Nightside 01 - Something From the Nightside

been through, he was still Razor Eddie, and tough as nails. Joanna and I helped him across the room, pushed and pulled him through the hole in the wall, and out into the alley. As soon as we were all out into the night, the sounds started up again. Eddie actually cringed for a moment as he heard them, but only for a moment. His gaze was steady now, and his mouth was firm. By the time we reached the main street again, he was walking on his own. Something had broken him, something awful, but he was still Razor Eddie.
    "How did you end up the only living person here?" I said finally. "When is this, anyway? How far in my future? I've just come back into the Nightside, after five years away. Does that help you date it? Dammit, Eddie, how many centuries have passed, since the city fell?"
    "Centuries?" said Eddie. "It seems like centuries.
    But I've always had a good grasp of time. Not centuries, John. It's only been eighty-two years since you betrayed us all, and the Nightside fell."
    Joanna and I looked at each other, and then out over the deserted city. The crumbling buildings, the starless, moonless night.
    "How could all this have happened in just eighty-two years?" I said.
    "You were very thorough, John. All of this is down to you. Because of what you did." Eddie tried to sound more accusing, but he was just too tired. "All Humanity is dead ... thanks to you. The world is dead. Cold and corrupt, the only remaining life ... like maggots writhing in a rotten fruit. And only I am left... to tell the tale. Because I can't die. Part of the deal I made ... all those years ago. On the Street of the Gods. Fool. Damned fool. I have lived long enough ... to see the end of everything and everyone I ever cared for. To see all my dreams dashed, and made into nightmares. And now I want so badly to die . .. and I can't."
    "What did John do?" Joanna said urgently. "What could he have done ... to bring about this?"
    "You should never have gone looking for your mother," said Eddie. "You couldn't cope, with what you found. You couldn't cope with the truth."
    "Hang in there, Eddie," I said lamely. "You're going home. Back in Time, to the Nightside as it was.
    And I swear to you ... we'll find a way to prevent this. I'll die, rather than let this happen."
    Razor Eddie turned his head away and wouldn't look at me. He breathed deeply of the relatively fresh air, as though it had been a long time since he'd breathed anything like it. He was walking more or less normally now, and we were making a good pace as I headed us towards the boundary. But we were still in the same street when it all went to hell.
    They came up out of holes in the ground, before and behind and all around us. Dark and glistening, squeezing and forcing their flexible bodies through the ragged openings in the dusty ground. We stopped dead in our tracks, looking quickly around us. And everywhere there were long spindly legs, hard-shelled bodies, compound eyes, grinding teeth and clattering mandibles, and long, quivering antennae. Insects, of all shapes and breeds, species I'd never seen before, all horribly, unnaturally large. More of them came scuttling and scurrying out of the ruined buildings, or skittering down the crumbling walls, light as a breath of air for all their size, joining the hundreds and hundreds already circling us, hopping and seething in a living carpet, covering the ground. The smallest were six inches long, the largest two and even three feet in length, with great serrated mandibles that looked sharp enough and strong enough to take off a man's arm or leg in a single vicious bite. Sometimes the insects crawled right over
    each other to get a better look at us, but for the moment at least they maintained a safe distance.
    I could feel my gorge rising. I really can't stand creepy-crawlies.
    "Well," I made myself say lightly, "I always thought insects would end up inheriting the world. Just never thought they'd be so bloody big."
    "Cockroaches," said Joanna, her voice thick with loathing and disgust. "Revolting things. I should have stomped on more when I had the chance." She waved her cigarette lighter at the nearest insects, and they actually seemed to shrink back a little. It had to be the light. It wasn't any real threat now, but their instincts remembered. Maybe we could use it to open up a path, make a run for it... I glanced at Eddie, to see how he was doing, and was horrified to discover he was quietly crying. What had they done to him? The great