Don’t you have anything to say to these people?
What can I say that I’ve not already said? I am confused by their confusion, oppressed by their hope. It’s all very sad. Yet I long for such innocent longing!
Then what are we doing out here? It’s really dangerous! And we’re not even ducking!
I know. Somehow that feels out of character.
But this is madness! Where is that wretched fellow who was with us?
Somewhere under all these others, I suppose.
Shouldn’t we at least be protecting all these children?
No. They are protecting us.
Helicopters clatter overhead with hollow amplified voices like those of creatures from outer space. “You must leave this property immediately! Put down your weapons! You are all under arrest!” They go largely unheeded. Though many have been brought low, the remaining Brunist Defenders and Christian Patriots, under the command of Ross McDaniel, the deputy acting sheriff and Patriot sergeant-at-arms, have managed to pin back the enemy forces at the top of the hill, using the excavated outline of the temple floor plan as a shallow trench bulwarked by fallen bodies, and they continue to exchange sporadic gunfire. At least, for the moment, the shooting has stopped from the base of the hill, where the town banker, exercising his wartime experience as a decorated senior officer, has pushed aside the state governor and the frightened young National Guard captain and ordered the rattled troops to stop firing and take cover behind the buses. With the megaphone wrested from the young officer, he turns to the outraged townsfolk, arriving now by the carloads, seeking revenge for the horrors visited upon them, and appeals to them to put away their weapons, warning them that they could face imprisonment or worse. They should return to their cars at once and clear the area. None do — it was the banker himself, after all, who urged them all to arm them-selves — but at least, after his warning, they stop taking potshots at the tunicked zealots on the hillside. He moves through the crowd, seeking out law officers, firemen, medics, conferring with them, and as he points out various positions, they all spread out.
Although they think of themselves as righteous servants of God and country, the citizenry at the foot and those in the air are serving human laws, not divine ones, and thus are recognized by those fighting the Holy War of the Last Days as members of the legions assembled by Satan, it being in the nature of the Powers of Darkness that they do not know they are the Powers of Darkness, just as, though they are doomed, they cannot know that they are doomed, else they would not play the roles in God’s grand scheme that they are obliged to play. Such are the beliefs of the ardent young Brunist evangelist, presently scrunched down in the puddled grave at the temple cornerstone intended for the last remains of the Prophet Giovanni Bruno, together with the hysterical First Follower and visionary who is his constant companion. As he once replied to the young woman accused by many of being the Anti-christ — and perhaps she is indeed an unwitting manifestation of that enigmatic figure, so essential to the Apocalypse — when she protested that it seemed unfair of the deity to single out a chosen elite: “Well, too bad. That’s how it is.” Victims have fallen in on top of them, but they have been pushed out again.
“Can we fly to Heaven now, Darren?”
“No, we’ll wait here.”
“I’m afraid. I want to go sit in my chair.”
“Stay down, Colin. We’re safe here.”
“I want my chair!”
“Here, this is like your chair.”
“It’s wet!”
“No, it’s all right. Just sit on me. Raise yourself up a little so I can… there. Is that better?”
From the other empty cornerstone grave comes the stentorian voice of the spiritual leader of the Holy Remnant, the Brunist Bishop of West Condon. “Sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the habitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord has come!” He has been foxholed there by his loyal supporters, who shield him from those who wish to kill him. He is staunch and unbowed still, fist raised in defiance of the stuttering gunfire around him. “There has never been such a day before, and there won’t be no other after it! The sun and the moon they’ll go dark, and the stars will quit their shining!” On top of the Mount of Redemption, intent on thwarting the will of the Almighty, is the Romanist villain who thrashed him so mercilessly when he was held, like the Apostle Paul, in captivity: It is all falling into place. Divine history is revealing itself. He is who he has always thought he is. “Do you hear?” he bellows, his voice resounding over the scorched hillside. “Yea, God is fed up with the wickedness on earth and nothing will escape His fury!”
His chief guardian, the black-bearded deputy acting sheriff, hunkered down in the trench next to him and firing at anything that moves up on top, is not so certain God has the upper hand. Through carelessness they have ceded the higher ground, and now they are easy targets out here on this barren hillside and risk total decimation. He turns to the Christian Patriot nearest him, the bishop’s new son-in-law. “I want you to cover me, Lawson. Keep them pinned down up there. They’re mostly just kids and scared outa their skins. You shouldn’t have no problems. If they show more’n their cowlicks, put a bullet in their dumb brains to give ’em something new to think about. I’m gonna make a run for them backhoes.” He selects two Brunist Defenders to go with him, and as they are about to attempt their run, another in a plaid shirt and billed cap, leaning on his rifle, struggles to his feet and begins to sing: “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross!” Yet another rises beside him, then another. “Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss!” Soon there are half a dozen, then ten, twelve others courageously pulling themselves erect and raising their militant voices, rifles at their shoulders, their fusillades pounding the hilltop rhythmically as they sing. Even the old fellow in the wheelchair pushes himself forward and joins in with his sharp nasal caw. “From victory unto victory His army shall He lead…!” It works. The Patriot leader and his team run low behind them, sprint the final open yards, and reach the backhoes before the first shots are fired at them, bullets now whanging ineffectually off the backhoes’ pressed steel bodies.