Route 666 Anthology

by David Pringle

  The car pulled into a large and mainly empty underground carpark sixty seconds ahead of schedule. Across the lot, they could see two guards standing by the elevator door.

  “Okay,” said Pereira. “Everyone know what they’re doing?”

  “Well if we don’t by now, we’re going to end up dead meat,” said Steve Yonoi, taking a last, wistful pull on the whisky bottle.

  “Perfect,” observed Pereira as he watched the two guards at the elevator cross the lot to an unmarked car and drive away. “The amount of money we’ve had to backhand those bastards, I’d have been well pissed if they hadn’t kept their side of the deal.”

  “I don’t suppose it can be cheap buying off an entire city force for three quarters of an hour,” observed Steve Yonoi.

  “No it isn’t,” snarled Pereira. “But believe it or not, they have a standard set of charges for turning a blind eye, or for not being somewhere at a certain time.”

  “Isn’t human nature a beastly thing?” said Steve.

  “Sure is. C’mon. Time to get going.” All three got out of the car. Pereira took the briefcase containing his computer, with the SIG under his arm. Eitan pushed his Uzi into a large pocket in his overcoat. From under the driver’s seat he pulled a Murphy Bullpup assault rifle and slung it on his shoulder. Finally, he picked up a Remington pump shotgun from the passenger seat.

  Pereira watched with interest. “Isn’t that shotgun a little old-fashioned?” he asked as they walked towards the elevator.

  Steve cut in on Eitan’s behalf. “You don’t understand showbiz, do you Caetano? The Remington’s crude, but that’s its value. Its noisy, it’s nasty and it’s brutal—it’ll impress people more than the very latest weapons. Isn’t that so, Shimon?” Eitan just nodded.

  Back in the car, the TV set remained turned on. Bob’s wife Dolly had come on, and, backed by a pre-recorded tape, had started singing a Country and Western song whose principal refrain seemed to be “Ah’m not ashamed to be a Christian.”

  They got out of the elevator at the third floor of the building, the only floor on which there were any lights.

  Inside WZLD’s studio 4, the 200-strong studio audience of Bob ‘n’ Dolly’s Honest-to-God Bible Show were politely (in some cases, enthusiastically) enduring the final chorus of “Ah’m not Ashamed to be a Christian.” In the Control Room, the lone Producer yawned and looked at the clock. On his schedule it said it was now time for Bob to talk to a few members of the audience. This would be followed by Dolly narrating a two-minute film about the latest atrocities committed by Yakuza gangs, Muslims and other “godless scum.” He pressed a button, and the remote control camera following Dolly widened focus as she hit and desperately tried to hold, her final note. He pushed another and switched to Camera 2 to take in Bob, clapping enthusiastically in the front row of the auditorium in between a pair of sweet-looking old ladies.

  The Producer’s airspace was brutally invaded by the stench of Fulgencio Narcissus aftershave. He turned and found himself looking down the barrel of an SIG machine pistol.

  “Don’t bother trying to call Security,” said the gun’s owner, a spare figure in a dark business suit carrying a briefcase in his left hand. The man talked quietly, the softened consonants of his speech suggesting a faint foreign accent. “They’ve all gone home. Now, please be so kind as to put the studio on autopilot. C’mon, we haven’t got all night.”

  The Producer pressed a key at the top right of his control panel. From now on, the cameras would automatically focus on whoever was using a microphone at the time.

  “Good. Now could I ask you to swallow these little pills here?” said Pereira, proffering a pair of green capsules.

  “What are they?” asked the Producer.

  “Just a little ju-ju. Fact is, I could tie you up, but whenever you do that to people in the movies, they escape. So I thought we’d go for something more secure. They’ll put you to sleep in seconds, and a very deep, pleasant sleep it is, I can assure you from my own experience. You’ll wake up in the morning feeling just fine, except of course that the place will be full of security ops and studio execs asking you dumb questions you can’t answer. Of course, I could be offering you cyanide, but you really don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. You’re going to have to take my word for it that these are just regular Mickeys. Now, you going to lie down in the corner and get some shut-eye, or are me and SIG going to have to blow your head off? Choice is yours, pal.”

  The Producer lay down in the far corner of the control room and swallowed the pills, washing them down with the dregs in his coffee-cup.

  Down in the studio, one of the sweet little old ladies was telling Bob how much she loved Jesus and how much she hated Catholics, Blacks, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims. Them rag-heads, she was saying, were the children of the Lord of Darkness his Satanic self.

  The Producer snored. Pereira opened his briefcase, set up screen and keyboard and plugged it into the telephone socket. He sat at the studio control console and took the cameras off automatic for the next bit.

  Eitan entered stage right, firing his machine-pistol at the ceiling. Panic broke out among the audience. Many of them very soon discovered that all the exits were locked, and nobody was armed. It was one of the rules of the Studio that before you entered you were electronically searched. Any weapons you were carrying had to be left with the gun-check machine and reclaimed as you left. While everyone was screaming, ducking for cover or trying to get out, Steve Yonoi appeared behind Eitan with handcuffs. As Eitan covered them, Steve went over to Bob and Dolly and secured the wrists of both behind their backs. Bob, his innate sense of self-preservation recovering itself, made frantic facial gestures towards the Producer’s box at the far end of the studio, trying to get the cameras stopped, little knowing that the Producer was already fast asleep and now dreaming lasciviously of having a candle-lit dinner with a news reporter called Lola Stechkin.

  Steve Yonoi had disappeared. Eitan pushed Bob and Dolly into the sofa at the centre of the stage and came forward, glaring at the audience. There are times when a hard, uncompromising stare is worth a hundred bullets, he used to tell his officer cadets and now he was giving it his best. People were uneasily returning to their seats, wondering what would happen next. As they quietened down, Eitan threw the Uzi on the floor and unshouldered his assault rifle, cocking it noisily. Bob, dumbfounded in his seat, looked at the discarded Uzi, wondering…

  In the Control Room, Pereira took a recording of the events of the last few minutes. Via his computer, he squirted it off to every TV station in the world that subscribed to the International Broadcasting Convention. Along with the pictures of a TV evangelist and wife and audience being hijacked went the sales pitch:

  HUMILIATION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST TV PREACHER AND WIFE 90 PERCENT PROBABILITY OF DEATH OR EXTREME VIOLENCE

  OPEN IBC CHANNEL USAWZLD4TZ0900 FOR FREE AUDIENCE INTERACTION

  LIVE 240 SEC DLY

  STANDARD IBC RATES 26 MINS 1 CB UNLIMITED RPT RTS SPEC CREDIT TFR IMMEDIATE THIS CODE OFFER CLOSES 240 SECONDS COUNTING…

  COUNTING…

  COUNTING…

  TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THIS’LL BE THE WEIRDEST THING YOU’LL SEE ALL YEAR

  From the Control Room, Pereira turned on the theme music. Not the normal theme music for Bob and Dolly’s Honest-to-God Bible Show, but an upbeat orchestration, suggesting humour as well as great entertainment. Just like you’d get with one of those game shows where people’s children are given electric shocks if their parents don’t know the capital of Venezuela or given a Clever Boy roboguard got up to look like a German Shepherd dog if they do. Pereira switched on the canned applause, since there was little likelihood that the studio audience were going to do any clapping and cheering just yet.

  The applause was Steve Yonoi’s cue. He walked jauntily down the central stairway through the auditorium, smiling broadly, waving to camera.

  Eitan moved to one side and Steve took up posi
tion centre stage. “Whoooo! Awwwww-right! Thankyew! Thankyew! What a great welcome!” he enthused as the music and recorded applause drained away. “Whoo! Okay! No, thankyew! Ladies and gentlemen, or may I say, friends,” he grinned, smarmily. “Please don’t worry about a thing. I’m sorry about all the confusion back there, but there’s been a slight change to our schedule for this evening. Yes, those of you watching at home, and those of you here in the studio thought you were going to see Bob ‘n’ Dolly’s Honest-to-God Bible Show. But all the time, we were outside waiting to give you all a real big surprise.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, friends, brothers and sisters, my name is Steve Yonoi and I’d like to welcome you to the Old Testament Vengeance Show. And may I say to those of you at home, please stay tuned to us, because we’re going to be having a lot of fun this evening. Let’s go talk to Bob and Dolly right now.”

  All this was much too much for Bob, who rushed, head-down directly at Eitan’s stomach. Eitan side-stepped him and he hit the flimsy partition to the next studio. Eitan kicked him in the butt, grabbed him by the collar and swung him round, returning him to his seat next to his wife. More shouting and screaming from the audience. With the rifle hanging from his right shoulder, he unslung the Remington from his left and, aiming low over the heads of the audience, loosed off three deafening shots.

  People quietened down again. Steve smiled broadly and got on with the show. “Bob,” he started, “you thought you were here tonight to present Bob ‘n’ Dolly’s Honest-to-God Bible Show. Well, you were wrong, because all along we’ve been planning this lovely surprise for you, your lovely wife, and for all the lovely viewers at home as well as in the audience here. Cuz tonite Bob, This is Your Death… Or could well be anyways,” he winked, in an aside to the camera. More canned applause, followed by a canned fanfare. “Yes, Bob, tonight, this is your death. And you’re probably all asking yourselves at home what Bob here has done to deserve the horrible death he’s probably going to get tonight, so without further delay, let’s see what Bob gets up to in his leisure time…”

  Pereira’s offer had gone out to most TV stations across the world. The show was being recorded and relayed to customers on a four-minute delay, giving buyers and producers from the US through Europe, Asia and Australasia the chance to take it more or less live if they liked the first four minutes included with the offer. It was proving irresistable to TV stations all over the world already. There were few countries in the world where people would be able to resist watching the embarrassment of an American fundamentalist firebrand. Two more minutes and Pereira would close his system to them, sending on the show to customers on the station’s own relay systems. He had to go back to producing the show here momentarily, pulling a vidisc from the pocket of his jacket and slapping it into the studio/transmit player.

  Behind Steve, behind Bob and Dolly on the sofa, a screen lit up.

  “Fact is Bob,” Steve began his commentary, “that you and the lovely Dolly are sinners. Not, as you so often say yourself, ‘mere’ sinners, but real big ones, major-league sinners. You fill people’s heads with crap, get them all scared that the world’s going to end just so’s you can make yourselves a hatful of money.”

  There appeared on the screen a drawing, an artist’s impression of a collection of comfortable-looking air-conditioned huts, full of smiling black children.

  “This is the mission school and hospital you’re telling people you need money to build in Africa. In fact Bob, it doesn’t exist, and you have no intention of building it.”

  “That’s a lie!” screamed Bob. “We are in the process of building missions in Greater Rhodesia!”

  “Well, I guess you could call them missions, Bob,” grinned Steve. On the screen, film footage of a collection of miserable huts, a compound surrounded by a wire fence, patrolled by armed guards with dogs. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is Bob’s idea of a mission. It’s in Namibia province, and it houses the workers for a couple of uranium mines he owns. The facility also has a profitable side-line in burying highly toxic chemical waste from Europe and America. And I don’t have to tell you that they haven’t heard of safety regulations here and that many of the workers and their families are literally poisoned to death. When I say workers, perhaps ‘slaves’ would be a better way of putting it, because as you can see here, they’re all wearing chains. Plus which, our hidden camera hung around five weeks and didn’t get any footage of payday. That’s not a very Christian attitude, is it Bob?”

  “But that’s terrible!” exclaimed Bob. “Nobody told me that this was what they were doing. I trusted my people out there. I didn’t know that this was how they were treating folk!”

  “Well that’s funny Bob, real funny. Because as you can see here, our secret camera managed to get some footage of you and Dolly visiting the place a few months back.” On screen, Bob in shirtsleeves and Dolly in a light dress being shown around a mine, being escorted around the compound by a group of armed men…

  “Who the hell are you people? Who’s behind this? Who’s trying to destroy me?” snarled Bob, getting out of his seat. Eitan moved towards him, menacingly. He fell back into his seat.

  In the Control Room, a small panel at the bottom of Pereira’s screen was counting. Almost four hundred million bucks, and a bit of loose. Not bad. “Va Mais!” muttered Pereira clenching his fists so tight it hurt, willing the money to come in the same way he would will Camoes to strike at goal back in Bahia. They were doing better than expected.

  Another section of the screen lit up. One of the payments had a weird signature. Coming from a station in Singapore which was a subsidiary of GenTech… Incoming sleeper! Spotted in time, Pereira punched in a pre-programmed code and it was sent off down a blind alley. Into worthless 20-year-old Polish government stock, where it would stay. The offer was now closed. Using the studio computer, Pereira told his customers to be prepared for interaction.

  “So Bob, we thought we’d find out what happens to all the money, and God’s honest truth is that we just don’t know. You’ve got so much of the stuff washing around that we really can’t tell what you do with all of it. And our hidden camera’s been spying on you and Dolly for quite some time now… Friends, those of you at home who’ve donated your life savings to the Divine Purpose Mission might want to take a big drink at this point…” Pictures of Bob drinking whisky from the bottle, Bob slobbering over an imported German porn vid. Bob squeezing his secretary’s breast. Bob and his secretary, on Bob’s desk, in a state of semi-undress…

  “Well, wasn’t that just horrible, ladies and gentlemen? And I can categorically assure you that none of what you’ve just seen was made up or staged by robots or stuntmen. It’s all absolutely true. Isn’t it Bob?”

  Bob said nothing.

  “Okay,” said Steve. “Now what you just saw was more for the benefit of Bob’s flock than for those of you at home. Like Bob and Dolly are always telling us, the world is full of wicked people indulging in the sins of the flesh. They may, however, have given you the impression that they lead pure and Godly lives. Well, like you just saw, Bob’s given to lapsing from grace. About ten times a day one way or another, in fact. Now here’s something that should shock more of you…”

  On screen, silent, grainy footage of Bob and a group of men with hunting rifles approach a wooden platform near a river. At the steps of the platform, Bob hands over a wad of cash to a man in uniform. It is the uniform of the Southern Border Patrol, so this is the Mexican-American border. The man in uniform gets into a patrol car and drives away. The film cuts to the top of the platform. Bob and his friends are out for an afternoon’s sport. One of them passes a whisky flask around. Another points to the other side of the river, where a young man and woman emerge from behind a boulder. They intend, it seems, to try and swim across the river. They want to escape the hell of Mexico’s simmering civil war in the hope of finding a better life in the United States. They wade into the water. They start to swim. Bob and the others strain their eyes into the
enhancement-scopes of their rifles, fingers flex and embrace triggers. „

  Silence among the audience.

  Steve Yonoi, showman, did his best to get the pace going again after this sombre interlude. “But, ladies and gentlemen, you ain’t seen nothing yet. What those of you out there who’ve sent in your hard-earned money would probably like to know is, what do Bob and Dolly do with it when they’re not using it to bring back the slave trade or take pot-shots at poor Mexicans?

  “Well, here, as you can see on the screen, is just one of Bob and Dolly’s three luxury homes. This one’s the ranch a few klicks out of here and we visited it this afternoon and this is what we found… look at the size of that heated spa pool… this is the bedroom. Why on earth would anyone want to put a mirror on the ceiling, Bob? That way you have to brush your hair and straighten your tie lying down on the waterbed. Oh, and there’s our Mr Eitan accidentally machine-gunning the waterbed… Sorry ’bout that! Ladies and gentlemen, there was one thing missing from Bob and Dolly’s luxury home. You see, we looked absolutely everywhere, and we couldn’t find a single Bible. Well, we thought, that can’t be right—a God-fearing couple like Bob and Dolly don’t have a Bible! We were worried. We were angered at this. In fact, Mr Eitan was so angered (even though he’s Jewish himself) that he took an axe and went into Bob’s study and chopped up this lovely desk made of the rarest Brazilian rainforest mahogany. And that’s when we did, at last, find a Bible. This beautiful leather-bound edition was being kept in a locked drawer in Bob’s desk… And as you can see, when you open it up, the middle has been hollowed out as a hiding-place for this little bag of white powder…”