Route 666 Anthology

by David Pringle

  A booted leg delivered a heavy kick against the forecourt barricades. The Titheman started to swing the flail; slow, rhythmic smacks against the sheet iron. Eventually Tasha appeared from the workshop and unfastened the locks.

  Joe strained to hear the conversation carried away on the wind. Tasha was shaking her head vigorously, doing a good job.

  Then the Titheman hit her.

  Small mercy it was a fist and not the flail. Joe tensed the coil of flex between his wrists and notched a debt on his account.

  Another bike appeared up ahead. The rider killed the engine and peered down the street towards the station. The sixth Titheman looked round and waved the other rider away. Joe allowed himself a sour grin. That’s it, Greaseball. Show us you can handle her all on your own.

  The other rider fired up and turned the bike round. The Titheman followed Tasha into the workshop. Joe slipped out across the road, trailing the flex behind him.

  “And let’s see how you handle this.”

  The Titheman reappeared, stuffing a wad of bills into his leathers, tipping the last swills from a beercan into his gut. As the backblast from the pipes cut into the night, Joe knotted the flex around a stanchion dug into the sand and pulled the wire tight.

  The bike pulled away from the station on a muscle-torqued wheel-lift. By the time the front end dropped she was rising sixty and heading straight up the street. Joe stroked the knot of flex.

  “Be good, baby.”

  Thirty metres on, the Titheman pulled his final wheelie. The bike cartwheeled front end over back and skated the sand-caked street, metal sparking red in the darkness. The Titheman flew off the bike and chewed into the dirt.

  Joe hit the kill button on the bars of the hog then crossed to check out the rider. The big, brutal body was lying face up, gazing at the stars. Joe lifted the smokeglass visor and looked at the bearded face staring up in dumb disbelief. Very ugly; very dead. Joe bent down and unfastened the leather jerkin.

  “Hope you don’t mind, pretty boy. I just wanna borrow your party dress.”

  The bike was razored up as good ole Milwaukee street-hog, but that was just dressing. Underneath the wolfs clothing there was something much meaner; a state of the art V4 injected Ninja in sprint tune; serious business. Joe wound up through the meshes into sixth, hanging on tight whilst he figured out the hardware. The bike was kitted with a standard Thruway autoguider; Joe triggered remote-tail, and five tiny blips lit up on the display. A mile twenty-five ahead, and closing. He locked in the guide and pushed the speed up to ninety.

  Soon the blips were matched by a glow of lights looming up out of the darkness. The Ninja closed in on five tail-lamps, each the shape of an inverted crucifix. He held the throttle open till he was level with the last rider. Faceless visor screens exchanged glances; Joe lifted a hand off the bars in greeting and pulled up into the pack.

  The fortress was looming ahead of them, a black brick monolith ringed with evil razorshards, searchlight beams trawling the desert wastes beyond the walls. They were no longer alone on the road; a steady stream of human debris was moving in towards the fortress; ju-ju men, juicers and mujos crawling towards their Bethlehem like flies swarming round a corpse. Every freak for miles around must have been homing in on Vandenberg’s honeypot. Joe tried not to breathe the stench.

  Heavy steel security doors swung apart. Gun-toting apes in sentry towers menaced the pilgrims passing below. One of the guards recognized the riders, smiled, and spat at them. A Titheman returned the compliment; the bikes rode through the checkpoint.

  They were inside a wide, open courtyard, a market of sorts. The mujos were milling around, trying to buy, trying to sell. Faces were daubed with the same expressions; violent; expectant; wiped.

  Trucks were being unloaded, brought into the fortress by profit or persuasion. Joe doublechecked on a line of vehicles being stripped of their cargoes. His gaze flipped from the familiar Transcorp logos to a row of faces. Vacant eyes returned his stare: twelve figures strung up from a crossbeam, swaying gently in the light from the furnace fires.

  Looked like it wasn’t going to be Denver after all.

  Suddenly the slow, twisting bodies were the only thing moving. Everyone in the yard was gazing up at the surrounding walls. The fazed dope-dealer babble had stopped like a tape being cut; the void was filled by a single droning voice, some kind of prayer or incantation. Joe sat back in the saddle and snuffed the motor. All around the mujos were dropping onto their knees. Joe figured it for some kind of psycho-narcotic scam; the voice was being shifted out on a high-resolution sound system through hidden speakerpoints, grinding junkies into submission.

  He scanned the walls hemming the courtyard, then saw the holo. Floating mid-air over their heads, mouth moving with the slow-motion drawl of the incantation, the face from the ID-file.

  Luther Vandenberg.

  Now other figures were moving amongst the waxworks; spooks in long black robes, cowls masking faces. Joe’s memory flicked up a word: Apostles.

  The Apostles drifted across the courtyard, inspecting the parade of the dead, dropping chromium pearls into open palms. Goosepimples rose up on Joe’s neck without being asked; the Apostles were circling, spiralling in on a target they couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, but still sensed was there.

  Him.

  The other riders were kneeling by their machines. Very slowly, Joe got off the bike and joined them. The Apostles moved closer, then hesitated. The voice stopped and the holo melted away. The courtyard was moving again; the Apostles had vanished.

  Engines burst into life. Joe hit the starter tab and was about to slip the Ninja into gear when a voice nearby shouted out: “Hey you! Let’s see your security clearance.” Joe glanced round. One of the apes from the guardpost was standing beside him, hand outstretched.

  “C’mon. You had ya party. Let’s see ya ticket.” Joe reached inside the jerkin and brought out a clenched fist. The guard leant forward just a fraction; Joe let him have it square in the face and dropped the clutch, rubber searing on ashphalt. He aimed the Ninja for the corner of the yard and fed the injectors a gutful of gas; the mujos scattered as he sliced a track across the square.

  He didn’t need Scanguide to let him know he had close company; the Tithemen piloting the bikes behind him knew their territory and were eating up the gap, fast. A cannon burst took away a mirror; Joe wrestled the bars straight and flattened himself against the tank, stabbing blindly at the tabs on the headlamp nacelle until he hit the oil layer. A pursuer jackknifed and threw its rider across the road, but the rest were still on him.

  A black crack ahead of him widened till it became an alleyway. Joe leaned the Ninja into it. He was accelerating down a lane lined with what looked like new-built laboratories; the baby-blues factory. Right then they could have been making Pepsi; all Joe cared about were the riders breathing down his neck.

  Suddenly the head of the street lit up: a row of double halogens blocking the road and Joe heading straight into them. An armoured dragger; a grinning freak up top with a searchlight and a combat laser for toys. No way of swerving round this one.

  Joe loosed off all the lead the Ninja had; a puny stream of slugs bounced off the armour plates like rainwater off a windshield. Seconds before he was due to become dogmeat, Joe hit the brakes. The ABS struggled to hold the whiplash then gave out. Joe kissed the bike goodbye and hit tarmac.

  He lay on the road for what seemed a long time.

  Gravel was burning into raw wounds under shredded leathers. Just when it was going to feel good to scream, dark figures moved out of the shadows and lifted him up. Cool hands pressed into his flesh where the leather had flayed. Waves of sickly pain were telling Joe to pass out; he looked up into smooth white faces shaded by the heavy cowls, eyes like glittering beads.

  One of the Apostles had a hypo; all Joe could focus on were the droplets running down a cruel silver cylinder. Someone was rolling up what was left of his sleeve; the Apostle’s grip tightened for the jab.
>
  “Don’t worry, brother. Your trip is only just beginning.”

  Sometimes dreams end; sometimes they just slide into reality. Joe had no memory of sleep, but the Apostles had taken him places you only went in nightmares.

  He remembered only a feeling of emerging from an long, lightless tunnel. It was as though he was standing outside his body, looking down on the bruised and bloodied figure sitting cross-legged on the marble floor of a cavernous chamber. He stared at the hands in front of his face; his hands. He tried to remember how he got there; tried to remember who he was. Somewhere in memory there was the silver needle sliding under his skin; somewhere there was the bike crash. Fractured seconds of past time slowly meshed together.

  The floor was marble. Real marble. Ahead of him there was what looked like an altar, behind that a heavy curtain drawn across the room. The place looked old; thirty, forty years even. Stone images of Angels lined the walls, faces mockingly mutilated. The inverted crucifix insignia was everywhere, graffiti from hell.

  The drapes behind the altar mount started to open. The candlelight was wiped out by two spots throwing crystal columns of light onto a sheet glass screen. Flickering colours formed into shapes; the outline of a man in Apostle’s robes, his back to the screen. As the image solidified the figure turned.

  It was the eyes that Joe would remember; mild, blue eyes the colour of desert sky. The expression on Luther Vandenberg’s face was serenity; slow, peaceful calm.

  “Welcome to the Church of the New Cross, Joe. As you can see, we’ve come a long way.”

  Joe was slowly coming round. Now he could feel every inch of the bruises tattooing his hide. He reached instinctively for the Gen-Tech CTI above his hip. Vandenberg smiled, the gentle smile of a madman. “Don’t trouble. Your weapon’s gone. You’ll find your needs are simpler now. You’ve had the first treatment. Soon you’ll be begging for your next.”

  Joe struggled up on to his feet and managed to stay there. “I’ll pass on the offer, thanks. Your fruit-juice doesn’t agree with me.”

  Vandenberg laughed, soft and easy. “You won’t feel that way for long. You’d be impressed by the rapid dependency we’ve engineered in our nectar, Joe. I wish I had time to explain the biochemistry to you, I really do. Too bad you’ll be just a dope-programmed zombie in a few hours. Anyway—” Vandenberg touched a pad on the console in front of him. “I’m afraid its not a matter of choice.”

  The room started to fill with deep, pulsating vibration; Joe clamped his hands over his ears but it made no difference. The frequency hammered into him, a drill-bit boring into his skull. Vandenberg was speaking through the blur of sound, a slow incantation echoing round the chamber. Joe couldn’t block it out; the sound was wired right into the poison juice they’d pumped into his bloodstream. He was sinking onto his knees; he watched his hands come together in supplication. All the time he was screaming at himself inside his own head, screaming to be heard.

  Concentrate. Find something to concentrate on. A diagram flashed up in his mind. The interceptor. G-Mek R400–10 interceptor. The turbocharging system; remind yourself how it—

  On your knees. On your knees and pray.

  Come on, jerk. The frigging turbocharge system. How does it work?

  Obey. Stop fighting. Obey.

  Maximum rotational speed 18,000 R. Waste gate set at 17 psi. Pain tearing through every nerve of your—

  Hear us. Hear the voice of the New Cross and submit.

  Body starting to burn up. Razor blade slicing into muscle tissue. Waste gate exits into exhaust breather case. Mufflers mounted back of gearbox. Plain cast sump finned for oil cooling—cooling—

  Obey.

  Cooling— Out of the sea swirling around his eyes an object came into focus. On top of the altar mount, the size and shape of a grotesque shrunken head. Joe groped towards it, concentrating on the altar, concentrating on the data swimming round his head. Vandenberg’s voice was surging through, but Joe couldn’t, wouldn’t hear it. His body was yelling for more poison but he wasn’t listening.

  He reached the altar. His hands shaped themselves round the hoodoo charm, heavy glass. He lifted it from the altar; pulled his arm back. Flaming snakes of gasoline were streaking through his veins. Vandenberg’s voice was a shriek filling his entire body.

  The screen exploded as Joe’s pitch hit target.

  Blood was running down his face; splinters of glass were cascading around him. The voice had stopped.

  Joe climbed the steps to the stage behind the altar, steadying himself against the rail. Behind the shattered screen everything was in darkness. He stepped through a fissure like a smashed, toothless mouth, into the room beyond the screen. Through the half-light he made out the shape of the figure in a chair, back towards him, cowl pulled up over the head.

  Joe took a grip on the back of the chair and rolled it, slowly, around.

  The face was certainly Vandenberg, but stripped of the screen enhancement it looked what it was; a plastaflesh mask. Vandenberg—or whoever—sat motionless. The limbs beneath the robe were withered to rotting, useless branches. Joe got his fingernails behind the edges of the mask and pulled it free.

  Beneath the face was another face, still Vandenberg. Just.

  Most of the jaw and the left side had been blasted away. Underneath was a crude man-metal fusion, seared flesh mated with thin steel plates and circuit looms. On the left of the face a tiny opticam blinked in images of the Blue Star man standing over Luther Vandenberg. On the right, a human eye; bright with that same poison. The expression changed to something like recognition. A frail, birdclaw hand lifted free of a bracing-strut.

  Vandenberg’s ribbon-lips moved, but the sound came from a voder grill in the plate which had replaced his neck:

  “Not… supposed to… be like this. Not my… fault.”

  Joe knelt by the wreckage of Blue Star’s finest son. “Luther, who’s done this to you?”

  The eye turned towards him was all that could be seen of the fear consuming Vandenberg, the fear of waking each day, finding yourself still alive.

  “Please,” Vandenberg whispered, “kill… me.”

  “Go ahead, Joe. Why don’t you?”

  The face of the man squaring Joe in the sights of a laser pistol was shadowed by an Apostle’s hood. A stray gleam of light flashed off a fleck of blue ice.

  Then Joe knew he’d finally bitten on the maggot. “Why? In hell’s name why you? Throwing away Blue Star for a warehouse full of baby blues?”

  Da Souza pulled the hood back from his face. His eyes sparkled like any zombie, but his system was running on pure vitriol greed.

  “Throwing it away? Ops? Law-enforcement agencies?” He spat the words out. “That crap’s finished. That’s yesterday. The muscle’s moving into narcotics. Today the mobs; tomorrow the multinats. That’s the future, Joe.”

  He inched closer, laser rock-steady in his hand. “Imagine. A whole society of scumbags crying out for a five-mil shot of heaven. Then another, and another. And along comes opportunity, ripe and golden, and drops into my lap.”

  “You’re mad,” Joe said; but he knew Da Souza was chillingly sane.

  “See, here’s poor Luther Vandenberg, wallowing in his sandside pit, building his crapshot religion; peace and love, a new beginning. A ready-made safehouse to start rolling out the goods.Then there’s good old Blue star, rock of ages. The perfect front to take the goods to market.”

  “You won’t pull this on your own.”

  “You’re never alone once the dollars start talking. Don’t fret; I’ve got plenty of backing. But first I had to make a few adjustments.” He spun the cripple round in the chair. “First I got Luther to see things my way. Then there was Blue Star; people I had to persuade, or remove. Smart-arse whiter-than-white guys like Joe Gold. People who get in the way.”

  Da Souza was an arm’s length clear of Joe, and sharp enough not to get any closer.

  “I’d mopped up all the other suckers who thought Blue Star was so
me kind of holy order. You were the last. And the worst. You managed to keep me away from you, so—”

  Joe nodded, nausea souring his gut. “So it’s welcome to my parlour.”

  “And guess what? You’re still in the way. Luther’s disciples have had feeding time disturbed; little lost sheep, all because of you. I thought maybe you could be made useful, but—”

  The door to the chamber opened and a black-visored Titheman entered.

  “Just in time to save me the effort. Kill him.”

  The Titheman pulled a weapon and lifted the helmet-visor. Da Souza’s sneer was wiped away as Tasha McRae levelled the weapon. Her knuckles were white round the gunstock.

  Joe took his eye off Da Souza for an instant; Da Souza dived for the floor and loosed off a laser stream that ricocheted around the chamber. In the same splintered second Tasha fired. The impact from the slug picked Da Souza off the ground and hammered him into the wall. Da Souza’s expression was comic disbelief as he looked down at the dark flower spreading out over his robes. His lips opened and shut just once before he slid down onto the marble floor.

  Tasha stacked the gun back into its holster; her face was flushed and bright. “That one’s for Dave.”

  “I thought it didn’t matter once you’re dead?”

  “Yeah, maybe. But you’re not dead, are you? Not yet.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “Same way as you, mostly. There’s an army of gooks wandering around out there like someone just ripped out their wires.”

  Joe moved towards the control bank. “They’re waiting for feeding time. Let’s see if we can keep it that way.” He prised the laser out of the dead man’s grip and sliced the panel into tinfoil.

  “Now let’s get the hell out.”

  Tasha pointed towards Vandenberg. “What about him?”

  The half-man lay motionless in the chair, head slumped on one side, blood cauterized around the laser-slash through his throat.