The Last Day (62 page)

It had little of the desired effect, as the gunman, unintimidated, swung hard with a left cross, catching Feldman a glancing blow to his chin. What the reporter lacked in combat skills, he made up in anger and courage. As the arc of the blow turned the sniper past Feldman, the reporter coupled his hands and brought them down hard on the back of the man's neck. Crying out in pain, the enraged gunman faltered, recovered, and threw himself bodily into Feldman, crashing him to the roof, knocking the wind from him.

Before Feldman could regain his breath, the man kicked him again, hard in the ribs, propelling the reporter to the edge of the building. Kicked once more in the stomach, Feldman slid backward over the roof, and suddenly he was dangling by his fingertips, three stories above the street.

The sniper stood over his helpless prey, a look of cruel triumph in his eyes. With the surly clouds swirling sickly green overhead and the wind whipping his oily, dark hair, the gunman slowly raised his boot to crush Feldman's tenuous grip.

But the gunman's look of victory instantly dissolved into glazed bewilderment as something heavy smashed against the side of his head, sending him reeling across the roof. A strong hand grabbed Feldman by the wrist, hauling him up to safety. It was Hunter, his broad face flushed, his breath coming in puffs.

“What kept you!” Feldman gasped.

Hunter gave his friend an intolerant glare. “Oh, about thirty feet of open air, three stories up! How the hell did you get across that!”

Feldman put a loving arm around his friend in exhausted relief, “God knows, Hunter, God knows. Was I in time?”

“Shit, I don't know, I was too busy chasing after your kangaroo ass.”

They looked out worriedly over the plaza to find the stage a swarm of millenarians, police and militia. Jeza and Litti were nowhere in sight, and the helicopter was gone. Lightning and thunder were crashing down and large raindrops began to fall. The crowds in the plaza and beyond continued their screaming and panicking in complete disarray.

From across the roof of an adjacent building, a troop of Israeli military came storming up, brandishing weapons.

“Relax, guys,” Hunter called to them, “my man here did your job for you!” The gunman was still out cold, a very nasty gash bleeding from the side of his head. A splintered camera tripod lay next to him.

As the military took the sniper into custody, a suspicious sergeant-major began to confront. Hunter and Feldman. But a familiar voice intervened.

“It's okay, Manny, they're clean.”

Feldman recognized Corporal Lyman, their female escort from earlier that day.

Hunter smiled. “I knew you'd be back.”

She ignored him and told Feldman they were free to go.

“What about Jeza?” Feldman asked. “Is she okay?”

“I don't know,” the corporal answered. “We couldn't see.”

It was pouring now, and a very large spike of lightning crashed nearby. Corporal Lyman, her face streaming rivulets of water, motioned the two men to leave. “Quick, off the roof. Lightning!” Neither man had to be warned twice. On their way, Hunter stooped quickly to snatch up Feldman's bent glasses.

As they found their way down a stairwell and out into the alley, Feldman gaped up in wonder at the airspace he'd so recently vaulted. It had to be nearly thirty feet across. He shuddered and Hunter grabbed him to hurry him along. Feldman recoiled in pain, which Hunter failed to notice.

“Come on, we got to get my equipment before it's ruined,” Hunter yelled in the driving wind.

“I'm not letting you go up there in this storm,” Feldman shouted back as he hobbled after his partner through the streets.

“I want to get the videotape!” Hunter yelled over his shoulder. “I left the camera running!”

Ordinarily much fleeter than the big videographer, Feldman, hurting from the effects of his leap and pummeling, could barely keep up. Arriving at their building, neither man remembered that the door was locked from the inside. Without hesitation, Hunter smashed it open with a mighty foot.

Reaching the top of the stairs, despite Feldman's pleas, Hunter forced open the door and fought his way toward the elevated roof where he'd left his camera. Feldman halted at the doorway, then braced himself to follow, ducking low to ward off lightning, praying they'd make it through.

The camera, however, was no longer visible. Whether it had been struck by a bolt or blown away, they couldn't be sure until Hunter scaled his way up the wall. Meanwhile, Feldman gathered the remaining gear and dumped it through the door into the dry corridor.

Hunter was soon by his side, holding a wet and damaged camera.

“The wind blew it over!” he yelled, pushing Feldman through the doorway. “It's soaked. I sure as hell hope we got a usable tape in here.”

They shook as much water off things as they could, and Feldman tried to contact Bollinger over his cellular phone. He got nothing but static. Meanwhile Hunter began hooking the camera up to a small monitor. Miraculously, it appeared to be working, and Hunter rewound the tape.

“What?” Feldman was amazed. “You're going to try to review the tape right here?”

“Why not?” Hunter said. “We're not going anywhere for a while, are we?”

The screen flickered, the image twisted, flipped, fought to balance itself, and then locked into a discernible picture. The image was Jeza speaking on the platform, so Hunter scanned the tape at fast-forward until the point where she stepped away from the podium. He then reduced the speed to a crawl.

Once more, Jeza's immaculate image transfixed them. In graceful, poetic motion, she began gliding toward the right front side of the stage, the camera following her. It was as if she were looking directly at them the entire time, her face composed, purposeful. The sniper started to come into frame now, a fuzzy blur in the bottom right foreground. Momentarily, Jeza's image was entirely obscured by the gunman, and Hunter's camera centered on the man's back, rolling into focus. The white letters “WNN” showed plainly on his jacket. And then, haltingly, the sniper began to move away from his camera and the butt and scope of a rifle came clearly into view.

“See!” Hunter remarked. “He's got the gun built right into the camera! Probably attached the scope and stock once he got it up on the roof.”

The image underwent a few spasms and then settled down again. “Yeah,” Hunter indicated, “here's where I left the camera running to chase after you.”

They moved in closer as the events continued to unfold.

“Look, you can see Jeza again!” Hunter exclaimed as a hazy image in white rose up in the right side of the frame, off in the distance. “It looks like she's standing on something in the foreground of the stage. It's too out-of-focus to see.”

The sniper, however, was in perfect focus. In slow motion, he looked up from his sight, made a slight adjustment to something on his rifle, looked up again and then hunkered back down behind the gun.

“What's she doing?” Hunter wanted to know as the cloudy image appeared to widen.

“She's stretching out her arms,” Feldman offered. “Kind of like she's embracing the crowd, or giving a blessing or something.”

The sniper bore down on his scope.

“God, hurry, hurry!” Hunter was muttering to himself, as Feldman mouthed the same words.

Suddenly, from the upper-right-hand corner, a blurred shoe emerged on the screen, and in the next few frames Feldman came barreling down onto the gunman as the unfocused image of Jeza backed out of the picture.

Hunter began to cheer in jubilation, but Feldman placed a stifling grip on his friend's shoulder. “Wait!” he commanded. “Back it up a few frames and freeze it.”

Hunter did so, reversing the action until Feldman's legs were eliminated from the screen once again.

“Stop!” Feldman ordered. “Hold it right there!” He squeezed Hunter's shoulder like a remote control. “Now take it back and forth quickly between the two frames.”

Hunter saw what his friend was pointing at, and his face fell. There, out in front of the camera-gun, for only the span of one frame, was the briefest wisp of smoke before the wind immediately removed it.

“He got off a round,” Hunter confirmed in a hushed voice.

Advancing the tape, they could see the blurred image of the Messiah, arms still outstretched, receding from view.

“Jon, that doesn't mean she took a hit,” Hunter declared as Feldman slowly rolled back on his haunches away from the monitor, staring blankly at the floor.

While they both sat in silence, the video played on, showing bits and pieces of Feldman's battle as the fight drifted back and forth, in and out of view. Neither Hunter nor Feldman paid any heed until Hunter finally noticed the obscured image of a helicopter rising in the screen.

“Hey, Jon! It looks like maybe they got her out of there!”

Feldman took heart at the possibility. “I've got to know, Hunter,” he said at last, attempting to get to his feet and falling back in pain on top of his friend.

“Whoa, pal!” Hunter saw the agony on Feldman's face. “You okay?”

Feldman pulled up his pant leg and a badly swollen ankle answered.

“Jesus! You hurtin’ anywhere else?” He looked at Feldman's face closely for the first time and was surprised at the swelling jaw and blackening eye.

Feldman held up a puffy right hand. “And my ribs and my shoulder.” He flinched as Hunter poked his enlarged ankle.

“You aren't goin’ far on this. And look at it out there. All hell's breakin’ loose.”

Gale force winds and torrential rains were tearing at the window of the stairwell. The entire building was vibrating. The lightning was virtually incessant.

“Well,” Feldman said, “I'm not going to stay here and get electrocuted. I've got to find out what happened to her.” He slid himself up the wall, this time making it to his feet.

Hunter shrugged, pulled the tape out of the player, stuck it inside his shirt and lent Feldman a hand.

Out in the storm, soaked to the skin, they hobbled along, arm in arm, through the rain-whipped, deserted streets. Less than an hour earlier, this entire area had been standing room only. Now, eerily, the city was totally devoid of life.

“Well, if this
is
the end of the world,” Hunter shouted into Feldman's ear, “looks like we're in for another Deluge!”

Feldman didn't respond, concentrating on his torturous progress as they made their way slowly out of the city, past the pitifully inadequate tent shelters of the millenarians, and steadily up the Mount of the Ascension to their villa.

At the door, an aghast Robert Filson beheld the spectacle of the two drenched newsmen. “Jesus! We thought you guys were dead!”

Hunter lowered Feldman gently to the floor at the bottom of the stairs. From the rooms above, the voices of Cissy, Bollinger and the others came calling down.

“Oh my God, you guys look awful!” Cissy wailed, as Bollinger and Hunter assisted Feldman up the stairs. They settled the injured newsman on the couch, and Cissy returned with towels. She hurriedly began blotting Feldman dry, causing him to cry out in pain.

“Easy on him,” Hunter cautioned. “He's pretty beat up.”

“Jeza!” Feldman shouted from behind a towel Cissy was dabbing over his face. “What happened to Jeza?” He pulled away the towel and immediately located the TV, which was on and functioning despite the storm. Although not the best quality picture, the news clip of Jeza was far clearer than the blurry image Feldman had watched on Hunter's monitor in the musty stairwell.

The room was deathly silent as the two reporters witnessed a full accounting of the episode they had only glimpsed before.

The video was from a different angle. As Hunter had surmised, upon reaching the edge of the platform, Jeza had stepped up on what appeared to be a loudspeaker box. She stood there, elevated in front of the crowd for a few moments, and then stretched out her arms straight and wide, holding them slightly above her shoulders. She was staring out beyond the crowd, unblinking in the wind, her face composed, the gnarled clouds swirling overhead. Her mouth formed several unintelligible words.

At the final moment, she smiled. Sweetly. Innocently. Her skin radiant, her eyes brilliant, deep blue and shining. The way Feldman would always remember her best.

And then the impact of the bullet drove her backward off her stand into the waiting arms of her disciples and the ever-faithful Cardinal Litti. Lying in their embrace, her eyes slowly closed and a bright red patch grew large upon her chest.

Hunter stood and left the room. Feldman hung his head and sobbed.

108

The University of Wisconsin, Madison 8:38
A.M
., Friday, April 21, 2000

A
s if the black smoke billowing from mammoth Camp Randall Stadium had spawned them, low-lying dark clouds overhung the city of Madison, Wisconsin. An anxious, fearful Michelle and Tom Martin approached the university haltingly in their car, held up by snarled, bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“Damn!” Tom ventilated at their slow progress. “We'll never get there through this mess!”

“Maybe with all the traffic, Tommy never even made it!” Michelle voiced, optimistically.

“If he and his friends left at three this morning, he made it all right. It's the riot over there that's causing this traffic jam. Anyway, we know Shelley was at the damn rally! I told that girl not to go!”

Michelle moaned with worry.

The Martins had been up since 5:30
A.M
., awakened by a disturbing phone call from the parents of their son's best friend. Against Tom Senior's orders, young Tom had sneaked away in the middle of the night with some of his schoolmates. They, and tens of thousands like them, had journeyed to Madison to attend a 7:00
A.M
. assembly held at the University of Wisconsin's massive Camp Randall football stadium.

Sponsored by, and intended for, the pro-Jeza Messianic Guardians of God, the event had been organized to showcase Jeza's Good Friday speech. Her address was to be telecast live, at 7:30
A.M
., Central Standard Time, on the stadium's giant viewing screen.