The Last Day (55 page)

Suddenly Feldman was aware of a red cast to the desert sand in front of his face, as if the sun were dawning behind him. He looked up and Jeza, too, was bathed in a rosy glow. She gazed past him in the direction of the light. He rolled on his side and looked over his shoulder. But it wasn't the sun blazing behind him, it was the meteor—large and churning hellfire, barreling straight for him. He was transfixed.

The meteor struck him, but he felt nothing. There was a loud ringing like a phone, jangling, pausing, jangling again. A shower of sparks, brightness all around him, and a feeling of confusion and helplessness. Reflexively, he flipped over on his back, holding out one hand in front of him to protect himself, hiding his face in the crook of his other elbow. Someone was softly calling his name. And finally, Feldman realized that this was just another dream. He relaxed, awakened himself and removed his arm from his face to open his eyes.

He was in his hotel room. But he was not awake. There, floating in the air, in the dark just beyond the end of his bed, was the glowing figure of Jeza. Larger than life. More lustrous than life. Her arms were outstretched to him her robe open, revealing a divine, surreal, phosphorescent nakedness.

“Jon,” she called to him again. He rose on his elbows and tried to focus his nearsighted, alcohol-dulled eyes on the apparition. Jeza stepped out from space onto his bed and descended to her knees, straddling him.

This was
not
a dream! He could feel the motions of the bed as she rolled downward, her weight upon him, her bare breasts brushing his chest She enfolded him, caressing his face with her warm, soothing, moist hands. He could feel her wet lips enveloping his.

Dropping from his elbows to his back, he pulled away, reached up and clasped the shimmering face in his hands. This was certainly Jeza's tousled mane of dark hair. This was Jeza's gleaming brilliance, if considerably brighter in candlepower. But this was
not
Jeza!

“Love me,” the voice whispered to him.

He withdrew his hands and his palms glowed in the darkness. “Erin?” he gasped incredulously.

“Love me, Jon,” she cooed again.

“Erin, what are you doing? How'd you get in here?”

She leaned down, nuzzled against his neck and began to slowly wrap herself around him. “Just lose yourself to me. Let yourself go.”

Grabbing her wrists tightly, he unwound her, casting her off forcefully as she collapsed beside him in reluctant resignation. The bed sheets were stained with luminescence.

“Dammit, Erin! How the hell did you get in here?” He flipped on the lights and retrieved his glasses.

Lying on her side, her head resting submissively on her outstretched arm, her hair in her face, she said nothing for a moment, and then with a curt sigh, “I told the desk clerk we were married.”

Exasperated, Feldman grasped the edge of her robe to cover her unselfconscious nakedness. “Jesus! What could have possessed you to do something as crazy as this?”

She dispelled the hair from her face with an upward puff of breath. “If you haven't noticed, Jon,” she said, rolling her eyes up at him, “ ‘crazy’ is the prevailing disposition of the world these days. A little inoculation of crazy is exactly what you need to deal with all this.”

“What I don't need are more complications in my life,” he snapped, irritably. “Please, just leave.”

“There don't have to be any complications,” she assured him, inching closer. “No one needs to know anything.” She rose on her elbow and leaned toward him again. “I can take you far away from all this turmoil,” she whispered softly. “I can be any woman you want me to be. I can clear your mind and unburden your soul. And all you have to do is just give yourself to me. Just let yourself go,” she purred as her robe fell away once more and her painted breasts glistened up at him pointedly.

It wasn't the sensuality, but the notion of surrender itself that was alluring. His psyche, wearied by weeks of relentless emotional expenditures and frustrations, longed for escape. To weightlessly, aimlessly free-float in the ethers of irresponsibility. He said nothing, allowing the concept to fill him.

“I understand what's troubling you,” she declared, her confidence growing with his indecisiveness. “The way you took on that cardinal tonight. The way you defended her against him. She's seduced you, hasn't she?” Erin sat upright to engage him directly, her eyes narrowing with the certainty of her prosecution. “You're infatuated with her. You've come under her spell. She's compromised your relationship with Anke and you don't know what to do!”

Cornered by the truth, Feldman remained silent.

“I can help.” She advanced persistently, tracing the fingers of one hand lightly across the sculpted pectorals of his chest. “I can break that spell, if you'll let me.”

It was ironic to him. Throughout his entire life he'd always abandoned his relationships whenever they became difficult or complicated, finding quick solace in the arms of someone new. Now enmeshed in the most complicated of triangles with Anke and Jeza, he refused to escape.

Brushing Erin off, Feldman concluded the issue decisively. “No. You
don't
understand. You can't begin to understand. Whatever my problems, no one can help me with them. Now, Erin, I'm telling you for the last time— leave!”

She sighed heavily, drew her legs into her body, and spun neatly out of bed to her feet, facing away from him. Without looking back she lamented, “We could have been so perfect together. The quintessential media couple…” Her voice dropped, she girded her robe about her and slipped away to the door, quietly letting herself out.

Surveying the room before he turned off the light, Feldman noted the chair at the end of the bed on which Erin had been standing. He shook his head sadly, hit the switch and watched smears of luminescent paint signal their presence randomly about the room: on the doorknob, in ghostly footprints across the carpet to his bed, in a handprint on the receiver of his desk phone, all over his sheets, all over himself. He shut his mind and fell back on his pillow, numb.

96

Brookforest subdivision, Racine, Wisconsin 8:40
P.M
., Tuesday, April 4, 2000

T
his scripture stuff's lame,” Tommy Martin's friend told him. “Let's go to the weapons section.”

Tom Martin, Jr., was sitting in his darkened bedroom with a friend, in front of a computer screen, rapidly paging through the hellfire and brimstone Internet Web site of the Guardians of God.

“There,” his friend indicated, and the graphic of a medieval-looking castle came up on the screen. “This is it!” He impatiently grabbed the mouse away from Tommy and clicked on the drawbridge. Immediately, they entered a virtual great room, then turned right down a torch-lit hallway to a door marked “Weapons Keep.”

Tommy's eyes widened.

“Look,” the boy pointed at the screen, “they give you all these radical weapons, and then you click on the one you like and they show you exactly how to build it.”

He directed Tommy's attention to a short, broad, pointy club with a carved handle and sheath. “See, here's this thing called a
tronchoun.
You use it to beat and stab the enemy. It's made out of wood, just like the ritual stakes you use to kill vampires. Only, with this, you gotta follow a different ceremony. You gotta consecrate it with special prayers and Holy Water and stuff to make it work on the Antichrist!”

“Okay, cool,” young Tom agreed. “Let's do that one!”

97

The Oval Office, Washington, D.C 9:30
A.M
., Wednesday, April 5, 2000

E
dwin Guenther, presidential campaign manager, and Brian Newcomb, Democratic Presidential Reelection Committee chairman, rose respectfully and solemnly as the forty-third president of the United States entered the Oval Office.

Smiling faintly, Allen Moore motioned them back into their chairs and took his seat behind his desk. This morning, the day after Super Tuesday, the normally youthful-appearing president looked much older than his fifty-six years. Yesterday had been a disaster. Of the nine states holding presidential primaries, not a one supported the incumbent. It was a landslide for Moore's tenacious opponent, Billy McGuire.

“A tough night, eh boys?” The president broke the uneasy silence.

“Yessir,” Guenther responded glumly.

“I don't see how we can give credence to yesterday's results when only eleven percent of the electorate shows up to vote,” Newcomb volunteered.

“Is that what the final tally was?” Moore sighed, “Yeah,” Guenther confirmed, “and only seven percent turned out in California. Now what the hell kind of primary is that?”

“The most expensive ever conducted,” Newcomb calculated.

“There's gotta be a way we can invalidate the returns based on insufficient voter turnout,” Guenther suggested. “I've got the attorneys working on that now. Given the unprecedented national crisis, I think we've got grounds to—”

Moore held up a hand to stop the turning wheels. “No.” He shook his head. “That wouldn't change things. Look at the polls. We've been dropping steadily since early March.”

“Ever since the Jeza fiasco,” Newcomb icily finished the thought.

“So what would you have us do, anyway?” Guenther spit out. “Have Al get born again and make him suck up to the anti-Jeza far right like that craven opportunist McGuire?”

‘It's a little late for that,” Newcomb spit back. “You know McGuire got the Confraternity of U.S. Catholic Bishops to endorse him. Hell, the Church even
ordered
their flocks to the polls to support him.”

“They were leaning that direction anyway.” Guenther's corpulent face was turning a fiery red. “It was as much McGuire's anti-abortion stance as it was the pope's decree.”

Newcomb started to respond, noticed Moore's crestfallen face and thought better of it. “Al,” he tried to sound encouraging, “it's a long way to the convention. And with the political climate in such an uproar, hell, a lot can happen between—”

Moore held up his hand once more and forced a dim smile. “No, gentlemen, please. Enough's enough. The writing's on the wall. McGuire has a two-to-one margin of delegates already. He's leading in fourteen of the twenty states left. I talked it over with Susan last night. It's a doomed effort, boys. It's time to pull the plug.”

Guenther and Newcomb shot looks of hurt disbelief at their president. Although Moore's decision should have now seemed inevitable, neither campaign manager was truly prepared to accept this incredible turn of events— the most decisive rejection of any sitting president in the history of the Union.

“At two o'clock this afternoon,” Moore informed them, “I'm holding a press conference to announce my withdrawal.”

“Al, please,” Guenther pleaded,
“anything
could happen between now and the convention. Or even
during
the convention. You can't abandon the party to the likes of McGuire!”

“I'm sorry, Ed.” Moore stood up to make his decision final. “To be quite frank, it's not so terribly hard for me to give up the responsibility of this office. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. I feel like I've completely lost the handle on the nation. And I pity the poor bastard who inherits the social nightmare out there. I'm beginning to think that little woman is right. Maybe it is the Last Day.”

98

Na-Juli apartments, Cairo, Egypt 9:39
P.M
., Friday, April 7, 2000

R
eturning to his apartment after a long day, Feldman found the tape on his answering machine completely filled. This time, however, no calls from Anke. There was an assortment of unimportant business messages, and then an almost continuous series of short, anxious calls from the resurfacing Cardinal Alphonse Litti.

The cardinal left no number, but claimed it was important he reach Feldman, gave the time of his call, and added that he'd keep phoning every hour, on the hour, until he connected.

Litti was perfectly prompt. At ten o'clock sharp, the phone rang and Feldman heard a familiar, welcome voice. “Jon, thank God I've found you!”

“Hello, Cardinal. How have you been?
Where
have you been?”

“That's not important right now, Jon. Let's just say I've been meditating and studying and learning from the Messiah.”

“How is Jeza?” The concern in his voice was apparent.

“She's well, Jon. We've had to keep Her hidden as much as possible with circumstances as dangerous as they are, you know. Not that we can do so for long. She has this uncanny knack for slipping away when She has a mind to.”

“Yes.” Feldman smiled drolly. “I've experienced that a few times myself. When can I see her again?”

“Shortly, Jon, I suspect. I don't know Her plans exactly, She's rather mysterious in that way. But that's the reason I'm calling you. I—She—needs your help.”

Feldman's heart kicked.

“Jon, I have to rely on your complete confidence here.”

“You know you can, Alphonse.”

“Jeza wants to leave Cairo and return to Jerusalem. I need your help to smuggle Her back.”

“Jerusalem? Why? It's too dangerous. All her enemies are there. Everyone who thinks the world's about to end is converging on Jerusalem for a front-row seat. It's safer here in Cairo.”

“She has to be ‘about Her Father's business,’ as She says. Whatever the Almighty might be asking of Her, I don't know, but She's determined to return, one way or another.”

“You realize, Alphonse, WNN's still blacklisted in Israel. All our facilities up there are seized and we're not allowed back in the country.”

“Please, Jon, I have nowhere else to turn!”

“Did Jeza ask you to contact me?” He held his breath.

“She doesn't know I'm calling.”

Feldman sighed.

“She's intending to leave within the next week or two, I believe,” the cardinal continued. “She doesn't want me along, says it is too dangerous. But I insist that you also make provisions for me.”

“Okay,” Feldman agreed. “I'll see what I can do. How can I get back in touch with you?”

“I never know where She'll lead me next, Jon. Just tell me when and where, and I'll contact you.”