Route 666 df-1

by Jack Yeovil

  Route 666

  ( Dark Future - 1 )

  Jack Yeovil

  Introducing Elder Seth, a modest and holy man. Not only is he the head of the Josephite Church but the President of the United States has just gifted him the entire state of Utah. Oh, and secretly he wants to open up a rift in space and time allowing daemons to pour through and consume the souls of every living thing on Earth.

  Jack Yeovil

  Route 666

  Dark Future 1

  If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.

  Edgar A. Poe

  Hold it fellas, that don't move me…let's get real, real gone for a change.

  Elvis A. Presley

  For Karen

  PROLOGUE: THE BOOK OF JOSEPH

  I

  Utah Territory, 1854

  "Elder Shatner, look," said Brother Carey, pointing to the high country, "thou canst see a horseman, alone."

  Hendrik Shatner turned casually in the saddle. In the light of the coming dawn, the lines of the ancient and rugged table rocks were becoming visible. Young Carey saw true. A rider was picking a careful way, silhouetted against red-threaded sky.

  Hendrik shivered with sudden insight. If he stopped and dismounted, he could draw a clear rifle bead before the horseman was out of sight. It would not be a certain kill at this range, but he had made more difficult shots.

  His rifle hung from his saddle-horn in its soft leather sheath. Store-bought in the East, it had been his companion for a good few years.

  In the desert stillness, the report of the shot would carry for miles, probably as far as New Canaan. He could not risk alerting the Gentiles. Still, his gut-twinge told him this bloody business would go better without the unknown stranger drifting through. He wished he had availed himself of the skills of the Brethren's Paiute allies and learned how to bring down a hawk with a silent arrow.

  "Is't one of the Indians?" Brother Carey asked.

  Hendrik shook his head. The horseman sat on a saddle and wore a hat His gaze was fixed on his rocky path. To him, the deep crack of the canyon would be a river of dark. The raiding party were bottom-crawling creatures of the shadow. Hendrik tried to believe the stranger was unaware of them.

  "A Gentile," Carey spat.

  "Most like, Brother."

  Carey had been raised in the Brethren of Joseph. His parents, early converts, had died on the Path, run out of one town after another, pestered Westward. The young man had gathered up an unhealthy store of vengeance. He was not alone among the Brethren. Each man of this party had made his blood sacrifices.

  "We'll see them Gentiles off, Elder," Carey said.

  "That's the general idea."

  The rider up in the high country would be some ragged mountain man, drifting West, never settling. Hendrik might have gone that route himself at one time or another, before his brother put on the mirrored spectacles and saw the future laid out like a map. The horseman would not be one of the Gentiles who had fixed on the played-out mining town of Spanish Fork. The pioneers had planted their grain and renamed the place New Canaan.

  The grain shouldn't have taken, but neither should the crops planted at the Josephite settlement. The Lord made the desert flower for the Brethren of Joseph; now Gentiles picked around the edges of the territory, crowding the outcasts. Of course, it seemed passing strange that the Lord should have placed that deep-water well for Gentiles to find rather than the elect. Hendrik recalled that a similar situation had obtained in Old Canaan before Joshua rode up with his trumpets.

  In the dawn quiet, Hendrik heard tiny sounds: hooves on sand and the occasional rock outcrop, the muted rattle of harnesses, the squeak of saddles, the breath of horses.

  This was a necessary action. The Brethren had left too many settlements behind, been driven off good land by soldiers and bandits. Here, in deserts no one but an Indian could want, the Path of Joseph petered out. This was where the Shining City must rise to the glory of the Lord. It was either that or a communal grave.

  "We'll send 'em runnin' back for the States," Carey vowed, vehemently trying to convince himself. "This be the Land of Joseph. Our land."

  "And theirs," Hendrik indicated.

  The Paiute rode silently. Hendrik had expected the party to separate into its constituent elements but everyone was mixed in. The Indians were blanketed huddles on scrawny mounts, interspersed with Josephites in broad-brimmed black hats and long, peg-fastened black coats. A sprinkling of Chiricahua was in with the Paiute, wanderers well off their usual trails.

  The Brethren of Joseph were at peace with the Indian, if not with the United States. Among the elect was the Ute, who had been at the side of Brother Joseph from the first. He was taken, even by Indians, as one of their number, if rarely welcomed as a red brother.

  The Ute had scouted this path and now rode near the head of the party. Even in the twilight, he wore his peculiar mirrored spectacles. It was hard for most to imagine his eyes, though suggestive glimpses troubled Hendrik's nights. The Ute had the coat and hat of a Josephite but his face was burned the colour of blood. Josephites abjured adornment, but the Ute wore a necklace of knuckle-bones.

  "Gentiles whipped my pa, back in Kentucky," Carey said, steeling himself. "Tied him to a wagon wheel, opened his back to the bone, left him to die. And Gentiles hanged Elder Joseph. Thou knowest that better'n anyone."

  Joseph Shatner, founder of the Brethren of Joseph, had indeed been hanged. Hendrik had heard the verdict handed down against his brother, had tried to raise his voice amid the hurrahs of the crowd. The charge was sorcery, a capital crime in certain backward counties of the State of Massachusetts. The law had lain unused among the statutes since the Salem Witch Trials.

  "It has to stop somewhere," Carey continued. "The whippings, the hangings, the bullets in the back. We've found the place where we ought to be, and we must take our stand."

  Hendrik had heard this speech before, in the war with Mexico and in the campaign against the Seminoles. Before fighting, each man convinced himself the cause was just, that he was doing the right thing. Trouble was, the Mexicans and the Seminoles must feel the same way, or else why would they bear arms.

  A shaft of early light angled down into the canyon. The horseman was gone. Hendrik saw round black hats ahead, bobbing like mushrooms in a pot of water. There were about twenty Josephites, with maybe ten Indians mixed in. It was a fair-sized war party.

  "Any rate," Carey said, "we're going to see them Gentiles off."

  "Like I said, that's the general idea."

  II

  Boston, 1843

  Hendrik Shatner counted himself unfortunate to be in the company of not one but two madmen.

  "The only irrefutable argument in support of the soul's immortality," the poet announced, "or, rather, the only conclusive proof of man's alternate dissolution and rejuvenescence ad infinitum is to be found in analogies deduced from the modern established theory of nebular cosmogeny."

  The air of Samuel's Tavern was thick with bad whiskey and worse talk. If one took into consideration the storm-clouds of tobacco smoke gathering under the low ceiling, the aromatic powders upon the faces of every woman present, and the natural odour of the male clientele, the atmosphere was hardly calculated to soothe the nostrils.

  Hendrik was at least accustomed to the eccentricities of his brother, Joseph. This Eddy, Richmond-bred but currently out of Philadelphia, was some new species of lunatic. Hendrik was afraid Joseph and the poet would lock horns in a contest of drink-sotted feeble-wits which would outlast the night and conclude only with the both of them in their graves.

  As debate thundered, Molly O'Doul, whom Hendrik knew to be a not infrequent paramour of Joseph's, pouted and w
riggled by his side, failing to distract him. If matters continued, Hendrik would feel obliged to relieve his brother of this particular burden of the flesh.

  Hendrik abused his throat with another swallow. It raised stinging tears in his eyes. He had spent too much time in the crowded East; he should head for the open West again, soon. He had not been to California since the territory was ceded by Mexico. There were stories of cities of gold.

  He shook whiskey fire from his brain and returned his attentions to the vagaries of the conversation.

  Eddy declaimed against the current state of American letters, not a topic of any particular interest to Hendrik, with occasional footnotes as to the essential nature of the universe. The poet and essayist had come to Boston, which he insisted upon calling "Frogpondium", to attend the deathbed of the Pioneer, a monthly magazine that had published his scribblings and then had the indecency to expire before paying him for his efforts. Eddy was aghast to discover that the periodical, published in this very town, had lived its brief life without extending its fame, and thereby his own, to Samuel's Tavern.

  "Have you not read my tale, 'The Tell-Tale Heart'? My poem, 'Lenore'? My celebrated essay 'Notes Upon English Verse'? The Pioneer took them at ten dollars apiece, but monies have not, I regret to say, been forthcoming. The demise of the periodical is a most severe blow to the good cause, the cause of Pure Taste."

  Hendrik was given to understand that Eddy, a self-declared genius, had not much prospered from his literary efforts. Like Joseph, he could talk up a blue streak but was only minimally able to transform his energies into remuneration.

  "I have expectations of securing, through my contacts with the family of President Tyler, a government post, a sinecure in the United States' Customs House. This position will finance my literary endeavours, freeing me from the pestilential need of providing for myself and my dependants. Until that welcome time, so close as to be within a breath's grasp, I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you to settle a greater portion of the worthy Samuel's bill."

  Despite Eddy's penury, the goodfellows drank steadily for two hours. Hendrik could almost no longer feel the lump of Mexican shot that had lodged in his leg as he galloped away from San Antone. Usually, he took that as a sign that his evening's liquoring was over and that he should transfer his affections to beer. In the current circumstances, he called for another shot. Ernie, the pot-man, was ready with an unstoppered bottle and exchanged a sympathetic look with Hendrik. Evidently, he was more than familiar with the windy likes of Joseph and Eddy.

  At Molly's summoning, a cluster of drab girls gathered around, loitering like coyotes just beyond the firelight. Hendrik was not yet far enough along the whiskey turnpike to discern the attractions of these painted specimens, but he knew well enough that before the bottle was emptied he would make out some startling and hitherto unperceived beauty among the unpromising herd.

  Joseph, eyes bright, had taken a shine to Eddy, whom the brothers had come upon when the tavern was a deal less populated than now. Alone and muttering, he had been scattering spittle over the pages of the book he was reading. He was going through a poem by Longfellow, underscoring phrases stolen from other sources, and his first outburst had been a bilious attack on monied plagiarists. Now the conversational topic had shifted, Eddy was arguing mysterious matters with Joseph.

  "Our perceptions must perforce be inexact," Eddy said, taking some new tack. "A veil hangs before all things and we cannot push it aside. My belief is that devices can be constructed, poetical devices or physical, which would enable us to see clear through this fog as a telescope penetrates the night skies."

  "Aye, there's truth to be seen," Joseph said, taking another gulp of liquid fire. "The Lord's Truth."

  Hendrik knew the preaching fever was almost on his brother. It was Joseph's habit to pursue the pleasures of the bottle, generously sharing them with fellows like this poet, until entirely in his cups. Then Joseph would be possessed of a deep revulsion for his sinful ways and would feel compelled to get up on a table and rail against the generality of mankind. His usual topics were those faults that ran strongest in his own character – drink and dissipation.

  "If we could but shake the casts from our eyes," Eddy continued, "what wonders would not be disclosed to our revivified sight? We could remake the world on ideal lines."

  "Changes are coming, Eddy. The Lord's changes."

  While Hendrik had knocked around the territories for most of his adult life, Joseph had stayed in the States. His travels had all been interior, and wayward.

  If he had been more given to speechifying, Hendrik would have silenced Joseph and Eddy, criticising them for drawing conclusions about the nature of the universe from observations made exclusively in the taverns, chapels and gaudy houses of Massachusetts. A man had no right to an opinion of the world until he had seen the unpeopled desert stretching to the Western horizon, waded through Florida swamps forever expecting a Seminole blade in his throat, outraced the soldiers of Mexico while comrades fell at the Alamo, passed a year in the wilderness without seeing another human soul, held in his hands a treasure in dust that would shame the courts of Europe, losing said fortune along a punishing trail yet counting himself wealthy indeed to come down from the mountains still breathing.

  "This world does not please its maker, Eddy," Joseph said. "It is populated by foul harlots and men of low character."

  Molly's comrades were not offended. Joseph always knew girls in Boston taverns. Originally, he had set out to preach to fallen women but at some point, early in his career as a reformer, he had undertaken to fall along with them. He had passed more than a few nights in jail cells on account of his association with soiled doves.

  Eddy ignored the painted child who was cosying up to him, though when the polite coughs with which she endeavoured to secure his attention turned into racking spasms that spotted her kerchief with blood, he began to show singular excitement.

  Joseph was able to keep up a flow of chatter, though he had a constantly replenished glass in one hand and the substantial bosom of Molly O'Doul in the other. For some reason which Hendrik thought best to leave behind Eddy's universal veil, Molly was providing coin enough to settle the party's bill.

  Suddenly, Joseph slammed down his glass, sloshing liquor on the scarred bar, and cast Molly roughly aside. He leaped up from the stool upon which his backside had been perched, tearing his hat from his head and hammering his breast with both fists. His remaining fringe of hair, wet with whiskey-sweat, stood out in tufts from his scalp.

  "The Lord is upon me," Joseph shouted, "and I must speak His Truth!"

  The hat skimmed, forgotten, through the air and crumpled against the wall. With an agility that always surprised Hendrik, Joseph leaped upon the bar and strutted like a performer upon a stage. Eddy's large, watery eyes goggled and his tiny mouth fell open. At this, even the poet's prodigious flow of talk ran dry. The coughing child – Kitty or Katie or somesuch – looked down as if expecting a thorough chastising.

  The regulars at Samuel's had seen this before. Ernie was ready with his cloth to wipe any drink that was spilled by Joseph's boots, and with his leaded shillelagh to silence any unwise customer who might complain at such wastage. A few of the girls clapped; nothing so endeared Joseph to women as his ability to convince them the fires of hell were nipping at their petticoats.

  Joseph sucked in a lungful of smoky air and Hendrik assumed the draught would be good for a full hour of sermon. Afterwards, Eddy might feel obliged to counter with a recital of one of his poems. As free shows went, it was one of the more expensive. Listening to rot gave a man considerable thirst.

  "Sisters, brothers…" Joseph began.

  His flow died and his mouth stilled. His eyes fixed upon a face in the crowd and words became ashes on his tongue. His cheeks and forehead flushed an angry crimson.

  Hendrik turned to discern the object of his brother's gaze. The lump in his leg shifted sharply and he gritted his teeth at the pain.

&nb
sp; He could still hear the crack of that rifle-shot. Then, he had thanked the Lord, for if the ball had missed his leg and penetrated his horse's ribs, Santa Anna's men would have brought him down and his pains would have been at an end. Now, he cursed the tiny scrap of dull, unreachable metal.

  Standing alone, near the back of the room, was a man in nondescript clothes. His face might be carved of wood: cheekbones knife-edged, mouth a thin line. His eyes were concealed behind extraordinary spectacles, black wooden frames with silvered mirrors for lenses. Whatever Joseph saw in those mirrors, smote him to unique silence.

  III

  Utah Territory, 1854

  The sky was the colour of flame, scattering bloody light on wind-carved mountains and deep-etched rifts. When the canyon widened briefly to admit the light, their shadows lay before them, spindle-legged and scrawny, dark against reddish dust and rocks.

  The party made its way through a narrow fissure which cut deep into the rock. A primordial blow, struck by the hand of God, had cracked the land in two. Another shift might restore the unity, and crush them all like paste between hard faces.

  Hendrik had learned that everything was alive.

  Brother Carey's horse paced evenly. The young Josephite's long rifle jogged against his back as he bent his body either way to avoid overhangs. Hendrik carefully kept to the centre of the path. The walls of the passage were rough. A scrape against an outcrop could take off clothes and skin.

  At the head of the column, the Ute whistled like a night-bird. The sound cut the quiet like a dagger's edge. Beside the Ute, Brother Clegg, who had once been a soldier, held up his hand and whirled it in a signal.

  Step by step, the party emerged from the passage and fanned out as if drilled. Their horses stood in the shadow of the mountain, at the top of a gentle slope. Below was New Canaan.