Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Redford: Colonel, you have my word you are not one of the villains I'm aiming to bring down.

Hardacre: That's touching. What about Mr Turner?

Redford: Brunt, as I'm sure you are aware, there are laws of slander.

Turner: They'll only take my guns away from me by prising them from my cold, stiff, dead fingers. Yes, indeed.

Redford: The only things your fingers ever touch are computer keys, salary-man. My guess is you've never been shot at in your air-conditioned office.

Turner: Umph grumph…

Hardacre: Hold on guys, let's keep our sleeves down. There you have it, a regular rough-house debate just like in the old days. Mr Turner thinks the Ops are doing a fine job keeping the filth in their place; Senator Redford thinks Mr Turner is full of bullstuff; and Colonel Presley is just trying to keep his customers satisfied. Me, I sleep better knowing my blonde-haired little nine-year-old is protected by Estevez and Blunt, who have a 100 per cent kill-rate in kidnap cases. If this debate has worried, disturbed or upset you, get that bitch to haul another six-pack out of the icebox and suck down a couple more Pivos until the pain goes away.

Next week on Nostalgia Newstrivia, in our "Living Memory" slot, we look back with misty eyes to last year, 1994. Liz-Beth Hickling, the look of last year, brings back the people, the places, the faces, the fashions, the music, the massacres. You haven't yet had time to forget, but we'll remind you all the same.

In the quiet of the morning, Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper uprolled the blinds and took a look at the peacability. From the window of his study, on the top storey of the clapboard courthouse-cum-town-hall, he could survey the Main Street of Spanish Fork, Utah, and be satisfied with the world he had made.

Everything was still except the creaky sign of the Feelgood Saloon, which was electronically jiggered to waver as if in a breeze even when the wind was down. The town slowly came to life. The scissor-legged shadow of Christopher Carnadyne skittered across the street like a stick insect as the undertaker took his morning constitutional. Carnadyne doffed his crepe-ringed top hat to Mrs Dolley Magruder as they met in the street and exchanged pleasantries. Cash crop farmhands with a bellyful of big bean breakfast broke out of the Chow Trough and headed off to the fields for a hard day cultivating the Whoopee Weed. Small children played with dogs. Honest traders opened for business. O'Rourke's Security Goods offered a special summer price on Kevlar.

The judge was proud of the town. His town. He liked to think of Spanish Fork that way. It was certainly the way most folks had come to think of the old place. The judge was a contented man. Spanish Fork was a peaceful community, a friendly town like they weren't supposed to be any more. They had some laws, but not so many a man couldn't cut loose a little. They had a deep-water well which still ran pure and was under 24-hour guard. Murder wasn't necessarily a capital offence in Spanish Fork, but stealing from the well was.

The town had a few deputies who had made names for themselves and decided to settle down. Job Fiske had been with T-H-R until they'd parted company over his disrespectful treatment of a Japcorp oyabun, and Matthieu Larroquette had made the cover of Guns and Killing when he'd brought in the serial killer Hector "Chainsaw" Childress in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Nice, regular, deputy-type guys, they made sure the peace was kept, or at least as much of it as the town decreed desirable.

The sun was high already and Main Street baked. Without the well, Spanish Fork would have parched up and blown away like all the other towns hereabouts. The place had once been called New Canaan – it was in the county records – and the sand had flowered through the miraculous agency of that deep water. Then, the fruitfulness had excited envy and a parcel of no-good Josephites and Indians had fallen upon New Canaan, massacred everybody and razed the place to the ground. There was an ugly memorial by the old corn exchange. Judge Colpeper had learned the lesson of history. This time, Spanish Fork was ready for whatever varmints came out of the Des, sniffing after the precious nectar.

From one end of the street, a figure strode on powerful legs. It was Matthieu Larroquette. In town, he walked everywhere, tireless. The first biker who thought the pedestrian deputy would be easy meat soon learned about the kick Larroquette packed in his amended arm. Things were so quiet, the judge could almost hear the jingling of Larroquette's spurs. Carna-dyne raised his hat and stepped aside, letting the Deputy past; the undertaker's toothy grin suggested Larroquette was good for his business.

You could tell it was a civilised community. Colum Whittaker had a 25-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, Dolley Magruder's sporting gents and ladies entertained nightly at reasonable rates at the Pussycat Palace on Maple Street, and Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper was in charge of a picturesque gallows with facilities to handle five customers simultaneously.

Just now, Colpeper only had one set of guests to be bothered with and he had a sense that they could be handled.

When the Psychopomps hit Spanish Fork late the night before and headed for Colum's 25-foot bar, Job Fiske had made a personal call to inform the judge. Colpeper considered things a moment and looked up the rap-sheets on the interagency 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 rep. Twenty-three semi-confirmed kills, starting with her own father, 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 a watch for a girl with one eye, and make sure her lieutenant Andrew Jean wasn't too enthusiastic with the beehive-hairdo-concealed slipknife. A solo Op 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 'Pomps were content to be good customers, and pay for their food, drink, gas, auto repairs and party favours, the judge was content to let them be. The secret of the town's survival was that folks that other communities saw as threats, Spanish Fork treated as customers.

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

Things were pretty quiet. A recorded note from Fiske on his oak desk reported that the Psychopomps had enthusiastically partaken of the fare at the Feelgood and broken a little furniture. Nothing indispensible. Then they'd rented cabins over at the Katz Motel and broken some of Herman Katz's ugly tables and chairs while passing round the glojo Ferd Sunderland mixed up in the back of the drug store. A couple of the hardier boys and nancier girls from the Pussycat Palace had gone back to the Katz for a little Strenuous Recreation with the ganggirls.

The judge had a warm glow as he imagined the fun the boys and girls must have had and still be having in and around the shower units, hot tubs and water-beds of Herman's Party Cabins. They wouldn't be too competent at trouble-making, at least until suppertime.