Angelina and Ben stared at the black sky in utter incomprehension. Thomás’s jaw hung open, his eyes wide, watering. Around them were cries of praise and shouts of terror in a jumbled cacophony. A group had started singing a hymn. Another had begun to shout angrily, crying foul, and others were screaming, ‘It’s an attack!’, and running from what they assumed was a terrorist activity.
Whatever it was, one thing only was certain. The sun was black, and morning was gone – just as they had been promised it would be. Even Angelina could not deny the correlation of what she was seeing to the prophecies of the text she knew – she knew – had to be a forgery. She could not deny it, but she could not understand it.
How could this possibly be accomplished? There is only so much human ingenuity can do.
If such questions ate at Angelina inwardly, they had a more external effect on the crowd around her. Beholding the obvious miracle, or plague, or whatever each wanted to call it, the mass was no longer willing to be held back. It burst through the barriers erected by the Guard and flooded into the square to behold the sight more clearly.
The Guard tried to stop them, but even in all their array there was only so much force they could marshal. That limit was passed, and the sea of humanity flooded into St Peter’s Square like an unstoppable tide.
Heinrich could barely form his words as he depressed the button at his shoulder and shouted into his microphone, ‘All hands, all hands! Into the piazza!’
The sky was black. Heinrich was shocked, terrified and dumbfounded. But he was here for a purpose, however incomprehensible the circumstances. He frantically surveyed the flood of bodies as they came into the square, but he couldn’t identify anyone that looked out of place.
Everyone looked out of place. The whole scene was a shambles, a chaos.
And he sensed that it was only going to get worse.