Judge Dredd (17 page)

Olmeyer shook his head and punched a dozen keys. “It’s chock-full of anomalies. Really clever ones, too. Someone must have used a GCI terminal
and
a scan quadrupler to come up with this. Man, that’s state of the art twenty years ago.”

Hershey squeezed Olmeyer’s arm. “What are you saying, it’s not—it isn’t real?”

“Watch. Keep your eyes on the screen. I’ll drop out all the imposters, all the artificial pixels.”

Hershey watched, stunned, as the elements of the picture began to fade and disappear, one by one, vanishing into mist, each scan line erasing another part of the image until nearly everything was gone.

“My . . .
God,”
Hershey said.

Olmeyer spread his hands. “That’s it. Sky, foreground, house, parents . . . it’s all fake, Judge. Every line of it.”

“Everything except—”

“Right,” Olmeyer finished. “Everything except the baby. The baby’s real. The rest of it is zero, zilch. It doesn’t exist.”

“Q
uit talking and do it,” Dredd said. “You’re starting to piss me off.”

Mean Machine threw back his head and laughed like a wolf in heat. He’d never seen a wolf, and he’d never seen anything in heat except Pa, and that was too scary to even think about.

“I
like
you,” Mean Machine said. “I like you ’bout as good as that other’n, I surely do.”

He turned to Pa Angel, standing close to the fire. “He’s just a’spoofing, Pa. He’s hurt bad.
Real
bad. I heard stuff crunkle inside. I figure I hit him real low in his private sinner parts he’ll bring glory to the Lord like you never seen before.”

The Reverend Billy Joe Angel turned his hooded face toward his son. He raised his wooden shaft and aimed in the direction of Dredd.

“Prink ib do kot, poi,” he shouted. “Prink ib do kot!”

“I’ll do it, Pa, I will. I’ll bring him to God real good!” His yellow eyes flashed. “Is this a—a Four you think, Pa? You think it maybe is?”

“Vore!” Pa bellowed in a voice like rocks in a can.

“Four!” shouted Mean Machine. “Four!
Four! FOUR!”

Mean Machine reached up to his shiny silver head and dialed himself a Four. His mouth fell open. Blue fire crackled in his eyes. A low sound started in his gut, trembled up his body and out his throat in a ragged roar. He spread his arms wide, the good one and the bad, spread them out wide like a man who fully intended to fly. He swept in a dizzy circle around the fire, twisting and turning and shaking himself into a frenzy and a froth, a small tornado looking for a trailer park, looking for a kill. Then, with a howl that shook the ruined walls, he lowered his head and came straight for Dredd.

“Glory!
Glory! GLOOOOOR—EEE!”

Dredd knew exactly how this maniac’s charge had to end. He would hit with the impact of a truck, and all of Dredd’s organs would spurt out of his ears. He tensed the muscles in his belly, in his thighs. Everything hurt. Every motion brought a new jolt of pain. Dredd opened his mouth and roared, lifted his body at the waist, snapped his legs straight out.

His boots met the top of Mean Machine’s head. Mean Machine’s speed kept him going for a second and a half. He stopped, then, shook all over, and staggered off in a ragged dizzy course. His head found the wall. He turned on his heels and stumbled off toward Dredd again. The deadly blade whirred above his head. Smoke came out of Mean Machine’s nose. Dredd jerked his body aside, felt the blade hum by, wrapped his legs around the metal head.

Mean Machine howled. Dredd closed his eyes against the pain and lifted Mean Machine off the ground. Mean Machine’s leg kicked air. The pole holding Dredd’s hands snapped. He fell in a heap, came to his feet, and ripped the leather thongs from his wrists.

Mean Machine turned in a circle, got his bearings and came at Dredd again. Dredd lifted half the broken pole, swung it in an arc at Mean Machine’s head. Mean Machine went down, shook himself, and came to his feet again.

“Okay,” Dredd said, “I get the message, friend. You can take it in the head. Forget about the head.”

Mean Machine jerked up straight, scanned the room and settled on Dredd.

“Don’t
like
you no more. Liked you real good. Don’t like you no more at all.”

“We’ve got a problem, then,” Dredd said. “You don’t like me and I’m still fond of you.”

He whirled the broken pole above his head. Mean Machine came at him. Dredd let go. The pole made half a turn in the air and struck Mean Machine solidly at the knees. Mean Machine yelled and went down. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Dredd moved in to finish him off. The earth exploded at his feet. Dirt and stone geysered into the air. Dredd threw himself to the ground, rolled, and came up on his knees. The Reverend Billy Joe Angel had an antique automatic weapon in his hand. He was screaming out a hymn, and blasting every corner of the room.

Dredd tried not to move. A blind man with a weapon like that was a hazard to everyone’s health. A totally whacked-out squirrely-in-the-head blind man with a weapon was a case of walking death.

Mean Machine suddenly came to life. Smoke curled out of his head. His legs kicked the air like a beetle on his back.

Pa Angel swiveled on his knees, centered on the sound.

“Huh! Goht-chew! Goht-chew, Tread!”

Lead stitched a nasty fence around Mean Machine. Mean Machine yelled, and scooted for his life.

“Sh-shit, Pa, it’s me, it ain’t him! He’s over that-away!”

Pa Angel cocked his head from side to side, raised his weapon and blasted a crooked line a foot above Dredd. Brick and plaster showered on his head.

“Enough of this,” Dredd muttered to himself. He picked up half a brick, tossed it across the room.

“Yuuuuuh!”
Pa Angel turned in a blur and blasted the brick to bits. Dredd went low and scurried along the wall, into the narrow hall. He decided he was losing it, that something was wrong with his head. Looking for Ferguson after what that moron had done. Maybe he’d get lucky—maybe they’d already quartered and barbecued the little crook. Dredd could scoop him up, mail the scraps to Aspen in a box.

He could smell Pa Angel’s boys. They left an odor strong enough to cut up and stack.

Dredd stopped. There was another smell now. Different, but not much worse than the first. The smell of burning flesh. Dredd had smelled it a hundred times. Always as a casualty in the street, though, never as an item on the menu before.

He stepped out of the corridor and into the small room. The ceiling had collapsed, scattering plaster, marble, and rusted steel bars across the floor. On some of the marble, there were broken bits of names, flowers and leaves carved in stone.

Across the room, something that used to be a prisoner or a guard sizzled on a spit. Dredd drew in a breath. A few feet away, one of Pa Angel’s loonies was basting Fergie’s naked backside with half a broom. The other hummed a hymn. Fergie’s hands and feet were bound to the spit. He squawked and rolled his eyes. Dredd thought he looked a little skinny for a really good meal, but the freakos didn’t seem to care.

Dredd walked up behind Link-Link, picked him up by the collar and tossed him against the wall. Link-Link’s head made a terrible sound. Junior Head-Dead turned and stared. He said, “Snuk-snuk-shuk!” He tried to get his motor skills working, drew a long-barreled pistol from his belt. His reaction time was six months slower than Dredd’s. Dredd took the weapon from his hand, turned it around, pulled the trigger, and shot Junior in the head.

“Snuk-snuk yourself,” Dredd said. He looked down at Ferguson.

“What I ought to do is leave you here, you groon. Did I tell you these crazies
ate
people? You didn’t get that? That too hard for you?”

“Go muck yourself, Dredd. Have one on me.”

“Right. First intelligent thing you’ve said all day.”

Dredd stood watch while Fergie got into his clothes. Fergie whined and complained. Dredd studied Junior’s weapon, looked at the cylinder and blew down the barrel. It might fire again or it might blow off his hand. He decided to keep it until something better came along.

Someone roared down the hall. Pa Angel, or Mean Machine, Dredd couldn’t tell.

“Come on,” he said, glancing at the thing on the spit, “I don’t want to stand around here.”

Fergie looked at him. “What are you going that way for? Man, I am headed the other way, I am not going back in there.”

“I’m not through in there,” Dredd said.

“Yeah? Well, I am. You go ahead. Write sometime.”

Dredd looked at him. “What are you worried about? Lo, He shall stomp out evil, He shall smite the Unbelievers . . .”

“Okay, okay.” Fergie shrugged. “Hey, you been right all your life? You ever goof up, do something didn’t work out the right way?”

“Yes,” Dredd said. “You. Shut up and stay behind me. Pick up a brick. When no appropriate weapons are available, utilize those materials at hand.”

“Judges. ‘How to Cover your Ass,’ right?”

“Dredd. ‘Survival Against All Odds.’ I wrote the course.”

“I had to ask.”

“Normal behavior for lawbreaker scum. Asks a lot of questions. Never listens to anything anyone says.”

“You write that, too?”

“No,” Dredd said.
“You
did. You’ve been living it all your life. You and all your kind. That’s why there’s us.”

“Us.”

“Us. Judges. As long as there are people who think the world is their lunch, there has to be someone to show them they’re wrong.”

“Oh. Okay, I got it,” Fergie said.

“Good. Now button it up and stay close. Don’t fall behind.”

Button it up seemed like a good idea, Fergie decided. Likely not the best time to remind Dredd he wasn’t an “us” anymore—that officially, he was a lawbreaker scum. Just like Ferguson, Herman, ASP-900764. Probably not what Dredd would like to hear.

The tunnel was silent. No sound. Nothing. Fergie didn’t care for that. Quiet got on his nerves. You hear something, you know what’s going on. You don’t, something isn’t right. Noise is good. Noise is the way things ought to be.

Dredd hadn’t bothered to tell him how he’d gotten loose. What the old freak and the lead-head might be up to now. Why tell a con, right? What’s your common ordinary habitual offender need to know?

Fergie hefted his broken brick. Dredd was a couple of feet ahead. It might work out, it might not. Lay him out flat. Make a deal with the freaks. Get out of this place. Yeah, right. They’d really go for that. Especially after they found the mess Dredd had left in the other room.

At the end of the hallway, Dredd waved Fergie to a halt. The fire was nearly gone. The embers cast a feeble glow. Ancient white columns across the room looked like pallid ghosts.

Dredd waited, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the shadows, to the starlight from the shattered roof overhead. There. The two posts that had held the pole where they’d strung him up by his hands. Fallen by its base was Pa Angel’s automatic weapon. Good. The old man was out of ammo or he wouldn’t have left it there.

The dying fire caught a dim point of light. Metal. Mean Machine’s head. He was still laid out where Dredd had left him. With any luck, dead. That’s one. One more . . .

Dredd held his breath. A scarecrow shadow, a bundle of rags. The Reverend Billy Joe Angel, sitting on the ground by his son.

Dredd turned and touched Fergie’s arm, signaled him to stay where he was. Fergie nodded. Doing anything else had never crossed his mind.

Dredd took a cautious step into the room. He sniffed the air and kept his eye on the shadow across the room. Junior’s long-barreled weapon was at his side. There were likely no other members of the Angel crew, or they would have showed up by now. Still, Judge training told him
thinking
the way was clear was not enough. Playing safe was how you stayed alive. Thinking safe was how you got dead.

He took another step. Come up behind the shadow. Take the old man out. Make sure metal-dome was dead. Look for any more weapons and—

He heard the rush of air, had a quarter of a second to duck, curse himself, and remember Chapter Nine of his own damn book: “When you think the area’s secure, chances are it’s not.” Then Pa Angel’s staff hit him squarely on the side of his head and he went down like a rock.

D
redd felt the ground coming up. Plenty of time to think. Hour, hour and a half. Time works different somehow. Wham. Drop. Fall on your face. Stationary target. Get the hell up. He clobbers you again and you’re flat-ass dead . . .

Dredd pushed the darkness aside. Just enough to wake up motor control for a tiny little nudge to the right. Not bad. Good. He hit the dirt hard.

“Gaht-su, Tread! Got-su, you sinner sum-bish!”

Pa Angel’s staff came down again. Missed. Half an inch is good as a mile.

Dredd reached out and grabbed a filthy foot. Nothing. The action took place in his head. His hand was paralyzed. Pa Angel kicked him in the knee. Dredd howled and rolled away. He thought about Herman Ferguson. Ferguson and his brick. What was he doing that was more important than this?
Your own fault, Dredd. Count on a criminal type you deserve whatever you get.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the scarecrow loom up above him, the staff gripped in his scrawny hands, the weapon raised up behind his shoulders, ready for the deathblow, ready for the kill.

And in that instant, in a second, in a breath, he watched the dirty hood fall away, saw the scarred and razored flesh, saw the leather thongs tangled in strange configuration, in ritual array, lacing the horror’s ruined face, covering the darkness where ears and nose and mouth and eyes of madness used to be.

The Reverend Billy Joe Angel bellowed out his rage and swept his weapon down, and Dredd knew he didn’t have time, that this was the one where he wouldn’t walk away, the one where a blind man had fooled him with a stick and a pile of smelly rags when he wasn’t really there, and Dredd wished it might have happened any other way, nearly any way but that—

“HUUUUUK!”
Something exploded in the ragman’s belly and scattered him in several bloody parts.