Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

me.”
    “I can see that would cause problems,” said Chandra.

* * * *
    Because I was in a hurry to get some information on the Walking Man before the bodies started dropping again, I broke one of my oldest rules and hailed a passing taxi-cab. Normally I know better. You can’t trust the taxis in the Nightside. Partly because you can never be sure who the drivers are really working for, or reporting back to . . . but mostly because taxis are just too bloody dangerous. Some of them run on powdered virgin’s blood, some of them interrupt their journeys to fight duels with cabs from rival firms, and some of them eat their passengers. Not everything that looks like a cab is necessarily a cab. But this was an emergency, so . . .
    An old-fashioned black London taxi-cab pulled sharply out of the endless roar of Nightside traffic and screeched to a halt before me. I recognised the firm, Infernal Taxis. Their proud motto— We promise you a Hell of a ride! I held the door open for Chandra so he could get in first, just in case. I let him get settled comfortably and only then got in after him. You can’t be too careful.
    A sign inside the cab said Please refrain from smoking or the driver will rip your lungs out. Fair enough. I’d barely settled back into the scuffed leather seat beside Chandra before the driver slammed through the gears and forced his way back into the flow of traffic through brute force and intimidation. He body-slammed a few slower-moving vehicles out of his way, and heavy-duty automatic weapons deployed from the gleaming black bonnet to threaten any other vehicles that didn’t move fast enough, or looked like they were getting too close. Which was also fair enough. Offensive driving is the norm in the Nightside if you want to reach the end of your journey alive, or even in one piece. I relaxed a little, feeling that I was in safe hands.
    The driver was human enough, from the waist up. From the waist down, his torso plugged directly into the driving seat. Cables, wires, and tangles of translucent plastic tubing full of pulsing liquids connected him to the cab on both a physical and a mental level. Basically, he was a cyborg, and the cab was an extension of his truncated body. He drove it with his thoughts, but he kept his hands on the steering wheel to reassure his passengers. He kept a bonsai pine tree on his dash-board to serve as an air-freshener.
    Chandra took one look at the driver’s situation, and immediately lost his temper.
    “Who did this to you, sir?” he demanded loudly. “Give us the man’s name, and I promise you we shall hunt him down and inflict dire punishments upon him!”
    “Will you relax?” I said. “He paid for it himself. You can make serious money driving a cab in the Nightside, if you live long enough. Being a cabby here is a vocation, like mountain-climbing or spree killing. You leave him alone, Chandra, he’s quite happy.”
    “Too right, squire,” said the cabbie, without looking round. His skin was as pale and puffy as a mushroom, but his voice was disturbingly hale and hearty. “I had that Walker in the back of my cab the other day, you know. A real toff. Lousy tipper, mind. Where to, squire?”
    “I need to speak to the rogue vicar,” I said. “Take us to the Vicarage.”
    The driver sucked in a sharp breath between his yellow teeth. “Ooh no, I don’t think so, squire. I don’t go that far into the badlands. Far too dangerous.”
    I leaned forward so he could get a good look at me in his mirror. “I’m John Taylor. How dangerous do you think it’s going to get in here if you don’t do what I tell you to?”
    “Oh bloody hell,” said the driver.
    He sniffed loudly, put his mental foot down, then sulked in silence for the rest of the way. Which suited me well enough. He’d only have wanted to talk politics, and how there were far too many elves in the Nightside these days. Chandra was apparently lost in his own thoughts, so I just stared out the window at the traffic. It was the usual mixture of vehicles—from the past, present, and future—thundering through the Nightside on their way to somewhere more interesting. Ambulances that ran on distilled suffering. Articulateds with unfamiliar logos emblazoned on their sides, transporting goods too dangerous or too disturbing even for the Nightside. Demon messengers on souped-up motorcycles, with hellfire flying out their exhausts. And a whole bunch of things pretending to be vehicles, for reasons