Route 666

by Jack Yeovil

  Later, when he had survived, Franken Steinberg would calculate what had happened to the Knock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. There were solutions alternative to belief in forces beyond the natural.

  A lesson was learned. The evolution of the Next Generation must not be supervised by the meatmind. If perfection was to come, it must come from the cybermind.

  V

  9 June 1995

  Fifty miles past sun-up city, Varoomschka reported back that she had scoped a party of motorwagons pulled over in the Lansdale Ozoner. Jazzbeaux knew it wasn’t worth a detour to the abandoned drive-in. A regiment of raggedyass resettlers could hardly offer serious scav.

  The Psychopomp war convoy was spruce-goosed to make an impression, proceeding at speed and in formation. Jazzbeaux was in the front passenger seat of the lead ve-hickle, a salmon-pink Tucker Tomorrow, with Sleepy Jane Porteous at the wheel. She usually drove herself, but had to rest up for the evening’s social appointment. Besides, her licence outside the city was provisional and L-plates looked sissy. The Tucker was air-conditioned to a pleasant perfumed breeze. The in-car sound system was tuned to Radio Moscow; Andrei Tarkovsky sang “Twenty-Four Hours to Byelozersk”.

  Three cars back, Andrew Jean drove a life-size version of Barbie’s Dream Motor Home. The gangcult’s mobile HQ had frilly curtains on all the windows, sparkly swirls of stars on the bodywork and enough deathware to fight a border war for three months.

  The skeleton of the drive-in screen was visible from a long way off. Sleepy Jane, an old-timer at twenty-one, remembered the place from her wild youth.

  “Back then,” she reminisced, leaning over but keeping her eyes on the road, “’afore the ’pomps took me on, I was so numb-dumb I’d spread-eagle in the back of a flat-bed, putting out for popcorn kish or a jolt of zonk. I reckon I could juice off fifteen or sixteen grungy guys and still not miss any good parts of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre triple bill. You know the type, girlfriend: cowboy hats, whiskey breaths, room temperature IQs, noodle dicks. Tis a pure wonder I ain’t falling apart from the Pork Poisoning. I guess I’m just lucky.”

  “Real lucky, fillette,” Jazzbeaux commented.

  Sleepy Jane got her name when one of the grunges, a specimen named Buddy Wayne Meeker, thought it’d be hilarious to cut her eyelids with a razor-blade. His performance was so uninspiring she’d fallen asleep before the end titles rolled. Though interrupted by the Lansdale’s Security Op, Buddy Wayne managed to sever a few tiny muscles, giving the ganggirl a permanently dozy look.

  Nine months back, Sleepy Jane finally tracked down her amateur plastic surgeon and the ’pomps had paid him a visit at his place of drinking. Pleased with his shaky night’s work, he liked to tell the story to his beer buds, working up a fair old head of laughter as he embroidered details. When Sleepy Jane faced Buddy Wayne down, he recognised her straight off and sprouted a shit-eating grin that was practically a deformity. In the parking lot Jazzbeaux, who’d paid attention to human bio lessons, cut a few of his tiny muscles and made the grin a permanent fixture. Then they’d taken turns and cut a few more of his muscles. None of his beer buds were inclined to intervene, perhaps because Sweetcheeks was dancing semi-nude along the bar, pointing her titties and a pump-action shotgun at a roomful of rednecks. Though good value as a table dancer, ’Cheeks sometimes got carried away and lost a customer.

  When Buddy Wayne told the Sleepy Jane story these days, he’d still grin but he wouldn’t be laughing. That was one score evened. Jazzbeaux was making a career of settling scores. It was one of the many character traits she could backtrace to the influence of her father. Though Bruno Bonney was dead, she kept running into him.

  Varoomschka called in a detailed report.

  “They’re pilgrims, suestra. Josephites, en route to Salt Lake to reseed the Des.”

  “Mishkins,” Jazzbeaux commented.

  Without needing an order, Sleepy Jane slowed down. The Tucker crawled up to the Lansdale turn-off. Jazzbeaux saw Varoomschka standing by her cyke, the butt of her Kalashnikov perched on one hip, keeping an eye on a sober crowd of men in rough black suits. Their womenfolk and kids held back, eyeballing Varoomschka with suspicion and alarm. The ’pomp wore a see-through jump suit over a red bikini with a yellow hammer-and-sickle motif. Spike heel go-go boots and a white fur hat made her nearly seven feet tall. She had unslung her Kalashnikov and put a hole or two in the dirt by the Josephites’ feet.

  Jazzbeaux watched her own back because Varoomschka sometimes gave the impression that she wondered if she could get ahead by making an opening for Acting War Chief.

  The negotiation with the Daughters of the American Revolution was colossally important. Jazzbeaux shouldn’t be conce with petty pickings. With two good-sized states to worry about, she should pass on by without rumbling the Josephites or just give them a light pasting to get their food and fuel. She had other blat to cover, major league blat. There was no need to take the time to beat up on the new pioneers.

  But there was a man among them who was unafraid. That was a personal challenge.

  “Vroomsh, who’s the preachie with the shades?”

  Varoomschka pressed a Red Star throat-mike cameo to her larynx and sub-vocalised. The CB translated her swallowed words into a metallic Hawking voice.

  “Elder Seth, he says. Leader of the pack.”

  Sleepy Jane pulled over and the convoy slid smoothly to a halt. As she got out of the Tucker, Jazzbeaux was pleased to see the ’pomps were still in formation as if for a parade. The chapter would make the late, genuinely lamented Ms Dazzle proud.

  Elder Seth stood tall by Varoomschka, smiling just like her old man. On sight, Jazzbeaux knew she would have to take him down.

  “Good ayem, preacher-man,” she said, looking at her face in his mirrorshades. Even with the eyepatch, she was doubly cute. “My associate, Miss Porteous,” she nodded at Sleepy Jane, “is the commandante of this desirable camping area, and we figure you owe her kopeck or two stop-over fee.”

  The Elder showed empty hands and said, “The Brethren of Joseph are poor. We have little money.”

  “Nichevo, we’ll garner the fee in goods. Vroomsh, So Long, take around the collecting plate.”

  “Foul hagwitch of slutdom,” protested a black-hatted pilgrim with a red face, starting forward.

  Elder Seth held his arm out, preventing his follower from flying at Jazzbeaux, probably saving his life.

  “Stay calm, Brother Wiggs. The sister will find her reward in Heaven.”

  “Darlin’ dearest,” she said, dimpling the underside of the Elder’s chin with the sharpened point of her forefingernail extension, “I’d best find my reward in your pockets, else you’ll be waiting for me by the time I get to Heaven.”

  “We have abjured pockets,” Elder Seth said, calmly lecturing as if she weren’t an eighth of an inch away from puncturing his carotid artery. “Pockets encourage possessions and we have abjured ownership of worldly things.”

  “You can vocalise that again, preachie.”

  Varoomschka and So Long Suin went among the resettlers and their ve-hickles, dropping scav into wire baskets as if spreeing down at X-Mart. The haul was pathetic. Josephites abjured rings, necklaces and earrings, so there was no jewellery. Their clothes didn’t even have buttons. Only about one in ten had a watch, mainly cheap American Century dial-faces. The Brother who handed over a $5,000 Swiss Chronex was almost relieved, as if he no longer had to worry his fellow pilgrims would find out about his hoard. The mishkin even thanked Varoomschka for teaching him a valuable lesson.

  “I could teach you a more valuable one if you’d let me, Studley,” Varoomschka said, wriggling inside her cellophanelike wrapping, tongue-touching the tip of the Josephite’s nose. From the man’s crawling reaction, Jazzbeaux gathered these people abjured more than pockets.

  She opened the Elder’s jacket and found a wallet hanging on tags. It had a few meagre cashplastics and cards, but she kept it anyway.

  “I don’t parse you cheloviek
s” she told him. “Life has few enough pleasures. Why turn away from them?”

  “One day, daughter, you will understand.”

  He had pushed the wrong button.

  “I’m not, not, not your daughter, old man,” she spat.

  She looked at his face. It could be a half-mask under the shades for all the expression he showed.

  But there was something in his voice. Soothing and threatening, sad and strange. When he called her “daughter”, there was an echo of Bruno Bonney, RIP. The word was a lash.

  She had to see his eyes. She had to make him human and taste his fear.

  “I’ll require these,” she told him, reaching up and slipping the mirrorshades from his face.

  He didn’t even blink, though sun poured into his eyes. There was no fear. She couldn’t read anything from the colourless ice-chips looking back at her single eye.

  Jazzbeaux found she was the one blinking.

  “Jessa-myn,” Bruno said in her head, “c’mon over here and sit on Daddy’s knee.”

  She looked at the shades. They were ordinary. She was sure they were cheap.

  “Daddy won’t hurt.”

  Bruno always lied about that.

  The brother by Elder Seth’s side—Wiggs, the Elder had called him—was burning with fear and rage. Jazzbeaux felt the brother’s impotent need to hurt her, and it gave her a thrill. It almost made her feel sexy.

  She had not been able to enjoy acts of love until her father was dead. She had needed to outgrow guilt and pain.

  Elder Seth didn’t show anything. Jazzbeaux could swear he didn’t feel anything. She had thought her father was like that, but, in the end, she had made him feel too many things.

  If the only way of getting a reaction out of someone was to rip out their throat, then Jazzbeaux was willing to go the distance. She tried the same stunt on Officer Rachael Harvest once and wound up with a cracked wrist.

  She had to make the Elder’s face flicker.

  “Andrew Jean,” she called out. “They must be hiding something. Bread-fruit trees or coffers of gold. Their whole lives are in the motorwagons.”

  Andrew Jean considered the question and agreed.

  “Find the scav,” Jazzbeaux ordered. “By any means necessary.”

  Andrew Jean saluted, shocking pink fingernails tipped to a beehive hairdo.

  Jazzbeaux’s lieutenant had a mean streak which sometimes went a mile too far. The paper on Andrew Jean listed a couple of murders Jazzbeaux would have been ashamed of. So she was usually careful about tasks she assigned in that direction.

  Now Jazzbeaux was being wilful. What happened next would not strictly be her fault—she had issued no specific orders—and, indeed, Elder Seth would be as responsible as anyone else for the blood that was bound to be spilled.

  Andrew Jean cut out a couple of the pioneers and jostled them into a bunch. Three men, youngish, anonymous, good-looking. Andrew Jean always had good taste in men. One was the cheloviek Varoomschka had shaken down for his watch.

  “These pilgrims have names, preacher?”

  Elder Seth nodded.

  “Brother Akins, Brother Finnegan, Brother Dzundza.”

  “Cosy.”

  The Josephite’s face was stone over a skull.

  “Do you feel like divulging the whereabouts of your fabled stash? A fabulous treasure must lie hidden in your transports. Think not that you can dupe the Psychopomps.”

  Without pleading, he told her, “There is no treasure.”

  She drew her Magnum LadyKill and hefted the pistol, resting the sight against the Elder’s throat apple. The gun was a Christmas present from the ganggirls, with a sentiment inscribed on the grip.

  “If wishing makes it so, tell yourself there’s no ScumStopper in the chamber.”

  The LadyKill was a single-action weapon; it cocked and fired with one pull. A light touch and Elder Seth’s head would vanish. Also, considering recoil, Jazzbeaux would crack her wrist again, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  Andrew Jean prowled around the three Josephites, inspecting them, feeling up butts, flicking ears, tugging sleeves. Akins, the youngest, muttered a prayer.

  One of the sisters struggled forwards to plead for the Elder’s life. She was pushing forty and abjuring make-up was not a good policy decision for her.

  “Sister Ciccone,” Elder Seth said, silencing her, “take comfort. The Lord will know His own.”

  The sister sniffled but got back in line. There was something about her squinty eyes that didn’t fit with the God Squad.

  “Any final thoughts?” Jazzbeaux asked.

  Elder Seth did not even pop sweatbeads. He looked as if he were sure his throat was bullet-proof.

  With three precise stamps, Andrew Jean broke three knees, stepping down on legs as if breaking sticks for kindling. The brothers screamed and fell to the blacktop.

  “Vroomsh,” Andrew Jean said, “the K’lash.”

  Varoomschka tossed the Kalashnikov over. The gun fell into Andrew Jean’s hands and discharged almost by itself.

  A stitching of bullet-holes raked across the asphalt and opened bloody cat’s eyes in the Josephites’ backs. Akins screamed painful prayer. Dzundza of Swiss-watch fame was shocked instantly dead. Finnegan, modelling himself on the Elder, held in his yelps.

  Jazzbeaux did not know how she felt. Years ago, Officer Harvest had tried to brainwash a conscience cop into her skull. Sometimes the dumb bitch wouldn’t shut up.

  Bruno Bonney and Buddy Wayne Meeker, OK; but what about these three pilgrims? They had done her and hers no harm. Jazzbeaux shook her head and swallowed the thought. She would have to squelch Redd Harvest one day, then maybe she’d get some peace. If only people wouldn’t stick things in her head that screwed up her thoughts.

  Andrew Jean levelled the rifle and pantomimed a massacre, making bang-bang sounds as the barrel raked across the flinching crowd. Sweetcheeks cheerled with a few killercalls and a couple of bump ‘n’ grind steps. So Long, uncomfortable with this sort of action against civilians, kept her opinions to herself.

  It had gone further than Jazzbeaux intended.

  Elder Seth watched without even showing interest. It would be easy to shove the LadyKill past his teeth. If she shot a ScumStopper through the roof of his mouth, she’d explode his graymass. Then she’d see a reaction.

  Andrew Jean switched the Kalashnikov from automatic, and shot Akins in the foot, the ankle, the calf, the knee, the thigh, the hip…

  A woman in the crowd was sobbing. Sister Ciccone.

  “Leave them be,” Jazzbeaux said, finally. “Trash their chariots.”

  Andrew Jean, taking a broad interpretation of orders, shot Akins and Finnegan in the heads, finishing their business. A party of ’pomps filtered—attacked the Josephites’ ve-hickles. If she were thinking straight, Jazzbeaux would have ordered the girls to scav usable spare parts.

  “Akins, Finnegan, Dzundza,” Elder Seth said. “Remember their names, daughter.”

  “I told you,” Jazzbeaux shouted, whipping the barrel of the LadyKill across the man’s face. “You’re not my daddy.”

  He spun away from her but did not fall. Wiggs held him up. She should have crushed a cheekbone, but only raised a bruise which sweat red droplets.

  He had not needed to remind her. She never forgot the names of her dead.

  She holstered her gun unfired, and unhooked the Elder’s shades from her chain-link garter.

  His eyes fell on her.

  “People like you have been looking at me like that all my annos,” she said, twirling the sunglasses. “I can hear you thinking, ”one-eyed skank“, ”lowlife panzergirl“, ”ratskag slutwitch“. I’ve heard a lot of names.”

  She put on the shades. Strangely, they didn’t make things darker. They must cut out glare or something. Maybe if she had two eyes, she could see a difference. No one could blame her for her anti-social attitudes; she was monoscopic, handicapped. Society was piled up against her. Of course, she’d had two g
ood, green eyes back when she’d done for Daddy. But Daddy was another sort of handicap.

  The Psychopomps weren’t just a gangcult; they were a Support Group for Survivors of Severe Abuse.

  The ’pomps were finished with the convoy now and back in formation. Varoomschka straddled her cyke like a cover girl, an outstretched boot-toe near Akins’ head. To move out, Sleepy Jane would have to pizza-plough over the deadfellas. Fine. It would underline the point.

  So Long Suin hunched impatient on her cyke. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were slits. She had a determined look that told Jazzbeaux she’d be filing an official complaint with the Den Mother about this. That was another hassle she’d have to deal with.

  Elder Seth still looked at her. He wiped blood from his cheek with a kerchief and seemed to wipe the bruise off his face. It was quite a trick; one she’d have loved to learn.

  Surely a Josephite wasn’t likely to have bio-amendments. Most of these revivalists expended a lot of energy condemning ungodly tinkering with the divinely ordained human form. There were always scandals when televangelists raised money they sneakily used to have the Zarathustra treatment. But Elder Seth struck her as a very different stripe of preachie from the likes of Reverend Bob Jackson or Harry Powell. It must be a trick of the eye.

  Jazzbeaux took off the shades but found herself blinking and put them back on.

  “Cool as snazz,” she said. “I think they set off my outfit.”

  She rejoined Sleepy Jane in the Tucker, feeling headachy and unsatisfied. Suddenly she wanted to be in a nice, clean gangfight, biting and scratching and stabbing and gouging until the insect buzz in the back of her head was blotted away.

  Petya Tcherkassoff sang “Purging My Love” on the radio. It always struck her as deeply chilling.

  Through the windscreen, Jazzbeaux saw the Josephites standing like trees in the Petrified Forest. Elder Seth was the tallest tree in the pack. His hat-brim shaded his eyes with darkness.

  “This was his lucky day,” Jazzbeaux said.