Jack Yeovil - Route 666

"Nine ve-hickles, camped off-road in a box canyon," Burnside reported. "Place used to be a drive-in movie theatre, the Lansdale Ozoner. Maybe thirty, forty citizens. Repeat, citizens, not gang personnel. No deathware in sight. All in black, like our flat friends two days back. They don't scan hostile, but they don't scan too healthy either."

Quincannon spoke into the communicator. "We'll be along directly, trooper. Do not establish contact until we're with you. The DAR didn't scan too hostile either, then they slaughtered F Troop with hatpin missiles."

"Check, sergeant."

Yorke had been driving since they broke camp at sunup. They were well into Utah. Quincannon was keeping watch on the scanners as the cruiser took in the view. The roads here wound through canyons and passes. Road Runner country. It was ideal ambush territory and you had to keep a camera-eye on the horizons for sniping points. There had been no trouble but that didn't mean there wouldn't be. Up on the root swivel-mounted sensors swept the landscape.

"So, what are we doing, Quince, rescuing or policing?"

"Could be either one, Yorke. Either one."

The cruiser blip joined the Tyree and Burnside blips on the mapscreen. The troopers were off their mounts, waiting for the heavy brigade. With assumed solids, procedure was to approach as a unit. Only certified gangcults warranted the surprise sneak-up. Quincannon signed for the troopers to saddle up and follow the cruiser. It was the regular formation again.

"Just slide 'er into the canyon, Yorke. Don't make too much of a noise but don't be too stealth-oriented either. We don't want to provoke any trouble. People in situations are liable to get panicky. Even decent folks have big guns and hair-triggers these days. And, believe me, my favourite song is not ' I Love a Massacre'."

Yorke took the cruiser off the road and the suspension had to do extra work as it bounced over dirt track. The cruiser was so well-sprung, you could put a shot glass of whiskey in the cup-cradle and not lose a drop over the brim.

There was a bunch of wheelmarks in the dust. They hadn't bothered to cover their trail. Therefore these were more likely to be victims than violators. The cruiser was gearing up for a fight, just in case. Yorke was still rattled from the patrol's brush yesterday with Boris freakin' Karloff and the Spidercopter of Doom. A row of lights on the dash went green one by one, and flashed regularly. The laser cannons were primed, the mortars ready to slide out of their holes, the directional squirters keyed up for tear gas, the maxiscreamers humming.

If Custer had had just one of these babies, he would have come back from the Little Big Horn a live hero.

"You hear that?"

Yorke strained his ears and Quincannon twiddled up the directional mikes, homing in on a noise.

"Singing?"

There was a faint, reedy whine. Voices joined, none too professionally, in song.

"A hymn?"

"It's a psalm, Yorke. 'How Amiable Are Thy Tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts'. You should have paid more attention in Sunday school."

"My parents are secular humanists, sir."

Quincannon mimed spitting.

Hymns gave Yorke a bad feeling. "What do you reckon, Quince. The Bible Belt?"

"Could be."

Yorke's hands were sweaty on the wheel. He had bad memories of the Bible Belt, a motorised gangcult of Old Testament fundamentalists. They wore spade beards, linen robes, open-toed sandals and "Jesus Kills" tattoos. Their kick was doing the Lord's work, but they were more inclined to Smite the Unrighteous and Put Out the Eye of Thine Enemy than Turn the Other Cheek or Love Thy Neighbour. They had moved into a couple of wide-open townships in Arizona, Welcome Springs and Buggered Goat, and renamed them Sodom and Gomorrah. Then they had razed the places to the ground and righteously slaughtered everyone in sight in the name of the Lord. They could easily have moved this far north.

Yorke had been captured by the Bible Belt three patrols back, and sentenced to die by the sword for having an ungodly Richard Clayderman chip in his walkman shades. He still owed the Quince for pulling him alive out of Gomorrah, Ariz. And he still owed the Bible Belt for the three plastik and steelspring fingers he was toting on his left hand.

The cruiser quietly approached the drive-in. There was a camp at one end. A group of people stood together as if at a meeting, scanning up at where the screen used to be. They were the ones singing. Someone with a bigger, blacker hat than the rest stood on the hood of a motorwagon, leading the congregation. The only one who could see the Cav coming, he kept waving his arms, keeping the psalm going.

Yorke let out a breath. The preacher was not Hezekiah Tribulation, messiah of the Bible Belt.

"Time to break up the sing-song," Quincannon said.

He turned on the outside hailers and spoke into the mike.

"Attention. This is the United States Road Cavalry. We mean you no harm."

He was obliged by law to say that before he shot anyone.

"We are here to offer assistance."

Yorke pulled the cruiser over and saw the blips converge as Tyree and Burnside parked by them. He still had the wheel and was supposed to stay at it in case the hymn-singers proved dangerous. It was the spot he liked. It felt a lot less exposed than getting out and talking to strangers in the Des.

The lights stopped flashing and glowed steady. The weapons system was waiting for the touch of a switch to cut loose. Yorke wouldn't even have to aim anything, unless he wanted manual override. The cruiser was ready to put a hole in any moving or stationary blip on its sensors without the photoactive Cav strip down its pantslegs.

The hymn ended and the singers turned to look at the newcomers. One or two went down on their knees and prayed out loud. They were either thankful for the rescuers or making their peace with God before they got killed trying to kill someone else. The Bible Belt went in for praying in a big way. And torture. Somehow, the two always seemed to go together.

"See you later, Yorke."

"Sure thing. Quince."

Quincannon stepped out of the cruiser and walked up to the choir, empty hand outstretched.

There was something strange about the preachie's shades. Jazzbeaux had worn them on and off for nearly a day. They were clearer than regular dark glasses and had a queer effect. She was used to the more-or-less flat, one-third obscured panorama of monocular vision augmented by an optic replacement Once or twice, she thought she scanned things in the periphery that couldn't be there. Indistinct, but unsettling. Sometimes it was like seeing in 3-D again. The disturbing presences hovered in the extreme left field, where she could usually see nothing.

"Whassamatter, Jazzbie," Andrew Jean asked, "you a loca ladybug? You're spookola in spades this ayem …"

The Psychopomps were grouped outside Moroni. The convention was that everyone parked neatly like solid citizens and walked into the arena like old-style gladiators.

Jazzbeaux sat on the hood of the Tucker, dangling the shades from her mouth. It occurred to her the glasses might be some new type of "safe" psychoactive. The lenses might convert light rays into optical illusions. It was possible. She'd read such things in magazines.

"No probs, Ay-Jay," she said.

This was important. Some liked a little high before a negotiation. It made them loose, less concerned, more daring. Jazzbeaux preferred going in straight. Back in her warehouse gladiatrix period, she always saved the Kray-Zee pills for after the bout.