“What are your town’s defences?” Ramini asked.
“Well, the canyon keeps a lot of the natural predators out,” O’Donnell said. “Or it did. Couple of years back one of the seams ran dry, and this geologist the Hanenbergers brought out said it’d be easier and cheaper to blast the canyon walls than it would be to open a new mine.” He let out a long sigh. “Pity about that geologist. I kinda liked her. I thought she might keep in touch, but she never returned any of my calls. Anyway... So we used to have these great big near-vertical walls a hundred metres high, with guard towers on top so we could see the Earthers coming. Now we’ve just got a fifty-metre watchtower in the centre of town. It’s better than nothing.”
“Earthers?” Dredd asked.
Montag said, “Colloquial name for denizens of the Cursed Earth. Anyone who doesn’t live in the town or the Meg. Mostly mutants.”
“That’s right,” O’Donnell said. “You been outside the city before, Montag?”
“Not since I was a cadet.”
“Oh, right. The old hot-dog run, huh? I always thought that maybe that was a way to make sure you Judges realised how cushy life in the city is compared to out here.”
Dredd asked, “If you’re the deputy of Ezekiel, who’s the sheriff?”
“Alfonsa Hanenberger. But she’s sheriff in name only: she mostly leaves the day-to-day stuff to me.”
Three minutes later, O’Donnell dropped the shuttle through a gap in the death-belt’s debris stream—the craft was rocked twice with the sudden loss and then regain of gravity—and then Dredd saw the town of Ezekiel spread out before them.
The walls of the canyon were almost completely gone. They had been stripped back layer by layer, and now the town was at the centre of a two-kilometre-wide cone made up of unnaturally accurate concentric rings, each about three metres high. Clouds of grey dust drifted and skidded across the geometric landscape, and if it hadn’t been for the occasional building or vehicle, Dredd would have had a hard time figuring out the scale.
O’Donnell said, “Now, we’ve gone about as far as we can with the strip-mining, so it’s all turned around again. Lately the pickings have been so slim that it’s cheaper to go back to mining the seams. Could be why the Earthers are increasing their raids: they mostly kept away when everyone was working outside.”
“Hold at this height,” Dredd said. As the craft slowed to a hover, he examined the landscape ahead. “Raiders can only easily approach over land from the north and south along the canyon bed. Any reason you can’t create barricades?”
“Because we need the roads clear. The trucks that take the ore away are huge, and their schedules are calculated to the nearest minute—any barricade will slow things down, and Hanenberger is a stickler for schedules.”
Ramini said, “Turn us around three-sixty. Keep it slow and steady.”
As the landscape rotated past the shuttle’s cockpit, Dredd took note of everything. To the north, a huge array of medium-sized, identical hills: presumably spoil from the strip-mining. To the east, nothing but broken, dried land criss-crossed by drifting shadows from the debris-laden death-belts above. The view south-west was almost completely obscured by a dense, slowly rotating, ten-kilometre-wide dust-cloud.
“That’s been there for about five months now.” O’Donnell explained. “They don’t usually last so long.”
“It stays in the same spot?” Montag asked.
“Pretty much, yeah. It’s safe enough, as long as you seal your vehicle’s vents. You just can’t see more than a few metres ahead. We get hit by smaller, more powerful storms from time to time. You ever been caught in a rad-storm, Judge? Without the right protection you’re dead in seconds. I heard that there was this band of slay-riders heading for the Mississippi, couple of years back, and a sudden storm hit them. The only survivor was this teenage kid they’d taken. They had her tied up in the back of this old truck they used to transport their prisoners, so she was safe from the storm. But the slay-riders were exposed, riding on horses and grazelles and bullwolfs, a couple on motorbikes... She said that the storm hit them instantly, absolutely no warning. One second, clear skies. Next second, everything was dark and the riders were screaming. The storm didn’t last long, but when it was over the riders had been skeletonised. Every speck of flesh and blood had been blasted away. You don’t get that in the city, huh?”
“No,” Dredd said. “Weather-control.”
O’Donnell shifted the craft out of hover-mode and resumed the approach toward the town. “Exactly. All the mega-cities have their satellites working overtime to keep the elements out, makes sure it’s not too hot or too cold. In the Meg you let the people vote on whether they want sunshine or rainbows or a gentle fall of pretty snowflakes. They think that’s what the weather-control is for, don’t they? They’ve no idea that it’s about the only thing that’s saving them from being sand-blasted, scorched, frozen or irradiated out of existence.” He pointed toward the wide, slow-moving stream of detritus floating overhead. “Y’know, I heard that the weather-control satellites use the same gravity-distorting tech that created the death-belts in the first place.”
Ahead, the small town was laid out in a simple pattern: three long north-to-south streets split by five shorter cross-streets. Though some of the buildings were old-fashioned wooden-framed structures, anything that had been constructed since the war was squat, not more than two storeys high, with small windows and tapered walls: “Best way to ride out the storms without too much damage,” O’Donnell had told the Judges.
The shuttle touched down on a plaza in the centre of the town, where a small group of people was waiting in the shadow of a steel-framed watchtower. As O’Donnell was shutting down the controls, he said to Dredd, “Woman with the tricorn hat and the long coat? That’s Alfonsa Hanenberger. She’s the sheriff—self-appointed, of course—and she’s pissed as hell that your Sector Chief has only sent you three, so best not to get on her bad side, yeah? Make a good impression.”
“The others?” Dredd asked.
“The two women with the blasters on their hips are her bodyguards. Mercenaries. There’s eleven of them in total. Most of them guard the mine. The three older guys are Hanenberger’s advisors. Far as I can tell, their main job is to find evidence that proves anything she does is right.”
Dredd, Ramini and Montag followed O’Donnell out of the shuttle and toward the waiting group.
Alfonsa Hanenberger was thirty-four years old, but had the mottled, wrinkled skin and stooped posture of a woman twice that age: her Justice Department files mentioned a rare hereditary skin-condition. Given that she was worth several billion credits, it struck Dredd as odd that she hadn’t had rejuvenation treatments.
Hanenberger walked up to the Judges and looked them up and down, then stepped back and addressed Dredd. “Grud... you’re a child! What the hell is Benzon thinking? How long have you been a Judge?”
“Seventeen months since I graduated from the Academy.”
“Seventeen months? I got food in my fridge that’s older than that! What am I supposed to do with a rookie Judge who still has diaper-rash? I’ve got bands of Earthers swarming down on my town and shooting the place up, and the city sends me two women and a Judge who’s so wet behind the ears it’s a wonder his helmet hasn’t gone rusty.”
Hanenberger’s advisors chuckled at that, but it was obvious to Dredd that their amusement was forced. When the boss makes a joke, you laugh.
Hanenberger looked down at the Lawgiver in Dredd’s boot-holster. “You ever even fired that thing? ’Cos out here, a man who doesn’t know how to use his gun might as well trade it in for a shovel and start digging his own grave.” She stepped back from Dredd and turned around, pointing to the top of a nearby building. “See that weather-vane? If you can’t hit that from here, you’re no use to me.”
“I can hit it,” Dredd said.
“As they’re fond of saying around here, Judge, talkin’ ain’t doin’. Show me.”
“No. W
aste of ammunition.”
Slowly, Hanenberger turned back to face him. “No? Judge, I own this town. You do whatever I tell you.”
Ramini said, “We’re here to help defend the town and keep the peace. Not to perform tricks for you, Miss Hanenberger. Your social status will have no influence on how we do our job.”
The woman peered at Ramini through half-closed eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Glad to hear it. Last thing I need around here is another bunch of yes-men too scared to speak up if they see something wrong.”
One of her advisors muttered, “Damn straight,” and Hanenberger threw him a withering glance before turning back to the Judges. “All right. O’Donnell here is deputy sheriff, you follow his lead. Don’t forget that you’re not in Mega-City One now—we’ve got our own laws here in Ezekiel. Screw up and you’re out.” She turned and walked away, with her entourage following her to the largest building on the edge of the plaza.
O’Donnell approached the Judges. “That went well. Okay. I’ll get you settled in. First thing tomorrow I’ll give you a tour of the town and the mine, then—”
“We’ll do it now,” Dredd said.
“No, we won’t. I went straight from a ten-hour shift to pick you up, so I’m due some down-time. Relax, Dredd. Put your feet up for the rest of the day.”
“Where are our quarters?”
“I’ve cleared out space in my basement. It’s not what you’d call five-star accommodation, just three beds, but—”
“It’ll do,” Ramini said. “We’re going to take a look around.”
“Not without me. Some of the people around here are liable to start shooting if they see Judges coming.”
Ramini picked an arbitrary direction and began to walk. Montag and Dredd fell into step beside her. “We can handle ourselves.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” O’Donnell called after them.
Ezekiel appeared to have been constructed on the remains of an older town; here and there Dredd spotted old moss-covered bricks and cracked paving slabs, and some of the town’s older buildings had been constructed from weather-beaten wooden panels, patched and re-patched dozens of times. Windows were small and either shuttered or made from shatter-proof glass.
The streets of Ezekiel were mostly packed dirt; during the wet season, it would be like wading through a swamp.
The Judges reached the north end of the town without encountering any people, animals or vehicles, but as they turned west toward the mine they heard two short blasts of a siren.
Montag froze. “I don’t like the sound of that. A warning siren?”
“End of shift at the mine, is my guess,” Ramini said.
Within minutes dust-covered citizens began filing out of the mine’s entrance. Others—presumably part of the next shift—were lining up outside, and as each worker exited they handed their pickaxes and shovels to the next person in line.
“Efficient,” Dredd said.
“Cost-effective, too,” Ramini replied. “Check out the mine, Dredd.”
As she and Montag walked on, Dredd stopped to watch the miners, mentally noting faces and distinguishing features. Most of them appeared to be normal, with perhaps twenty per cent showing visible mutations. One young man had a second, poorly-formed face on the side of his head, another lacked a nose or ears. A middle-aged woman who passed by was sleeveless, her arms covered in thumb-sized bumps, each bump containing something dark at its core, just beneath the skin.
While many of the citizens spotted Dredd and nudged their colleagues, the first one to approach him was a middle-aged bear of a man with a thick off-white beard and eyebrows like arctic caterpillars. “The heck is a Judge doing here?”
“Brought in to supplement the town’s security,” Dredd said. “Who are you?”
“Ishmael Stinnett. I’m the town’s preacher. Have you been saved, Judge?”
“Not interested.”
“That’s not what I asked. In the end, the Lord Grud turns his big squinty eye upon us all, even Judges. What we do in this life is an audition for the next. Our lives on Earth are the box containing the cereal, not the cereal itself, nor the awesome plastic prize within!” Stinnett pinched the back of his hand. “This flesh-cloak is merely the film canister that holds the unpleasant short, grainy travelogue that heralds the awesome all-star main feature! Do you understand? This human existence is but the clam before the storm!”
“The clam?” Dredd asked, even though he didn’t want to be drawn into this conversation. “You mean the calm?”
“No, the clam! The oyster that holds the Pearl of Eternal Truth. ‘Give unto others and be ye not shellfish,’ sayeth the Lord, ‘for, um, its flesh be-eth foul and slimy and looketh like unto a mighty lump of snot, yea, and such.’ Praise Grud!” He reached inside his dust-covered jacket and pulled out a dog-eared pamphlet. “You should read this. I know you come from the city of the darned, but even you can be spared Grud’s hefty wrath—even for the worst sinner there is always time to repent, except right at the end when it’s too late. Praise Grud! Praise him!”
“Save your sermon for someone else,” Dredd said.
Stinnett froze, and stared at Dredd. “I said, praise him!”
“Not today.” Dredd resisted the urge to arrest the man for harassment and charge him with preaching without a licence, reminding himself that things were different out here. “Move along.”
“The wrath of Grud be on you, Judge Dredd! He sees all, he knows all! He will smite the lawless!”
“Then Grud and I have something in common.” Dredd walked away, still watching the other mine-workers.
The preacher called after him, “Big one’s coming, Judge! You better know which side you’re on! Grud knows, you bet he does!”
A dark-haired woman waiting to enter the mine said, “You’d do well to steer clear of Preacher Stinnett, Judge. Or if you can’t avoid him, just agree with anything he says. It makes things a lot easier.”
“Advice noted, citizen. You are?”
“Eloise Crow.”
“You’re a miner?”
She smiled. “Why, thank you for the compliment, kind stranger! It’s just my youthful looks.”
Dredd didn’t know what to do with that. Obviously, she was deliberately confusing the homonyms ‘miner’ and ‘minor’ for humorous effect, but he wasn’t sure why. She could be flirting, or just engaging in banter. Rico would have known the difference; he was good at that sort of thing. They’d been trained at the Academy of Law to recognise and resist attempts at flattery, but it wasn’t an area in which Dredd considered himself an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Officially Judges were forbidden from entering into romantic relationships, but that didn’t stop some of them. And there were certainly members of the public who pursued Judges. That was something Dredd could understand: Judges were healthy, committed, and uncompromising. They were also—technically—unobtainable, and for some reason people are drawn to what they’re told they can’t have.
Rico had given in to his base urges and indulged in physical relationships, Dredd knew, and that was a sign of weakness, not to mention a potentially huge security risk. Even though the citizens should know better, Dredd himself had so far been offered sex on seventeen different occasions. Those offers had resulted in sixteen on-the-spot fines for attempted bribery and one arrest for assaulting a Judge.
When the class of ’seventy-nine were eighteen-year-old cadets, Ellard had taken Joe aside one day and said, “One of the others wants you. Physically, I mean. I’m not saying who. Just warning you, Joe. Don’t go reporting this, okay? I’m just letting you know so you can watch out for it.” Nothing had happened after that—at least, nothing Dredd had noticed—but it had troubled him a little, and he’d often wondered whether Ellard had concocted the story for personal reasons, maybe to unsettle him and throw him off his game. If that was the case, it had almost worked. Almost.
Now, Dredd looked down at Eloise Crow and wondered how
he should respond, but he was saved from that dilemma by the arrival of a man of about Crow’s age, who strode up to her and slipped his arm around her waist.
The man nodded at Dredd. “I heard we were getting some Judges. Good to have you here. I’m Travis Crow, Eloise’s husband.” He leaned a little closer to Dredd. “You want to watch yourself with some of these folk, Judge. They’re not happy you’re here.”
“People with something to hide are rarely pleased to see a Judge,” Dredd said, a little relieved to be on familiar territory once more.
Eloise said, “We have ways of getting things done in Ezekiel that might not sit well with you.”
“Such as?”
She shrugged. “Hopefully you won’t have to find out.”
At the mine’s entrance, a burly woman wearing dusty, battered body-armour called out, “Aaannnd... that’s the last one! Next shift, you’re up! C’mon, get moving! Ore ain’t gonna mine itself!” She had a shotgun slung over one shoulder, and a pair of powerful-looking handguns on her hips, the same models as Hanenberger’s bodyguards used.
The Crows nodded to Dredd once more, then followed their colleagues into the mine.
Dredd walked up to the burly woman. She was perhaps sixty years old, and kept watch on the miners as she greeted him. Past her, further into the mine, he could see at least four more similarly-dressed women.
“So you’re the bump in the town’s security. Just three Judges.”
“Yes,” Dredd said. “Who are you?”
“Santiago, mine supervisor.”
“You’re a mercenary.”
She shrugged. “No law against that, is there?”
“Not out here.” Dredd moved to step past her into the mine, but she put out her arm to stop him.
“No unsupervised access.”
“Then supervise me.”
Santiago called to one of her colleagues to take her place, then walked side-by-side with Dredd through the winding, low-ceilinged tunnel.
Judge Dredd: Year Two Page 5