“Those who trespass are but the evidence, the mirror that shows us that men and women who live without Christ are lost, eternally lost, condemned, damned to follow the serpent! Do not be swayed by the words of sinners.
“‘You shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him; but you shall kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones.’
“All people must rise up against this false god and his followers. Demiel ben Yusef—I repeat, and I beg you to understand and take action—is none other than the devil incarnate!”
Dona returned to the air amid thunderous applause and what sounded like mad rioting.
“The Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe’s supporters have begun to clash wildly with ben Yusef’s supporters, and the whole of Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza up as far as I can see to the United Nations is in a riot situation! It is total bedlam,” she screamed into the microphone above the roar.
Just then gunfire broke out, and Dona screamed, “The riot police on horseback have entered the park! Horses are trampling the—”
Then nothing—the station went dead. “Oh, my God! Dona! What happened to Dona?” I screamed in the car, burying my hands in my face. Maureen leaned over and patted my hand.
“These are terrible times, and the police are on the scene.…”
Instead the radio made all kinds of old-fashioned crackling noises before we heard the voice of il Vettore, whose group had pirated the station and, I later learned, all the radio frequencies in the world.
“Stop in the name of Demiel ben Yusef,” she declared. “The rioting, the killing, the torchings, the bombings that have already begun must stop immediately. Stop in the name of the Son of the Son, I beg you!
“Everything you are doing is against everything, everything that Demiel has preached. He just implored you to not die in his name, nor to kill in His name—nor in the name of any person, church, or religious institution.
“The tribunal will continue regardless of the inhumanity of man against man. This is not a process you—or any human—can stop. If Demiel must die, as He said He would, then please let Him die a man of peace. Let Him die in the peace of our Lord, knowing that He left the earth better for His being here than worse than before He came to us.
“Do not, I beg you, listen to false prophets like the Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe,” she continued, choking back tears. “He proclaims war against all who do not believe in Jesus. He is wrong. Do not take up arms in the name of Jesus or His Son. Do not take up arms against one another. In the name of the Son of the Son of God, I beg you, do not allow killing, profiteering, power mongering, or hatred to sully His name and destroy everything He worked for.”
The radio went silent again, and so did Maureen and I as we each contemplated what we’d just heard as we drove the next two and a half hours through the mountains, with hillsides ablaze on either side, overturned cars, and burned-out towns and beautiful vacation homes being torched in the distance.
“Armageddon doesn’t happen in a day,” I finally said to Maureen as we drove off the Alanno-Scafa exit.
As we passed through the unmanned tollbooth, we narrowly avoided running over the corpses of two carabinieri lying directly in front of the booths.
Maureen sped up and we pulled off the highway, tires squealing, onto the local road. People were running amok through the first small town we came to, some smashing windows, others holding torches like some old Frankenstein movie, setting fire to the local police station.
Because of the congestion of people in the road, we slowed down to a crawl.
“Get ready…” Maureen said as she accelerated slightly. Instead of people being mowed down and climbing onto our car in fury, as I thought they would, the crowds instead parted, and on either side of the car people knelt down and made the double sign of the cross as we passed.
“Salvatore del Salvatori! Dio vi benedica! Filius Salvatori! Dio vi benedica,” they called as they bowed before us. Maureen just looked at me calmly.
“You really are the one picked by fate to save the Savior’s Son! Even these people who have never laid eyes on you before stopped the chaos for a moment to pay homage. Extraordinary, really.”
“This is so weird and so creepy I can’t stand it.”
“Why?”
“This business of crowds bowing and crossing—happened to me once before. After I left your house in Rhinecliff.”
She didn’t answer, so I continued: “This crossing twice, do you think that’s what the term double-cross means?”