“We’ll get into the main street going south,” she whispered to Michael. “Once we’ve passed the big square with a column in its centre, we can try going north again.” He tightened his grip on her arm. This vast and murmuring crowd was terrifying even with a girl who seemed to know where she was going. He didn’t want to be separated.
But the junction with Regent Street was impassable. All holding up their torches, many arms locked, there must have been ten thousand people crowded together in expectation of something big. “What is happening?” Jennifer finally asked a man whose back was turned, but who wasn’t joining for the moment in the cacophony of prayers and hymns.
A bad choice, she realised the moment he was facing her. Giving her the look of someone far advanced into lunacy, he raised a megaphone and took a breath just long enough to let her get out of completely ear splitting reach. “It’s the Second Coming!” he bellowed at a volume that silenced every other utterance within a dozen yards. He pointed up at the low clouds, and began a slight but ecstatic dance in the space available.
“The Second Coming?” Jennifer hoped she’d misheard.
No chance of that. “He will descend among us at midnight,” the man took up again at full volume. “Every mystery will then be revealed.” At midnight? Jennifer thought. She looked at her watch—1:49am, it said. Her heart skipped a beat. These people were going on Outsider time. How had they been allowed to assemble for this? She looked about, her stomach turning to ice as she remembered Hooper’s mention of extreme prejudice
The man was continuing his dance of joy, and still pointing upward. “It is written that He will descend from Heaven to Oxford Circus. The graves shall give up their dead, and all who were lost in The Break shall be restored.” He did say more. But, from deep inside the crowd, there came a sound of ragged cheering. After a moment when it might have died away again, it strengthened and was taken up closer and closer to where Jennifer was beginning to panic. While it was still possible to hear anything at all unless shouted though a megaphone, a woman behind her took up the cry. “Christ is risen!” she cried. “And those of us now alive shall never die.”
There was a sudden roar of excitement and then a slow but irresistible movement of the crowd. The man and his megaphone were carried in one direction. Jennifer and Michael were carried in the other, past a Belisha beacon. “We must get out of here now,” she shouted, no longer worried if anyone heard the Latin. Michael tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her over to the doorway of what had once been a McDonald’s restaurant. If they pushed together through a thinner eddy in the crowd, they could get into a side street she hadn’t noticed: Harewood Place, the sign said. She tried to remember where this led. Except it must go south, she couldn’t place it on a map that had turned hazy in her memory.
They were stopped a few yards into the side street. A big man dressed all over in white stood before them. He held up the wooden crucifix that hung about his neck. “You cannot approach the Apostle,” he boomed in a voice that reminded Jennifer of the old Underground instruction to mind the gap. He raised both arms and stepped forward to usher them away. Without seeming to move, Michael leaned over to the man and gave him a gentle tap with his cosh. Eyes still open, the man went down like a stricken beast. He took Jennifer forward over the sprawled figure into a narrow street that, if not empty, was passable.
Michael kept the girl close beside and stepped forward. About twenty yards down the side street there were more people dressed in white. Two of them carried a large banner that had on it an image of the Latin Patriarch. Though the cheering from behind was now overpoweringly loud, he could hear the joyous singing of the white figures and they came slowly forward in procession. The girl stopped and tugged at his arm. A scared look on her face, she pointed ahead at the banner. He ignored her and looked to where a platform had risen out of nothing. On this, a short and very fat man was beginning a sermon for anyone inclined to listen. Correction—there was a loud screech as the man held up something that looked like a cosh but that amplified his heavy breathing to a roar that it was impossible not to hear.
Pushed forward by the crowd that had followed them into Harewood Place, Jennifer looked between the dangerously illegal image and the American insurance agent. Since the M25 flyover, he’d cleaned himself up, and now looked decidedly like a televangelist—and what he was about to say, she had no doubt, would never get past the Religious Advisory Council. He waited for someone to reach forward and play with his microphone. The feedback under control, he raised his free hand to heaven and took a deep breath that was blasted from the two huge and battered speakers blocking the way round him. “Brothers and Sisters in Christ,” his voice blasted, a pleased look on his face, “I am come to declare that the Tribulation that began with The Break has now reached its middle point, and the Rapture is upon us.” There was more feedback, and the man with the megaphone came out of Oxford street to insist that the Rapture was supposed to follow the Tribulation. He ended with a massive squawk of “Heresy! Heresy!” and drew a cheer of agreement from his own followers.
The American scowled and pointed. “O ye of little faith,” he thundered, “listen not to the votaries of Satan. They are sent only to confuse. It is written that all the saints and Elect of God shall be gathered, prior to the Tribulation that is to come, and shall taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins.” There was a louder and more collected cry of disagreement. The American was no longer paying attention. He patted his lacquered hair into place, and waited for six women to climb up beside them. Jennifer recognised the black woman she’d spoken to at the M25 flyover, and someone else who’d lost her husband when he was buying water pipes in Poland. “Know ye not that worse is yet to come?” he continued when they were in place. “I tell you that Christ, this night, shall not come to earth. He will only appear above John Lewis. Then shall He pull up beside Him those who are pure of heart, to wait with Him the moment of His Second Coming.” There was a deafening crash of guitar music, and the women began to sing:
Behind, a fight had broken out between those who held different opinions about End Times. Michael understood nothing of this. Fascinated against his will, he watched the women spin joyously round and round, showing their legs as they kicked up their white robes. The man who’d been speaking was wiggling his enormous hips to their singing, and his hair glowed blue, and never moved an inch out of place, in the lights that shone on him.
Now, he heard a vast grating sound, beyond the fat man in white, as another metal barricade unfolded itself at the end of the road. Armoured police officers were fanning out in front of it. Even as he thought of the Islamic demonstration he’d seen that afternoon, he heard the overhead clatter of one of the armed flying machines. It appeared over the man in white and swooped low towards them. He looked away just in time to avoid being dazzled by the light it shone over the crowd. The man in white was dancing with frantic excitement and pointing up at the machine. The two women beside him were spinning about faster on the platform, their arms held out. The fighting had given way to cries of fear and wonder.