Route 666 Anthology Page 4

  Playing nursemaid to the Josephites seemed too much like walking through downtown Detroit or Pittsburgh with a “Shoot Me” sign picked out on the back of your jacket. The Prezz might have given Elder Seth Utah to play with, but he hadn’t guaranteed to clear out the former owners or any gun-toting vermin that might be left behind. The truth was that the President of the United States of America was only something like the 112th Most Powerful Individual in the World these days. He ranked somewhere below most GenTech mid-management execs, and could probably put less men in the field of combat than Didier Brousset or the shadowy Exalted Bullmoose of the Maniax. Corporate smoothies and psychotic punks ran the world, and the Cav was one of the few hold-outs against any and all factions.

  Admittedly, it had been quiet so far. Quincannon was pretending to be asleep in the passenger seat, but kept stirring long enough to check all the scanners and change the music. Burnside and Tyree were talking back-and-forth on the open channels, and Yorke was getting just a little jealous listening in. Guys in cruisers were supposed to pull all the tail, not the guys on the mounts. It was a Cav tradition. Yorke felt he was letting the Troop down by allowing Burnside to make time with Leona. She had cold-shouldered him so far, but he knew he was well in there. After this patrol was over, he would be making some definitive moves, and then he would have some stories for the bunkhouse.

  The Josephite convoy moved slow and steady like the old-style wagon trains. Their vehicles were piled high with personal possessions, the furnishings of lives soon to be recommenced in the Promised Land. Elder Seth’s motorwagon even looked like a prairie schooner, with its tented canvas cover and roped-on barrels. In the rearview screen on the dash, Yorke could see the Elder sitting up in the open cab next to his driver, shaded eyes fixed on the road ahead as if he could see his destiny lying on the horizon. He didn’t move much, like the figurehead of a ship, or one of those wooden Indians you see outside small-town stores. The heat didn’t bother him any more than the cold had done last night.

  Suddenly, with the sun overhead, there was a commotion back in the convoy. Burnside and Tyree left off their crosstalk, and simultaneously signalled a halt. Quincannon pushed his hat back and sat up. Yorke stopped the cruiser, and Elder Seth’s motorwagon braked, lurching a few metres closer to the cruiser than suggested by the highway code. Elder Seth was out of the cab and back with his people, who were congregating in the middle of the convoy.

  As usual, Yorke got left in the cruiser while Quincannon went to see what the trouble was. He could get to resent that.

  Sister Maureen was nearly dead, and Brother Bailie was completely hysterical.

  “She fell… fell…”

  Tyree held the woman, trying to stop her shaking. Her right hand was a bloody smear on the road, and most of her face was gone. There was no hope.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  Burnside grabbed Bailie and took him away. The Quince had his medpack out, and was squirting the bubble out of the hypo.

  “Morph-plus,” he said. “That’ll stop her kicking long enough for us to see if there’s anything we can do. Give me her arm, Leona.”

  Tyree grabbed the flailing left arm by the elbow, and held it fast as Quincannon tore Sister Maureen’s sleeve open. He swabbed the patch over the vein with a dampragette, and took aim. Tyree gripped the elbow fast, and cooed soothing platitudes into the woman’s ear.

  “No,” said Elder Seth, calmly, taking Quincannon’s wrist. “No drugs. She has abjured them.”

  The Quince stood up, and turned angrily on the Elder. “I ain’t about to hop her up full of ju-ju. I’m just tryin’ to save her pain. Ain’t that what your God would want us to do?”

  Elder Seth didn’t back down. He took the syringe away, and laid it down on the hood of Bailie’s automobile. There was a red splatter across the bodywork, and the hubcap was still dripping.

  “My God is merciful, Mr Quincannon.”

  The Elder knelt down, and took the woman from Tyree. Sister Maureen moaned as she was shifted, but settled in Elder Seth’s arms. Incredibly, given that she barely had cheek muscles left, she smiled, and seemed to sleep. She was still breathing. Her hoodlike bonnet had been scraped away by the wheel, and her hair was free. It was long, blonde and must have been beautiful.

  Tyree pulled away, and stood up. Her shirt and pants were bloody. Quincannon was still fuming, but had fallen silent.

  Elder Seth brushed Sister Maureen’s hair away from the ruin of her face, and wiped some of the blood off with his hand. More welled up. Tyree could see bone shards, and felt sure the oozing grey was brain tissue. She had never seen anyone hurt this bad still live. Elder Seth was praying silently, his lips working, tears coursing from under his shades.

  The other Brethren had gathered around, and were joining in prayer. Bailie was back, under control, praying hard with all the rest.

  Finally, Elder Seth shook his head. Sister Maureen’s breathing had stopped.

  He laid her on the roadway and stood up. The corpse continued to leak, little rivulets of red following the cracks in the neglected asphalt and spreading out from her head in a spiderweb pattern.

  Elder Seth gave Quincannon back his hypodermic, and the sergeant looked as if he wanted to use it. On the Elder or on himself. It didn’t matter.

  Tyree realized she had been praying hard with the best of them.

  The Summoner rejoiced, as more blood was spilled. The ritual was progressing well. The Dark Ones would be pleased.

  There was a sign up by the roadside. YOU ARE NOW ENTERING SPANISH FORK—A NICE, QUIET, LITTLE TOWN—PLEASE LEAVE IT AS YOU FIND IT.

  Yorke slowed, and looked over at the Quince.

  “Gas stop?”

  “If there’s a place.”

  It wasn’t hard to find. Just inside the City Limits there was a big sign. CHOLLIE’S GAS AND AUTO REPAIR, THIS WAY, with an arrow pointing to a big old building that looked like a cross between a livery stable, a junkyard and a dirigible hangar. Spanish Fork was obviously a big place for signs. Yorke turned the cruiser into Chollie’s yard, and the convoy followed. There wasn’t room enough for them all on the forecourt, so they spilled over up and down the street. It was early in the day, and quiet, so nobody minded much.

  Elder Seth was outside, rapping on the window. Quincannon rolled it down.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “We need a tank top-up, Elder. Your motorwagons could do with a going over, too.”

  “We only have another 50 miles to go to Salt Lake City.”

  “50 is just the same as 50,000 in this country if your car don’t work. Better safe than vulture meat.”

  The Elder considered a moment, and walked away without saying anything. Most of the other resettlers were stretching their legs and kicking tires. More than one radiator was boiling over. Tyree and Burnside rolled up, and checked it out. A scrawny kid with coke-bottle-bottom goggles. He wore oil-stained overalls with CHO LIE’S written on them. One of the Ls had peeled off.

  “Fill ’er up,” Quincannon told him, “and check the oil. What kind of mechanics you got in this town?”

  “The best, sir. Chollie don’t come cheap, but he don’t come shoddy neither.”

  “You accept US Cavalry discount vouchers?”

  “How’s that again?”

  “You don’t mind my friend Kirby Yorke here hangin’ around while you’re workin’ on the ve-hickles and shooting your head off if he figures you’re sabotagin’ or overchargin’.”

  “Sounds mighty fair to me, sir.”

  “Good, now where can a man get himself some brunch in this burg?”

  Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper was proud of his town. His town. That was the way he liked to think of Spanish Fork, Utah, and it was certainly the way most people in the area had come to think of the place. There was a lot to make the Judge a contented man. Spanish Fork was a peaceable community, a friendly town like they weren’t supposed to be any more. They had some laws, but not so many that a man could
n’t cut loose a little. They had a deepwater well which still ran pure and which was under 24-hour guard. Murder wasn’t necessarily a capital offence in Spanish Fork, but stealing from the well was.

  The town had itself a few deputies who had made a name for themselves elsewhere and decided to settle down. Joe Fiske had been with Hammond Maninski until they’d parted company over his disrespectful treatment of a senior Japanese corp exec, and Matthieu Larroquette once made the cover of Guns and Killing when he’d brought in “Chainsaw” Childress in Albuquerque. They were nice, regular, deputy-type guys, and they made sure the peace was kept, or at least as much of it as the town decreed desirable.

  You could tell it was a civilized community. Colum Whittaker had a twenty-five-foot polished wood bar in the Feelgood Saloon, the Reverend Boote kept a nice little church nobody shot up too much, Chollie Jenevein ran a world-class auto repair shop with spare parts for everything from a ’55 Chevrolet to an Orbital Shuttle, and Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper was in charge of a picturesque wooden courthouse-cum-town-hall and a gallows with facilities to handle five customers simultaneously.

  When the Psychopomps hit Spanish Fork late the night before and headed for Colum’s twenty-five-foot bar, Joe Fiske had made a personal call to inform the Judge. Colpeper had considered things a moment, and looked up the rap-sheets on the inter-agency datanets. He didn’t consider crimes committed outside the city limits much to do with him, but he liked to keep abreast of things. There was a girl with the ’pomps, Jessamyn Bonney, who was earning herself a reputation. Twenty-three confirmed kills, and some interesting black market surgical amendments. She would be a Guns and Killing pin-up within the year. The Judge told Fiske to keep an watch on the girl with one eye, and make sure her lieutenant Andrew Jean wasn’t too enthusiastic with the beehive-hairdo-concealed slipknife. An independent Op up in Montana had got a nasty surprise from ignoring the orange-haired ’pomp with the eye make-up, and there hadn’t been much left to bury afterwards. Otherwise, if the Psychopomps were content to be good customers, and pay for their food, drink, gas and auto repairs, the Judge was content to let them alone.

  By now, Colum’s bartender down at the Feelgood would have told them all about him, and maybe, if they were lucky, they’d respect his reputation. It had been a while since he’d officiated at one of his special quintuple executions.

  This afternoon things were pretty quiet. There was a recorded note on his oak desk from Larroquette. The Psychopomps had enthusiastically partaken of the fare at the Feelgood, and broken a little furniture. Nothing indispensible. Then, they’d rented rooms over at the Katz Motel, and broken some of Herman Katz’s ugly tables and chairs while passing round some of the glojo Ferd Sunderland mixed up in the back of the drug store. They wouldn’t be too competent at trouble-making until suppertime at least.

  The Judge fastened his bootlace tie, and put his silver-banded black hat on his flowing silver locks. He felt his inside vest pocket for the derringer dartgun he habitually carried, and slipped the polished Colt .45 Python he favoured into his hip holster. The gun was satisfyingly heavy, fully loaded with ScumStopper explosive rounds.

  Larroquette came by to accompany him on his regular tour of the town.

  “Afternoon, Judge,” the Deputy said, taking off his Cyberfeed helmet. The sockets on his shaven head stood out raw. He had been scratching them again.

  “Good afternoon, Matthieu. Thank you for your report.”

  “Weren’t nothin‘, Judge. Just keepin’ tabs, like you always say.”

  The Judge joined Matthieu on the porch. Joe Fiske was with him, quiet as usual. The Judge looked up and down Main Street. Ferd was sweeping up out front of the drug store. Colpeper returned the druggist’s wave.

  There were kids playing over by the gallows, throwing stones at the head of the carthief the Judge had sentenced yesterday. Colpeper smiled, as the children ran up to him, hands open. He found the bag of Ferd’s jujubes he always kept for the little ’uns, and passed them out. They ran off again, ’jubes popping as they pressed them to their little nostrils.

  “You see, Matthieu. You see what this is all about. What we’re standing up for here in Spanish Fork.”

  Larroquette pulled his Cyberfeed down over his head, and drew his breath in sharply as its terminal plugs slid into his sockets. The helmet hummed and the deputy held up his replacement arm. Electricity crackled between his fingers, and he primed the pump action. He saluted, ready for work.

  As they walked down Main Street, the Judge bid good morning to various citizens who passed by, and Larroquette’s helmet downloaded the information it had gathered since last night.

  “Anything new, Matthieu?”

  “We got some Josephites in town, with United States Cavalry escort. It’s a wagon convoy. They’ll be passin’ through on the road to Salt Lake.”

  The Judge pondered, and his hand just happened to end up resting on the pearl-inlay handle of the Colt Python.

  “Josephites, huh? Too much like Mormons for my taste. All that hymn-singin’ and holiness. Mormons used to think they owned the State of Utah, Matthieu. I hear tell that damfool in Washington D.C. says these Josephites can have it now. Well, nobody asked me whether I wanted to be a citizen of Deseret and give up my cup of morning recaff, my slug or two of Colum’s whisky, my shot of Ferd’s zooper-blast, or my Saturday evening sessions with Dolley Magruder over at the Pussycat Palace on Maple Street. And, you know what, Matthieu, I don’t reckon I do want to give up those things. I’m a peaceable man, but sometimes you have to fight for the little comforts you believe in. Do you get my drift?”

  “Yes, Judge.”

  Larroquette extended his arm, palm flat out, and flexed his bicep. There was a bang, and a discharge of smoke, and a mangy cat twenty paces down the road flew to pieces. The deputy bent his elbow, then straightened out again, the spent cartridge popping out of the hairy slit in his forearm. It fell in the sand. Larroquette primed his pump action again.

  “I believe you do, Matthieu, I believe you do.”

  There were some gaudy girls bellying up to the bar, looking for trade, and a few old-timers leaned their chairs against the walls in the corners and mainlined the poison of their choice. But otherwise, the Feelgood Saloon wasn’t doing much business this early in the evening, so the US Cav managed to requisition itself a table. A green-faced waitress with vestigial gills took their orders. Some said signs like the gills were the legacy of those long-ago Bomb Tests. Quincannon laid out kish for the hundred-dollar grill, while Tyree just had the vat-grown eggs and Burnside plumped for gristle ‘n’ grits. Tyree’s tasted okay. They had recaff all round. Fake coffee, but real water, a luxury this far into the sand. The Quince even remembered to have the girl send someone over to Chollie’s with some N-R-Gee candies for Yorke.

  It would be a couple of hours before the convoy could get moving again—one or two of the motorwagons were a few refits too many nearer the auto graveyard—so there was no sense in not taking advantage of the comforts on offer in Spanish Fork. They had been held up most of the day burying Sister Maureen, so they might well be looking to make camp here for the night.

  Quincannon was talking ancient history again, not from experience, but from books. In his down time, the Quince must be something of a library junkie. Tyree hadn’t known that about him. She hadn’t read anything herself except forms, regulations and the odd comicstrip since military school. Burnside had asked the sergeant his opinion of the Josephites’ chances of making anything out of the Salt Lake valley.

  “The Mormons did it once before,” Quincannon replied, “round about 1848, just the same as they’re trying to now. They’d been kicked out of everywhere else ’cause they believed in marryin’ more than one gal at a time. I reckon they’ve given that up these days, along with ‘carnal relations.’ They found a place where nothing would grow and no one would live, and turned it into fertile land. The Lord knows how they did it. That Church was founded by some fella named Smith who claimed
an angel gave him some extra books of the Bible and a pair of magical spectacles to help him read it. The Josephites have some similar story. Different glasses, but the same angel. Something like that. Hell, I don’t know. The Mormons were straight-laced, but these lot are unnatural, if you know what I mean. They’re like the Mormons, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Amish, the Moonies, the Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Stone-Crazed baptists all rolled up into one. Me, I’m a good Catholic. Religion’s been downhill since Martin Luther.”

  Tyree drank her coffee 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. While the Mormons were settling Salt Lake, the Josephites were carving out some claims for themselves in the Indian Territories. 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 tried to move in and stake some land claims at a place 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 behind him had opened silently and a tall man had walked into the Feelgood. Elder Seth. She knew she should have said something, tried to shut the Sergeant up, but somehow she found herself unable to open her mouth.

  Quincannon kept on talking, not realizing he had a larger audience now. “They 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 Elder Seth will take it into his head to make war against the United States of America again. Then we’ll all be in a pretty pickle, ’cause I reckon any man who can haul a bunch of candy-ass resettlers a couple of thousand blood-stained miles through the desert wouldn’t be no pushover.”