Route 666 by Jack Yeovil

Author:Jack Yeovil [Yeovil, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Dark Future, Games Workshop, Alternative History, Science Fiction
ISBN: 1852833688
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 1993-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

VIII

9 June 1995

The patrol made good time on the pilgrim trail before making camp, returning to where they had buried the roadkill. The cruiser had a microwave for reheat-rations and an in-built recaffolator, but Quincannon liked to get a real fire going. He said the desert night didn’t sound right without crackling. Also, flames kept unwelcome critters away. Every month, some straying patrol logged a sighting of something that shouldn’t be alive.

Yorke and Tyree spent half an hour rounding up scrubby weeds and wooden jetsam for the fire while the Quince and Burnside raised the wind-wall and the pup tents. With the sun falling rapidly, the task had some urgency. Under starlight, it was impossible to find anything.

Half buried by the road was a bookcase, complete with paperbacks. There was a set of Margaret Thatcher’s “Grantham” romances, which Yorke’s mother devoured in the ’80s before her father decreed that such slush should be burned in public, and a few pulps by Kenneth Livingstone, who turned out to be a Brit science-fiction writer.

The bookcase and books were all the troopers needed to get a good fire going. Yorke stamped the furniture into fragments and made a pile. Tyree was nervy about putting books into the blaze, which Yorke couldn’t understand. They were just dead old words on paper.

While Quincannon boiled up a pot of recaff, hoping that real fire might improve the taste, Tyree hauled herself off to one side with a paperback called Newtworld and started reading. Yorke eyed her. She was like that in off-hours, withdrawn and a tad nose-in-the-air. She was seeing Nathan Stack, another trooper out of Valens, but the affair seemed on the wane. Yorke, who hadn’t had himself a woman since his last leave in Tucson, would have liked a chance, but Tyree had a good five years on him, and he knew she didn’t take him seriously. She had tiny lines around her mouth and eyes, but was in shape. A man could do a sight worse…

“March over, Leona,” the Quince said, “get your reheated taco and grits.”

Tyree scrambled nearer the fire and took a plate. With her helmet off, she had honeyish hair that cleared her shoulders by a couple of inches.

“What’s the book about?”

“So far as I can scan, it’s set in the future when intelligent swamp creatures rule the planet and the Brit government are amphibians. Except the prime minister, who’s a jellyfish. The first couple of pages are missing.”

Quincannon looked at the faded book-cover. It showed a man-sized lizard with a big gun and a British policeman’s helmet.

“I’ve heard enough strange stories not to be bothered with this stuff…”

Yorke could tell the Quince was in a vocal mood. They’d be lucky to get to sleep before three, by which time the sergeant would have done his best to pack them off to dreamland on the nightmare express. If it was scary, it had happened to someone Quincannon knew.

“Wasn’t today strange enough for you?” Tyree asked. “You met the Frankenstein monster. And Dr Zarathustra.

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