Route 666 Anthology

by David Pringle

  “Guess they were right,” said Jackson.

  “What’s in the truck?” asked Carl.

  “Nothun’ much,” said Jackson. “They missed the med wagon and the chipbasket. Mostly plastic components—not easy for the wreckers to load up, not easy to fence in Memphis. Nobody’s gonna get much joy outa tonight’s party.”

  “Like most nights,” commented the pilot, morosely.

  They fell silent, then, just waiting patiently for the copter to eat up the miles separating them from the wreck. Nobody asked Carl what Bro had been doing in the wrapper. They all knew Bro, and they knew better than to start ribbing Carl about his antics.

  When they got to the crash-site everything seemed quiet.

  The truck was lying on its side; the mine it had run over had shredded its tires but hadn’t cracked the shell of the cab. The rear doors had been blown open, but that had happened afterwards, when the wreckers had swarmed in from the rocks.

  There were no dead bodies to be seen—which probably meant that Bro and the driver hadn’t been in any condition to put up a fight, because Bro wasn’t the kind to let his truck be run off the road without firing a shot in return. Carl could only infer that Bro had been knocked out or killed when the truck turned over.

  As the copter made a second low pass Carl saw that the looting of the truck had been abandoned with less than half the cargo removed—probably because the wreckers had realized that it wasn’t sufficiently valuable to warrant waiting around; they knew GenTech procedure, and knew that reinforcements would soon arrive. For drugs or electronic equipment they might have stayed put to take potshots at the bird, but no one sane was going to go up against missiles and heavy lasers for the sake of a few plastic doodads, even if they had come a long way from home in search of the pickings.

  Even so, the pilot made a third and slower pass while Jackson and Bronski shone the searchlights into every gully that might have been a hiding-place for bikes or a jalopy. There was no sign of any vehicles, and if there were people hiding out, they were more concerned with keeping out of sight than anything else.

  The bird settled, and the pilot took up the radio to report in, while Carl and Jackson leapt out and ran towards the cab. Bronski and Coleman got out the other side and ran to the rear.

  When he got to the cab Carl shone a flashlight through the windscreen, hoping that he was going to see Bro inside, alive and well and cursing his luck—but waiting patiently like a sensible guy to be pulled out.

  But Bro wasn’t even there. There was only the driver, folded up where he’d fallen, looking very dead.

  Carl pressed himself close to the windscreen while Jackson tried to peer over his shoulder. His first thought was that Bro might have been sleeping in the bunk at the back of the cab, behind the seats—but the curtain screening off the bunk wasn’t drawn, and the beam of his flashlight shone brightly enough to show him that there was nowhere anything as big as a body could be. He moved the beam back to the driver, to make absolutely certain that he was dead before turning away to wonder what had happened to Bro.

  The guy was dead all right; the flashlight showed him that there wasn’t the shadow of a doubt about that. It also showed him that the dead man’s face was discoloured, and that the flesh seemed already to be shrivelling upon the bone.

  Quickly he moved the beam away from the face, and stood up, making Jackson start backwards.

  “He’s dead,” said Carl, brusquely. “Bro’s not there. Are you sure none of the other trucks picked him up?”

  “No way,” said Jackson. “They all know better than to break procedure. They wouldn’t stop for their own brothers, let alone yours. If Bro’s not in there, he must’ve got out. Must be crazy, though, with nothin’ out here but the desert and the wrecking crew. Unless….”

  “Unless what?” said Carl, coldly. He was trying to think, and he didn’t want an argument, but he couldn’t let it pass.

  “Hell, Carl,” said the other. “I know it ain’t like that—but the bosses are going to wonder why a guy who ain’t supposed to be on a truck in the first place ain’t around when his friends come to fetch him.”

  “He’s my brother,” said Carl, acidly. “He is not an inside man for a wrecking crew—you got that?”

  Jackson fell back one more pace. “I got it!” he answered. “Just hope the commander gets it, too—an’ the guys you’re working for now.”

  “They reported another stowaway, didn’t they?” said Carl. “There was someone else is the cab, wasn’t there?”

  “Hell no,” said Jackson, in an aggrieved tone. “What is this, Carl—we did you a favour, man.”

  Coleman came up to join them, and said: “What’s going on?”

  “The girl!” said Carl. “Some stupe let her go again! There was a girl in the cab, with Bro and the driver—she must have been hiding in the back when they pulled out, and she didn’t show until the rig ran off the road. As soon as he saw her, Bro must’ve lit out… and she’s gone too… the Doc’s gonna kill somebody for this. Oh hell, you don’t have the least idea what I’m talking about, do you? Forget the load—we have to find the girl! And Bro… if he’s still alive.”

  “You’re crazy!” said Jackson. “There’s no girl, I tell you. You know the regs—we’re only here to pick up survivors, an’ if your brother don’t have the sense to stay with the rig, he ain’t a survivor. We’re goin’ home, Carl. They’ll send out a spare rig with a couple of sneakers as soon as it’s light, and if your brother wants to come in then, he can.”

  “No!” said Carl, desperately. “You don’t understand. The girl… Doc Zarathustra’s guinea pig…”

  “Hell, man,” said Coleman, “there ain’t no girl. They’d’ve told us if there were. Your brother should’ve known better than to leave the rig, ’specially with wreckers around. You know we can’t let the bird sit there, with two hours left until dawn—that’s time for a whole goddam army to sneak up on us. Come on, man—we gotta go.”

  Carl shook his head in frustration. They didn’t understand—but he wasn’t supposed to explain. He’d said too much already.

  What on earth was he supposed to do?

  Only one thing was certain: he had to find Bro—if Bro wasn’t already lying in a ditch, blue-black and shrivelled up. And even if Bro had met the same fate as the driver, he still had a job to do. He had to find the girl, all over again. Maybe Bro was right, and Doc Zarathustra was the wrong man to work for—not because he was a creep, but because he was too damn careless with his guinea pigs.

  “Go!” said Carl. “Just get in the bird and fly. I can’t come with you. I’ll come in with the sneakers in the morning, if I can.”

  They stared at him as if he were mad.

  “Just go!” Carl yelled.

  “Hell, Carl…” Jackson began—but then Coleman pulled at his sleeve, and said: “Let him stay, if he wants to. We shouldn’t have brought him in the first place. You think they’ll want him and his crazy brother back after this? Let’s go, like he says.”

  Jackson still hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he turned with the others and ran back to the waiting bird. Carl didn’t move a muscle until it rose into the air again, the wind from its rotor blades swirling sand into his face. He watched it climb into the starry sky, until its searchlights blinked off and it disappeared.

  Carl turned, flashlight in hand, to look back at the dark cab of the upturned truck. He didn’t shine the light into the cab again, because he had no wish whatsoever to look at that unnaturally-decaying corpse. Instead, he looked for footprints in the sand—for some sign of the direction in which the other passengers must have gone. But the loose sand had been blown about too much, and he couldn’t even see which way the wreckers had gone.

  He put his hand to his mouth, and yelled “Bro!” as loudly as he could, and then repeated it for good measure. Then he shone the light on the ground, and began walking slowly away from the road, in the direction which the girl would most likely have taken.

>   He had been walking for only a few minutes when he heard a sound ahead of him, and he brought up the machine-gun ready to fire.

  “Carly?” said a small voice, stretched into a virtual whimper. “Carly, is that you?”

  Carl cursed, and jerked the light up, shining it in the direction from which the voice had come.

  “Bro?” he said. “What in hell are you playing at?”

  He expected Bro to come out of the shadows then, but nothing happened. Carl just stood still in the darkness, feeling foolish.

  “Stay where you are, Carly,” said Bro’s voice—not very distant, but no closer than before. Carl could hear fear in it, and awful anguish. That wasn’t like Bro at all; whatever faults he had, lack of guts wasn’t one of them.

  “Where’s the girl, Bro?” said Carl. “What happened to the girl?”

  “That’s just it, Carly,” said the plaintive voice from the dark. “Ain’t no girl. Just me and him, Carly. Whatever she had, I got it too, Carly. You hear me—I got it too.”

  Carl felt as if a dagger of ice had been plunged into his chest. “That’s impossible, Bro,” he said. “The Doc explained…I tried to explain to you.”

  “Then the Doc’s a freakin’ liar!” said Bro, his voice suddenly loud, with a screeching edge to it. “Go back and look at the guy, Carly—an’ you come back and tell me I ain’t got it. You think I sprung the girl, after what I saw in that freakin’ roadhouse? I ain’t such a smartass as you, Carly, but I ain’t no moron. I got it, Carly, an’ I feel as sick as a pig. I’m gonna die, Carly. You gotta stay away from me—you should’ve gone back with the bird.”

  The Doc’s a freakin’ liar! The words seemed to echo in Carl’s empty skull. So it was a disease after all—germ warfare. And if Bro had it, what about him?

  But then he remembered something else that Bro had said, last time they were alone together out in the darkness. I’m bein’ bitten to death by freakin’ skeeters! I heard tell of guys who got AIDS from skeeter bites, ’cause the freakin’ skeeters hadn’t been too choosy about who they’d been bitin’ earlier that night.

  He’d heard something like it himself—that when a mosquito bit you, it first injected an anaesthetic, and with that anaesthetic came blood cells from its last victim. The girl’s victims had died because their own red blood cells had been poisoned, and they’d had none of the Doc’s new ones to reproduce and take their place. If Bro had become poisonous too, that meant he had the same kind of cells multiplying inside him that the girl had—and like her, he was producing new blood to replace the old corpuscles which were being killed.

  “Calm down, Bro,” said Carl, quietly, “I think I know what’s happening. I don’t think you’re going to die, Bro. I think you’re going to be all right. Except…”

  He broke off suddenly, not wanting to go on. But for once in his life, Bro was able to follow the line of the argument.

  “Except if I don’t die. I’m going to be like her,” said Bro. He wasn’t shouting any more, but his voice still had that edge to it. “Is that what you’re trying to say, Carly? That I might not die—but I’ll have to spend the rest of my days in a goldfish bowl. Hell, Carly, don’t think I ain’t thought of it. I ain’t no moron, Carly, I told you that. But I got it, Carly—anywhichway you look at it, I got it, ain’t I? Live or die, I got it.”

  For once, Carl had to admit that his brother was right. He had it.

  Carl shone the flashlight on the back of his own hands, looking for the blue lines which marked the veins. He too had been bitten by mosquitoes—and he had ridden out here in the copter with three other men. If he had it too, that copter might not make it back to base. If he didn’t have it… then Bro was right to be hiding, out there in the darkness, because he was never going to be able to touch his brother again. Not ever. Unless…

  “Hell, Carly,” said the plaintive voice, “I feel awful. I really do.”

  “Yeah,” said Carl. “I know you do, Bro. I know.”

  He didn’t feel too good himself—but he didn’t feel as if his blood was in turmoil, with new red cells multiplying as fast as old ones died. He felt nauseous, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Bro had it, and he didn’t.

  Just Bro’s luck, to find the one mosquito which could do him real harm.

  The night was silent now—he couldn’t even hear Bro breathing. The wreckers were long gone, and no one else would come by, this far out in the desert—not until morning, when a truck and a couple of sneakers would ride out to pick up the part of the load which the thieves had left behind.

  “I have to go back to the truck, Bro,” he said, in a tone which was as flat and calm as ever. “I have to raise Joe Stenner on the radio, if I can. The Doc has to send a body-bag out with the sneakers. You have to go back the way the girl went back. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  There was silence for a minute or two, and then Bro sighed, as though he had been holding his breath for a long time, and let it out all at once. “I don’t have a lot of choice, do I?” he said, bitterly.

  “No you don’t,” said Carl. “I’m sorry.”

  As he was turning away, though, the voice came again, as plaintive as ever: “Don’t let them kill me, Carly. I know I ain’t no use to you no more, but don’t ever let them kill me.”

  “I won’t,” Carl told him. “Believe me, you’re going to be all right.”

  It didn’t seem enough. Not for his little brother. It was all he could say, but it wasn’t enough.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dr Zarathustra, looking at Carl with those frosty blue eyes. “I truly am.”

  “No you’re not,” said Carl, colourlessly. “Not truly sorry. That mosquito saved you some trouble, didn’t it? In time, you’d have done the same thing yourself, with a hypodermic syringe. An Adam for your Eve. Events have just got a little ahead of themselves, that’s all.”

  The scientist raised his blond eyebrow just a little. “All right, Carl,” he said. “I see that you do understand what I’m doing here, better than I thought you would. And you do see, don’t you, that it’s all in the cause of progress. Your brother, like Mary, has become a stepping-stone on the way to the future.

  “It’s not all bad, you know. What was your brother, on the outside? What was he really good for? He would always have held you back, Carl. He was no good for the kind of work you want to do. He knew that when he hitched a ride on the wrapper, heading for Kansas. He was trying to do you a favour, let you go your own way. This is better—he’s off your back, and he’s safe. Out there, even working for GenTech, he’d be just one more hired gun waiting his turn to stop a bullet. Now, he has a chance to outlive us all.”

  “It’s one way of looking at things,” said Carl, calmly.

  “It’s the best way,” the man in the neat white coat assured him.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any prospect of curing them?” asked Carl. “Keeping the poison inside their veins, where it was supposed to be.”

  “In time,” said Zarathustra, “anything’s possible. But we’d have to be very sure, before we let them out.”

  “That’s what I figured,” said Carl. “You think she could ever get to like him?”

  “Why not? She’s a very lonely girl, and he’s all she’s got.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like it if there were children, some day.”

  The scientist hesitated for a moment, but Carl knew by now that Zarathustra was not, in his heart of hearts, a secretive man. All his requests for Carl to keep silent were a sop to the demands which GenTech made of him; he wanted to share his ideas, and be known for the worldmaker he believed himself to be—and Carl, now, was uniquely fitted by circumstance to share, and to know.

  “I already did a pregnancy test,” said the scientist. “Because of the rape. There’s already a baby, Carl. I’m sorry it’s not your brother’s.”

  Carl looked away for a moment, but not for long. “Bro was right, you know,” he said. “We should never have got involved
. We were okay as ordinary mercy boys. I got too ambitious. But it’s too late to turn around now—it’s working for the brave new world, or nothing.”

  “That’s right, Carl,” said Zarathustra. “I don’t think you’ll regret it, in the long run.”

  Carl stood up as if to leave the office, but he didn’t turn towards the door. Instead, he looked down at the seated scientist. “I’m still abandoning him,” he said, softly. “Even if I work for you for the rest of my life, as long as we’re on different sides of the glass, I’ll always feel that I’m letting him down.”

  “Is there an alternative?” said Zarathustra, mildly.

  Carl knew that he was only playing dumb. There was an alternative, and they both knew what it was.

  “Would you do it, if I asked you to?” asked Carl, his voice suddenly intense. “Would you play mosquito with your hypodermic syringe, and shoot me full of your bright new blood, so I’d have to go in there with him? Bro, me and the girl… all together.”

  “The eternal triangle?” said Zarathustra, in a sarcastic tone which implied that Carl could not be serious. “Yes, I’d do it, if you wanted me to. The cause of progress needs as many volunteers as it can get. But you don’t want me to, do you? In fact, when it comes down to it, Carl, you really couldn’t stand the thought of being that close to your brother, forever and ever, could you?”

  Carl shook his head. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t. But he could. He would have come back from Kansas City, you know. He always came back, because he really does need me.

  “When he understood what had happened to him last night, and knew how he would have to spend the rest of his life, he was scared half to death. But he wouldn’t come near me, because he was desperate to make sure that I wouldn’t end up like the driver. He was prepared to stay away from me, then—forever. Because I’m his brother.

  “In the end, though, he’ll figure it all out. He’ll know that I could be in there with him, if I chose. I really don’t know what he’ll want me to do. He might not say a word, but he’ll know, when his stupid slow brain gets around to figuring it out, that I could be in there with him, if I chose to be.”