“Standard procedure.”
Stender didn’t respond and glared sulkily out of the window. Lox caught my eye and bit down on a smirk. She’d never been much of a fan of the jays at the best of times; none of us were, given our circle of acquaintances, but Loxley had a history of pro-Dem sympathies. Rumour had it she ran with that crowd when she was younger and did some weeks in juvie for leafleting. Ironically, it was her subsequent professional life of crime as an ace thief that saved her from receiving the inevitable Lawgiver bullet to the back of the head as an amateur, not-very-effective seditionist.
“So this Center for Disease Research,” she continued, “which totally isn’t Grand Hall’s chemical weapons lab, is where they’re storing Red Mosquito—and you want me to help get you in? To… what, destroy the stuff?”
“That’s about the size of it,” I said.
“If it doesn’t work already, as you suspect, why bother? They can’t use it.”
“Because that’s not to say they won’t be able to at some point,” Stender explained. “We can’t afford to leave them the opportunity.”
“Sounds to me,” Loxley mused, “that we’d be better off blitzing the place entirely. Wire the building with C4 and blow it into orbit.”
“That is an option,” I conceded. “You know where to get your hands on explosives?”
Lox pulled a face like I’d asked if she could crack a safe in under four minutes. “Well, duh.”
“Too risky,” Stender interjected. “Considering what’s in there, we could be releasing something even worse.”
“Aaaand we come back to why you jaybird shitsticks are the biggest assholes on the planet. Honestly, who needs an army of fuckin’ zombie cops to wipe us out when our own law enforcement have the means to instead?”
“I keep telling you, I’m not a Judge—”
“You fucking worked for the HoJ, same difference. Your fingerprints are all over that crap in the facility: this Mosquito thing, and lots more besides, probably. You’re instrumental in allowing Justice Department to develop stuff specifically made to murder its own citizens.”
“That’s not fair—”
“Yeah, yeah, you didn’t know what you were working on. But your bosses sure did, didn’t they?” Loxley slammed the palm of her hand against the wheel in frustration, causing the truck to wobble a little across the lane. “Goddammit, this new Chief Judge, this creature that’s instigated this slaughter—it’s not like he came from nowhere, right? What’s the betting that he was one of you—a badge and a uniform that’s just gone up a level. I mean, you fascists wanted this all along, didn’t you? Dispose of all the undesirables permanently. Kill the world. Cleanse it.” Her voice dropped. “We should’ve expected it. This was always gonna come as long as you fucks were in power. You opened the door for this, and now everyone’s going to pay.”
Silence descended in the cab. Despite myself, I felt bad for Stender, so I broke the ice after a couple of minutes had passed. “Pretty sure no one wanted this, Lox. This is a madman’s coup, powered by god-knows-what.”
“It’s not like this world was all sweetness and light beforehand,” she muttered, eyes on the road. “Summary executions. A president in the pocket of the cartels. TV news was a rolling shitstorm of misery. You know anyone that was happy? Christ, they even deregulated dentists a few years back, did you see that? Talk about a sick society in its death throes already. No, this was written in the stars. This was fated to happen eventually.”
I glanced at her. “Predestination,” I murmured.
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s a pretty big word for you, McGill.”
“Just don’t ask me to spell it.”
RENNICK WAS TO the south, on the other side of the capital, and as we left the deserted countryside and headed further back towards the more densely populated areas, so the signs of chaos became more apparent. Bodies littered the tarmac, some of them having been dragged from their cars, which were now slung across both lanes and we had to slalom around them. Doors were still wide open where the vehicles’ occupants lay slumped, half in and half out. All bore the marks of frenzied violence. Blood was smeared across the asphalt in wide arcs like someone had taken a huge brush dipped in gore and signed this atrocity. I thought of the crazies from the previous evening, and imagined this could’ve well been a full night’s butchery. They may have all been infected as far as I knew, and slaughtered each other, lost in their derangement—who killed who mattered little to the architects of this madness, as long as the graves were filled.
“Jesus,” Loxley whispered, eyes wide as she eased the truck through the carnage, gaze moving from windscreen to side window as she tried to process the scale of what she was seeing. “This is genocide.”
“They got something into the water supply,” I told her. “We think it’s been sending the population insane.”
“Another of your genius projects?” Loxley wanted to know, addressing Stender.
He shook his head. “I never saw anything like this virus before.”
“We all seem to have avoided picking it up,” she said.
“You got your water direct from your well, right?” I replied. She nodded. “I kinda take my refreshments neat, if you know what I mean. And Stender… well, he came close.”
“Really?”
“The Grand Hall has its own closed system,” he said. “Just to avoid this kind of contaminant. I would’ve detected the organisms that the water’s been seeded with if it had been present. From what I can see, this has been directed at the population at large.”
“So they don’t want to kill everybody.”
“Not just yet. Not those that are still useful to them,” I said. “Like I told you, they still want him. It’s us scumballs that are the first to be wiped out.”
“Thank you for including me,” Loxley answered.
“My pleasure.”
“The spread of infection must be radiating out from the source,” Stender murmured. “I’m fairly sure counties outside the immediate area haven’t been affected yet. It’s still the early stages. Chances are the speed and intensity of the mania too are burning up a lot of energy.”
“You mean the carriers are killing each other at a rate of knots.”
“Which would explain why we’re seeing a lot of bodies, but few still alive. Efficient in the short term, but not viable for sustained worldwide species extinction.”
“Jesus,” Loxley groaned, “I can’t believe we’re talking in these terms so matter-of-factly.”
“You’d rather we panicked and ran around like headless chickens because the sky is falling in?” Stender said acidly.
“I’d rather you fuckers hadn’t put us in this position in the first place,” she snapped back.
“Okay, okay,” I interjected. “Let’s not get into that again.” I turned to Stender. “What do you think their next move will be?”
“A wider means to an end. Red Mosquito is meant to shut down the food supply. They’re weaponising the insect kingdom...” He paused then cocked his head to one side, peering out the passenger window. “The weather, maybe.”
“The weather?”
“Hacking into Weather Control would give them a far greater reach—even an ability to spread their contagion overseas. If they’re going for sheer quantity, which they evidently are, then they’re not going to stop until the whole world is theirs. See that?” He pointed up.
“What am I looking at?” I asked, squinting.
“That silver speck, directly above. See it? It’s a drone. They use them for cloud-farming.”
“Uh, now you come to mention it,” Loxley said, “does that sky look right to you?” She nodded towards the horizon on her left, where a thick bank of purplish-pink clouds was roiling in like a thunderhead. What had started out as a bright morning had become steadily overcast, the sun little more than a hazy disc struggling to penetrate the grey canopy. There was a gloomy, rainwater light that cast a pall over everything. Seeing t
hat vast churning mass roll across the heavens towards us was terrifying in its sheer scale.
“Drive, Lox,” I said, watching it unfold. “We don’t want to be outside when that breaks.”
She needed little encouragement and stepped on the accelerator, swerving to the best of her ability to avoid the vehicles and corpses littering the highway, but finesse had to be abandoned in favour of speed. Wheels losing traction for a second as they slipped on a wide puddle of viscera, the truck skidded and caught the rear end of a station wagon lying on its side. The bodywork squealed, and all three of us juddered with the impact, but Loxley managed to get it back under control, grunting an apology.
“Hold on,” she warned as we approached two more cars blocking the road and slammed directly between them, slewing them aside. We heard the headlamps shatter and the hood buckled, but it kept going. “The old gal ain’t built for this kind of treatment.”
“The road’s getting worse as we’re nearing the capital,” Stender said. The thoroughfare was choked with wrecks—some blackened and still smouldering—and cadavers in various states of dismemberment piled up against the crash barriers. “It’s going to be near impossible to get much further. Can we take an exit?”
“We want to be circuiting the city anyway,” I said. “No way should we drive willingly into that horrorshow.” If this road to hell had been any indication of what lay within its environs, I didn’t want to bear witness to the horrors, had been perpetrated within the capital.
“The 55 is coming up,” Loxley shouted over the racket the engine was now making. “It’ll be a loop, but it’ll get onto the I9 going south.” She pulled hard on the wheel and veered the truck down the off-ramp doing a solid eighty, clattering towards the intersection, sparks dancing as it bounced once off the low wall that edged the slope.
“Ah shit.” She hit the brakes and the tyres screeched as the vehicle slid to a halt, the air filled with the sharp tang of burning rubber.
Loxley turned to me and Stender, and we wordlessly looked out at the half dozen grey Judges manning the barricade that stretched across the highway. They gazed back at us, then slowly began to advance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LOXLEY STUCK THE truck in reverse and hit the gas but the engine whinnied and died. Smoke was starting to waft from beneath the hood. She twisted the key in the ignition and tried again but this time it didn’t even splutter. She sat back in her seat and slammed the heel of her hand against the dash. Even though we weren’t going anywhere, one of the advancing deadfucks raised a Lawgiver and put a round in each of the front tyres. The vehicle lurched forward like it was getting ready to pray.
“I’ve got a shotgun in the back,” she muttered, glancing at me. “You still got your piece?”
“Yep.”
“How do you want to play this?”
“Could do with evening the odds some, and right now they’ve got us cold.”
“They want me, remember?” Stender said. “They’ll be under orders to bring me in alive. Don’t do anything rash for the moment.”
“If they get their hands on you, this is all over,” I replied.
“We haven’t got any option but to go along with them right now. It’ll buy us some time.”
“All right, keep ’em talking,” Loxley said. “’Til I can at least get access to the truck bed. Once I’ve got my shotgun, we’re gonna have to move fast.”
“Not sure they’re big on conversation, Lox,” I said, looking out at the jaybirds as they now surrounded the vehicle. They were as rancid as the pair I’d encountered the previous night—skin the colour of six-month-old offal, and it wasn’t easy to see where their uniforms ended and the creature inside began. The black leather seemed to be growing into the liquescent flesh—or vice versa—and melding into a similar consistency; they were no longer officers donning the regalia of justice but entities entirely indivisible from their function. They were the law, moulded by the new regime and whatever the hell these fluids they’d all been encouraged to drink—personifications of an ideal. Their badges may have well been stitched straight onto their chests, their helmets carved from their skulls. This was the change the thing had talked about last night: the sloughing off of humanity and embracing a darker, more primal existence.
One rapped on the passenger window with a bony knuckle, leaving a residue smeared across the glass. It leered in, lips peeled back from blackened teeth; a beetle, I noticed, scuttled from under the Judge’s bloated tongue, carapace gleaming in the wetness. My scalp prickled. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the truck—I didn’t want these monsters anywhere near me. It must’ve sensed my reluctance, for it didn’t wait long for a response; instead, it brought up a spiked daystick, lightly scraped the sharpened points against the frame, then drove the head against the window. It spiderwebbed instantly, and the Judge followed up with another powerful thrust and the glass shattered. I yelped and shrank back, but a hand was inside, fumbling for the lock and yanking the door open. A second later, I was pulled from the cab and deposited ass-first onto the road.
“Out,” one rasped to the others, and Stender unfolded himself from the passenger seat, arms raised in surrender. Loxley followed, scooting across to climb out the same side, and reached down and offered me a hand, helping me to my feet, glaring at the grey things as she did so. Three of them had their Lawgivers trained on us.
“Been looking for you, Ssstender,” the jay nearest the Tek-guy said in a gravelly gurgle. His name was just about still visible on his grime-encrusted badge: Kernick. “Had psssis trying to find you. Too much interference hid you from usss, alasss.”
“The sssweet sssounds of the guilty being punissshed,” another commented. “Ssso loud. Ssso… invigorating.”
Kernick nodded at this. “Ssidney told uss the ssong of jussstice would be a cressecendo at first. The sscreams of the sssinnersss would be deafening as millionsss faced judgement. But sssoon a lawful peace will ssettle.”
“I’ll come with you,” Stender said. “I won’t cause any trouble. There’s no need to hurt my friends.”
It was a vain plea, even I was aware of that. Kernick looked at me and Loxley and then back at Stender as if struggling to understand what was being asked of him. “But they are lawbreakersss, are they not? They breathe, therefore they are criminalsss dessserving of ssentencing. All living beingsss mussst be judged. And the ssentence is death.”
“Mortis needs me, right? Well, I won’t co-operate if they’re harmed in any way.”
Kernick chuckled, and it rippled out through the other uniforms as well. “You’re in no posssition to bargain. If necesssary, we’ll take the relevant bitsss of you and Judge Mortisss will fashion a… proxy. But either way, you are coming with usss.” He turned his helmeted head to speak over its shoulder in a disarmingly casual manner. “Execute.”
Thunder rumbled overhead. The clouds were blackening as the churning bank rolled in. I shot a look at Lox and indicated with my eyes that she get behind me; she stepped back just as I pulled my automatic from my waistband and held it to Stender’s temple. He twisted in shock when the cold barrel pressed against his skin.
“Back off,” I said. “Back off or you lose your asset. Figure it’s the brain you need most. Not going to be any good to you scattered to the winds.”
“You are not going to kill him.”
“I will if it prevents him falling into your hands. He means nothing to me.” I pulled Stender with me as I slowly edged backwards. Lox was doing the same. I hoped her shotgun was within easy reach; she was parallel with the flatbed now, and her hand was trailing over the side. I could only stall them for so long.
“You’re bluffing, and you have nowhere to go,” the thing rasped. “End thisss charade now.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in your boots, pal, when you report back to… Sidney, was it? Tell him that you lost the guy you were after, that was instrumental in your plans, ’cause you made the wrong judgement call.”
The mention o
f the big cheese made Kernick pause. It was impossible to gauge whether anything resembling second thoughts was crossing its fetid brain, but clearly there was something even undead pigs feared and that was the new chief. Christ, he was called Sidney, how fearsome could he be? Nevertheless, he was the one calling the shots, and evidently, it didn’t do to displease him.
Fat, warm drops of rain started to fall, drumming a rhythm on the truck’s bodywork. I could feel them trickling down my neck. It had grown ominously dark, and the downpour started to increase in ferocity. Zombies being zombies, they barely noticed, but me, Lox and Stender were getting drenched, hair plastered to our foreheads, eyes streaming. The gun was slick in my hand.
“Mow him down,” Kernick said finally. “Ssstender too, if you have to. We don’t need anything below the neck.”
I pushed Stender to one side and shot the Judge in the face, which vaporised in a grey-green deflation, leaving him standing upright and headless. The other jays returned fire instantly, and I caught a bullet in the back of the leg as I scrambled round the back of the truck for cover. I rolled, hissing in pain, and blood swirled in the rivulets coursing across the rain-sodden asphalt. Stender scampered under the vehicle. Loxley was up and armed in a flash, cutting loose with both barrels and blowing another jaybird in half with a wet smacking noise. I had to admit they did come apart easy when you hit them with enough force.
The remaining four Lawgivers all barked in unison, and forced Lox to retreat. She ducked down, leaning against the tailgate and reloading. I was lying next to her like a freshly landed fish on a riverbank, using my bandaged—and what felt like increasingly paralysed—hand to apply pressure to the leaking hole just below my kneecap. The other hand was locked, rain-frozen, around the gun butt.
“So you reckon the odds are evened up now?” she asked.
“Wanted to give them… at least a fighting chance,” I said, smiling.
She rolled her eyes and ducked round the other side of the vehicle, standing when she was level with the driver’s door and aimed her gun through the window. A grey was stalking past on the opposite side and she fired through the cab, exploding the glass nearest her and severing the thing’s non gun-arm at the shoulder. It stumbled but seemingly shrugged it off, turning and firing in response. Lox squatted again, then bent low beneath the vehicle; Stender saw the shotgun barrels emerge and scrabbled away before she shot the jay’s foot out from under him. That took him down, and his helmeted head hit the road like a watermelon, facing her. Black orbs stared back at her behind the cracked visor. She fired again, obliterating it.
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