The Last Day Read online

  But the figure was much larger than a fetus. The physique was slight, adult and female.

  The body floated pale and free in soft spotlights, attended by assorted monitors and scholarly men and women. Its entire head was encased in a helmeted Medusa of electrodes and spiraling wires. These attachments fed into a port in the back of the holding tank and continued upward in spreading branches to unite with the various technologies above. A larger tube, the thickness of a garden hose, meandered its way from the gut of the body, out the top of the vessel to disappear in a tangle of connections overhead.

  Beyond the figure, separated and off to one side like a couple of abandoned prototypes, were two identical female forms in similar support vessels. Their heads were also encased in helmets but only partially linked into the labyrinth above. Each, however, bore umbilical hoses which tapped into the grand placental network.

  To the other side of the showcased subject, the scientists were focusing their attention on monitors displaying three-dimensional, holographic images of a human brain. Visible within the brain were thirteen distinctly nonorganic devices. Thin square wafers less than a millimeter in size, the objects were distributed deep within the cerebral hemispheres.

  Originating from each device were wisps of ultrafine fibers which collected into tiny threads. The threads traveled up through the brain tissue, penetrated the skull, then migrated under the scalp to a central gathering point in a larger wafer attached to the back of the skull. From here, a single, coiled wire emerged from the scalp and through the helmet to join the mechanisms and monitors beyond. Next to the monitors were other displays, including EEG screens, which recorded wildly active readings.

  “My God, look at this one!” A gratified administrator summoned his charges, and they converged to marvel at the progress of their work. “This is a historic moment, ladies and gentlemen,” he crowed, taking full advantage of the euphoria to squeeze an attractive female assistant next to him. “We're about to steal a page from the Book of Genesis!”

  Inside the central vessel, the slumbering form would twitch occasionally, reminiscent of an infant's startle reflex. Hunched down, observing this closely, was a frail, elderly, white-haired gentleman in lab coat and tie. The vessel's glass reflected his troubled frown. “What have I done!” he reproached himself softly. “God forgive me, what have I done!”

  Just before the fireball impacted, there was a synchronized moment when all in attendance sensed the ominous presence, suspended operations, and turned in spellbound unison to fathom the approaching spectacle of their doom.

  Steadily disintegrating in its fiery descent, sloughing off hot chunks of itself to the desert floor below, the core mass of the object was still sizable as it plunged into the swollen dome of the complex. Tearing through layers of whirring cybernetics, it penetrated deep into the pulsing tubes and electronic ganglia.

  There was a pause as if the entire structure were sucking in its breath, and then the top of the dome erupted in a white napalm concussion. The upper four tiers, and any person stationed there, vaporized instantly. As air defense sirens bellowed belatedly in the distance, a series of smaller explosions in the lower levels began to issue thick black smoke.

  Miraculously, the substructure containing the human forms remained, for the moment, intact. The frail white-haired man, struggling desperately in the acrid fumes to free his imprisoned subjects, staggered against a chamber and collapsed.

  Abandoned by the other attendants, their support systems disastrously interrupted, all the encased figures were showing escalating movement; particularly the main subject, which was becoming frantic, grappling clumsily with its helmet and kicking against the sides of its vessel. Reacting to a more intense electronic burst from the circuitry above, the figure underwent a grand mal convulsion, arched its back and exploded the sides of its container with a powerful thrust of its legs.

  Outside the inferno it was the chaos of the dead and dying. Frustrated security patrols held well back beyond the perimeter fence, unable to do anything but watch as the terrible drama played itself out. Over the mournful tremolos of the sirens, the first interceptor jets could be heard arriving overhead, too late to do anything but make wide, futile circles over the stricken installation.

  From within a ruptured wall of the building, a struggling, naked, bleeding female form was thrust out onto the ground. The thin white arms that made the deposit hesitated, then quickly withdrew back inside.

  Left sprawled in the dust, the abandoned escapee, driven on by the fumes and heat, desperately began to claw and lurch itself forward. It had scarcely dragged itself out of lethal range when the last of the infrastructure gave way and a final explosion atomized the greater part of the installation, hurling the terrified victim violently across the ground. The battered form recovered quickly and immediately resumed its crazed flight. Without apparent knowledge of its direction, it writhed its way onward, unobserved, through the main gate and out into the night.

  4

  Ben-Gurion apartment complex, Jerusalem, Israel 1:05 A.M., Saturday, December 25,1999

  The phone jangled Jonathan Feldman out of the last truly undisturbed sleep he would ever have.

  Groping in the dark for the receiver with one hand, his wire-rimmed glasses with the other, he sent a half-eaten bowl of yesterday's cereal tumbling from cluttered night-stand to floor.

  He snapped on the light and squinted nearsightedly down at Cheerios and milk sloshing in his Nikes. Swearing profusely, Feldman cradled the phone between ear and shoulder and wrestled on his glasses.

  “What?” he croaked, pouring back cereal from shoes to bowl.

  “Jon, get over here. Jordan just hit a military installation in the Negev!”

  It was the familiar, if unusually excited, voice of Breck Hunter, a videographer and close friend with whom Feldman worked as a World News Network Middle East TV correspondent.

  “What?”

  “Just about an hour ago. I can see the glow in the sky from here.”

  “Jordanians?”

  “That's the buzz over the military radio band,” Hunter explained. “Let's get out there.”

  At a relatively young thirty years of age, Feldman's crisp reporting style and disarming on-camera presence had already caught the attention of the World News Network hierarchy. It had helped net him this prestigious assignment, his first outside the U.S. Yawning, Feldman pushed up his spectacles, rubbed unfocused, pale gray eyes, and began gathering his resolve. “Okay. See if you can get us clearance. I'll pick you up in five minutes.”

  Checking his clock, he was doubly glad he'd left WNN's dull Christmas Eve office party early. But his hopes for tonight's more promising U.S. embassy function, he realized, might now be jeopardized.

  Journalistic instincts began taking over. Why Jordan? he wondered to himself. Why would a poorly armed, moderate Arab state risk war with a military power like Israel? He shoved papers around his desk, searching for his keys. And wouldn't a surprise attack be more effective over Rosh Hashanah? This is a Jewish state, for chris-sakes. Not exactly Washington at Valley Forge.

  He pulled on his sneakers, stopping only long enough to swear at the wetness, grabbed his worn leather jacket from a chair and bolted out the door. Once again, he was thankful he'd slept in his clothes.

  Although he'd only been on assignment here a few months, the newsman had come to learn his way around Jerusalem quite well. Firing up his rented all-terrain Land Rover, Feldman hustled away from his downtown apartment complex, heading south. The dust in the streets kicked up in turbulent swirls with his passing, the result of a severe drought that had begun long before his arrival.

  He found it fascinating the way the night transformed this strange city. The bright gleaming lights misrepresented Jerusalem's antiquity, and obscured its truth. To the passing eye, the artificial illumination cast shadows, disguising the Holy City as a stable, thriving metropolis. But as Feldman knew, sadly, the reality was otherwise. Beneath Jerusalem's veil lay th
e ancient origins of three very proud religions with a history of violent opposition to one another. Jew, Christian and Muslim lived grudgingly side by side in segregated sections of the city amid continuing tension and distrust. Locked in an eternal struggle that dated back to before the Crusades, they competed in a three-way ideological tug-of-war over control of the city's sacred shrines.

  Despite their intense political differences and animosities, the three religions were surprisingly similar. They were, after all, born of the same God, tracing their theological descent back four thousand years to one common source — Abraham, the grand patriarch. To their lasting frustration, the three faiths were inseparably commingled in the dust of Jerusalem's past, each playing an integral part in the Holy City's celebrated, historic encounters with divinity.

  As Feldman picked his vehicle's way through the narrow corridors of the downtown district, he had to be careful to avoid yet another kind of religious encounter. With the calendar inching relentlessly toward the year 2000, Jerusalem was inundated with thousands of millenarian visitors. Comprised of hundreds of bizarre cults, the millenarians had burdened the intolerant city with their own peculiar brands of religious fanaticism.

  Drawing near Hunter's apartment block on the outskirts of the city, Feldman at last got an unobstructed view of the horizon. Due south he spotted the red shimmer of what he assumed was the Negev disaster. Shrugging off a spell of déjà vu, he rolled up to the courtyard where Hunter awaited him, video camera and travel bag in tow.

  Above average in height and powerfully built, Hunter was dressed in fatigues left over from headier days covering Operation Desert Storm. A respected, hard-story video journalist, he looked at the world through alert, squinty blue eyes.

  Before the Rover could slow to a halt, Hunter slung his gear into the back, slid in beside his colleague, slapped the dashboard hard twice and they barreled off toward the glowing sky.

  “So what did you find out?” Feldman wondered.

  “Nothing more than I told you,” the cameraman replied. “It looks like an isolated attack. Nothing else hit so far.”

  “Did you confirm it was Jordanian?”

  “No. But that's the intelligence read.”

  Jonathan Feldman, the wordsmith of the two-man team, was athletically lanky with clean features, a long, straight nose and bright gray eyes that stood out boyishly under unkempt dark hair. Slightly older, Hunter was rugged, outdoorsy, with light hair and blond-tan complexion.

  Their relaxed familiarity underscored a strong friendship they'd developed over the past year as members of a WNN field unit crew. They'd worked closely together covering some of the many millennialist movements that had sprung into prominence across the U.S.

  As both reporters had soon learned, many of these millenarian sects had been in existence in America and throughout the world for decades, patiently anticipating the new millennium. But most had only come into being within the last few years.

  The majority of these millenarian cults had religious orientations, ranging from the uplifting, who saw the twenty-first century as the beginning of a holy reign of Christ, to the doomsdayers, who perpetually envisioned Armageddon. Some groups were secular, others more metaphysical. Still others were merely social or political. And many remained as yet undeclared, but found the millennium an exceptional excuse to drop out and reinvent the “live-for-today” hedonism of the mythical 1960s.

  From groups numbering in the thousands to single voices crying in the wilderness, there was a millennial philosophy for every inner calling, with more than 297 separate millennialist organizations currently listed on the Internet.

  It had been obvious to Hunter and Feldman early on where most of the important millenarian activity would end up. Requesting to be included in WNN's Israel operation, the two men had maneuvered themselves into the Jerusalem post. It had been a timely move. With each passing day, the numbers of these cults all over the world, like so many colonies of lemmings, would reach critical mass and converge on the Holy Land. And while the greatest concentrations were clustering around Jerusalem, other famous biblical sites, such as Nazareth, Bethlehem, Mount Sinai and Megiddo, also had their advocates.

  5

  Somewhere in the Negev Desert, southern Israel 1:20 A.M., Saturday, December 25,1999

  Three excited Japanese astronomers tore across the desert floor in hot pursuit of the fallen star. Already they'd forgotten their poor associate, who, having the least seniority, had been left behind to finish their experiments.

  From their mountaintop vantage point, the men had clearly witnessed, in horror, the meteorite's collision with the research institute. They immediately set off in their car, making their way across the rugged rift of the valley floor, the huge orange glow guiding them like a beacon. Along the way, they were treated to an ongoing light show of meteors, jet fighters and helicopters crisscrossing the night sky with regularity.

  Hardly a half kilometer away from their goal, however, and completely without warning, a thin, bearded, weather-beaten Bedouin in a hooded robe suddenly rose up in the beam of their headlamps, waving desperately for them to stop.

  Narrowly avoiding him, the car spun out of control, rotated twice and careened to a dusty halt. The nomad, seemingly unaffected by his close call, jabbered at them excitedly in Arabic. The old man pointed alternately to the flames of the destroyed facility beyond and to a nearby gully.

  The astronomers grew excited with the assumption that the Bedouin had found a piece of the meteorite. But their excitement quickly gave way to shock. As they hurried in the indicated direction, their panning flashlights revealed a nomad woman crouching over a motionless human form curled naked on its side in a fetal position.

  6

  Somewhere south of Jerusalem, Israel 1:42 A.M., Saturday, December 25,1999

  In the convoluted topography of southern Israel, there were few direct highways to anywhere. And although the research institute was only about seventy-five kilometers due south of Jerusalem, Hunter and Feldman had to take a roundabout route. The first legs went quickly with Feldman's aggressive driving.

  “So, you still thinkin’ of quitting WNN when all this is over?” Hunter rehashed a dead topic.

  Feldman smiled, turned and raised an eyebrow at his friend. “Hey, if you'll recall, ‘quitting’ isn't exactly the operative word here. My contract ends when this millennium story's over.”

  Hunter shook his head, knowing better. “Hell, Bollinger told me he's asked you to be a part of our East Coast special assignments crew. Party time, man! We'd kick some ass together back in New York!”

  ‘Tempting,” Feldman said, laughing at his friend's enthusiasm, “but I can't pass up this deal in Washington—a chance to cover a presidential election. An opportunity to do some really serious reporting. WNN's too crazy for me. You know I'm too conservative to make it in show-biz news.”

  Hunter shrugged his big shoulders. “I just hate to see us break up a good team. It's been fun.”

  Feldman nodded his agreement. “Yeah, it's been great working with you, Breck. I'm going to miss you and all the gang. Hard to believe I'm coming up on my last day.”

  As they zigzagged south, the terrain became increasingly rugged, the vegetation sparse. In the crisp, clear night air, the reporters could make out the beginnings of the scabrous Negev Mountains, massive sandstone formations thrust up in ever-higher, primeval slabs. Soon, they had to exit the transit highway at a small desert kibbutz town marked “Dehmoena” on the map, but spelled “Dimona” on the road sign. A common situation in this country, which has no uniform rules of spelling. Hunter and Feldman were used to these inconsistencies, but regardless, the beacon of the glowing fires told them this was the place.

  Concealed on three sides by a box canyon and sunken slightly, the remains of the installation were virtually impossible to see from any angle but due east. And at ground level, even that angle was unsatisfying. Particularly since the Israeli military, which was everywhere, was ensuring that
bystanders kept their distance. The two journalists were not surprised to see more than a hundred vagabond millenarians drawn to the disaster.

  “Shit, we're not going to get anything from way out here,” Hunter fumed, watching the Israelis holding the curious onlookers well away from the front gate area.

  “No,” Feldman concurred.

  “And the militia will never let media through.” Hunter spoke from experience.

  “Especially if this is a covert military facility,” Feldman added. “But we have to try.”

  Hunter nodded in agreement. “Why don't you see what you can learn from some of these onlookers while I check out the equipment. Then we'll drive up to the front gate and talk with the field commander.”

  One group of about twenty men and women appeared as though they'd been there awhile. Next to their old faded-blue school bus, they had a small camp stove with a blackened pot of coffee perking. Feldman walked up and introduced himself to a scraggy-bearded man in worn blue jeans and sandals, seated on the ground with an old U.S. army blanket around him. Despite his bedraggled appearance, the man had a ready, pleasant smile, and he responded in German-accented but excellent English.

  “Fredrich Vilhousen, from Hamburg,” he said.

  “Tourist or pilgrim?” Feldman began with his standard millenarian entrée.

  “We are Sentries of the Dominion,” Vilhousen explained, “one of the largest new orders in Europe.”

  Feldman had never heard of them.

  “We've been in Tangiers and are traveling to Jerusalem to meet up with our main group for the Arrival. We are called to make ready His Way, and to His purpose—”

  “Sorry, Fredrich”—Feldman had no interest in yet another take on the Second Coming—“right now my only concern is to learn more about the air strike here. Did you see it happen?”