Dredd VS Death (18 page)

If DeMarco was having any thoughts about slipping quietly away and alerting the Justice Department to what was going on now, these were swiftly ended when the doors to the place were sealed and two long lines of cloaked and hooded figures were marshalled into place on either side of the main congregation. DeMarco didn't much care for the sound of snarling and growling coming from beneath those hoods, and she liked it even less when the hoods came off and she saw the shockingly feral faces of the fanged, white-skinned things beneath them.

The vampires - DeMarco couldn't really think of any other term to describe them - hemmed the congregation in, leading them in the droning chant begun by the priest figure on the altar platform. The priest stood over the altar, a gleaming black, horned skull in one hand - the remains of some kind of Cursed Earth mutie specimen, DeMarco imagined - and a curved-bladed dagger in the other. DeMarco didn't like the look of that at all, and realised that she was going to have to do something about this.

She had been edging slowly forward for a while now, taking advantage of the darkness and the semi-trance state into which many of the congregation members seemed to have entered to slip forward surreptitiously, row by row, creeping towards the front. There were over a hundred of them and only one of her, and all she had was her pistol held inside her robes and her training as a Judge, but she had a job to do, and she wasn't going to stand by and watch these sick freaks kill an innocent girl.

Up until now, DeMarco still wasn't completely worried. If worse comes to worst, she told herself, she was going to use her first shot to save the girl from whatever they had planned for her, and then use the rest of the clip to kill as many of these creeps as she could. It was only when the four spirit-shapes started materialising in a greasy cloud of dripping, dark-coloured vapour in the air above the altar platform that she finally realised just how far out of her depth she was here.

"Yes!" the four voices hissed in unison. "Complete the ceremony. Give us flesh once more!"

The air was charged with psychic power. The congregation's chanting was nearing its frenzied climax. The vampire things prowling round the sides of the room were filled with a terrifying anticipation and excitement. Unable to control itself any longer, one of them leapt upon a member of the congregation, hungrily tearing out his throat. Several more of the creatures rushed to join the feast, and their eager snarling and the scent of freshly spilled blood only added to the highly charged atmosphere inside the place.

The priest stepped forward, raising his dagger. DeMarco slipped her pistol out from her robes, mentally drawing a bead on him as she raised the weapon to fire. Two in the chest, one in the head, she decided, and then everything else for the creeps around her. The dagger in the priest's hand began to descend. DeMarco's finger began to tighten on the trigger.

There was a loud gunshot explosion from behind her - a scatter gun shot, DeMarco's Judge training instantly told her - and the doors there crashed open. Two more scatter gun blasts sent the cultist guards there flying through the air.

"Justice Department! Party's over, freaks!" shouted a commanding female voice.

"Andersssson!" the four things hovering in the air above the altar hissed as one, their voices full of hatred. And something else too, DeMarco detected. There was fear there too.

"Kill her!" they ordered their followers. "Finish the ceremony. Give us flesh!"

The priest raised the dagger once more, getting ready to strike. DeMarco beat him to it, putting two slugs into his chest, as promised. The one intended for his head instead found its way into the big creep in front of her, who had turned and tried to grab her as she began firing.

There were more scatter gun blasts from behind her, together with the screams and howls of dying cultists and vampires. Whatever Anderson was doing back there, she was going about it the right way. DeMarco pushed forward through the throng of panicked cultists, trying to get to the figures on the altar platform. She pistol-whipped one cultist who tried to block her way and delivered a swift kick into the crotch of the next creep who came running at her with the same idea. The rest of the time she simply cleared a path through with her pistol, firing blindly into the bodies of any robed figures that stood before her.

Somewhere in the distance, above the sounds of the melee, she thought she could hear the sounds of Judge sirens. Lots of Judge sirens, in fact. Help was on its way and closing fast. DeMarco just hoped she could stay alive long enough for it to matter.

Incredibly, the priest creep was on his feet again, still holding the knife and staggering determinedly towards the girl on the altar. Ignoring for a few vital seconds everything else going on around her, DeMarco took careful aim again and put two more slugs into his back. Her gun clicked on empty the third time she pulled the trigger.

The creep was still staggering forward, but he had lost the knife now.

"Yes, serve us," the spirit-shapes commanded him. "Be our sacrifice. With your own life's blood, make us flesh again."

The priest pitched forward with the last of his strength, throwing himself forward against the stone column. As he touched it, smearing the blood from the bullet wounds in his chest across its surface, the spirits of the four Dark Judges gave a hellish shriek of triumph. The stone suddenly seemed to suck the life out of the figure clinging to it. Sorcerous energy crackled forth from it, touching first the disembodied spirits of the Dark Judges and then down into the four forms beneath the shroud covers. The spirits of Death and the others flowed with the energy stream, allowing them to take possession of the corpses their devoted followers had so carefully prepared in advance for them.

It all happened with surprising speed. One moment, Death and his super-creep pals were floating about in the air in spirit-form, and the next the four corpses on the slabs were rising up with preternatural speed and an awful, unnatural stillness. The shrouds of Death and Fear fell to the ground at their feet. The one covering Fire fell away in burning fragments. That covering Mortis simply rotted away into stinking, mildewed pieces in seconds.

There they stood, reborn again: Death, Fear, Fire and Mortis. The four Dark Judges, who had expunged all life on their own world and had come to this one to do the same here.

One of the Death cultists clambered eagerly up onto the platform, throwing himself down to kneel, hands clasped in supplication, at the feet of Death. "Master!" he begged. "Grant me eternal existence. Let me join you there in the glorious realm beyond life and death!"

"With pleasure, sinner," cackled Death, sinking his hands seamlessly through the shell of the man's skull and squeezing its contents with his clawed fingers. The cultist fell dead at the monster's feet, the frozen expression of pain and horror on his face suggesting that the experience had been somewhat different from what he had hoped.

"Don't be shy, sinners. Who's next?" Death asked with an inviting leer, looking round, his cold, inhuman gaze finally settling on DeMarco. She wanted to reach for the spare ammo clip she had on her, load it into her pistol and empty it into the thing in front of her, but found she couldn't.

She couldn't do anything, in fact: move, scream, call for help or turn her gaze away. All she could do was stare back into that ghoulish caricature of the face of a Judge, as Death loomed up towards her.

"NO!"

It was Anderson's voice, and there was real power in it, enough to break whatever psychic spell Death could cast over his would-be victims. With a shock, DeMarco realised that it hadn't been Death that had been moving, it had been herself, shuffling unwillingly and unconsciously towards him to receive his twisted sentence of judgement.

Death looked up, all interest in DeMarco forgotten as he saw his old nemesis come running towards him. There were other Judges arriving on the scene too, crowding in through the door behind her, and DeMarco could hear the distinct heavy engine thrumming of at least one large h-wagon circling above the building. But the Dark Judges had sightless eyes for only one person here.

"Anderssson," hissed Death. At his gestured command, one of the vampires hurled itself at her. She blew its head off in mid-air with a scatter gun blast and kept on moving.

"Anderssson," gloated Fear, throwing one of his vicious mantrap weapons into her path. Another scatter gun blast sent it flying out of harm's way, and still she kept on moving.

"Anderssson," blazed Fire in hatred and raised his burning trident weapon, sending out a blast of supernatural flame. Anderson twisted out of the way and the blast struck behind her, consuming several panicked Death cultists and reducing them to charred scarecrows in seconds.

Anderson strode forward, firing the scatter gun, and the weapon's high velocity shot load tore into the Dark Judges' bodies. Their Church of Death servants had done their work well, and each of the creatures was dressed in an exact replica of their familiar uniform, which themselves were grotesque, twisted parodies of the uniforms worn by Mega-City One Judges. DeMarco watched as Death slid one long, bony hand down to his version of a Judge's utility belt, reaching for the object attached there, reaching for what looked like a-

"Teleporter!" shouted Anderson in angry warning to the other Judges following in behind her. "For Grud's sake, shoot them. Stop them before they can teleport away!"

She opened fire again with the scatter gun, the roaring sound of the weapon joined seconds later by the crash of massed Lawgiver fire. A hail of Lawgiver fire, including Hi-Ex and Incendiary shells, struck out at the Dark Judges, but it was already too late. A dancing nimbus of energy surrounded the four figures on the altar platform, and the volley of gunfire passed harmlessly through their dematerialising forms as the activated devices teleported them away out of the Judges' reach.

"There is much work to be done, but we will meet again soon, Anderson," hissed Death as he shimmered into nothingness, his gloating gaze fixed on Anderson. A moment later, he was gone, his final words left echoing psychically in the minds of those left behind. "This time, we will not be stopped so easily..."

Not wasting any more time, DeMarco scrambled forward up onto the altar platform, standing on the spot where the Dark Judges had been only moments ago. She heard the ominous clatter of a scatter gun being cocked directly behind her.

"Don't shoot! Family man!" she shouted, realising that in these robes she looked like any other Death cultist, and giving the traditional code phrase used by undercover Judges to identify themselves to other members of the Justice Department.

"Turn round. Slowly."

DeMarco did as ordered, seeing Anderson there, a hostile, suspicious look in her eyes, the scatter gun levelled straight at DeMarco's body. The look in the Psi-Judge's eyes intensified for a moment, and DeMarco felt cold psychic fingers picking through her mind, searching for the truth about her identity.

The fingers withdrew, the odd look left Anderson's eyes and the gun barrel was lowered.

"You're DeMarco?" asked Anderson, surprise evident in her voice. "The one that used to be Sector Chief in 303? The one that..."

Anderson's voice drifted off, but DeMarco knew what she had been about to say.

The one that's supposed to have tried to get Dredd into the sack with her? Yeah, that's me, ma'am. Guilty as charged.

"I guess that means I can lower my hands now without worrying that you're going to shoot me?" DeMarco said, continuing what she had been doing and going over to the prone figure of the girl on the altar slab.

"What are you doing here?" asked Anderson.

DeMarco laid a finger on the girl's neck, feeling for a pulse - and finding one. It was weak, but it was still there, thank Grud.

"Closing a case and saving a girl's life," she replied. "I guess you've got some important calls to make. Make sure one of them is for this girl. Grud knows what kind of drugs these freaks pumped into her. We need to get her into a med-unit fast."

Anderson nodded in understanding, and reached for her belt pouch radio.

"Control - Anderson. Things didn't go so well down here at Jack Kevorkian. Thanks to these cult creeps, the Dark Judges now have bodies and teleporters. They've escaped and are still on the loose. Wherever Dredd is, and whatever he's doing, tell him to drop it now. I need him to help track them down again before they start trying to wipe out the entire city."

ELEVEN

Fergus Munclie liked being a living mannequin. Sure, it wasn't the greatest job in the world, but it was still a job - and that was a damn site more than most people in this city could ever say. He was the only guy on Level 271 of Jack Yeovil Block who even had a job, and the only other person in his extended family who had one was that dumb jerk of a brother-in-law of his, who had somehow managed to land a gig down at Resyk as a Part-Time Assistant Trainee Blockage Cleaner. Fergus had been down there once to see him, and hadn't been too impressed by what he saw. His brother-in-law worked in the sub-basement maintenance area directly below the main fat-rendering vats. The acidic fumes down there were pretty nasty, especially when the Resyk conveyor belts were running at full capacity, which was pretty much most of the time, and as far as Fergus could figure out, his brother-in-law's job mostly involved crawling about inside pipes and run-off troughs with the partially dissolved remains of recycled human organic matter dripping down on top of him.