Armageddon Crazy

SIX

Carlisle

He ran the tracy on his wrist through a quick function check. The screen was still distorting, but the communicator was working again. Outside the auditorium, in one of the tunnels that led to the street, there was enough protection from the storm of leakage that was coming from the stage to allow the audio to function. He touched the send stem.

"Carlisle here. Control, do you copy?"

"Opcon here. We copy you, Lieutenant, but no visual."

"I know that. It's the best I can do."

"Audio loud and clear."

"So listen, the Alien Proverb show is over. There have been no incidents. I am signing out and returning to Astor Place."

"We've logged that. What about the rest of the team?"

"They're off the air until they move away from Proverb's special effects. You'll just have to pick them up individually as they come out. Tell them to regroup downtown. I've had enough of this bullshit. The damned A-waves have given me a headache."

"Ten four, Lieutenant."

"Yeah."

He closed the channel. Harry Carlisle was in a foul temper. What had all the paranoia been about? Was it celebrity chic to imagine death threats? He felt that he and his men had yet again been used, and he fully intended to stop at a bar before he returned to Astor Place.

The street door led out onto Eighth Avenue. Carlisle's temper was not improved by his discovery that the street lamps were out. It was a hell of a time for a power failure. Or was it a power failure? It was certainly limited. From the corner of Thirty-third Street, he could see the Empire State Building, shining in its halo of cloud, just blocks away. He could also see that the traffic was not running. People were strolling along the empty expanse of the avenue. What the hell was going on? He looked around. There were plenty of cops about, but they seemed to be standing in tight watchful groups, certainly not deployed to handle the crowd that would be coming out of the Garden at any minute. They had the look of men who were waiting for an order. He walked over to the nearest group and flashed his badge.

"What happened to the lights?" he asked.

"It's all part of the show."

"What show?"

The patrolman was inscrutable behind his armored visor. His name tag read 'Rennweiler'. He imperceptibly jerked his shoulders. "You better talk to the sergeant."

"At any minute, thousands of these fools will come streaming out of the Garden, twisted out of shape on A-waves, and find themselves in total darkness. "

"Really, Lieutenant, you'd better talk to the sergeant."

"Where is he?"

"He's here someplace. I'm not sure exactly where. It's hard to keep track in the dark."

Carlisle knew that he was getting the uniformed run-around. He looked about for someone in authority but failed to see any stripes or gold braid. The first of the Proverb audience had begun to emerge from the exits. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Oh, Christ, they were chanting something. What was it they were saying? It sounded like 'Go outside, look to the skies'. They were crazier than he had thought.

They were spilling out of the exits in earnest. The chanting could be heard coming from those who were still inside, but once they reached the sidewalk, the cohesion faltered. They seemed to become confused. They walked aimlessly, turning and peering upward, spreading out over the closed-off width of Eighth Avenue. Only a handful seemed to be going for their cars or turning for the subway. By far the majority seemed to be holding on, waiting for something to happen. The squads of uniforms were not doing anything. It was insane. The way things were being handled went against all the most basic rules of crowd control. In a situation like this it was a matter of get 'em out and get 'em gone.

A crowd could never be allowed to linger after any event, and that went double when the event had been as emotionally charged as this one. He was starting to suspect that someone had failed to tell him something. What did that jiveass Rennweiler mean by 'it's all part of the show'?

Then it started.

They simply glimmered into silent life, like apparitions from another dimension. There was a conceited gasp from the crowd on the street. The things were huge. At first, Carlisle was too close to the building to be able to see them. With a host of other people, he hurried across the sidewalk and out onto the avenue. When he turned and looked, he was instantly rooted to the spot.

"God almighty!"

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, maybe a hundred feet high, were charging across the city. War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, armor gleaming, spear raised, scythe swinging. They seemed to be galloping full tilt for the Hudson, New Jersey, and the rest of America. Fire burned from the horses' nostrils, and sparks flew from the giant hooves. The Horsemen's eyes were hidden beneath cowl, behind visor, or in the dark hollows of black skull sockets. Their spectral images were reflected over and over in the curtain glass of the neighboring towers. Even though Harry knew it was all an electronic illusion, the first sight took his breath away. It was magnificent.

It was also an explosive situation. All around him, those who were not simply standing and staring as he was were dropping to their knees in prayer. Many were walking backward, gazing up, transfixed. Someone had started shouting.

"The day has come!"

Others took up the cry.

"The day has come!"

"The day has come!"

Carlisle was very much aware that word would soon be spreading across the city about the vision above the Garden as people saw it from their windows and started to call friends. It was possible that literally millions of people would soon be converging on the area. Just a few blocks downtown, the burned and blackened buildings that had been torched in the recent bread riot stood as testimony to a crowd's madness. He opened a channel on the tracy.

"This is Carlisle. I'm on Eighth Avenue, outside the building. Do you know what's going on out here?"

"This is opcon. What is going on out there, Lieutenant?"

"There's a hundred-foot-high hologram on the top of the building."

"The Four Horsemen, right?"

"That's right. The goddamn Horsemen. Why wasn't I told about any of this?"

The tracy was now working perfectly. The opcon operator on the small screen shrugged.

"Don't ask me, Lieutenant. I just work here. Maybe someone didn't think it was your territory."

"But who sanctioned this damned thing? It could start a riot."

"I don't know, Lieutenant. I heard the deacons approved it."

"Can you patch me through to Captain Parnell?"

The operator shook his head. "I can't, Lieutenant. He went into the auditorium just before the end of the show. He's still off the air."

"Goddamn it."

"I 'm sorry, Lieutenant."

Carlisle knew that he was helpless. He spotted a sergeant with a squad of uniforms. The sergeant's name tag read 'Muncie', and he looked as if a conversation with a lieutenant of detectives was the very last thing he wanted. Carlisle didn't give a damn. He had had enough of closed-minded departmentalization. He glanced pointedly at the huge hologram images. "This could easily come unhinged."

"Tell me about it, but we've got orders from the brass to let it happen."

"And you're just following orders?"

"You said it, Lieutenant, not me. Get me some new orders and I'll move them out of here and get the traffic running. Until then, I'm not offering up my ass for sacrifice."

Carlisle sighed. "I hear you."

In fact, the crowd, although growing increasingly dense, was surprisingly orderly. The chanting and screaming only came in brief bursts, and comparatively few were still on their knees. The majority simply stood, heads tilted back, gazing up at the giant Horsemen. The first ones out had moved up onto the block-long stone steps of the big post office building across the street and were using them as granite bleachers. He could see blue pinpoints of light from the Elvi's globes. War's mount reared, and its rider stabbed down at the mass of people with his spear. There was the murmur of thousands of voices. Carlisle spotted a gang of street kids moving through the growing throng like sharks through a school of tuna. They were almost certainly making a preliminary pass before the first purse- or chain-snatching runs of fast larceny. The calm would not last long.

"But what the hell, it's not my problem."

Unfortunately, he couldn't quite believe himself. Sometime-it seemed like centuries ago – he had sworn an oath to protect the public. It had not said anything about all deals being off if the public put itself willfully at risk or his superiors acted like morons. He couldn't just walk away. He looked around for someone who might be a little more help than Sergeant Muncie. It was then that he spotted the deacons.

There were eight of them, coming out of the Garden at a fast walk. They all wore bulky, dark-blue, three-quarter-length raincoats and porkpie hats. Carlisle knew those raincoats. Their cut sufficiently loose to hide automatic weapons and lightweight body armor. Something was absolutely wrong. They looked like a deacon hit team – and what in the name of merciful heaven was a hit team doing in this already lunatic situation?

They turned sharp right and followed the curve of the building around into Thirty-third Street. He decided to follow them. They seemed to be heading for the gates where cars and trucks had access to the inside of the Garden.

Speedboat

He knew that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He pushed through a set of double doors and found himself in an approach lane to an underground loading bay. There was a black and heavily armored stretch limousine parked under a light. It might have been a Mercedes when it started out, but the extensive customizing made identification difficult. There was a cowcatcher on the front, and the windshield and windows were just slits surrounded by steel plate. The ceramic eggbox panels covering the sides and top could stop anything short of a rocket attack. Whoever owned the car took his or her personal safety very seriously.

It was not the car, however, that made him duck back into the doorway. It was the five armed men who stood around it. At first he thought that they were cops, but then he saw the pale-blue trim on their uniforms. They were Garden security. Speedboat did not know too much about private rentacops. He didn't have a great deal of contact with them down on the Lower East Side. In theory, he should have been able to stroll up to them with his backstage pass prominently displayed and ask directions. The pass was legit, and it had worked perfectly well on the guards who had let him through the security screens into the backstage area and who had explained how to find the guy he had to contact. Though the explanation had turned out to be garbled, it had been freely and civilly given.

Theory and practice were, unfortunately, two different things. Speedboat fished out the pass from one of his deep pockets and stuck it on the front of his parka, but he hesitated before walking out into plain sight. What kept him there in the doorway, peering furtively at the car and its escort, were the machine pistols that they held at high port. These guys were serious. In a culture where shooting first and asking questions afterward was far too common, an individual with a uniform and a machine pistol required a good deal of consideration and respect.

He had all but finished considering and was about to pull out his pass and walk boldly up to the armed security men when the five of them stiffened. He quickly changed his mind and stayed put. Something was about to happen. There were voices in the darkness beyond the pool of light around the car. Figures came into the light. There were four of them, backed up by even more armed Madison Square Garden security. On the outside, there was a mountain of a man dressed like a western gunfighter, complete with Stetson and fancy suit, and an almost-as-large black man in a scarlet sweatsuit. They flanked a flashy blonde with a gold leather evening coat tossed over her shoulders and a small man wearing a rhinestone suit, dark glasses, and a towel draped around his neck. Disconnected cables trailed from his pants leg. Speedboat froze. It was Alien Proverb himself.

The cowboy opened the door of the limo, and first the blonde and then Proverb got into the back. The cowboy slammed the door. There was a brief conversation with security personnel, and then he and the black man climbed into the front. The long car was started, and it accelerated quickly up the tunnel. The Garden security and the unnoticed Speedboat watched it go. Speedboat was a little bemused; he rarely came close to celebs.

Once again he readied himself to seek directions from the security men, but once again he shrank back into the shelter of the doorway. There was a commotion beyond the lights – shouts and running feet. Another group of men also brandishing guns ran into the space where the armored limo had just been. Speedboat's eyes widened. There was no mistaking the blue raincoats and dark suits. They were dekes. They yelled something indistinguishable at the security men and started up the tunnel at a run. Speedboat did not hesitate. He jerked back through the doors behind him and fled.

Carlisle

There was a sizable crowd around the gates. They were quiet, with no pleading, pushing, or hysteria, and the line of security directly in front of the vehicle entrance had no difficulty in holding them back. These were the hardcore, the fans rather than the faithful. Despite the Four Horsemen, they were waiting for Proverb to come driving out of the bowels of the building in his limousine. They just wanted to be close, maybe to see his face, and they stood quietly holding souvenirs or programs. Two had raised a banner that read 'Next to Jesus, We Love You'. There was a high proportion of Elvi among them, holding up those blue globes.

Carlisle was about eight yards behind the deacons, and he slowed a little as they came up to the knot of fans by the gates. Nothing had prepared him for the sudden and completely purposeless violence. They simply went through the crowd, barking and manhandling, counting on ingrained fear to make the people melt away in front of them. And their tactic might have worked if it had not been for one burly Elvi. His wife was not fast enough in getting out of the way. One of the deacons pushed her roughly. She stumbled on her Minnie Mouse shoes and fell with a shriek. Her previously quiet husband, who had been docilely holding a pair of polytone 3D pictures, one of Elvis Presley in his ceremonial costume and a slightly smaller one of Proverb in his, instantly turned into a mean and outraged good ol' boy. He grabbed the deacon by his lapels and threw him.

"I don't care who you are. Nobody pushes my wife to the ground."

He turned to help his wife to her feet but was immediately jumped by three deacons. Two others pulled guns from under their raincoats. At the very same moment, the gates started to slide open. A large and heavily armored black limo was coming through from inside. It was coming fast, and the Garden security started to move the crowd out of its path. They immediately ran up against the remaining deacons, who seemed to by trying to push through to the gate. There was total confusion. The deacons who were struggling with the furious Elvi tried to break away and go for the car. But the Elvi had not finished with them. He brought one down with a mighty, double-handed chop to the back of his neck. The fallout from that act cannoned into the security men and the now-panicking fans they were attempting to control, resulting in a tangle of struggling people right in front of the car. Whoever was driving the black limo slammed on the brakes, and it screeched to a shuddering halt. The deacons were straight on it, brandishing their weapons and grabbing for the car's door handles.

For Carlisle, everything fell into place. Maybe he was going to see an assassination after all. The idiots were going after Proverb, and they did not look particularly bothered as to whether they took him alive. That in itself was a measure of how far gone they were. The bastards thought that they could get away with anything.

The black limo was resisting all their efforts to open the door. The engine roared. The people in front of it, caught in the blazing headlights, scrambled to get out of the way. The car shot forward. Its lowered cowcatcher clipped one of the deacons and sent him sprawling on the hard road surface. It made a hard right and sped the wrong way down Thirty-third Street, scattering the stream of people who were coming in the opposite direction to see the Horsemen. A deacon loosed off with a burst from his machine pistol at the disappearing limousine. The bullets struck orange sparks off the sheet steel in the car's armor. The car did not stop, but gunfire started a mass panic on Thirty-third as screaming bystanders dived for cover anywhere they could find it. Carlisle clipped his badge to his lapel and reached for his own gun. The deacons all seemed to be equipped with the latest.10 Krupp HVs, which made his own automag seem puny.

The big Elvi did not seem at all deterred by the show of weapons. With three or four more at his back, he ran straight at the deacon who had fired and blindsided him. The deacon went flying. The way he hit the ground, rolled, and fired did credit to his training. The burst took the Elvi in the chest. He was lifted off the ground and thrown backward. His wife started screaming. The deacon lost his gun as the other Elvi ran over him, kicking and stomping with pointed Italian shoes.

The second burst of gunfire started the stampede. People were running in every direction. The echoes from the surrounding buildings made it impossible to tell where the firing was coming from unless one was very close to the incident. Somewhere a woman was screaming.

"They're killing us! The deacons are killing us!"

It was the kind of blind hysteria that could spread like wildfire through a crowd. Carlisle looked down at his tracy. His first instinct was to call in, but what was the point? He didn't need anyone confirming that there was nothing that could be done.

There was a lot of noise coming from Eighth Avenue. The panic must have reached the main body of the crowd. A second tight, angry group of deacons came running up the ramp from inside the Garden. As they came through the gate, Carlisle grabbed one of them by the arm. He spun the man quickly around and yelled in his face.

"Who's in charge of this nonsense?"

It was only after he had yelled that he recognized the deacon. It was that sanctimonious little jerk Winters. The recognition was simultaneous and mutual.

"Carlisle."

"I asked you a question, boy."

An unpleasant smile spread over Winters' scrubbed, unctuous face. He was out of breath and clearly running on adrenaline. "You don't talk to me like that, Carlisle. After the end of tonight, things are going to be very different."

They both ducked as a bottle smashed against the wall behind them. An angry mob had started to ring the gate, and the deacons were pulling back into a protective formation in the gateway. The crowd did not seem willing to force the confrontation yet. The firepower that the deacons had between them was more than enough to keep them sullenly at bay. They contented themselves with throwing things from the back rows and yelling abuse. Carlisle knew that it was a situation that would not continue indefinitely. It had to deteriorate. Either the mob would work itself up until it was irrational enough to charge the deacons, or else the deacons would lose control and start shooting. In either scenario, people would die. He knew that he really had to get himself out of there. He could not do anything, and he was damned if he would let himself be caught in the crossfire.

He was still holding on to Winters. They were in a kind of no man's land.

Winters glanced down at the ten caliber in his hand. "You realize that I could shoot you out of hand and nobody would do a thing."

Carlisle's own gun was in his free hand. The moment's angry impulse that had caused him to grab Winters was creating a ridiculous and dangerous standoff. It was time to take the initiative. He smiled back. "You could, at that."

Winters' eyes flickered. It was obviously not the response that he had expected.

Carlisle laughed. "For all your bullshit, you deacons really don't have it, do you?"

Without warning, he kicked Winters hard in the crotch and turned to run. Three steps, and he was in among the crowd. They parted to let him through.

Winters

His eyes were watering and he wanted to vomit. He lay on his side, doubled up, his body curled around the throbbing agony between his legs. Only rage stopped him from crying out. That bastard Carlisle. He would kill him. The next time he saw him, he would kill him. Through the pain and the violent fantasies of what he would do to Carlisle, he heard shouts in among the mob.

"Get his gun! Quick, get his gun!"

He realized in horror that when Carlisle had kicked him, he had dropped his weapon. He opened his eyes and saw the brand-new Krupp lying some six feet away on the sidewalk. He had only been issued it half an hour earlier. He tried to move, but the pain redoubled. There were footsteps coming toward him. He tried dragging himself. Hands reached for the gun. He stretched for it, too, but his arm was kicked aside. Then, right on top of him, there was a thunderous explosion of gunfire. Rogers was standing, straddling him, firing over the heads of the crowd. They were backing away, and some had turned tail and run. Rogers' first burst had been aimed at the scum who had been trying to get the HV. Four of them lay sprawled on the sidewalk. There was a lot of blood.

Rogers moved quickly forward, picked up the fallen gun, then stepped back to Winters. "Can you walk?"

"I don't know."

"You'd better."

Meredith, the team leader, was yelling to them. "Everyone move back inside the gates! Move back!"

Rogers slung Winters' machine pistol over his shoulder and put a hand under his armpit. "Come on, I'll help you."

Winters found that his legs were working again. With Rogers holding him up, he hobbled back to where the other deacons were slowly retreating to the vehicle entrance. That withdrawal made the crowd a good deal bolder. They were closing in again. Meredith had found himself a bullhorn somewhere. He faced the mob. He cut a heroic figure, the ramrod-straight embodiment of authority facing the milling forces of darkness and disorder.

"There will be no more warnings. If you don't disperse, I will order my men to open fire."

Winters dropped to one knee. He took his Krupp back from Rogers. The ring of angry faces stopped coming on, but the crowd showed no inclination to disperse.

Meredith looked grimly at the other deacons. "They've had their chance. Fire at will."

The muzzle flashes spat into the night. Winters' gun vibrated in his hand. The Krupp HVs made an angry, high-pitched sound. Winters was surprised at how easy it was. They went down like mown corn. Bodies kicked and contorted on the street and sidewalk. The ones who were not hit in the first withering fire took to their heels, scrambling for their lives. They immediately ran into the crowds behind them who were still pressing forward. All of Thirty-third Street was choked by terrified, struggling humanity. On the far sidewalk, the front window of Toots Shor's bar exploded.

"Hold your fire. Back through the gate, right now."

As he moved back with the others, Winters had almost forgotten about his pain. He felt breathless and light-headed. That'll show the bastards. That'll show them who gives the orders. That'll show those inferior scum what kind of God we worship.

Kline

There had been a chorus of protests when they had been told that they could not leave the VIP lounge. Everyone had something to do or someplace to be. They had parties and dinner dates to go to, or lovers waiting for them. The Yorkshire terrier that was clutched under the arm of the overweight wife of the president of Good Shepherd Inc. started yapping. Maybe it, too, had plans, Cynthia reflected wryly. Only the senior deacons had left, after making a curt announcement that, because of possible street disturbances, everyone should remain where they were. Only official vehicles would be going in and out of the Garden until it was considered safe. They had left Longstreet to take the flak, with a couple of junior aides to do spin control on the disgruntled guests. Longstreet immediately had the waiters push out the booze as if it were New Year's Eve, and then he got on the phone to his department at Astor Place.

"What the hell is going on?"

During the lengthy pause that followed, Longstreet's face had grown increasingly disbelieving.

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Has the world gone completely insane?"

There was a shorter pause.

"Why, in God's name, weren't we told about it? Was it supposed to be a surprise?"

Pause.

"What do mean you just got it from NBC? Do you realize how that makes us look? Who authorized this?"

Pause.

"What is Dreisler's office doing authorizing sky spectacles? I'm getting a little tired of the assumption that he can do exactly as he pleases. In the meantime, I'm bottled up in here with a party of extremely miffed bigshots. If this Four Horsemen thing is happening, they might as well see the damn thing. I want you to get on to somebody at the Garden and have a video picture piped in here. In the meantime, I'll do my best to smooth the feathers."

He hung up and turned to the circle of impatiently waiting guests.

"Well, we may not be going anywhere for a while but at least we'll be able to see what's happening."

His words were not greeted with any degree of enthusiasm. The detainees did not want to see what was happening – -they wanted to get on with their planned evenings.

After about five minutes, the monitor screens came to life. Some, apparently being fed from a camera mounted on the roof of the big post office building on the other side of Eighth Avenue, showed an upward-angled shot of the Four Horsemen. A second view was provided by a camera crew in a helicopter hoveling over the Hudson. A third set of images came from a mobile unit down in the crowd. The video hookup, far from calming the protesters in the VIP lounge, actually started a new round of complaints.

"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 laughed 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!"

He had seen the small knot of NYPD uniforms struggling against the tide, and he had fought his way through to them. The STG's plan was simple and obvious. They were going to drive the crowd south on Eighth. They would probably run the hardcore all the way down into the twenties, down as far as the devastation left by the recent bread riot. There they would finish them. The lucky ones would be arrested, and the rest would be left for dead.

The uniforms did not need a second urging. They were as glad as he was to get out of that deadly chaos. They formed a tight phalanx around him and started fighting their way to the nearest entrance. They were not particularly gentle about it. Once they had made it to the door, Carlisle was surprised to find that nobody responded when they beat on it. He looked around anxiously.

"Anybody got a track on this?"

He was delighted when one of the uniforms broke about fifteen regulations by blowing off the inspection plate and running an illegal-looking DU through the lock system like a hot knife. The door slid back, and they tumbled through.