And so he walked and wandered, and he didn’t know where he was when the people started milling past him, when the man caught his arm and breathed garlic in his face.
“Come, brother, come,” the man said, his voice a grating rasp. He saw the man’s throat moving like clammy turkey skin, the red-splotched cheeks, the feverish eyes, the black suit, unpressed, unclean. “Come and be saved, brother, saved.”
Robert Neville stared at the man. He didn’t understand. The man pulled him on, his fingers like skeleton fingers on Neville’s arm.
“It’s never too late, brother,” said the man. “Salvation comes to him who . . .”
The last of his words were lost now in the rising murmur of sound from the great tent they were approaching. It sounded like the sea imprisoned under canvas, roaring to escape. Robert Neville tried to loose his arm.
“I don’t want to—”
The man didn’t hear. He pulled Neville on with him and they walked toward the waterfall of crying and stamping. The man did not let go. Robert Neville felt as if he were being dragged into a tidal wave.
“But I don’t—”
The tent had swallowed him then, the ocean of shouting, stamping, hand-clapping sound engulfed him. He flinched instinctively and felt his heart begin pumping heavily. He was surrounded now by people, hundreds of them, swelling and gushing around him like waters closing in. And yelling and clapping and crying out words Robert Neville couldn’t understand.
Then the cries died down and he heard the voice that stabbed through the half-light like knifing doom, that crackled and bit shrilly over the loud-speaker system.
“Do you want to fear the holy cross of God? Do you want to look into the mirror and not see the face that Almighty God has given you? Do you want to come crawling back from the grave like a monster out of hell?” The voice enjoined hoarsely, pulsing, driving.
“Do you want to be changed into a black unholy animal? Do you want to stain the evening sky with hellborn bat wings? I ask you-do you want to be turned into godless, night-cursed husks, into creatures of eternal damnation?”
“No!” the people erupted, terror-stricken. “No, save us!”
Robert Neville backed away, bumping into flailing-handed, white-jawed true believers screaming out for succor from the lowering skies.
“Well, I’m telling you! I’m telling you, so listen to the word of God! Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation and the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth! Is that a lie, is that a lie?”
“No! No!”
“I tell you that unless we become as little children, stainless and pure in the eyes of Our Lord — unless we stand up and shout out the glory of Almighty God and of His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, our Savior — unless we fall on our knees and beg forgiveness for our grievous offenses — we are damned! I’ll say it again, so listen! We are damned, we are damned, we are damned!
“Amen!”
“Save us!"
The people twisted and moaned and smote their brows and shrieked in mortal terror and screamed out terrible hallelujahs.
Robert Neville was shoved about, stumbling and lost in a treadmill of hopes, in a crossfire of frenzied worship.
“God has punished us for our great transgressions! God has unleashed the terrible force of His almighty wrath! God has set loose the second deluge upon us-a deluge, a flood, a world-consuming torrent of creatures from hell! He has opened the grave, He has unsealed the crypt, He has turned the dead from their black tombs-and set them upon us! And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them! That’s the word of God! O God, You have punished us, O God, You have seen the terrible face of our transgressions, O God, You have struck us with the might of Your almighty wrath!”
Clapping hands like the spatter of irregular rifle fire, swaying bodies like stalks in a terrible wind, moans of the great potential dead, screams of the fighting living. Robert Neville strained through their violent ranks, face white, hands before him like those of a blind man seeking shelter.
He escaped, weak and trembling, stumbling away from them. Inside the tent the people screamed. But night had already fallen.
He thought about that now as he sat in the living room nursing a mild drink, a psychology text resting on his lap.
A quotation had started the train of thought, sending him back to that evening ten months before, when he’d been pulled into the wild revival meeting.
“This condition, known as hysterical blindness, may be partial or complete, including one, several, or all objects.”
That was the quotation he’d read. It had started him working on the problem again.
