Dredd VS Death (24 page)

"Ray? Billy?" he called out, thinking he could see two forms in the drainage chamber ahead of him. Ray and Billy were supposed to be working this area on this shift, and the blockage they had been sent to clear was still there, causing an overflow that was now threatening to back up all the way to the bile pumps.

Gruddamnit, if he found out that they had been slacking off again, sneaking off down to the illegal card games run by one of the conveyor belt's assistant foremen in the maintenance sub-bay next to the bone-grinders, then there was gonna be trouble...

He stepped into the drainage chamber, seeing the two figures lying there in the swirling, acidic chem-fluids. Working at Resyk, you got used to the sight of corpses real fast, and Ernesto had no hesitation in deciding that both Ray and Billy were as dead as you could get. They could only have been dead for a short while, though, otherwise they would already have started dissolving into the bubbling tox-brew they were lying in. Ernesto had seen a lot of corpses, but he had never seen two likes these, especially with what he could only describe as frozen looks of horror on their faces.

He was just reaching for his radio headset to report on what he had just found, when he heard splashing sounds from the sluice-duct to his right and looked round to see the silhouette figure of a Judge coming towards him. Sure, it was a real thin-looking kind of Judge, wearing some kind of extra funky looking uniform, but Ernesto knew there were all kinds of Judges with all kinds of different uniforms, and so he didn't see anything to get worried about - not until the thing he had thought was a Judge stepped out into the dim light of the chamber and reached out towards him with something that was more like a ghoul-claw than a human hand.

"Greetingsss, sssinner," it hissed. "Rejoiccce. Judgement is here."

Dredd was still in the air, aboard his h-wagon, when the news broke.

"Dredd - Control. Got a query for you from the clean-up crew at the Icarus lab location. You sure about call on the Icarus stiff? The meat wagon crews say there's no sign of the body."

"That's impossible, Control," Dredd snarled into the radio mike. "I put six Lawgiver slugs into him, every one a kill shot. The only place that creep was going was Resyk. Tell them to check again and-"

"Hold it, Dredd," the voice of Control abruptly cut in. "Something coming in over the radio net now. Reports coming in about a possible Death sighting... Wait, that's confirmed! We've got a positive lock on Death's position."

"Where?" Dredd's voice, instantly commanding.

"Only half a sector away from your current position, Dredd. He's at Resyk, and he's killing every living thing in the place."

The h-wagon pilot must have been monitoring the conversation, because the vehicle was already swerving round in an abrupt change of course, accelerating off towards Resyk.

"Wilco, Control. I'm on my way. Dredd out."

Being dead wasn't nearly as dramatic as one might have imagined, Icarus had decided. For a start, he still had consciousness, although he wasn't sure how much that was to do with the retrovirus which was now steadily transforming his recently dead body. The seat of his consciousness was still tied to that body, and he was aware of his surroundings and what was happening around him, but the sights and sounds were oddly dimmed, almost as if he were experiencing them all in a strangely detached, fugue-like state. He knew he was still within his body, but he had no sense of physical existence, and any kind of sensation of pain or bodily awareness was completely absent. Which was probably just as well, he decided, considering the six Lawgiver bullets which had torn his insides apart.

As far as he could tell, he was somewhere in the Undercity, carried there by the last few vampires which had remained in hiding in his lab during the confrontation with Dredd. He had no idea where they were taking him, or why. To be honest, he wished he could communicate with them in some way. On the other hand, even if he had been able to, he wasn't sure they would take any notice of his commands any longer. The way they were moving, the way they seemed to work together in perfect accord without speaking, he got the distinct impression they were acting under the direction of some outside force.

His creations were no longer his to command. For the first time since he had taken his first steps on the long road to this point, Icarus began to feel a vague uneasiness about his presumed pact with the things he had set free from Nixon Pen.

Meanwhile, while he dwelled on what Dredd had told him about the wisdom of making deals with the Dark Judges, his former servants continued on their mysterious journey, carrying him deeper and deeper down into the darkness of the Undercity beneath Mega-City One.

Giant still woke up sometimes at night in his dorm cubicle at the Grand Hall of Justice, sweaty and panicked from nightmares about his first encounter with Judge Mortis. The experience had been a defining one for him. And almost a fatal one too, he grimly remembered. Mortis had kept right on coming at them, as he and the others had pumped round after round of Lawgiver fire into the Dark Judge's rotted, ossified body. Even after a decapitating Hi-Ex round, the Dark Judge had simply picked itself up again and reattached its head to its body before continuing the pursuit.

Mortis's touch was literally death, and Giant could still remember the putrefying stench that had filled the air as he watched the flesh rot away in mere seconds from the body of one of Mortis's victims. The memory, together with the fear of those hands ever bestowing the same deadly touch on his own flesh, had stayed with Giant a long time. He had been a cadet back then, of course, not one of the rising stars of the Justice Department and Dredd's chosen right-hand man, but some things you don't forget. Especially in your nightmares.

And now here he was, ten years later and about to confront the source of those nightmares again.

He was leading a squad of Judges down the corridors of Clooney Memorial Hospital. So far, it hadn't been difficult to work out which direction Mortis had taken. Like Dredd said, all you had to do with the Dark Judges was follow the trail of corpses.

Mortis hadn't been here long - it was less than twenty minutes since the alert had gone out and Giant had jumped aboard an h-wagon and maybe broken the Department's aerial speed record to get here - but, by Grud, Mortis had been busy in that short time. He had been going from one ward to another, slaughtering every living soul he found, and the rooms and corridors of the place were choked with corpses and filled with that same awful and familiar reek of decay. Not even the droids had been spared, because Mortis's touch affected more than just flesh. Giant had already passed the rusted and corrosion-pitted remains of several robo-docs.

They were in the isolation ward now, and there were screams coming from further up the corridor. Mortis had been busy here too, going from room to room dispensing his version of justice, the occasional locked or sealed door proving no barrier to his material-corrupting touch.

Grubb's Disease. Rad-sickness. Creeping Buboes. 2T(FRU)T. The oddities of twenty-second century life threw up a bewildering variety of new and dangerous diseases, and this was where the sufferers of such contagious ailments were treated. Of all the deadly contagions that had been loose in here, though, Mortis was by far the most lethal.

The corpse of a fattie wearing a hospital smock was blocking the corridor. This one was fresh, the flesh on it still in the process of accelerated rotting, its body looking like a deflating tent as the decaying bulk of its mountainous belly melted away, leaving bare the bones of its massively expanded rib-cage. Giant vaulted over it, homing in on the continued sounds of screams from just up ahead. They were close now.

"No, please! I-I'm sick!" came a voice from up ahead. "I got Super-Duper Creeping Buboes, or something real bad like that. You... you don't wanna touch me or you'll catch it too, I guarantee!"

"Life itself is a sickness, sinner," snickered the unearthly voice of the Dark Judge. "Death is the only sure cure."

Giant rounded the corner, seeing a terrified cit in a patient's smock in Mortis's grip. The cit was screaming, Mortis's horrific decay touch already going to work on him. Too late to save this poor creep, thought Giant, bringing his Lawgiver up to bear.

"Rapid fire," he ordered his squad. "Blow that bony freak to pieces."

Mortis looked towards them, hissing in irritation, the screaming cit still caught in his lethal grasp. In one movement he turned and hurled the cit at them, using him as a human shield, throwing him into the full fury of the Judges' weapons fire.

If the cit wasn't dead already from the effects of Mortis's touch, then he surely was now, as the hail of Lawgiver bullets struck him, tearing apart his decay softened, putrefying body and spraying Giant and his squad with the leftovers.

If Giant had somehow ever forgotten how deceptively fast the Dark Judges could move when they wanted to, he got a sudden reminder now. Mortis was in amongst them in the blink of an eye, cackling in malignant glee as he went about the business of bringing judgement to the Judges.

Furio, a ten-year veteran who had been Giant's second-in-command, was the first to die, collapsing in a rotted heap as one of Mortis's claws punched right through him. Willot, whom Giant had first met when he had been briefly posted to Sector House 301 to help Dredd in his mission to clean up the city's most crime-ridden sector, was next to go. Screaming in agony as tumours and lesions spread in seconds through his body, Willot tumbled backwards, thrashing and writhing, knocking Giant to the floor.

In the time it took Giant to kick Willot's disease-bloated corpse away from him and realise that he had lost his Lawgiver in the fall, Mortis had already killed Judges Powers, Hiassen and Goldman. That left only Giant to be judged.

Mortis loomed over him, reaching down towards him. Giant stared into the empty sockets of Mortis's skull head, feeling the tug of the powerful psychic spell the Dark Judges were capable of casting over their victims.

"Come, sinner, why try to resist? Fighting me is useless. You cannot escape your fate."

Mortis's hand descended towards Giant's face. The Judge's own hand snatched down, finding and drawing his boot knife in one smooth motion.

"Heard it before, freak. It might have had more effect ten years ago, when I was still a frightened kid - but not now."

Giant's hand came up to meet Mortis's, the knife he was holding stabbing hilt-deep through the centre of Mortis's outstretched palm, stopping the Dark Judge's taloned fingers just centimetres away from Giant's face.

Mortis hissed in anger. His powers of decay were already going to work on the blade piercing his unnatural flesh, and the metal of the knife blade was quickly starting to crack and erode away in rusted flakes. Giant had only delayed Mortis for a few seconds, but those few seconds were all the defiant Judge needed.

Giant brought his feet back and lashed out with both legs, catching Mortis square in the chest with two Judge boots, propelling him backwards. Mortis crashed into the wall opposite with a dry, bony rattling sound, but recovered almost immediately and pulled himself up again. Giant rolled, grabbing his fallen Lawgiver and aiming it at the Dark Judge as Mortis advanced upon him again.

"We've met before, freak," he reminded him. "Remember this?"

The Hi-Ex shell tore Mortis's head off. Whatever he was made of, however light and frail his leathery, mummified skin and wasted, brittle bones appeared to be, the Dark Judge was a lot tougher than he looked. Anything else would have been blown to shreds by the same shot.

As it was, it was still enough to stop him in his tracks as he bent to pick up the skull and reattach it to the snapped-off, bony stump of his neck. Giant had seen this trick before. What was new, though, was that he found out Mortis could still speak even with his head separated from his body.

"Foolish mortal," rasped the voice from the bodiless skull. "When will you learn? You cannot kill that which does not live..."

"Tell it to someone who gives a drokk," replied Giant, firing a brace of Incendiaries into the body of Mortis.

Even as the hungry flames took hold of him, Mortis still took the time to wait for his head to reattach itself. Meanwhile, up until now, Giant had been acting on instinct, just trying to survive the encounter moment to moment. Now, seeing the open doorway to the place directly behind where Mortis was standing, he suddenly saw a way to bring this whole thing to an end.

He charged forward towards Mortis, even as the Dark Judge staggered forward towards him. The fiend was wreathed in flames, a fact which would soon force him to abandon his current body, but not before he took one last sinner with him, it seemed. Even after his body had been destroyed by the flames, Mortis's spirit would still survive, roaming the city until it found another host form to occupy and possess. If that happened, Mortis would rise again, free to continue the same kind of carnage that had occurred here and elsewhere.

Giant wasn't about to let that come to pass.

He shoulder-charged straight into Mortis, turning his face aside and holding his breath to avoid scorching his lungs with super-heated air from the flames that were now all over Mortis. It was like charging into a pillar of solid granite. A pillar of solid granite that had been set blazing alight. A lancing shot of agony told Giant he had probably just dislocated his shoulder and maybe cracked his collar bone into the bargain. Numerous points of growing pain told him he was on fire down most of that same side. Giant could already hear the sirens of the med-wagon that would probably soon be rushing him to the nearest sector house med-bay.