The Cold Light of Day (14 page)

“And we know from Judge Meacham’s report that Chalk wasn’t alone in Joanne Vanderbilt Block. You think maybe Fierro’s the other man? That’s possible. If Fierro wasn’t in Eminence, he couldn’t betray Chalk.”

On the screen in front of Dredd, Chalk’s vehicle dipped and soared, dodging left and right as it wove a complex path through the tangled junction of two dozen elevated highways, known locally as The Knot. The other H-wagons were having difficulty anticipating its path.

“I think I know what he’s planning,” Dredd said. “We need to head him off. Take us up,” he told the pilot. “High arc, top speed. Head for the finish-line.”

S
EAMUS
“S
HOCK
” O’S
HAUGHNESSY
saw nothing but the road ahead and the back of Napoleon Neapolitan’s bike.

He was only dimly aware of the pedestrians scattering before them, of the vehicles skidding to a stop as they blazed through junctions, of the Lawmasters’ sirens trailing them and the H-wagon dogging their path behind them.

His mind was filled with fury at the Mutants, and Napoleon in particular. Whichever way this ended, Napoleon was going to die.

Shock didn’t know this part of the city too well. He’d studied the race’s route carefully in the previous months, but now they were off-track, and if he hadn’t been following Napoleon, he’d be lost, especially since his Blenderbike’s on-line map was no longer functioning.
All
communications were down, and he was certain that Judges had ordered a full block on the networks.

But that didn’t matter. All he had to do was stick close to Napoleon until the finish-line was in sight, and then they’d see who was the better rider.

The wheels of his bike rumbled over the inlaid rails of the sector’s old-style tram system, slowing him a little, and ahead he saw that Napoleon’s larger wheels were not suffering as much. Shock nudged the bike over to the rail-free side of the road, and his speed picked up a little.

He wished he’d brought a gun. He was a good shot: even at top speed on the bike, racing through unfamiliar streets and dodging panicking pedestrians and swerving vehicles, he’d have had no trouble blasting off the top of his opponent’s head. And no qualms.

Ahead, at the massive Discount of Monte Cristo outlet store, a full-scale riot was in progress as citizens took advantage of the chaos to swarm through the store and help themselves to last season’s fashions. Shock saw Napoleon collide with a woman staggering under the weight of so many rat-fur coats she could neither see nor hear him coming. As the stolen and now blood-spattered merchandise scattered through the air, the Mutie clipped another woman, this one laden with armfuls of shoulder-bags and purses.

Shock’s bike, only half the width of Napoleon’s, made it through the throng unscathed, and he gained a few metres on his rival.

“S
ET ME DOWN
on the plaza,” Dredd said.

“In the middle of the
crowd
?” the H-wagon’s pilot asked. “Are you nuts? There’s got to be twenty thousand citizens still down there, and they’re all looking for trouble.”

“They’re always looking for trouble,” Dredd said. “Today it’s the race, tomorrow it’ll be something else.” He turned back toward the engineer. “How’s my bike?”

“Refuelled,” the engineer said. “Checked the tyres, re-sprung the rear suspension. Not much else I can do for it here. You could call for a replacement.”

“No time,” Dredd said. He got out of the co-pilot’s seat. “Chalk?”

“Still on this vector,” the pilot said. “About eleven minutes behind us. The wagons in pursuit still have their weapons locked on.”

“And they still can’t risk shooting,” Dredd said. “That’s what Chalk’s counting on.”

The co-pilot asked, “You reckon he’s going to land and try to lose himself in the crowd?”

“That’s my guess,” Dredd said. “Only one way to find out for sure.” He climbed onto the bike. “Take us down fast but steady, pilot. Make sure the citizens below know we’re coming—don’t want to squash any if we can help it.”

The H-wagon shuddered and lurched a little as the pilot adjusted its course, then began to descend.

“Faster. Set down just long enough for me to get clear,” Dredd said. “Then take off and vacate the area.” To the engineer, he added, “Prep the ramp.”

Less than a minute later, Dredd was back on the ground with the shadow of the H-wagon passing over him.

He glanced around the litter-strewn plaza. In front of him, the large podium erected for the winner was being attacked by a gang of juves, and on all sides the rioters were giving him a wide berth, those who had seen him having dropped their wares before running for the relative safety of the surrounding blocks.

An angry voice behind him yelled “Judge! Let’s get him!” and Dredd turned to see a man bearing down on him, wielding a hardball bat. The man was huge, a head taller than Dredd, with a face so pitted with acne scars that he looked like he’d have to shave with a potato peeler.

“There’s only one of him—there’s thousands of
us
!” the man snarled.

The circle around Dredd widened as he climbed off his bike. “Drop the bat, creep.”

He continued to advance on Dredd, thumping the bat against the palm of his free hand. “Who’s gonna
make
me, Judge? You?”

“Last warning.”

The scarred man broke into a run and bellowed with rage as he pulled his arm back, ready to strike.

Dredd side-stepped the swing and slammed his fist into the man’s stomach. The hardball bat clattered to the ground and the giant dropped to his knees, gasping. Tears of pain spilled from his eyes and took meandering paths down his craggy face.

Dredd patched his helmet mike into the Lawmaster’s loud-hailer, and pushed the volume up to eleven. “Attention, all citizens. Your identities have been logged—we know who you are. Disperse now, quietly and quickly, and you will not be charged. You have two minutes.” On the ground beside him, the scarred man was crawling away.

“Walton? You got eyes on the crowd?”

“It’s working, Dredd. They’re starting to filter out of the plaza.”

S
HOCK HAD FOLLOWED
Napoleon onto the packed pedestrian concourse at Sector 115, where the race’s route looped back for the final run south to the finish-line at Sector 124. Once they knew where they were, they both began to pick up the pace.

Now, they were half-way through Sector 122, racing on empty, open streets running parallel to the Mega-City 5000’s course.

Can’t be more than fifty kilometres to go... I can
do
this. I can
beat
the drokker.

Cross the line and then keep going, right out into the desert where the Jays won’t follow me.

Ahead, a cluster of citizens scattered out of Napoleon’s way, and Shock followed in his wake. He saw a panic-stricken man throw himself flat on the ground and the oversized wheels of the Mutie’s bike pass safely either side of him. The man was not so lucky a few second later, when Shock ran over his foot and crushed his ankle.

Then they were through the throng and Napoleon picked up speed again.

Shock wouldn’t entertain the possibility that they weren’t going to make it. He knew the Judges were after them, but they hadn’t caught them yet, so maybe whoever it was that gunned down Travis Cannon was a higher priority.

Napoleon shot across a busy junction without slowing, expertly weaving his bike through the dense, slow-moving cross-traffic. Shock was right behind him, his own crossing made a little easier because many of the drivers had hit their brakes when they saw Napoleon.

A few more of those, and I’ll be close enough to touch him.

They entered The Cobbles, a region of the sector that was popular with tourists, especially at this time of the year when the prevailing winds from the north kept the stench of the Black Atlantic to a minimum.

On a long stretch of road, Napoleon overtook a roadtrain on the wrong side, narrowly avoiding an oncoming Resyk truck. Shock had followed him, but by the time he saw the truck it was too late to pull back. He nudge his bike to the right, mounted the wide pavement and rapidly weaved around the pavement’s trash cans, benches, plasteen statues of local celebrities and artificial palm trees.

As they exited The Cobbles, Shock saw Napoleon glance back for a second, and then they were passing into Sector 124, the final sector of the race.

Thirty kilometres to the line.

Seventeen

D
ESPITE
D
REDD’S WARNING,
the citizens took more than five minutes to clear the plaza. But save for a few stragglers who were very slowly ambling out of the area and constantly looking back to see what was going on—there was always at least one citizen who didn’t grasp that the word “everyone” included them—there was more than enough clear space.

Dredd waited, watching the skyline to the north. With a little over a minute to go, a trio of teenaged girls darted around from the other side of the podium, each of them wearing dozens of freshly-stolen wedding rings and so many chains around their necks that they had to run hunched over. They skidded to a stop when they saw that the plaza was now empty, save for a lone Judge on a Lawmaster, watching them.

“Drop everything you’ve taken and get out of here,” Dredd yelled at them. “Now!”

One of the girls froze in place, eyes and mouth wide as she stared, horrified, at Dredd. The other two grabbed an arm each and hauled her away from the plaza.

Dredd activated his radio. “Walton.”

“I’m here. Chalk’s still heading toward you, ETA fifty seconds. Dredd, he’s
not
going to set down. If he was planning to lose himself among the crowd, that option is now closed. You’ve scared them away.”

“I know. Instruct the H-wagons to keep the pressure on him. We want him to have no choice but come in low and fast.”

“I don’t get why he’s going to the finish-line. Why not anywhere else along the race’s route?”

“Because this is the southernmost sector of the city. The Cursed Earth is only five kilometres behind me. He’s hoping we won’t know whether he’s stayed in the city or gone out into the desert.” Dredd glanced north; the Chameleon would be approaching over the top of Brian Alexander Robertson Block.

“Dredd, he’ll change course the second he sees there’s no one in the plaza. He’ll head out into the Cursed Earth for sure.”

“No,” Dredd said. “He won’t. Remind me again why we haven’t shot him down yet?”

“Because the falling debris would likely kill thousands of...” Walton paused. “Grud. You emptied the plaza. Dredd, you’ll be in the line of fire!”

“And if I move, the citizens will come swarming back.”

Then there was no more time for conversation. The customised Chameleon roared up and over the roof of the apartment block in an arc that would set it down in the heart of the plaza, coming straight toward Dredd.

He had a moment to lock eyes with Percival Chalk, the first time he’d seen the man in five years. The expression on Chalk’s face changed instantly from shock at seeing the empty plaza to resignation when he realised what it meant.

Then the pursuing H-wagons opened fire.

Dredd gunned his Lawmaster’s engine, its massive tyres squealing as it darted out of the Chameleon’s path.

The H-wagons’ cannon-fire tore through the rear and roof of the vehicle, shredding its armour-plating as though it were paper.

The Chameleon crashed nose-first into the plaza’s rockcrete slabs, rippling through them with a shockwave that almost knocked Dredd from his bike.

Even before the perforated vehicle had scraped and ground its way to a stop, Dredd was off his bike and running toward it, Lawgiver ready.

The passenger-side door shuddered once, then a second time, then it collapsed out onto the ground, followed by a man Dredd recognised as Winston Fierro, his body-armour pierced a dozen times by the H-wagon’s large-calibre bullets. Fierro arched his back once, groaned, then lay still.

Dredd leaped onto the Chameleon’s buckled hood, crouched, with his Lawgiver aimed at Chalk. Inside the cab, Chalk was still held firmly in place by slowly-deflating airbags: a safety feature that clearly hadn’t been added to the passenger’s side of the vehicle.

Weakly, barely able to turn his head among the airbags, Chalk said, “Stop him, Judge! He’ll get away!”

“I doubt that,” Dredd said. “Not unless he’s holding the world record for crawling with broken arms and legs.”

“Fierro
kidnapped
me, forced me to—”

“Not this time, Chalk,” Dredd said. “You only get to use the fake-hostage trick once.”

Chalk narrowed his eyes as he stared at the Judge. “I
know
you... You were the cadet who arrested me back in Eminence! Then this is
your
fault. Everything that happened today is down to you!”

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that one a lot. Still don’t buy it. Percival Chalk, on the charge of the premeditated murders of your former colleagues, the murders of Judges Pendleton and Collins, the attempted assassination of Judge Amber Ruiz, extensive property damage leading to the loss of countless lives, and piloting an unregistered flying vehicle without a permit, I sentence you to execution.”

Chalk’s expression collapsed for a moment, then he shrugged—the airbags had almost fully deflated now—and broke into a wide smile. “Almost made it through, right? Well, go
ahead
, Judge. Pull the trigger, like you should have done five years ago.”

“That’s not how it works, Chalk,” Dredd said. “First, there’s the interrogation.”

There was a dull
whump
from somewhere beneath Dredd’s feet, and a small flame erupted from the front of the Chameleon. Keeping his gun aimed at Chalk, Dredd jumped down from the hood and wrenched open the driver’s-side door. “Out. Hands on your head, fingers interlaced.”

Chalk started to climb out, then jerked to a stop. “My foot’s stuck.”

Dredd glanced toward the flame. Black smoke was starting to billow out from the vehicle’s buckled hood. “Try harder.”