Simon Green - Just Another Judgement Day

The tentacles lashed back and forth, grabbing everything within reach and crushing it to rubble or pulp. People died screaming as the tentacles shot after them faster than they could run. Men and women were snatched and slammed against the ground or the nearest buildings. Razor-packed suckers ate greedily into yielding flesh, and blood and other fluids ran down the Street in thickening streams. The temple was gone now. All that remained was a nest of long, thrashing tentacles killing everyone within reach. And finally, deep in the heart of the tentacles, there rose up a burning three-lobed eye, almost the size of the temple itself, staring unblinkingly on the death and destruction it was causing and finding it good.

Beings of all shapes and sizes and natures came charging out of their churches and temples to face this new threat to the Street of the Gods, for whatever threatened the security and business of the Street was a threat to them all. The Walking Man might have intimidated them, but this was one of their own, and no-one would take you seriously on the Street if you let your neighbour intimidate you. So gods and icons and avatars spilled out on to the Street, and magics and sciences and strange energies spit and crackled on the air. Tentacles writhed and caught fire, exploded and cracked apart, and a choking, noxious smell filled the air as thick black blood spilled. But there were always more tentacles to replace those that were destroyed. Fanatical worshippers rushed in to cut and hack at the tentacles with blessed swords and axes, urged on by their priests, only to see the metal of their weapons break and shatter against the unyielding unearthly flesh of the Unspeakable Abomination.

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 . . .

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.