— 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.
A murmur rose from the thousands watching the big screen.
Her moment of transformation stolen, Mary Klipot struggled to free herself, growling at Shep like a rabid dog—
— while on the balcony below, Manisha Patel strained to remain on her toes, the rope’s friction peeling away the skin along her throat.
A few catcalls rose from the crowd. “Give us the murderer!”
“Give us the vaccine!”
Shep reached beneath his overcoat, pulling out the wooden case. “You want the vaccine? Here it is!” He flung the case into the crowd, then turned to face Pastor Wright and his followers. “There’s more in her pocket — you deal with it.” He shoved the redhead toward the security detail—
— as Tim Burkland and his followers reached the second-floor gallows directly below his balcony, the radical talk-show host intent on hanging the roped victims himself.
“No!” Patrick Shepherd jumped down from the third-story ledge, landing feet first on the wooden gallows. He swung his steel appendage wildly toward Burkland and his mob, backing them away—
— while on the ground, thousands of plague-infected men and women tore into one another in an attempt to grab the wooden box.
And then all hell broke loose.
The heavens bellowed, the frozen ground reverberating beneath the sonic rumble generated by five turbine jet engine Air Tractors. The industrial crop dusters rolled overhead in a standard inverted-V formation a mere two thousand feet above the park. The crowd never saw the planes or their dispersing payload — a partially frozen mist laden with carbon dioxide, glycerine, diethylene glycol, bromine, and an array of chemical and atmospheric stabilizers.
The fighting ceased, all eyes gazing at the heavens as the gas elixir mixed with the moist air, causing a chain reaction. Frozen CO2 and bromine molecules expanded rapidly, creating a dense, swirling reddish brown cloud that coagulated as it sank, reaching neutral buoyancy a mere 675 feet above Manhattan.
To the amped up crowd, the Rapture had arrived. Thousands already swooning with fever collapsed and fainted. Those still conscious dropped to their knees in fear.
The noose around Manisha’s throat loosened, the sliced rope falling across her shoulders. She bent over, wheezing, as Shep cut through her duct-tape bonds, freeing her arms.
Daughter and husband rushed to her side, the family weeping and hugging one another in an emotionally spent embrace, the kind that comes only from death’s reprieve.
Shep grabbed Tim Burkland by his coat collar, dragging the radical TV host to his feet. The blade of his mangled steel pincer pressed alongside the man’s Adam’s apple, drawing blood.
“Please don’t! I was wrong. I’m asking for absolution.”
“I’m not God, asshole.”
“You’re the Angel of Death… the Grim Reaper. You have the power to spare me.”
“You want to live? Free these people — every one of them.”
“Right away! Thank you… bless you!” Burkland crawled off—
— as an explosion of white-hot pain stole Patrick Shepherd’s thoughts in a frothing wave of delirium — the blade of the axe buried deep inside his left deltoid, tearing muscle and nerve endings before being blunted by the coupling of his steel appendage. Crying out, he collapsed to his knees in agony, his body wracked in spasms, the wound gushing blood.
The encapsulated night sky ignited to the east and north, turning what was left of the heavens into a rose-colored aurora. The military flares illuminated the face of Patrick’s attacker, who stood over him, the axe poised above her forehead, the blade dripping his blood.
“And the first angel blew his trumpet, and hail and fire, mixed with blood were thrown down upon the earth!”
Shep’s eyes widened—
— as Mary Klipot’s red hair thickens into coiling serpents, her eyes pooling with blood until the overflow pours down her stonelike face, the Medusa screeching at him.
Paralyzed in shock, Shep remained frozen in place as the axe plunged toward his skull—
— its wooden shaft intercepted by Pankaj Patel, who tore the weapon loose from Mary Klipot’s hands. “Begone, witch, before I chop off your ugly head and feed it to the ducks!”
As if tossed from a trance, Mary stumbled backward, then dashed from the gallows, disappearing down the stone stairwell.
Manisha Patel knelt by Shep. “Pankaj, he’s in shock. Look at his arm. She cut clear down to the bone.”
Dawn Patel gathered strips of torn duct tape, the ten-year-old attempting to seal the gushing eight-inch-long wound. “Mom, hold that in place while I wrap his shoulder with my scarf.”
An old man with long, silvery white hair tied in a loose ponytail bounded out of the open stairwell. “Patrick, we have to go, the military’s coming.”
“He can’t hear you,” Manisha said, her hands covered in blood. “He’s in shock.”
Virgil looked at the Patels, his blue eyes kind behind the tinted teardrop glasses. “We have a car waiting for us on the other side of this castle. Can you get him on his feet?”
“This man saved our lives, I’d carry him through Hell if I had to.” Pankaj slid his left shoulder beneath Shep’s good arm, hoisting him off the ground. Manisha wrapped the scarf tightly around the duct-tape bandage, then assisted her husband in carrying the unconscious one-armed man down the Victorian temple’s steps.
They exited Belvedere Castle to the south by Vista Rock, where Francesca was waiting. “Virgil, what happened to Patrick?”
“He’ll survive. Where’s Paolo?”
They turned as gunfire erupted to the north.
“Francesca?”
“He’s down below, on the 79th Street Transverse. This way.”
The two black military Hummers bounded across the Great Lawn, their four-wheel-drive vehicle with its bulletproof tires tearing up the snow-covered softball diamonds. Turret-mounted guns spit lead-laced tracer fire above the crowd, scattering the multitudes like bleach sprayed upon a fire ant’s nest.
Major Steve Downey was up front in the lead vehicle, relaying instructions from the Reaper drone’s crew to the second Hummer. “He’s leaving the castle, heading south. Head southeast past the Obelisk and Turtle Pond. We’ll head west around the castle, trapping him at the 79th Street bridge.”
In order to create an uninterrupted natural flow of lakes, streams, glades, woodlands, and lawns, Central Park’s engineers had had to sink the roads that crossed the venue so that they actually ran below the landscape. Their biggest challenge had been the 79th Street Transverse, a section of road that connected the Upper West Side with the Upper East Side at East 79th Street. To submerge the street meant carving a tunnel out of Vista Rock, the remains of an ancient mountain that became the foundation of Belvedere Castle.
Completed in January 1861, the rock tunnel was 141 feet long, 18 feet high, and 40 feet wide. To access the transverse from inside the park, pedestrians descended a hidden stairway by the 79th Street bridge, which overlooked the subterranean roadway.
A swarm of humanity pushed, prodded, and shoved past Francesca in the darkness as she led Virgil and the Hindu family carrying Shep away from Belvedere Castle and through the Shakespeare rock garden. Disoriented, swallowed by the fleeing masses, she quickly lost her way.