by Steve Alten
By three in the afternoon, all four had been stricken with plague.
Feverish, infected by painful buboes and coughing up mouthfuls of blood, the four women had made their way to Central Park to “die in peace with nature.” Marion had gone first, succumbing in front of her favorite spot, the Bethesda Fountain’s Angel of the Water sculpture.
Patricia and the twins lay dying by her side, all three holding one another, trembling in the cold and pain but not in fear.
Pastor Jeramie Wright had administered last rites from a safe distance when the former biker had observed a woman approach the fallen females. Clad in white, she knelt on the ground and kissed all of the infected women on their open mouths, inducing them to swallow her “spit.”
Within minutes, the three dying women were sitting up. Reborn.
Having witnessed the miracle, Pastor Wright approached the woman in white. “Who are you? What is your name?”
“I am Mary the Virgin. Baby Jesus has been born. Assemble the flock, for tonight, Revelations shall come.”
Word of the Virgin’s miracle had spread quickly. By nightfall, tens of thousands of frightened, abandoned New Yorkers were flocking to Central Park to be saved.
* * *
“Each one of you shall bow before the Furies, so that they may determine your place at the Rapture. You… state your name and occupation.”
A tall woman with an hourglass figure bowed her head. “Linda Bohm. I’m visiting from California. I work as an assistant buyer at Barnes and Noble—”
“Why are you here?” the older Fury asked
“I was visiting a friend. We were on a bus. One of the passengers was coughing. None of us knew about the plague.”
“You’ve got Dis?”
She nodded, wiping back tears. “Can the Virgin cure me?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, but I don’t think so.” The twin on the right brushed her long, wavy, brown hair, smacking her gum. “Bohm sounds like a Jewish name. Linda doesn’t believe in the Virgin Mother, and that makes Linda a heretic. The Virgin Mother specifically told us to purge all heretics into the arena.”
“Are you a Jew?” asked the twin on the left.
“No. I’m… Episcopalian.”
“She’s lying. Mother Patricia?”
The older woman scrutinized the frightened tourist. “It’s so hard to decide. Still, I suppose it’s best to err on the side of caution. Toss the heretic into the flames.”
Shep’s eyes widened in horror as two orange-vested guards dragged the screaming California woman toward the amphitheater. Before he could react, a third guard doused her with gasoline and she was coldly heaved into the mouth of the conflagration, her flailing body igniting in an ethereal white flame.
Shep swooned, the black smoke rising from the pyre — not over the amphitheater but over a brick enclave surrounded by wood barracks and barbed wire herding living skeletons wearing striped uniforms and despair.
Auschwitz…
“Who’s next? You… one-armed man. Tell us your name.”
Shep shook the vision of the Nazi death camp from his mind, only to find himself staring at the voluptuous twins. Wind swirled around the jagged rock, whipping up the conflagration—
— loosening Jamie Megaera’s and Terry Alecto’s outer garments. The twins smile seductively at him, exposing their ample breasts as they stand to perform, gyrating in place.
“Come closer, Patrick Shepherd.”
“Yes, Patrick. Come closer so that we might taste you.”
He takes a step closer—
— his face battered by a blinding gust of sleet that whipped through the park, dousing torches and swirling bonfires, sending the Furies crawling down from their perch to seek cover.
Thunder rolled in the heavens, followed by a blast of trumpets that cut through the night like a scalpel. Having been officially summoned, the swell of forty thousand followers pushed forward as one, crowding the base of Belvedere Castle.
Virgil yelled at Paolo, shouting above the wind to be heard. “Find us a car, anything that’s mobile! Patrick and I will watch over your wife!”
“No! It’s the Second Coming! I need to be here!”
“Remain here, and your son shall never see the dawn. Tell him, Francesca!”
She looked at the certainty in Virgil’s eyes. “Paolo, do as he says!”
“Francesca?”
“Go! We’ll meet you at the 79th Street Transverse.”
Unsure, Paolo looked around, got his bearings, then pushed through the crowd, heading for the stretch of tarmac known as West Drive.
A slice of spotlight cut across the Great Lawn’s periphery. For a moment, Patrick feared it was an Army helicopter, but the beam was coming from atop the Delacorte Theater. It settled on a lone figure standing on the third-story balcony of Belvedere Castle — a pale woman, dressed in a hooded white robe.
Loudspeakers crackled to life, powered by two backup generators. Cheers rose across the Great Lawn as the white-clad figure took the microphone from its stand to address her flock.
“Then the seven angels with the seven trumpets blew their mighty blasts. And one-third of the people on Earth were killed by this mighty plague. But the people who did not die still refused to turn from their evil deeds… refusing to repent their murders or their witchcraft or their thefts.”
The woman in white retracted the garment’s hood, revealing herself to her followers. Her frightening appearance elicited gasps from those standing closest to the castle’s foundation. A moment later, her image materialized on the theater’s big screen for all to see.
Beneath a shock of greasy candy-apple red hair was a face plagued hideously pale. The tip of her nose was blotched grayish purple, matching the circles beneath her olive green eyes. Scythe had rotted her teeth and gums black, and her psychotic expression was more demon than deliverer.
Virgil pulled Shep closer. “Patrick, I’ve seen this woman. She was in the VA hospital. They were moving her into an isolation ward.”
“Isolation?” Shep stared at the figure, recalling his last conversation with Leigh Nelson as she dragged him up the stairwell to the VA hospital’s roof. “One of my patients, a redheaded woman we had in isolation, she released a man-made plague…”
Mary Louise Klipot moved to the edge of the Victorian balcony, the crowd silencing itself to listen to the woman’s words. “Babylon has fallen. Our once-great city has fallen because she was seduced by the nations of the world. Babylon the great… now mother of all prostitutes and obscenities in the world, hideout of demons and evils spirits, a nest for filthy buzzards, a den for filthy beasts. And the rulers of the world who took part in her immoral acts and enjoyed her great luxury will suffer as the smoke rises again from her charred remains… the heretics who sought to destroy her… who sought to destroy America shall suffer God’s wrath.”
Yellow-tinted lights illuminated the second tier of the castle directly below Mary’s perch, revealing three hastily constructed gallows. Lined up in rows, held at gunpoint, were several hundred people, their wrists bound behind their backs, their mouths duct-taped shut. Gays and lesbians, Muslims and Hindus. Old and young, men, women, and children… all predestined to be sacrificed… at least in Mary Klipot’s jumbled thoughts.
“Bring forth the first group of heretics!”
The first three people in line — a Hindu family — were segregated from the condemned.
Manisha Patel convulsed in the grasp of hooded men adorned in the robes of the archdioceses. She screamed through her gag. Her knees buckled, her bridled angst sending her body writhing in contortions as she witnessed men grab her daughter, Dawn, and forcibly shove the girl’s head through the noose on her right.
The rope on her left was occupied by her husband, Pankaj, who was being wrestled into submission by four men dressed in religious robes.
The crystal dangling around Manisha’s neck sparked with static electricity as her own head was forcibly thrust through
an awaiting noose. The rope was tightened around her jaw, forcing her up on her toes in order to breathe. “God, please spare my child. Spare my child. Spare my child!”
As Manisha moved, her hearing dulled, muffling the voice of the redheaded witch as she drove the crowd into a feverish frenzy. Barely conscious, the necromancer grunted each painful breath — an arctic inhalation that burned her throat while causing her nose to run. Her entire body trembled as she danced on the rope, waiting… waiting—
“Stop!”
Manisha opened her eyes, her dilated pupils too blurred with tears to focus.
She found him on the big screen. He was standing atop the third tier directly above their gallows, his face partially concealed within the dark hood, his right fist holding the witch upright by her hair, his bloodstained scythe poised at her neck.
Patrick Shepherd dragged Mary Klipot past the two skinhead “elders,” who lay bleeding on the stone deck, and leaned over the microphone to speak, the blinding spotlight glistening on his steel prosthetic arm. “And then another angel appeared… the Angel of Death. And the Grim Reaper said, Release those innocent people now, or I’ll cut off this ugly bitch’s head and send her and the rest of you straight to Hell.”
* * *
The moon slipped behind storm clouds, once more casting him from West Drive’s snow-covered tarmac into darkness. Unseen branches tore at his clothing and face, unseen roots caused him to stumble and fall. He was hopelessly lost, separated from his wife, exiled from deliverance. Regaining his feet, he groped his way forward another eight paces—
— only to run into fencing along the edge of a partially frozen wetland. The impasse unleashed a wave of panic. His bearings gone, his faith diminishing rapidly, he knelt in the snow and prayed, more an act of desperation than of salvation.
The wind died down. Then he heard it… the gentle strumming of an acoustic guitar.
Wiping back tears, he followed the sound, finding his way through rows of American Elms before coming to a clearing that intersected with a vaguely familiar path.
The man was in his forties, seated alone on one of a dozen benches situated around a circular mosaic. Oily brown hair hung past his shoulders. A gaunt pale face, framed by long sideburns. The signature wire-rimmed glasses were slightly tinted. He was wearing worn jeans, a denim jacket over a black tee shirt, and appeared not the least bit concerned about the cold. The guitar rested on one knee. He was measuring each chord as he felt his way through an acoustic rendition of a song recorded nearly four decades earlier:
“…playing those mind games forever, some kinda druid dudes… lifting the veil. Doing the mi… ind guerrilla. Some call it magic… the search for the grail. Love is the answer, and you know that — for sure. Love is a flower… you got to let it… you got to let grow.”
John Lennon looked up at Paolo Salvatore Minos and smiled. “I know what you’re thinking, lad. Truth is, I thought about singing “Imagine,” but that would have been a bit clichéd, don’t you think?”
Paolo knelt by the Imagine mosaic, now visible in the returning moonlight, his body shaking with adrenaline. “Are you real?”
The deceased Beatle tuned a string. “Just an image in space and time.”
“I meant… are you a ghost, or is it this damn vaccine?”
“Don’t believe in ghosts, don’t believe in vaccines either.” A roar grew louder in the distance. “Listen to them… murderous bastards. Praying for Jesus to arrive on his white steed like some rock star… as if Jesus would have any part of that chaos.”
“They’re not sinners. They’re just looking to be saved.”
“Yes, but salvation, according to John the bloody Apostle, is a right reserved only for Christians. Ironically, that would exclude Jesus, too. Toss Rabbi Jesus into the fire pit on the right, lads, the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and the rest of the lot into Satan’s pit on the left. Once they’re gone, we can reserve the infighting strictly among the Catholics and Protestants, the Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Mormons, Baptists… who am I forgetting? Wait, I know, we can call for another war in the Holy Land, this one to sort out whose church is the real church of God.”
Paolo grabbed his head. “No, I can’t hear this… not now, not on Judgment Day. You were such a hero to me, but this… this is heresy.”
“Aye. And be sure to count Rabbi Jesus among the heretics.”
“Stop… please!”
“Paolo, listen to me. We’re all God’s children. All of us. The real sin is man’s refusal to become what we are. Spirituality isn’t about religion, it’s about loving God. Two thousand years of bickering, persecution, hatred, and war, all caused by some silly competition over who Daddy loves best. All we have to do is love unconditionally. When each man becomes his brother’s keeper… that’s when everything changes. It’s not too late. Look at me. I grew up angry, then I found my purpose.”
“Your music?”
“No, lad. Music was merely a channel, a means of delivering the message.” He strummed a chord. “Love is the answer… Sorry, I’m a bit off-key.”
“John, I need to know… is this it? Is this the end?”
The former activist put down the guitar. “Destruction is a self-fulfilling path, but so is peace. Murder has become a billion-dollar industry, with greed and selfishness leading mankind toward oblivion. It must be stopped. As a Christian taught to believe out of fear, you need to decide what it is you want more — the destruction of the world and the so-called promise of salvation, or the peace, love, and fulfillment that transforms every human being on the planet.”
“But how can one man… I mean, I’m not you.”
“You mean you’re not an insecure, egomaniacal, angry musician who abused drugs and alcohol?”
“Come on, John. You risked your career… your life to speak out against the Vietnam War. You mobilized millions, you saved lives—”
“And how many lives have you saved by feeding the hungry? If history has taught us anything, lad, it’s that one man, one voice, one mantra can change the world. Now tell me, what is it you really need?”
Paolo wiped the tears streaming down his face. “I need… a car.”
John Lennon smiled. “Follow the path across West Park Avenue to my old building, the Dakota. There’s a parking garage next door…”
* * *
With the spotlight in his eyes he could not see the crowd, but he could feel their negative energy, their hatred. For a fleeting moment Patrick Shepherd was on the mound at Yankee Stadium, forty thousand hometown fans booing him unmercifully.
A thousand feet overhead, the night lens of the Reaper drone’s camera zoomed in on his face.
“Listen to me! Those people… they’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Liar!” Tim Burkland was standing on the back of a WABC radio van loaded with speakers. The former punk rocker and talk-show blogger was a self-described “polemic journalist,” his radical views, wrapped in religious dogma, helping to secure a New York cable show in which he battled “the lies, injustice, and cruelty of American socialism and the systematic destruction of the Church.”
“You listen, freak. Christ died for our sins, for our imperfections. Jews need to be perfected. Homosexuals need to be perfected. Muslims need to be perfected. Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. Allowing these people to exist within our Christian society is a sin against our Lord and Savior!”
Burkland’s supporters roared, chanting, “Hang the heretics! Hang the heretics!”
The redhead squirmed in Shep’s grip, turning to face him. “And He shall destroy all who have caused destruction on Earth.”
“Shut up.” Shep yanked her head away from the microphone, catching a whiff of her foul, diseased breath. “All of this hatred, all of this negativity… it’s fueling the plague. Hundreds of thousands have already died, none of us may live to see the sunrise. Every one of us here has wronged our fellowman. Is this really the last act you want to commit on
Earth before you’re to be judged? Whose side would Jesus defend if He were here? Would He support the hatred spewing from the mouths of these false prophets of the entertainment world who desecrate His message of peace so they can earn millions in book royalties and over the airwaves? Would Jesus be so easily deceived that He would stand by and allow innocent children to be hanged? Mark my words — if one of these people dies tonight by your action or inaction, then all shall be judged!”
The crowd grew silent, contemplating Shep’s words.
Dozens of men and women wearing fluorescent orange vests approached from either side of the balcony, aiming their guns. Pastor Jeramie Wright stepped out from the group, the big man pushing his followers’ shotgun barrels toward the ground. “Strong words, son. It’ll mean nothing if you harm the Virgin Mary. Let her go.”
“This woman is not the incarnation of the Virgin Mary. She’s Typhoid Mary, the one who unleashed the plague.”
“Now that’s a lie. I witnessed the miracle myself.”
“What miracle?”
“I saw her spit into the mouths of the inflicted and cure them.”
The armed men raised their shotguns.
Shep tightened his prosthetic arm around the redhead’s chest, freeing his right hand so he could pat her down.
“Rape! Murder!”
The crowd surged forward.
“Stop, or I’ll slit her throat!” He pressed the blade of his mangled prosthetic until he drew a ring of blood around her neck, halting the armed men’s advance—
— while his right hand felt for the plastic vials located in an internal pocket of the redhead’s hospital robe. Removing several, he tossed one to Pastor Wright, holding the rest up to the crowd. “This is what your so-called Virgin Mother used to cure the inflicted — plague vaccine. The sickness is called Scythe. This woman helped develop it for the government, then she unleashed it in Manhattan. And now you want to worship this murderer?”
The mob on the balcony looked to Pastor Wright — unsure.