“I’ll be the judge of that,” said a muffled voice.
It was the masked guard who had led Dixon up there. He pulled off his hood, revealing an intense, bearded face… and a crown of thorns. The spectators gasped, then fell absolutely silent. The wind ruffled his hair.
After an initial start, Dixon seethed. “Who are you? Who is this man?”
“Don’t you know me, Chace?” asked the stranger. He was something out of a black velvet painting, with wavy brown curls and gold highlights in his beard. His eyes shone strangely bright, their whites luminous. Droplets of blood were visible on his brow.
“I know who you’re pretending to be, but you’re going to find we don’t appreciate imposters, much less spies and vandals. Arrest this blasphemer!”
As guards warily approached from both sides, the stranger held out his hands in mild supplication, revealing open wounds in both palms. The wounds were deep vertical slits, grisly but totally bloodless. Pinkish light shone through them.
The soldiers stopped as if hitting a wall, some dropping to their knees and others piling up behind in confusion.
“Somebody please just shoot him,” Dixon beseeched, crossing to the opposite side of the stage. Kasim Bendis drew a pistol that had been used by Teddy Roosevelt to deliver the coup de grace to enemy soldiers on San Juan Hill. Bendis was a dead shot, and the bullets traversed the bearded stranger to strike the great statue of Lincoln just beyond. Lincoln didn’t flinch… and neither did the stranger.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” the man said, pulling open his robe to reveal his exposed, beating heart.
“It’s a miracle!” someone cried.
“It’s Him!” yelled someone else.
“Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!” The field echoed with men begging forgiveness, throwing down their weapons and falling on their faces, to weep and drool into the mud.
Impatiently, Dixon stalked across the stage and shoved his forked scepter into the stranger’s side. The rod was adapted from an electric cattle prod. It was an effective crowd-control device, delivering a hundred thousand volts on contact.
There was a bright blue spark, and suddenly the stranger underwent a bizarre transformation. The flesh of his face rippled smooth, wiped of its features like a sandcastle in the surf. Eyes, nose, mouth, beard, thorns-all abruptly fluttered, dissolved, then changed into another face altogether, an old man’s face, clean-shaven and angular, with deep-set eyes and a shock of silver hair. Dixon thought he looked like Jimmy Carter. His pierced hands also aged, their wounds miraculously healing shut.
Uncertain about what it meant, but feeling vindicated by his own evident power, Dixon fired consecutive shocks from his staff, yelling, “Look! Look! He’s a phony! A fake! He’s possessed by demons-a wolf in sheep’s clothing! Stop groveling like dogs and get him!”
With a loud snap, the power went out. Someone had pulled the plug. Before anyone could react, an ugly mutt ran out from under the stage and disappeared around the Memorial.
The crowd murmured in confusion. Even with his rod disconnected, Chace kept on jabbing until the stranger seized the weapon, and said, “Quit it.” The holy visage reasserted itself, wounds and all, smiling sadly upon the congregation. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
“Shut up! I don’t know who you are, but you’re not going to get away with it!”
Dixon charged to tackle the stranger, confident in his immunity. He wanted to humiliate him and prove him false. The thought of kowtowing to this soft-voiced hippie was unbearable; it was impossible, absolutely ridiculous, to think that this queer could be his Lord and Savior. Jesus-if He really existed-was a man. A man’s man, who could bench-press three hundred pounds and pin Chace Dixon to the floor with His massively muscled thighs. That was a Jesus worth surrendering to.
The stranger did not flinch from the attack but met his attacker head-on, ducking beneath Chace’s outstretched arms and flipping the bigger man over his back. Dixon was shocked-no Xombie should be able to touch him! But after the initial alarm, he realized he was pissed off. Dixon had been a championship wrestler in college and a dabbler in mixed martial arts, so he was not about to let himself go down without a fight. Lunging upward, he managed to lock arms around his prancing opponent’s legs so that both men became halves of a human cartwheel, a rolling yin and yang that tumbled off the platform.
Landing hard, they came up fighting, each one gripping the other’s shirt with one hand and furiously punching with the other. Locked together in a brutal tango, they grappled for advantage as the assembly watched in awe.
Shouts rang out: “Bust his face! Kick him in the balls! Hit him with a left, a left! Whup his ass!”
To break the stalemate, the fighters commenced kicking, trying to trip one another, but in spite of their size difference, they seemed evenly matched. Bendis hesitated to intervene without a direct command.
The stranger grunted, “Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
“Who the hell are you?” Chace demanded.
“A man… a plan… a canal-Panama.”
“Phony!” Dixon snarled.
“Hypocrite!”
“You’re not the Savior!”
“Neither are you!”
“But I’ve been anointed by God!”
“Oh really? Then how come I can do this?” The stranger kneed Dixon in the groin. “Or this?” He head-butted him in the mouth, splitting Dixon’s lower lip. The crowd went wild. “You know what I think?” the bearded stranger said. “I think you got a bad batch. I think you got some blood from a boy-a boy in drag.”
“You shut up, shut up! Shut your filthy mouth!”
Crazed with anger, Dixon delivered a knockout punch, a hard uppercut that coldcocked his opponent. The newcomer went down like a ton of bricks.
Gasping for breath, bloodied but unbowed, Chace climbed back onstage and turned to his audience, awaiting their cheers. He became aware that no one was looking at him. All eyes were focused on the top of the Washington Monument. Dixon followed their gaze, and he, too, saw the source of the disturbance.
It was the obelisk’s winged colossus-it was moving. Someone was crouching atop the tower, using a blowtorch to cut through the suspension cables. Showers of sparks rained down, and wires twanged, causing the wings of corrugated steel to wobble. Suddenly, the cable let go, and the whole thing toppled down the side of the building and crashed to the ground.
The crowd gasped. Appalled, Dixon shrieked, “Find whoever did that and catch them! Scourge them! Don’t let them escape!” Bendis ran to comply.
Chace was still looking up, afraid to blink lest he lose sight of this phantom. “Get some lights on him!” In a feverish voice, he muttered, “There you are, there you are…”
At the very apex of the obelisk, an Olympian figure with a golden spear gleamed heroically in the floodlights. It was the statue of the Independent Man-the very statue Dixon had removed from the Rhode Island State House!
Except that it was no statue. It was alive. And the stranger was gone, vanished from the stage.
“Hallelujah!” someone cried. “Praise the Lord!” A furious murmuring swept through the crowd, many people babbling, “It’s Him! It’s our Lord and Savior!” Others crossed themselves, and yelled, “It’s Satan, it’s Satan!”
“It’s not God or Satan,” yelled Dixon. “It’s just a freak in gold paint! Someone shoot him, and you’ll see!”
Gunfire crackled, peppering the Monument. The range was too far, having no effect on the golden man, who stared down like a disappointed Oscar as spent ammo pelted the crowd, causing mass casualties. Then he hefted his spear, raised it high, and cast it like a thunderbolt.
Kasim Bendis was halfway to the tower with a squad of sharpshooters. He saw the spear coming but did not try to run or dodge because it was simply too absurd to think a thrown spear could single him out amid so many others, not from such a height and distance, even if it was aimed at him, which it surely was not.