Ramini began to crawl forward, keeping her Lawgiver aimed at the darkness ahead of her. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Try anything and they’re dead.”
“And when they’re dead, what’s to stop me from killing you?” The fingers of Ramini’s free hand probed the ground ahead of her. It was smooth—laser-cut—but coated with a layer of dust and small, sharp stones. When the lights had gone out, she’d been able to see four lights ahead of her, each set into the ceiling, about eight metres apart, before the tunnel curved.
“You want to take that chance?”
“Not especially.” Something scuffled behind Ramini, and she froze.
“It’s me,” Eloise Crow whispered.
“Told you to stay at the entrance!” Ramini hissed back.
“I know these tunnels. You don’t. On your left, about four metres ahead, there’s a secondary junction box for the lights.”
“Not a lot of good to me, Eloise—they’ve shut off the circuit at their end.”
More scuffling, and Ramini felt Eloise crawling past her on the left. “I know... But when you get to the cavern, they’ll turn on the lights and dazzle you. Shoot you down before you can see where they are. Well, that’s what I’d do. So we break the circuit here too, and they can’t turn the lights back on.”
“Good thinking,” Ramini said. “You’d have made a good Judge.”
“It’s in the blood. My grandfather was a New York City cop.” A fresh clunk ahead, then Eloise said, “Done.”
MONTAG SAW ESTEBAN fire off two rounds at the vehicle closest to the gap in the barricade. A converted camper van bristling with weapons, its windows and much of the bodywork had been replaced with steel sheets, strong enough to resist standard ammunition. Esteban was about to shoot at the camper’s tyres when Montag grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“No! Let it through!” she yelled.
“We can stop it here, block the entrance!”
“Then the others will change direction, find another way in! This way we can pick off at least the first few of them.”
The mutant nodded, and fell back with the rest of the townsfolk. They had lined the street on both sides, many of them crouched beneath the raised porches, which kept them hidden from the raiders and provided some shelter from the wind. It also meant that they would be shooting upwards at the vehicles that broke through, which reduced the risk of any of them getting caught in the crossfire.
The camper rumbled over the drawbridge and through the narrow gap in the barricade. Montag waited until it had travelled seventy metres along the street before she gave the signal to open fire.
The camper’s tyres and lower half of the body were shredded by gunfire, but even this close, Montag couldn’t hear the guns over the roar of the storm.
Already, three more vehicles had passed through the barricade. The first of them—an open-topped convertible with an ancient Gatling-gun mounted on the trunk—swerved when the driver saw what had happened to the camper. Montag’s first shot took out the mutant manning the gun, but her second shot missed the driver. He swerved again, gunned the engine toward one of the cross-streets. Montag fired a single heat-seeker in his direction and even before it hit home she had turned her attention to the next vehicle.
A raider on the largest motorbike Montag had ever seen skirted past a truck just inside the barricade. He was wearing what looked like a medieval suit of armour, and rode with his head down and the throttle full.
Montag’s shots ricocheted off his armour, but she’d caught the rider’s attention. He steered directly toward her: she dodged to the side at the last moment and he roared past, clipping a wounded Earther who’d jumped out of the camper and sending the man spinning.
Montag glanced up at the watchtower, looking for Dredd. She saw a single muzzle-flash, then the motorbike wavered, toppled onto its side and kept going, with the rider pinned beneath it. It gouged a twenty-metre-long blood-soaked trench in the dirt road before it stopped.
Another flash, from somewhere behind Montag, and she turned back toward the barricade, expecting to see a column of smoke or billowing flames. The townsfolk were still shooting at the raiders as they tried to pass through the barricade, but there was no obvious source for the flash.
She dismissed it; right now, there was enough to worry about.
She darted across the street—stopping long enough to snatch a large pair of goggles from a dying raider—and jumped onto a plastic water-barrel next to the tapered wall of a building. From there, she was able to leap for the edge of the roof and pull herself up. Up there the wind was even stronger: Montag had to grab onto an old radio mast to keep upright. The mast itself was already swaying and creaking far too much for comfort.
Ahead of her, lying face-down on the roof, was one of the townsfolk, armed with a long-range rifle. Montag dropped flat and squirmed forward. The man glanced back as she grabbed his calf, nodded to her and yelled something.
Montag edged forward until she was parallel with him, and handed him the goggles. He nodded thanks, and put them on, then said something else.
With her mouth only a hands-breadth away from his ear, Montag yelled, “What?”
The man pointed ahead, over the barricade, and Montag turned to look.
A few minutes ago, the last time she’d looked, she’d been able to see maybe a hundred vehicles emerging from the dust cloud. Now, she could see fifteen.
For a moment, relief flooded through her. We’re done. We can mop them up and—
The wind shifted abruptly, and briefly cleared the dust from the air.
A thousand different vehicles were racing over the rough ground.
As they watched, one of the closest vehicles—a wide, flat hoverskimmer carrying perhaps a dozen Earthers—suddenly swayed, hit by a powerful gust of wind. Another gust, even stronger, hit the hoverskimmer from behind; it surged forward, and Montag saw the driver desperately working the controls. Another gust, and the Earther at the rear of the skimmer lost his balance and toppled out.
His colleagues didn’t see that: the people around the edges were too busy clinging on, and the three directly behind the driver were shooting at the townsfolk on the rooftops.
Montag took aim with her Lawgiver and fired. Dredd had warned everyone, “Conserve your ammunition. Where possible, aim for the drivers.” It made sense: taking out the drivers not only slowed the vehicles down, it caused their passengers to panic.
Montag’s shot passed through the driver’s throat. He collapsed forward over the controls, and the skimmer veered off to the right.
The fallen Earther scrambled to his feet and left his gun behind as he ran after his colleagues, but he didn’t make it more than ten metres before another out-of-control vehicle—a battered, twentieth-century white Toyota with a cracked, blood-spattered windscreen—struck him from behind.
Then the Toyota, too, was hit: an eighteen-wheeled truck ploughed into it sidelong, crushing it instantly.
The truck hit the drawbridge at an angle, and the drawbridge buckled under the massive weight, sending the truck into the pit outside the barricade.
Even before it had ground to a halt, the rear of the truck burst open and a stream of Earthers flooded out.
Swathed in thick, dust-covered rags and carrying handguns and crossbows, the Earthers began to swarm up out of the pit and over the barricade.
Montag set her Lawgiver to hi-ex and fired off three shots, widely spaced. She couldn’t hear the explosions over the roar of the storm, but their effect was visible. The high-explosive shells ripped through the swarm of Earthers.
One of them—a middle-aged woman, Montag noted—was blasted straight up into the air, where the wind caught her blood-drenched, charred body and carried her forty metres before slamming her against the side of a house.
Another flash from somewhere to the south, and Montag wondered if the Earthers were using flares. It seemed pointless; in the billowing dust, visibility was down to only a few metres in some ar
eas.
Then a third flash, and this time Montag saw what had caused it: a bolt of lightning from the dense clouds struck one of the trucks and incinerated it.
Montag slapped the arm of the townsman beside her, and yelled, “Fall back! Everyone, fall back!”
He didn’t move, so she yelled again, pulling at his arm. His body shifted and she saw that most of his face was gone.
On the building across the debris-strewn street, one of the surviving townsfolk got to his feet and began to run. He almost made it to the edge before another bolt of lightning struck, vaporising him.
Montag swore and squirmed about, desperately trying to keep low as she headed back the way she had come.
More flashes around her, and she thought she could hear screams.
She reached the edge and pushed herself over it head-first, trusting that her Academy training would kick in; she landed on her feet, in a crouch, and began to run.
They were all running now; defending the town against the Earthers was a lost cause.
Twin bolts of lightning blasted the burning wreckage of a truck ahead of her, showering the street with molten metal.
Then someone crashed into Montag from behind, knocking her to the ground. She had barely enough time to register that it was a panic-stricken Earther before the man turned, wide-eyed, and raised a sawn-off shotgun in his left hand, pointed it at her face. He was shouting something; desperate, terrified, his gun-arm trembling. His right hand was a shredded mass of flesh and fractured bone. Spittle flew from his blood-smeared mouth, tears cutting paths through the dirt on his face.
She pointed in the direction of the mine, unable to think of anything else he might be demanding to know.
The man nodded, turned as though he was about to run, then turned back. He again took aim at Montag with his gun, then toppled forward, hitting the ground face-down in front of her.
Montag looked at the ragged hole in his back, then raised her head. Ahead of her, at the centre of the town, Judge Dredd was still in the watchtower, calmly picking off the Earthers one by one, while the unearthly lightning ripped through the streets, getting closer and closer.
She grabbed the Earther’s gun, pushed herself to her feet and started to run.
Fifteen
TIME WAS RUNNING out for Ramini. Even this deep inside the mine, the roar of the storm was almost deafening.
She had already sent Eloise back to the entrance to begin shepherding the townsfolk into the mine, but the entrance tunnel wasn’t big enough or safe enough for all of them.
Got to be close to the central cavern by now, she said to herself. Eloise had told her how far it was, and Ramini had been cautiously following the curve of the wall.
She crouched and felt around until she found another small stone, picked it up and tossed it ahead of her. It bounced twice. Not there yet.
According to Eloise, the tunnel opened onto a wooden gantry fixed around the upper levels of the cavern. The sound of the stones hitting the gantry should be obvious.
A voice called out from ahead, “You still there, Ramini?”
“We are,” she shouted back.
“You’re operating blind. Why don’t you just quit now? The second we see you, you’re dead.”
Ramini tossed another stone.
“Testing the ground ahead of you? Smart. It’s not going to help, though.”
“I want to talk to Hanenberger!”
She heard a frantic, murmured conversation, then Alfonsa Hanenberger’s voice drifted back to her. “I’m here.”
“Why are you doing this?” Ramini called. Another four steps in total darkness. She resisted the urge to use her Justice Department-issue flashlight: that would instantly tell the mercenaries exactly where she was.
“I don’t have to answer to you, Judge. You’re trespassing in my mine!”
“Why didn’t you take the shuttle and get out of town before the storm hit?”
There was no reply. Ramini threw another stone, which landed with a solid thunk. “What is it you’re hiding, Hanenberger? Some dark secret?” Ramini dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl forward. “Maybe you found something, is that it? If the mine’s running dry, what difference does it make to you if the people of Ezekiel take shelter here?”
Ramini’s right hand touched the wooden platform. Still crawling, she edged out onto it. “And those hostages you claim to have... How about some proof, huh?”
Hanenberger shouted back, “You’re getting closer, Judge! Stop right there or my people will open fire!”
Ramini took a deep breath. She could hear the muffled footsteps of the townsfolk not too far behind her. If Eloise was right about the lights...
Ramini stood up, and one of the mercenaries shouted, “There! Do it!”
There was another metallic clunk, then muttered swearing.
Thank you, Eloise Crow, Ramini thought, grinning. She crouched once more and fired an incendiary shell across the cavern, angled upwards: the napalm-filled round struck a stalactite and ignited.
The flare from the burning napalm wasn’t as strong as Ramini would have liked, but it was enough: it showed two of the mercenaries waiting for her on the far side of the cavern, and—three levels down—Hanenberger and her advisors hiding behind the two other mercenaries. And no hostages.
Ramini fired two heat-seeking shots at the mercs opposite her as she ran. Even before the shots found their targets, the others below were shooting at her.
Further heat-seekers were not an option: by now, the napalm would be hot enough to draw them away from the mercenaries.
Ramini pounded along the platform, heading for a flimsy-looking ladder ahead. The surviving mercenaries’ shots ripped through the platform; one of them was smart enough to shoot ahead of her.
But the Judge had been expecting that; she leaped, landed a little heavily, then threw herself forwards, skidding on her stomach right up to the ladder.
The napalm would burn itself out in seconds: she had to finish this before the darkness swamped her.
She fired again, aiming down past the ladder. Armour-piercing shots, aimed at where her memory told her the mercenaries had been standing.
They could have moved, to get a better angle on her or to defend themselves, but she doubted it. They wanted to protect Hanenberger; she was the one with the money.
The echo of Ramini’s shots died at the same time as the incendiary flare above faded out.
All that was left was darkness, and Alfonsa Hanenberger’s weak voice begging, “Please don’t kill me!”
Ramini stood, and shouted out, “Eloise! All clear—start moving them in!”
DREDD LOOKED DOWN on the town of Ezekiel. There wasn’t much of it left standing. To the south, hundreds of desperate Earthers were scrambling over the barricade, swarming through the houses and stores.
He hadn’t fired his Lawgiver for almost a minute.
The lightning strikes were getting closer; it was almost a miracle that the watchtower hadn’t yet been hit. It was grounded, and Dredd’s boots were heavily insulated, so there was a small chance that the lightning would pass by without hurting him, but Dredd decided he didn’t want to take the risk. Besides, the winds were still increasing in strength. The watchtower swayed back and forth; it could be only a matter of minutes before it collapsed. Time to abandon the post.
He jumped for the watchtower’s ladder and half-slid, half-climbed down.
Before he reached the ground he saw Montag herding a small group of people out of the basement of their lightning-blasted home. She kept watch as they kicked fragments of burning timber out of their paths. The last of them, an older man, seemed immobilised by rage, staring at the scattered remains of his house.
Montag grabbed the man by his collar, trying to drag him away, but he struggled against her, screaming something inaudible. He balled his fists and took a swing at the Judge. She tried to stop him, but his fury leant him speed: one of his punches collided with her jaw, sent her spraw
ling back into the red-hot embers.
Dredd paused his descent long enough to shoot the old man in the arm.
Montag quickly rolled free of the embers, glanced up toward Dredd, and nodded. She grabbed hold of the man again, and this time he was more compliant.
Dredd raced to catch up with them, and saw O’Donnell doing the same.
The deputy was limping; crude bandages covered a twenty-centimetre gash in his left leg, and what looked like two bullet-holes in his right forearm. He shouted something to Dredd, pointed toward Montag and the old man, then before Dredd could respond, O’Donnell ran up to Montag, hoisted the old man onto his shoulder, and began to awkwardly run in the direction of the mine.
This close to Montag, Dredd could see her uniform was scorched and torn in a dozen places, blood oozing from deep scratches and cuts, her skin blasted raw by the sand. He pressed his helmet against hers, and yelled, “Go with them! Get to the mine!”
She shook her head, pointed toward the stream of Earthers. “There’s too many for you to take on!”
“That’s not the plan! Now go!”
He shoved Montag away, and watched for a second as she struggled to follow O’Donnell.
His own rough estimates put the number of Earthers somewhere north of two thousand, though Grud only knew how many of them there really were. Or how many were still alive.
To the south, the wind was now whipping bodies—alive and dead—over the barricade, peeling the roofs off buildings, scattering the town with fist-sized chunks of rock and flaming debris.
There was nothing more he could do, Dredd realised. The storm hadn’t yet reached its climax: within minutes, the town would be nothing more than rubble.
And thousands of Earthers, hostile or just terrified, would be dead.
He knew what he had to do.
Dredd ran through the streets, heading for the mine. He caught up with Montag, hoisted her into his arms and kept going.
Judge Dredd: Year Two Page 11
