Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Tyree didn't believe it but she saw it anyway.

The Psychopomps – one creature of indeterminate sex with an orange cockatoo haircut, and two shocked girls – stood back and watched Elder Seth go to work on their leaderine. And he just glided across the floor and picked her up like the hero of a romance comicstrip cruising for truelove in the disco hall.

The jukebox was stuttering into life again, some zonked version of "The Tennessee Waltz".

With a deep revulsion at herself, Tyree realised she was actually jealous of the one-eyed 'Pomp. There was something badly wrong, and Leona Tyree was part of it. Quincannon had his side arm out now but wasn't doing anything with it.

Elder Seth, dancin' with his darlin', whispered something Tyree couldn't hear in the girl's ear and put her sunglasses on. Her mouth opened in a silent oval scream.

It was as if an invisible but blinding light filled the room. Tyree found herself blinking, rubbing her eyes as tears flowed. Everyone in the bar was doing the same. But there hadn't been any real light.

The Psychopomp was slumped over the bar, one arm hanging limp, throat exposed. Elder Seth supported the girl and heaved her up onto the stool. She was either dead or in a dead faint. He lifted her head and took her dark glasses off. They were the old-fashioned, metal-rimmed, non-wraparound kind.

He slipped the mirrorshades on and his face was complete.

The Elder picked up the fillette's handbag and emptied it on the bar. The cockatoo laid a hand on him, but backed off instantly, face clown-white under make-up. Elder Seth sorted rapidly through the 'Pomp's belongings.

… Tyree could see the burning village in her mind again. Sod huts, log cabins, cattle and goat pens, all ablaze. Horsemen riding through, whooping, swinging weapons. Men and women ridden down and killed. And the Elder, on his knees, rubbing a small dead thing into the dirt, squeezing out the blood.

Elder Seth found what he was looking for.

"My little demon, I believe," he said to the cockatoo, holding up a cashplastic. He made it disappear in his hand like a conjuring trick. He reached out and picked up the unconscious girl by the throat, hauling her upright as if she were a straw doll. Her arms dangled, her head lolled and her feet scraped the floor. Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone held the batwing doors open. Holding the 'Pomp like a plucked turkey, Elder Seth left the saloon.

Quincannon followed him and Tyree snapped to it, followed by everyone else in the saloon.

The sun wasn't yet down, but evening bugs were in the air. The street was crowded. Something had brought the people of Spanish Fork out of their houses. The resettlers were crowded around like a congregation, and a cadre of Psychopomps gathered like a gang spoiling for trouble.

The skies were darkening. There was a tang of blood in the air.

Elder Seth carried his prize through the ranks of parked vehicles and dropped her in the middle of the road. Her head cracked on the blacktop, and she moaned, stirring a little. Blood was smeared where she had fallen.

Six hundred threescore and six! 666!

The Summoner heard the Number in his mind, ringing like a chorus, voiced by a thousand inhuman throats. It had been left for him in the writings of all the religions, a sign to be read.

There was blood on the road. The road to the Prime Site. And that was as it should be. The blood was the main ingredient of the ritual, it was there to guide the Dark Ones, to call them down, to help them gather at the City, the Shining City, the City of Dreadful Night, the City of the Last Days. He had the glasses now, and he had the Key.

He knelt and took Jessamyn's head in his hand, gathering a forelock of her hair in his fist. The girl was unconscious, still terrified on the plain outside space. A pity. It would be better if she were awake. He slammed the back of her head against the hardtop. Her skull bounced a little, like a coconut.

The Summoner smashed Jessamyn's head against the road again. Blood flew, splattering in a neat arc, and sank in like butter on a griddle.

He remembered New Canaan, remembered fighting alongside Old Hendrik Shatner and the Paiute. To him, 1854 was but a minute past. Then, he had been called the Ute. He had pulled a child out of a burning cabin. It had been grateful but started kicking and squealing when his mule-skinning knife came out. Burned flesh was no good to the Dark Ones, only spilled blood.

He had seen so much blood, down through the centuries. He had been born in blood, continually rejuvenated in blood. There were many places, many names, many faces, but the blood was always the same. Whether on the Mutia Escarpment in Africa, or Judea under the Herods, or Pendragon's Britain, or Temujin's Eastern plains or Bonaparte's Empire or the fields of Kampuchea, the blood was always the same.

In the Outer Darkness, the Old Ones heard the call. He spoke the words under his breath as his fingers spread the blood.

He invoked the Names He recited the Nine Names of the Beast. The creatures of the Outer Plains gathered around pricking at the balloon of this reality.

His hands were bloody to his shirtcuffs.

Flat hammers pounded the back of her head. Jazzbeaux awoke to mushrooming pain.

Her mind was blanked. A continent of blood funnelled into her eye and washed everything from her head.

Only fear remained.

A hand held her hair. Her head was being lifted up and slammed down. Again and again.

A black arm was responsible. It was as precise and impassive as a machine component.

More pain cracked inside her head. Something was breaking.

She scanned Elder Seth's impassive face floating above in the distance. The black arm which hurt her stretched up to the Elder's shoulder.

She was getting motion sickness.

The rhythmic pounding echoed, beating time like a metronome. Her nostrils were full of blood.

She sent signals to her hands to come together around Elder Seth's throat, but the rest of her body wasn't at home when her graymass came to call.

The Elder muttered something as he killed her. He chittered like an insect.

"… sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sick-sicksicks …"

Her right arm convulsed and reached upwards, but Elder Seth brushed it away and bore down on her body with a bony knee. A stab of pain shot through her ribs.

She twisted her neck and her bloody hair slipped through the Elder's greasy fingers. She grabbed the road and tried to pull herself away.

Hands took the back of her neck and the back of her head. Cruel fingers squeezed her wounds.

Jazzbeaux heard herself screaming again.

Elder Seth smashed her face against the road, twisting her head so the brunt of the blow was taken by her eyepatch. She felt crunching in the orbit around her optic burner.

If she could roll over, she could give the scumsucker a blast at the bridge of his cursed shades. She could bore a hole through his head and see the evening sky.