The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus Read online

  He’d taken the badge by that point, but nothing had changed—he was still a lone wolf, content to be by himself, and to believe in his own philosophy. To be a cadet was usually to become subsumed into the Justice Department system—another cog in the machine, more meat for the grinder—and indoctrinated into their way of thinking. But Sidney had never truly fitted in that way: severe even by their standards, his ruthlessness took them by surprise, and his arguments for execution as the standard punishment for all crimes were groundbreaking. His tutors had never considered a blanket use for the ultimate sanction—indeed, they initially baulked at it, lily-livered cowards that they were—but they couldn’t refute his claim that none of his arrests ever repeat-offended. His record was so consistent across the board that they had to revise their way of doing things. You can’t shoot jaywalkers, they’d gasped. On the contrary, he’d countered, show me a convicted felon of mine that would be tempted to do it again. You can’t gun down those for whom a death sentence didn’t apply, they’d weaselled. Show me a law and order advocate that didn’t push for tougher punishments, he’d reply. We’re not death squads, they’d exclaim in exasperation. Well, that’s where you’re going wrong, he’d calmly assert. Such was his stone-cold logic, utterly pure in its rationale, that none of his superiors could admonish him for his actions, and began to consider instead that he actually had a point. The odd kid out—the father-frying weirdo that challenged the orthodoxy—was to all intents and purposes reshaping the Judicial model from the inside. He was the new face of Justice Department, and it wasn’t long before a substantial number of the rank and file fell in line behind him.

  Drabbon never saw it coming, of course. The Chief presided over a largely corrupt and disorganised force: drug-taking was rife—even encouraged, in the case of aggression-enhancing narcotics—and a blind eye was turned to sexual liaisons between officers. Payoffs were commonplace. He operated a ‘cripple or cube’ policy, with most of his Judges leaning towards the former, which meant the arrest rate was in the toilet but hospitals were heaving with those that had felt the full weight of a Judge’s spiked baton. It was a short-sighted initiative that merely fostered resentment—if the crims recovered, then they’d return to their old ways as soon as they hit the streets—and didn’t address the root cause of all crime, which was that one hundred per cent of it was committed by the living. Remove that chance for them to come back at you, and you were by definition winning the war. Drabbon operated a seedy, small-minded Justice Department, whose only concern was that if you didn’t want to end up in intensive care, start coughing up for the privilege. Sidney saw a much bigger picture.

  De’Ath smiled when he remembered how he’d made the Chief squirm and beg before he’d permanently ended his reign. He’d been a weak fool. He’d betrayed his position as a lawmaker, too concerned with monetary gain and rule by intimidation, his vision limited to what he could get for himself, be it power or reward. Sidney, on the other hand, knew that to eradicate crime was to end humanity itself. It was that kind of undertaking—that belief in what he had to achieve—that separated him from those like Drabbon who had come before. It was a life’s work, if you will, except he would go beyond mortality in a bid to see a world scourged of lawlessness, of every single guilty being brought to justice. He had pledged to himself—and to the entities the Sisters represented—that he would deliver on that promise, by hook or by crook.

  Mortis’s viral Red Mosquito psi-meme seemed to be doing the trick, by all accounts—De’Ath’s eyes on the ground were reporting that cases of insanity and surrender amongst the lawbreakers had tripled since it went online. Those that couldn’t face self-enforced starvation—the food, to their eyes, rotten and inedible, shrouded with flies—were throwing themselves at his Judicial forces, who had little to do but mop up. Resistance had dropped by a third. He had to hand it to his tech-minded second-in-command: the idea of driving the populace out of its mind was an inspired one.

  You really couldn’t overestimate the power of suggestion, Sidney mused, as a word or image could balloon in the victim’s head in seconds to utter madness. From nothing would spring the seeds of their own demise. Like his father’s obsession with brainworms was a delusion that would prove his undoing, consuming him to the point of mania, so the fertile ground of the population’s consciousness was the ideal place to ferment their doom. He quite liked the irony of the guilty bringing about their own end—a global suicide—because it made them face their own culpability and understand the need for their execution. The crime was life, and they’d all had a hand in perpetuating it; let them fall upon their swords (or a well-placed Lawgiver bullet) so they can receive the punishment that was due to them.

  The Mosquito’s reach was being widened as Mortis came under pressure from the powers that be to improve on already impressive results, but it was putting a strain on the psi-network. Minds were at risk of burnout, under the effort required to shape and distort neural activity on such a vast scale. De’Ath himself had naturally never been shy of ambition, but sometimes the sheer size of what was being attempted here was brought home to him; could it run the risk of getting away from him, thundering out of his control like an avalanche? Would he be dwarfed by it, lost in the maelstrom? He felt like he had to maintain his hand on the tiller, even while others were demanding more, more, more. He had to exert his authority.

  The shadows shifted around him, and he was aware that even if he actively sought the peace of his own company, he was never truly alone. The Sisters’ sponsors were always there, watching, cogitating, judging—the global extinction couldn’t come soon enough in their eyes. Sidney’s lieutenants—especially malcontents like Fear—queried his desire to speed up the process, to render the world lifeless as quickly as possible, reasoning that as immortal beings they had no need to stick to a timetable. But they didn’t understand the pressure De’Ath was under to mollify his patrons: he had to satisfy their need for total annihilation as much as his own. Nevertheless, he bristled at their ever-present intrusion, and angrily pondered just who was the true superior—the entities that used Sidney and his brothers to bring into being a sundered world, or Judge De’Ath himself? It was he who wore the robes of office, he who had the globe in his grip.

  He could hear the voice of his father, a self-made man, who answered to no one: Don’t let the worm-riddled fools dictate your vision, son, he’d said as he pushed another body out of his van and onto an already substantial pile of corpses. YOU are the navigator of your own destiny.

  Sidney stood suddenly and upended his desk, sending it crashing to the floor in a cloud of dust. It was he that had initiated the cull!

  He picked up his chair by one arm and threw it across the room, where it shattered. It was he that the living should bow down before and receive judgement from!

  He tore shelves down from the walls. It was he who led and others followed! He who was the great reaper—

  Sidney abruptly stopped and stood motionless for a moment, regarding the destruction. The fury that had visited him was gone as quickly as it had come. He shook his head, attributing it to the juvenile core that still lay within; he did, he had to admit, have trouble managing his temper. Daddy issues, maybe. But it was the suggestion that someone or something else was controlling the narrative that set him off. He was in charge, he told himself. He was in charge. It was imperative that he knew that.

  There’d be time enough for quiet and reflection, he thought as he headed for the door, when the last bones were laid. He should be out there, asserting his position lest his authority was undermined and his retreat taken as a sign of weakness. The trappings of the Chief Judge had perhaps removed him too much from the front line.

  It was time he got his hands dirty again.

  ASHIA SAID NOTHING as she led Misha and Hawkins across town to the civic building, but the girl noticed the whole place seemed a little subdued after the service. Not that it had ever been exactly jumping, from what she’d seen of it; but there was a dec
ided lack of activity tonight, as if everyone had had the same idea of retreating into their homes and shutting their doors. The teen stole a fleeting glance at the sentry points atop the compound walls, and caught a glimpse of the guards’ motionless silhouettes, rifles slung over shoulders, as they silently contemplated the land beyond. They were too far away for her to pick out individual details, but they were the only signs of life that she was aware of on their brief journey. She considered saying something off-hand to the woman, but thought twice about it, the muted atmosphere invading her head and stilling her tongue.

  There was fortunately a long, looping ramp alongside the stone steps to the hall’s grand entrance, and Misha was able to push Hawkins in her wheelchair up to the door, where Ashia patiently waited before heading inside. It was the first time that Misha had visited the place, and her eyes were drawn to the ornately carved ceiling, suggesting a tangle of flowers in bloom, and the closed heavy double doors that dominated the foyer. But the woman didn’t make for those, instead veering left and marching them down a short service corridor, where she stopped at a plain wooden office door and indicated that Misha knock. A male voice called out from the other side that they should enter.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Ashia said, sweeping them across the threshold and closing the door behind them.

  The room appeared to be some kind of admin office; not the environs Misha expected of a great leader. It boasted the thin carpet and boxfile-packed shelves that she was familiar with from every accommodation officer and department head’s room from her time at university, back in the day. It was poky, functional and anonymous, and she was immediately curious as to why the group’s founder would squirrel himself away in here, or use it to play host to newcomers.

  The man she presumed was Arnold was perched on the arm of an easy chair to one side of the office, not behind the desk—that was stacked with more boxes of paper. He rose as they entered and regarded them with a mixed air of benevolence and disdain, which Misha took immediate exception to. He was a thin, balding man in his sixties—clad like the others, minus the hat—who could’ve been a retired economics professor or amateur gadgets inventor, exuding about an equal level of menace. He didn’t proffer his hand to shake but cast an assessing eye over them. No, not much of a threat, Misha thought, but a bit of a socially inept asshole.

  “This the nerve centre, then?” she asked, breaking the ice.

  “This?” The man followed her gaze, taking in the files and staid surroundings. “This was all here when we co-opted the place. But you might well indeed consider this the heart of the community. Its importance is immeasurable. The documents have been left exactly as they were when we moved in.”

  “Why? What are they?”

  “Environmental reports. Charts monitoring climate change. Impact warnings. They detail the deleterious effect the shift in habitat conditions has had on species population, and the downturn in crop production, amongst other things.”

  “How far back do they go?”

  “Way before the Fall.”

  “So... we were fucked even without the zombie pricks gunning us down?”

  The man didn’t blanch at Misha’s language. “It’s a school of thought. Some believe that this De’Ath character that’s taken charge is merely a symptom—a carrion feeder attracted to a dying planet, hastening its demise.”

  “That’s cheery.”

  “Why have you kept them?” Hawkins piped up, her voice strained. “The files, the paperwork.”

  “Because they’re sacred,” Arnold replied matter of factly. “They tell the truth about our planet’s fate. And we—my community of Libitina—are shepherds of that ultimate destiny.”

  “Shepherds?” Misha asked, feeling queasy.

  “Extinction acceptance, my child. We worship the end of the world.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “WHAT DID I tell you?” Hawkins rasped, side-eyeing her companion. “There’s always a kink.”

  “Extinction acceptance?” Misha said, ignoring the Judge and incredulously addressing the old fart in front of her, whom she now realised was seriously deranged.

  “There’s no point rebelling against the inevitable,” Arnold replied calmly. “These documents were the key to my enlightenment, and to how I could preach my gospel—the world as we know it was always finite. Humanity was never going to last forever. The reports say that the planet had been irrevocably changing for decades, if not centuries, and our time upon it was going to finally come to an end. We should embrace extinction for the opportunity that it is.”

  “Goddamned doomsday cult,” Hawkins spat derisively.

  “The Church of the Immortal Spirit… what, you think there’s a better world beyond this one?” Misha said. “Is that your doctrine? Get behind total wipeout, because it’s the stepping stone for your soul to somewhere nicer?”

  “All flesh falls away, all matter… crumbles,” Arnold replied. “Our essences will transcend entropy and find a purer home.”

  “If you’re that keen on going on to a better place, why don’t you all just do yourselves in? Seriously, you’d find Paradise all the quicker, if you passed around the Kool-Aid.”

  “It’s not just our lives that are coming to an end—it’s the world’s too,” Arnold said, not rising to her bait. “Indeed, our existences are somewhat fleeting and insignificant, compared with that of the planet. We’re like flies crawling on a cadaver that’s rotting away beneath our feet—this is all we’ve known, and all we ever will, and the Church’s faith celebrates the death of the entity that we call home. If we were to simply commit suicide, we would not be able to bear witness to the end of the world and sing the praises of its passing.”

  “This is seriously messed up,” Misha murmured, shaking her head. “You’re celebrating the end of everything?”

  “For a journey to start, there has to be destruction. For every stage in life, there is trauma before there is rebirth. For mankind to throw off its shackles and seek a new beginning, first must come dissolution. Like I say, the razing of our world is an opportunity for the betterment of our spiritual well-being.”

  “So De’Ath and his pusbag pals are doing us a favour by massacring us all?”

  “A farmer torches his fields so he might see new growth next season. That is what is happening to us as a species.”

  “Why are we listening to this crap?” Hawkins growled. She grabbed Misha’s arm, hauling herself out of her wheelchair, making an uneasy stand on two feet. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Misha nodded. “Can you walk?”

  “I’ll manage. I’ve spent enough time in that damn chair.”

  The teen turned back to Arnold. “I don’t understand—the sentry guards, the walls. You’re protecting yourselves from a fate that you singularly want to happen.”

  “The defences aren’t to save us from the architects of the planet’s doom, they’re to stop other factions of survivors storming in and taking what’s ours. We want to be here to see the end.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to get the choice,” Misha said. “When the forces of the Hall of Injustice find you, they’ll put you in the ground right then and there. You’re not going to get a ringside seat to the end of days. Your worship and your prayers and your hymns will amount to nothing because there’s a big empty void at the heart of your religion. There’s nothing to be gained from extinction, just dust and bones.”

  The girl turned, and with her arm around the Judge’s shoulders, headed towards the exit. Behind them, Arnold called out Ashia’s name, and she immediately opened the door, blocking their path. All smiley bonhomie had gone, replaced with a steely glare. Over her shoulder a pair of bruiser types lingered in the corridor as backup.

  “I wanted to see you tonight to see if you’d assimilated into our community, if you were becoming true members of our Church,” the old man said. “It’s my judgement that I deem you still outsiders—you’re not willing or able to embrace the faith.
”

  “Then let us go,” Misha answered. “Let us walk out the front gate and we’ll be gone.”

  “You still have your uses, though. My flock can be understandably nervous faced with their final hours—their belief can take a wobble. It does them no harm to see occasionally that death is truly transformative, that redemption can spring from annihilation. That’s where you two can shine before the congregation.”

  “Sacrifice,” Hawkins muttered.

  “It’ll be a worthy end to your journey,” Arnold replied, “or perhaps the beginning of a new one. The natural first stop of your pilgrimage.”

  Misha considered how quiet the compound had been on their way over, the people shutting themselves away. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? This is what you’d told your followers you were going to do. We were never going to be accepted—there was only one fate intended for us, wasn’t there?”

  Arnold didn’t respond.

  “So why nurse us back to health in the first place?” she asked. “Why save us?”

  “The lamb is fed and looked after until it’s needed, is it not?” Ashia said. “Even when its time upon the earth is short.”

  “Madness,” Misha said. “It’s bad enough we’ve got creatures out there wanting to hunt us all down and exterminate us—but now we’ve got you death fanatics helping them along the way.”

  “It cannot be stopped,” Arnold reiterated. “You have to understand that.”

  “That doesn’t mean we roll over and accept it. We fight them, every inch of the way—”

  “Save your breath,” Hawkins said, cutting the girl short, switching to sign.

  Misha looked at the Judge. “You’re giving up too?”