Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

to burn all the pieces separately to stop them moving, but we did it.

TWO
    At Home with John and Suzie

    U ntil 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