Armageddon Crazy

"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, ru

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 perso

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 si

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 si

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 ru

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.