Judge Dredd

TWENTY-SIX

Dredd felt the ground coming up. Plenty of time to think. Hour, hour and a half. Time works different somehow. Wham. Drop. Fall on your face. Stationary target. Get the hell up. He clobbers you again and you’re flat-ass dead…

Dredd pushed the darkness aside. Just enough to wake up motor control for a tiny little nudge to the right. Not bad. Good. He hit the dirt hard.

“Gaht-su, Tread! Got-su, you sinner sum-bish!”

Pa Angel’s staff came down again. Missed. Half an inch is good as a mile.

Dredd reached out and grabbed a filthy foot. Nothing. The action took place in his head. His hand was paralyzed. Pa Angel kicked him in the knee. Dredd howled and rolled away. He thought about Herman Ferguson. Ferguson and his brick. What was he doing that was more important than this? Your own fault, Dredd. Count on a criminal type you deserve whatever you get.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the scarecrow loom up above him, the staff gripped in his scrawny hands, the weapon raised up behind his shoulders, ready for the deathblow, ready for the kill.

And in that instant, in a second, in a breath, he watched the dirty hood fall away, saw the scarred and razored flesh, saw the leather thongs tangled in strange configuration, in ritual array, lacing the horror’s ruined face, covering the darkness where ears and nose and mouth and eyes of madness used to be.

The Reverend Billy Joe Angel bellowed out his rage and swept his weapon down, and Dredd knew he didn’t have time, that this was the one where he wouldn’t walk away, the one where a blind man had fooled him with a stick and a pile of smelly rags when he wasn’t really there, and Dredd wished it might have happened any other way, nearly any way but that—

“HUUUUUK!” Something exploded in the ragman’s belly and scattered him in several bloody parts.

Dredd pulled himself up, stared at the Judge Hunters dropping from the ceiling, blasting through the wall, following the drill the way they’d trained to do, fast and quick and clean. One, two, three… maybe more outside but only three in here.

Dredd threw himself at half a wall as gunfire stitched a pattern at his feet. A visored figure came right at him, firing an ugly weapon black as night. Dredd pulled Junior Head-Dead’s revolver from his belt, squeezed the trigger and fired. Lead struck the visor, glanced off the armored plastic and whined off into the air. The Hunter paused a fraction of a second, thrown off his guard. Dredd came in low. The gun clattered to the ground. Dredd raised up, jerked the Hunter’s helmet off his head, and slammed it across the man’s jaw.

He heard the sound behind him, knew there were two. Picked up the Judge Hunter’s gun, fired it in a circle an inch above the ground. The first man stopped, stared at his leg and went down. Dredd swung his weapon by the barrel, and smashed the Hunter’s face. He glanced at the Hunter he’d shot in the foot. The man cursed him and started up again. Dredd kicked him soundly in the head.

Okay, three. Everybody down. He swept the weapon around the room to make sure.

Fergie walked out of the corridor, clutching half a brick in his hand.

“You’re not going to finish ’em off? Why the hell not?”

Dredd looked at him. “Because I’m innocent, remember?”

Fergie shrugged. “Yeah, I remember. So? You think those groons give a damn about that?”

“Thanks for jumping in,” Dredd said. “I appreciate the help.”

“Hey, I was ready, you know? You were terrific, man. I said to myself, I said, ‘Fergie, you can hop in the ring and finish these guys, but if you do, you’re going to knock Dredd’s timing off. You’re gonna’—shiiiit, Dredd!”

Dredd swung around in a blur. The Hunter was up on his knees, finger on the trigger of his weapon. His head exploded in a shower of red. Dredd stared at the man in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the stars. The Remington hanging from his hand, the long duster coat…

“Fargo?” Dredd took a cautious step forward. Maybe he was tired, maybe it was somebody else.

Fargo showed him a weary grin. “Welcome to Cursed Earth, Joseph. Hell of a place we’ve created out here. I guess hell’s the right word, all right.”

Fargo glanced at the dead Hunter, then looked back at Dredd.

“I’d like to say I felt something for him. I’d like to, but I don’t.” He studied Fergie a moment, decided he was too tired to ask who Dredd’s companion might be.

“I don’t guess I’m who I was when I came out here. I don’t think anyone could be. You have any water, Joseph? I ran out half a day ago.”

“Yes, sir. Sit down. Please.”

Dredd nodded at Fergie. Fergie searched the room, and came back with two glass jars of water. Fargo took a healthy swig, letting the liquid trickle down his chin.

“Tastes good.” He leaned back, took off his hat and wiped his brow. He looked about the room and smiled.

“A little irony, I guess. You and me and the others winding up here.”

“Sir?” Dredd raised a brow.

“Don’t know where you are, do you? Those columns, that piece of carving up there… This is a courtroom, Joseph. Or used to be. That, part of a face, what’s left of it. Up there?”

“Yes, sir.” Dredd agreed, though he wasn’t certain what he could or couldn’t see.

“That’s the blind lady. Justice. Before your time. Mostly before mine, too. She treated everyone the same. No favors, no secrets. A jury of ordinary people. Hard to believe that one, but it’s true. They decided. Not us. We should never have taken the law out of their hands.”

Dredd shook his head. “You had to. You brought order out of chaos.”

“That we did. Solved a hell of a lot of problems. And created more than we knew how to handle.”

He saw Dredd’s confusion, and laid a hand on his arm. He seemed to hesitate, lost for a moment in thought.

“I never thought we’d be sitting here together. Or that I might have the chance to tell you what I could never tell you before. To be a Judge, to decide the fate of thousands of lives during your career, I think that’s… too much power in one man’s hands. Too much, Joseph. For me, you, any man.”

He looked right at Dredd. Dredd read the doubt in the old man’s eyes, the sorrow and regret, the pain of recalling a past that was written in the stone of lost years.

“I once tried to compensate for that,” he said. “To strike some kind of balance, to eliminate the mistakes we might make, to put Justice beyond the possibility of error. We tried to… to create the perfect Judge. We called it Janus.”

Dredd frowned. “I don’t understand, sir. I’ve never heard that name before.”

Fargo shook his head. “No, no you haven’t. It was forty years ago, Joseph. To create the perfect Judge, DNA samples were taken from all members of the Council. The samples were analyzed and studied. One was chosen for the Janus project. Mine. It was then refined again and again. Altered to enhance the best qualities and screen out the worst. Weaknesses. Frailties. Any physical or mental characteristics that might obstruct the purpose of the project. We… we created you, Joseph.”

Dredd’s breath caught in his throat. “Me? Sir, that couldn’t be. I—”

“Listen to me.” Fargo shook his head. “Let me finish this.”

“I had real parents. I wasn’t made by any… project!”

“Yes, you were, Joseph.”

“No!”

“Joseph…”

Dredd gripped Fargo’s arm. “My parents were killed. When I was just a kid. They told me at the Academy. You told me!”

“It was a lie.”

“I have a picture of my parents!”

“You have a fake, a lie.” Fargo shook him off. “We lied to both of you!”

“Both of—both of who?”

Fargo wouldn’t look at him. “There was another person created in that experiment. But something went wrong. Terribly wrong.”

Dredd blinked in sudden understanding. “I have a brother?”

“Yes.”

“And what went wrong with him? Is he dead, did he die?”

“He didn’t die. You were best friends at the Academy. Inseparable. Both of you star pupils. Then he… turned. Went bad. We didn’t know until then. We created one perfect Judge, and another who genetically mutated into the perfect criminal.” Fargo stopped. “And for his crimes… you judged him.”

Dredd came to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “Rico? You let me judge my own brother and never told me!”

“I couldn’t, Joseph. You were like a son to me.”

“A son!” Dredd’s hand swept out and grabbed the water jar from Fargo, shattered it against the wall. The parched earth drank the precious fluid at once.

“Rico had to be killed,” Fargo said. “To protect you. To protect the city.”

“To protect yourself, you mean.”

“Yes. That’s true. God help me, I cannot deny that. I did it for myself, for all of us, for—”

“Wait, wait…”

It struck him, then, like a physical blow, real and so suddenly clear it nearly brought him to his knees.

“Rico. He’s not dead.” He stared at Fargo. “Rico’s still alive.”

Fargo looked at his hands. “No, he’s not dead, Joseph. He’s alive. I signed the order myself. He’s in Aspen Prison. Special quarters there. I couldn’t—I couldn’t destroy him, whatever he was. He’s part of me. Part of you.”

Dredd struck his fist against the wall. “Damn it, don’t you see it?” He gripped Fargo’s shoulders. “I didn’t kill Hammond. He did. It was his DNA that convicted me. Our DNA. It was Rico. I don’t know where the hell he is right now, but he’s not in Aspen Prison!”

“Oh, Joseph, Joseph…”

All the color drained from Fargo’s face. He looked at his hands, as if he might make the whole thing go away.

“How, though? How could he…” He looked up at Dredd. “Griffin. It has to be. There’s no one else. He’s deceived us both. Sent us both to hell and brought Rico back.”

“The Janus project.”

“Yes. Of course.” Fargo’s eyes went cold. “He’s going to do it. He’s going to activate the project, open up that box of horrors again.”

Dredd shook his head. “No. He won’t. Griffin can’t do anything without Rico. We get to Rico and we stop Griffin cold.”

“Joseph—”

“Sir. I will stop him. There are ways to get into Mega-City, we both know that.”

“It’s not that easy. You don’t know, Joseph.”

“I know I can sit on my butt in this pesthole and die!” Dredd’s voice clattered off the walls. “I know I will not do that, sir. He took my badge away from me. That’s all I ever had, and I will get it back!”

Fargo slowly pulled himself to his feet. Dredd thought he looked every one of his years. Dust filled the lines of his face, a map of his long days of service, of giving himself to a cause he was no longer sure had been a just cause at all.

What of all those years now? Dredd wondered. What had it come to, his faith in the system, in himself?

Dredd had never imagined he could look at this man with any feelings except those of respect, devotion. Fargo had been like a father to him, the only father he’d ever known. Now, with the twisted irony of truth, he knew that Fargo was his father, in blood as well as name. And with that realization came the shadow of doubt, the confusion of love and hate—rage, sadness, despair.

Dredd felt the heat rise to his face, the heat of sudden shame. Emotion of any kind had always troubled him deeply, and now those emotions battled with one another, clashed like dark and angry stormclouds in his head. That terrible conflict paralyzed him with doubt. He wanted to turn away, be anywhere but here. He wanted to reject his father for what he’d done… to go to him, tell him he understood, that he, himself, felt the torment of the decision this man had been forced to make. Right or wrong, he had followed his heart, served in the best way he could…

And as he watched the old man in the long duster coat, watched him as he looked out at the cold night stars as if he sensed Dredd’s thoughts, as if he knew that he, too, was being judged, judged by the son he had created, loved, and finally betrayed, as Dredd watched his father’s tall silhouette, another shadow rose, stirred, brought itself up on its haunches, came out of the dark with the quickness, with the awesome blurring speed of a snake, striking before Dredd could move, before the message of danger could flash from his senses to his brain.

Mean Machine screamed, a high-pitched senseless babble of sound, a hymn of joy and death. Fargo sucked in a single breath. His arms and legs went rigid, his head snapped back, his hat slid across his face. Mean Machine’s blade arm ripped through Fargo’s back, lifting him off the ground.

Fergie sat far away from the ruins, alone out in the night. He didn’t like it out there. It scared the hell out of him to be alone in the dark. But it didn’t scare him half as much as staying back there. Not after what had happened, not after what he’d seen. Sitting out here with the scorpions and centipedes and the god-awful spiders bigger than his head was better than being back there. Better than being in that building with Dredd.