The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus Read online

  T H E F A L L O F

  DEADWORLD

  O M N I B U S

  Matthew Smith

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Beth Lewis

  Editors: David Thomas Moore, Michael Rowley and Kate Coe

  Marketing and PR: Hanna Waigh

  Design: Sam Gretton, Oz Osborne and Gemma Sheldrake

  Cover: Clint Langley

  Based on characters created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

  Red Mosquito copyright © 2019 Rebellion 2000 AD Ltd.

  Introduction, Bone White Seeds and Grey Flesh Flies copyright © 2020 Rebellion 2000 AD Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-315-6

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  The Fall of Deadworld

  Red Mosquito, Matthew Smith

  Bone White Seeds, Matthew Smith

  Grey Flesh Flies, Matthew Smith

  Judge Dredd: The Early Years

  City Fathers, Matthew Smith

  The Cold Light of Day, Michael Carroll

  Wear Iron, Al Ewing

  The Righteous Man, Michael Carroll

  Down and Out, Matthew Smith

  Alternative Facts, Cavan Scott

  Judge Anderson: The Early Years

  Heartbreaker, Alec Worley

  The Abyss, Alec Worley

  A Dream of the Never Time, Alec Worley

  Bigger Than Biggs, Danie Ware

  Devourer, Laurel Sills

  Fly Trap, Zina Hutton

  Rico Dredd: The Titan Years

  The Third Law, Michael Carroll

  The Process of Elimination, Michael Carroll

  For I Have Sinned, Michael Carroll

  Judges

  The Avalanche, Michael Carroll

  Lone Wolf, George Mann

  When the Light Lay Still, Charles J. Eskew

  Golgotha, Michael Carroll

  Psyche, Maura McHugh

  The Patriots, Joseph Elliott-Coleman

  For Evie and Joe

  And with thanks to John Wagner, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Kek-W and Dave Kendall, whose nightmares I freely borrowed in the writing of these stories.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHAT IS IT about Judge Death’s popularity that endures so? When he first entered the Judge Dredd strip—four decades ago this year, no less—John Wagner and Brian Bolland’s superb design for this mirror image of Ol’ Stoney-Face himself made him an instantly iconic addition to the series. If Dredd was the ultimate authority, capable of dispensing summary justice without need for trial or juries, then here was the twisted extension of that idea: a Grim Reaper figure believing that since all crime is committed by the living, life itself must therefore be crime. Dredd’s robes of office—the eagle, the shoulderpad, the visor, the badge—all become warped with gothic iconography (bones, skulls, a portcullis), and his no-nonsense grimace is replaced by a terrifying rictus grin. Death was a dark reflection of Dredd, no less driven by his adherence to his version of the law, and the readers lapped it up, especially when he was joined by his lieutenants Fear, Fire and Mortis—they were the perfect villains, pure in motivation and horrifyingly ruthless.

  Yet, compared to other comic-book arch-nemeses—the Joker in Batman, say, or Lex Luthor in Superman, or Dr Doom in the Fantastic Four—the Dark Judges have appeared relatively few times in the history of the Dredd strip, not much more than a dozen stories featuring them across both 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine. Despite the characters’ credo of overkill, keeping the audience wanting more clearly generates anticipation. When they do appear, they make an impact, and any mention of Death and his murderous cousins on social media yields hundreds of likes and replies. The entity formerly known as Sidney has a following, and is guaranteed to provoke a reaction. He’s the supernatural being we love to hate—a Dracula, a Freddy Krueger—that sends chills down the spine even as he entertains. A Halloween costume come to life.

  Given Death’s fanbase, it was felt that maybe there was potential in a series of novels surrounding him, as had proved successful with Dredd and Anderson. But where to set them? Current continuity has the superfiend off-world and decimating a deep-space colony, and that felt to me to limit your storytelling options. More satisfying would be to embed the tales within The Fall of Deadworld, the 2000 AD prequel series by Kek-W and Dave Kendall that showed how the Dark Judges rose to power and began butchering their planet. End-of-the-world fiction has never felt more prescient, and in Deadworld we had all kinds of creatures going about the bloody business of global annihilation.

  I borrowed elements from Kek and Dave’s gallery of grotesques so it cleaved fairly closely to the strip—the grey Judges, Justice Department’s hideously mutated attack dogs, the Psi-Div freaks, the blazing funeral pyres, the general air of despondent gloom—but created my own protagonists, seeing society around them crumble. For the first book, Red Mosquito, I had a hankering to write a lowlife crime story, inspired by novelists like Joe R. Lansdale and Carl Hiaasen and films such as I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, where our dim-bulb hero Jackson McGill finds himself ensnared in events he doesn’t fully understand (the idea of it opening with him beating up the wrong guy, and thus kicking off the plot, was sparked by a Soulwax lyric). Jackson’s criminal adventure, however, is of course set within an ongoing apocalypse, and it’s seeing Sidney’s coup from the street level; we hear there’s trouble in the Grand Hall, but it’s not until the second and third books, Bone White Seeds and Grey Flesh Flies—what I call my ‘trois couleurs bleurrgh’ trilogy—that we encounter Death and co properly.

  Adding flashes of personality to the likes of Sidney and the Sisters of Death, Phobia and Nausea, fleshing them out, so to speak, with their own agendas and character quirks is great fun, as is coming up with the horrible fates that await the poor sods whose world is being destroyed. It may not seem like a barrel of laughs to read about a planet being hurried towards its extinction, and the fact that ultimately their destiny is unavoidable, since we’ve seen what becomes of Deadworld, but I’ve tried to add grace notes of hope and the indomitable human spirit in the face of overwhelming odds, because in our worst moments that’s when people often shine best. Plus, y’know, zombies, cannibalism, locusts, all the good stuff.

  Without further ado: ‘Let the dead fluidssss floowwwww...’

  Matthew Smith

  Oxford, February 2020

  PART ONE

  RED MOSQUITO

  CHAPTER ONE

  I WAS NEVER a believer in predestination. Hell, if pushed I’d struggle to spell it. It seemed an unlikely state of affairs, your life attached to these rails that lead to one inevitable conclusion. It’s a comforting school of thought, I have to admit, to consider that every shitty choice you ever made was fated to happen, that every bum deal you were handed you were never going to escape. Kinda takes the sting out of the guilt. Que sera sera, and all that—whatever will be will be, so fuck it, there’s nothing I could’ve done to change it.

  But I can’t avoid accepti
ng the responsibility, however attractive that sounds at the time. The trains I take are mine alone to board, and where they take me is a journey of my own making. I am the master of my own destiny, even if that destiny is to be a washed-up asshole with no prospects. I got myself to here through every bad decision and crummy situation I found myself in, and no matter how much I’d like to drink that knowledge into oblivion, the fact is that it’s no less true. Nothing is fated; the future is yours to mould and shape as you see fit. Your life is in your hands, not the mysterious whim of the cosmos. Sure, I could blame a lot on the arbitrary roll of the dice, and the fact that Lady Luck’s been mainly smacking me in the face lately rather than softly nibbling the nape of my neck, but I feel it’s better to own your screw-ups rather than rant about outside forces you’ve got no control over. No one likes a whiner, after all.

  So, yeah, I’m well aware of who’s at fault for putting me in my current predicament, and I’m cool with it—in the sense that I’m not bitter as opposed to unwilling to change it, because I would be quite happy for the chance to climb out of this pit. But that would require commitment, sobriety and drive—attributes that I don’t necessarily possess in abundance; and money too, and it’s the lack of folding that’s possibly the root of everything. Does my pursuit of the green get me into these scrapes? Probably. Does it plunge me further into debt, in an ever-tightening downward spiral of self-loathing, thereby necessitating me to take jobs that I would otherwise baulk at? Oh, most definitely.

  Anyway—predestination. Not a believer. Or I wasn’t. But sometimes I guess a moment comes along where you feel it’s a turning point; it’s setting your life on a path that you’re not going to be getting off. It’s got nothing to do with choice; the event’s been handed to you as a fait accompli. Or what’s that other Frenchie phrase? Force majeure. This is the universe taking that big old junction lever with both hands and giving it a wrench, tugging you onto a whole other set of tracks entirely, and you get no say in the matter: you just have to respond accordingly, which is mostly by barrelling along head first towards the new end-point. Now, you may disagree—you might reckon I could’ve done things differently at any time; taken a way out, a side exit, picked another route. But I suppose we’ll have to not see eye to eye on that, ’cause as far as I’m concerned I’m sure—sure as eggs are cluckers—that my future was mapped out that night. Fate took a guiding hand, and swept me along a road I couldn’t turn back on.

  Fact is, the bottom crapped out of the world the evening I beat up the wrong guy. I mean on a global scale, not just in some localised woe-is-me way: the whole actual planet went down the shitter. I’m not naïve enough to think that what I did was the catalyst—I’m sure this stuff had been building for a while, and I only became aware of it in the slow, dim, dawning realisation of a man who’s just been alerted to the fact that he’s on fire—but it felt like a through-the-looking-glass episode. Everything was changed, both within and without.

  Now, I don’t make a habit of beating up guys, wrong or not. Or at least I don’t do it for pleasure. But unfortunately it’s something my somewhat sorry state of affairs has dragged me to, and efficient acts of moderate violence are one of the few skills I can legitimately lay claim to. Thirty years ago I was a boxer of reasonable standing—welterweight, semi-pro—and had the potential to make a name for myself in the ring. I was fit—frighteningly fit—and had ambition to burn; I used to spar with Thad Dewberry, if you remember him? This was before he became four times national champion, naturally. Knocked him on his ass on more than one occasion too. Freddy, my trainer, said I had raw, natural talent, and at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I knew I was good: I was fast, nimble, with enough aggression to power a decent right hook, and an obstinate streak that meant I never knew when to quit. So, of course, I took all that aptitude and ability and threw it all out the window in exchange for a serious gambling addiction. Cards, dice, roulette: I was a sucker for everything, and the more it took hold, the bigger my debts grew, and the faster that physical discipline drained right out of me. All I could think about was the next game, and where I could secure the funds to enable it, and with that my concentration was shot.

  Organised crime circles the sport like sharks round a stricken dinghy, and outliers on the fringes of the Mob were more than willing to lend me the cash with an interest rate scarier than some head injuries I’ve received. I took a dive a few times, I’m ashamed to admit, and ploughed the payoffs I got from those straight into my next poker session. I did some bare-knuckle fights—cracked my eye socket, was hospitalised for a spell with bleeding on the brain (which may or may not have had more of a permanent effect than the quacks let on). I backed out of those pretty quick. By this point I was in my mid thirties and starting to feel gravity’s sag. I wasn’t the dancer on the canvas any more; I was lumbering, and threatening to do myself wheelchair-worthy damage.

  I retired from the ring while I could still see and speak without a slur, and got a job at an automobile plant. Picked up a nice little alcohol problem too, which made sure the ship sailed on the last of my fitness: pants got that much tighter, breath got a shade shorter, heart palpitated more times than I cared for. But I… Listen, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, or why I think you would want to have all this personal info frontloaded onto my tale. Like, you didn’t ask my life story, right? I guess the point I was making was that I wasn’t always a bum, and that current fiscal circumstances are the reason I agreed to rough up a complete stranger. Once I abandoned the boxing, my income plummeted, but unfortunately my love affair with the cards didn’t lose any of its ardour. Next thing I know, I’m being informed that my debts that I’d spread around town had been consolidated into one big chunk of change that I owed a guy who called himself the Bushman.

  I’d never met this dude, and still haven’t; the reasons for his moniker are as shrouded in mystery as his facial features. I didn’t know anything about him, but he sure as shit knew plenty about me. His intermediaries informed me of his preferred repayment plan, but made sure to point out that if I was willing to do him what they called ‘favours’, then he would see about shaving off a few kay. This sounded voluntary, but I never considered refusal was ever an option, and frankly a couple thousand off my tab looked better on the balance sheet than the inevitable broken limbs that were heading my way if I didn’t start returning my loans. The Bushman was well aware of my former sporting prowess, and figured to exploit it, even though it had been a good half decade since the last time the old Jackson McGill piledriver had been called into use. It was still there, that jab, even if time had not been kind to the body that it was an extension of.

  So I became de facto Mob-boss muscle, directed as required. I threw up after the first time I beat someone to a pulp, disgusted with what I’d become, and haunted by the look of fear on their faces just before I slammed my fist into them. They were squirrelly little saps for the most part—losers like me who thought they could take the money and run—and nothing like my opponents in the ring, who had come out of their corners snarling with the intention of delivering equal amounts of hurt. These submissive pricks, on the other hand, snivelled and blew snot-bubbles and apologised profusely, and sometimes I hit them more than was necessary just to get them to shut up. I didn’t need to hear it—my own head was filled with doubts and regrets and broken glass, and I didn’t want it to get too crowded in there. Block it all out, I told myself. Give the bozo some bruises to remember the Bushman by, and skedaddle. The drinking came into its own there, I have to admit; it was great for blurring memories. I embraced the bottle even more.

  I know how all this sounds, and I’m not expecting you to like me. As I say, how I got here is through my own choices, and no one else’s. If I was smart, if I truly wanted to get out of this life, then I’d knock the gambling on the head, stop racking up the debts. But I’m well aware that’s not going to happen any time soon—and most pertinently, so does the Bushman. He’s got no desire to lose me, I’m too
much of an asset. Thus, here I find myself, trapped in a role of my own making.

  I got the call just after five on my way home from work. I live a little outside of town in a two-storey shitpile on the edge of a derelict street just before the suburbs give way to scrubland and the woods, and it’s a good half-hour drive past the factory stacks and abandoned car lots. I saw my cell chirrup on the passenger seat of my Pontiac as I edged it through the rush-hour traffic, rain splodging the windscreen. I knew who it’d be—they always texted from the same number and at the same time. I found a public call box and pulled over, hitching my jacket collar up and ducking through the fat, warm drops to the kiosk.

  I don’t know if this is the benefit of hindsight colouring my recollection, but something felt off even then: more people seemed to be out in the weather than you’d expect, and they appeared agitated, restless. Sirens blared several blocks over. The radio said something about tailbacks across the river. There was an edgy vibe, as if tensions were going to spill over any second, but I didn’t know for what reason. A guy slammed his palm against the call box window and shouted something indecipherable, then tried to yank open the door; I told him to fuck off and he took the hint, but his eyes told me he was barely aware of what was going on. A few more just like him stomped past, and I remember pausing to watch them, this herd of crazies surging down the street, demented in their terror. That should’ve been the first sign, I guess, but I must’ve passed it off as random loons—the city wasn’t short of them. Even the Judges weren’t exactly stable, at the best of times.