Dredd VS Death (28 page)

"Yes," the cold, ghostly voice of Fear whispered. "Look deeper. Gaze into the face of Fear and know what true nightmare looks like."

Dredd looked, and for a moment stood on the edge of the precipice. Then he remembered three things, and the shadowy terrors waiting for him down there in that abyss retreated back into the shadows, snarling in cheated anger.

He was Joe Dredd, a Judge of Mega-City One, and he wasn't going to lie down and die as long as his city still needed him.

"Told you once before," growled Dredd, reaching down to his belt pouch. "Maybe you don't remember, so here's a quick reminder...

"Gaze into the fist of Dredd!"

Dredd's fist smashed into the empty helm that was Fear's head. The Dark Judge reeled back, hissing in outrage. A moment later, though, Fear was rising up again, damaged but still intact.

"The years have made you weak, sinner. Now you no longer have the strength to defeat me!"

"Don't bet on it, creep," Dredd told him. "Check your headspace. I left something for you in there."

Dredd hurled himself aside as the frag grenade he had left inside Fear's open helm exploded. The blasted remains of Fear crumbled to the ground, trails of black vapour already starting to seep out of it as Fear's spirit abandoned its destroyed host body.

Dredd didn't waste any time. The suction trap device was in his hand even before the Dark Judge's spirit had finished seeping out of its former body. He threw it, its small anti-grav generator and gyro-stabilisers activating immediately. It hovered above Fear's abandoned body, powerful motors kicking in to draw in everything in the air around it, including the gaseous stuff of Fear's escaping spirit. Fear gave one last hissing scream as his spirit-form was drawn inexorably into the device, and then the trap sealed itself shut again. It fell to the ground, its power used up, giving little hint of the malign monstrosity now safely held inside it.

Dredd picked it up, and looked over to where Anderson was limping towards him. The mantrap, its jaws prised open, lay behind her, as did the corpses of the last few vampires who had foolishly thought she was trapped there helpless.

He tossed the suction trap over to her. "Souvenir of your trip to the Undercity, courtesy of the Psi-Div Teks."

She caught it, wincing it pain from her injury. Fear's mantrap had done a real number on her leg, Dredd saw.

"Three down-"

"And one to go," Anderson said, looking at the swirling darkness of the dimensional gateway. "Death's escaped back to Deadworld, and he's taken the Psi-cadets with him. Grud knows what he's planning to do with them."

"Nothing good," decided Dredd, reloading his Lawgiver before moving off towards the gateway entrance.

"Wait, Dredd! You can't go through that thing on your own! You need me there too!" Anderson started limping forward after the other Judge, but her injured leg suddenly gave way beneath her. Giving an involuntary cry of pain, she fell forward. Dredd caught her and lowered her gently to the ground.

"You'll be more of a liability than a help in Deadworld, with that leg," he told her. "Wait here for back-up. Anything except me tries to come back through that gateway, use Hi-Ex to demolish the whole thing. Check your chronometer - I'll be back within an hour."

"And what if you're not?"

Dredd was already walking away towards the mouth of the portal.

"Then Hi-Ex it anyway. If I don't make it, then at least we haven't left the door open for Death to come back. Whatever he's planning, I'm going to make sure it ends on Deadworld."

And then he was gone, swallowed up by the swirling darkness of the gateway.

Dredd's boots crunched noisily on the carpet of bones at his feet. The bleached litter of human remains stretched out in all directions, for as far as the eye could see in the perpetual twilight gloom of Deadworld. How many were there, Dredd wondered. Hundreds of millions? Billions? However many, it could never be enough for the Dark Judges. They had exterminated all life on their own world, and now they wanted to export this same nightmare to Dredd's world.

Dredd had been on Deadworld before. The carpet of bones, the twisted buildings with giant, screaming faces emerging out of them, the eerie, eternal silence that hung in the air, the sinister gloom that cast a lifeless pall over everything - all of it was familiar to him, like the memory of a particularly bad dream.

This is what my city will look like one day, he reminded himself, if we ever fail to stop Death and the others.

They were just ahead of him, he could see, mounting the bone-scattered steps of what had probably been this world's version of the Grand Hall of Justice. There weren't many of them left now, Dredd saw. Four vampires or cultists, each one carrying one of the Psi-cadets, and another group carrying something large and shroud-covered on a makeshift stretcher. Dredd couldn't see the disembodied spirit of Death, but he knew it would be here somewhere, hissing commands and sinister exhortations to its servants.

The bloodsucking freaks disappeared inside the vast, fortress-like building. Dredd picked up his pace, hoping to catch them before they could begin whatever it was they were planning. He got halfway to the entrance of the building before, with a dry rattle like someone expiring on a slab, the inhabitants of Deadworld began to come to life again.

Skeletal fingers reached up to claw against the soles of his Judge boots, trying to pull him down into the writhing bone carpet at his feet. Empty skulls shouted out hate-filled insults or defiant threats, all of them speaking in Death's own hissing, mocking tones. Dredd kept on going, in places actually wading through the layers of human remains as they rose up around him.

They came up in massed groups, the tangled mess of bones creating strange skeletal hybrids as the fragments of different bodies were freely used to form brand new composite forms. Roaring blasts from Dredd's M2000 blew them back into the bone-dust from where they came. He kept on firing, destroying group after group just as fast as they rose up to face him. Those few that survived the furious barrage succumbed easily enough to punches or blows from his weapon butt, collapsing back into the ground whenever they were struck with enough force. It was grim, tiring work, but Dredd was in little real danger from the waves of skeletal figures that threw themselves at him. The real point, he knew, was to keep him busy and delay him from reaching Death's lair.

He broke through at last, reaching the entrance to the fortress in a few paces and discarding the now empty Widowmaker as he sprinted up the steps towards the open doorway ahead. The skeletal things pursuing him collapsed as one, the bones of the closest ones tumbling rattling down the steps behind him.

After that, Dredd was through the doorway, which took the form of a giant screaming mouth, and into the lair of the Dark Judges.

It wasn't difficult to work out which way to go. The rising sound of the chanting echoed through the dead, empty corridors and chambers of the place. All Dredd had to do was follow the sound back to its source.

The Judge found Death and the others in a vast, high-ceilinged chamber deep inside the fortress complex.

The four psi-cadets were tied down on the top of crystal slabs, grouped around a structure that was like a more elaborate version of the gateway portal in the Undercity. Crackling bolts of psi-energy leapt from the cadets to the dark, stone-like material of the new portal that dominated one wall of the place. As each bolt struck, flickering power runes became visible, carved into the surfaces around the edge of the portal, and the glowing, swirling haze at the centre of the gateway seemed to grow slightly larger and more ominous every time.

Dredd strode forward, sheer instinct warning him of the waiting ambush vital moments before it came. The vampire that leapt at him got a Standard Execution round through its head for its troubles. At the same time, however, a cultist hurled a dagger at him from his other side. Unable to dodge the weapon in time, Dredd simply chose the most expedient course and used his free hand to block the blade which would otherwise have found his heart. A brief grunt of pain was his only reaction as the spinning knife sank through the material of his Judge gauntlet, impaling him through his left hand.

Dredd had better things to do than react to the injury. The knife-throwing creep got two shots through the heart back in return, and so did his pal while he was still fumbling to aim his spit pistol. Half of what he had left in his Lawgiver's magazine took care of the rest of the Dark Judges' remaining servants. A few seconds later, the last of the gunshots faded away, the last of the cultists slid to the floor, and Dredd declared the Church of Death officially out of business.

He ran forward towards the nearest of the Psi-cadets, intending to free them. As far as he could see, he and the four cadets were the only things left alive in the chamber...

And as soon as he'd formed the thought, the... the thing appeared out of the shadows on the far side of the chamber.

"Hello, Joe," it cackled in a voice that was both horribly familiar, but still somehow different. "Surprised to see me back so soon?"

"Icarus!"

Dredd knew this wasn't really the deceased Dr Dick Icarus, aka Vernon Martins, that he faced now, even as the surprised exclamation of the name escaped from his lips. For one thing, Icarus was dead. For another, the last time Dredd had seen him, he hadn't been three metres tall and covered in thick bony plates of armour that rose out of his mutated, virus-warped flesh.

"Not quite," growl-hissed the thing in a voice that was half Death's, and half something even stronger and yet more monstrous. "Our servant's spirit has left this flesh, but his sinful attempts to attain eternal life would seem to have had their uses. His serum flows in this body's veins, transforming its dead flesh. Now it is truly indestructible, a fitting new form to contain my spirit and a vessel with which to continue our great work."

As the thing spoke, Dredd could see Death's own ghastly visage emerging at moments from the pulsing mass of flesh that was its face. It was still changing, still transforming before Dredd's eyes.

"Indestructible?" sneered Dredd. "Fine in theory. Let's see how it works in practice."

His Hi-Ex shots caught the Death-thing square in the chest, blowing it backwards off its feet. It landed heavily and twitched for a moment, lying in a spreading pool of its own fluids and exploded flesh. It lay there for a moment, but then began to climb to its feet again.

Dredd watched, seeing its flesh knitting back together, layers of hard bone-shell pushing up through the surface of the skin to provide additional natural armour. In what seemed like seconds, the thing's body had regenerated itself. If anything, in fact, it actually looked slightly larger, more powerful and menacing than it had before he had shot it.

The Death-thing growled in pleasure, pleased at this test of its new body's abilities. Dredd didn't give up. Standard Execution rounds struck against its bony armour, to little effect. A Hi-Ex round to the face wiped the gloating smile from its face, but only for a moment. After that, the smile just grew back again, along with the rest of its face. Several Incendiary rounds burst against it, setting it ablaze. The phosphor-fed flames caught for a moment but died away again, unable to affect the stuff of the thing's unnatural body. What little flesh that had been burned flaked away in blackened scales, to be instantly replaced by newly regenerated tissue.

Death was shambling towards him all this time, forcing Dredd to circle away from him, keeping the altars with the Psi-cadets on them between the Dark Judge and his prey. A moan escaped from the lips of the cadet nearest Dredd, as another current of rippling psi-energy leapt out from her towards the portal. Death gloated at the sound, as if it was the sweetest music.

"Yes, with the energy from these little ones, I can open the dimensional gateways to their full extent. The Sisters of Death will be found and returned to us. Deadworld and your own corrupt dimension will merge together as one. I will cross over again to free my brothers. In this body, with our two worlds merged into one, I will be invincible, and all will finally be judged!"

"Right. And what makes you think we're going to stand here and let that happen?"

It was Anderson's voice. Dredd turned to see the Psi-Judge standing at the entrance to the chamber. She looked seriously haggard, worn out by everything she'd been through in the last twenty-four hours. Then Dredd remembered his own experiences in the same period, and realised he probably looked just as bad.

"Anderson! Thought I told you to-"

"Stay and guard the gateway in the Undercity? Yeah, well, you know me, Dredd. I never was much good at following orders. So how do you want to handle this?"

"Free the cadets. I'll keep gruesome here busy while you do it," Dredd ordered, snapping off another series of shots at the foul thing containing Death.

The brute charged forward, knowing that it was now under serious threat. Dredd hit it with everything he had, and then some more, just for good measure. The Death-thing staggered under the crippling impact of multiple Hi-Ex shells. Rapid-fire bursts tore into it. Incendiaries set it ablaze. Armour-piercing shells drilled through the bony plates of its chest, futilely seeking out vital organs to puncture and burst.

The Death-thing absorbed it all, and just kept on coming. Dredd stood his ground, knowing that every bullet impact still delayed it for one crucial moment more, giving Anderson more time to free the cadets. He risked a glance back, seeing that she had now freed the first of them. He had only looked away for the barest of moments - but when he looked back the Death-thing was right on top of him.