Route 666

blow was like a drumbeat.

A short man, nattily dressed in a frock coat and a big black stetson, stood in the street, flanked by two gorilla- shaped individuals with tin stars and Cyberfeed stetsons. The local heat.

The girl's blood made signs in the cracks of the road.

'I say I don't know if'n you have much familiarity with the law,' the short man said, 'but we take objection to this here sort of unruly behaviour in Spanish Fork, Utah.'

The Elder dropped the girl's head and stood up. His hands were red, but the rest of his outfit was as clean as it ever was. His face was empty.

'Deseret,' he said, grinding the word between his teeth. 'New Canaan, Deseret.'

'We like proper names round these parts,' said the short man.

The girl rolled away from the Elder's legs, and the cockatoo creature went to help her. The fillette was still alive but had a bloody dent in her forehead. Her eyepatch was scraped away and and a mechanical doodad hung out of her socket on multicoloured filaments. Tyree would guestimate severe concussion at the least, probably brain damage.

The short man took off his hat. 'Permit me to introduce myself. I am Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper and we do things my way in Spanish Fork. Job, arrest this man.'

One of the deputies lurched forwards, his clapperclawed right hand held out. Circuitry hummed inside the bulky bio-amendment.

There was quite a crowd. Most of the Josephites were there, looking bewildered but not surprised at their Elder's activities. Kirby Yorke was with them, goggle-eyed and slack-jawed, derelict in his duties for leaving the cruiser unguarded. That worried Tyree almost more than anything; it was like seeing a baby crawling in the road. There were more Psycho-pomps, pouting with indignation and fingering home-made shooting and stabbing irons. The townsfolk of Spanish Fork all turned out to see the show.

Shutters went up over breakable windows and guns were banded out like burgers at a B-B-Q. This situation had all the fixings of a medium-sized bloodbath, Tyree thought.

The clawed deputy reached out to take Elder Seth's wrist. With an easy movement, the Elder pushed the big man in the centre of the chest. It looked like a playground shove to Tyree, but there must have been deadly force behind it. She heard bones snapping and the deputy dropped like a felled tree.

Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone darted forwards and fell on the deputy. Wiggs' knee smashed into the man's throat and Ciccone's hands dug into his guts. The cyberfeed overloaded and blew its circuits. The deputy's head caught fire, burned bright for a few seconds, then turned into a reeking, charred blob. The rest of him was still twitching.

There was more blood on the road.

Elder Seth said something that sounded like 'sicksick-sicks'. The resettlers gathered behind him. Wiggs and Ciccone, dirtied and bloodied, were back in line. One or two of the faithful looked scared out of their tiny minds, but they still backed him up. Tyree had to fight the impulse to go stand beside the Elder. She got the impression Brother Bailie, for one, was fighting an impulse to get out of the line-up and stand against Elder Seth. The man had some sort of unnatural influence.

'Get your kicksssss,' hissed Elder Seth, 'on Route Sicksicksicksss...'

The remaining deputy shot his arm out, flat-handing the air. He had a shotgun implant, an impressive piece of work. There was an almighty bang as he discharged himself. He cocked his elbow, filling the chamber again, and fired a second time.

'…sicksicksicks sicksicksicks...'

He had taken one of the blasts full in the belly. The other had glanced off his right shoulder. Brother Bailie, who had been standing behind him, was on the ground with his face in his hands, trying to press it back onto his skull. Elder Seth was still standing, clothes a ruin, body still whole. Tyree saw patches of his skin blackened from the discharge, but unbroken.

'…sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks ...'

Elder Seth wasn't human. That explained a lot.

XII

This was the site of the Great Invocation. The Summoner ignored the stinging in his flesh, and advanced on the man with the gun in his arm. Deputy Larroquette reminded him of a Roman legionary he had pulled apart when he rode with Attila. If you lived long enough, everybody reminded you of somebody else. The Roman's insides had felt slippery and yet tough in his fists. He had been less strong then.

He took the next blast full in the face. His hat flew off and he shook the flattened fragments of the charge out of his hair. His spectacles were not destroyed. He fixed the Deputy with mirrored eyes.

The Deputy saw the worst thing in the world and lowered his arm. For Larroquette, the worst thing in the world was a man with two buzzing chainsaws, surprised in the boiler room of an Albuquerque elementary school The Summoner let the man with the chainsaws carve the deputy's mind into sections.

He took Larroquette's wrist and tore his gun-arm off, as easily as he would rip a silk neckerchief in two. He dropped the useless thing on the ground.

The deputy bled from the shoulder, bright jewels splashing to the tarmac More blood for the Dark Ones.

They were in the air now, squeezing onto the earthly plane through rips in the fabric of this reality. He saw them swarming around in multitudes The clawed, crawling, winged, stinging, horned, spiny, toothed hordes. The Vanguard of the Beast

This would have to end now. It was the place of sacrifice, and the time. Those who would not follow him must die.

The deputy, dead but moving, lunged out with his remaining arm and clawed the spectacles from the Summoner's face. His nerveless fingers couldn't grip the sacred objects, which flew away and skittered across the ground towards the crowd

The loss didn't matter. As always, it was temporary.

XIII

12 June 1995

People were suddenly dying all around Yorke. Attacked as if by invisible creatures and torn apart. It was as if the Dancing Death had descended among them and laid about himself with a vibrating scythe.

Yorke discharged his side arm into the air until his wrist was wrung out, spinning around trying to draw a bead on something insubstantial. Hot cartridge cases pattered around his feet, bouncing on asphalt like Mexican jumping beans.

Brother Bailie, sorely wounded, staggered out of the ranks of the Josephites, sobbing with pain and terror, face leaking through his fingers. He froze and was pulled up into the air. His clothes ripped and red rain fell around him. He twisted in the air as if mangled, and thumped to the ground in several large pieces.

One of Yorke's ankles was kicked out from under him and he went down, eyes hurting as if he had stared full