Route 666

by Jack Yeovil

  Tyree drank her recaff and ate her eggs. Burnside kept asking questions and passing comments. “You have to admire those old settlers, Quince, making something of nothing like that.”

  “Well, Wash, there was another side to the story. A side Elder Seth ain’t gonna be too keen on hearin’ told again. You can bet they’ll remember it here in Spanish Fork, though. While the Mormons were settling Salt Lake, the Josephites were carving out claims for themselves in the Indian Territories. A feller by the name of Hendrik Shatner, brother of the Joseph who founded the Brethren, was their head man, and he had some mighty strange allegiances. In the 1850s, federal troops were sent against the Church of Joseph, and the Josephites had a little war with the US of A. It seems the Josephites weren’t so all-fired holy back then. No sir, when a group of regular Christian settlers moved in and staked a land claim right here, when this place was called New Canaan, the Josephites got together with the Paiute Indians, painted themselves up like redskins, and had themselves one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of the West.”

  She hadn’t liked to say, but as Quincannon was speaking, the swinging doors opened silently and a tall man walked into the Feelgood. Elder Seth. The Quince must see him but he was into the flow of his story. She knew she should say something, try to shut the sergeant up, but somehow she found herself unable to open her mouth.

  With Elder Seth were his two most devoted puppies, Wiggs and Ciccone. They looked different indoors, their faces harder.

  Quincannon kept on talking. “Them Josephites carved up those regular Christians like you’d carve up a Sunday goatroast. The Prezz probably don’t know much history or he wouldn’t be handin’ a state to these fellas. Who knows, maybe one day Seth will take it into his head to make war again against the United States of America. Then we’ll be in a pretty pickle, ’cause I reckon any man who can haul a bunch of candy-ass resettlers a couple of thousand bloodstained miles through the Des wouldn’t be no pushover.”

  Tyree looked from Quincannon to Elder Seth, comparing the Quince’s expressiveness, making handsigns as he spoke as if communicating with an Indian, and the Elder’s almost mechanical impassivity. If the Josephite was offended, he gave no indication of displeasure. Indeed, Tyree thought that she could make out a real expression on his face, like the ghost of a smile around the very edges of his thin lips.

  … and, in her mind, she had funny pictures She thought she saw reflections in Elder Seth’s eyes, but not the reflections of the saloon and its patrons. Under an open sky, in Elder Seth’s pupils, red-smeared savages ran riot, hacking at fleeing men. Flaming arrows struck home, red knives did their work, kids fell under horses’ hooves, women’s hair came bloodily loose. Tyree thought she heard the echoes of screams and whoops and shouts. And, in the midst of the carnage he had wrought stood Elder Seth, dressed all in black with red on his face, a long rifle in his hands. The ground under his boots was bloodied…

  “Leona?”

  She snapped out of it. “Sergeant Quincannon?”

  “Leona, you were dreaming.”

  Elder Seth walked further into the saloon, until he was standing directly across from Quincannon.

  “No, I…”

  The Elder’s shadow fell on the sergeant. Quincannon looked up at the man. He held a fork of mule kidney up at Elder Seth, then popped into his mouth.

  “I am given to understand the raiders who attacked us on the road are in this town,” Elder Seth said, evenly, “staying at the motel. These people have stolen from the Brethren of Joseph. They have important relics. You will help me secure their return.”

  The Quince chewed slowly. “Hold on a moment. How many of these raiders are there?”

  “That’s of no matter. Sister Ciccone has already been assaulted by one of their number.”

  “It may not matter to you, Elder, but I’ve got a troop strength of four.”

  “My people will help.”

  Quincannon swallowed and stood up. He wasn’t quite as tall as the Elder but he did his best to look the man in the eye.

  “That’s a comfort. If it comes to preachin’ the crap out of the ’pomps, I’m sure you’ll be a big help.”

  That shadow smile was back. “In the Bible,” Elder Seth began, “it says there is a time to every purpose under Heaven.”

  “So, now it’s fightin’ time.”

  “If needs be.”

  Quincannon shrugged, and hauled up his shotgun. “OK, Elder, lead the way to the motel. I’ll call Yorke in for backup with the cruiser.”

  Tyree and Burnside stood up, leaving unfinished meals, and unflapped their holsters. Tyree knew her piece was up to standard. She’d cleaned it twice since the patrol began.

  “Sergeant, I said the raiders were staying at the motel. I did not say they were there at this moment.”

  Quincannon had been halfway to the door. He turned, looking highly fed up. Somehow, the Elder had made a fool of him.

  One of the gaudy girls turned on her barstool. She had an eyepatch.

  “Hello preacherman,” she said to Elder Seth, “come for your shades?”

  VI

  12 June 1995

  So, she was back here again, facing the preachie. She had his glasses on a thong around her neck. She was horribly tempted to look at him through the shades, but terror prevented her. She remembered Herman Katz’s shrivelled skull and the bloody hoofprints. If inoffensive things were made horrible, what would be revealed of Elder Seth through his magic mirrorshades? The circuits of her optic implant buzzed, and she had the feeling it was too late, that having looked through the glasses, she would forever see more than she should.

  “Hands away from those guns, yellowlegs,” she said, pulling the rainbow scarf away from her semi-automatic pistol, “or I’ll redecorate the saloon with your insides.”

  The sergeant and the two troopers held their hands out in front of them and looked at each other. The sergeant carefully set his shotgun down between plates of half-finished food and stood away. Jazzbeaux would rather not fight all three, since she knew a little about the Cav weapons training. Everyone else in the saloon was quiet. The jukebox was running down, some Kenny Rogers number slowing to a growl. The barman was backing away.

  “And keep those pretty-pretty fingers off that scattergun you got down in the slops, darlin’ dear.”

  The barkeep slapped his hands on the bar and left them there. Jazzbeaux nodded appreciation and blew him a kiss. He flinched. She turned back to the Elder.

  “If you want the shades, you’ll have to take them, lover.”

  Elder Seth walked across the room. Jazzbeaux felt the Psychopomps with her—Andrew Jean, Sleepy Jane, Sweet-cheeks—edge away, leaving her alone at the bar. It was between her and the preacherman. She flipped the safety and chambered a round.

  The Elder stood in front of her now. If she exerted just a hint of pressure on the hairtrigger, she’d fill his chest with explosive bullets. He’d be cut clean in two. She had the unhealthy feeling that his face still wouldn’t move.

  She flicked her tongue in and out. “Come on, preachie!”

  He was as close to her as a dancing partner now, the barrel of her gun resting on his sternum. Jazzbeaux felt she was alone in the universe with the man.

  His hands came up and he took the shades. She was sure he would rip them away, but he merely lifted them to her own face and eased the bars over her ears. She shut her eye but felt silly, then looked through the glass.

  The Elder’s face changed in a second. The features became liquid, flowed into each other, and became features again. But different features. He had her daddy’s face, she realised. Bruno Bonney’s face when he was hopped up on zonk, and pulling his studded leather belt out of his jeans, mishkin drool on his chin, pain in his brain, death on his breath.

  “Jessa-myn,” Elder Seth said with her dead daddy’s voice, “gimme the scav. Gimme the scav now, or it’ll go harsh with you.”

  Her forefinger had gone to sleep on the trigger. She tri
ed to lire the gun but her godrotted finger was stone. It wouldn’t move. The gun shook and she tried to gouge into the preacherman’s chest with the barrel. His hands were on her now, fingers digging into her waist.

  “Jessa-myn!”

  Her cheek was wet, she knew. She was crying. No, her optic was leaking biofluid. She tried to singe through the patch, to blast the preacher’s hat off. The amendment wouldn’t burn and she had a feedback headache.

  She had ripped out her daddy’s throat when he had tried once too often to take things out on her. That had been her first, and she had done it with just claw-gauntlets. Now, when she needed to kill him again, she had a fine piece of high-precision deathware ready and couldn’t bring herself to exert the pull you’d need to open a tube of Pivo.

  Elder Seth had his own face back but her Daddy’s hung just behind his skin, ready to peer through at her.

  Bruno Bonney wasn’t done with her yet.

  Elder Seth took the gun away from her and put it on the bar, between shot glasses. His other hand crept up her side, sliding through her armpit, reaching around her back, pulling her to him.

  He leaned his face close to hers. She thought he was going to kiss her and shuddered at the anticipation of his reptile touch, but he just let his eye loom as close to the lens of the spectacles as her own was behind it.

  She didn’t want to look into his huge eye. She knew she’d be dead if she did that.

  But she looked…

  … and she saw such horrors.

  VII

  12 June 1995

  Outside everything, the Summoner held the girl by the shoulders and watched her face as the truth crowded into her mind…

  After nearly a century and a half, he was back. The name didn’t matter: Spanish Fork, New Canaan. The place had other names. It was a site of predestined power. Once, he had put his mark here. Now, he would rekindle the flame.

  Across the featureless, white plain rushed a crimson wave, driving before it hordes of ghosts.

  The girl shivered and screamed, pestered by her own phantom. She was crying for her father, or crying against her father. It didn’t matter. Nichevo, as she would say.

  Horsemen passed by, their eyes shot away. Farmers trudged from the fields, hair askew on encrusted scalps. Pilgrims were borne down under the rush of blood, and embedded into the white sands. An eternal battle continued, as the living and the dead clashed, vast ignorant armies in a war only the Sum-moner truly understood.

  Here, the Dark Ones walked, preparing themselves for the earthly plain. The desolation was magnificent.

  This was, for the Summoner, a peaceful juncture, a moment of calm. He was poised on the lip of the next phase of the ritual, the mass spilling of blood. At this second, he was alone with this tiny girl, almost intrigued by the rudimentary workings of her mind.

  “Jessa-myn,” he said to her, in her father’s voice, “now it’s just us two, all alone and the evening ahead of us.”

  She was still horror-struck.

  In the girl, the Summoner sensed the seed of something fine, something strong, something strange. When the moment was over, he should snuff her like a candle before her flame grew to a brushfire. It was even conceivable she could hinder him. She had the makings of a spirit warrior inside, as a marble block conceals the statue that must be dug out by the sculptor.

  But he would miss her. There were so few in his league. It would be a shame to finish her before she could truly test him.

  That was sentimental nonsense. There were others, and they would come forth when it was time. They would give him enough trouble. There was a woman in Switzerland, a man in Rome. And there were men and women in the United States, already bloodied in the Dark Ones’ killing grounds. The Op in Memphis, the woman from Denver, the Navajo, the horseman…

  He took Jessamyn’s head and turned it away from his face, admiring her clean profile as she saw the plain extending away to infinity. Her white face was pinked by the reflection of the crimson wave that towered across the plain, rushing closer…

  Jessamyn breathed something that might have been a profanity or a prayer.

  In the torrent, creatures danced. They might be called demons and imps. Lost souls were turned inside out and left behind on the sands, exhausted forever. The wave ate everything…

  The Summoner was unique. He could ride the wave…

  VIII

  12 June 1995

  Tyree didn’t believe it but she saw it anyway.

  The Psychopomps—one creature of indeterminate sex with an orange cockatoo haircut, and two shocked girls—stood back and watched Elder Seth go to work on their leaderine. And he just glided across the floor and picked her up like the hero of a romance comicstrip cruising for truelove in the disco hall.’

  The jukebox was stuttering into life again, some zonked version of “The Tennessee Waltz”.

  With a deep revulsion at herself, Tyree realised she was actually jealous of the one-eyed ’pomp. There was something badly wrong, and Leona Tyree was part of it. Quincannon had his side arm out now but wasn’t doing anything with it.

  Elder Seth, dancin’ with his darlin’, whispered something Tyree couldn’t hear in the girl’s ear and put her sunglasses on. Her mouth opened in a silent oval scream.

  It was as if an invisible but blinding light filled the room. Tyree found herself blinking, rubbing her eyes as tears flowed. Everyone in the bar was doing the same. But there hadn’t been any real light.

  The Psychopomp was slumped over the bar, one arm hanging limp, throat exposed. Elder Seth supported the girl and heaved her up onto the stool. She was either dead or in a dead faint. He lifted her head and took her dark glasses off. They were the old-fashioned, metal-rimmed, non-wraparound kind.

  He slipped the mirrorshades on and his face was complete.

  The Elder picked up the fillette’s handbag and emptied it on the bar. The cockatoo laid a hand on him, but backed off instantly, face clown-white under make-up. Elder Seth sorted rapidly through the ’pomp’s belongings.

  … Tyree could see the burning village in her mind again. Sod huts, log cabins, cattle and goat pens, all ablaze. Horsemen riding through, whooping, swinging weapons. Men and women ridden down and killed. And the Elder, on his knees, rubbing a small dead thing into the dirt, squeezing out the blood.

  Elder Seth found what he was looking for.

  “My little demon, I believe,” he said to the cockatoo, holding up a cashplastic. He made it disappear in his hand like a conjuring trick. He reached out and picked up the unconscious girl by the throat, hauling her upright as if she were a straw doll. Her arms dangled, her head lolled and her feel scraped the floor. Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone held the batwing doors open. Holding the ’pomp like a plucked turkey, Elder Seth left the saloon.

  Quincannon followed him and Tyree snapped to it, followed by everyone else in the saloon.

  The sun wasn’t yet down, but evening bugs were in the air. The street was crowded. Something had brought the people of Spanish Fork out of their houses. The resettlers were crowded around like a congregation, and a cadre of Psychopomps gathered like a gang spoiling for trouble.

  The skies were darkening. There was a tang of blood in the air.

  Elder Seth carried his prize through the ranks of parked vehicles and dropped her in the middle of the road. Her head cracked on the blacktop, and she moaned, stirring a little. Blood was smeared where she had fallen.

  IX

  Six hundred threescore and six! 666!

  The Summoner heard the Number in his mind, ringing like a chorus, voiced by a thousand inhuman throats. It had been left for him in the writings of all the religions, a sign to be read.

  There was blood on the road. The road to the Prime Site. And that was as it should be. The blood was the main ingredient of the ritual. It was there to guide the Dark Ones, to call them down, to help them gather at the City, the Shining City, the City of Dreadful Night, the City of the Last Days. He had the glasses now, and he
had the Key.

  666!

  He knelt and took Jessamyn’s head in his hand, gathering a forelock of her hair in his fist. The girl was unconscious, still terrified on the plain outside space. A pity. It would be better if she were awake. He slammed the back of her head against the hardtop. Her skull bounced a little, like a coconut.

  666! The Number of the Beast!

  The Summoner smashed Jessamyn’s head against the road again. Blood flew, splattering in a neat arc, and sank in like butter on a griddle.

  666! The Number of the Dark Sun!

  He remembered New Canaan, remembered fighting alongside Old Hendrik Shatner and the Paiute. To him, 1854 was but a minute past. Then, he had been called the Ute. He had pulled a child out of a burning cabin. It had been grateful but started kicking and squealing when his mule-skinning knife came out. Burned flesh was no good to the Dark Ones, only spilled blood.

  666! The Number of the Apocalypse!

  He had seen so much blood, down through the centuries. He had been born in blood, continually rejuvenated in blood. There were many places, many names, many faces, but the blood was always the same. Whether on the Mutia Escarpment in Africa, or Judea under the Herods, or Pendragon’s Britain, or Temujin’s Eastern plains or Bonaparte’s Empire or the fields of Kampuchea, the blood was always the same.