Just Another Judgement Day

TWO At Home with John and Suzie

Until Walker’s people arrived, Suzie and I stuck around, talking to the newly awakened patients, and comforting them as best we could. Well, I did most of the talking and comforting. Suzie isn’t really a people person. Mostly she stood at the door with her shotgun at the ready, to assure the patients that no-one was going to be allowed to mess with them any more. A lot of them were confused, and even more were in various states of shock. The physical injuries might have been reversed, but you can’t undergo that kind of extended suffering without its leaving a mark on your soul.

Some of them knew each other, and sat together on the beds, holding each other and sobbing in quiet relief. Some were scared of everyone, including Suzie and me. Some . . . just didn’t wake up.

Walker’s people would know what to do. They had a lot of experience at picking up the pieces after someone’s grand scheme has suddenly gone to hell in a hand-cart. They’d get the people help and see them safely back to their home dimension. Then they’d shut down the Timeslip, and slap a heavy fine on the Mammon Emporium for losing track of the damn thing in the first place. If people can’t look after their Timeslips properly, they shouldn’t be allowed to have them. Walker’s people . . . would do all the things I couldn’t do.

When Suzie and I finally left the Guaranteed New You Parlour, Percy D’Arcy was outside waiting for us. His fine clothes looked almost shabby, and his eyes were puffy from crying. He came at me as though he meant to attack me, and stopped only when Suzie drew her shotgun and trained it on him with one easy move. He glared at me piteously, wringing his hands together.

“What have you done, Taylor? What have you done?”

“I found out what was going on, and I put a stop to it,” I said. “I saved a whole bunch of innocent people from . . .”

“I don’t care about them! What do they matter? What have you done to my friends?” He couldn’t speak for a moment, his eyes clenched shut to try to stop the tears streaming down his face. “I saw the most beautiful people of my generation reduced to hags and lepers! Saw their pretty faces fall and crack and split apart. Their hair fell out, and their backs bent, and they cried and shrieked and screamed, running mad in the night. I saw them break out in boils and pus and rot! What did you do to them?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But they earned it.”

“They were my friends,” said Percy D’Arcy. “I’ve known them since I was so high. I never meant for this to happen.”

“Percy . . .” I said.

“You can whistle for your fee!” said Percy, with almost hysterical dignity. And then he spun around and walked away, still crying.

I let him go. I saw his point, sort of. Some cases, no-one gets to feel good afterwards. So Suzie and I went home.

The Nightside doesn’t have suburbs, as such. But a few areas are a little more safe and secure than anywhere else, where people can live quietly and not be bothered. Not gated communities, because gates wouldn’t even slow down the kind of predators the Nightside attracts, but instead small communities protected by a few magical defences, a handful of force shields, and a really good mutual defence pact. Besides, if you can’t look after yourself, you shouldn’t be living in the Nightside anyway. Suzie and I lived together in a nice little detached house (three up, three down, two sideways) in one of the more peaceful and up-market areas. Just by living there, we were driving the house prices down, but we tried not to worry about that too much. Originally, there was a small garden out front, but since Suzie and I were in no way gardening people, the first thing we did was dig it up and put in a mine-field. We’re not big on visitors. Actually, Suzie did most of the work, while I added some man-traps and a few invisible floating curses, to show I was taking an interest.

Our immediate neighbours are a Time-travelling adventurer called Garth the Eternal, a big Nordic type who lived in a scaled-down Norman castle, complete with its own gargoyles who kept us awake at night during the mating season, and a cold-faced, black-haired alien hunter from the future named Sarah Kingdom, who lived in a conglomeration of vaguely organic shapes that apparently also functioned as her star-ship, if she could only find the right parts to repair it.

We’ve never even discussed having a housing association.

Suzie and I live on separate floors. She has the ground floor, I have the top floor, and we share the amenities. All very civilised. We spend as much time in each other’s company as we can. It’s not easy being either of us. My floor is defiantly old-fashioned, even Victorian. They understood a lot about comfort and luxury. That particular night, I was lying flat on my back in the middle of my four-poster bed. The goose-feather mattress was deep enough to sink into, with a firm support underneath. Some mornings Suzie had to pry me out of bed with a crow-bar. Supposedly Queen Elizabeth I had slept in the four-poster once, on one of her grand tours. Considering what the thing cost me, she should have done cart-wheels in it.

A carefully constructed fire crackled quietly in the huge stone grate, supplying just enough warmth to ward off the cold winds that blew outside. The wood in the fire remained eternally unconsumed, thanks to a simple moebius spell, so the fire never went out. One wall of my bedroom is taken up with bookshelves, mostly Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour Westerns, and a whole bunch of old John Creasey thrillers, of which I am inordinately fond. Another wall is mostly hidden behind a great big fuck-off wide-screen plasma television, facing the bed. And the final wall holds my DVDs and CDs, all in strict alphabetical order, which Suzie never ceases to make remarks about.

I have gas lighting in my bedroom. It gives a friendlier light, I think.

A richly detailed Persian rug covers most of the floor. It’s supposed to have been a flying carpet at some point, but no-one can remember the activating Words any more, so it’s just a rug. Except I always have to be very careful about what I say out loud while I’m standing on it. Scattered about the room are various and assorted odds and ends I’ve collected and acquired down the years, often as part or even full payment for a case. A few purported Objects of Power, some antiques with interesting histories, and a whole bunch of things that might or might not turn out to be valuable or useful someday.

There’s a musical box that plays top-twenty hits from thirty years in the future. Still mostly crap . . . Some Tyrannosaurus rex dung, in a sealed glass jar, labelled For when any old shit just won’t do. A brass head that could supposedly predict the future, though I’ve never heard it utter a word. And a single blood-red rose in a long glass vase. It doesn’t need watering, and it hisses angrily if anyone gets too close, so mostly I leave it alone. It’s only there to add a spot of colour.

As I lay on top of the blankets on my huge bed, listening to the wind battering outside and feeling all warm and cosy, it occurred to me how far I’d come since I returned to the Nightside. Wasn’t that long ago I’d been trying to live a normal life in normal London and being spectacularly bad at it. I’d been living in my one-room office, in a building that should have been condemned, sleeping on a cot pushed up against one wall. Eating take-away food and hiding under my desk when the creditors came calling . . . I’d left the Nightside to feel safe. And because I was afraid I was turning into a monster. But there are worse things than that. Failure tastes of cold pizza and over-used tea bags, and the knowledge that you’re not really helping anyone, even yourself.

I’ll never leave the Nightside again. For all its many sins, it’s my home, and I belong there. Along with all the other monsters. And Suzie Shooter, of course. My Suzie.

I got up off the bed, with a certain amount of effort, and went downstairs to see what she was doing. We loved each other as best we could, but I was always the one who had to reach out. Suzie . . . couldn’t. But then, I knew that going in. So down the stairs I went, and treading the patterned carpeting was like moving from one world to another. Suzie wasn’t what you’d call house-proud.

Her floor looked a lot like her old place—a mess. Dirty and disgusting with overtones of appalling. It was somewhat more hygienic, because I insisted, but the smell always hit me first. Her floor smelled heavy, female, borderline feverish. I peered through the bedroom door in passing. It was empty apart from a pile of blankets in the middle of the floor, churned up like a nest. At least they were clean blankets. Since she wasn’t there, I moved on to the living-room, careful to knock on the door first. Suzie didn’t react well to surprises.

Suzie was crashed out on her only piece of furniture, a long couch upholstered in deep red leather. So it won’t show the blood, Suzie had said when I asked, so I stopped asking. She ignored me as I entered the room, her attention fixed on the local news showing on her more modest television set. The room never ceased to depress me. It was bleak, and so empty. Bare wooden floor-boards, bare plaster walls, apart from a huge life-size poster of Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel in the old Avengers TV show. Suzie had scrawled My Idol across the bottom, in what looked suspiciously like dried blood.

Her DVDs were stacked in piles against one wall. Her Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, her much-watched copies of Easy Rider and Marianne Faithful in Girl on a Motorcycle. She also had a fond spot for James Cameron’s Aliens and his two Terminator movies. Plus a whole bunch of Roger Cor-man’s Hells Angels movies, which Suzie always claimed were comedies.

She was wearing her favourite Cleopatra Jones T-shirt over battered blue jeans, and scratching idly at the bare belly between the two, while eating deep-fried calamari nuggets from a bucket. I sat down beside her, and we watched the local news together. The impossibly beautiful presenter was in the middle of a story about a proposed strike by the Nightside sewer workers, who were holding out for bigger flame-throwers and maybe even bazookas. Apparently the giant ants were getting to be a real problem.

Next, a new Timeslip had opened up in a previously unaffected area, and already members of the Really Dangerous Sports Club were racing to the location, so they could throw themselves in and be the first to find out where they’d end up. Nobody was trying to stop them. In the Nightside we’re great believers in letting everyone go to Hell in their own way.

And finally, a fanatical Druid terrorist had turned up in the Nightside with his very own backpack nuke wrapped in mistletoe. Fortunately, he had a whole list of demands he wanted to read out first, and he hadn’t got half-way through them before Walker turned up, used his commanding Voice on the Druid, and made him eat his bomb, bit by bit. People were already placing bets as to how far he’d get before the plutonium gave him terminal indigestion.

Without looking away from the screen, Suzie reached out and placed her left hand lightly on my thigh. I sat very still, but she took the hand away again almost immediately. She tries hard, but she can’t bear to be touched, or to touch anyone else in a friendly way. She was abused as a child, by her own brother; and it left her psychologically scarred. I would have killed the brother, but Suzie beat me to it, years ago. We’re working on the problem, taking our time. We’re as close as we can be.

So I was surprised when she deliberately put down her calamari bucket, turned to me, and put both her hands on my shoulders. She moved her face in close to mine. I could feel her steady breath on my lips. Her cool, controlled expression didn’t change at all, but I could feel the growing tension in her hands on my shoulders, the sheer effort she had to put into such a small gesture. She snatched her hands away and turned her back on me, shaking her head.

“It’s all right,” I said. Because you have to say something.

“It’s not all right! It’ll never be all right!” She still wouldn’t look at me. “How can I love you when I can’t touch you?”

I took her shoulders in my hands, as gently as I could, and turned her back to face me. She tensed under my touch, despite herself. She met my gaze unflinchingly for a moment, then lunged forward, pressing me back against the couch. She put both her hands on my chest and kissed me with painful fierceness. She kissed me for as long as she could stand it, then pushed herself away from me. She jumped up from the couch and moved away from me, hugging herself tightly as though afraid she’d fly apart. I didn’t know what to say, or do.

So it was probably just as well that the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and there at my front door was Walker himself. The man who ran the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, or can. A dapper middle-aged gentleman in a smart City suit, complete with old-school tie, bowler hat, and furled umbrella. Anyone else you might have mistaken for someone in the City, some nameless functionary who kept the wheels of business or government turning. But you only had to look into his calm, thoughtful eyes to know how dangerous he was, or could be. Walker had the power of life and death in the Nightside, and it showed. He smiled easily at me.

“Well,” I said. “This is . . . unexpected. I didn’t think you did house calls. I wasn’t even sure you knew where we lived.”

“I know where everyone is,” said Walker. “All part of the job.”

“As a matter of interest,” I said, “how did you get past all the mines, man-traps, and shaped charges we put down to discourage the paparazzi?”

“I’m Walker.”

“Of course you are. Well, you’d better come in.”

“Yes,” said Walker.

I took him into Suzie’s living-room. He was clearly distressed by the state of the place, but was far too well brought up to say anything. So he smiled brightly, tipped his bowler hat to Suzie, and sat down on the couch without any discernable hesitation. I sat down beside him. Suzie leaned back against the nearest wall, arms tightly folded, glaring unwaveringly at Walker. If he was in any way disturbed, he did a good job of hiding it. Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately launch into whatever business had brought him to my home for the very first time. Instead, he made small-talk, was polite and interested and even charming, until I felt like screaming. With Walker, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Usually he speaks to me only when he absolutely has to—when he wants to hire me, or have me killed, or drop me right in it. This new friendly approach . . . just wasn’t Walker. But I played along, nodding in all the right places, while Suzie scowled so fiercely it must have hurt her forehead.

Finally, Walker ran out of inconsequential things to say and looked at me thoughtfully. Something big was coming—I could feel it. So I did my best to avert it with other business, if only to assert my independence.

“So,” I said. “Did you get all the Parlour’s patients safely back to their home dimension?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Walker. “Less than half, in the end. Many didn’t survive being separated from their life-support technology. Many more died from the shock of what had been done to them. And quite a few were in no fit physical or mental state to be sent anywhere. They’re being cared for, in the hope that their condition will improve, but the doctors . . . are not hopeful.”

“Less than half?” I said. “I didn’t go through all that just to save less than half!”

“You saved as many as you could,” said Walker. “That’s always been my job—to save as many people as possible.”

“Even if you have to sacrifice some of your own people along the way?” I said.

“Exactly,” said Walker.

“Why should you get to decide who lives and who dies?” said Suzie.

“I don’t,” said Walker. “That’s up to the Authorities.”

“But they’re dead,” I said. “We were both there when they were killed and eaten by Lilith’s monstrous children. So who . . . exactly . . . pulls your strings these days?”

“The new Authorities,” said Walker, smiling pleasantly. “That’s why I’m here. I need you to come with me and meet the new Authorities.”

I considered him thoughtfully. “Now you know very well I’ve never got on with authority figures.”

“These people . . . are different,” said Walker.

“Why now?” I said.

“Because the Walking Man has finally come to the Nightside,” said Walker.

I sat up straight, and Suzie pushed herself away from the wall. Walker’s voice was as cool and collected as always, but some statements have a power all their own. I would have sworn the room was suddenly colder.

“How do you know it’s really him and not just some wannabe?” said Suzie.

“Because it’s my business to know things like that,” said Walker. “The Walking Man, the wrath of God in the world of men, the most powerful and scariest agent of the Good, ever, has come at last to the Nightside to punish the guilty. And everyone here is either running for the horizon, barricading themselves in while arming themselves to the teeth, or hiding under their beds and wetting themselves. And every single one of them is looking to the new Authorities to do something.”

Suzie paced up and down the room, scowling heavily, her thumbs tucked in the top of her jeans. She might have been worried, or she might have been relishing the challenge. She wasn’t scared. Suzie didn’t get scared or intimidated. Those were things that happened to other people, usually because of Suzie. She sat down abruptly on the edge of the couch, next to me. Close though she was, she still didn’t quite touch me. I caught Walker noticing that, and he nodded slowly.

“So close,” he said. “In every way but one.”

I gave him my best hard look, but to his credit he didn’t flinch. “Is there anything you don’t know about?” I said.

He smiled briefly. “You’d be surprised.”

“It’s none of your business,” said Suzie. “And if you say anything to anyone, I’ll kill you.”

“You’d be surprised how many people already know, or guess,” said Walker. “It’s hard to keep secrets in the Nightside. I am merely . . . concerned.”

“Why?” I said bluntly. “What are we, to you? What have I ever been to you, except a threat to your precious status quo, or an expendable agent for some mission too dangerous or too dirty for your own people? And now, suddenly, you’re concerned about me? Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because you’re my son,” said Walker. “In every way that matters.”

He couldn’t have surprised me more if he’d taken out a gun and shot me. Suzie and I looked blankly at each other, then back at Walker, but he gave every indication of being perfectly serious. He smiled briefly, holding his dignity close about him.

“We’ve never really talked, have we?” he said. “Only shared a few threats and insults, in passing . . . or discussed the details of some case we had to work on together. All very brisk and businesslike. You can’t afford to get too close to someone you know you may have to kill one day. But things are different now, in so many ways.”

“I thought you had two sons?” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Oh yes,” said Walker. “Good boys, both of them. We don’t talk. What could we talk about? I’ve gone to great pains to ensure that neither they nor their mother has any idea what it is I do for a living. They know nothing about the Nightside, or the terrible things I have to do here, just to keep the peace. I couldn’t bear it if they knew. They might look at me as though I were some kind of monster. I used to be so good at keeping my two lives separate. Two lives, two Walkers, doing my best to give equal time to both. But the Nightside is a jealous mistress . . . and what used to be my real life, my sane and rational life, got sacrificed to the greater good.

“My boys, my fine boys . . . are strangers to me now. You’re all I’ve got, John. The only son of my oldest friend. I’d forgotten how much that time meant to me, until I met your father again during the Lilith War. Those happy days of our youth . . . We thought we were going to change the world; and unfortunately we did. Now your father is gone, again, and you’re all I’ve got left, John. Perhaps the nearest thing to a real son I’ll ever have. The only son who could ever hope to understand me.”

“How many times have you tried to kill me?” I said. “Directly, or indirectly?”

“That’s family for you,” said Walker. “In the Nightside.”

I looked at him for a long time.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Suzie. “You can’t believe him. It’s Walker.”

“The words manipulative and emotional blackmail do spring to mind,” I said. “This is all so sudden, Walker.”

“I know,” he said calmly. “I put it all down to midlife crisis myself.”

“And where does all this leave us?” I said.

“Exactly where we were before,” said Walker. “We’ll still probably end up having to kill each other, someday. For what will no doubt seem like perfectly good reasons at the time. But it means . . . I’m allowed to be concerned. About you, and Suzie. And no, you don’t get a say in the matter.”

“We’re doing fine,” said Suzie. “We’re making progress.”

She let one arm rest casually across my shoulders. And I hope only I could tell what the effort cost her.

“Let us talk about the Walking Man,” I said. Everything else could wait till later, after I’d had more time to think about it. “He’s never come here before. So, why now?”

“In the past, the Nightside’s unique nature kept out all direct agents of Heaven and Hell,” said Walker. “But since Lilith was banished again, it appears a subtle change has come over the Nightside, and many things that were not possible before are cropping up now with regrettable regularity.”

“So all kinds of agents for the Good could be turning up here?” I said.

“Or agents of Evil,” said Suzie.

“Well, quite,” murmured Walker. “As if things weren’t complicated enough . . .”

“Still,” I said, “what’s bringing the Walking Man here now?”

“It would appear he disapproves of the new Authorities,” said Walker. “The group whose interests I now represent.”

“That’s why you’re here!” I said. “Because if they’re in danger, so are you!”

Walker smiled and said nothing.

“Who are they?” said Suzie. “These new Authorities? The old bunch were nothing more than faceless businessmen who ran things because they owned most of the Nightside. So, are we talking about their families? The next generation? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, don’t get screwed again?”

“The inheritors?” said Walker, with something very like a sniff. “They wish. We saw them off. One quick glimpse of what actually goes on here, and they couldn’t sell their holdings fast enough. No . . . Certain personages in the Nightside have come together to represent the main interests in this place. Essentially, the Nightside is now determined to run itself.”

“Who, exactly?” I said. “Who are these brand-new self-appointed Authorities? Do I know them?”

“Some of them, certainly,” said Walker. “They all know you. That’s why I’m here.”

“How can you serve people from the Nightside?” I said, honestly curious. “You’ve never made any secret about your feelings for us. You always said the best thing to do would be to nuke the place and wipe out the whole damned freak show once and for all.”

“I’ve mellowed,” said Walker. “Just possibly, these new Authorities can bring about real change, from within. I would like to see that, before I die. Now, come with me and meet the new Authorities. Hear what they have to say; learn what they mean to do. Before the Walking Man tracks them down and kills them all.”

“But what do they want with me and Suzie?” I said.

Walker raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought that was obvious. They want you to use your gift to find the Walking Man, then find a way to stop him. Shall we go?”