Jack Yeovil - Route 666

"Are you alright, bro?" The kneeling water-dispenser asked, concern dripping from every syllable.

Brother Claude had tried to smile, tried to make the woman (if woman she was) feel better. She wore a black tutu, fluffed out to show long, shinily PVC-skinned legs.

"Snazz," she said, black against the sun. As she stood, the 'bot hummed to herself:

"When a gal's an empty kettle,

She should be on her mettle

Yet I'm torn apaaaa-art…"

Brother Claude remembered The Wizard of Oz. His MRA Troop had been shown the film, a scratchy video dupe from some striated celluloid print, blown up and projected on an off-white sheet. Tatum O'Neal as Dorothy, Lee Majors as the Tin Man, Frank Zappa as the Wizard.

Satisfied, the 'bot kicked him again, jamming the point of her pump into his ribs, breaking a few more bones.

"Just because I'm presumin'

That I could be sorta human

If I only had a heart…"

Her leotard was cut away over her chest like a fetish suit. Her breasts were hard, clear, plastic bumps. Inside were wheels and pistons. An LED clock flashed numbers. Tiny gears moved like insect-legs. A rounded glasspex stomach sloshed with acids that processed whatever the cyborg needed to keep walking. Batteries?

The 'bots drove away, leaving the stink of their exhaust in the air. Elder Seth said a few words over Brother Lennart, and repeated them for Brother Claude. He had thought it best not to interrupt his own funeral service with unseemly groans. The survivors moved on.

He understood the concept of sacrifice. By his death, the Path of Joseph would be seeded.

He didn't envy the 'bot. It was better to die clean than live on with half your guts replaced by vacuum cleaner parts and computer terminals.

Nobody had chanced along the Interstate since the convoy followed its yellow brick road. Brother Claude wasn't surprised. Only a damfool would venture this far sandside. A fool, or a pilgrim …

He was twisted in the middle, face up but skewed at the hips, groin pressed to the asphalt. He couldn't feel anything below his ribs. Considering what he could feel from the rest of him, that was a mercy. He realised he was deaf. One of his eyes was shut, sealed by a rind of dried blood.

Brother Claude, born in the Phoenix NoGo, had lived outside Policed Zones all his short life, and always had to follow someone. His daddy took off early – Mama Hooper tried to make out he was some high mucky-muck in Japcorp, but Claude knew better the types she slung out with and so he found other daddies.

During the Moral Re-Armament Drive of the early '80s, the ten-year-old Claude enlisted in President Heston's Youth Corps. Big Chuck looked like a Prezz ought to: a mile wide at the shoulders with a jaw like a horseshoe and acres of medal-heavy chest. When Pioneer Hooper was cashiered for breaking a kid's nose in a dispute about the superiority of Battlestar Galactica over Charlie's Angels, he transferred allegiance to Burtram Fassett, Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of the White Magnolia. The IGW told the pledge that he, as a white heterosexual male, was a Prince of the Earth, and that it was the young recruit's duty to stick killing steel into the human vermin who dared rise up against nature's aristocrats.

If he was a Prince of the Earth, he'd tried not to wonder, how come his mama couldn't afford the Playboy Channel?

Then he was a soldier in the War. Not any of the overseas Wars, like the ones in Cuba or Nicaragua; the War between the Knights and the Voodoo Brotherhood, when the Knights tried to clear nigras out of Arizona. That'd been a gold-plated bust. He'd had noble ideas about racial purity and Aryan jihad drummed into his graymass, then it turned out the Knights were financed by raghead troublemakers from the Pan-Islamic Congress.

His life was trickling out before his eyes, or at least ticking through his graymass. Brother Claude guessed that was a bad sign.

When T-H-R broke up the Knights and Fassett decamped for pastures greener, Claude drifted a spell. Didier Brousset, head houngan of the Voodoo Bros, put a bounty on the pizzles of ex-Knights, so it wasn't healthy to keep your white hood and red-cross robes. Claude was on the streets of the Phoenix NoGo, running. Ducking away from a couple of rattlesnake necktie Bros, he found himself in a meeting hall. A man was speaking. He wore a damfool black suit and a pilgrim hat, like many of his audience. He wore mirrorshades, also like many of his audience. And he had the Truth in his voice.

Claude had come upon the Word of Joseph and found himself a final daddy in Elder Seth. The Elder purred a sermon, not shouting like the teevee preachies Mama Hooper watched whenever she wasn't pumping the bunk with squiffed strangers. In him burned a fire of faith that spread wherever he went. Claude was not the only convert made in that hall that night. He had to jostle through a crowd to sign up.

Brother Claude had been Saved, he thought: he didn't miss recaff or co-cola or the Devil's music or carnal relations or fast foods or pockets or any of the things he was required to abjure. He wore his pegged black coat and round black hat with pride.

"We need men like thee," Elder Seth said. "The Brethren must have young blood. These are the last days."

Elder Seth believed the heartlands were not lost. The Des could be reseeded, resettled, reclaimed. Most everybody outside the Brethren said Elder Seth was a damfool but the Elder had a way of convincing people. Claude joined up with the Brethren's Resettlement Programme. He sang the hymns – "The Battle Cry of Freedom", "Tis the Gift to Be Simple", "The Path of Joseph", "Stairway to Heaven" – and enlisted as shotgun on the first convoy out of Phoenix for Salt Lake City; 850 klicks of lawless road and burning desert lay before the resettlers.

If he'd actually been given a shotgun, maybe he wouldn't be where he was, but Elder Seth frowned on needless violence. "Our weapons shall be our faith and fervour," he announced, while Gentiles shook their heads.

Brother Claude had no idea where he was dying. He wondered if they had reached the former state of Utah. He had the idea that they'd crossed the state line. This was his first time outside his native Arizona. And his last. According to Elder Seth, this wasn't even the United States of America. He was dying on the chosen ground.

As the convoy put out of Phoenix, crowds had cheered. Plenty of bignames from the PZ came out, shielded by armed goons – natch – and Elder Seth made a speech to the multitudes. It had been a speech of hope and promise. The big public screen played a message from President North, fumbling his way through best wishes. The Prezz's speech boiled down to "Good luck guys, but don't blame me if you don't make it". Then the gates of the city were opened, brushing away NoGo derelicts who were camping outside, and – after minimal escorting to get them through the Filter – the resettlers were on their way and on their own.

And here he was, bleeding himself empty on the Interstate. Flies buzzed and he imagined tall, dark figures standing over him. They had faces he could recognise – President Chuck was there, and ole IGW Fassett, and Elder Seth, and the woman-like gadget who had given him water – but no real shape. Elder Seth 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, and Brother Bailie, and Brother Wiggs, and Sister Consuela, and Brother Akins, and Sister Ciccone, and the Dorsey Twins? If he twisted his head a degree or so, he could see Brother Lennart, a black rag-doll with a bloody head. The carrion birds were closing in. And other things had loped out of the desert.