Roger pushed open the door and gripped the two carriers.
"No, Roger," Laura screamed.
"Dad, don't go!" Brett begged.
"It'll be a bloodbath otherwise," he said.
Zazzaro pressed in front of him. "I can't let you do that."
"Then you're going to have to shoot me," he said and pushed his way out.
Laura and Brett were still screaming for him to stop as he moved away from the vehicle.
Brown jumped out after him. He had explicit orders to get the serum into federal protection, no matter what.
Roger knew that now, but it was no time for anybody to play cop. "There's an army of them with more firepower than you've got in fifty miles," Roger said. "Go tend your wounded."
Brown heard the cries of the men behind them. He saw the wall of white uniforms and the weapons. It wasn't worth the sacrifice. "Just give them the shit and haul ass."
"Dad," Brett cried. "Daaaad."
Roger looked back. I love you, beautiful boy.
A quick glance at Laura. Her face was twisted in horrid realization.
Then he turned and walked toward Lamar Fisk and his army in white.
From behind him, the dozens from the first truck closed around Roger, leaving in cars the dead and wounded, and those who had been spared. The Witnesses had no more interest in them. Nor in the distant sounds of sirens. Nor the media people cowering with their microphones and cameras running.
Nobody tried to stop Roger as he approached Fisk. But all their weapons were trained on him-automatic weapons stolen from military arsenals.
As he approached, he noticed the looks on their faces. A wild intensity. Perhaps rapture, perhaps drugs. Men and women, young and old, mostly white, but with some blacks and Asians. Some women holding babies.
"It's all here," Roger said. "Please let the others go. There's been enough killing."
Fisk raised his bible as Roger had seen him so many times on the news. The look of bloodless piety in his face. "'And one by one the Angel of the Lord opened the vials and poured forth the plagues upon the earth…'"
Roger stopped a few feet before the man. He raised the twin cases. "It's all yours."
But Fisk disregarded his plea. "This is the one true elixir," he shouted, holding up the bible. "This is the only way to eternal life. Not your snake oil."
The creep was going to preach to him first, Roger thought.
In unison the Witnesses cried "Alleluia."
Roger said nothing. The man was not to be reasoned with. He was beyond reason. He was beyond the moment. Beyond this bridge. Beyond the here and now. His eyes were huge glazed orbs. He looked insane with mission.
Roger's eye fell on Fisk's other hand, half-hidden in the folds of his robe.
"Lay them down," Fisk said.
Roger set the two boxes between them.
"Open them."
Roger unlocked the boxes and opened them.
He then stepped back as Fisk inspected the contents. When he was satisfied, he nodded at a woman who overturned the contents making a large pile of glass ampules.
"Vials of abomination," he said.
All around him guns poked angrily in the air. For a moment, Roger saw the Okamolu warriors. "Fisk, please let the others go. You have what you want."
Roger braced himself to be shot dead. That was also what they wanted. Death to the Antichrist. He just wished it didn't have to happen in front of his wife and son.
Fisk shook his bible at him. "'And I heard the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunder saying "Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."'" And he stomped his foot onto the vials, the contents splattering.
That was the cue. Instantly others began to smash the vials under their shoes.
As Roger stood there, they crushed each of the ampules until all that lay on the tartop were shards of glass and wetness.
When they were through, they dropped their weapons and embraced each other across the shoulders, forming a circled wall around Roger and Fisk.
It was insane: They had just killed a bunch of people, and now their faces were glowing with beatific light as if at any moment Jesus Himself would materialize.
Spontaneously they broke into a chant of "Alleluia" and kicked and stomped the smashed glass.
It was then Roger noticed the red backpacks they were wearing. Fisk, too.
"Alleluia."
"ALLELUIA."
The chant got louder, and the Witnesses began to jerk as if the syllables were being pumped out of them by unseen forces.
"AL-LE-LU-IA."
"AL-LE-LU-IA."
"AL-LE-LU-IA."
Over the chanting, Fisk's voice rose: "'And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse and against His army…'"
"ALLELUIA."
"ALLELUIA."
While Fisk bellowed on, his people looked to the sky with beaming faces and jabbering mouths, all locked in unison, impervious to the police gathered on the banks of the lake and the media people behind them and the sound of sirens approaching from both sides.
"'And the waters shall run red with blood…'"
"ALLELUIA."
"ALLELUIA."
Fisk's face was huge with intensity, the tendons of his neck swelling, his long red hair flowing like tongues of flame as he recited the doom and gloom and pumped with the rhythm of the chant.
In the movement Roger noticed something small and black in his hand.
"'…and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. And whosoever was not witness was also cast into the lake of fire…'"
"ALLELUIA."
"ALLELUIA."
Some kind of remote control device.
Of course, Roger thought. Of course.
THIS is how it will end.
This is my death.
In a feverish pitch, his tongue slashing out the words with a spray, his eyes bulging in their sockets, his body appearing to swell into its huge white folds-Fisk reached his crescendo:
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last."
As Fisk raised his left hand, still howling in verse, Roger considered bursting through the Witnesses to make a flying dive off the bridge. He saw an opening between some women and children-a fast sprint could do it. He might even survive the sixty-foot plunge. In a flash he ran through the moves in his head.
No.
He looked back over the heads to the Hummer.
Laura and Brett were out of the car. Brett started to run toward him, but Brown caught him. He, too, saw what was coming.
Thanks, thought Roger.
"DAAAAAD."
Laura was holding onto him, crying for Roger to get away.
His eyes locked on them. For a brief moment, all time seemed to stop, as if the world had turned to a still-life.
"I love you," Roger said.
Before the final syllable was out, the moment exploded in a brilliant concussion of light.
EPILOGUE
Brett's body burned as he pumped the last two miles of the bike path that took him around the southern shore of Lake Mendota.
It was a splendid April afternoon. The sun was high and the air sultry, and a gentle breeze swept off the lake, churning the tender new leaves of the trees along the path. It was a wonderful day to be alive-the kind of day that should last forever.
He had been in lab since eight that morning, antsy to feel his muscles hum. He completed the last test around two, changed into his helmet and tights, and took to his wheels. He felt so good that he added an eight-mile detour to the usual thirty-five-mile ride.
At twenty-one years of age, Brett Glover was in peak physical condition. He had kept up with wrestling right through Pierson Prep, making UW varsity in his freshman year. His senior season ended with a 24-and-2 record and a defeat of last year's champ from Michigan State at the MWC Conference last month. With the season now over, he kept in shape on the bike and inline skates. He had to because the rest of his days were spent in class or labs.