillars that held up the post office's massive portico and pressing back into the dark spaces between them. There was no room for her up there. The helicopters screamed past once more. This time they dropped the gas. It came up the steps in a single rolling billow. When it reached them, it burned. Maude was doubled over, racked by stomach cramps. Her eyes were streaming. It was the Day of Judgment, and they were all sinners. The terrible, faceless men that advanced through the swirling gas were like demons from the pit.
They were beating people as they came up and across the steps. Lashing out at them with bulky clubs that made blue electric sparks when they struck home. The violence was cold and impersonal. Anonymous in their dark-blue armor and identical insect masks, they were quite literally a line of grim reapers. The crowd fled in front of them in blind choking panic. Men and women fell and were trampled. The woman of the voices went down, her old-fashioned glasses falling at Maude Anslinger's feet. In the next moment, a foot came down and crushed them. Maude hunched her shoulders and closed her eyes. She was jostled and pushed, but she did not fall. Miraculously, the crowd had gone around her. She opened her eyes and found herself face to face with the locust-headed demon from the pit. The club came down, and there was a single flash of pain and then nothing. Maude Anslinger did not know that her neck broke when she fell backward down the steps. She would not know that her cat would be rescued from starvation in just three days. Nobody would know or even care whether she spent the hereafter walking and talking with Jesus or in the atheist's oblivion. To the world, Maude Anslinger was just part of the death count.
Carlisle
"Get back inside the Garden, right now!" Carlisle yelled through the handkerchief he had pressed to his face. He held up his badge with his free hand. His exposed skin felt as if it were being peeled. "That's an order!"
