Dredd VS Death (15 page)

"Dredd, alpha red priority!"

The double set of thickly armoured blast doors obediently rumbled open before him and he ran through them without breaking stride. The sentry guns lining the corridor beyond submissively swivelled away as he approached and then swivelled back after he had passed, guarding his back. The Tomb and its entrance level within Nixon Pen had their own independent power source, and so were unaffected by the damage inflicted on the iso-block's security and power systems. The computer controlling them was now responding to the order, the combination of Dredd's name and voice recognition pattern, together with the command code he had given it, these all combining to override all other considerations.

"Activate elevator!" he barked while still a good ten paces away, making it through the heavy blast doors just before they rumbled shut, saving himself a few more precious seconds.

The ride down was a speedy one, considering how far below ground the Tomb level had been buried. For Dredd, with the safety of every citizen in Mega-City One at stake, it still seemed to take forever.

He squeezed himself through the doors as soon as they began to open again, his Lawgiver held at the ready. He took the situation in at a glance, seeing the two dead Judges, the bullet-riddled control consoles and the disabled security systems. The las-drill he destroyed with a single Hi-Ex shot, but it was too late, because its work was already done, and the stream of spirit matter was already flowing out through the fissure that had been cut into material of the crystal.

The spirit of Judge Mortis coalesced alongside those of its brethren, the four Dark Judges hissing together in shared triumph.

"Free at last," they exalted. "Free to continue our great work."

The atmosphere inside the Tomb was charged with dark psychic power. Even Dredd, who was double-zero rated for psi-sensitivity and thus mostly immune to any kind of psi-attack from the Dark Judges' spirit forms, could feel it, like a pressure between his temples. There was a foulness there too, a creeping sickness, the sense of something tainted hanging invisible in the air of the place. The Dark Judges were toxic, completely poisonous to everything around them. Even in spirit form, their deadly, corrupting power could still be felt.

They began to flow through the air of the chamber, heading towards the metal grille openings of the chamber's air-conditioning system. Dredd instinctively opened fire at them, spraying a dozen or more Lawgiver rounds into them, knowing just how futile the gesture was even as the bullets passed harmlessly through the creatures' insubstantial forms to strike the walls of the chamber.

They flowed with ease through the grilles and into the narrow conduits beyond. Dredd knew that the air-conditioning was supposed to be secure, with dozens of fail-safes built into it to prevent anything - even something gaseous - making it in or out of the Tomb, just as he had no doubt at all that the Dark Judges would find a way to elude all such safeguards. They were too cunning, too dangerous, to allow anything as mundane as air filters or vacuum-sealed plasteel slam-barriers to stop them now.

The others were gone, but the Death spirit lingered for a moment, floating tauntingly in the air before him. Dredd stared dispassionately at the leering visage of what was probably his oldest and greatest enemy.

"Patience, sinner," it grinned at him. "Your time to be judged will come soon enough."

Dredd raised his Lawgiver to give Death his reply, but the spirit-thing was already gone, flowing into the grille after the others, leaving behind only the mocking echo of its chilling laughter. Dredd activated his helmet radio to deliver the bad news to the rest of the Justice Department.

"Alert the Chief Judge. Tell her we were too late. The Dark Judges have escaped and are loose in the city."

NINE

Just as night fell, disembodied, invisible, the spirit-forms of the four Dark Judges passed across the face of the vast, teeming future city which had once come so tantalisingly close to being theirs forever. The city bustled with life as day turned to evening. The bars, clubs, restaurants, hottie houses, shuggy halls, vid palaces, juve joints, poseur parlours and all-nite shopperamas were starting to fill up with the night's customers, and the zoom trains were running at double frequency in the busiest central sectors, bringing in millions more citizens to the bright lights of the city's main attractions. It was Sunday night. Which meant that the familiar phenomenon known to the Justice Department as Sunday Night Fever was just beginning to bite, as countless millions of citizens went out to drown their sorrows or vent their anger and frustration against the fact that the following morning would bring nothing but the prospect of another long week of unemployment, boredom and poverty.

This was also the time when the tour party flyers took to the city skies in droves, each one packed full of foreign tourists who gawped down in stupefied amazement at the ocean of light that was the Big Meg by night. For these visitors, no matter how large they had previously thought their own mega-cities to be, there was no sight like it. Light and life stretched out everywhere below them; giant city blocks clustered together to form bright, glittering constellations, vehicle-filled megways threading between them and looking from this height like living rivers of light; the spaceports and strat-bat ports were blazing galaxies of light, throwing out the comet-like engine trails of craft blasting off for somewhere new every few minutes. Few ordinary flyer vehicles were capable of ascending to the height necessary to see the city in its entirety, where it stretched from the shores of the Black Atlantic in the east to the sullen, ominous darkness of the Cursed Earth rad-wastes to the West, so for those looking down on it from the tour flyers, it seemed as if Mega-City One was all there was to the whole world.

For these sightseers, the sight was simply amazing. For the spirits of the Dark Judges, moving invisibly amongst the drifting flyers, it was simply hateful and frustrating. So much despised life teeming beneath them, so many sinners waiting to be judged.

They were travelling at great speed, riding the invisible currents of psychic power that flowed across the face of the city, drawn inexorably towards a point somewhere just over the horizon. They were being called, they knew, and allowed the call to carry them to their ultimate destination.

A summoning spell, they realised. Their followers were calling the Dark Judges to them, to a place that had already been prepared, where Death and his brethren would be garbed in flesh again so that they could continue their great work of eradicating the crime of life from this world.

Passing unseen amongst the tourist flyers, Death amused himself for a moment by plucking thoughts from the minds of those sinners within the craft. He had always known that there were other cities in this world, other clusters of pestilent life waiting to be judged, but the number and variety of them which he found within the minds of those sinners surprised even the Dark Judge.

Brit-Cit... Simba City... Banana City... Hong Tong... Hondo City... Oz... Cuidad Espana... Cal-Hab... Puerto Nova... East-Meg Two... Sino-City Two. So many different places. So much disgusting life. So many guilty souls awaiting judgement.

"Patience, sinners. Your time will all come," gloated Death to himself, deliberately echoing what he had told Dredd earlier, thinking now of all the glories that still awaited even after Mega-City itself had fallen to him and his brothers.

There was still much to be done here first, of course. Their old enemy Dredd had arrived just too late to stop their escape, and he and the rest of his troublesome kind were still a danger to Death and his brethren at this early stage of their escape. Clearly something must be done to distract Dredd and those like him, while the Dark Judges and their servants prepared for the next stage of the great work.

Death could sense the one who had set all this in motion. He was one of those few sinners whom Death had allowed to live long ago, choosing him for some greater task and setting his invisible mark upon him. That mark was there still, like a hard black stone planted within the mortal's mind, and the chosen one had passed it on to the things he had created, the Hungry Ones. And they, in turn...

Death hissed in pleasure to himself, seeing a sudden opportunity to keep Dredd and the others from interfering in their plans for a little longer.

"Concentrate, brothers," he told the others. "Focus your energies. Let us put one more obstacle in the path of those who would try to stop us completing our work."

"For Grud's sake, will someone go and see what that banging sound is?"

Unlike their colleagues in Street Division or on general Sector House assignment, the specialist staff of the central tek-labs didn't work in shifts, and many of them were off-duty now, leaving the labs mostly empty for the night. Which suited Helsing just fine. He didn't like noise and he didn't like company, at least while he was working, and the few other Judges and auxiliary staff still on duty in the labs knew to keep their distance and give the Forensics Chief some space.

Helsing picked up the las-scalpel again and bent down over the corpse to take another tissue sample from its inner organs. The results of the last few sample tests had been inconclusive, but he felt sure that he was getting close to what he was looking for. Despite its startling gene-altering properties, there was something tantalisingly familiar about the chemical composition of the as-yet-unidentified retrovirus. The Justice Department computers still hadn't found a match for it yet anywhere in their mind-bogglingly huge file repositories, but Helsing trusted his own instincts more than any computer, and felt sure he had seen a protein chain profile much like it before - and recently too. If only he could get a better idea of the way it reacted and replicated, then perhaps-

The sound occurred again, breaking his concentration. A dull booming noise coming from somewhere to the back of the labs, near the refrigerated mortuary rooms where specimens and evidence still awaiting analysis were stored. The corpses of the victims from the Bathory Street massacre had arrived just after Hershey and Dredd had left the lab, and-

The sound came once more, louder and more insistent. A hammering, drumming sound, like fists pounding on metal.

Laying down his las-scalpel with an exaggerated sigh, Helsing went to investigate. The lab was deserted and he seemed to be the only one here. Acting on a vaguely disquieting afterthought, Helsing went to his desk and retrieved his Lawgiver from one of the drawers. As a Tek-Division lab specialist, he had never fired the weapon in anger - the closest he ever usually got to actual perps was when they turned up as evidence on his autopsy slab - but Justice Department regs required him to attend marksmanship courses at least once a year at the Grand Hall of Justice's firing range.

He walked towards the source of the sound, which was definitely coming from one of the locked mortuary rooms. Even as he watched, he could see the metal door shaking on its hinges, as something or someone relentlessly hammered on it from the other side. By the looks of things, the lock on it would only last a few moments more, and then there was the matter of the angry, animal-sounding, growling and moaning noises coming from whatever was on the other side of the door.

Calmly and methodically, Helsing reached down for his belt radio handset. "Control - Helsing. Unidentified intruders in the Forensics lab. I need some back-up down here as soon as possible."

He had barely finished speaking before the door lock gave way with a scream of snapping metal. The occupants of the mortuary chamber beyond tumbled out, snarling and hungry as they quickly spotted Helsing and started shambling eagerly towards him.

Helsing had lived through Judgement Day and knew what zombies looked like. How these zombies had come into being, whether the corpses of the vampires' victims had been reanimated by scientific or psychic means, these were questions the forensic scientist in him would have to wonder about later, assuming he was going to live through this. Right now, the only part of him that mattered was the Judge part, and his reactions were textbook perfect.

He brought his Lawgiver up to bear, drawing a bead on his first target and fired. The zombie's head exploded and it tumbled soundlessly to the ground, where the others trampled over it in their mindless, stumbling rush to get to Helsing.

Helsing took aim at the next nearest one, wondering if his first shot was a fluke, since to be frank his marksmanship scores on those annual firing range courses were barely above the Department required minimum.

One way or another, he figured he was soon going to find out. The zombies were almost upon him, and there was still no sign of that back-up.

"Say that again, Giant?"

"It's happening all over the prison, Dredd. Corpses are coming back to life again. Anyone who was killed by the vampires' bite is getting back up again as a zombie."

Grud almighty, that's all we need, Dredd cursed to himself. Vampires, Death-worshipping freaks, the Dark Judges and now the walking dead. This case was turning into a real late-night vidshow horrorfest.

"You able to handle things at your end?"

There was a pause on the radio link. Dredd could hear screams and Lawgiver fire in the background. Giant's riot squads had touched down a few minutes ago, and were methodically working their way down through the iso-block from its uppermost levels, rounding up escaped perps and gunning down any of the vampire things still on the loose. More h-wagons full of reinforcements were on their way, and it was confidently expected that Nixon Penitentiary would be back under full Justice Department control before dawn the next day.