Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  O'Mannion left, smiling back through the diminishing slit of the closing door as she went. In the suddenly silent con-apt, Zandonella and the pig looked at each other.

  The first thing that Zandonella did was take down the shower curtain and spread it across her beloved carpet in the living room, so that when the inevitable happened she would merely have to clean pig excrement off the plastic curtain and not out of the deep, rich ruby fibres of her carpet. Then she sat nervously, legs curled under her on her pale blue, synthetic leather sofa, watching the pig.

  The pig lay disconsolately on the plastic shower curtain, strangely subdued. The mischief seemed to have gone from its dark eyes as it watched her. The sunlight gradually faded from the window of the living room and the room eventually fell into darkness.

  Her guest seemed disinclined to move from its spot on the living room floor so Zandonella went to bed and left it there. What else could she do? She turned off the lights and climbed onto the sloshing softness of her waterbed. Normally, she found sleep as soon as she put her face to the cool liquid slope of the double membrane. But tonight she was keenly aware of another breathing presence, another living thing, out there in the darkness of the next room.

  When Zandonella finally managed to go to sleep she was almost immediately jolted awake by a noise. It was a familiar roaring sound, but so unexpected that she snapped awake in response to it, all her faculties honed sharp by a burst of adrenaline. The toilet was being flushed.

  Who was flushing her toilet? Zandonella lay there for a moment, disoriented, and then she heard the clatter of hooves in the hallway. Little pig hooves crossing the tiled floor of the bathroom, and then falling into silence again as they passed out into the carpeted softness of the living room.

  Zandonella sprang to her feet, walked to the living room, and put the lights on. The pig was sitting there on the plastic shower curtain in the middle of the floor looking up at her, patiently, attentively. The only noise was the hissing and the gurgle of the pipes as the toilet patiently finished its automatic refill.

  At exactly 06.00 hours, Dredd came and collected Zandonella and the pig from the rooftop of her building with the Floating Weapons Platform. The FWP also contained Darrid, the perennially ill-smelling Carver and the Karst sisters. No sign of O'Mannion though. Zandonella relaxed and buckled herself into a seat. The pig came and sat at her feet, his warm back pressing into her shins. As the weapons platform rose into the Mega-City sky, Zandonella found herself absent-mindedly scratching Porkditz behind the ear. He responded by rolling his head with pleasure.

  Zandonella had dubbed the pig Porkditz because the History Channel had recently featured an obscure programme about the daring escape of a number of prisoners from the World War Two castle prison called Colditz, and somehow she associated the pig with daring escapes.

  As Dredd sat in the cockpit piloting them towards the city dump, a holographic briefing appeared in the rear of the FWP, showing the Judges, and the oddly attentive Porkditz, the details of their mission.

  "This is the target," said Dredd over the intercom. The glowing hologram showed a pale green donut shape floating in mid-air. "It's the factory farm which is being concealed in the municipal dump. A big operation, large enough to house thousands of animals and the facilities for slaughtering them. The unit was salvaged from a high orbit space station, and it has been adapted for use in the atmosphere. It is a steel structure in the shape of a toroid."

  "What's that?" whispered Carver.

  "Like what you see there," said Zandonella. "Like a donut."

  "I wish I had a donut," said Carver.

  "Shut up," said Darrid. "I'm trying to listen."

  "The factory is not, repeat, not, in the municipal dump itself," said Dredd. "It is floating above it."

  "Floating?" whispered Carver.

  "It is suspended from a large helium balloon which is hanging in the air above the dump," said Dredd. Above the donut hologram appeared a pale green ball, its diameter somewhat larger than that of the donut itself. "High tension alloy cables attach the circular farm unit to the balloon." A series of glowing white lines appeared, attaching the balloon to the donut and then the view swung around so that the donut could be seen floating edge on, suspended flat in mid-air with the ball floating above it.

  A small glowing dot appeared a metre away from the ball and donut. "That dot is our vehicle," said Dredd. "As you can see we will be making contact with our target shortly. Prepare for assault, using hover-chutes."

  The hover-chutes were triangular shapes that hung above the wearer like a conventional parachute, but jet propulsion units on the convergent sides of the triangle allowed the user to hover and to steer. They were the ideal means of deployment for a raid on the factory farm and Zandonella was glad to be using one. Porkditz the pig, however, didn't seem so pleased.

  The armourers at Justice Central had adapted a harness on one of the chutes so that it could be used for the pig. It was Zandonella's job to strap Porkditz into the harness and then push him out of the weapons platform into mid-air. The first part of the procedure went easily enough, the pig submitting trustfully as she adjusted the padded black nylon harness around his tubular pink body. Porkditz seemed to think it was all some kind of game, his tail wagging cheerfully. But then Zandonella fastened the Velcro fasteners on the harness and began to urge Porkditz towards the door of the FWP. The door was open and cool air was blowing in. Below was a straight drop of over one hundred metres to the streets of the Mega-City. Porkditz sensibly refused to go out, digging his trotters into the metal floor of the weapons platform. Zandonella had to grab him and push him out.

  The controls for Porkditz's chute had been linked to Zandonella's, with thin, silver umbilical cables into an improvised tandem unit. All of which meant that when Porkditz went out the door, Zandonella had no choice but to follow.

  She tumbled out into thin air, heading for their target.

  FOUR

  The Trinny and Susannah Municipal Dump was a landfill site, a huge circular crater into which, as the name suggested, countless tonnes of city garbage were dumped every day. The angry smoke of millions of burning tyres perpetually hung over this giant crater as a mountain of discarded rubber was consumed in a slow, endless inferno, giving the place the appearance of a sullenly smouldering volcano here in the very heart of the Mega-City.

  It was inside this permanent cloud of choking, acrid brown smoke that the factory farm was concealed, hanging on its balloon, although Zandonella couldn't see any sign of it yet, and she and Porkditz were already deep inside the sour, billowing dark cloud. The floating bulk of the weapons platform had vanished in the distance behind them, set on autopilot by Judge Dredd to hover unmanned at a constant altitude, obediently awaiting their return.

  Dredd's voice crackled on Zandonella's headset. "Switch to infrared." She adjusted her goggles and immediately through the smoke she could make out the ghostly sweeping shape of the farm in the distance, like a giant metal pipe curved in a circle, hanging suspended from the bloated sphere of the helium balloon which rose like an eerie full moon above it. Porkditz gave a little yelp and Zandonella realised that even if he couldn't see the farm he must somehow sense its closeness. Perhaps his sensitive nose could detect the smell of it, even through the sulphurous stink of the smoke from the dump. Or perhaps his eyes were more sensitive than a human's.

  In any case, the pig seemed aware of where they were going and didn't seem entirely pleased by the prospect. After all, reflected Zandonella, this was the giant killing machine from which he'd only recently managed to escape.

  Zandonella switched off her goggles. She could make out the shape of the farm now without the help of the infrared, and it emerged as a vast dark shadow within the depths of the smoke.

  Dredd's voice came over her headset again. "Zandonella, you're drifting off to the left. See to it."

  She realised that Dredd was right and promptly corrected the controls of the tandem hover-chutes, aiming them
once again, straight and true, at the middle of the farm. As they grew closer she could see the dark oval shape on the sloping steel hull that was their point of entry. The oval hole was an exhaust duct intended to vent gases from the toroid when it was used as a space station. It was the best way into the farm for a clandestine penetration by the Judges.

  Zandonella steered herself towards the oval opening, Porkditz hanging glumly from his hover-chute beside her. The dark oval grew and grew as they floated silently forward, the tiny jets of the propulsion units on the hover-chutes above them snorting quietly and shedding a fine spray of water vapour as they powered Zandonella and the pig gracefully through the air. The brown curtain of smoke began to part and the true dimensions of the exhaust opening - and therefore the entire structure - became clear to her for the first time. The oval duct was big enough to accommodate perhaps three of the jumbo-sized Floating Weapons Platforms. So why had they left the FWP back there and taken the hover-chutes?

  The ring-shaped space station itself was big enough to house a population of several thousand personnel, especially if they were packed together Mega-City intensive-housing style. Several thousand... Zandonella began checking her weapons. Intelligence reports suggested that the farm was automated and virtually unmanned, so they should only meet with the minimum of resistance.

  Zandonella hoped the reports were right.

  As she entered the oval aperture she realised why they'd used hover-chutes for their approach rather than simply flying the weapons platform into it. Directly inside the opening there was a lip several metres deep. But beyond that the opening was sealed with metal strips three metres high and forty metres across, like the slats of a giant venetian blind. The slats were angled, evidently, to allow a certain flow of air into the farm, and consequently they were open just wide enough to allow access for a human being, or a pig.

  On the lip below, the other Judges stood waiting, dismantling their chutes and checking their guns. Zandonella's arrival had been slowed down by the need to steer for her companion and she was the last to get there. She set down on the lip and unbuckled quickly, making up for lost time. As soon as she was free of the chute's harness she unbuckled the pig. Porkditz instantly squirmed free and dashed towards the edge of the lip. Zandonella's heart leapt in her chest and she ran after him.

  "Don't lose the pig!" shouted Dredd, but Porkditz had already come to a halt, staring down over the lip of the duct at the hellish smoke billowing up from the dump far below. There was clearly no escape in that direction. He raised his head and looked at Zandonella as if to say, "It was worth a try," then he turned back to the wide metal slats where Dredd and the others stood waiting. Zandonella breathed with relief and followed him.

  Dredd was waiting impatiently. "I want everyone clear on this," he said. "We want to bust the gang that runs this place. But to get to them we have to penetrate through the slaughterhouse itself. Surveillance has managed to provide a schematic of the interior and intelligence has acquired access to the plans originally used to convert the place, so we have some idea of what to expect, and it's not good. This whole structure is a vast killing machine, designed to eviscerate, decapitate, slice and dice thousands of pigs every day."

  Zandonella couldn't help stealing a glance at Porkditz while Dredd was speaking. The pig gave every appearance of listening attentively to the Judge, his broad and surprisingly delicate-looking pink ears spread wide as if to receive every word. She felt like covering those big floppy ears to prevent him hearing about the bloody fate of his brethren.

  "This is what makes the place so well fortified and so dangerous to penetrate," said Dredd. "We can use this exhaust port as our point of entry, but as soon as we're inside we're going to have to make our way through the abattoir tunnels and the killing chutes."

  "Why?" said Darrid. "Surely there's another way?"

  "Negative," said Dredd. "The farm is designed like two circular pipes, one inside the other. The big pipe on the outside is the farm itself. The smaller pipe running through the centre contains the control rooms and the living quarters of the perps."

  "I don't get it," said Carver helplessly.

  "We have to go through the big pipe to get at the little pipe inside," said Zandonella.

  "Correct," said Dredd. "We have to go through the slaughterhouse to get to the perps. Now this slaughterhouse is equipped with mechanical swing blades and chainsaws and razor-sharp killing knives. They are designed to be triggered by the approach of a pig, but any animal will do." Dredd looked at Carver and Zandonella. "Including rookie Judges. Do I make myself clear?"

  "All except for one small point," said Darrid. "How the hell do we get through this fun house in one piece?"

  Dredd looked down at Porkditz, sitting patiently and alertly at Zandonella's heels. "Our little pink friend, here. He obviously found a safe route through the place on his way out. Now he will be our guide on the way back in."

  "You've got to be kidding," said Darrid.

  "No," said Dredd.

  "We're going to follow that pig?"

  "Yes," said Dredd.

  "And what the hell are we supposed to do once we get inside?" demanded Darrid. "There's only six of us." Seven, thought Zandonella, who was already beginning to think of Porkditz as one of the team.

  "Reinforcements are already arriving," said Dredd.

  "I don't see any. Where are they?"

  Dredd nodded towards the enveloping cloud of foul-smelling brown smoke that rose from the crater below. "Dump ships are arriving out there all the time. The perps in this factory farm are accustomed to the comings and goings of these dump ships. They know they're just independent waste contractors bringing garbage in from all over the Mega-City. But we've borrowed some dump ships and modified them and now we're using them to bring in reinforcements who will be deployed as soon as we have secured a staging post." Dredd looked at them. "Securing that staging post is our responsibility."

  He turned away without another word and clambered through the gap beneath the vast metal slats. Darrid stared after him for a moment, then followed. Carver shot a nervous look at Zandonella, then went after him. The Karst sisters went next and Zandonella brought up the rear, urging the squirming mass of Porkditz through the opening with her. The air inside was warm and smelled of engine oil, manure and something else, something heavier and sweeter and choking. The hairs on the back of Zandonella's neck stirred. If death had a smell, this was it.

  "Wait up," she called to the others. "I've got our guide here."

  "So this place is held up by a balloon?" said Blue Belle.

  "That's right," replied Mac the Meat Man, smiling and nodding at her. Mac was a small, cheerful man with a tight, round little paunch that made it look like a basketball was tucked into his pink and turquoise horror of a Hawaiian shirt. He also wore khaki shorts over his knobbly and pathetically spindly white legs, and flip-flops that exposed egregiously hairy toes. His toes disgusted Blue Streak. As did his fat white eyebrows and his attitude. Mac was annoyingly eager to please and never happier than when he was agreeing with someone. "When I decided to build the Mega-City's number one meat farm and slaughter-"

  "Who says you're number one?" interrupted Blue Streak. He couldn't take any more of the little man's posturing.

  "Let him finish," said Blue Belle. Streak fell silent, glumly reflecting that he'd only been with this woman a few days and already she had him firmly under her thumb. Sneckin' Blue Balls. That nickname was perfect, because she was a real pain in a very personal place. Not that he'd ever dare hint as much to her. Streak was infatuated with the girl and he knew it.

  Blue Belle turned back to Mac the Meat Man. She was wearing combat boots, ski pants, a bra and a bandolier full of ammunition; all matching in black leather, and that was all. The astonishing detail of the blue tattoos on her naked torso made it hard not to stare at the splendid contours of Belle's body. He could see Mac, that red-faced old fraud, trying hard not to stare. The old, sick bastard was turned on
by her sexy outfit even now, with death staring him in the face.

  Belle, at that moment, was pointing her pistol, a wicked-looking silver automatic with twin ammunition clips, right in Mac's face. But still Mac was trying not to stare at her breasts. And of course Belle's tattoos stopped abruptly at her neck, and this along with her short hair, cropped close to her skull, made her pale unblemished face look obscenely naked. Obscenely, or arousingly, thought Streak. But definitely naked.

  "Go on," Belle demanded. "What were you saying?" She held the gun steady, pointing right between Mac's eyes. The laser-assisted gun sight projected a hot pink dot on his forehead between the bristling white eyebrows that looked disgustingly to Streak like two fat white caterpillars. The white caterpillars danced and jiggled on either side of that hot pink spot that indicated where the first bullet would go in.

  "Ah yes, where was I? My farm, my slaughterhouse, the finest in the Mega-City, yes. The finest anywhere. I had other farms before, certainly, little back street operations, but nothing like this. The big one. The big one I knew I had in me. And when my operations began to turn a profit, a pretty profit..."

  "There's money in meat, all right," said Streak, suddenly feeling left out of the conversation.

  "Stop interrupting," said Belle, a now familiar note of irritation creeping into her voice. Streak suppressed his own annoyance. It was hard to believe that this ill-tempered shrew was the same, feverishly passionate, almost violently responsive creature he'd made frantic love to in the sweaty confines of the escape pod as it drifted safely down through the burning sky of the Mega-City night.

  "So I invested all my profits," said Mac, "in this fine operation you see here. A Tatou-class Russian space station bought for a snip from a military surplus supplier, converted and armoured and reinforced-"