More importantly, what was the deal with these two pus-heads? This was not just some weirdo ideology they were spouting—this was a physical transformation. The fuckers were corpses, for God’s sake.
“The living will be judged,” Judge Nasal Cavity said. “The guilty will be ssentenced.”
“Come forward to receive punisshment, ssinner,” his pal hissed and reached forward, grabbing hold of my shirt and yanking me towards him. I instinctively resisted and took hold of his wrist to tear myself free. That was a mistake: the body was cold beneath the uniform, and softer than it should have been. My fingers clamped down on liquescent tissue, and my stomach did a roll in silent disgust. Nevertheless, the jay still had some strength at his disposal and wouldn’t relinquish me.
“Don’t let them touch you,” Stender blurted, suddenly the most animated he’d been all evening. “Don’t let them get any closer.”
The badge that had a hold of me stopped momentarily and did this awful neck-swivel, as if he had lost all his vertebrae. He slid his attention from me to Stender in one slow, fluid motion and studied the man before jerking his head and indicating that his no-nose friend take care of him. No-Nose unsheathed his spiked billy-club and stalked forward, repeating mantra-like that life itself was a crime and the sentence was death. My one turned his attention back to me and tightened his grip, my shirt bunched up in his surprisingly solid fist.
The vial packs that I’d tucked into my waistband came loose and tumbled onto the sidewalk between us. They caught the Judge’s attention, and it paused. Stender had seen them rattle onto the ground too, and panicked, trying to barge forward and retrieve them, but he was effectively blocked. “Don’t let him get those!” he shouted to me.
“What… are you doing with thesse?” the lawman whispered, and relaxed his hold on me slightly in order to bend down and pick one up. I seized the chance, and brought my knee into the Judge’s face just as he was starting to stoop—it crunched into his visor and I could feel bone and cartilage separating. He let go, and I followed up with a powerhouse punch to the side of the neck, the jay crumpling before me.
I snatched up his daystick from his belt before he could recover and pirouetted on the spot, driving the business end into the side of the other cop’s head. The helmet didn’t offer much protection and caved spectacularly, the spikes embedding themselves deeply into his skull. The jay barely made a sound, just a short sigh, and turned awkwardly in my direction, the billy-club now lodged at a right-angle in his head. He took a step forward, and I pulled the gun from my pocket and shot him point-blank in the face. His putrescent features vaporised, and he dropped to the ground instantly. I turned and put a bullet in the back of the other one’s head, just as he was starting to rise. It blew a sticky mass of dark matter out the front of the visor and onto the sidewalk, and he collapsed face down into it. Both were now motionless, lying in spreading pools of ichor, the daystick next to them, blown out by the force of the bullet.
I breathed out, only then realising that I’d been holding it, aware of my heart thudding against my ribs. I met Stender’s gaze and he looked equally shellshocked, but he moved before I did—he crouched down and gathered up the vials, holding them to his chest.
“We have to go,” he said. “More will be coming.”
I nodded and grabbed his arm, pulling him towards my car, the gun still gripped in my right. The Pontiac was where I left it opposite the motel entrance, which was something, at least. The building was all in darkness now, even the foyer, and one of the main doors was streaked with blood. Yeah, we weren’t going back in there. I manoeuvred Stender towards the passenger side and unlocked it, indicating that he get in. Pockets of weirdies scampered past, an unhealthy glint in their eyes; I lifted the automatic and exuded enough of a ‘don’t-fuck-with-me’ vibe that kept them at bay. Something major was on fire a block away, the heavy clouds stained orange by the leaping flames. Glass shattered in the distance. Screams. I was starting to wonder if anywhere was safe.
“Let’s get out of here,” I answered numbly, getting behind the wheel.
We peeled away, and drove at speed out of the city.
CHAPTER THREE
THE GUY DIDN’T say a word in the car, just curled up on the passenger seat like a kid past his bedtime, still clutching those damned vials. His head was turned to the window so he was facing away from me, but I could tell from the reflection whenever I glanced over that he wasn’t paying much attention to what was beyond the glass. There wasn’t much to see outside anyway, now that darkness had stolen across the sky and we’d threaded our way out of the city. I’d purposefully chosen the back ways and minor roads to avoid the congested areas, and that meant we skirted the vast, flat Badlands, emptier than a church collection plate on a Saturday night. There was no light out there save the twin beams of the Pontiac’s headlamps illuminating the tarmac and the sulphur-glow of the moon above.
With no conversation forthcoming, I was left to ruminate on what I’d just seen and done, not that it made a whole pack of sense. Ashamed as I am to admit, those weren’t the first men I’d killed, if you could call them men (and I’m assuming they started out normal at some point). I’d been responsible for the deaths of three others over the years—two boxing related, and one in a drunken brawl in a bar, my Mob contacts getting me out of the legal predicaments of all of them—but the pair of worm-sacks that I’d put down tonight were the first that I’d ever shot. I’d pulled my gun plenty of times in the interests of self-defence, knocked a handful of squirrels out of trees when sitting in my backyard, but never popped an honest-to-God human being with one, having never had any desire or reason to. Having done it, it felt kind of removed, like I’d played only a small part in it. I guessed that was why guns were so popular: they took the hard work out of killing.
These weren’t just everyday knuckleheads, though. This was a couple of Judges, the murder of which under regular circumstances was an offence punishable by summary execution. What I’d done was a pretty big deal. But these weren’t regular circumstances—that was becoming painfully clear—and whatever those lawmen had been, they’d crossed over into something else before I’d blown their oily black brains out. Some takeover had happened at Grand Hall, and the cops had ingested something, been exposed to something, that had turned them. They’d looked half dead; rotting creatures that had crawled out of a grave. One of them had mentioned fluids—it sounded like a zombie ritual.
Christ knew what horrorshow was going on at the top, but the madness was evidently spreading. Swinging the car into my driveway, I was gladder than ever for my relative isolation; few visitors ever came out this way, and that was just the way I liked it. That situation probably wouldn’t last if the crazies were on the march, but for now the street was deserted. I climbed out, jogged round and opened the door for Stender. He initially didn’t move.
“Come on,” I encouraged. “We’ll be safer inside.”
I put an arm round his shoulder and he didn’t resist as I guided him out of the passenger seat, up the porch steps and across the threshold. Flipping on the lights, I was faintly surprised to find the power still working. I directed him towards the kitchen at the rear of the house, and eased him into one of the three rickety chairs that lined the pine table.
“Be better if we didn’t let anyone know we’re here,” he murmured, gazing at his hands cupped together on the tabletop.
“Huh?”
He flicked his head towards the bare bulb blazing from the ceiling. “Keep the signs of life to a minimum.”
“Oh. Right.” I could see the sense in that. I dug around in a cupboard and found an old oil lamp, which I lit and placed on the table, before clicking the lights back off. The lamp just gave off a weak orange aurora that threw most of the room into shadow. I grabbed a bottle of whiskey from a shelf, took a slug straight from the neck, then plucked a pair of tumblers out of the sink and set them down between me and Stender.
He shook his head and held up a hand. I
poured us both a couple of fingers each anyway, knocking back mine in one gulp before refilling my glass. I pushed his towards him. “Take a drink.”
“I don’t need it.”
“It’s good for shock, believe me. Settles the nerves. You’ll feel better for it.”
He took a long look at the glass, then picked it up and downed the contents. He grimaced and coughed, shivered a little, but slid his empty tumbler across the tabletop towards me and I did the honours, splashing some more into it. I could feel an alcoholic buzz setting up residence at the base of my skull, and was content to sit in silence for a moment, eyes closed, letting it mellow me out.
“You think they’ll come looking for us?” I asked finally.
He let loose a bitter, exasperated laugh. “They’ll come after everyone eventually.” His voice was hoarse, throat seared by the whiskey. He spoke in a strange monotone, like he was explaining himself to a dim-witted six-year-old. It irritated me, but I was glad he was talking as I wanted some answers. I figured the booze had loosened his tongue. “If we stay here, it’ll only be a matter of time. We should be all right for now, as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves. They may be looking for me once they discover I’m gone, but there’s no reason for them to know I’m with you.”
“The two jays I… I shot. Is that gonna bring down some heat—?”
He shook his head as he took a sip. “They got bigger fish to fry. Soon that’s going to be just a drop in the ocean.”
“They…” I spat the word into my drink and fixed him with a glare. “So why are they going to be looking for you? You know anything about what’s going on? It’s like the fuckin’ end of the world out there.”
“Not yet,” he answered slowly. “But it’s the start.”
“Who are you, Stender?”
“Not the fool that owes your boss money, I think we’ve established that.” He prodded at some bruising above his right eye for theatrical effect.
I downed the whiskey in one fiery swallow. “Yeah, man, I said I was sorry. Mistaken identity. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You some kind of hitman?”
I snorted back a chuckle, swinging back my arms to indicate the state of the room we were sitting in. “Yeah, ’cause this is how professional hitmen live. You should see my second home in Aruba; it makes this place look like a dump, hard as that may be to believe.” I poured my third, draining the bottle. “No, I ain’t a hitman,” I said, slapping the cap back on. “I’m a… an errand boy. I do what I’m told, go where I’m told, menace who I’m told, so I don’t end up with my own balls in a vice.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Peachy. Half a dozen more broken legs and I get my own parking space.” I could feel a sour mood coming on. “I seem to recall I was asking about you. Why might they be after you?” He didn’t reply, dropping his gaze back to his glass, and my patience was running out. I slammed down the empty bottle on the tabletop and got to my feet, striding round to his side, pulling one of the vial packs off his lap before he could react. I brandished it before him, snatching it away when he reached for it. “What’s the deal with these things—what are they?”
“They’re dangerous, is what they are. Give that back—”
“They’re dangerous? You’ve seen me before I’ve had a drink, and I put you in the fuckin’ dirt in a heartbeat, pal. How much control you think I’m going to have when I’m fully wasted? So if you don’t want to find out, start answering my questions right now.”
He shifted uneasily in his seat. “They’re biological.”
I studied one, gave it a shake. From what I could see, they contained nothing more than a couple of millilitres of clear fluid each. “It’s… what, an agent? A toxin?”
“Of a sort.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“The Grand Hall.”
My attention shifted from the vials back to Stender. “You a Judge?”
He shook his head quickly. “No, an auxiliary. I work—worked—in Tek-Division. R&D. One of the back-room lab guys, you know? The white coats.”
“Did you make this?”
“Not directly. I worked on part of it—there were lots of us, designing different elements. None of us knew the full ramifications of what we were putting together.”
“Which are?”
He looked away, and downed his own glass, gripping it tightly. His eyes moistened, and he wiped something off his cheek with the back of his hand.
“Tell me,” I persisted, rattling the pack. “What is this?”
“You don’t understand.” His voice took on a reedy quality. “The order came from the Chief Judge, we had no choice—”
I pushed the table away from him suddenly, which made him visibly jump. The table legs protested against the tiled floor, and the bottle rolled off and smashed. I kicked his chair back, and he yelped, struggling not to topple over. “Tell me.”
“It’s called Red Mosquito,” he yelled, panicky. The colour had drained from his face, his lashes gleaming with tears. “T-that’s its codename. That was what the project was referred to as.”
“What is it? What does it do?”
Stender swallowed. “The plan… the plan was to release it into the food chain. It’s an inhibitor—it kills off cells, stops them from regenerating. The life form would be dead within four hours of first contact. Seeded into the water table, it would wipe out vast swathes of animal life in a matter of days.”
“What…? Why? Why would you think that was a good idea?”
“We didn’t know, that’s the point. We were working on different parts. Orders, you see? I thought I was engineering an antibacterial agent that strengthened white blood cells. I never… I never had any idea what they were using my research for.”
“They… This is the Chief Judge? What’s his name—Drabbon?”
“There’s been a change at the top. There’s a new guy in charge; he has his own underlings. It’s like a cult. They’re ultra-hardcore—they want control by any means. I think… I think they’re attempting some kind of genocide to strengthen their position.”
“Christ.” My legs went a little wobbly, and I had to support myself against the table. “So you got out?”
“Gathered up as much of the prototype as I could before they came for me. Rumour had it that those that refused to co-operate were being dispensed with. I thought if I could get a plane out of the country, I could show some foreign authorities what was happening here—might get them to intervene. The Mosquito was my proof. But all the flights were cancelled; the Judges grounded everything. They don’t want anyone getting out.”
“This isn’t everything?” I held up the pack. “They have more?”
He nodded. “Yes. The… the new head of Tek, he took charge of it all. He… I’m not sure he’s human. He doesn’t look right.”
“Not human?”
“He calls himself Mortis.” Stender ran trembling hands over his face. “Dear God, they want to kill us all.”
I ALLOWED THE lamp to burn low, let the dark flood the kitchen. We sat in silence, exhausted, scared and a little bit drunk, and I needed a moment to process what I was being told. Stender quietly muttered to himself as he nodded off, the words indistinct; it sounded like a repeated apology, intoned under his breath, which dissolved into a soft, steady snore. Elbow on the table, one hand under his chin propped him up, his head lolling forward every now and then and threatening to drop face-first onto the hard wooden surface. I contemplated doing nothing, an angry part of me feeling he kind of deserved it, but decided I was being an asshole unnecessarily and went and got a ratty-looking cushion from the living room and placed it under him.
My own eyes felt heavy and gritty, but I couldn’t offer myself up to sleep, my head churning with too many thoughts. I stood by the window, my forehead against the cold glass, and listened to the world descending into chaos. As far removed as my house was, I could still hear the crack
le of gunfire and the muffled explosion of a building going up in flames deep in the heart of the capital. A Justice Department vehicle rumbled overhead, searchlights roving amongst the clouds, and I instinctively ducked behind the curtain. I didn’t know who was on the side of law and order any more, who was the enemy. Surely there had to be those within the Grand Hall that were opposing this coup; that were fighting this madness? Was what I was hearing the sounds of a resistance pushing back against the monsters that had taken root at the highest level? Or it being swept aside?
Ironic, I thought, that I should be caring about who the good guys were any more, when my own relationship with the Judges had always decidedly been one of supreme ambivalence. Economics generally drove my sense of morality rather than any abiding belief in right and wrong. I wished it was otherwise, but a distinct lack of folding has always been my primary motivator, not the greater good. I liked to think I wasn’t malicious or overtly criminal, just had a flexible approach to the law, especially if I could benefit financially. And now… now it felt disconcerting to have the Judges’ authority upended, like the centre of gravity had shifted. Who was coming to anyone’s aid? Were we on our own, left to fend for ourselves as everything collapsed into anarchy? Someone like the Bushman would no doubt be revelling in the power vacuum that this was creating, and the opportunities complete social breakdown would offer for exploitation. He was probably already planning what deals he could make with the new regime, one that was a bit more lax on the whole justice/punishment side of things. Having seen its foot soldiers first-hand, I sincerely hoped he’d underestimated the true nature of whatever was in the process of overthrowing the Grand Hall, and was about to discover that there’s always a bigger predator. Fucker deserved to be eaten alive.
The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus Page 3
