Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

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 need. 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

    W alker’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