The Cold Light of Day (6 page)

“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?”

Judge Ruiz turned to the cadets. “Don’t stray too far. Keep your eyes open. Try to avoid engaging the locals.” She looked at Joe as she spoke, though he was the least likely to get into trouble.

She followed the Mayor into the store. It was packed with racks of canned goods, most of the cans having long since lost their labels.

“I’m the chief supplies officer as well as the Mayor,” Faulder said. “And the banker. And I run the mail service.” He stopped, and turned back to face her. “Hell, I’m the town doctor too, when I need to be. You can’t survive out here without picking up a few skills.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the back of the store. “Office is back there. Come on through.”

T
HE CADETS HAD
been alone for less than five minutes when Gibson turned to Rico. “Want to check this place out? Joe’ll stay here and keep watch, right?”

“We have
orders
,” Joe said.

“Vague instructions, at best,” Rico replied. “C’mon, a bit of freak-spotting won’t hurt anyone.” To Gibson, he said, “You see that guy on the way in who didn’t have a head? Now,
that’s
a mutation.”

As they walked away, Joe heard Gibson say, “I once heard about a mutie woman who had two breasts.”

“Two? So what’s so odd about that?”

“One hanging out of each side of her neck, that’s what.”

Joe kept his expression neutral as he watched them leave. He wanted to argue with them that they should stay put, but it wouldn’t do for cadets to be seen squabbling, even out here. Besides, they weren’t technically breaking any rules.

He heard the sound of something scuffing on the ground behind him, and turned to see a small mutant boy lying face-down on an old skateboard as he pulled himself out of the mayor’s store. The boy’s legs trailed out behind him, boneless lumps of scabbed, filthy flesh that were barely recognisable as limbs. The door slammed shut behind the boy as he asked, “You a Judge?”

“Not yet,” Joe replied. “I’m training to be one.” He wasn’t entirely sure where to look.

“I could be a Judge,” the boy said. “Doesn’t look hard, just tellin’ people what to do all day.”

“And making sure that they do it,” Joe said. “Enforcing the law is considerably more work than just declaring it.”

The boy nodded for a moment, then asked, “What?”

Before Joe could answer, the boy propped himself up on one elbow and with his free hand reached out towards Joe’s boot. “How much for the boots? Them’re good boots. I’ll give you... six credits. I got the money back in the house. C’mon an’ I’ll—”

“The boots aren’t for sale.”

The boy looked up at Joe again. “Hey, wanna see sumpthin’? Sumpthin’
cool
?”

“No.”

“All right, I’ll
tell
you. It’s a dead dog-vulture, down by the river.” The boy scooted backwards a little. “No one else knows about it an’ I was thinkin’ we could go poke it with a
stick
.”

“Not interested.”

The boy hesitated for a moment, then said, “You’ll
like
it. It’s on the way ta where that old Judge’s body is up on the cross. Yeah, some old fella came in a few months back an’ he was tryna arrest Stumpy Nigel fer sumpthin’, an’ Stumpy’s missus put a bullet in the Judge’s back. They stringed him up an’ left him ta die.”

Joe stared down at him. “You telling the truth?”

“Sure, yeah. That’s why I hadda ask if you was a Judge, on accounta you gotta different costume.”

“It’s a uniform, not a costume.” Joe glanced at the door of the mayor’s store, then said, “All right. Show me.”

The boy grinned and began to propel himself down the street on his skateboard. Joe fell into step next to him.

“You’re from the Meg, right? What’s yer name?”

“Joe Dredd.”

“I’m Lamb.”

“That’s... An unusual name.”

“Yeah. When I was bornd the mayor ast my maw, ‘Whatcha wanna call ’im?’ and she said, ‘Name him after his father,’ an’ then she passed out an’ the mayor ast around who my paw was, an’ someone teld him my paw was on the lam.”

Lamb talked constantly as they made their way through the small town, but the further they travelled from the mayor’s store, the quieter the boy became. They reached a crossroads, and Lamb inclined his head to the right. “We gotta go down this way to th’ river. I’ll hafta climb over the fence, so that’s gonna be tricky an’ you’ll hafta help me.”

Lamb scooted around the corner. “Normally, see, when I get to the fence I tie a rope around the board an’ then I hafta drag it over when I get to the other side, unless I wanna crawl all the way to the gate, but that takes even longer. You can just throw it over for me. That’ll save time.” He grinned up at Joe. “An’ you won’t just keep the board or throw it away or anythin’ like that, right? We’re friends now, right?”

“Don’t you have any other friends?” Joe asked.

“Sure, yeah. There’s my
maw
, an’... an’ my gramma, an’ there’s my half-sister Emily, but she’s only three. Mosta the other kids in town don’t liketa play with me ’cos I can’t run.” He stopped, and pointed ahead. “All right, there’s the fence. We’re nearly there.”

The crude wooden fence was less than a metre high.

Joe crouched down next to the boy, grabbed him around the chest and lifted him over the fence, then scooped up the skateboard and climbed over.

Lamb laughed as he slithered back onto the board. “That was great! No one’s ever lifted me before!” He began to propel himself down the gently-sloping riverbank. “Come on, I’ll show you where the dog-vulture is. There’s all, like, maggots an’ beetles all over it. Crawlin’ in its eyes and outta its mouth—it’s really cool.”

“I’d rather see the body of the Judge.”

“Yeah, okay... Only, it’s pretty
far
an’ I’m not sposta go there an’ I’m not even sposta
know
about it, I think, an’...”

“You’re lying,” Joe said. “Is there a dead Judge or not?”

Lamb looked down at the ground. “They tole me to get ridda you. They got
guns
.” He looked up at Joe. “They beat up the lady Judge an’ said they’d kill my maw if I didn’t distrack you but
you
can stop them, can’t you? You’re nearly a
Judge
.”

Joe felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck. “They’re already here.”

Mega-City One

2080 AD

Eight

Z
EDERICK
M
ARYBETH
D’A
NNUNZIO
winced as the med-Judge poked a long, thin probe into the wound on his thigh.

“Through and through,” the med-Judge said to Dredd. “No fragments, missed the bone. Some minor vessel damage... Should heal nicely.”

They were in D’Annunzio’s apartment, with the landlord stretched out on a long canvas-covered sofa. Dredd had insisted that D’Annunzio be removed from Chalk’s apartment—“he’s already contaminated the scene; let’s not make it worse”—and D’Annunzio had complained and moaned as he dragged himself up the stairs.

Dredd was sure D’Annunzio was hamming it up, but right now wasn’t the time to cite the citizen for slowing the progress of an investigation.

The med-Judge finished cleaning and sealing the wound. “That’ll do it. Keep off the leg for the next forty-eight hours, citizen.” He turned to Dredd. “Heard about Pendleton and Collins. They were good Judges. That’s on you.”

Dredd ignored that. “Check on Ruiz. Any change in her condition, let me know immediately.”

“I’m just saying that—”

Dredd nodded toward the door. “You’re done here. Out.”

The med-Judge hesitated for a second, then gathered his equipment and left the apartment.

“D’Annunzio, you lucid?”

“What? No! I never touch the stuff!”

“I mean, are you clear-headed right now?”

“Oh. Yeah.” The man looked down at his leg. The med-Judge had sliced through his brand-new FantyPance to get access to the wound. “Feels a bit numb, but kinda nice, y’know? Whatever was in that hypo is doing the trick. So how much am I gonna get?”

“Get?”

“You know. Compo. I got shot ’cos of you, and now I’ve gotta repair a window and two doors, plus these pants ain’t cheap. So what’s the deal?”

“The deal is that you tell me everything you know about Percival Chalk and I don’t haul you in on any of the dozen violations I can see right now without turning my head. Drag your heels and I’ll order a full investigation on this rat-hole. Everything you’ve
ever
done will be brought to light. You understand me?”

“Look, I don’t know what you want! I already told you I didn’t know Chalk. Never even
saw
the guy!”

“That door in the lobby. Security glass, bullet-proof. Expensive. Why’d you have that installed?”

D’Annunzio shuffled himself into a sitting position. “We had some trouble a couple of years back. Guy came here after a ten-stretch... Roman Chantell, his name was. In for assault. Some creeps came lookin’ for him. They shot the place up. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“That model door is fitted with an intercom and camera.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t wired up. It would have cost me an extra five grand, and the sort of tenants we have here don’t get many visitors, so I didn’t bother.”

Dredd pulled out his radio-mike. “Dredd to control... Send the tech-team out to retrieve the door—they’ll know which one—and extract the inbuilt camera. I want names and details of every face captured in the past two months.”

“On the way, Dredd.”

D’Annunzio asked, “What for? I told you the camera wasn’t wired up.”