Good Omens

Shadwell paled, muttered something inaudible, and put on the green helmet.

"What was that, Mr. Shadwell?" Madame Tracy looked at him sharply.

"I said, De'il ding a divot aff yer wame wi' a flaughter spade," said Shadwell.

"That'll be quite enough of that kind of language, Mr. Shadwell," said Madame Tracy, and she marched him out of the hall and down the stairs to Crouch End High Street, where an elderly scooter waited to take the two, well, call it three of them away.

* * *

The lorry blocked the road. And the corrugated iron blocked the road. And a thirty-foot-high pile of fish blocked the road. It was one of the most effectively blocked roads the sergeant had ever seen.

The rain wasn't helping.

"Any idea when the bulldozers are likely to get here?" he shouted into his radio.

"We're crrrrk doing the best we crrrrk," came the reply.

He felt something tugging at his trouser cuff, and looked down.

"Lobsters?" He gave a little skip, and a jump, and wound up on the top of the police car. "Lobsters," he repeated. There were about thirty of them—some over two feet long. Most of them were on their way up the motorway; half a dozen had stopped to check out the police car.

"Something wrong, Sarge?" asked the police constable, who was taking down the lorry driver's details on the hard shoulder.

"I just don't like lobsters," said the sergeant, grimly, shutting his eyes. "Bring me out in a rash. Too many legs. I'll just sit up here a bit, and you can tell me when they've all gone."

He sat on the top of the car, in the rain, and felt the water seeping into the bottom of his trousers.

There was a low roar. Thunder? No. It was continuous, and getting closer. Motorbikes. The sergeant opened one eye.

Jesus Christ!

There were four of them, and they had to be doing over a hundred. He was about to climb down, to wave at them, to shout, but they were past him, heading straight for the upturned lorry.

There was nothing the sergeant could do. He closed his eyes again, and listened for the collision. He could hear them coming closer. Then:

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

And a voice in his head that said, I'LL CATCH UP WITH THE REST OF YOU.

("Did you see that?" asked Really Cool People. "They flew right over it!"

"kin'ell!" said G.B.H. "If they can do it, we can too!")

The sergeant opened his eyes. He turned to the police constable and opened his mouth.

The police constable said, "They. They actually. They flew righ…"

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Splat.

There was another rain of fish, although of shorter duration, and more easily explicable. A leather jacketed arm waved feebly from the large pile of fish. A motorbike wheel spun hopelessly.

That was Skuzz, semi-conscious, deciding that if there was one thing he hated even more than the French it was being up to his neck in fish with what felt like a broken leg. He truly hated that.

He wanted to tell G.B.H. about his new role; but he couldn't move. Something wet and slippery slithered up one sleeve.

Later, when they'd dragged him out of the fish pile, and he'd seen the other three bikers, with the blankets over their heads, he realized it was too late to tell them anything.

That was why they hadn't been in that Book of Revelations Pigbog had been going on about. They'd never made it that far down the motorway.

Skuzz muttered something. The police sergeant leaned over. "Don't try to speak, son," he said. "The ambulance'll be here soon."

"Listen," croaked Skuzz. "Got something important to tell you. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse… they're right bastards, all four of them."

"He's delirious," announced the sergeant.

"I'm sodding not. I'm People Covered In Fish," croaked Skuzz, and passed out.

* * *

The London traffic system is many hundreds of times more complex than anyone imagines.

This has nothing to do with influences, demonic or angelic. It's more to do with geography, and history, and architecture.

Mostly this works to people's advantage, although they'd never believe it.

London was not designed for cars. Come to that, it wasn't designed for people. It just sort of happened. This created problems, and the solutions that were implemented became the next problems, five or ten or a hundred years down the line.

The latest solution had been the M25: a motorway that formed a rough circle around the city. Up until now the problems had been fairly basic—things like it being obsolete before they had finished building it, Einsteinian tailbacks that eventually became tailforwards, that kind of thing.

The current problem was that it didn't exist; not in normal human spatial terms, anyway. The tailback of cars unaware of this, or trying to find alternate routes out of London, stretched into the city center, from every direction. For the first time ever, London was completely gridlocked. The city was one huge traffic jam.