Paolo turned to Virgil, tears in his eyes. “Then it’s true, this is the End of Days.”
The old man gave him a wry look. “There is spirituality, Paolo, and there is religious dogma. The two are rarely compatible.”
Vern’s expression darkened. “Stay your tongue, old man. Any words perceived as blasphemy may burn you and your flock.”
“It’s time!” A bank security guard wearing a fluorescent orange vest waved his handgun at the crowd. “Single file, stay together. If the Furies ask you a question, answer honestly. Each of you will be instructed where to go once you reach the amphitheater.”
The crowd jostled one another, several pushing past Shep to secure their place in line. “Vern, who are the Furies?”
“It’s Judgment Day, fella, and the Furies are the judges. All three Furies are women personally selected by the Virgin Mary.”
“But what is the Furies’ purpose?”
“To administer the Lord’s vengeance. One of the guards told me they’re especially hard on anyone who raped or killed women and children. Once the Furies begin their process of vengeance, they won’t stop, not even if the guilty party repents.”
The crowd moved quickly through the arch, the armed detail signaling for Shep and his entourage to join the line.
Paolo pulled Shep aside. “No hallucinations. You need to find a way to control yourself. Francesca and I must be among those chosen for salvation.” Before Shep could argue, the Italian and his pregnant wife fell in line behind the Folleys, trailing the couple through the Winterdale Arch.
Shep and Virgil looked at one another before joining the moving herd. They passed through the granite tunnel, following the bridle path up a steep slush-covered hill, accompanied by a howling wind that bit deep into their exposed flesh.
Patrick was operating on autopilot. His feet were numb from the cold, his legs moving just enough to keep pace with the faceless bodies in front of him. He felt lost, physically and spiritually, as if he had been transported into a waking, disorienting nightmare.
This is a wasted effort, an intentional walk before the manager visits the pitcher’s mound, takes the baseball, and pulls you from the game. Just lie down now. Lie down in the snow and the cold of night and die. How bad can it be?
“Ow… damn it!” Lost in thought, he had walked headfirst into an immovable object. It was a bronze statue, Romeo caressing Juliet in a loving embrace. Shep stared at the immortalized figures, his heart yearning again for his soul mate. Was that supposed to be a sign?
“Let’s go! Keep moving!”
The path circled through pitch-darkness, sending hands to grope the brick facing of a large building. Another sixty feet, and the forest suddenly yielded to a spectacle of religious fervor gyrating across the Great Lawn.
The assembled were everywhere, their numbers revealed by the glow of tangerine flames dancing from a thousand torches. It was an orgy of faith — forty thousand lost souls — all competing to gain entry into Heaven. Some scrambled atop the timeworn crags of Vista Rock, others pushed forward in random tides of desperation, drawn to the base of Belvedere Castle, the Gothic mansion rising above an undulating sea of humanity… the modern-day equivalent of the Israelites waiting for Moses’s return from Mount Sinai.
The building Shep and the others had just circled was Delacorte Theater. The horseshoe-shaped arena that had once hosted Shakespeare in the Park now served as the pit for a raging bonfire. The remains of a large vinyl banner hung over the amphitheater stage, its city of n.y. presents disney on ice message purposely torn to read:
city of dis
Situated on a blanketed perch of rock, silhouetted by the crackling bonfire that raged warmth at their backs were three women, each clad in a black robe taken from the quarters of a circuit court judge.
The “Fury” seated on the left was Jamie Megaera. Five-foot-one-inch tall, endowed with a thirty-eight-inch D-cup, the twenty-five-year-old single mom had given up custody of her daughter three years earlier to pursue an acting career in the Big Apple. The closest she had come to performing onstage was dancing nude from the birdcage hanging from the strip club where she worked.
Jamie’s identical twin sister, Terry Alecto, was seated on the right. As a high-class prostitute, Terry earned three times more money than her sibling, $500 a trick. Like her sister, she was also separated from her family, her husband serving a nine-year prison sentence for promoting the prostitution of his wife (Terry having been a minor at the time of his arrest). The twin had no qualms about her line of work. In fact, she saw herself as providing a service, just like the local hairdresser or manicurist. She had had sex three times since she first noticed the swollen buboes on her neck.
Situated between the twins was sixty-five-year-old Patricia Demeule-Ross Tisiphone.
A product of alcoholic parents, Patricia had married when she was seventeen and spent thirty-nine years in an abusive relationship. Her daughter was addicted to pain pills, brought on by the suicide of her husband. Her sister and best friend, Marion, had moved in with Patricia after finally divorcing her own alcoholic husband, who had physically and verbally abused her since she was twenty. The two elderly women had been subletting an apartment to the twins, having “adopted” the girls as granddaughters.
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.”