Route 666 df-1

by Jack Yeovil

  "So, what are we doing, Quince, rescuing or policing?"

  "Could be either one, Yorke. Either one."

  The cruiser blip joined the Tyree and Burnside blips on the mapscreen. The troopers were off their mounts, waiting for the heavy brigade. With assumed solids, procedure was to approach as a unit. Only certified gangcults warranted the surprise sneak-up. Quincannon signed for the troopers to saddle up and follow the cruiser. It was the regular formation again.

  "Just slide 'er into the canyon, Yorke. Don't make too much of a noise but don't be too stealth-oriented either. We don't want to provoke any trouble. People in situations are liable to get panicky. Even decent folks have big guns and hair-triggers these days. And, believe me, my favourite song is not 'I Love a Massacre'."

  Yorke took the cruiser off the road and the suspension had to do extra work as it bounced over dirt track. The cruiser was so well-sprung, you could put a shot glass of whiskey in the cup-cradle and not lose a drop over the brim.

  There was a bunch of wheelmarks in the dust. They hadn't bothered to cover their trail. Therefore these were more likely to be victims than violators. The cruiser was gearing up for a fight, just in case. Yorke was still rattled from the patrol's brush yesterday with Boris freakin' Karloff and the Spidercopter of Doom. A row of lights on the dash went green one by one, and flashed regularly. The laser cannons were primed, the mortars ready to slide out of their holes, the directional squirters keyed up for tear gas, the maxiscreamers humming.

  If Custer had had just one of these babies, he would have come back from the Little Big Horn a live hero.

  "You hear that?"

  Yorke strained his ears and Quincannon twiddled up the directional mikes, homing in on a noise.

  "Singing?"

  There was a faint, reedy whine. Voices joined, none too professionally, in song.

  "A hymn?"

  "It's a psalm, Yorke. 'How Amiable Are Thy Tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts'. You should have paid more attention in Sunday school."

  "My parents are secular humanists, sir."

  Quincannon mimed spitting.

  Hymns gave Yorke a bad feeling. "What do you reckon, Quince. The Bible Belt?"

  "Could be."

  Yorke's hands were sweaty on the wheel. He had bad memories of the Bible Belt, a motorised gangcult of Old Testament fundamentalists. They wore spade beards, linen robes, open-toed sandals and "Jesus Kills" tattoos. Their kick was doing the Lord's work, but they were more inclined to Smite the Unrighteous and Put Out the Eye of Thine Enemy than Turn the Other Cheek or Love Thy Neighbour. They had moved into a couple of wide-open townships in Arizona, Welcome Springs and Buggered Goat, and renamed them Sodom and Gomorrah. Then they had razed the places to the ground and righteously slaughtered everyone in sight in the name of the Lord. They could easily have moved this far north.

  Yorke had been captured by the Bible Belt three patrols back, and sentenced to die by the sword for having an ungodly Richard Clayderman chip in his walkman shades. He still owed the Quince for pulling him alive out of Gomorrah, Ariz. And he still owed the Bible Belt for the three plastik and steelspring fingers he was toting on his left hand.

  The cruiser quietly approached the drive-in. There was a camp at one end. A group of people stood together as if at a meeting, scanning up at where the screen used to be. They were the ones singing. Someone with a bigger, blacker hat than the rest stood on the hood of a motorwagon, leading the congregation. The only one who could see the Cav coming, he kept waving his arms, keeping the psalm going.

  Yorke let out a breath. The preacher was not Hezekiah Tribulation, messiah of the Bible Belt.

  "Time to break up the sing-song," Quincannon said.

  He turned on the outside hailers and spoke into the mike.

  "Attention. This is the United States Road Cavalry. We mean you no harm."

  He was obliged by law to say that before he shot anyone.

  "We are here to offer assistance."

  Yorke pulled the cruiser over and saw the blips converge as Tyree and Burnside parked by them. He still had the wheel and was supposed to stay at it in case the hymn-singers proved dangerous. It was the spot he liked. It felt a lot less exposed than getting out and talking to strangers in the Des.

  The lights stopped flashing and glowed steady. The weapons system was waiting for the touch of a switch to cut loose. Yorke wouldn't even have to aim anything, unless he wanted manual override. The cruiser was ready to put a hole in any moving or stationary blip on its sensors without the photoactive Cav strip down its pantslegs.

  The hymn ended and the singers turned to look at the newcomers. One or two went down on their knees and prayed out loud. They were either thankful for the rescuers or making their peace with God before they got killed trying to kill someone else. The Bible Belt went in for praying in a big way. And torture. Somehow, the two always seemed to go together.

  "See you later, Yorke."

  "Sure thing. Quince."

  Quincannon stepped out of the cruiser and walked up to the choir, empty hand outstretched.

  II

  10 June 1995

  There was something strange about the preachie's shades. Jazzbeaux had worn them on and off for nearly a day. They were clearer than regular dark glasses and had a queer effect. She was used to the more-or-less flat, one-third obscured panorama of monocular vision augmented by an optic replacement Once or twice, she thought she scanned things in the periphery that couldn't be there. Indistinct, but unsettling. Sometimes it was like seeing in 3-D again. The disturbing presences hovered in the extreme left field, where she could usually see nothing.

  "Whassamatter, Jazzbie," Andrew Jean asked, "you a loca ladybug? You're spookola in spades this ayem …"

  The Psychopomps were grouped outside Moroni. The convention was that everyone parked neatly like solid citizens and walked into the arena like old-style gladiators.

  Jazzbeaux sat on the hood of the Tucker, dangling the shades from her mouth. It occurred to her the glasses might be some new type of "safe" psychoactive. The lenses might convert light rays into optical illusions. It was possible. She'd read such things in magazines.

  "No probs, Ay-Jay," she said.

  This was important. Some liked a little high before a negotiation. It made them loose, less concerned, more daring. Jazzbeaux preferred going in straight. Back in her warehouse gladiatrix period, she always saved the Kray-Zee pills for after the bout.

  Winning still hurts, she had learned.

  So Long was running through stats on the DAR. In the chapter they were dealing with, there were a few well-known scrappers but no clear contender. That gave the Daughters the advantage; going in, the rep would know exactly who the 'Pomps would put into the ring. Jazzbeaux was facing some unknown.

  "If t'were me picking the negotiator," So Long mused, "I'd go for this fillette, Valli Forge. She's got more confirmed kills than anyone else in the chapter."

  "Bio-amendments?"

  So Long made the shaky sign. "None on record. Interesting chemical dependency, but she's not likely to be in withdrawal crisis when you do the dance."

  Jazzbeaux liked high-fliers. They didn't know when they were damaged. The whole point of pain was to tell you when to protect yourself. Anyone with smacksynth or zonk in their system would stumble around on two broken legs until it was over.

  Impulsively, Jazzbeaux slipped on the shades again. Last night, in the dark, she had scanned too many things. In daylight, they should be safe. The view seemed to ripple and voices whispered in her head. She swore she could hear the preacher man fuming.

  "Best of luck, suestra," Varoomschka said, lying. If Jazzbeaux came out of this badly, Vroomsh would be the obvious candidate for Acting War Chief.

  Jazzbeaux looked briefly at her, and flash-saw a jewelled skeleton wrapped in crinkled plastic. All the 'Pomps looked briefly shrivelled and dead. Then there was a shift and things settled – Varoomschka filled out her see-through jump suit properly.

&nbs
p; Sweetcheeks stuck a wet kiss on her face, leaving a lipsticky heart. Jazzbeaux rubbed the girl's back affectionately, taking in a lungful of the scented air around her.

  After only seconds in the shades, migraine sprouted. A hot nail drove between her eyebrows. Jazzbeaux took off the glasses and thought of throwing them away. She could drive a cyke over them and the distraction would be over. But she just slung them around her neck.

  From inside the Tucker, Sleepy Jane reported the seismograph had picked up ve-hickles on the other side of Moroni. "Company's here," she said.

  The world looked real again but Jazzbeaux found herself wanting to put the glasses back on. It was like when she was eight and Dead Daddy put her on Hero-9 to keep her under control. She'd had to wean herself off the dope over a period of years and still felt the occasional urge for a H-9 hit. She knew a lot of addicts – there were dotted blue bruises behind Sweetcheeks' plump knees and Andrew Jean kept a powder compact filled with zonk – and even more people who were just more comfortable facing the world in an altered state.

  It was reversed for her, like a negative picture. As a child, she'd been drugged for annos on end and never had a say. She remembered her first straight hours, when Officer Harvest put her in solitary after a juvie bust; that experience had been like the revelation some get the first time they go out of their skulls. Since then, she'd become more and more hung up on her straight spells, taking fewer and fewer drugs, spending longer and longer with only her unaugmented senses. One day soon, she would be hooked on reality.

  Unless the shades scrambled her brain.

  It was an irrational longing but after minutes it became irresistible. She fought it for as long as she could, but it was such a silly thing. She was Acting War Chief. She wasn't afraid to wear a pair of glasses.

  "We don't go into town until nightfall," Andrew Jean said. "That's the arrangement."

  "That'll make for a long, dull afternoon," Jazzbeaux replied. "Oh well, que sera, sera ..."

  She fiddled with the shades, tapping her teeth with an arm. She knew she should eat but didn't feel hungry.

  Sweetcheeks was absorbed in a tiny game console; she was hung up on a scenario called "Perfect Date", but hadn't yet made it to the senior prom, let alone gone all the way with the class captain. The one time Jazzbeaux played the thing, she wound up being gang-banged by the football team and dismembered by a serial killer.

  Varoomschka unshouldered her boom-box and slotted in 'Tasha's Ancient Mariner Mambo album. It had never been one of Jazzbeaux's favourites. Tasha had been married, at different times, to Petya Jerkussoff and Andrei Tarkovsky. Moscow Beat said she represented a fusion of Glit and Glum. Jazzbeaux just thought 'Tasha was a pretentious whiner.

  Maybe she was growing up.

  Finally, she snapped, and – trying not to look desperate – casually slipped her head into the glasses, shaking back her hair at the same time. As the bridge settled against her nose, she kept her eye shut.

  She heard Tasha singing,

  "It is an Ancient Mariner

  Who stoppeth one of three,

  And by your hairy tangle beard and that glitter in your eye,

  keep his filthy rotten hand off of me..."

  Jazzbeaux opened her eye.

  This time, the effect was different. Colours were brighter, but less sharp. There were shadows where there shouldn't be. It was a little like a Hero-9 or Method-1 buzz, but without any elation. Somehow, with the glasses on, she felt compelled to look back over her shoulder all the time.

  "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 wi
th 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.