Judgment Plague

by James Axler

  HUMAN OFFENSIVE

  Though the Cerberus Rebels have battled unfathomable odds to defend mankind, victory and sovereignty remain far from assured. As enemies of otherworldly origin push the warriors’ power to the limit, a very human menace emerges, eager to grind them all to dust.

  DOOMSDAY CONTAGION

  Brothers-in-arms Kane and Grant upheld the inflexible laws of Cobaltville until they finally turned their backs on its wicked regime. Now a fresh threat brings them back to the barony—a mysterious plague that kills with impunity. It soon becomes clear that this murderous pestilence isn’t the result of some random mutation, but the product of a dark and twisted mind. With the disease spreading rapidly, the Cerberus warriors can only hope they’re not too late—or too vulnerable—to save humanity from being snuffed out by one of its own.

  “Grant, wake up,” Brigid said, shaking the man by his shoulder

  Please be alive, she thought. Please be alive.

  Grant shifted a little with the force of Brigid’s shaking, then his eyes flickered open and he smiled. “What? Did I miss something?” he asked. His voice sounded weak and quiet, like he had just woken up, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “I thought you were zoning out on me,” Brigid said, smiling briefly. “Don’t do that again.”

  Grant began to reply, but the words were lost as he began coughing. He rolled on his side and covered his mouth with his hand. When he drew his hand away it was spattered in black spittle. “Wh-what is this?” he asked, bewildered. He didn’t sound like an ex-Magistrate to Brigid anymore—he sounded like a lost child, frightened by something he didn’t understand.

  “I think you may have become infected,” Brigid said, hating the words as they left her mouth, as if saying them had somehow made it happen, made it real. “That one who jumped you, he…spat at you.”

  Other titles in this series:

  Outer Darkness

  Armageddon Axis

  Wreath of Fire

  Shadow Scourge

  Hell Rising

  Doom Dynasty

  Tigers of Heaven

  Purgatory Road

  Sargasso Plunder

  Tomb of Time

  Prodigal Chalice

  Devil in the Moon

  Dragoneye

  Far Empire

  Equinox Zero

  Talon and Fang

  Sea of Plague

  Awakening

  Mad God’s Wrath

  Sun Lord

  Mask of the Sphinx

  Uluru Destiny

  Evil Abyss

  Children of the Serpent

  Successors

  Cerberus Storm

  Refuge

  Rim of the World

  Lords of the Deep

  Hydra’s Ring

  Closing the Cosmic Eye

  Skull Throne

  Satan’s Seed

  Dark Goddess

  Grailstone Gambit

  Ghostwalk

  Pantheon of Vengeance

  Death Cry

  Serpent’s Tooth

  Shadow Box

  Janus Trap

  Warlord of the Pit

  Reality Echo

  Infinity Breach

  Oblivion Stone

  Distortion Offensive

  Cradle of Destiny

  Scarlet Dream

  Truth Engine

  Infestation Cubed

  Planet Hate

  Dragon City

  God War

  Genesis Sinister

  Savage Dawn

  Sorrow Space

  Immortal Twilight

  Cosmic Rift

  Necropolis

  Shadow Born

  Judgment Plague

  It is better to murder during time of plague.

  —English Proverb

  What, will these hands ne’er be clean?

  —William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  The Road to Outlands—

  From Secret Government Files to the Future

  Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

  Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

  What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

  Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible author­ity, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

  In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

  Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

  But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

  Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

  Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

  For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

  After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

  With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

&nbs
p; Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 1

  The Geiger counter on the dashboard flashed red, ticking over into the danger zone. For a moment, DePaul’s fixed expression slipped, his eyes widening as he saw the telltale flicker that meant they had entered a patch of radioactivity.

  “Chin up, rookie,” Irons said from the seat beside him. “Nothing out there I ain’t seen a hundred times.”

  Irons was a magistrate in the barony of Cobaltville. He was in his mid-forties, with thick hair that had turned steel-gray, lines around his eyes and mouth, and a scar on his chin where some deviant had taken a potshot at him a dozen years before. He wore the uniform of a magistrate—black molded armor that sheathed his body like an insect’s shell, a bright red shield painted across the left breast to show his rank of office. His helmet was poised on the seat behind him, within easy reach. It was Irons’s job to monitor DePaul—a rookie magistrate in his final year of training, following in the footsteps of his father.

  Irons sat next to DePaul, flashing him that fatherly smile that spoke of how he was indulging the lad, not teaching him.

  Up front, Bellevue was driving the SandCat, navigating the dirt roads that reached out from Cobaltville like spokes, unpaved and unmarked. Bellevue was a tall man with skin so dark it looked like licorice, picking up the highlights of any illumination so that it seemed to have a sheen. Bellevue was twenty-five and had been active in the field for almost a decade. Like DePaul, like Irons, he had followed in his father’s footsteps, born solely for the task of being a magistrate, drilled from a young age in the ways of Cobaltville law.

  “Coming up on Mesa Verde,” Bellevue said from his place at the steering wheel.

  DePaul peered out the windshield at the towering sandstone structures that dominated the horizon. Brown-orange in color, the colossal rocks had been carved with windows and doors by human hands, hundreds of years before.

  “Pretty different to home, ain’t it?” Irons said.

  DePaul shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” It was true. He had never had cause to leave the walled confines of Cobaltville in all his seventeen years. This was his first trip beyond ville limits and out into the wild.

  DePaul was a young man with jet-black hair and a narrow face. His hair was cut magistrate short and slicked back from his forehead, revealing his widow’s peak. He had dark eyes, a darker brown than his father’s, and those eyes seemed to take in every detail, every nuance of whatever was placed before them. He had been small for his age, but the late blossoming of puberty had given him taut muscles and long legs, and now he regularly outmatched his strongest classmates in any test of physical strength. He remained slender, however, giving him the appearance of a spectre when he dressed in the dark armor of a magistrate.

  DePaul was well on the way to becoming a full-fledged one. He had excelled in exams, scoring top marks in knowledge and interpretation of the law. That had not come as a surprise to his father; the boy’s memory had been prodigious even at the age of ten. DePaul showed a steady hand in stress tests, was a crack shot and had survived to become last man standing in five of the six simulations he had been placed in with his classmates this year. In the remaining simulation he had come second only when one of his own team betrayed him at the finishing task.

  DePaul was quick-thinking and quick to adapt, and he had displayed endurance that belied his slender frame.

  Irons liked the kid, had warmed to him over the last few weeks that they had been stationed together. He had taken DePaul on a few regular patrols of the ville and down in the Tartarus Pits. The lad was all right—quiet maybe, but all right. He certainly had a memory on him; his attention to detail was up there with the best of the magistrates. He reminded Irons a lot of his father, a good mag who had taken a knock to the head during a routine pit patrol and never recovered. His son would go far, further even than the old man—Magistrate Irons was certain of that. But his recommendation would come another day, once they had completed a circuit of the Outlands and investigated rumors of a mutie farm located close to the Mesa Verde structures.

  Bellevue had had less interaction with DePaul, but he remembered his father and could see the old man’s looks in the kid’s face, and his mannerisms. The youth came from good stock, and that counted for a lot.

  The SandCat bumped over a patch of rough ground, its engine emitting a low rumble as it navigated the uneven terrain. Exclusive to the Magistrate Division, the SandCat was an armored vehicle with a low-slung, blocky chassis supported by a pair of flat, retractable tracks. Its exterior was a ceramic armaglass compound that could shrug off small arms fire, and it featured a swiveling gun turret up top armed with twin USMG-73 heavy machine guns.

  They were moving out away from Cobaltville on a routine patrol of the surrounding areas. Forays like this were a necessary chore, to ensure there was nothing brewing in the lands near the ville that might challenge the baron’s rule. Baron Cobalt was very shrewd and protective concerning the retention of his power.

  Bellevue turned the wheel and the SandCat’s engine growled with a low purr as it bumped over a patch of loose shingle and began to ascend a slope behind the Mesa. Some of this land had been used for research by the barons; some of it might even now be in use, for all the magistrates in the SandCat knew. Bellevue just stuck to the path and followed the target beacon that his onboard software had set before him.

  A moment later, the armored vehicle nudged over the incline and began to descend toward a ragtag sprawl of tents surrounding a cattle pen.

  “Well, lookee here,” Bellevue muttered as he pumped gas to the engine.

  The pen was populated not by cattle but by muties. There were at least fifty of them, and they each wore a see-through plastic, one-piece suit as they sat or lay sprawled out in the scorching midday sun like sunbathers. The muties were humanoid, and looked human enough, except that beneath their transparent coverings they were utterly hairless and their skin was red and cracked, with blisters and sores all over. That may have been the effect of the sun, though some of it was a natural defense for these types. Called sweaties, they oozed a poisonous compound from their sweat glands that, when imbibed, had a hallucinogenic effect on humans. People farmed them sometimes, distilling their sweat and selling it. The plastic jumpsuits they wore had a greenhouse effect, Magistrate Irons knew, and there would be a collection rig set in the rear that gathered the sweat they generated. The poor bastards were so ill-treated and so hot that they could hardly move. It was all they could do to lie there in the dust as the sun beat down on their roasting bodies, cooking them alive.

  It was more than the magistrates had expected from the Deathbird’s fly-past report. Bellevue eased off the accelerator and the SandCat crept slowly toward the half-dozen tents that were set out beside the pen.

  “What is this?” DePaul asked.

  “Sweat farm,” Irons told him, reaching for his helmet. “We’re going out there, rookie. You’re going to need your helmet.”

  Obediently, DePaul reached for his head gear. “They’re muties, right?”

  Irons nodded.

  DePaul had never seen a mutie before, not in the flesh, anyway. “Then what are they doing here? What are they doing to them?”

  “It’s a drugs op,” Irons explained, checking that his sin eater pistol was loaded. “They make the muties sweat, then the farmers here take that sweat and refine it, sell it on.”

  “Why?” DePaul asked, pus
hing his helmet down over his face. The Magistrate casque was black and covered the wearer’s skull all the way down the back. The front covered the top half of the user’s head, before meeting with a dark-tinted visor that protected and hid the eyes, leaving only the mouth on display. The result was intimidating, turning the mags into near-faceless upholders of the law.

  “People want to get away from what they are,” Irons explained, “especially here in the Outlands. Trust me, kid, it ain’t much of a life that these people have.”

  “But they’re breaking the law,” DePaul stated, “which means we stop them.”

  “Be glad of it, too,” Irons said, “if any of that stuff is destined for Cobaltville streets. Which it probably is.”

  Beyond the SandCat, the illegal ranchers were exiting their tents, watching the familiar mag vehicle pull up. They were a motley crew, six in all, dressed in undershirts and shorts, one woman among them with her hair—blond dreadlocks—tied back with a rainbow-patterned bandana. They all wore breath masks over their mouth and nose, and several openly wore blasters holstered at their hips.

  “You got this?” Bellevue asked, as he pulled the SandCat to a halt.

  “Sure, me and the rookie can handle these mooks,” Irons assured him. Then he gestured to the turret gun, above and behind where he and DePaul sat. “Keep your trigger finger handy, though.”

  “Always do,” Bellevue confirmed, flipping open the secondary control panel on the dashboard that operated the twin USMG machine guns.

  Irons swung back the gull-wing door of the SandCat and stepped out onto the dirt, with DePaul following a moment later. DePaul glanced behind them as he did, imagining he might still be able to see the golden towers of Cobaltville waiting like an oasis in the distance. He couldn’t; they were too far from its protective hub.

  A rancher from the group spoke up, his voice sounding artificial through the plastic of the breath mask, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, a smug grin on his mustached face. “You lost, Magistrate?”

  “No, sir,” Irons replied, eyeing the group. Six people wasn’t enough for a farm like this; given the number of tents, he’d expect at least eight, maybe more if they employed extra muscle. He made a subtle gesture with the fingers of his left hand, enough that DePaul knew he needed to stay alert.