Simon Green - Just Another Judgement Day

The driver slammed on his brakes, but the tongue convulsed, rising and falling beneath us, carrying us on. The driver opened up with all his guns, but the heavy-jacketed bullets did little damage to the walls, which absorbed them. Thick pearly digestive juices were already dropping from the ceiling, hissing and fizzing on the cab’s metal surfaces. The driver swore loudly, and threw the cab into reverse. Its wheels dug deep into the red meat of the road, and churned madly, but still we were carried deeper into the tunnel. I yelled for the driver to open the windows, and they juddered down slowly.

Chandra immediately leaned right out of his window, so far out I had to hold on to his legs for fear he’d fall. He stabbed the red road with his sword, the tip digging deep into the red meat, leaving a long, bloody furrow behind us. The tongue convulsed, throwing the taxi this way and that, but we were still being pulled in. I hauled Chandra back into the cab and concentrated on raising my gift. I forced my inner eye all the way open, the better to See the situation we were in. It only took me a moment to find what I was looking for, and hit the tunnel in its weakest spot. The red road whipped out from under us, the whole tunnel shaking violently. The taxi’s wheels dug into the road again, and just like that we were backing out of the tunnel at speed. The starry skies reappeared above us as the taxi accelerated back into the Nightside traffic, which made every angry noise conceivable as it fought to avoid us. Chandra looked at me.

“All right, what did you do?”

I grinned, just a little smugly. “I used my gift to find its gag reflex . . .”

The taxi finally lurched to a halt, and we watched the living bridge melt away into mists. Getting around in the Nightside can be murder sometimes.

The taxi took us deep into the badlands, the roughest, most desperate and desolate part of the Nightside. So rough that even the more adventurous tourists find excuses to avoid it, and only the hardiest sinners venture in, looking for the pleasures and satisfactions they can’t find anywhere else. The techno fetishists, looking to have sex with computers. Volunteers for drug-testing labs, only too willing to take on the latest pharmaceutical heavens and hells, just to be first in line for the latest trip. Innocence for sale on every street corner, only slightly shop-soiled. Sin eaters, soul eaters, sleep eaters. The darkest delights and the deepest damnations, for all those foolish enough to think they’ve already hit bottom. There’s always further to fall, in the Nightside.

The buildings slouch together for support, with brickwork blackened by decades of traffic, or maybe just the general environment. Broken windows, holes patched with faded newspapers, doors hanging permanently half-open because the locks were broken long ago. Street-lights that sometimes worked, and the burned-out skeleton shapes of dead neon. Heaps of garbage everywhere, that sometimes moved, revealing the homeless. Many of them had missing limbs. You can sell anything in the badlands.

And, finally, long after we’d had to shut the cab’s windows to keep out the smell, when it seemed we’d reached the sleaziest scummiest depths of the badlands, the taxi eased to a halt outside the Vicarage, the only civilised-looking building in the middle of a row of destitute properties. The streets looked wet and sticky, and something told me that had nothing to do with the recent rain. I’ve walked through alien jungles that looked less dangerous and forbidding. Exactly where a Christian missionary would be most needed . . .

Chandra and I stepped out of the taxi, which had parked under the only working street-light. I’d barely shut the cab door before the cabbie revved up and roared away, so desperate to get out of the badlands that he hadn’t even paused to ask for his fare. Not that I’d had any intention of paying, of course.

Various figures stirred in the darkest parts of the shadows, deliberating whether Chandra and I were easy targets. Chandra drew his sword with a dramatic gesture, and the long curved blade burned supernaturally bright in the gloom. The figures shrank back, dim silhouettes disappearing into the concealing night. One predator can always recognise another. Chandra smiled briefly and sheathed his sword. I knocked on the Vicarage door. It was an old-fashioned brass knocker, in the shape of a lion’s head, and the sound it made echoed on and on behind the closed door, as though travelling unguessable distances. There were no lights on anywhere, and I began to wonder if this was really such a good idea after all. But after a worryingly long pause, the door swung abruptly open, and bright, golden light spilled out into the street, like the illumination of Heaven itself. And standing in the doorway was a healthy, happy, young lady in a baggy brown jumper over worn-in riding britches and boots. She had short, tufty red hair and vivid green eyes, and she grinned broadly at Chandra and me as though we were two old chums who’d come to tea.

“Hello!” she said, in a bright cheerful voice. “I’m Sharon Pilkington-Smythe. Come in, come in! All are welcome here. Even you, John Taylor! No sin too great to be forgiven, that’s our motto!”

“You know me?” I said, the moment I could get a word in edgeways.

“Of course, sweetie! Everyone knows you. You’re right at the top of People we intend to save by whatever means necessary before we die. Now in you come, don’t be bashful, all are welcome in the Vicarage! Don’t know your friend.”

Chandra drew himself up to his full impressive height and stuck out his beard. “I am Chandra Singh, holy warrior, mighty monster hunter, and legend of the Indian subcontinent!”

He was clearly gearing up to say a lot more, but Sharon butted in before he could get going.

“Gosh!” she said, with that particular mixture of innocence and ignorance that can be especially galling. “A real live monster hunter! We really could use you round here. If only to keep the local rat population under control. You can’t keep using land-mines; it upsets the neighbours. Come in, Chandra, you’re just as welcome as John Taylor, and probably more so. I should go easy on the whole monster-killing bit when you meet the vicar, though—not really her thing.”

“She doesn’t approve of killing monsters?” said Chandra.

“Well, I don’t give a damn myself,” Sharon said airily. “Carve them all up and make soup out of them, see if I care. But the vicar takes her beliefs very seriously. To her, a monster is only another lost soul that needs saving. The sweet and soppy thing. Come on, come on in both of you, and I’ll take you to meet Tamsy!”

Sharon Pilkington-Smythe stepped smartly back, encouraging us both to enter with emphatic arm gestures, and Chandra and I allowed ourselves to be ushered in, if only to stop her talking. She slammed the door shut behind us with casual violence, and there was the sound of many heavy-duty locks, chains, and bolts closing by themselves. I can’t honestly say it made me feel any safer. Sharon led the way down an excessively neat and tidy hallway that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a traditional country vicarage, the kind that only seems to exist on the lids of biscuit tins these days. Gleaming linoleum covered the floor, while pretty flowered prints adorned the walls. The light was a pleasant golden glow, warm and comforting. The whole scene couldn’t have seemed more cosy if it tried. I didn’t trust it an inch. Half a dozen puppies scrambled suddenly out of a side doorway, furry little bundles with oversized paws, falling over each other to get to us. And, of course, nothing would do but Chandra had to stop and make a fuss of them. They were still too young for me to guess their breed, and some of them clearly hadn’t had their eyes open long. Chandra knelt and petted them all happily. He held one up before his face, and the puppy wagged its stumpy tail ecstatically. Chandra looked at me.