Read Just Another Judgement Day Online
Authors: Simon R. Green
Just Another Judgement Day (24 page)
The three-lobed burning eye looked on god and follower alike and found them all equally hateful in its gaze.
The tentacles churned out from the ruins of the temple, growing longer and thicker. They snatched up gods and squeezed them till their heads exploded, or pounded them against their own churches like a child having a temper tantrum with its toys. They slammed down on whole congregations, crushing them under their writhing weight until nothing was left but red pulp. The Abomination was awakening from its long sleep and remembering the joys of slaughter and destruction and the sweet taste of blood and suffering.
Chandra Singh strode steadily forward, his long, curved sword glowing almost unbearably bright in the gloom of the Street. Some of the lesser Beings actually flinched away from its light and fell back to give Chandra room to work. He cut savagely at the nearest tentacle, and the shining blade sank deep into the metallic flesh. Steaming black blood spurted, hissing and spitting on the ground, but though the tentacle reached for Chandra, it couldn’t touch him. He gripped his sword in both hands, raised it high above his head, and brought it sweeping down in a mighty blow that sheared clean through the tentacle. The severed end flapped and flopped on the Street, curling and uncurling aimlessly. The stump retreated, spurting blood. Chandra went after it, his gaze fixed on the three-lobed eye.
Meanwhile, I had my own problems.
A tentacle came right for me, then hesitated at the last moment, as though it recognised me, or at least something about me. Which was both flattering and worrying. The tentacle humped and coiled before me, as though making up its mind, then suddenly pressed forward. I jumped out of the way, dodging behind a handy stone pillar. The tentacle curled around the massive pillar and wrenched it away with one heave. The roof started to come down, and I was forced back out into the Street. There was nowhere to run; the tentacles were everywhere. I dug through my coat pockets, searching for something I could use, and finally came up with a flat blue packet of salt. I tore the packet apart and spilled the salt on to the tentacle as it reached for me. The metallic flesh shrivelled and blackened and fell apart, the way salt affects a slug.
Never leave home without condiments.
I tried raising my gift, hoping I could use it to find some fatal weakness in the Abomination (seeing as I’d run out of salt), but the aether was jammed with the emanations of all the Beings out on the Street, fighting the Abomination. It was like being blinded by spotlights—I couldn’t See a damned thing. I had to screw my inner eye shut to keep from being overwhelmed.
When I could see clearly again, the Walking Man was striding right into the heart of the lashing and roiling tentacles, heading straight for that burning three-lobed eye. It loomed over him, bigger than a house by then. The tentacles couldn’t even get close to him, let alone touch him. Something made them pull back in spite of themselves, as though just the touch of him would be more than they could stand. He was protected because he was walking in Heaven’s path. He passed by Chandra Singh, still fighting valiantly though surrounded on all sides. The Walking Man didn’t even glance at Chandra, all his attention fixed on the three-lobed eye.
He walked right up to the eye, tentacles recoiling from his very proximity, and when he was standing right before it . . . he raised one of his long-barrelled pistols and shot the eye three times; one bullet for each lobe. The eye exploded in a blast of incandescent fire, and a wave of almost unbearable heat rushed down the Street, but none of it touched the Walking Man. The tentacles collapsed and lay still, slowly melting away, disappearing into long blue streams of decaying ectoplasm. The Unspeakable Abomination was gone. I’d like to think it was dead, but such creatures are notoriously hard to kill.
All around, Beings and men alike stared at the Walking Man, and a whisper went down the Street;
Godkiller . . .
Godkiller . . .
I started towards him, and Chandra Singh came forward to join me. He looked like he’d been in a fight, his silks torn and steaming from black blood-stains, but he still held his long sword, and his back was straight and stiff. He only had eyes for the Walking Man, and he looked mad as hell.
“You!” he said, when he was close enough. “Walking Man! You did this! How many dead and injured, simply because they happened to be here when you chose to pick a fight with the Abomination? How many innocents dead today, because of you?”
“There are no innocents here,” the Walking Man said calmly. “Not on the Street of the Gods, or in the whole damned Nightside. Isn’t that right, John?”
“Not everyone here needs killing,” I said stubbornly. “Sometimes, a place like this can be a haven for the damaged and the broken . . . a place to go when no-one else will have you. You can’t just kill everyone.”
“No?” said the Walking Man. “Watch me.”
He didn’t even bother with his guns this time. He walked unhurriedly down the Street, turning his terrible implacable gaze this way and that, and buildings and structures on all sides began to shudder and shake and fall apart under the impact of his deadly faith. Centuries-old stone and marble cracked and splintered, while construction materials from a hundred worlds and dimensions collapsed, or shattered like glass, or melted away like mist. For what use was antiquity and mystery in the face of his brutal faith? He was the Walking Man. He had God on his side, and he wasn’t afraid to use Him. Beings and creatures and things beyond reason stumbled horrified out on to the Street, driven from their places of worship. Some came out howling and screaming, some sobbing bitterly, and some came out fighting.
The Robot God, the Deus in Machina, demon construct from the forty-first century, all strangeness and charm and vicious quarks, came stamping down the Street on its solid steel legs, its divine metal workings exposed, clanking and scraping against each other. Its eyes were multi-coloured diodes, and its slit mouth roared static. All kinds of energy weapons emerged from secret recesses, and the Robot God unleashed all its terror arsenal on the Walking Man, seeking to blast him right down to the quantum level.
The Walking Man swaggered down the Street to meet it, flashing his old insolent smile, and when he got close enough, he jumped lightly up to grab a handhold on the massive metal body and tore the Robot God apart, piece by piece, with his bare hands. Future energies howled and sputtered around the pair of them as the Robot God lurched back and forth, screaming bursts of static. In a matter of moments, all that remained was a scattered pile of metal parts and a few dispersing energies.
The Inscrutable Enigma appeared out of nowhere, forming itself around the Walking Man in spiralling circles of coruscating intensities. Its living energies had burned up through the material world to reach the Street, and its very presence set fire to the ground and ignited the air. Unearthly flames burned all around the Walking Man, but could not consume him. The Inscrutable Enigma might have been as much idea as matter, an alien concept manifesting in the material world, but it was still no match for the power that burned within the Walking Man. And all too soon the Enigma exhausted its energies and faded away, its base idea consumed by a bigger one.
Pretty Kitty God gave it her best shot. She was an utterly artificial god, cold-bloodedly designed and created by marketing groups to appeal to the biggest possible audience. But they did their job too well, and Pretty Kitty God became real, or real enough. She escaped the confines of her planned Christmas Special, broke the shackles of her trade-mark, and took up residence on the Street of the Gods, where she belonged. She was vast and powerful and almost unbearably cute. All fluffy pink fur and enormous eyes, ten feet tall and wondrously soft, she advanced on the Walking Man with her padded arms outstretched for a hug, to overwhelm as she always had, through sheer, unnatural cuteness. The God of Lost Toys, designed to appeal to all those who never got over finding out Father Christmas wasn’t real, or having their favourite teddy bear thrown out by their mother because
they were too old for it now
, though they weren’t and never would be. I’d seen Pretty Kitty God subdue and smother old-school horned demons within a deluge of sheer niceness.
they were too old for it now
, though they weren’t and never would be. I’d seen Pretty Kitty God subdue and smother old-school horned demons within a deluge of sheer niceness.
She always gave me the shudders. Toys should know their places. They certainly shouldn’t want you to worship them.
The Walking Man gave Pretty Kitty God a hard look, and she burst into flames. She waddled away sadly, her leaping flames lighting up the gloom of the Street. The Walking Man, still smiling his mocking smile, looked unhurriedly about him, and all the gods of the Nightside stood there and stared back, not knowing what to do.
Then Razor Eddie appeared, and everything on the Street of the Gods went really quiet. He didn’t come walking down the Street, he didn’t make an entrance. He was suddenly there, the Punk God of the Straight Razor, a terrible thin presence in a filthy old coat, more than a man but less than a god. Or just possibly the other way round. Thin to the point of emaciation, his eyes dark and feverish in his sunken grey face, Razor Eddie was one of the more disturbing agents of the Good in the Nightside. He slept in doorways, lived on hand-outs, and killed people who needed killing, all in penance for the sins of his youth. He did awful things with his straight razor, in the name of justice, and didn’t give a damn.
I suppose he’s my friend. It’s hard to tell, sometimes.
He wandered down the Street towards the Walking Man, who turned and considered him thoughtfully. Like two gun-fighters in a Western town who’d always known that some day they’d have to meet, and sort out once and for all which of them was fastest on the draw. The wrath of God and the Punk God of the Straight Razor finally stood facing each other, maintaining a respectful distance, and it felt like the whole Street was holding its breath. God’s holy warrior and the most distressing agent the Good had ever had. The Walking Man’s nose twitched. Eddie lived among the homeless, and up close his smell could get pretty rank. But when the Walking Man finally spoke, his voice was calm and measured and even respectful.
“Hi, Eddie,” he said. “I wondered when you’d get here. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Nothing good, I hope,” said Razor Eddie, in his pale ghostly voice.
“You should approve of what I’m doing here. Striking down the false gods, punishing those who prey on the weak.”
“I don’t give a damn for most of the scum who infest this place,” said Razor Eddie. “And yes, I’ve killed a few gods in my time. But Dagon . . . is my friend. You don’t touch him.”
“Sorry,” said the Walking Man. “But I really can’t make exceptions. Bad for the reputation. People would think I was going soft.”
“Bloody hell,” I said, stepping forward. “The testosterone’s getting so thick around here you could carve your initials in it. Both of you, take a step back and calm the hell down.”
The Walking Man looked at me. “Or?” he said politely.
I met his gaze steadily. “You really want to find out?”
“Oh you’re good,” said the Walking Man. “You really are, John.”
I looked at Razor Eddie. “You’ve got a friend here, on the Street of the Gods? You’ve been holding out on me.”
He shrugged briefly, the merest lifting of his shoulders. “Do you tell me all your secrets, John?”
“Can we at least give reason and common sense a try?” I said. “Before the shit hits the straight razor, and I have to get seriously peeved with both of you?”
“All right,” said the Walking Man. “I’m game. Try me.”
“The Street of the Gods serves a purpose,” I said, trying hard to sound both firm and reasonable. “Not everyone who comes to the Nightside is ready for the real thing, for true faith. You could say this whole place is a repository and a haven for the spiritually walking wounded. They have to work their way up, in easy steps, one step at a time, out of the dark and back into the light.”
“There is only one way,” the Walking Man said patiently. “There is good, and there is evil. No shades of grey. You’ve been living here too long, John. Made too many compromises along the way. You’ve got soft.”
“I haven’t,” said Razor Eddie. “You’re not so different from me, Walking Man. We both gave up our old lives, and all human comforts, to serve God in violent ways, to do the dirty work no-one else wants to know about.”
“If you understand, then step aside and let me do my work,” said the Walking Man. “You don’t have to die here today, Eddie.”
“Can’t do that,” said Razor Eddie. “Hard as it may be to believe, there are some good people here. And some good gods. One of them is my friend. And what kind of... good man would I be, to step aside and let my friend be killed? Sometimes this Street can be a place for second chances, one last opportunity to make something better of one’s life. I found new hope here. You have to believe that.”
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