Judge Dredd

“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.

TWENTY-SIX

Dredd 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.

Dredd pulled himself up, stared at the Judge Hunters dropping from the ceiling, blasting through the wall, following the drill the way they’d trained to do, fast and quick and clean. One, two, three… maybe more outside but only three in here.

Dredd threw himself at half a wall as gunfire stitched a pattern at his feet. A visored figure came right at him, firing an ugly weapon black as night. Dredd pulled Junior Head-Dead’s revolver from his belt, squeezed the trigger and fired. Lead struck the visor, glanced off the armored plastic and whined off into the air. The Hunter paused a fraction of a second, thrown off his guard. Dredd came in low. The gun clattered to the ground. Dredd raised up, jerked the Hunter’s helmet off his head, and slammed it across the man’s jaw.