A long run of basic kennels held some twenty or more dogs. Large, powerful creatures in good condition. They all barked loudly at the Walking Man, protesting his presence. They could smell the blood and death on him. They moved restlessly back and forth in their kennels, uneasy as he approached them. Some actually backed away, disturbed by his intensity, while others threw themselves at the steel mesh of their kennel doors, barking and snarling and slavering, desperate to get at him. The doors were all firmly padlocked. The Walking Man was in no danger from them. He killed them all anyway. He walked slowly from one end of the kennels to the other, shooting each dog in the head. Some defied him to the last, some backed away with their tails between their legs. The last few crouched down, abasing themselves before him, pissing themselves and wagging their tails hopefully. He killed every last one of them.
Finally, he turned to face us, looking out of the screen as though he could see the three of us watching him. And perhaps he could. It took me a moment to realise he wasn’t smiling any more. He put his guns away, and said, “This is why.”
The scene moved past him, past the dead dogs in their kennels, to give us a clear view of the whole cellar. It was full of cages, rows and rows of them, maybe four feet square at most, simple steel mesh in steel frames. And in each of these cages was a child. Naked, bruised, and beaten, shivering, with a hopeless face and empty eyes. A bowl of water, and straw on the floor to soak up the wastes, and that was all. Not even a bucket to shit or piss in. Children, kept like animals. Worse than animals. Small children, none older than nine or ten. The youngest looked to be a little girl about four years old. None of them were crying, or asking for help, because they’d learned the hard way that didn’t work. They looked at the Walking Man with blunt animal curiosity. They didn’t expect to be rescued. All hope had been systematically beaten out of them. The cages weren’t big enough for them to stand up. They sat or crouched listlessly, in their own filth. Waiting for whatever this man wanted to do to them.
“These children were snatched off streets all over London,” said the Walking Man. “Brought here to the Nightside, to be raped, tortured, mutilated, and, eventually, murdered. All so that the experience could be impressed on a memory crystal, then sold to those who delight in such things. A real you are there experience, for sale to the very highest bidders. This was the product Precious Memories dealt in, for its very select clientele. Utter degradation, from a safe distance. They didn’t do anything, after all. They just watched. Over and over again, until the thrill wore off. Long after the child was dead and gone. That’s why everyone here had to die. They all knew what was going on. They all profited. They were all guilty. After the children died their slow, horrible deaths, their bodies were fed to the dogs, for disposal. And that’s why they had to die, too.”
He moved into view again, unlocking the cages one by one. None of the children tried to leave. They cowered back, afraid of the Walking Man, as they’d learned to be afraid of all men. Even with the doors open, they wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave. When the Walking Man had finished, he turned back to look at us.
“Help them,” he said. “Get them out of here. Get them to safety, and comfort, and heal those who can be healed. Get them home. I can’t stay here. I still have work to do. I have to track down everyone who was on Precious Memories’ customer list, and kill them all.”
The viewscreen disappeared, and the three of us were left together in the lobby full of dead people. I snatched my hand away from the memory crystal. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t speak. Suzie moved in close beside me, comforting me as best she could with her presence. I looked around at the dead men and women. I couldn’t believe I’d ever felt sorry for them. After what they’d done... the Walking Man showed them more mercy than I would have. He’d given them quick, clean deaths. I felt cold, so cold, right down to my soul. Bad things happen in the Nightside. That’s what it’s for. But this . . . systematic, business-like brutality, to feed the worst appetites of humanity . . . a concentration camp for children . . . He was right. The Walking Man was right, to kill every last one of them.
I must have said some of that aloud, because Chandra Singh nodded quickly. When he spoke, his voice was thick with outrage.
“Perhaps . . . I have been hunting the wrong kind of monster, all these years.”
“We have to go down there,” said Suzie. “Into the cellar. We have to help the children.”
“Of course we do,” I said.
We went down into the cellar. Sometimes we stepped over the bodies, sometimes we kicked them out of our way. At the bottom level, the smell hit us first. It drifted through the broken steel door like a breeze gusting out of Hell. A bad smell, of death and horror, of human filth and children’s suffering. Of piss and shit, sweat and blood. Of terrible things, done in a terrible place. A harsh, reeking, animal smell.
The children were still there, in their cages, trapped in the world that had been made to hold them. Suzie and Chandra approached the cages slowly and cautiously, speaking softly to the children, trying to coax them out. I got on the phone to Walker. I told him what had happened there, then I told him to send help. All the help the children would need. There must have been something in my voice, because Walker didn’t argue or waste my time with unnecessary questions. He promised me help was on the way, and I hung up on him.
Chandra was having some success reaching the children, with his great smile and his warm, friendly voice. And perhaps because he was dressed so differently from what they were used to seeing. Suzie did better. They weren’t as afraid of a woman. I tried to help, but I was too close to what they’d been taught to be afraid of. It seemed to take forever for Walker’s people to arrive. Down there, in that hell. When the doctors and nurses and shrinks finally turned up, we’d still only managed to coax seven of the children out of their cages. Five boys, two girls. They looked at us with wide, traumatised eyes, still too disturbed to talk, just beginning to hope that maybe their long nightmare was finally coming to a close.
One of the girls, a small bruised child of maybe five or six, impulsively hugged Suzie, who was kneeling before her. I moved forward to take the child away, but Suzie stopped me with a look. She slowly closed her arms around the girl and hugged her back. The child nestled against Suzie’s breast, safe at last. Suzie looked up at me.
“It’s all right, John,” she said. “I can do this. I can hold her. It’s like holding me.”
I guess one abuse survivor can always recognise another.
The doctors and the nurses and the shrinks did what they could. I got the feeling they’d seen this kind of thing before. They seemed to know what to say. One by one, the children began to emerge from their cages. Some could even say their names. Walker finally showed up and looked the scene over. His expression never changed, but his eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them.
“We don’t have social services, as such, in the Nightside,” he said finally. “Not much call for them. But I’ve got people coming in from all over, including a few telepaths and empaths. They’ll get the children stabilised, then I’ll arrange for them to be taken back into London proper. Back to their homes, eventually. Hopefully. The children will get everything they need, John. You have my word on that.”
“Search the computers here,” I said. “There has to be a complete list of Precious Memories’ customers, distributors, everyone involved in this filthy business who weren’t here when the Walking Man came calling. Find them all, Walker, and punish them. No exceptions, no excuses, no mercy. No matter how well connected some of them may be. Because if the Walking Man doesn’t kill them, I will.”
“He’s been sighted again,” said Walker. “At the Boys Club. Do you know it?”
“Of course I know it,” I said. “It’s back in Clubland. Send us there.”
“I’m not going,” said Suzie. I looked at her, and she met my gaze steadily, still holding the small child in her arms. “I need to be here, John. To see they all get the help they ne
ed. I can help. I understand.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “Stay. Do what you can. I’ll take care of things.”
“I will go with you,” said Chandra Singh. “I need to talk to this Walking Man. What kind of a man is he? What kind of man can go into places like this and kill everyone he finds? What must that do to a man, to his state of mind? To his soul?”
“He wants us to know,” I said. “That’s why he showed us everything. He’s teaching us to see the world as he does. Black and white, right and wrong, and no shades of grey. A world where the guilty will be punished.”
“He still has to be stopped,” said Walker. “All cats are grey in the Nightside. And not all of them deserve to be judged so harshly.”
“Are there other places like this, in the Nightside?” I asked him. “Did you know about this place?”
“No,” said Walker. “But I can’t say it surprises me. The Nightside exists to serve sinners. All kinds of sin. There are places worse than this, and if you keep following the Walking Man . . . I’ve no doubt he’ll show you just how dark the night can get.”
FIVE
Bad Boys and Wayward Girls
Walker’s Portable Timeslip delivered Chandra Singh and me right into the middle of Clubland, and we took a moment to lean on each other while our heads and stomachs settled. Passing through that unnatural darkness was getting worse. The latest one had felt like being trapped in a plummeting lift, while it was on fire, and something really bad was gnawing its way through the lift floor to get at me. Only more so.
“That . . . was most unpleasant,” Chandra said finally.
“Yeah,” I said. “And Walker’s been doing that every day for years. Explains a lot about the man.”
I led the way through the relatively sophisticated streets of Clubland (where you could still get mugged but at least the fellow would have the decency to wear a dinner jacket) and headed for the Boys Club. Chandra was inexperienced in the ways of the Nightside, so it fell to me to explain to him just what kind of a place the Boys Club was. Basically, it was a particularly nasty and wholly corrupt establishment where all the Nightside’s most pre-eminent gangsters, crime lords, Mr. Bigs, and general scumbags went to be with their own kind. To spend their money ostentatiously, practise very basic one-upmanship, usually involving guns, and boast of their latest successes and ill-gotten gains. Taste, restraint, and charm are notable by their absence, at the Boys Club.
“The law knows of this place, and does nothing?” said Chandra.
“This is the Nightside,” I said patiently. “There is no law here, and less justice, unless you make some for yourself. Walker and his people only ever step in when things are really getting out of hand, and then only to restore the status quo. This is a place where people come to do the things they’re not supposed to, and pursue the pleasures they’re not supposed to want. Forbidden knowledge, forsaken gods, and all the fouler kinds of sex. And where there’s business, you can be sure there’s always someone taking a cut. By force if need be.”
“And these...people belong to the Boys Club,” said Chandra.
“The nastiest, vilest, and most unpleasant representatives of their kind,” I said.
Chandra Singh considered this. “Why not just kick in the door and toss in half a dozen incendiaries?” He smiled briefly. “Being a monster hunter teaches you to be practical, above all else.”
“You could kill everyone in there,” I said. “And most of us have thought about it, at one time or another, but they’d all be replaced within the hour. There’s never any shortage of people on the way up, eager for a chance to prove they can be even nastier and more unpleasant than the scumbags they’re replacing.”
Chandra looked at me seriously. “Why do you stay in this terrible place, John Taylor? I have heard stories about you . . . but you do not seem such a bad man. What keeps you in the Nightside?”
“Because I belong here,” I said. “With all the other monsters.”
I increased my pace. Part of me was worried that we’d get there too late and find another massacre. And part of me wondered if that might be such a bad thing . . . But not everyone in the Boys Club deserved to die. Just most of them.
The Club finally loomed up before us, flashy, gaudy, and weighed down with a really over-the-top Technicolor neon sign. Nothing to indicate what the Club was for, of course; either you already knew, or you had no business being there. Membership was strictly by invitation only, an acknowledgment by your peers that you’d made it, that you were finally big enough and important enough to be one of the Boys.
And there, waiting outside the front door for us, was the Walking Man. He was leaning casually against a lamp-post in his long duster, with his hands in his pockets, smiling easily, one foot planted on the neck of the Club’s unconscious Doorman. Chandra and I came to a halt, maintaining a respectful distance. The Doorman was big enough to be part troll, but there he was lying facedown in the gutter, without an obvious wound on him. The Walking Man nodded to us, then we all stood there for a while, taking the measure of each other.
The Walking Man looked just as I remembered him to, but in person there was so much . . . more to him. He had an air, a presence, an almost overwhelming intensity to him, as though he was the only real man in a world of fakes and posers. His eyes were bright and merry, his smile was full of mischief and bravado, and everything about him exuded an almost spiritual insolence. I am here to do absolutely appalling things in the name of the Good, his stance positively shouted. And what are you going to do about it? He had the look of a man who would do anything he felt like doing, and do it with a laugh on his lips and a song in his heart. This was no sombre driven warrior of God come to do his duty, no cold and dour executioner. This man enjoyed what he did.
Dead men and women, and dogs. And children in cages.
“John Taylor,” the Walking Man said finally, in a happy, cheerful voice. “Thought you’d be taller.”
“I get that a lot,” I said.
“Who’s your friend?”
“I am Chandra Singh, monster hunter!” Chandra said proudly.
“Good for you,” said the Walking Man.
Chandra bristled just a bit, as he realised his name and cherished reputation meant nothing to the Walking Man. He drew himself up to his full height, the better to show off his magnificent Raj silks and the diamond flashing in his turban.
“I, too, am a holy warrior,” he said hotly. “I also do God’s work, striking down those who would threaten the innocent!”
“How nice,” said the Walking Man. “Try not to get in the way.”
Chandra suddenly realised he was being teased and gave a great bark of laughter.
I was concentrating on the Walking Man’s face. There was something of the impish, the almost devilish, about his mocking gaze and easy smile. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected. He was far more complicated, and therefore far more dangerous.
“I can’t just let you walk in there and kill everyone,” I said bluntly. “This isn’t like Precious Memories, where everyone was guilty. There are bad people in the Boys Club, but not everyone is bad enough to be worth killing.”
“That’s my decision to make, not yours,” said the Walking Man. “This is what I do. You’re just along for the ride.”
“I know the Nightside better than you ever will,” I said.
“You’re too close,” the Walking Man said kindly. “You can’t see it clearly any more. You need me, to do what you’ve never been able to do.”
“I’ll stop you if I have to,” I said.
He flashed me a bright smile and shot me a merry look, one professional to another. “You’re welcome to try. Now, let the fun begin!”
We just walked in. The Doorman was currently making low, sad moaning sounds in the gutter, clearly in no shape to ask to see our Membership cards. The door swung open by itself. (At least the Walking Man hadn’t killed the Doorman outright. I told myself there was hope in that.) There were, howe
ver, a number of large and very competent-looking security guards waiting for us in the lobby, their muscular forms all but spilling out of their expensive suits. The Walking Man sauntered in like he owned the place, nodding briskly to the security guards. They nodded back, responding instinctively to his arrogant authority, before catching themselves and moving quickly forward to block our way. The Walking Man stopped, and looked them over, his smile openly mocking.
I looked around the lobby. They’d redecorated the place since I was last there, but it was still big and flashy and overstated, like most of the Club Members. Chandra and I moved in on either side of the Walking Man, and several of the security men got a bit twitchy when they recognised me. It was because of my last visit that they’d had to redecorate the lobby. But still, they were just thugs with guns, for all their nice suits, and I’d spent my whole life running rings round goons like them.
Just Another Judgement Day Page 11
