A fly landed on Brother Claude's eyelash. He didn't blink.
III
The citizens were dead. There were two in the road, both dressed the same, both dead the same. As usual, they'd been overkilled. Trooper Leona Tyree assumed a parade had run over them.
"No wonder the population's declining," she said to Burnside.
For the first time in the recorded history of the world, according to ZeeBeeCee's Newstrivia, violence was a bigger killer than disease or starvation.
"This one lived longer than the other," Trooper Washington Burnside observed, frown crinkling his recaff-toned forehead, "the poor bastard."
He stood up, brushing road-dirt off the knees of his regulation blue pants After a couple of days on patrol, the yellow side-stripes were almost obscured.
Tyree scanned the startled faces, trying to puzzle out the look in the eyes. She always wondered about corpses. What had it been like at the end? Sometimes, she thought she thought too much. Maybe that was what held her back.
"The cruiser's coming," Burnside said.
Like Tyree, he wore gunbelt and suspenders, heavy gauntlets, a yellow neckerchief and knee-high boots. With his microcircuit-packed skidlid off, he could have been US Cav, 1875 vintage.
And the desert here had always been the same. There'd never been wheatfields in this part of Utah.
But it was 1995 all right. You could tell by the treadmarks on the deadfellas. And the armoured US Road Cav cruiser bearing down on them. The ve-hickle was shaped like an elongated armadillo, nose to the ground. Its gray carapace was coated with non-reflective paint.
"Here's the Quince."
The cruiser eased to a halt. Sergeant Quincannon pulled himself out, hauling a shotgun with him. For a fat old guy, he was in good shape. His ruddy complexion came from high blood pressure, Irish ancestors and Shochaiku Double-Blend Malt, but he never gave less than 150 percent on patrol. In his off-hours, he was another guy altogether. Now, the Quince was purposeful. This was a situation and he was going by the book.
Tyree considered the possibility that the deadfellas were ambush bait. It was unlikely: there was no cover within easy distance of the hardtop. Besides, this wasn't a convoy route to anywhere. Still, she'd scoped the Des for possible foxholes A man could hide in the sand, but stashing a ve-hickle was another proposition.
Tyree gave the no trouble sign and the Quince stowed his laser-sight pump action back in the car. Yorke stayed at the wheel. He got squeamish in the vicinity of deadfellas. Not a useful character trait in the Road Cav, but he was stuck with it.
Quincannon strode up. He had the Cav walk down pat: sort of an easy lope, with lots of shoulder action, belly pulled in. It was just the right side of a swagger.
"What's the situation?" he asked.
"Unidentified casualties, sir," Tyree replied. "We came upon them as they are. There were birds but I shooed them off with a miniscreamer."
"This deadfella's been gone less'n an hour," put in Burnside. "The other bit the cold one three – four ticks earlier."
"Careless driving costs lives."
"This wasn't careless. Whoever roadkilled these hombres made freakin' sure they did a snazz job."
Quincannon wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. A minute out of his air conditioning and he was sweating. Flies swarmed on the corpses. Soon the atmosphere in these parts wasn't going to be too pleasant.
"What do you reckon, sir? Maniax?"
The Maniax were supposed to be off the big board in the Western States, but there were enough rogue chapters of the gangcult rolling around pissed to do a pretty sight of damage before their file closed.
"Could be, Leona. Or Gaschuggers, KKK, Razorbacks, Masked Raiders, Psychopomps, Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, DAR, Voodoo Bros, any one of a dozen others. Hell, the Mescalero Apache ain't been no trouble for a hundred years, but this is their country too. Killin' people is the Great American Sport. Always has been."
The Quince got like that sometimes, mouthy and hardbitten. Tyree put up with it because the sergeant was a top op. After Howling Paul McAuley, probably the best all-round op in the Cav. If she wanted to advance herself off her cyke into a cruiser and then up the chain of command, she'd need his recommendation.
She'd been a trooper a month or so too long as it was. Put a tunic on her and she'd make a dandy lieutenant. Then captain, colonel. It could happen. Her mother had told her it was important to have ambition.
"What do you reckon to their outfits?"
The deadfellas were dressed square, in black cloth suits. No glitter, no frills.
"Don't rightly know, Burnside. Let's take a closer scan."
Tyree had hoped he wouldn't say something like that.
Without too much evident distaste, Quincannon examined one of the corpses, slipping gauntleted fingers between material and meat. He unpeeled a section of jacket from the crushed chest. The dead man wore a simple black suit and a shirt that had been white once but was now mainly red. The shirt was fastened to the throat but there was no tie.
"Funny thing," said Quincannon. "No pockets. No belt. And, scan, no buttons…"
The dead man had fastened his coat with wooden pegs.
"We found this." Burnside handed the sergeant a broad-brimmed black hat.
"He wasn't with any of the usual gangcults, that's for sure," the Quince said. "The ratskags who zotzed him might have taken his weapons, but they'd have left holsters or grenade toggles or something. This damfool wasn't even armed."
"Do you reckon he was an undertaker? All in black, like. Or a preacher?"
"Second guess is more likely, Leona. Though what the hell he was doin' this far into the sand is beyond me."
"Preachers these days pack more firepower than Bonnie and Clyde," Burnside put in. "Take the Salvation Survivalists."
"The other is dressed the same," Tyree observed.
"Just a gang of pilgrims, then. Looking for the Promised Land."
"The Amish don't use buttons," she said. "Or the Hittites."
"As far as I know, the last Amish were wiped out in '93. But that's a good thought. Plenty of religions about these days if a man has a fancy to pick a new one. Or an old one."
Quincannon stood up and dropped the hat over the dead man's face. He observed a private moment of silence and made a gesture that could either be the sign of the cross or the hoisting of a last drink.
"What should we do?"
"Bad news, Leona. You found 'em. You gotta scrape 'em up and bury 'em by the roadside. I'll call it in to Valens. Burnside, break out the entrenching tools and give the lady a hand. Then we'll go up the road a ways, following the tracks. There are tracks?"
Tyree nodded. After the pilgrim-flattening session, the killers' tires would be bloody enough to paint a trail for three counties The white strip down the middle of the road was a solid red.
"Thought so. Anyway, we see who's at the end of the trail. If we're lucky, we get to kick badguy ass before suppertime. If not, we ride through the night and head 'em off at sunup."
The Quince saluted. Tyree and Burnside returned the salutes, and pulled neckerchiefs up over their mouths and noses. They'd had all the infection lectures about handling suspect deadfolks. At an adjustment, the bandanas shrivelled onto their faces, functioning as filters.
"Remember, disease is your worst enemy," Quincannon said, "so check the seals on your gauntlets before you interfere with these former citizens Snap to it, men."
IV
The girls were loitering around the Virtual Death Unlimited Arcade, a roof on stilts raised over a platoon of credit-machines. The games centre was attached to Arizona-Wonderworld, a failing mall out in the Painted Desert. In the stores, all goods were on massive discount. Jazzbeaux had glommed a pair of snazz boots on American Excess, a card she intended to pay off when Dracula got a suntan. She even found a stall specialising in ornamental prostheses and tried on a selection of eyepatches, none of which took her fancy.