Dredd VS Death Read online

  Death paused in his work, looking up as though suddenly sensing something amiss. From behind the iron grille of his helmet, undead eyes gazed out in search of what it may be. He gave a low hiss of irritable displeasure as his gaze picked over the thousands of corpses in the craters surrounding him. He did not like to be disturbed in his work, not when there were still so many sinners waiting to be judged.

  Vernon cringed in terror, pressing himself into the tangle of cold, lifeless flesh beneath him as he felt Death's eyes searching him out, inexorably finding the spark of treacherous life amidst the otherwise pleasing landscape of death. The icy grip of fear took hold of Vernon's body as Death's gaze fell upon him and, horribly, he felt the creature's long, cold fingers picking through his mind, almost as if he were physically kneeling before him to receive the Dark Judge's lethal blessing.

  His body convulsed and the beating of his heart slowed... and stopped. For a moment, he knew what it was to stand on the very edge of the abyss of death, and then the fingers withdrew, and the gaze of Death was lifted from him. Whatever Death had found in the mind of one helpless and terrified human had pleased him.

  Death withdrew his deadly tendrils from Vernon's soul with a long, low hiss of satisfaction and turned his attention back to the business at hand. 'The crime is life... the sentence is death,' he ritually intoned and, seconds later, another corpse joined the thousands of others in the burial pits.

  Vernon crept away, still only dimly aware of the significance of what had just happened. Death had found him, had judged him - and had found him worthy of something other than extinction.

  There was something more though, something the Dark Judge had left within him. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, Vernon imagined he could just see it, a slick, hard, black pearl planted amongst the living tissue of his brain.

  He had been marked by the Dark Judge. Marked not for death, but for life. For a purpose that was yet unknown to him, but which he already knew he would faithfully and devoutly carry out when the time came, for he knew that if he did Death's bidding, then he would be suitably rewarded.

  'I don't want to die,' he intoned to himself as he crept away again. I don't want to die. Not now, not ever. I don't want to die.'

  MEGA-CITY ONE, 2122

  ONE

  "Anything happen while I've been away?" Burchill asked, helping himself to a few generous gulps from Meyer's cup of now lukewarm synthi-caf.

  Meyer sighed in unhappy resignation. Being a Judge-Warden wasn't exactly the most exciting duty in the Justice Department, and keeping watch over the things they kept down here in the Tomb wasn't exactly the choicest duty posting in the Division, but it was having to work with jerks like Burchill that was the worst thing about this job. Worse even than the mind-numbing boredom and the extra creep-out factor of the nature of the... things encased within the crystalline cube-prisons only a few steps from where Meyer sat at the duty-console.

  "Nothing much," she told the smug Psi-Judge. "You're welcome to watch the vid-logs, if you want. We've got the whole of the last eighteen months since you were last here still on file. Not much to see, I'll grant you, but I think maybe Sparky might have done something like blink or change the flicker pattern of his flames a month or two ago."

  Burchill snorted into the cup of synthi-caf. "Sparky! It was me that christened him that, you know that? Sparky, Spooky, Creepy and Bony, that's what I called 'em one night, a year or two ago. Glad to see it's caught on while I've been away."

  Meyer bristled in irritation again. Psi-Judges were notoriously highly strung, and other Judges were expected to cut them a little extra slack, but Burchill was just an annoying creep. Duty regs said that there must always be a Psi-Judge on duty in the Tomb, to protect against any dangerous psychic activity from the things imprisoned down here, but the Psi-Judges selected for the job were rotated every three months since there were concerns about the effects on a Psi's mind of long-term exposure to the creepy vibes generated by the four detainees held in the Tomb. It had been a year and a half since Burchill had been on Tomb duty - or "spook-sitting", as he called it - and Mayer didn't think that was nearly long enough.

  "Yeah, ain't you just the Department comedian?" she commented, the sarcasm bare in her voice. "And, hey, by the way, feel free to finish the rest of my synthi-caf, why don't you?"

  "Thanks. Don't mind if I do," laughed Burchill, draining the last of the contents of the plasti-cup.

  "No! Don't you d-" began Meyer, way too late, as the Psi-Judge casually flipped the empty cup over his shoulder, throwing it towards the thick red warning line painted on the floor behind him, which divided the underground room into two distinct halves.

  On one side of the line were the duty-consoles for the two Judges - one experienced Judge-Warden and one Psi-Judge - which Tomb regs required to be at all times on duty here, as well as the elevator entrance back up to the surface. On the other side of the no-go line were the four entities imprisoned within the Tomb.

  Even before the plasti-cup had crossed the line, hidden sensor devices buried within the walls of the chamber had detected the movement and were tracking the object's progress. As soon as it entered the no-go area marked by the line, multiple sentry guns placed at various points around the chamber opened fire, using precise telemetry data fed to them by the room's remote sensors.

  The cup was instantly vaporised, struck by several laser beams simultaneously. All that remained of it was a fine residue of ash, which drifted slowly down to settle on the ground on the forbidden side of the red line.

  Meyer cursed, and punched a button to open up her duty log. "Thanks a lot. Now I'm going to have to make a report on that."

  Burchill laughed, and settled down into his seat in his duty-post across from her. "Hey, look at it this way: at least I've given you something to do now, which makes a change down here."

  From behind the substance of the crystalline barrier, from behind the walls which had imprisoned him and his brethren for too long, Death watched his captors. The failure of their great work, the collapse of their grand vision of the Necropolis, had been a galling experience. And defeat at the hands of their old enemies, Dredd and Anderson, had been even more so. The destruction of their physical bodies, the entrapment of their ethereal spirits within these crystal prisons, where they were almost completely cut off from each other and unable to plan the continuation of their holy work, all this was bad enough, but worst of all was seeing sinners so close by - sinners guilty of the worst crime of all, the crime of life - and being unable to bring due punishment upon them.

  Although Death could not actively commune with his brothers, he knew that they felt as he did. Within his prison, Fire blazed with angry, vengeful rage. Next to him, Fear writhed in agitation, his spirit twisting in on itself. On his other side, Mortis's restless spirit-shape formed and reformed itself, prowling round the borders of its prison, endlessly testing the strength of the walls and psychic wards which had been put in place to contain him.

  Of them all, only Death was at relative peace. While the others raged and turned their anger on themselves and the seemingly unbreakable walls of their prisons, he watched. And waited.

  And now, perhaps, his patience was being rewarded.

  Death recognised their new gaoler, the Psi-Judge. He had been here before, and Death, probing subtly and tentatively at the edges of the man's mind, had sensed the interesting possibilities within. There was weakness within this one, Death understood, weakness that could be exploited to his advantage. The man had gone away again, as they always did, but Death had waited patiently for his return, silently laying his plans.

  In the city beyond were the special ones, the ones who knew the Dark Judges for what they truly were - liberators, come to free all from the sinful burden of life - and who were eager to help Death and his brethren in their glorious task. Death had encountered several such special ones, and had put his mark upon them, knowing that one day he might have need of them. That day was soon, he knew n
ow, and his call had already gone out to them.

  Secret acolytes in the city beyond this place, and now a weakness here amongst their guardians. Yes, now he had everything he needed.

  Patience, brothers, he whispered silently to the occupants of the other three cells. Soon we will be able to begin our great work anew. Soon, Necropolis will be ours once more.

  Eyes, red and hungry, blazed at her from out of the darkness. She tried to move, to draw her Lawgiver, but the darkness around her was a living, sentient thing. It wrapped itself around her, snagging her limbs, dragging her down.

  She felt herself falling, down into the dark. From above her came the angry, cheated snarl of whatever had been pursuing her.

  She hit the ground with a clattering impact. She felt dust on her face, smelt withered, ancient decay and felt something dry and brittle beneath her fingers. Opening her eyes, she saw she was lying on a carpet of bones. Raising her head, she saw the litter of bones - human remains, she noticed, seeing identifiable skulls and bone shapes amongst the graveyard detritus - stretching out as far as she could see. The vague tombstone shape of vast buildings, cracked and ruined, loomed up out of the surrounding gloom. There was something horribly familiar about the whole scene.

  Deadworld, she wondered to herself, remembering her past experiences in the nightmare world which had given birth to the Dark Judges?

  Or Necropolis maybe, she asked herself, noticing with growing disquiet how much the surrounding buildings resembled the familiar outlines of Mega-City One?

  No, none of these things, something whispered inside her. Not something from the past. Something from the future, something dreadful that had yet to happen...

  Pulling herself to her feet, she heard a chorus of menacing growls from the nearest of the buildings. Backing off, she heard more of the same sounds from the buildings behind her. And from those to her left, and then her right.

  Surrounded on all sides, she checked the ammo counter on her Lawgiver and waited for whatever was out there to come to her.

  She didn't have to wait long. From out of the buildings they came, a black wave of shadow figures, snarling and hissing at her in hungry anticipation. She opened fire with her Lawgiver, firing off quick controlled bursts as per Academy of Law standard training. The bullets tore into the ranks of the shadow things, giving rise to an outraged chorus of howls of pain and anger. A dozen or more of the things tumbled to the bone-littered ground, to be fallen upon mercilessly and ripped apart by the others swarming close behind.

  Despite the carnage, the others came right on at her, swift and relentless. As they closed in on the Judge, heedless of the Lawgiver bullets tearing through unnatural flesh, they merged into one great shadow-shape, a black and red collage of maddened, hunger-filled eyes and crimson-dripping fangs.

  They bore down on her, dragging her to the ground, and the last conscious thing she remembered before the red veil descended was the sensation of talon-like fingers raking into her and sharp, needle-like teeth worrying at her flesh.

  After that, there was only the darkness, and the overpowering smell of freshly spilled blood.

  My blood, she thought, awakening with a shuddering start. The thin synthi-satin sheets of the bed were soaked with perspiration; the short vest she wore - definitely not Department-approved, which was probably why she wore it - clung to her sweat-soaked skin.

  Coming out of the nightmare, it took her a moment to remember where she was: the small and predictably Spartan temporary quarters assigned to her within the dorm-wing of Psi-Division Headquarters. Closing her eyes, she received a few brief but gruesome mental after-images of the nightmare she had just experienced.

  "Grud on a greenie, that was a doozie," she murmured to herself as she leaned forward to flick-activate the intercom control on the panel set into the wall beside the bed. Instead, she hit the wrong switch, and made the room's small tri-d screen activate into sudden and noisy life.

  "...it's Fluffy, darling... he's dead!" bellowed the voice on the tri-d, making Anderson look up with an involuntary start. She saw a husband-and-wife pair of citizens, both of them straight out of the usual dumb vidvert Central Casting, by the looks of things, crying and cradling the white-furred corpse of something she assumed was supposed to be a dead rabbit. At that moment, the vid-generated background of an ordinary city block apartment wiped away, and a tall, rather intense-looking man in a spotless white lab coat stepped into shot, smiling in a supposedly disarming but actually rather scary manner at the camera.

  "Dr Dick Icarus, chief scientist from EverPet! What are you doing here?" exclaimed the wife character in a way that probably made the vidvert director wish he'd gone for digitally generated actors after all.

  "I'm here... for Fluffy!" declared the freaky mad scientist type, brandishing a syringe filled with an alarming-looking, glowing green liquid, and quickly injecting the noxious stuff into the dead pet. Almost instantaneously - because vidvert airtime didn't come cheap, naturally - the animal sprung back to life and went hopping off out of shot.

  "He's alive! But HOW???" shrieked the wife-actor in amazement, no doubt seeing a dazzling career ahead of her in walk-on roles in middle-of-the-night graveyard slot soap-vids.

  "It's all thanks to this," boasted the wacko in the lab coat, holding the syringe and its contents up to camera. "EverPet's revolutionary new Pet Regen Formula. That's right! Now there's no need for death to part you from your most beloved animal companions. For only a small monthly fee, and regular injections of Pet Regen, EverPet can bring your furry little family members back to life. So dial 555-REGEN and resurrect your pet tod-"

  "Bringing dead pets back to life... only in the Big Meg," Anderson muttered, hurriedly switching off the tri-d before what was shaping up to be a predictably dumb and irritatingly catchy musical jingle started playing. Second time lucky, she activated the intercom.

  "Psi-Control - Anderson. Just picked up something. Could be a pre-cog flash, maybe a big one."

  The answering voice on the radio-link was politely sceptical. "You sure about that, Anderson? We've got more than thirty other Psi-Judges asleep in the dorms, not to mention the full-time pre-cogs down in the Temple, and none of them are interrupting my duty shift to report on picking up anything. You sure it wasn't just some REM sleep phantom bogey stuff?"

  Anderson fought to keep her temper under control. "You know my rep, Control. You're not talking to some rookie Psi straight out of the Academy. I know the difference between a nightmare and a genuine pre-cog flash."

  "Okay," sighed the voice of Control. "You want me to log this as a possible pick-up. We both know the routine. Tell me what you thought you picked up, starting with surface impressions first."

  Anderson closed her eyes, bringing her psi-powers to focus on the images still burning in her brain. A moment's concentration, a careful sectioning off of the various areas of her mind to prevent random and subconscious psi-spill from polluting the memory of the images she had picked up, and then she was ready to replay the nightmare she had just experienced.

  "I see blood, Control. Lots of blood."

  "I mean, just what the drokk is it with these so-called 'Church of Death' freakoids, anyway? The Big Meg is what I like to call a broad church, with room for all kindsa wackos, freaks, gomers, spazheads and nutjobs, sure, but there's still gotta be some limits, ain't there? Now, all you regular listeners out there know that good ol' Drivetime Sam ain't no bigot - except when it comes to muties, Alientown freaks, Juggernaut fans, stuck-up Brit-citters, assorted Euro-cit trash, those big-mouthed domeheads from Texas City, Luna-cit weirdos and especially those dirty Sov-Blokers - but usually I say 'live and let live'. Except in the case of these Death cult creeps.

  "You know the freaks I'm talking about, right? Loons that paint their faces like skulls, dress up like it's Halloween and worship - yeah, you heard me right, I said WORSHIP - Judge Death and his three fellow extra-dimensional freakshow buddies? That sound SANE? That sound LEGAL? That sound like the kind of
thing we should encourage our innocent young people to get into, when they could be out there getting into juve gang rumbles, taking illegal narco-tabs, setting fire to winos or doing any of the other traditional things the juves of today get up to?

  "'Of course not, Sam,' I hear you say, 'that's why the Judges are rounding these freaks up as soon as they appear.' Which is fine by ol' Drivetime Sam, but I say we should all be doing our part too. You know any of these wackos, you think some of your neighbours might be perverted sickos who have a shrine to the Dark Judges hidden in their apartment, then there's only one thing to do. Let the Judges know about it. Dial 1-800-KOOKCUBE, and tell 'em Drivetime Sam told ya to do it.

  "Okay, so that's the Rant of the Hour slot and our statutory public information obligations taken care of for the time being, so now it's back to our usual mix of travel-time news, made-up stuff about the private lives of vid-celebs and phone-in chat with you, the dumb, feeble-minded and pathetically attention-seeking ordinary cits of Mega-City One. First on the line is Chuck Cheedlewidge, who we understand is some dweeb who wants to tell us that the weird growth on his neck has started channelling the spirit of the late Chief Judge Goodman. Ooowww boy, now where did I put that kook cube num-"

  Galen DeMarco switched off the radio with a curse that would surely have earned her a verbal reprimand from any of her old Sector House shift commanders. Like millions of other citizens, she couldn't stand arrogant, opinionated shock jock creeps like Drivetime Sam. Then again, like millions of other citizens, she also couldn't help tuning in to hear what he was going to say next.

  "So much for all those dull citizenship classes they made me take," she said to herself. "If I really wanted to blend in with the rest of the population, all I had to do was listen to the meatheads on talk radio."