Judge Dredd Fire and Brimstone © 2001 Martin Luscombe Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone Prologue A cold wind blew down the deserted street. It swept dust across the cracked concrete and toyed with an old plastic cup, rolling it around as if trying to read the faded writing. It gave up and a short gust kicked the cup into the open, which caught the attention of a small rat-like creature that scampered over a pile of rubble to investigate. The rat sniffed at the cup and then paused, looking up over the plaza to the east. Once the square had been constantly packed with people, travelling from one vast city-block to another. Now the towering skyscrapers had been reduced to hills of rockcrete debris. Steel girders reached out from each pile – broken, bent and twisted. People hadn’t lived here for a long time. The rat was about to return to the cup when it heard the sound again – a quiet hissing, high up in the sky. The sound came from a dot that dropped rapidly, revealing itself to be a small shuttlecraft. The rat scarpered as the shuttlecraft pulled up sharply and gingerly landed in the ruins of Mega-City Two. After a few moments the door opened and a woman, wearing a heavy-duty radiation cloak and carrying a small pistol, cautiously stepped out. Katrina Dawson looked around, orientating herself. It had been eight years since she had last been here and it had looked very different then. Although rebuilding had started on the west side of the city, this area was still a radioactive hell. The familiar skyline of towers and domes had gone – there was just rubble and debris as far as the eye could see. The power that could create such destruction was awe-inspiring but also terrifying. Her heart tightened when she recognised Enbury Hall. Shielded from the nuclear shock wave by the hundred-storey mountain of Charles Wilson block, the small ten- storey building had survived almost intact. However one of the four towers on top of the Stilton complex had fallen onto it, crushing the top couple of floors and now large cracks 1 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone covered the walls, giving the impression that the whole thing could collapse at any moment. As Katrina crossed the plaza towards it, the only sound was the steady clicking of her radiation meter, which merely added to the eerie sense of desolation. She fingered her pistol anxiously; afraid of what she would find in her old home. But she had to come – she had to see with her own eyes what they had done. A door was leaning across the doorway like a last minute barricade. Katrina pulled it aside and turned on her flashlight. She took two steps into the foyer and stopped as a sickening odour filtered through her face mask. She directed the beam of light forwards and clenched her teeth at the sight. There were the remains of three dead bodies on the floor, all heavily decomposed. Two had been walking or running towards the stairs when they were fried by radiation. The third was behind them, possibly following them. This one was missing its right arm, which appeared to have been severed with a sharp blade, revealing the bone and muscles, which were now as black and shrivelled as the rest of the body. Katrina glanced around the room but she couldn’t see the missing arm. If the stump was black and burnt then the arm must have been cut off before the bomb hit. He must have walked in here, following the other two, with a severed arm – bones exposed and flesh hanging raggedly. A horrible thought went through Katrina’s mind . he had been a zombie. Zombie. It was unbelievable. Ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as that day, eight years ago on holiday in Mega-City One, when Katrina watched the corny horror movie being shown on every news channel in the city. Reporters running down streets shouting into the camera as hordes of undead battled with Mega-City One judges. It was like something from a kid’s story – an evil necromagus called Sabbat had come from another dimension with the power to animate every dead body on the planet. He ordered them to destroy all the living creatures in every city in every country – it was a world war. The only way to stop them was to blow them apart but there were so many – billions and billions. They overran the cities by sheer force of numbers – they were in every street, in every block, and each victim they claimed was a new recruit for their army. The human race came close to extinction that day. 2 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone Now that Sabbat was safely disposed of, there was no danger of the zombie coming to life but Katrina gave it a wide breath as she crossed the foyer to the stairs. She climbed carefully. On the third floor landing she saw another body. It had two chunks of flesh bitten out of it. The chunks, both blackened and burnt, had been spat out onto the floor beside the body. The body must have been eaten by a creature a long time after the bomb exploded, perhaps quite recently . She reached the fifth floor and walked along the corridor. It was dark and the paint on the walls had patches of black bubbles, but she remembered skipping along here on her way home from school. She swallowed for the first time since entering the building and tried to shut out the acrid burnt smell. Katrina arrived at her parent’s apartment and tried the door. It was locked. She shot out the lock but the door still wouldn’t open – it was barricaded on the other side. She put her shoulder to the door and pushed. There was a grinding sound as the old dresser moved back and the door opened wide enough for her to squeeze through. She paused for a moment and then entered. The large window on the opposite side of the room had been blown inwards and years of radioactive wind and rain had made everything grimy and streaked black. The sofa had been pulled out into the centre of the room, burnt to a blackened husk. The vidscreen had melted and the small table in front of it was scorched. Katrina swallowed again as she noticed something lying on the floor behind the sofa. It looked like a leg. Katrina’s knees were trembling as she walked round to the rear of the sofa and then she fell to her knees, choking with grief. The bodies of her mother and father were lying on the floor, black and decomposing. She gripped her face mask with both hands as tears ran down her cheeks. It was worse than she was expecting, worse than the bodies downstairs. The rain had washed away the burnt flakes of skin, staining the carpet with black ash. Some bacteria had digested parts of the muscles, exposing dirty yellow bone. One of the heads – it was impossible to tell who was who – had fallen apart, the jaw lying at right angles to the skull, the empty eye sockets staring into space. It took two minutes for her to stop hyperventilating and to blink away the tears. She looked up at the ceiling and breathed deeply. 3 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone Eventually she composed herself sufficiently to take another look at the scene and saw her father’s antique semi-automatic rifle lying beside one of the bodies. Buying that gun was the only illegal thing that he had ever done. He had bought it back in 2107 when the Hendersons, who lived five doors down the hall, had been killed by a roving gang. Then Katrina realised – the dresser, the sofa and the position of the bodies and the gun. Her parents had barricaded themselves in. They were waiting for the zombies to attack, and then they’d shoot them to bits. They weren’t worried. They were prepared. There was only one zombie in the whole block anyway. They weren’t in danger. They were winning! But Mega-City One – Mega-City One just saw the worst reports, just heard the people radioing for help. They thought Mega-City Two was gone. ‘Overrun’. They didn’t know that most of the people were fine – they were just staying in their apartments and they were fine. But Mega-City One decided, the judges of Mega-City One decided, that they were gone. ‘Unsalvageable.’ They decided to cut their losses. They decided to nuke the entire city. And not just Mega-City Two. They nuked South-Am City, and Brasilia, and Djakarta, and Sino-City One. They murdered two billion innocent people – families, friends, communities, entire cultures wiped out at the press of a button. Katrina’s fists were clenched so hard that her nails were drawing blood. They would pay. 4 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone Chapter 1 Walter Hibble felt cool. Mauve Slapduster kneepads, Emphatically Yes jeans and a Chopper style surf jacket with ribbed shoulder pads. Way cool. ‘Hey look – Mister Coool!’ Walter stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly he didn’t feel cool any more – he felt very very stupid. He knew he was taking a risk coming through this short cut. He had hoped that the juve gangs would think he was all right now and let him pass, or maybe they’d just be indoors watching the vid.