Dredd VS Death (13 page)

"Find some more weapons," he told them. "We're gonna bust our way outta here and maybe have some fun while we're doing it."

"There's serious trouble at Nixon Pen. Let's roll!"

The message crackled through the helmet radios of more than eighty Judges, all of them mounted on Lawmasters and heading at speed out of Sector House 57. The call had come in only a few minutes ago. Nixon Penitentiary was under attack, and every Street Judge in the sector house had been scrambled in response. Off-duty Judges were rudely roused out of dorms or sleep machines, Judges who had just come in from an eight-hour duty shift immediately got ready to hit the streets again. Emergency response units were being pulled in from other sectors, and more units from their own sector house - pat wagon crews, riot squad teams, even sector house admin and auxiliary staff to plug the holes in the ranks of the Street Judges - would follow them up soon enough, but these would be the first Judges to arrive at the scene and bring the situation at Nixon Pen back under control.

They were travelling along Minnie Driver Megway towards the prison, bike sirens blaring en masse, when the ambush happened.

A juggernaut-transporter jackknifed itself on the road ahead of them, overturning and completely blocking the road, crushing half a dozen other vehicles and their occupants in the process. At the same time, ten or more roadsters travelling along behind the Judge convoy suddenly skidded to a halt, blocking off the road behind the Judges and cutting off their escape. Hidden snipers on the block plazas and pedways on either side of the road opened fire at the Judges below. Seconds later, their comrades at the roadblocks in front of and behind the Judges joined in too.

Corralled in, the Judges took cover behind their Lawmasters, returning fire at targets whenever they presented themselves. It didn't take them long to identify their attackers; their coloured robes and the way in which they fought with almost suicidal abandon soon gave the game away.

"Death cultists!" shouted a senior Judge, picking off a black-cloaked, skull-tattooed sniper perched on top of a Sump Industries advertising billboard overlooking the roadway. "And if it's death these freaks are looking for, then today's their lucky day!"

"It's happening everywhere, Dredd. We're getting reports of attacks and violent disturbances involving Church of Death cultists all across the board!"

Dredd studied the tactical display on the h-wagon's control console. A pattern quickly appeared to him.

"They're centred around Sector 57, and Nixon Pen. Every incident is either designed to cut off one of the main routes to Nixon or tie up units that would otherwise be sent to deal with the trouble there."

"That's a roj," said the voice of Hershey over the radio link. "These Death cult kooks are coming out of the woodwork everywhere. They're doing everything they can to keep us away from Nixon Pen. There's thousands of them, but at the rate we're mopping them up, they'll all be either in the cubes or on their way to Resyk by the end of the night."

"If we don't get more units into Nixon fast, the whole city might be following those creeps along the Resyk conveyor belts," Dredd said grimly.

He'd commandeered the fastest h-wagon available at the Grand Hall of Justice as soon as Anderson's warning had reached him, but it had barely even taken off before the news of the attack on the prison had come through. Anderson's warning had been passed on too late, and the Death cultists had already made their move. It was minutes after that, as the h-wagon sped across the sky, that the first reports started coming in about the other Death cult attacks.

Like Hershey said, the Church was coming out of the woodwork, throwing everything they had into slowing the Judges down. Small groups of heavily armed Death cultist commandoes were on the loose in several sectors adjacent to 57. A human wave of unarmed, chanting cult members had blocked off Bachman-Turner Oversked, cutting off yet another approach to Nixon Pen. Lone cultists were going on killing sprees in crowded plazas and ped-precincts, and a report had just come in that a Death cult suicide bomber had detonated herself in the lobby of Sector House 58. Several block wars had suddenly flared up - the ever-feuding Minogue twin conapts had been the first, eagerly renewing simmering hostilities once more - and it seemed too much of a coincidence for the Death cult's involvement not to be suspected.

Dredd had intended to rendezvous at Nixon Pen with the local Judge units already at the scene there and then take command of the operation to restore order in the prison. At the moment, with roads blocked off and most of the available reinforcements tied up in dealing with the Death cult attacks, he was going to be the first unit to reach the place. He needed more Judges, and he needed them now. He activated his helmet radio.

"Giant - Dredd. Where are you?"

"About twenty minutes behind you," came the reply, "with four h-wagons' worth of riot squad units and a couple of heavy weapons teams. There's another ten wagons of the same taking off now, about another ten minutes behind me. We'll rendezvous with you at Nixon Pen, and-"

"No time," growled Dredd. "These Death cult creeps are trying to bust out the Dark Judges. The whole city's at risk now."

Dredd could see Nixon Pen through the h-wagon's cockpit window; a dark, forbidding-looking tower standing starkly against the illuminated backdrop of the city's spectacular skyline. Part of the building was burning, and even from this distance Dredd felt a sense of the chaos that had suddenly enveloped the place. Grud only knows how bad it was inside.

He signalled for the h-wagon pilot to begin his approach. "I'm going in on my own right now," he told Giant. "I'll meet you inside."

Two minutes later, the h-wagon touched down briefly on an emergency landing platform on the side of the prison building, then at Dredd's signal took off almost immediately afterwards. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of escaped and dangerous perps on the loose inside the prison, and Dredd had no intention of leaving an h-wagon sitting there on the landing pad for any of them to try to seize and make their aerial escape in.

Dredd was left standing alone on the landing pad, with the door into the main prison levels in front of him. He deactivated its coded locking mechanism with his override card, drew his Lawgiver and stepped into hell.

EIGHT

The Hi-Ex shot caught the vampire in the midsection, blowing it and the one next to it apart in the same single, bloody blast. The third creature leapt over their smoking remains, fangs bared in anger.

"Hungry, creep?" Dredd asked it. "So chew on this!"

He fed his Kevlar-reinforced fist into the creature's mouth, feeling its fangs break against the armoured material of his Judge glove. Two Lawgiver shots into its chest gave it something more to howl about. Dredd knew the shots wouldn't kill it, but they would keep it distracted for a few more seconds - and a few more seconds was all he needed.

Grabbing it by the shoulders, he hurled it backwards, smashing its head into the cell door opposite and then, before the creature could recover, he propelled it in the other direction across the narrow corridor, throwing it through the broken doors there and into the elevator shaft that dropped through fifty levels of this section of the iso-block building.

The vampire fell, uselessly flailing its limbs and howling in equally useless fury. Dredd didn't know if the fall would kill it - as he had been finding out ever since the battle at the Bathory med-repository, these creeps took a lot of killing - but he was fairly sure he wouldn't be seeing that particular example again in a hurry.

He continued on, following the route down to the next level. Power to the elevators and grav-tubes was gone, possibly as a built-in security measure when the alarms had first gone off, possibly as a result of damage done to the building's power supply either by the impact of the crash or sabotage by the rioting prisoners. Either way, the only way down through the building was on foot.

Dredd was heading for level 10, where the elevator entrance to the Tomb level was located. So far, he'd managed to fight his way down through twenty-six, with another twelve still to go. His combat responses had fallen into a pattern on the way down through those twenty-six levels.

Vampires got Standard Execution rounds to the head, or Hi-Ex or Incendiary shot special deliveries. Any armed perps he came across - and there were thousands of them at loose within the prison - and who were dumb enough to get in his way got the Standard Execution treatment, no more questions asked. Everyone else got a single warning and, if that didn't work, they got a brief but efficient first-hand demonstration of Dredd's unarmed combat ability and renowned daystick head-busting skills.

It was a crude but effective system, designed to get him to where he wanted to go with the minimum of delay and using the minimum of ammunition. Even so, in the twenty-six levels he'd covered so far, he'd still managed to go through four whole Lawgiver magazines, and his supply of Hi-Ex and Incendiary shells was now at a premium.

At the moment, nothing else mattered other than getting to that express elevator to the Tomb, and Dredd was forced to press on, going against his every instinct by ignoring all the other law-breaking going on in the prison around him. If the Dark Judges escaped, the chaos happening now in Nixon Pen would be as naught compared to what could result across the entirety of Mega-City One.

Giant would be touching down with his riot squad reinforcements soon enough. Dredd had been in constant radio communication with him, giving him updates on his progress so far. Thanks to Dredd, when Giant and his squads stormed into the place, they would already know where the worst trouble spots were, and where to apply the most force to swiftly bring order back to the prison.

He found the stairs from the level below and was down them in seconds, applying his daystick to the two shiv-armed escaped perps who stepped out of the shadows halfway down, demanding that he first pay the "entrance toll" to the next level. Dredd left them where they fell, unconscious and bleeding.

"Giant - Dredd. Two more for you, level 22, bottom of Stair B. Attempted Assault on a Judge: five years apiece onto their sentences, on top of the general counts for Rioting and Attempted Iso-Cube Escape."

Level 22. Twelve more levels to go.

Level 19.

Turning a corner, he ran into a mob of fifty or more escaped perps, all of them armed with a variety of makeshift weapons, all of them doing their best to slaughter each other. Freed from their cubes, and with no sign of any living Judge-Wardens, the prisoners had so far been at liberty to pursue their own violent agendas. Many of them, like the fifty creeps here, were using the opportunity to reignite some ancient gang feuds.

Dredd didn't have time to deal with a distraction like this. A precious Hi-Ex shot into the ceiling stopped the fighting and grabbed their attention. Two more Standard Execution rounds into the heart of a perp - probably one of the gang leaders - who tried to fire a stolen scatter gun at him grabbed their attention even further.

Fifty pairs of hostile eyes regarded him with sullen hatred, fifty hands grasped the handles of makeshift clubs or shivs, fifty minds imagined how good it would feel to bring those clubs down hard on that helmet or bury those shivs hilt-deep into that chest. Dredd coolly stared down every one of them, daring any of them to make their move. Not one did.

"Lay down your weapons and return to your cubes," Dredd commanded, bringing his full, natural authority to bear in what could almost have been a textbook moment straight out of his own Comportment. "Wait there - and don't even think about leaving them again. Judges will be here soon enough to deal with all of you."

"Drokk that!" shouted some big creep who had stripped off to the waist, his filed teeth and scar-crossed skin marking him out as a former bite-fighter. It was time for the classic equation. "There's one of him, and-"

He never got to finish it. Dredd's Lawgiver sounded once and the perp hit the floor, a Standard Execution round drilled through the centre of his forehead.

The other creeps took the hint. By the time Dredd reached the end of the corridor, there wasn't one of them left in sight.

Level 16.

"Giant - Dredd. Make sure someone picks up the four creeps in the Level 16 med-bay. Life sentences all round - murder of a Med-Judge. Any problems finding them, just look for the four perps with my Lawgiver slugs in each of their kneecaps."

Level 15. He was getting close now, and running into more vampires along the way. Some of them were sluggish and bloated from feeding on the plentiful supply of unwilling blood donors they had found in the iso-cubes around them. Some of them weren't, but sluggish or still hungry, they all went the same way.

By the time he found the way down to the next level, he had taken care of another eight vampires, at the cost of most of another Lawgiver mag and an extra minute's delay. It was time Dredd knew he didn't have to spare.

"Gruddamnit, what's keeping them up there?" cursed Mayer, frustrated at her attempts to raise anyone on her console radio. "Why isn't there anyone there to tell us what's happening?"

"Yessss. Do it now."

The sound came from behind her. It was Burchill's voice, but at the same time it wasn't. Mayer spun round, seeing Burchill standing right in front of the no-go line and staring in what she could only describe as mesmerised adoration at the things imprisoned on the other side of it.