Good Omens

Would you like it?”
    Skuzz shook his head sadly. Stomach rumbling, he made his way back to the game. Big Ted got irritable when he got hungry, and when Big Ted got irritable everyone got a slice.)
    A new category had come up on the video screen. You could now answer questions about Pop Music, Current Events, Famine, or War. The bikers seemed marginally less informed about the Irish Potato Famine of 1846, the English everything famine of 1315, and the 1969 dope famine in San Francisco than they had been about War, but the player was still racking up a perfect score, punctuated occasionally by a whir, ratchet, and chink as the machine disgorged pound coins into its tray.
    â€œWeather looks a bit tricky down south,” said Red.
    Black squinted at the darkening clouds. “No. Looks fine to me. We’ll have a thunderstorm along any minute.”
    Red looked at her nails. “That’s good. It wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have a good thunderstorm. Any idea how far we’ve got to ride?”
    Black shrugged. “A few hundred miles.”
    â€œI thought it’d be longer, somehow. All that waiting, just for a few hundred miles.”
    â€œIt’s not the traveling,” said Black. “It’s the arriving that matters.”
    There was a roar outside. It was the roar of a motorbike with a defective exhaust, untuned engine, leaky carburetor. You didn’t have to see the bike to imagine the clouds of black smoke it traveled in, the oil slicks it left in its wake, the trail of small motorbike parts and fittings that littered the roads behind it.
    Black went up to the counter.
    â€œFour teas, please,” he said. “One black.”
    The café door opened. A young man in dusty white leathers entered, and the wind blew empty crisp packets and newspapers and ice cream wrappers in with him. They danced around his feet like excited children, then fell exhausted to the floor.
    â€œFour of you, are there, dear?” asked the woman. She was trying to find some clean cups and tea spoons—the entire rack seemed suddenly to have been coated in a light film of motor oil and dried egg.
    â€œThere will be,” said the man in black, and he took the teas and went back to the table, where his two comrades waited.
    â€œAny sign of him?” said the boy in white.
    They shook their heads.
    An argument had broken out around the video screen (current categories showing on the screen were War, Famine, Pollution, and Pop Trivia 1962–1979).
    â€œElvis Presley? ’Sgotta be ‘C’—it was 1977 he snuffed it, wasn’t it?”
    â€œNah. ‘D.’ 1976. I’m positive.”
    â€œYeah. Same year as Bing Crosby.”
    â€œAnd Marc Bolan. He was dead good. Press ‘D,’ then. Go on.”
    The tall figure made no motion to press any of the buttons.
    â€œWoss the matter with you?” asked Big Ted, irritably. “Go on. Press ‘D.’ Elvis Presley died in 1976.”
    I DON’T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the helmet, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM.
    The three people at the table turned as one. Red spoke. “When did you get here?” she asked.
    The tall man walked over to the table, leaving the astonished bikers, and his winnings, behind him. I NEVER WENT AWAY, he said, and his voice was a dark echo from the night places, a cold slab of sound, gray, and dead. If that voice was a stone it would have had words chiseled on it a long time ago: a name, and two dates.
    â€œYour tea’s getting cold, lord,” said Famine.
    â€œIt’s been a long time,” said War.
    There was a flash of lightning, almost immediately followed by a low rumble of thunder.
    â€œLovely weather for it,” said Pollution.
    YES.
    The bikers around the game were getting progressively baffled by this exchange. Led by Big Ted, they shambled over to the table and stared at the four strangers.
    It did not escape their notice that all four strangers had HELL’S ANGELS on their jackets. And they looked dead dodgy as far as the Angels were concerned: too clean for a start; and none of the four looked like they’d ever broken anyone’s arm just because it was Sunday afternoon and there wasn’t anything good on the telly. And one was a woman, too, only not ridin’ around on the back of someone’s bike but actually allowed one of her own, like she had any right to it.
    â€œYou’re