The Cold Light of Day Page 4

  Trembling, D’Annunzio stared at Dredd. “What?”

  Dredd was already getting to his feet. “Seal her wounds until the medics get here. She dies, that audit is definitely going to happen.”

  “But I don’t know how to—”

  “Just don’t let her bleed out. Stick your fingers in the bullet holes if you have to.”

  D’Annunzio shouted something else, but Dredd didn’t hear it: he was already out of the apartment and pounding down the hallway.

  Dredd didn’t have time to wait for the elevator: he raced down the narrow stairway, taking the steps four at a time. “What do you have for me, Control?”

  “Med-team’s on the way. ETA six minutes. Spy-cams deployed. Back-up’s converging on your location, four helmets. All we can spare.”

  Dredd vaulted over a rail and landed on the level below. “Not good enough, Control!”

  “Best we can do right now, Dredd.”

  On the ground floor, Dredd raced toward the main door. It was one of the building’s newer features. Heavy, bullet-proof security glass. Opening the door would mean slowing down, and every second lost greatly reduced his chance of catching the sniper.

  Without breaking stride, he thumbed his Lawgiver to Hi-Ex and fired in one swift motion. The intact door was blasted from its frame by the high-explosive shell. It soared across the quiet street and crashed heavily into the wall of the building opposite.

  Dredd raced through the still-burning doorframe and out into the street.

  The building across the street was a newer block, ten storeys high, a high-rent block of the sort that attracted wealthy senior citizens: heavy security, fully-automated systems.

  “Control—Dredd. Immediately lock every door in Ralph Bellamy Block, freeze the elevators. Track my position—unlock and open each door as I approach, close and lock after me.”

  “Acknowledged. Alerting block’s manager and owner.”

  The main door opened in front of Dredd and he raced through, his heavy footfalls immediately muffled by the thick carpeting. As he pounded up the stairs, he figured this would be a fruitless chase: the sniper would be long gone by the time he reached the roof. A block like this, the sniper would have bribed or threatened the manager or one of the tenants to gain access. The doors and windows were totally—

  He abruptly stopped on the stairs between the eighth and ninth floors, turned and raced back down, feeling like a year-three cadet. “Control—release the block. Perp’s not here.”

  “Wilco, Dredd. Do you require a forensic sweep?”

  “Unnecessary, Control. He was never here.”

  Dredd reached the street just as two Lawmasters screeched to a stop outside Percival Chalk’s building. The Judges were Hayden and Oakes, each at least twice Dredd’s age.

  “After me,” Dredd shouted as he passed them, running back into the dilapidated block. As he raced up the stairs he called over his shoulder, “Fifth floor, apartment 20. Judge wounded, citizen attending. Medics en route.”

  He barely had time to hear, “Who the drokk does he think he—?” from Hayden before his own thundering footsteps drowned out the Judge’s voice.

  He heard movement above him, and unclipped a set of cuffs from his belt as he ran. He passed a young woman on the stairs, slapping the cuffs on her without slowing down or explaining what he was doing: the odds were good that she wasn’t the sniper, but he wasn’t about to take that risk.

  Another three flights, then he was shouldering his way through a thin wooden door and out onto the building’s roof.

  Nothing.

  A collection of rusting old lawn furniture, power and TV cables snaking from one side of the roof to another, half a dozen skylights spattered with bird-droppings, and a small plastic cage holding a pet rat—but no sniper.

  Dredd quickly circumnavigated the roof, and counted four places where the sniper could have climbed down onto the neighbouring buildings. Then he crossed back to the front edge of the roof, and found the spot where the sniper had lain in wait.

  He got as close to the spot as he could without disturbing any evidence the sniper might have left behind, then peered down across the street to the windows of Ralph Bellamy Block. The glass was bullet-proof, and as reflective as a mirror. With the right ammunition, any decent sniper could have made the shot: the glass opposite would reflect the window of Chalk’s apartment, and all the sniper had to do was lie in wait for someone in the apartment to get close enough to the window.

  Dredd knew that if he examined the correct window opposite, there would be a tell-tale mark on the glass.

  He returned to Chalk’s apartment to see the owner, Zederick D’Annunzio, sitting on the bed—his arms and hands covered in blood—as Judge Oakes crouched over Ruiz, pressing a medi-patch to the wound on her back.

  D’Annunzio looked up at him, his face drained of all colour except for fresh bruising around his left eye. He said nothing.

  “What’s her status?” Dredd asked Oakes.

  “She’s holding on.” The Judge turned around to look at Dredd. “You. That figures. This creep says you told him to stick his fingers in the wounds.”

  “He’s right. I did.”

  “Huh.” Oakes glanced at D’Annunzio. “My apologies, citizen. Didn’t look like you were helping her.”

  “Pulled me offa her and the other one kicked me in the face,” D’Annunzio said.

  “Where is the other one?” Dredd asked.

  “Hayden’s checking the block opposite. You called in a sniper, right? Block opposite’s the only place where he could get a shot at this sort of angle.”

  A med-team arrived as Dredd was explaining how the sniper had made the shot. The three-man team assessed Ruiz’s wounds. “Reckon she’ll make it. Bullet was through-and-through. Not much damage—must have been low velocity. What about the cit?”

  “Patch him up here,” Dredd said. “I’m not done with him.”

  Six

  SEAMUS “SHOCK” O’SHAUGHNESSY pulled back on the throttle of his Blenderbike and risked a quick glance behind him. Vavavoom Grupp, lead rider of the Bearangel Clan, was still right on his tail, breathing his exhaust fumes, just as she had been for the past eighty kilometres.

  The screen mounted between the handlebars of Shock’s bike told him that he was in twenty-first place, right where his race-planner told him he should to be at this stage. In sixteen kilometres he’d move to overtake Arthur Dekko—a Mutie, but not a serious challenge—in twentieth, then sit on that position for another hour or so.

  This was Shock’s fourth time running the 5000. And he was determined that this time he was going to finish better than second place.

  Last year had been so close—two seconds between him and that drokker Napoleon Neapolitan, and less than a minute from the finish-line Neapolitan’s bike sputtered and wavered, slowed down enough for Shock to narrow the gap.

  And then, just as the front edge of Shock’s lead spoiler came into line with Neapolitan’s, the drokker had laughed and surged forward. After a thirty-nine-hundred-kilometre race, he beat Shock by four metres.

  For Shock—and for most of the racers—it wasn’t just the adoration of countless fans, or the sense of glory that came with being the winner of the Mega-City 5000: It was the money. Napoleon Neapolitan had signed fifteen sponsorship deals before he’d even walked to the podium to collect his trophy.

  The only sponsor who’d approached Shock was for a company that specialised in certain medical treatments for men and whose motto was “Sometimes, being in second place is important!” Shock had signed the deal anyway—money is money, and twenty thousand credits was significantly more money than he felt his pride was worth, even after the city took its sixty per cent tax—but if he’d been first... Rumour had it that Neapolitan had earned over two million creds in the past year.

  Right now, Neapolitan was in sixtieth place, hanging back with the core of the Muties’ team. Shock’s own crew, the Spacers, were scattered from fifth position—Jau
nty Monty, Shock’s number-two rider—all the way back to last place. That was Rennie The Wrench, the team’s on-road mechanic. Rennie’s oversized bike didn’t have a hope in hell of winning, but he was a mechanical genius and his bike carried emergency repair equipment that might just help a stranded Spacer get over the line.

  A kilometre ahead of Shock, a cluster of five riders slowed as they approached Carlo Imperato Block. They veered to the left edge of the cordoned-off road, almost close enough to brush against the straining fingertips of the thousands of cheering on-lookers crammed up against the temporary barriers.

  Shock eased off a little on the throttle, dropping his speed down to two-fifty. He’d studied the route—he knew what was coming next.

  Arthur Dekko either hadn’t studied, or he’d forgotten, or he just plain didn’t comprehend what he was riding into.

  Shock’s screen showed the Mutie zooming to the right, overtaking the slowing five-man cluster, and Shock could picture him grinning at them, maybe even giving them the finger as he passed.

  Shock dropped his speed a little more. If Dekko had been paying attention at all, he’d have noticed that the crowd lining the street ahead was denser. He’d have spotted the dozen TV cameras hovering over the track. He’d have realised that the wise rider slows way the drokk down if the audience looks a little too eager for a wipe-out.

  Brown Clancy, three positions behind Shock, contacted him over the radio: “You seein’ this, Shock?”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Should we warn him?”

  Shock suppressed a laugh. “Hell, no.”

  It was too late anyway: Arthur Dekko’s powerful Yomama 500 roared past the slowing riders, arcing around them at almost three hundred kilometres an hour.

  It was a little after ten in the morning, and Weather Control promised a clear, bright day. The morning sun reflected off the curved roof of the Drunkatorium, and Dekko emerged from the shadow of Carlo Imperato block and rode straight into the glare.

  Shock had ridden this sector many times, and more than once he’d been dazzled by the sudden blinding reflection. At the right time of the day, the building’s curved, mirror-like roof channelled the sunlight into a narrow beam.

  Arthur Dekko screamed. His bike wavered. The hovering TV cameras crowded closer, jostled one another for the best angle. A hush of anticipation fell over the crowd.

  Throughout the city, two hundred million people edged closer to their TV and Tri-D screens to get a better look at Dekko’s bike as it careened back toward the right side of the street.

  Many of those who watched later argued strongly that it was the Crash of the Race, and even the usually distracted and rambling pundits in Channel Epsilon’s commentary box had nothing but praise for the spectacular manner in which Arthur Dekko’s life came to an end.

  Shock switched his bike’s screen to a TV channel. He couldn’t do anything to circumvent Dekko’s fate, so he figured he might as well enjoy the show.

  The bike scraped along the barrier for a few seconds, with the wildly blinking and still screaming rider desperately clinging on. His protective suit almost instantly lost the battle of friction with the rough, pitted surface of the barrier. From his right calf, Dekko lost a good deal of skin and muscle tissue—which, naturally, later became the focus of a lawsuit between two overeager souvenir hunters—then he was momentarily able to regain control and steer the Yomama away from the barrier.

  And that was when he passed through the blinding beam of reflected light for a second time.

  The powerful bike slammed against the barrier on the road’s left side and ricocheted back into the centre of the road, leaving Dekko’s left arm behind, torn off at the elbow.

  Half-blinded, with only one arm, Dekko completely lost control and the bike tumbled to its side and into a long, slowly-spinning skid that ground the rest of Arthur’s body into a smeared red paste.

  Long before the remains of the bike had scraped to a stop, Shock and a dozen other riders had passed it, the wheels of their own machines painting crimson trails of blood and gore for another kilometre.

  The screen on Shock’s bike showed a close-up of Dekko’s still-twitching left hand, and one of Channel Epsilon’s commentators observed, “Oh, now that’s a bad crash.”

  His fellow commentator agreed: “Indeed it is, Peter, and, you know, it puts me in mind of Griswold Glennon’s little tumble two years ago. Happened much in the same manner, though that one was considerably less fatal.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I remember that, Ted. How is old Griswold doing these days?”

  “Still can’t cough without wetting himself, Peter.”

  The Cursed Earth

  2075 AD

  Seven

  JUDGE AMBER RUIZ listened to the cadets converse as she led them into the small town. How they interacted with each other—especially in situations like this, where they were in an unfamiliar and possibly hostile environment—was a good indicator of how they would measure up as Judges.

  “I really don’t like the way these freaks are looking at us,” Cadet Gibson said as they walked along the centre of Eminence’s main street.

  To Ruiz’s left, a woman with what looked to be a record-breaking case of acne stood with her mouth agape as they passed. She was shirtless, wearing only a ragged pair of old y-fronts, and every visible centimetre of her skin was covered in swollen red and yellow pustules. As Ruiz glanced in her direction, a thumb-sized blister on the side of the woman’s nose split, leaking its viscous contents past her blood-encrusted chapped lips and into her open mouth.

  “Jovus...” Rico muttered. “You see that?”

  Still with her attention on the Judge and the Cadets, the woman noisily cleared her throat, then leaned over and spat a globule of thick green phlegm and custard-yellow pus into the dirt.

  Grud, that’s one that’s going to stay with me, Ruiz thought. Aloud, she said, “Eyes front, Cadets. No ogling the women. Judges are meant to be celibate.”

  “That wouldn’t be much of a hardship out here,” Rico said.

  Ruiz glanced back to see him nudge Gibson with his elbow. “Scale of one to ten, how desperate would you have to be to—?”

  Gibson shuddered. “Look at them, living in their own filth and grubbing around in the dirt for food. Seriously, why do we even allow these ugly drokkers to breed?”

  “Allow?” Ruiz asked. “Cadet, they’re people, not animals. They deserve our sympathy, not contempt.”

  Gibson scoffed. “Well, if they’re people, why aren’t they allowed in Mega-City One or Mega-City Two?”

  Rico said, “Because the normal cits don’t want to have to look at them. The muties’d end up in ghettoes and that would cause more problems than just keeping them out. They’re better off out here.”

  Ruiz sighed. “Joe?”

  Joe nodded. “Rico’s right. But that’s not the whole story. The law banning them from the cities was originally passed to keep out anyone who’d contracted radiation poisoning during the war. If they’d been allowed to mingle with the non-contaminated citizens, the fear was that millions would have been infected.”

  “Correct,” Ruiz said. “Ionising radiation generates free radicals—unpaired particles that can warp the structure of DNA and break down cells. That can cause the body to decay, or tumours to form. There’s evidence to suggest that, prior to the war, President Booth’s geneticists developed a virus that could boost human resistance to radiation. The stories say that virus worked, after a fashion. Fewer of the infected died, but it screwed up the survivors’ DNA so much that they... Well, you can see for yourself. What’s important to remember, Gibson, is that these people didn’t choose to live like this. They just chose to live.” Ruiz suppressed a smile: on her last hot-dog run into the Cursed Earth, she’d said pretty much the same thing.

  Those cadets had been impressed. These three didn’t seem to have even noticed. Rico and Gibson were still glancing sidelong at the bare-chested woman, and Joe... Well, you
could never tell what was going on there. Some of Joe’s instructors had once unofficially voted him “Most likely to crack under pressure and kill the rest of us as we sleep.” Others felt that he would certainly graduate the Academy—his and Rico’s test scores were exemplary—but that he’d never be able to cut it as a street Judge. He didn’t seem to have much in the way of empathy. As far as Joe was concerned, the Law was everything.

  Part of Ruiz’s mission on this run was to assess Joe and determine whether it would be better to steer him into one of the more technical departments. Forensics, maybe. He certainly had a good eye for detail, and his encyclopaedic memory would make him a great boon to that department.

  Halfway along the street, a tall, slim man strode out to meet them. He wore an old-fashioned undertaker’s coat—complete with tails—over a gaudy knitted sweater, and a leather flying cap with goggles that were now resting on his forehead.

  “Got to be the Mayor,” Ruiz said.

  The man seemed perfectly normal at first glance, but as they neared him his stance looked awkward, and it took Ruiz a moment to realise that he had two knees on each leg.

  She stopped two metres away from the Mayor, and nodded a greeting.

  “We don’t get many Judges around here. Welcome to Eminence, folks. Name’s Genesis Faulder. Guess you could say I lead these people.”

  He extended his hand, and Ruiz shook it without hesitation.

  “Judge Ruiz, Mega-City One. Heard you’ve been having some trouble. What can we do to help?”

  Faulder peered past Ruiz. “These your boys? Fine looking lads.” He pointed toward Joe. “How much do you want for that one? My eldest is about his age, and if all his parts are in working order, then—”

  “They’re not for sale,” Ruiz said. “And they’re not my sons. They’re cadets.” She smiled. “But you know that, don’t you? This is all part of your small-town charm.”

  Mayor Faulder returned the grin. “It always helps to be underestimated by strangers, Judge.” He tilted his head toward a large, store-fronted warehouse. “We can talk in my office. Your boys mind waiting out here?”