Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

for.”
    “At least half the people I saw down there wouldn’t fit that description if you used a tire iron to squeeze them in,” I said. “In fact, some of them are exactly the kind of people you and your kind formed this Club to fight.”
    Chandra smiled. “What is it you people say—needs must when the Devil drives?”
    “You’ve grown cynical,” I said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
    “That’s what comes of hanging around with you,” said Chandra, and we both smiled.
    “I still have hope that seeing so many men and women of good faith come together will shock the Walking Man back to sanity,” said Julien.
    “Yeah, well,” I said. “Good luck with that.”
    “He’s here,” said Jessica Sorrow, and we all stopped and looked at her. Her gaunt face was blank, her eyes empty and far away. “He is at the door. And the rage that burns within him is cold... so very cold.”
    “Stay here!” I snapped at Julien. “Let us test the waters first, see if he can be talked down. Or stopped. Having you people there would only concentrate him on his mission.”
    “Give it your best shot, John,” said Julien Advent. “But preferably not with the Speaking Gun.”
    “We’re relying on John Taylor to reason with the Walking Man,” said Larry Oblivion. “We’re doomed.”

* * * *
    Walker and Chandra and I scrambled back down the stairs at speed and charged through the bar into the lobby. All the heroes and the rogues and the morally undecided were standing together, tense and silent, their eyes fixed on the closed front door of the Club. Walker gestured for Chandra and me to stay with him at the back of the crowd and observe how things went before we committed ourselves, and I was happy to go along with that. I really didn’t want to do what I was there to do. The tension in the air was almost unbearable, like waiting for the bullet to come your way, knowing your name is on it. The front door shook suddenly in its frame, as some massive force slammed against it. Like God himself knocking on the door and demanding entry. There was another great impact, and the huge door flew inwards, blasted right off its hinges. It slammed flat against the floor, and in came Adrien Saint, the Walking Man.
    Just a man in a long coat, with worn-down heels on his shoes from walking up and down in the world, doing good the hard way. He hadn’t even drawn his guns. But still he was the most dangerous, the most frightening man in the Club, and we all knew it. He walked in Heaven’s way, and Death walked with him. He was as inevitable as an earthquake or a flood, as implacable as cancer or heart failure. He was smiling his insolent smile, his gaze openly mocking as he contemplated the rows of adventurers gathered against him. He had come here to do a thing, and he was going to do it, no matter what we might set against him.
    He walked forward, and all the Club’s built-in security defences went to work. Force shields sprang into being before him, fierce energy screens generated by salvaged alien machines down in the Club basement. The Walking Man strode through the force shields, and they popped like soap bubbles. Protective magics and potent sorceries snapped and crackled on the air, bending the very laws of reality to get at him, and none of them could touch him. Even the mechanical booby-traps failed to slow him down. Trap-doors opened beneath him, and he just kept walking. Spikes protruded from the wall, only to break in half against his long duster as though it was armour. Man-traps snapped together around his ankles, and he kicked them away.
    The Walking Man headed straight for the packed crowd of waiting adventurers, who tensed, ready for action; and then he stopped before them and smiled easily. He looked back and forth, nodding briefly to familiar faces, and all the time his smile said I can do any damned thing I want, and none of you can stop me.
    “Stand aside,” he said finally, and his voice was quite cheerful and relaxed, as though he couldn’t imagine not being obeyed. Augusta Moon sniffed loudly and stepped out of the crowd to ostentatiously block his way. She scowled fiercely at him, her monocle screwed firmly into one eye, and brandished her staff of blessed wood tipped with silver.
    “And if we don’t? Eh? What will you do then?”
    “Then, I will kill as many of you as I have to, to get past you,” said the Walking Man, his voice as calm as though he was discussing the weather. “I walk in