Route 666

by Jack Yeovil

  “Like one that on a lonesome road

  Doth walk in fear and dread,

  And having once turned round walks on,

  And turns no more his head;

  Because he knows a frightful fiend

  Doth close behind him tread.”

  She couldn’t stop herself turning and looking back over the roof of the Tucker. Out in the Des, sands shifted. The sky was featureless, without even any birds.

  She couldn’t see the frightful fiend but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. A strange shadow crept across the sand like a pointing finger. She had to hold herself to suppress a shudder.

  Beyond the Des, she imagined a lone figure, advancing steadily with long-legged strides, face in the dark under his hat-brim. The preacherman was coming after her, coming for his property. That shouldn’t have scared an Acting War Chief. But it did.

  III

  10 June 1995

  Brother Wiggs watched with suspicion as the cavalryman walked towards the faithful. He logged the sergeant’s side arm, but noted the buttoned-down holster flap. The man didn’t need to draw his weapon; there was enough rolling death in his machine to level the Lansdale Ozoner and anyone in it.

  Why could Gentiles not leave the Brethren of Joseph alone? Must there be nothing but trial and blood along the road to the Shining City?

  The cavalryman put his gauntleted hands on his hips and looked the congregation up and down. Under his hat-brim were sharp eyes.

  “You folks having a church service?” the sergeant asked.

  “A funeral service,” Elder Seth replied. “For those lost along the road.”

  The Elder’s voice, heavy with sorrow, carried across the drive-in. There was a muttering of amens.

  “I think we found a couple of those souls a way South of here,” the Sergeant said. “Sort of spread out across the road.”

  Elder Seth bowed his head and stretched out his arms. It was as if he were hanging from a cross of pain.

  “Brother Hooper and Brother Lennart.”

  “This wake for them?”

  “Amongst others.” The cyke troopers had dismounted and joined the sergeant.

  One was a woman, provocatively dressed in indecently tight pants; the other was a black man, the type Wiggs’ Daddy would never have let onto his police force.

  “How many more pilgrims have you lost?”

  “Brother Akins, Brother Dzundza, Brother Finnegan.”

  “Seems to me you’ve been mighty careless with your brothers.”

  A spurt of anger shot up from Wiggs’s belly. How dare this Gentile address himself so facetiously to Elder Seth? From a dozen yards away, Wiggs recognised the red blossoms of alcohol abuse on the sergeant’s face. The cavalryman stank of sin.

  The Lord knew, with women and nigras and who-all else knew what, the US Road Cavalry was mightily degraded. Wiggs saw them as no better than the other motorised killers, the resettlers. The girl-witch who had taken the Elder’s shades had been indecently dressed too.

  “Let’s scan your dead,” the sergeant said.

  Elder Seth had laid out the brothers lost to the murderous harlots on the road beyond the drive-in, where their martyr’s blood had been spilled. The sergeant glanced over the three, who were concealed by a bloodied sheet.

  “Traffic accident?”

  “Murder,” Wiggs shouted. “Foul, bloody murder.”

  A look from Elder Seth stunned him into silence.

  “Someone will have to tell me what happened,” the sergeant said. “If people are killed, you have to report it. That’s the law. We can’t catch killers if witnesses don’t come forward.”

  The sergeant was lecturing them as if they were children.

  “They were painted women,” Sister Ciccone said. “Evil spirits in female form, wallowing in the lustful filth of their fornications, drinking deep of the cup of depravity.”

  “That pings the timer, Quince,” the cavalrywoman said. Her voice rasped through her helmet, like one of the godless cyborgs who slew Hooper and Lennart. “We had a report from T-H-R that the Psychopomps were raising their profile sandside. With the Maniax out of the pool, you expect smaller fish to flood in.”

  “We’ll need to take statements,” the sergeant said. “From all of you.”

  Elder Seth was unconcerned. “Earthly wrongdoers will receive their just reward on Judgement Day. It should be no concern of thine.”

  “Tell that to your perforated brothers.”

  Without his dark glasses, Elder Seth looked no different. In most lights, his eyes themselves were mirrors.

  “This pilgrim seemed upset earlier,” the woman said, indicating Wiggs. “Perhaps we should start with him.”

  Wiggs bowed his head in shame and silently prayed for guidance along the Path of Joseph. He had journeyed far from his sinning days, but was constantly reminded of the long, rocky road he had yet to travel.

  The woman stood close to him. As she breathed, the front of her tunic swelled and shifted her yellow US Cav suspenders. She was a shapely woman, the Devil’s worst temptation. She still wore her helmet, and her faceplate was opaque. Wiggs imagined an angel’s eyes and a harlot’s mouth, with a length of flaming hair confined in a tight clip.

  “Brother…?”

  “Wiggs,” he admitted.

  “Will you give a statement?”

  He looked to Elder Seth who did nothing to suggest he should not cooperate. Wiggs knew it would go easier if they tried to help the officers. If some innocent bystander gave him trouble when he was a deputy, he always found a way to slow them down. His daddy had a saying, “Nobody’s innocent, but some folks just ain’t been found out yet”. Cornered by the police, everyone had something to feel guilty about.

  Wiggs more than most. Guilt was his constant companion.

  “Whatever thou wish,” he told the cavalrywoman.

  The helmet nodded. Wiggs recalled situations when he would take advantage, pressing unwelcome attentions on a witness, approaching a crime scene with shameful desire in his heart. Was this hussy looking at him with lust?

  “Scans like we’ll be visiting with you folks a spell,” the sergeant said. “Any chance of a meal and a drink?”

  “Thou art welcome to share whatever we have,” Elder Seth declared.

  IV

  10 June 1995

  Tyree thought the Josephites were damfool cracked, but they still seemed confident about their jaunt. Despite the dead-folks they had left along the way. They just took it all, kept singing their hymns and following their damned yellow brick road.

  Surprisingly, the Psychopomps had left them with all their food and water. Elder Seth must be a persuasive fellow, to convince a gangcult to leave supplies. And to get this crew out on the road in the first place.

  It was just one freaking miracle after another with him.

  It was nearly nightfall now; the patrol had spent the afternoon processing statements. Tyree had started to tape and annotate an account of the gangcult incidents from that strange, squeaky little Southerner, Wiggs. He was a soul in torment who hadn’t quite abjured all he should, to judge from the way his eyes roved up and down her body. He was the type who meets a woman and can describe her bra size but not her eye colour.

  The statements told them nothing they couldn’t have guessed. When they learned what happened to the Knock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, the Josephites didn’t even gloat. The general mood was sorrowful, that lives were ended before errors were recognised. Tyree couldn’t understand that degree of forgiveness and wondered if the dead brothers would have gone along with it. If she got pancaked by bad guys, she’d expect her friends to be angry about it, and maybe even hit the old vengeance trail. It might not make a dead person feel better when their killers were zotzed, but it sure couldn’t make them feel any worse.

  Quincannon had downloaded a precis to Fort Valens. Apparently, the Psychopomps had been sighted—by Ms Redd Harvest, no less—at some mall and there was a black flag by their file. The
gangcult were climbing the hit parade towards the Most Wanted top twenty.

  If the Josephites were annoyed with anyone it was the ’pomp who had stolen Elder Seth’s mirrorshades. All the statements tallied on the detail, though they varied on everything else. What sort of a person finds scavved sunglasses more memorable than a triple murder?

  The women were preparing an evening meal. Burnside had hoped they’d brew up a couple of pots of coffee—some rich folks could still get the real stuff brought in from Brazil or Colombia, and the Brethren must be pretty well set up to mount such a damfool expedition—but it turned out that coffee was one of the sinful, worldly things they abjured. Even recaff was off their diet sheet, and that bore about as much relation to good coffee as a flea did to a dog.

  Without meaning to, Tyree drifted in with the womenfolk and found herself helping out with KP. As she opened packets, Sister Maureen told Tyree all about abjuration and all the things she didn’t miss. Tyree thought Sister Maureen was cracked. Hell, without coffee, carnal relations and a good clean gun, life wouldn’t be worth living. As the woman ticked off each new thing the Josephites had given up, her sisters sighed with happiness. Sister Ciccone, whose pureness of mind and body suggested a lobotomy, was especially joyful at her abandonment of the pleasures of the flesh. Tyree wondered if the Brethren of Joseph reckoned smugness was a sin. Nobody in the congregation seemed keen on giving up that.

  The Quince was face-slapped to learn the wagon train was dry. Back in Valens, the Sergeants’ Bar would be opening up about now, and Quincannon would normally be in his corner with his bottle of Shochaiku, yarning with Nathan and the others. Tyree preferred to spend her downtime jacked into combat simulators, bringing up her points average to impress the promo board. That was one of the things that was curtailing her on-off relationship with Nathan; come the next round of exams and advancements, she’d outrank him. He was enough of an old man to find that insupportable.

  Being around these people, with their fixed smiles and damfool passivity, made Tyree edgy. They didn’t display grief for their dead friends, just smiled and said the departed were in a better place. The only thing these Josephites seemed good for was singing psalms. That might prove useful, though. The way they were headed meant they would be going to a lot of funerals.

  The Quince was still talking with Elder Seth, recording notes on his cyberfax. Tyree, bored now her interrogation quota was used up and unable to listen to Maureen and Ciccone any longer, wandered over to the lean-to by the main motorwagon, where the two men were doing their business.

  “So,” Quincannon said, “let’s get this clear, you’re … what did you call yourselves?”

  “Resettlers, sergeant. We are here to reclaim the promised land.”

  Quincannon was having trouble with the word. “Resettlers?”

  “Like the original pioneers, we are proceeding to the appointed place.”

  “Salt Lake City?”

  “The flower of the desert. The Shining City. It is the Rome of our faith.”

  Quincannon whistled, not complementarily.

  “I know Salt Lake. Used to be a Mormon hang-out. But it’s a big ghost town now. The lake dried up when everything else did, and the solids died off or moved out. All there is now is the salt. Maybe a few scumscavengers, a gangcult hideout or two, but that’s it. There’s nothing for anyone in that hellhole. The Cav don’t even bother to patrol the place.”

  Elder Seth smiled the insufferable smile of someone who knows something he’s not telling. Tyree’s preachie father had been shaky with doubts all his life, but this God-botherer was certain he knew how the universe was ordered.

  “It will be resettled, sergeant. The deserts will bloom again.”

  “Are you some kind of irrigation expert?”

  Elder Seth smiled again. The sunset caught in his eyes, giving him burning pupils like the Devil. Tyree couldn’t tell, but she thought the Elder’s eyes were silvery.

  “That too. Mainly, I am a guide. I am just here to show these benighted people the Way…”

  “The Way to what? A dusty death out here in Nowhere City, Utah?”

  “Forget that name, sergeant. The Brethren of Joseph have changed it. By presidential decree, this territory is called Deseret now.”

  “Desert?”

  “No, Deseret. It is an old name. A Mormon name, as you said. The Mormons were, in many ways, a wise sect…”

  Tyree knew that was an unusual thing for a Josephite Elder to say. They didn’t usually have a good word for any other brand of Christian.

  “The whole state, and more, is legally the property of the Brethren of Joseph. You will not be surprised to learn no one else wanted it. The purchase price was one dollar. This will be where it all starts.”

  “What?”

  “The reseeding of the Americas. The Great Reversal.”

  Tyree felt tingly up and down her spine when Elder Seth spoke. His calm, even voice carried the unmistakable fire of truth. She didn’t understand him but she could understand why people followed him. In some circumstances, she would have considered banging a tambourine in his backing group.

  Sister Maureen brought him a cup of some unsweetened chocolate drink, and he smiled upon her. If the Josephites hadn’t abjured carnal relations, Tyree would have sworn Sister Maureen had itchy drawers for Elder Seth. The preacher was handsome in a cruel son-of-a-bitch sort of way, and his sombre sobriety suggested the sort of challenge any real woman would relish. If Gary Cooper had a mean streak a yard across, he would have been ideal casting for Dead in the Des: The Elder Seth Story.

  “We will make a difference, sergeant. We will found our Shining City.”

  “That’s your right, elder,” said Quincannon, turning off his cyberfax. “But you’re certifiably insane to come out here with no weapons. This is wild country.”

  There was a move in Washington, championed by Senator Manson, to amend the Constitution; outside the Policed Zones, the right to bear arms might well become an obligation to bear arms. The reasoning was that anyone who made easy meat of themselves was wasting the time and budget allocations of law enforcement agencies.

  “We have our arms, sergeant. Faith and righteousness. Nothing can stand for long against them.”

  Though she didn’t talk about it with Cav personnel, Tyree had signed a petition against the Manson Amendment. The reasoning that any man not in possession of a gun was begging to be murdered was too close to the infuriatingly popular reasoning that any woman in possession of a vulva was begging to be raped.

  “You might try explaining the faith and righteousness deal to the fellas Leona buried klicks back. Hooper and Lennart, wasn’t it?”

  “Our brothers understood. They went to glory joyous in the knowledge of the Lord. They forgave their tormentors.”

  Quincannon was exasperated. He got up, and walked away. The Elder watched him off; from the rear, Quincannon’s manly stride looked uncomfortably like a fatty’s waddle.

  “Sister,” Elder Seth turned to Tyree, “was there something you desired?”

  He was a tall man and must be well-muscled under his preacherman’s suit. She could imagine him bending an iron bar into an oval without raising cords in his neck. She had no idea how old he was. His hair was as black as his hat and there were no lines on his face and neck, but a depth to his voice, a tone to his skin, suggested maturity, even venerability. When he smiled, he was careful not to show any teeth.

  She had the most peculiar, not unpleasant, squirm inside her abdomen. Indecent ideas came to her.

  Follow me, the Elder’s eyes seemed to say.

  She wanted to answer.

  Suddenly, she was nervous again, watching the sun go down in Elder Seth’s eyes. He drank his chocolate.

  “No, sir,” she said, “nothing.”

  V

  10 June 1995

  The DAR had been racking up a heavy rep in the past few months. They had total-stumped some US Cav patrol in the Painted Desert and some were saying
they had scratched a Maniax Chapter in the Rockies. After tonight, their time in the sun was Capital-O Over. And the Psychopomps would rule!

  Jazzbeaux pushed a wing of hair back out of her eye and clipped it into a topknot-tail. She took off the shades and passed them back to Andrew Jean. A wave of slight sickness passed from her mind and she felt stronger, closer to the edge. Later, she’d think it through; now, she had busyness to bother with.

  Moroni was a typical Irving’s Intermediaries arena, some jerkwater zeroville nobody gave a byte about. They could rumble on Main Street without fear of interruption. The DAR clustered around the bank building, while the ’pomps hung back by a deserted virtual arcade.

  Buildings here were on raised wooden porches, Old West style. Tumbletrash blew through, skipping over the dusted and cracked road like crippled birds.

  Jazzbeaux, still feeling the hugs of her girlies, stepped off the porch and into the street. Torches in the broken street-lamps and at points along the roofs cast firelight onto the street arena. After negotiations were over, the town could burn for all anyone cared.

  She beckoned the Daughter forward with her razorfingered glove, and gave the traditional high-pitched ’pomp giggle. The others behind her joined in, and the giggle sounded throughout the ghost town.

  The Daughter didn’t seem concerned. She came out from her corner daintily and used the bank’s front steps.

  Jazzbeaux got a first good look at Valli Forge, the girl she would probably have to zotz. She was maybe seventeen, and obviously blooded. There were fightmarks on her flat face and she had a figure that owed more to steroids and implants than nature. Her hair was dyed iron-gray and drawn up in a bun, with two needles crossed through it. She wore a pale blue suit, skirt slit up the thigh for combat and a white blouse. She had a throat-cameo with a hologram of George Washington and sensible shoes with concealed switchblades. Her acne hadn’t cleared up yet, but she was trying to look like a dowager.

  More than one panzer boy had mistaken the Daughters of the American Revolution for solids, tried the old mug-and-snatch routine, and wound up messily dead. The DAR were very snazz at what they did, which was remembering the founding fathers, upholding the traditional American way of life, and torturing and killing people. Personally, Jazzbeaux wasn’t into politics. She called a gangcult a gangcult, but the Daughters tried to sell themselves as a Conservative Pressure Group. They had a male adjunct, the Minutemen, but they were wimpo faghaggs. It was the Daughters you had to be conce with.