Armageddon Crazy

Jimmy sounded jubilant. "Looking good, huh?"

"Not too bad."

"Can you hear that weird sound?"

Mansard nodded. "Yeah, what is it?"

"I think it's the sound of thousands of people going nuts. Maybe we touched a nerve."

1346408 Stone

All through the day, things had become progressively more strange. The usual mind-numbing routine of a Sunday in the camp first slowed and then ground to an inexplicable halt. In a place like Joshua, the first reaction was always one of fear. Any unexpected glitch in the normal discipline was viewed as a possible harbinger of some awful event. First, breakfast was more than two hours late, and when they were finally marched to the mess hall, the bosses were oddly quiet and preoccupied. There was none of the usual abuse and victimization. The billyclubs were still, and the hectoring voices were impossibly subdued. If anything, the guards seemed worried, almost frightened. Something was happening, but the prisoners had no idea what it was. One of the earliest theories was that there had been a breakout in some other section of the camp, but considering the wholly atypical behavior of the bosses, that idea hardly held up. After previous breakouts, the guards had actually stepped up the brutality. When the escapees had eventually been recaptured, the guards had taken a positive delight in parading their charges past the gibbet where the hanged and beaten bodies were put on display as a deterrent to the others.

The kitchens were the camp's clearing house for rumors and tidbits of information. They were one of the few places where inmates from different sections intermixed and, under cover of the steam and the clatter, were able to exchange furtive, muttered sentences. The first story to come out of the kitchens was attributed to a group on the women's side who had a clandestine radio. Supposedly, there were reports coming out of Canada that there was about to be major shakeup in the Faithful administration. Another, from G block, claimed that black deacon cars had been going in and out of the camp all through the night. There were also the usual doomsayers, who muttered that there were mass executions coming as the authorities intended to drastically reduce the size of the camp population.

In the middle of breakfast, there was an a

The next TV picture was the most bizarre of all. Three enormous sky walkers were moving up a river. The Manhattan skyline identified the river as the Hudson.

1334680 Montague let out a low whistle. "The Beasts of Revelations. " Montague had been a Rastafarian in the real world.

1346809 Pitlik looked at him in surprise. "They're just big holograms."

"Armageddon time. Jah know." His eyes had taken on a glaze and the whites had turned yellow. "Armageddon time. Jah know."

"He's flipped."

Montague kept repeating his words over and over like a mantra. "Armageddon time. Jah know."

Later they would come for him with a straitjacket.

The first pictures of the monsters came from circling helicopters, but in a few minutes there was one from ground level, somewhere on the lower Manhattan waterfront. The camera crew was being jostled and buffeted by a crowd of struggling people; the roar of mass hysteria poured from the speakers. Near the mike, someone was babbling about the end of the world. Hands were clutching at the lens. The world had gone insane. From within the brutal order of the camp, it was a vision of the impossible. More than one inmate of D block wondered if 1334680 Montague was right. The cameraman must have staggered forward. After a series of lurches, the vantage point was directly over the river. People were actually jumping into the water.

"Armageddon time."

The picture died completely. There was no power. The bosses had pulled the plug. There was a deathly silence, broken only by 1334680 Montague droning on. "Armageddon time. Jah know."

The PA cut in. "All prisoners will remain in their barracks blocks until further notice. Food will be brought."

In an hour, food was brought and Montague was taken away. The food was slopped out by two kapos from A block. It was an unpleasant soup. A scrap of paper was attached to the bottom of one of the pails. There was a message on it: "Faithful has been arrested! There's going to be a new government!"

It might have been a cruel joke, but if it was true, what would a new government mean? One that opened the camps, or one that would set up gas ovens? The note was passed from one man to the next in aching silence. They scarcely dared to hope. Freedom? Maybe even revenge? It was almost inconceivable.

Carlisle

"You know what this is? This is like that Orson Welles Martian freakout back in the radio days."

"Except that it's to the hundredth power."

"I don't understand this. It's mass mania."

"Do they really believe it's the Apocalypse?"

"It's like these figures of Mansard's have hit some nerve and flipped everyone out."

Carlisle looked coldly at the man who had spoken. "If you're already half out of your mind on propaganda, poverty, and A-waves, flipping all the way might not look like so bad a deal."

That brought him some sharp looks. He glanced back at Dreisler. "This is the revolution, isn't it? We've got free speech now, right?"

Dreisler was sitting behind everyone, apparently watching their reactions; he seemed almost languid. The only sign that he might also be feeling the strain was the way he chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes, holding them between thumb and forefinger, FDR style.

"As long as you're breathing, Harry, your mouth will keep flapping."

Carlisle's mouth did indeed keep flapping. The day's events were building a reckless go-for-broke anger inside him. "You don't seem very surprised by all this. Were you expecting it? Maybe like the Proverb shooting?"

Dreisler's eyes flashed cold. "Watch it, Harry."

Carlisle ignored the warning. "Seriously, what do you think is going on out there?"

Dreisler's expression was impossible to read. "I think Johansen's right. Mansard has hit a nerve. He may even have lanced a large boil on the national psyche. Maybe it's the emotional end of the Faithful era. America wants one last, massive psychodelusion."

Carlisle slumped down in an empty operator's chair. "People are getting hurt out there."

Dreisler dragged on his cigarette. "People always get hurt. Omelets and eggs, remember?"

Carlisle thought of the dead cop on the stairs to the roof.

In the Astor Place com center they were watching the chaos growing outside. As soon as Faithful had been secured in the basement lockup under heavy guard, Dreisler, with the swagger of a magician, had produced a living, breathing Japanese cowboy called Hama who had jacked into the acres of corrupted software and laced in a temporary vaccine program. That, at least, had provided a narrow logic path through the virus-filled, psychedelic, random jungles that had once been the CCC base software. Dreisler had immediately used it to consolidate his position and start infiltrating his men into places that might be potential contra strongholds.