Route 666

by Jack Yeovil

  “Don’t see many critters like you out on the trail,” the horseman said, grinning. “More’s the pity.”

  Herman Katz had shuffled away. Jazzbeaux didn’t feel like a shower any more. She also didn’t quite know what had just passed between Herman and her. She thought they were both a little wiser and a little more scared.

  “Do I know you?” she asked the horseman.

  “Could be you will know me,” he said. “Most everybody meets me one time or another. It’s what comes with being a saddle tramp. I haven’t been out this way in a while.”

  “You remind me of someone.”

  “I’ve got one of those faces, I guess,” he said.

  “John Wayne, maybe?”

  “I don’t know the feller. He’s from these parts?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  He was hunched over on his horse, bent a strange way as if he had taken some bad wounds a long time ago and left them untreated. She was reminded of a lightning-struck tree that grows strong but crooked.

  “You should cover up more, girl,” he said, wryly. “In the desert day, you forget how cold it gets at night. You’re begging for sunstroke or frostbite.”

  “This is not my normal get-up.”

  Wandering around in Barbie’s Date Rape Outfit was beginning to get monotonous. Somehow, the desert got a lot less deserted if you wanted to sunbathe in the nude.

  “I reckoned not, Jesse.”

  “Jesse?” Nobody had ever called her that before.

  “It’s one of your names, ain’t it? You must have a lot of names, as if you were trying them all on for a proper fit. Like a hat or something.”

  “Jesse?” she said out loud, thinking about it. Just now, she wasn’t really keen on being Jessamyn, and Jesse sounded like a shrivelled version of that.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “Who are you really?”

  The horseman grinned.

  “I’ve got me a lot of names too. I’ve been around a while. I figure to move on now.”

  “No,” she said, “who are you?”

  The horseman’s grin sparkled.

  “You got the question right, Jesse. Maybe next time we meet you’ll be ready for the answer.”

  Lazily, without seeming to take an order, the horse moved off. Jazzbeaux stood and watched the horseman ride off into the sand, away from town.

  She used the glasses. The picture was exactly the same, only there were scarlet, bloody tracks where the horse’s hooves had pressed.

  III

  12 June 1995

  There was a sign up by the roadside, YOU ARE NOW ENTERING SPANISH FORK—A NICE, QUIET, LITTLE TOWN—PLEASE LEAVE IT AS YOU FIND IT. Once the sign was passed, there was a sort of shift and the landscape changed. Brown-orange gave way to green. Large, picturesque houses stood on generous plots of grassy land. Signs on front lawns said KEEP OFF THE GRASS, BEWARE OF THE KILLER DOG, ARMED RESPONSE and TRESPASSERS WILL BE INDENTURED.

  Yorke slowed and looked over at the Quince.

  “Gas stop?”

  “If there’s a place.”

  It wasn’t hard to find. Just inside the city limits was another sign, CHOLLIE’S GAS AND AUTO REPAIR, THIS WAY with an arrow pointing to an old square building. Spanish Fork was obviously a big place for signs. Chollie’s scanned like a cross between a livery stable, a junkyard and a dirigible hangar.

  “This must be the place,” Yorke said. Quincannon grunted and tapped keys on the dash.

  Yorke turned the cruiser into Chollie’s yard and the convoy followed. There wasn’t room enough for all the motorwagons on the forecourt, so they spilled over up and down the street. It was early in the afternoon and quiet, so nobody minded much.

  “Do we know anything about Spanish Fork, Quince?”

  Quincannon was scrolling through Gazetteer. “Town used to be called New Canaan, a long time back. That rings a nasty historical bell. A bird named Colpeper more or less runs the place now. He calls himself a judge, just like Roy Bean. We don’t have anything actually against him on the charge roll, though I doubt if any of these neighbourhood despots would pass muster if we mounted a full inspection. Of course, this is no longer the United States of America, so it’s a moot point whether Colpeper is obliged to follow any of our laws on condoning drug traffic or immoral activities.”

  Elder Seth was outside, knuckles rapping like bird-beaks. It was a good thing the cruiser’s screens were reinforced armaplas. Quincannon down-rolled the window and the Elder’s face dipped into view. His eyes were black pinpoints in the shadow of his hat.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “We need a tank top-up, Elder. Your motorwagons could do with a going over, too.”

  The Elder thought about it.

  “We only have another 50 miles to go to Salt Lake City.”

  “Fifty is just the same as 50,000 in this country if your auto don’t run. Better safe than vulture meat.”

  The Elder considered a moment.

  “What is this place?”

  “Spanish Fork, Elder,” the Quince said. “As a Josephite, you might better remember it as New Canaan.”

  Elder Seth’s mouth curved into an approximate smile. He walked away without saying anything. Yorke had the odd impression his half-complaint had been for show. There was a quality about the Elder just now that suggested he was home and knew exactly what he was doing.

  “He remembers,” Quincannon said.

  “Remembers what?”

  “You’ll see. I’ll just bet this town has a sign up about it. I never did see such a place for signs.”

  Nearby, a sign read: FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ROB CHOLLIE’S. Underneath the slogan was an airbrushed painting of two crossed pump-action shotguns and a neat row of symbols. Inside barred prohibition circles were startled cartoon thieves with stripy jerseys, domino masks and swag bags. Yorke got the impression the cheery little designs were grave markers.

  Many of the resettlers were stretching their legs and kicking tires. More than one radiator was boiling over. Since the business with Sister Maureen, there was less smiling and hymn-singing. Their armour of faith was getting dented out here on the road, but a stubborn backbone of contrariwise determination was being shown.

  Brother Wiggs caught sight of a stand of porno magazines and his face bloodied up, as if he were boiling to do some serious preaching and condemning. There was something weird about the Josephites when you looked at them close: Yorke would swear that two days ago, Wiggs had a regular face, with lumps and moles and marks. It seemed to be smoothing into a handsome mask. Maybe the Lord was clearing up the complexions of the chosen.

  Tyree and Burnside rolled up and checked the place out. Tyree slipped her cashplastic into a vending machine and pulled out a can of Mountain Dew, which she opened with a thumb press, tested with her pen-end analyser and drank at a draught.

  A scrawny kid with coke-bottle-bottom goggles ambled out of the armoured post by the gas-pumps. He wore oil-stained overalls with CHOL IE’S written on them. One of the Ls had peeled off.

  “Fill ’er up,” Quincannon told him, “and check the oil. What kind of mechanics you got in this town?”

  “The best, sir. Chollie don’t come cheap, but he don’t come shoddy neither.”

  Another sign read: MOST OF OUR CUSTOMERS ARE STILL LIVING.

  “You accept US Cav discount vouchers?”

  “How’s that again?”

  Quincannon grinned.

  “You don’t mind my amigo Kirby Yorke here rubber-neckin’ while you’re workin on the ve-hickles and shooting your dang head off if he figures you’re sabotagin’ or over-chargin’.”

  The Quince played with his holster flap for emphasis. The kid goggled with respect.

  “Sounds mighty fair to me, sir.”

  “Excellent. Now where can a man get himself some brunch in this burg?”

  IV

  12 June 1995

  Something buzzed up and down Brother Wiggs’s spi
ne. These days of driving had bent his body into a new position, and it was hard to bend out of it.

  The godless display of foul filth at the magazine rack still assaulted his mind. There were copies of Satanist propaganda like Hustler, Big Butts, National Geographic and Split Beaver mixed in with good Christian publications like Guns and Killing, White Dwarf, The Truth and Creation Science Monitor. The glossy covers burned like vile flames of sin, searing his brain, reminding him of all he had abjured.

  Sister Ciccone gave him succour, leading him back to the motorwagon and clapping his hands together in prayer, forcing him down onto his knees and making him bow his head against her belly. She shook with the fervour of her prayer.

  Together on the filthy tarmac of Chollie’s, they conjoined in worship of the Lord. Theirs was the Path of Joseph, and the things of the world were as far gone from him as the sinful flesh from which he had been freed. He felt a strange tingling in his amended groin, as if the rejected meat were knitting together in a new, purer form.

  Elder Seth was not in the motorwagon. He must be about the Lord’s work in this town. Throughout the nation of Deseret, towns like this must be awaiting news of the convoy’s coming. There would be parades and processions and rejoicing.

  Under his vestments, Brother Wiggs’s skin squirmed and tightened. Months ago, he had been aswarm with bodily hair; now, only the barest wisps remained. Fasting and prayer had trimmed away the subcutaneous fat. His skeleton, even, was changed by the fire of faith.

  Their prayer concluded, Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone stood and adjusted their garments.

  He looked at the magazine rack and felt nothing.

  “I thank thee, Sister,” Wiggs addressed Sister Ciccone. “Thou art ever my guide on the true Path of Joseph.”

  Sister Ciccone bobbed and curtseyed demurely, eyes downcast. Then she looked up at him. The woman had a spot—it might have been called a beauty mark—at the corner of her mouth. In his backsliding moments, Wiggs had paid especial note to the black mark.

  He reached out with his finger and touched the spot. It came away smoothly, leaving no scar. Sister Ciccone’s face was now milky-perfect, lips as colourless as her cheeks, eyes as bright as a doll’s.

  He looked at the spot on his fingertip and flicked it away.

  “We become purer,” she said.

  For a moment, Wiggs wondered what manner of life the Sister had led before coming to the Path of Joseph. Knowing the worst sinners made the best saints, he suspected she had been mired deeply in filth and fornication.

  “We must venture into the centre of this town and spread the Word of Joseph,” she said. “Deseret will rejoice at our arrival. This place must be freed from the rule of sin.”

  They walked past the motorwagons towards Main Street. There were people around. Ordinary, sinning people. Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone were courteous. Wiggs touched his hat-brim and the Sister averted her eyes whenever they passed a citizen.

  No one stopped to stare but Wiggs fancied a certain hostility from some of the townsfolk.

  A sign identified a large building as the old corn exchange video arcade. Outside stood a battered cross. Wiggs bowed his head to the cross.

  “Arise and rejoice, thou brothers and sisters of Deseret,” Sister Ciccone shouted, her voice strong and pure and almost musical. “The day of your deliverance is at hand. Let this be your holy holiday.”

  A fat man in dungarees spat a brown stream and looked put out. A small, thin crowd gathered.

  “Follow the Path of Joseph,” Sister Ciccone sang, “put away fleshly things…”

  The fat man snickered. Several people, already bored, drifted away.

  “I seen Spanish language cartoons that preach better’n that,” the fat man said.

  “This land is blessed. This shall be the Land of Joseph.”

  “I reckon you’d do yourself a big favour by reading that there plaque under that there cross before you mention the Path of Joseph again,” the fat man said, snidely.

  Wiggs scanned the plaque. It was a pack of blasphemous lies about the Brethren. Deadly drivel, poisoning the minds of all.

  “Lies and filth,” he shouted.

  The fat man just laughed.

  The disappointed crowds went about their ways. As the people drifted off, they parted like a curtain. A woman stood still, hands on hips, looking straight at the Josephites. Wiggs recognised one of the she-fiends who had so abused the pilgrims.

  She was tall, dressed in transparent sheaths that indecently displayed her body.

  “Remember me?” she said. “Varoomschka?”

  She was one of the killers. Elder Seth must be told the Psychopomps were in Spanish Fork. He would be interested in recovering his stolen spectacles and cashplastics.

  “We have come to the place of our persecution,” Wiggs said.

  Varoomschka strode across to the monument. The fat man snickered as his eyes followed her long limbs and tight bottom. Wiggs again had a twinge of the old sinful urges, but he conquered them with a blast of fiery purity.

  The Psychopomp had a glossy fashion model face, and long, silky hair that looked like an implant. Though tall and powerful, she was dainty, like a dancer.

  Varoomschka cupped Sister Ciccone’s cheek with one hand and slipped her long fingers into the Sister’s bonnet, unloosing strands of mousy hair with her scarlet nails. Shockingly, the ganggirl kissed the Sister on the lips.

  Sister Ciccone suffered nobly, eyes raised to heaven. She knew that she would prevail.

  “Mmmmm,” Varoomschka said, licking her lips with a scarlet tongue. “You taste like a virgin.”

  “Thou art forgiven, harlot,” Sister Ciccone said.

  She launched a fist at the Psychopomp’s chest. Varoomschka was knocked backwards with surprising force. Her immodest garments showed the plate-sized purple bruise on her upper ribs.

  Sister Ciccone was changing. Like Wiggs, she got stronger as she got purer.

  Varoomschka scrambled upright, a butterfly knife in one hand. She made a series of slicing passes before her as she moved towards the Sister.

  “I’ll open you, hagwitch,” she said. “I’ll drink your kravye with cinnamon.”

  The Psychopomp struck like a scorpion. The knife slipped against Sister Ciccone’s side and slid upwards across her torso. She would be wounded from hip to collar.

  Varoomschka stepped back to admire her surgery.

  The Sister’s vestments were rent and sagged apart. White flesh shone, but no red gash. Sister Ciccone’s skin was inviolate and featureless.

  “Lady, you ain’t got no nipples,” the fat man said. “That ain’t natural.”

  Modestly, the Sister closed the hole in her clothes.

  “And you ain’t got no navel neither.”

  “What are you?” Varoomschka asked. “Some kind of clone thing?”

  Sister Ciccone bowed her head.

  “I am a Sister of Joseph,” she said.

  Wiggs realised his chest was itching and changing, and he felt his own nipples dwindling and receding into smooth skin. He was still flesh, but the flesh was better, stronger, purer. Untroubled by needs, he was fit for the struggles ahead.

  V

  12 June 1995

  The Feelgood Saloon was typical of a thousand other smalltown joints where Tyree had wasted evenings. A couple of gaudy girls were bellying up to the bar, looking for trade. A few old-timers leaned chairs against the walls in the comers, mainlining the poison of their choice. Otherwise, the Feelgood wasn’t doing much business this early, so the Cav managed to requisition a table. The Quince sat with his back to a wall and face to the main entrance, a shotgun stowed under his chair. From where Tyree was, she had a good view of the mirror behind the bar and thus of everyone in the room.

  A green-faced waitress with vestigial gills took their orders. Some said the mutations were the legacy of those long-ago Bomb Tests, but there must be a reason they had grown more common these last few years.

  Q
uincannon laid out kish for the hundred-dollar grill, while Tyree had the vat-grown eggs and Burnside plumped for gristle ‘n’ grits. Tyree’s tasted OK. They had recaff all round. Fake coffee, but real water, a luxury this far into the sand. The Quince even remembered to have the girl send someone over to Chollie’s with N-R-Gee candies for Yorke, who was minding the cruiser.

  The green girl was friendly and efficient. It couldn’t be easy adapting to an aquatic environment when there wasn’t any large stretch of water left in the state.

  The Quince lit up a Premier and offered the pack around. Tyree filled her lungs and had a good, healthy cough. She worried sometimes that she didn’t smoke enough. Dr Nick said there were no noticeable physical benefits unless you were up to a pack a day.

  It would be hours before the convoy could get moving again—one or two of the motorwagons were a refit away from the auto graveyard—so there was no sense in not taking advantage of the comforts on offer. They had been held up burying Sister Maureen yesterday, so they might well be looking to make camp here for the night. Tyree understood there was a motel outside town, so she might have a shot at a real bed.

  This patrol had gone on way too long. Back at Valens, she would have earned some extra pay and a couple of vacation weeks on credit. After they’d hand-held the resettlers to Salt Lake, they’d still have to trek all the way back home.

  Quincannon was talking ancient history again, not from experience but from books. In his down time, the Quince must be something of a library junkie. Tyree hadn’t known that about him. She hadn’t read anything except forms, regulations and the odd comicstrip since military school. Burnside asked the sergeant his opinion of the Josephites’ chances of making anything out of the Salt Lake valley.

  “The Mormons did it once before,” Quincannon replied, “round about 1848, just the same as the Josephites are trying to now. They’d been kicked out of everywhere else ’cause they believed in marryin’ more than one gal at a time. I reckon they’ve given that up these days, along with ‘carnal relations’. They found a place where nothing would grow and no one would live, and turned it into fertile land. The Lord knows how they did it. That Church was founded by some fella named Smith who claimed an angel gave him some extra books of the Bible and a pair of magical spectacles to help him read it. The Josephites have some similar story. Different glasses, but the same angel. Something like that. Maybe that’s why the Elder’s so steamed up about that gal who waltzed off with his shades. You notice how that riles them more than the fellers who got killed. More than the cashplastics she scawed. Hell, I don’t know. The Mormons were straight-laced, but this lot are unnatural, if you know what I mean. They’re like the Mormons, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Amish, the Moonies, the Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Stone-Crazed Baptists all rolled up into one. Me, I’m a good Catholic. Religion’s been downhill since Martin Luther.”