ducking low to ward off lightning, praying they'd make it through.
The camera, however, was no longer visible. Whether it had been struck by a bolt or blown away, they couldn't be sure until Hunter scaled his way up the wall. Meanwhile, Feldman gathered the remaining gear and dumped it through the door into the dry corridor.
Hunter was soon by his side, holding a wet and damaged camera.
“The wind blew it over!” he yelled, pushing Feldman through the doorway. “It's soaked. I sure as hell hope we got a usable tape in here.”
They shook as much water off things as they could, and Feldman tried to contact Bollinger over his cellular phone. He got nothing but static. Meanwhile Hunter began hooking the camera up to a small monitor. Miraculously, it appeared to be working, and Hunter rewound the tape.
“What?” Feldman was amazed. “You're going to try to review the tape right here?”
“Why not?” Hunter said. “We're not going anywhere for a while, are we?”
The screen flickered, the image twisted, flipped, fought to balance itself, and then locked into a discernible picture. The image was Jeza speaking on the platform, so Hunter scanned the tape at fast-forward until the point where she stepped away from the podium. He then reduced the speed to a crawl.
Once more, Jeza's immaculate image transfixed them. In graceful, poetic motion, she began gliding toward the right front side of the stage, the camera following her. It was as if she were looking directly at them the entire time, her face composed, purposeful. The sniper started to come into frame now, a fuzzy blur in the bottom right foreground. Momentarily, Jeza's image was entirely obscured by the gunman, and Hunter's camera centered on the man's back, rolling into focus. The white letters “WNN” showed plainly on his jacket. And then, haltingly, the sniper began to move away from his camera and the butt and scope of a rifle came clearly into view.
“See!” Hunter remarked. “He's got the gun built right into the camera! Probably attached the scope and stock once he got it up on the roof.”
The image underwent a few spasms and then settled down again. “Yeah,” Hunter indicated, “here's where I left the camera running to chase after you.”
They moved in closer as the events continued to unfold.
“Look, you can see Jeza again!” Hunter exclaimed as a hazy image in white rose up in the right side of the frame, off in the distance. “It looks like she's standing on something in the foreground of the stage. It's too out-of- focus to see.”
The sniper, however, was in perfect focus. In slow motion, he looked up from his sight, made a slight adjustment to something on his rifle, looked up again and then hunkered back down behind the gun.
“What's she doing?” Hunter wanted to know as the cloudy image appeared to widen.
“She's stretching out her arms,” Feldman offered. “Kind of like she's embracing the crowd, or giving a blessing or something.”
The sniper bore down on his scope.
“God, hurry, hurry!” Hunter was muttering to himself, as Feldman mouthed the same words.
Suddenly, from the upper-right-hand corner, a blurred shoe emerged on the screen, and in the next few frames Feldman came barreling down onto the gunman as the unfocused image of Jeza backed out of the picture.
Hunter began to cheer in jubilation, but Feldman placed a stifling grip on his friend's shoulder. “Wait!” he commanded. “Back it up a few frames and freeze it.”
Hunter did so, reversing the action until Feldman's legs were eliminated from the screen once again.
“Stop!” Feldman ordered. “Hold it right there!” He squeezed Hunter's shoulder like a remote control. “Now take it back and forth quickly between the two frames.”
Hunter saw what his friend was pointing at, and his face fell. There, out in front of the camera-gun, for only the span of one frame, was the briefest wisp of smoke before the wind immediately removed it.
“He got off a round,” Hunter confirmed in a hushed voice.
Advancing the tape, they could see the blurred image of the Messiah, arms still outstretched, receding from view.
“Jon, that doesn't mean she took a hit,” Hunter declared as Feldman slowly rolled back on his haunches away from the monitor, staring blankly at the floor.
While they both sat in silence, the video played on, showing bits and pieces of Feldman's battle as the fight drifted back and forth, in and out of view. Neither Hunter nor Feldman paid any heed until Hunter finally noticed the obscured image of a helicopter rising in the screen.
“Hey, Jon! It looks like maybe they got her out of there!”
Feldman took heart at the possibility. “I've got to know, Hunter,” he said at last, attempting to get to his feet and falling back in pain on top of his friend.
“Whoa, pal!” Hunter saw the agony on Feldman's face. “You okay?”
Feldman pulled up his pant leg and a badly swollen ankle answered.
“Jesus! You hurtin’ anywhere else?” He looked at Feldman's face closely for the first time and was surprised at the swelling jaw and blackening eye.
Feldman held up a puffy right hand. “And my ribs and my shoulder.” He flinched as Hunter poked his enlarged ankle.
“You aren't goin’ far on this. And look at it out there. All hell's breakin’ loose.”
Gale force winds and torrential rains were tearing at the window of the stairwell. The entire building was vibrating. The lightning was virtually incessant.
“Well,” Feldman said, “I'm not going to stay here and get electrocuted. I've got to find out what happened to her.” He slid himself up the wall, this time making it to his feet.
Hunter shrugged, pulled the tape out of the player, stuck it inside his shirt and lent Feldman a hand.
Out in the storm, soaked to the skin, they hobbled along, arm in arm, through the rain-whipped, deserted streets. Less than an hour earlier, this entire area had been standing room only. Now, eerily, the city was totally devoid of life.
“Well, if this
Feldman didn't respond, concentrating on his torturous progress as they made their way slowly out of the city, past the pitifully inadequate tent shelters of the millenarians, and steadily up the Mount of the Ascension to their villa.
At the door, an aghast Robert Filson beheld the spectacle of the two drenched newsmen. “Jesus! We thought you guys were dead!”
Hunter lowered Feldman gently to the floor at the bottom of the stairs. From the rooms above, the voices of Cissy, Bollinger and the others came calling down.
“Oh my God, you guys look awful!” Cissy wailed, as Bollinger and Hunter assisted Feldman up the stairs. They settled the injured newsman on the couch, and Cissy returned with towels. She hurriedly began blotting Feldman dry, causing him to cry out in pain.
“Easy on him,” Hunter cautioned. “He's pretty beat up.”
“Jeza!” Feldman shouted from behind a towel Cissy was dabbing over his face. “What happened to Jeza?” He pulled away the towel and immediately located the TV, which was on and functioning despite the storm. Although not the best quality picture, the news clip of Jeza was far clearer than the blurry image Feldman had watched on Hunter's monitor in the musty stairwell.
The room was deathly silent as the two reporters witnessed a full accounting of the episode they had only glimpsed before.
The video was from a different angle. As Hunter had surmised, upon reaching the edge of the platform, Jeza had stepped up on what appeared to be a loudspeaker box. She stood there, elevated in front of the crowd for a few moments, and then stretched out her arms straight and wide, holding them slightly above her shoulders. She was staring out beyond the crowd, unblinking in the wind, her face composed, the gnarled clouds swirling overhead. Her mouth formed several unintelligible words.
At the final moment, she smiled. Sweetly. Innocently. Her skin radiant, her eyes brilliant, deep blue and shining. The way Feldman would always remember her best.
And then the impact of the bullet drove her backward off her stand into the waiting arms of her disciples and
