Fear the Darkness by Mitchel Scanlon

Author:Mitchel Scanlon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849970495
Publisher: 2000 AD Books

TEN

FREEDOM GOT AN AK

"Emergency code ninety-nine red. Repeat: code ninety-nine red. Judges down in futsie incident at Charles Whitman Block. Judges down. All available units please respond!"

"Acknowledged, Control. Psi-Judge Anderson responding. ETA to Whitman: five minutes. Requesting further details. Over."

"Acknowledged, Anderson. Judges down are Ross and Ebden. No ID on the perp yet, but he's reported as armed with a spit gun. Other Judges and med-teams en route to the scene. Will advise you with further details as they become available. Control out."

She had been walking the corridors of the Sector House, letting her mind wander freely as she attempted to track the entity, when she heard the call over the Sector House intercom. Code Ninety-Nine Red. The most foreboding phrase in the entire lexicon of the Justice Department. Even with her case unresolved, there was no way Anderson could ignore it. Nor would she want to. Code Ninety-Nine Red. Judges down. Somewhere, fellow Judges were in trouble. If there was one unwritten rule among the Judges of the Big Meg, it was that a code red meant "drop everything and haul ass to the scene as quickly as possible".

Having retrieved her bike from the Sector House parking bay, Anderson pushed the accelerator as she sped along the meg-ways, skedways and overzooms to her destination. Brando. Nicholson. Hopper. McQueen. The Peter Fonda Memorial Interchange. The names of the streets on the way to Charles Whitman rushed past her while all the time she hoped she was not too late.

"Control to Anderson," her bike radio blared amid the roar of the engine and the whoosh of air. "First backup Judges on the scene at Whitman have made contact with the futsie. Do you want to be patched in to their comms traffic? Over."

"Affirmative, Control. I want to know what we're dealing with."

"Acknowledged, Anderson. Switching channels now."

For a moment the radio crackled with static as the channels were switched. She heard a man whispering. His voice all but drowned out by the brutal tat-a-tat-tat of a weapon firing on full automatic somewhere in the background.

"...need more backup!" the voice was hoarse with barely suppressed panic. "McCartney and Hoskins are down. The futsie's a walking arsenal. I'm trying to get behind him but it's like the drokker's got eyes in the back of his-"

There was a scream and the sound of more gunfire. For an instant the radio shrieked out an ear-splitting wail of feedback, then hissed before falling silent.

Dead air.

"Connection's broken." The channel switched back to Sector Control. "We've lost them."

Anderson refused to dwell on whether he meant the connection or the Judges.

"Understood, Control," she said. In the distance she could see "Charles Whitman" written in large letters down the side of one of the blocks ahead of her. "ETA to Whitman now one minute. Do you have a floor number for that last transmission?"

"A call-in from a block resident reporting gunfire puts it at the thirty-eighth. Ross and Ebden were ambushed on thirty-nine so it sounds like the creep's working his way down.

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