Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Admittedly, it had been quiet so far today. Quincannon pretended to be asleep in the passenger seat, but kept stirring to check the scanners and change the music. Burnside and Tyree were talking back-and-forth on open channels and Yorke was getting just a little jealous listening in. Guys in cruisers were supposed to pull all the tail, not 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. Nathan Stack was more or less definitively out of the picture. After this patrol was over, he would be making some definitive moves, and then he would have some stories for the bunkhouse. If this patrol was ever over.

Tyree was telling Burnside about a vacation she'd taken in Nicaragua with Nathan Stack. She was full of praise for the Central American Confederation, and said the people were less personally hostile to Norteamericanos than you'd think. And they had the real stuff, coffee. Yorke worked up a little jealous glitch, imagining Stack sharing a pot of coffee with Leona Tyree. He couldn't remember ever seeing her out of uniform. In Managua, she might even have worn a dress. It was hard to imagine, but pleasant…

The Josephite convoy moved slow and steady out of Moroni like an old-time wagon train, ve-hickles piled high with personal posessions, the furnishings of lives soon to be recommenced in the promised land. The motorwagons even looked like prairie schooners, with their tented canvas covers and roped-on barrels.

In the rearview dashscreen, Yorke saw the Elder sitting in the Edsel next to his driver, Wiggs. Elder Seth's shaded eyes fixed on the road ahead as if he could see destiny 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.

"What do you think of that Elder Seth, Quince?"

Quincannon grunted. "That's a man who certainly seems sure of himself, Yorke. Scans like he's never had a doubt in all his years. There's a name for religious folks like that. Folks who never doubt. Fanatic."

"But he's church folks, like a priest or the Pope…"

Quincannon mumbled "Secular humanist" disparagingly.

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

As usual, Yorke got left in the cruiser while Quincannon went to see what the trouble was.

Sister Maureen was nearly dead and Brother Bailie was 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. "It'll stop her kicking long enough for us to see if there's anything can be done. 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 juju. 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 Lada. Tyree briefly wondered what a Josephite was doing with an expensive imported 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. She was unwilling to give the wounded sister up, but she sensed Elder Seth's touch and struggled to press herself to him.

Tyree was pushed back.

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 angry but kept quiet.

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. Tyree scanned bone shards, and was sure the oozing pulp was graymass, brain tissue. She had never seen anyone hurt this bad still alive. Elder Seth was praying silently, lips working, tears coursing from his reflecting eyes.

The other Brethren gathered around and joined in prayer. Bailie was back under control, praying hard with the rest. Sister Ciccone supported him.

Elder Seth finally shook his head. Sister Maureen's breathing stopped. He laid her on the roadway and stood. The dead lady continued to leak, rivulets of red following the cracks in the neglected asphalt, spreading out from her head in a spiderweb pattern.

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

Tyree realised she had been praying hard with the best of them. Somehow, she knew the words.

The Summoner rejoiced, as more blood was spilled, soaking into the stony ground.

It had been easily accomplished, leading the sister to the asphalt altar and allowing the sacrificial wheel to break her. There was little pleasure in the killing part of it, little novelty.

The blood spread, sinking in. Each drop was a beacon, lighting the way to the achievement of the dark purpose. The ritual progressed well. The Dark Ones were imminent.

The 1980s was the decade when America woke up and smelled the coffee…only to find you couldn't get coffee any more. It was a time of crisis and change. In these bloody years, armed criminal factions known as gangcults carved out fiefdoms, fought wars, levied taxes. Weakened law enforcement agencies struggled ineffectually with groupings like the Maniax. Emerging from an unholy marriage between the Unione Siciliane and the Hell's Angels, the Maniax combined the high organisation of an established nationwide crime syndicate with the savage brutality of the worst motorcycle gangs.

The government recognised a wholesale breakdown of law and order and took measures to check the tide of anarchy and violence raging throughout cities and towns. After the Enderby Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1985, the field of law enforcement was opened to certain private individuals and institutions, bringing new firepower to the war against crime and a new expression to the language, the Sanctioned Operative, or Op.

In tonight's Newstrivia seminar, ZeeBeeCee's Brunt Hardacre, co-host of Snitchwatch USA, reminisces about the lawless days of the so-called Death Wish Decade with Mr Tad Turner, of the nationwide Turner-Harvest-Ramirez Agency, Mr Elvis Presley, an independent Op whose Hound Dog Agency is based in Memphis, Tennessee, and Senator Robert Redford of California, recently a stern critic of the Enderby system.