Simon Green - Just Another Judgement Day

“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?”

“We’re going in,” I said. “Take it slow and steady. And if anything even looks at you in a way you don’t like, feel free to shoot the crap out of it.”

“Got that right, squire.”

“Are we in trouble, John?” said Chandra.

“Maybe,” I said. “That bridge wasn’t there yesterday. It could have dropped out of a Timeslip, or it could be a projection from another dimension. Or it could just be a new bridge. I have absolutely no idea as to who’s in charge of traffic improvements. Mostly, they just . . . happen.”

The bridge and the tunnel it made remained reassuringly solid and ordinary as we approached the entrance. The lights inside were bright and steady. The taxi slowed right down as we passed under the bridge and entered the tunnel . . . then the beast revealed its true colours. The smell hit me first, even through the cab’s closed windows—rotting meat spoiling in digestive juices. The lights lost their electric fierceness and sank into the blue-white glare of bioluminescence. The walls of the tunnel rippled slowly, the blue steel look replaced by a soft organic pink. And the road ahead and under us was suddenly the rough red meat of an endlessly long tongue. Sharp bones protruded from all sides of the tunnel, like the cutting parts of a meat-grinder. The tunnel was alive . . . and we were driving right down its throat.