Jack Yeovil - Route 666 (Dark Future)

Published by GW Books

Copyright 1990 Games Workshop

ISBN: 1872372031

All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, andany resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Version: 1.0

Brother Claude was going to die soon. He hoped.

They had left him in the middle of the road, then driven over him awhole bunch of times. Cars, cykes, RVs, everything. He could have swornthat the third from last was at least a half-track. He could feel thesharp ends of his snapped bones stabbing inside him as he breathed, andhe knew too much of him was broken, crushed or squashed to fix. They hadbeen cruel, and concentrated on his extremities, his legs and arms. Hehad hoped they would kill him outright, but here he was left to dieslowly in the sun. It would probably be suffocation that got himhewas finding it almost impossible to draw breath into his collapsedlungsor else loss of blood. Even those fancy-shmancy GenTech bio-implantsand replacement doodads couldnt do anything for him, even if he couldhave afforded that kind of repair work. Not that he approved of thatkind of mad scientist stuff. It was better to die clean than go onliving with half your guts replaced by vacuum cleaner parts and computerterminals. Before they drove on, one of them had knelt almost tenderlyby him and spilled a little water into his mouth. He tasted his ownblood in the water.

Are you okay, brother? The kneeling water-dispenser had asked, concerndripping from her every syllable.

Brother Claude had tried to smile, had tried to make the womanifwoman she wasfeel better.

Good, she had said, black against the sun. Then she had kicked himagain, breaking a few more of his bones.

They had driven away after that, leaving the stink of their exhaust inthe air, haring off after the motorwagons, firing to wound or damage,not to do any serious harm.

Dying clean. Funny how it didnt seem so clean after all. Nobody hadchanced along the freeway since they had left. Brother Claude wasntsurprised. Only a damfool would venture this far into the desert. Afool, or a pilgrim

He was twisted in the middle, so he was face up, but skewed at the hips,groin pressed to the asphalt. He couldnt feel anything below his ribs.Which, considering what he could feel from the rest of him, was probablya mercy. He realized he was deaf, and that one of his eyes was sealedshut by a rind of dried blood.

Brother Claude hadnt always been with the Church. In the Phoenix NoGo,he had been a gofer for the Knights of the White Magnolia, and then asoldier in the War. Not any of the overseas warslike the ones in Cubaor Nicaraguabut the War between the Knights and the VoodooBrotherhood, when the Knights had tried to clear the nigras out ofArizona. That had been a bust. He had had all these noble ideas aboutracial purity and holy wars drummed into his head, then it had turnedout the Knights were financed by some raghead troublemakers from thePan-Islamic Congress. He had lived outside Policed Zones all his life,and had always had to follow someone. His Daddy took off earlyMomAkins tried to make out he was some high mucky-muck in a Japcorp, butClaude knew better the types she slung out withand so he had foundother Daddies.

First was President Heston, in whose Youth Corps he had enlisted duringone of the Moral Re-Armament Drives of the mid1980s. When he was kickedout of that for breaking a Chinese kids nose, he transferred hisallegiance to Burtram Fassett, the Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knightsof the White Magnolia. And when the Turner-Harvest-Ramirez operativeagency broke up the Knights and brought Fassett in, he had drifted awhile. Didier Brousset, head houngan of the Brotherhood, put a bountyon the scalps of ex-Knights, and so it wasnt too healthy to keep yourwhite hood and red-cross robes. Finally, Claude had come upon the Churchof Joseph, and found himself a new Daddy in Elder Seth. He had beenSaved, he thought, and he didnt miss recaff or coca-cola or Heavy Metal(the Devils music) or carnal relations or fast foods or pockets or anyof the things he was required to abjure.

Elder Seth believed the heartlands of America were not lost after all,believed they could be reseeded, resettled, reclaimed. Most everybodyelse outside the church said Elder Seth was a damfool, but the Elder hada way of convincing people. Face to face with him, it was difficult toargue. Brother Claude had argued at first, but had come round in the endand signed up for the Churchs Pioneer Program. He had sung the songswith all the othersThe Battle Cry of Freedom, Tis the Gift to BeSimple, Stairway to Heavenand been enlisted as shotgun on thefirst convoy for Salt Lake City. They had all cheered as the convoy putout of Phoenix. Plenty of bignames from the PZ had come out, surroundedby armed guardsnatchand Elder Seth had made a speech to themultitudes. Then the gates of the city were opened, andafter someminimal escorting to get them through the Filterthe resettlers wereon their own.

And here he was now, bleeding himself empty on the Interstate. Fliesbuzzed, and he kept imagining tall, dark figures standing over him. Theyhad faces he could recognizePresident Chuck was there, and ole IGWFassett, and Elder Seth, and the womanlike beast who had given himwaterbut no real shape. Elder Seth had talked a lot about angels,and spirits he called the Dark Ones. These must be the Dark Ones.

Where, Brother Claude wondered, were the others now? Elder Seth, andBrother Bailie, and Sister Consuela, and the Dorsey Twins? If he twistedhis head, he could see Brothers Finnegan and Dzundza, man-shaped pizzasin black suits on the other side of the road. Perhaps there were othercasualties, out of his range. Carrion birds had come for some of them.The buzzards really did circle overhead.

He had recognized the colours of his attackers. They were ThePsychopomps, one of the mid-sized Western gangcults. Mostly girls. Theyfavoured spiked heels, fishnet body-stockings, basques, glam make-up,stormcloud hairdos, painted fingernail implants, Russian pop music,Kray-Zee pills, random violence, facial mutilations, and Kar-Tel KustomKars. Compared with The Maniax, the Clean or The Bible Belt, they wereeasy-goers. After all, they had only killed three of the resettlers.

Three. Finnegan. Dzundza. And Claude.

Something gave in his neck, and his head rolled. His cheek pressed tothe hot, gritty road, and his field of vision changed. Beyond theasphalt was the desert. In the distance were mountains. Nothing else.There wasnt a cloud in the sky, hadnt been for decades.

The sun shone down, reflecting like a new hundred-dollar coin in thepool of Brother Claudes blood that was spreading across the road.

Blood on the road.

That reminded him of something Elder Seth had said. Something important.

Blood

on the road

Blood

A fly landed on Brother Claudes eyelash. He didnt blink.

Trooper Kirby Yorke, United States Cavalry, shot a glance at the routeindicator on the dashboard. The red blip of the cruiser was dead centre,the green lines of the map slipping by around it. They had just crossedthe state line into Utah and driven up past a place that had once beenKanab. Outside the wraparound sunshade windows, the scenery of Kanab,Utah, could as well be the scenery of Boaz, New Mexico, Shawnee,Oklahoma or almost anywhere in the desert that stretched almostuninterrupted from the foothills of the Appalachians to WashingtonState. Rocks and sand. Sand and rocks. The Great Central Desert, theColorado Desert, the Mojave Desert, the Mexican Desert. Pretty soon,theyd have to junk all the names and call it the American Desert. Bythen, they would all be citizens of the United States of Sand and Rocks.