Just Another Judgement Day (19 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: Just Another Judgement Day
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“Like your Penny Dreadful?” he said.
 
“She was never mine,” I said, automatically. “Penny was always her own woman. I never approved of her, but I liked her. She took no shit from anyone. And she really did do some good things in her time, even if she had to be paid to do them.” I looked around me, and a slow, steady anger burned within me. “They didn’t all need killing, Chandra. Some of them could have been saved.”
 
“Of course! That’s why you stay, isn’t it?” said Chandra, with the enthusiasm of a sudden insight. “To try and save those you care about. Like your Suzie Shooter.”
 
“Don’t go there,” I said, and when I looked at him, he fell silent.
 
No telling where that conversation might have gone because that was when King of Skin suddenly materialised out of mid air before us. Chandra and I both fell back a little, startled, as King of Skin skipped and swaggered among the dead bodies, sniggering and cackling and looking very pleased with himself. He stopped suddenly, and looked back over his shoulder at Chandra and me.
 
“I’ve been here all along,” he said, in his hot breathy voice. “Hidden by my power and my nature, watching and listening. Know thy enemy! He does like to talk, this Walking Man, and says so much more than he realises. He has a weakness, and it’s a very old one. Pride! He cannot ever admit to being wrong . . . Destroy his faith in the righteousness of what he does, even for a moment, and he will crumble . . . Oh yes!” He was suddenly right in front of me again, wrapped in his sleazy glamour, laughing right in my face. “Because of what I was, and what I am, I see the world very clearly. I see the Nightside for what it is, and not for what people on both sides like to think it is, or should be . . . That’s why Julien Advent insisted I be a part of his precious new Authorities. Because I will always see what needs to be done, and the best way to do it, no matter how upsetting.”
 
And just like that, he was gone again. Or at least, I presumed so. With King of Skin, you could never be sure.
 
I thought about Adrien Saint, the current Walking Man, so sure in his vocation. Could he really bring down the whole Nightside? Not by shooting the bad guys one by one . . . That would take him years, maybe centuries. So he must be planning something else. Something more . . . apocalyptic. Could he perhaps be the one to bring about the bleak dead future I’d encountered in the Timeslip? Where all the world was dead, and even the stars were going out? Could he be the real cause of that, and not me? Was that why the members of the new Authorities were the same people who had been my Enemies in that terrible future?
 
I had to stop the Walking Man. For many reasons. But how do you stop the will and wrath of God?
 
I was going to have to do some research.
 
SIX
 
The Only Thing Worse Than Asking Questions of God
 
We set fire to the Boys Club before we left. It seemed like the least we could do.
 
 
 
Afterwards, Chandra Singh and I stood outside in the street and watched the place burn. It went up very nicely. A crowd gathered around us to enjoy the spectacle. We like free entertainment in the Nightside. A street trader soon turned up to provide the crowd with snacky things on sticks, and in no time at all we were all variously toasting and roasting things in the flames of the burning Club. There’s nothing like a good pork, beef, and quite probably something else sausage you’ve personally blackened in a fire. Chandra politely declined to get involved and looked around uncertainly.
 
“Shouldn’t the fire brigade be here by now?”
 
“No such thing in the Nightside,” I said cheerfully. “The surrounding clubs have their own fire-insurance spells, so the blaze won’t spread. And in a high-rent area like this, reconstructive magics come as standard. This time tomorrow, there’ll be a whole new club standing here. Minus the Boys and their lackeys, of course.”
 
“What about the Walking Man?” said Chandra, apparently determined to be upset about something. “Shouldn’t we be hot on his trail before he causes another massacre?”
 
“If he’d been planning something imminent, he’d have told us,” I said, around a mouthful of sausage. “The man does love an audience. No, we’ve got time to do a little research. I need to talk with some Christian authorities, someone who can give us more detailed information...on the Walking Man in general, and the present incumbent in particular. Trouble is, there aren’t that many truly Christian people in the Nightside, apart from some rather extreme groups on the Street of the Gods, and a handful of missionaries.”
 
“Wouldn’t we be better off in a library?” said Chandra, tactfully. “You have some of the most famous libraries in the world here.”
 
“I think you mean infamous,” I said. “Not to mention downright dangerous. Some of our libraries have books that read people. And edit them. No, I think we need a more personal touch for something like this. Which rules out the big organisations, like the Salvation Army Sisterhood. They’d only feed us the party line. We need to talk to the missionaries, the holy rollers, and the dedicated individuals. Like Prestor Johnny, Saint Gorgeous, Kid Christ, or the Really Righteous Brothers.”
 
“They sound . . . rather eccentric,” said Chandra. Still being tactful.
 
“Well, yes,” I said. “You’ve got to be a little weird, not to mention certifiably strange, to want to spread the good word in a place like this. But we’ve always attracted more than our fair share of determined and highly individual religious zealots. Like Tamsin MacReady, the current rogue vicar. Yes, I think she’s our best bet. Ooh look—are those marshmallows?”
 
“The rogue vicar?” said Chandra, refusing to be side-tracked.
 
I finished the last of my sausage, discarded my stick, and wiped my greasy fingers on the coat of the person standing next to me. I strode away from the burning Boys Club, and Chandra walked along with me. A mothman had turned up, circling overhead, attracted by the light, and already people were using it for target practice.
 
“Direct agents from Above and Below have always been banned from the Nightside,” I said patiently. “Lilith designed it that way. Even the bigger organisations have trouble operating here, not least because the Street of the Gods offers mighty and ineffable Beings you can actually have a conversation and even do business with. But there’s a long tradition of rebel priests and rogue vicars who come here against standing orders, to test their faith and their mettle against the Nightside. Half-mad missionaries and holy terrorists, no practice too extreme, variously successful and always a pain in the arse. Tamsin MacReady is the latest in a long line of hard-nosed optimists. She probably knows all there is to know about the Walking Man. If only I can persuade her to talk to me.”
 
“Would I be correct in assuming that there is some bad feeling between you?” said Chandra.
 
“Sort of,” I said. “The previous rogue vicar was a man called Pew. My mortal enemy, for many years. He’s dead now, because of me.”
 
“I can see that would cause problems,” said Chandra.
 
 
 
Because I was in a hurry to get some information on the Walking Man before the bodies started dropping again, I broke one of my oldest rules and hailed a passing taxi-cab. Normally I know better. You can’t trust the taxis in the Nightside. Partly because you can never be sure who the drivers are really working for, or reporting back to . . . but mostly because taxis are just too bloody dangerous. Some of them run on powdered virgin’s blood, some of them interrupt their journeys to fight duels with cabs from rival firms, and some of them eat their passengers. Not everything that looks like a cab is necessarily a cab. But this was an emergency, so . . .
 
An old-fashioned black London taxi-cab pulled sharply out of the endless roar of Nightside traffic and screeched to a halt before me. I recognised the firm, Infernal Taxis. Their proud motto—
We promise you a Hell of a ride!
I held the door open for Chandra so he could get in first, just in case. I let him get settled comfortably and only then got in after him. You can’t be too careful.
 
A sign inside the cab said
Please refrain from smoking or the driver will rip your lungs out.
Fair enough. I’d barely settled back into the scuffed leather seat beside Chandra before the driver slammed through the gears and forced his way back into the flow of traffic through brute force and intimidation. He body-slammed a few slower-moving vehicles out of his way, and heavy-duty automatic weapons deployed from the gleaming black bonnet to threaten any other vehicles that didn’t move fast enough, or looked like they were getting too close. Which was also fair enough. Offensive driving is the norm in the Nightside if you want to reach the end of your journey alive, or even in one piece. I relaxed a little, feeling that I was in safe hands.
 
The driver was human enough, from the waist up. From the waist down, his torso plugged directly into the driving seat. Cables, wires, and tangles of translucent plastic tubing full of pulsing liquids connected him to the cab on both a physical and a mental level. Basically, he was a cyborg, and the cab was an extension of his truncated body. He drove it with his thoughts, but he kept his hands on the steering wheel to reassure his passengers. He kept a bonsai pine tree on his dash-board to serve as an air-freshener.
 
Chandra took one look at the driver’s situation, and immediately lost his temper.
 
“Who did this to you, sir?” he demanded loudly. “Give us the man’s name, and I promise you we shall hunt him down and inflict dire punishments upon him!”
 
“Will you relax?” I said. “He paid for it himself. You can make serious money driving a cab in the Nightside, if you live long enough. Being a cabby here is a vocation, like mountain-climbing or spree killing. You leave him alone, Chandra, he’s quite happy.”
 
“Too right, squire,” said the cabbie, without looking round. His skin was as pale and puffy as a mushroom, but his voice was disturbingly hale and hearty. “I had that Walker in the back of my cab the other day, you know. A real toff. Lousy tipper, mind. Where to, squire?”
 
“I need to speak to the rogue vicar,” I said. “Take us to the Vicarage.”
 
The driver sucked in a sharp breath between his yellow teeth. “Ooh no, I don’t think so, squire. I don’t go that far into the badlands. Far too dangerous.”
 
I leaned forward so he could get a good look at me in his mirror. “I’m John Taylor. How dangerous do you think it’s going to get in here if you don’t do what I tell you to?”
 
“Oh bloody hell,” said the driver.
 
He sniffed loudly, put his mental foot down, then sulked in silence for the rest of the way. Which suited me well enough. He’d only have wanted to talk politics, and how there were far too many elves in the Nightside these days. Chandra was apparently lost in his own thoughts, so I just stared out the window at the traffic. It was the usual mixture of vehicles—from the past, present, and future—thundering through the Nightside on their way to somewhere more interesting. Ambulances that ran on distilled suffering. Articulateds with unfamiliar logos emblazoned on their sides, transporting goods too dangerous or too disturbing even for the Nightside. Demon messengers on souped-up motorcycles, with hellfire flying out their exhausts. And a whole bunch of things pretending to be vehicles, for reasons of their own.
 
At least there are never any roadblocks to slow things down, mostly because the road is tougher than the traffic, and bites back if it gets annoyed. In fact, certain sections have been known to eat slower-moving vehicles, to encourage everyone else to get a move on. The whole road system in the Nightside is basically one big Darwinian struggle for survival, with only the strongest making it to the end of their journeys. Hell, sometimes you can actually watch vehicles
evolving
, right before your eyes. Some have become so advanced they’re now purely conceptual—just the idea of vehicles in motion . . .
 
And no, there aren’t any traffic lights. Anywhere. We tried putting some in a few years back, and they all retired with nervous breakdowns.
 
“Hello,” said the driver suddenly. “Don’t remember seeing that before . . .”
 
I immediately leaned forward to take a good look over his shoulder. Anything new and unexpected in the Nightside is automatically considered dangerous until proven otherwise by exhaustive testing. Up ahead a new bridge straddled the road, all gleaming steel and bright lights. The rest of the traffic seemed to be going out of their way to avoid it. I frowned.
 
“Is there another way we can take, driver?”
 
“Not one that doesn’t add an hour or more to our journey,” said the driver. “That new bridge crosses the only main road into the badlands. What do you say, squire? How much of a hurry are you in?”

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