The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus
Page 22
The Judge threw her arms wide, indicating the barren expanse. “Want to walk?” she growled, though Misha imagined she heard the faint outline of a smile behind it.
The teen shook her head and kicked the dust at her feet. “Fuck,” she repeated.
THINGS GOT WORSE the closer you got to the capital, as if that was possible: the smell, the sights, the pervading sense of despair. The horror had seemingly rippled out from the Hall of Injustice at the epicentre like an earthquake. So many had tried to escape being caught in the shockwaves, but the sheer weight of numbers and the ruthlessness of the new Chief’s forces meant that few within the city’s boundaries had survived the initial purge. Misha had been one of the lucky ones, bundled to safety thanks to the random kindness of a complete stranger, but plenty of others had been left behind, gunned down in their hundreds.
Some of them were still here, decaying bodies propped behind the wheels of their cars, massacred in the ensuing chaotic gridlock, but there was evidence that there had been a systematic clearance of corpses since that night. Smouldering pyres of bones lined the roads, and in the distance dotted points of flame suggested there were several burning away. It turned Misha’s stomach, and she wished they could go back, abandon this plan. Even though they were still some distance from the capital proper, you could feel the dread sense of emptiness, the void it had become, gnawing at your mind. She had argued further with Hawkins against this folly, believing it to be an unnecessary risk, but the more she protested, the more the Judge dug her heels in. She would motion to the bike, indicate the unhealthy noise that the engine was making, and remind her that it wouldn’t be long before their ride gave up the ghost entirely. The fact was the Lawrider was truly screwed—Hawkins hadn’t been wrong about the extent of its problems. It had got them over rough terrain in the past few weeks, but it was showing the strain now, kicking out oily black smoke as power outages kept rebooting the onboard computer. It would only be a matter of time before they were locked out of the weapons systems and/or something ignited close to the fuel tank. It said something of Misha’s fear of the city that she was aware that they were astride a failing machine and still she’d rather take her chances with that than go near the capital.
Of course, the teenager had reasons of her own not to get too close to the HoJ beside the obvious possibility of capture or, more likely, execution, but she had to be careful not to arouse Hawkins’ suspicions. She’d want to know why the girl had such a hard-on for staying well out of its area, and if Misha came clean, that would almost certainly be a prelude to a parting of the ways. At the same time, she was aware she was compromising both of their safeties. She just hoped they could circle the outskirts and quickly find what they needed without entering the city any more than they had to, and she’d made Hawkins promise as such, citing her own personal trauma as an excuse. The Judge didn’t need to know what Misha could bring down on them if they dallied too long in the Grand Hall’s shadow.
It had been like an itch at the back of her brain up until now, a pressure she found she could push back against. She’d evidently been previously well outside the Sisters’ reach: they’d been a background presence, an electrical charge in the air you could feel in the hairs on your arms, but nothing materialised beyond that. They were looking for her, casting out their psychic hooks in the hope that they’d get a fix on her location, try to worm inside her mind and plant their seeds of corruption, but she’d blocked them. It had been relatively easy when the psignal was that weak, and they were clearly casting a wide net, but now she was getting nearer to their centre of operations, it was only going to get harder to keep them out. All it took was one lapse in concentration, a drop in her defences, and they’d be inside her head, rifling through her thoughts, grabbing what they needed to direct their undead goons to pick her up—or worse, take control of her and force her to do their bidding.
They wanted her alive, she felt sure of that; or at least some approximation of it. It probably wouldn’t matter to them if she was delivered in pieces as long as her grey matter was still functioning. The thing about psychic broadcasts was that it worked both ways—while they actively sought her out, Misha at the same time could pick up the reasons behind it, their motives. Their intentions permeated their emanations, an unmistakable flavour running through them, and the Sisters’ curiosity about the girl showed strongly through their probes. They knew about Rachel, her sibling that had allied herself with the new CJ’s creatures, and the neuro-flipping that had been occurring between the pair; this kind of link was ripe for exploitation, and Misha’s potential abilities were too powerful to go to waste. She was sure that if the Sisters got their hands on her, they’d peel her brain apart for their own arcane amusement.
Needless to say, she’d told Hawkins none of this. It was a betrayal, after a fashion, that she was keenly ashamed of; she was endangering the Judge’s life through her own cowardly secretiveness and self-interest. But she reasoned they’d come too far now to imperil their partnership, and she deliberately chose to disclose nothing about the entities snapping at her heels.
Misha coughed as the wind swept smoke from the pyres in their direction, the smell sticking in the back of her throat. She tapped Hawkins on the shoulder, and signalled that this was close enough.
To go any further was to enter Hades itself. They were on one of the main arterial freeways that serviced the capital—once a never-ending flow of traffic, now a graveyard—and looking ahead, the road had seemingly been paved in bones. Layer upon layer of skeletal remains coated the ground, piling up in drifts; virtually impassable on two wheels. Hawkins slowed the Lawrider to a crawl, and weaved the vehicle between two burned-out cars to shield them from view when she saw greys patrolling the city’s boundaries. Leaving the engine idling, the Judge turned in her seat and motioned to the vibrations coming from within the engine.
Misha shrugged theatrically and looked around with arched eyebrows, indicating that they weren’t exactly spoiled for choice. They’d seen no abandoned Lawriders on their journey here, seemingly suggesting either that those resisting De’Ath had succeeded in fleeing the area, or they’d been incinerated on the spot. Hawkins raised a finger:
Transponder, the Judge mouthed. Will flag any other Lawriders in the vicinity using the same signal.
“Won’t that also alert anyone that’s listening that we’re here?” the younger woman whispered.
Hawkins nodded.
Misha looked around nervously. An H-wagon flying overhead at that moment would pick them up instantly on its radar, and their movements tracked. She didn’t like advertising their presence so blatantly, used to travelling well off the grid. She closed her eyes and counted down the seconds before her companion deactivated the transponder—
The tone changed suddenly and Hawkins grabbed the girl’s arm, shaking her to pay attention.
“What’s that?” Misha asked.
THEY’D BECOME ADEPT at avoiding the greys, but their misfiring Lawrider was starting to feel like it could draw attention, so they abandoned it in an alleyway a mile out from where the signal was hailing, concealing it beneath a discarded tarpaulin, and made the rest of the way on foot. Hawkins took a portable receiver unit to continue to follow the broadcast, and they quickly and quietly threaded their way through the back lanes of a deserted commuter area that lay sprawled in the foothills of the capital. Any living presence was long gone, but the signs that people had once existed here were readily evide
nt: plastic toys lay scattered in gardens, and washing flapped on clotheslines, never to be reclaimed. Many of the doors to the properties stood open where the residents had upped and fled, and Misha would cast an eye as they passed to see what she could see; but the interiors for the most part were dark and still. Whole stories could be written about the former occupiers, she thought, catching sight of children’s drawings tacked to refrigerators alongside family photographs, or a dog’s chain disappearing into a kennel in a front yard. SUVs were parked on driveways, their trunks stuffed with belongings, where the owners hadn’t managed to get away fast enough. Their final remains were captured in a frozen moment in time, indications of who once existed here before they were purged from the picture.
Hawkins gestured for the pair of them to halt, and they crouched beside a dilapidated fence. She pointed to a shuttered garage a few metres ahead, and told Misha that’s where it was holed up.
“In a civilian population sector?” the girl whispered back.
The Judge shrugged.
“This smells like a trap,” Misha said. The door looked well maintained, and there were tyre tracks on the concrete before it. “Something to draw us in. I don’t like it.”
“You’re a long way from the Grand Hall now, and that badge doesn’t mean a whole lot in the current climate. Fact is, we don’t know what’s in there.”
Hawkins stood and edged towards the garage, sliding her Lawgiver from its holster in one fluid movement. “Keep me covered,” she rasped over her shoulder, and Misha unhitched her own gun from the waistband of her pants, a small snubnosed semi-automatic that Hawkins had given her and taught her how to shoot reasonably accurately without injuring herself. She had a fractious relationship with the weapon: she liked the reassurance that it was there, but hated pulling the trigger the few times that she’d been obliged to. Nevertheless, she was now training it on her companion as the Judge examined the padlock on the shutter.
Misha jogged over and awkwardly grabbed the shutter while still holding the gun in her right hand—it didn’t seem prudent to put it away just yet—and they pushed up in tandem. She was expecting rusty resistance, but it slid on its runners remarkably smoothly. Someone had been making sure to oil it, she thought. As soon as the door cleared their heads they were inside, weapons at the ready, light from the outside spilling in and illuminating the headlights of a Justice Department bike that filled the majority of the space. Beyond it, towards the back, was shelving and a workstation, and it was there, to the right of the Lawrider, that Misha caught sight of the figure, a hunched silhouette squatting near the ground.
“Hawkins,” she exclaimed, directing the Judge’s attention to what she’d seen, motioning with the snubnose.
“My god,” she croaked, stepping forward, Lawgiver raised. “That’s—”
“Hello, Trace,” the figure answered quietly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“BLAKE.”
The name emerged from Hawkins’ throat as barely a croak—more a grunt of recognition than a genuine question. The Lawgiver wavered in her hand as if she was in two minds as to whether she still needed it, her gaze not leaving the figure on the floor.
Misha’s gaze flittered between the pair of them, her own gun decidedly more steadfast. “You know him?” she asked.
Hawkins nodded and edged round the bike towards the man, finally lowering her weapon and holstering it. She glanced at Misha and nodded that she do the same, though Misha was a little more reluctant, dropping her gun to her side but not sliding it back into her waistband. She kept it tight against her thigh and remained stationary, warily watching the Judge approach. Hawkins crouched and fished out a penlight from her belt pouch, clicking it on: the daylight from the open doors hadn’t reached the rear of the room. A couple of fluorescent bulbs hung from the ceiling, but it was safer to keep them off, if they indeed still worked, so as not to draw unwelcome attention. The yellowing newspaper glued to the two windows wouldn’t stop light being visible from the outside. A thought seemed to occur to Hawkins and she turned slightly, gesturing to Misha to pull the doors to, deepening the darkness except for a sliver of light that penetrated the crack the girl had left.
The penlight picked out a lumpen character slouched against the wall, blankets wrapped around him. He squinted at the glare when she waved the beam over his face, taking in the fortnight’s worth of growth on his chin and jawline, his skin lined with dirt. His expression turned to one of consternation when he saw Hawkins’ own features; he tilted his head and gasped, the fingers of his right hand emerging from the blankets to reach out and lightly brush the scarred tissue of her lower face. She retracted slightly, and his hand dropped away.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked.
She shook her head, motioned towards her mouth. “Explosion,” was all she could mutter, sweeping one hand towards outside.
“She finds it hard to talk,” Misha felt compelled to interject, still standing near the doors. “Don’t try to get her to say too much, it’s painful.”
Blake fleetingly looked round Hawkins to study the teenager. “You are?”
“Just her travelling companion.” She felt uneasy about giving him her name; no reason why he needed to know it. “You a Judge too, I assume?”
“Was. No law left to uphold now. Chief Sidney’s walking pusbags have the Grand Hall—they’re running the show.”
“They’re also killing everyone,” Misha replied testily. “I figured that was still illegal.”
“It’s a coup, a hostile military takeover. Statutes, penalties and criminality don’t apply anymore. It’s gone beyond that now.”
“Even when innocent civilians are being gunned down? Seems to me that this is as much a premeditated massacre as it is a power grab. People are being slaughtered in their thousands—so what are you doing hiding away in here?”
Hawkins shot Misha a glare that told her to wind it back, and the younger woman nodded, conciliatory, and made a zipping motion across her lips.
“Dying is what I’m doing,” Blake said when Hawkins had turned back to him. “Or at least I will if I don’t get to see a doc.” He lifted a blanket to show a stained, crudely wrapped bandage around his shoulder and chest. The Judge’s uniform had been cut away to accommodate it, and what still remained of his garb was filthy. Hawkins lifted her arms to indicate their surroundings; Blake understood. “How did I get here? Took a bullet trying to get out of the capital. Was holed up with a bunch of cits for a time when it first went down, waiting for the right moment to make a break. Nowhere felt safe, and we were being starved out, the civvies dropping like flies once the food evaporated.”
Misha winced, recognizing the bid for survival amongst the group she’d once been a part of—the demoralising rations, the weakness and disease. They’d all succumbed too, eventually.
“I couldn’t wait much longer. I knew how to get into the local sector house bike pool, steal one of the Lawriders,” he continued. “Picked the moment and took my shot, but screwed it up royally—the wheels I boosted only had half a tank. They spotted me trying to make it to the city limits, and I got clipped. Had enough wherewithal to find shelter here—been broadcasting an SOS ever since in the hope that another badge would pick me up.”
“What happened to the people you were hiding out with originally?” Misha asked.
Blake frowned for a second. “Oh, the cits? They were too far gone, too frail.”
“So you left them there while you ran.”
“Hey, fuck you,” h
e snarled, sitting forward suddenly. “They were dying, there was nothing I could’ve done for them. Staying would’ve just meant me joining them—” Hawkins laid a palm on his good shoulder and eased him back. She then pointed at the bike and opened out her hands. Blake shook his head and looked at the other woman. “What’s she saying?”
“She’s asking if that means your Lawrider’s got no fuel at all,” Misha explained.
“No, she’s dry,” he replied, sighing. “It’s working fine otherwise. Battery could probably do with a recharge, but that’s all.”
Hawkins slumped a little, then glanced round at the teen. She nodded outside and mimed siphoning gas. Misha gave a thumbs-up in agreement, aware Blake was watching the pair communicating with a mixture of confusion and anger.
“Hey, you ain’t taking my ride and leaving me here,” he said, turning his attention to Hawkins. “C’mon, Trace, we got a code amongst uniforms, right? We stick by rank, whatever the situation. You answered my distress call, so you got an obligation, man.”
“You two serve together, then?” Misha enquired.
“Operated under the same watch commander back when we were rookies,” he answered, hissing with pain as he adjusted his position. “Busted a fair few heads on those pro-Dem rallies, eh?” Hawkins looked away, then down at her feet, not meeting his gaze. “Sent a good number to hospital; put more than a handful in the morgue. Raided drug factories together, blown open organ farms. So, yeah, we got history.” He studied Misha. “What’s your deal? She pull your fat out of the fire, is that it?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“And now you’re best buds.”
“We’re surviving, if that’s what you mean.”