Judgment Plague by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Cobaltville Observation Post 17 was located on the west wall and was manned by two magistrates who controlled the gate there. It was a dull post and being assigned to man it was considered an unspoken demotion.

The tower was surrounded on all four sides by armaglass windows, and within, there were several monitor screens granting pinpoint-specific camera views of the area. The sun was approaching the horizon, a bright golden ball creating a dazzling scene through the west-facing windows. Magistrate Meers sat in one of the two chairs in the observation tower, bemoaning what he had done to get on the wrong side of his superior.

“I tell you, Stovepipe, I didn’t even know the skirt was there,” Meers told his partner as he oiled his field-stripped sin eater on the desk before the monitor bank. “She just come up behind me and—whack—swung her sugar daddy’s false leg at me, right across the noggin. What am I s’posed to do then, right?”

Magistrate “Stovepipe” Stover had his back to Meers and was peering through the windows at the rear of the observation post, where they looked down on the coil of streets that made up the Tartarus Pits. He was watching a gaudy slut working her patch of the street. He figured she was maybe seventeen, with a body trim through hunger, but wearing it well. She was dressed in a sparkly bandeau top, miniskirt and diamante-trimmed cowboy boots, and she took the arm of any male passerby, offering a dazzling smile as she plied her trade. Stovepipe was wondering how many men she slept with in a day, and his mind was busy conjuring images of what she did with those clients and just how depraved things could get. He had heard Meers’s lamentations before, could probably recite the words and sing the chorus if he’d been asked to. As it was, he just made a “hmm” noise that seemed to satisfy Meers as a cue to continue.

“That’s right,” he stated. “I turned and shot her, straight through the gut. I mean, my helmet cracked and there’s blood on the visor, plus I’m seeing stars from where she’d hit me. How was I to know it was an underage kid? Still a perp, right?”

Stover nodded. “Still a perp, underage or not,” he agreed. The gaudy in the street below had linked arms with a guy in a long, tailored jacket that flared below the waist, almost like a peacock’s tail. She led him to her hovel just off the street, disappearing from view. Man, what Stover wouldn’t give to be that guy right now, instead of stuck here in a dead post.

“’S’right,” Meers said. “Anyway, the family kick up a big stink, and Supervisor Hill chucks me out here till the heat blows over.”

“And that was two years ago,” Stovepipe recited, turning back from the windows to face his partner.

Meers was putting the sin eater back together piece by piece, his helmet resting on the desk beside him. He looked up.

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