Just before Christmas I had
my first Judge Dredd story published in the Judge Dredd Megazine. However, the story that was published was not quite the story that was written. That was in the present tense, whereas what finally saw print was written in the past tense, as that fitted the style of the other stories that had gone before.
So here, for your delectation, is
Psimple Psimon as it was originally intended to be read.
Judge Dredd: Psimple Psimon
by
Jonathan Green
‘Control to all units vicinity of Charley Rogers Block,’ a voice crackles
over his helmet comm. ‘We have multiple leapers. Repeat, mass suicide attempt
at Charley Rogers. Judges Hardy and Roach at the scene request assistance. Meat
wagons already en route.’
The grim expression etched on his granite features
doesn’t alter as he swings the Lawmaster off the skedway and onto the
intersked, heading for City Bottom.
‘Dredd responding.’
The body hitting the rockrete in front of him forces Dredd to slam on the
brakes, the bike skidding to a halt.
‘Drokk!’
He peers up at the
cyclopean city block, its designation picked out in letters three storeys high.
And there, half a kilometre above him, he sees…
It’s little more
than a speck to beginning with. Then he hears the scream of terror, sees the
flailing arms, his eyes zooming in on the plummeting figure. And now he sees
the uniform, the helmet, the badge.
He swears again.
The Judge hits the pedway nine seconds later,
travelling at a speed of more than fifty metres per second.
‘Control, Dredd,’ he
barks into the comm, revving the Lawmaster’s engine into life again. ‘Have
arrived at Charley Rogers Block. Tell those meat wagons they’re going to need
to break out their buckets and spades.’
He can’t help running over the mess of blood and
impact traumatised tissue covering the pedway as he steers the bike towards the
block entrance. Behind him another cit makes landfall with a sound like
breaking eggs.
It never rains, he thinks and heads for the lifts.
Dredd makes it to the top of the block.
‘Psi-Judge Mesmer is on his way,’ the voice of Control
buzzes in his ear again.
A psi-judge? Of
course. When Judges start jumping Grand Hall is bound to get jumpy too,
especially considering how their numbers have been so drastically depleted
since Chaos Day.
‘Understood.’
He kicks open the door to the roof, his lawgiver
already in his hand. He takes in the scene that greets him at a practised
glance.
Lined up on the edge of the roof are a dozen cits or
more. At the head of the line is the other Judge already attending the Charley
Rogers Block leaping frenzy.
Lined up like that they look like an iso-cube
execution detail. Only the expressions on their faces betray them, and they all
have exactly the same expression; one of abject terror.
There’s only one person on the roof who doesn’t look
terrified and that’s the juve ten paces away to Dredd’s right. He can’t be more
than eighteen. A look of sheer delight twinkles in the boy’s eyes, as he utters
the words, ‘Simon says, jump!’
With a scream of rage and fear, the Judge hurls
herself into the yawning gulf beyond the top of the tower to join her partner
as a gory puddle on the pedway below.
Dredd has the juve
in his sights in an instant.
‘Freeze, creep!’
The boy turns then, acknowledging the Senior Street
Judge for the first time. ‘You didn’t say, “Simon says”.’
He’s given the creep
a chance. Hershey’s No-Kill Policy doesn’t apply here. The juve’s already
killed two judges now, and Grud alone knows how many others. Zero tolerance.
It’s the only answer in this situation. It’s his judgement call.
‘Standard
execution,’ Dredd growls, passing sentence.
Pulling the trigger
is like instinct; he doesn’t even have to think about it. It’s automatic.
‘Don’t you want to
know why?’
But the perp’s still
alive. And he’s still talking. Dredd’s lawgiver remains undischarged.
The simple action of pulling the trigger suddenly
feels like trying to push a Fattie uphill without a belly-wheel. Sweat beads on
his brow.
‘Aren’t you even
just a little bit curious?’
‘Your confession,
creep,’ Dredd mutters through gritted teeth. He can feel the perp inside his
head now, taunting him, mocking his inability to execute his duty, to see
justice carried out.
The rezzies lined up
along the edge of the roof remain where they are, whimpering, the wind tugging
at their clothes and hair. Not one of them moves a muscle. Not one of them is capable
of doing so.
‘I used to be the
block idiot, you know. Butt of everyone’s jokes. You wouldn’t believe it now,
would you?’
Looking at him,
Dredd can detect the hint of mental retardation in the high forehead and the
spacing of the eyes.
‘Oh, I don’t know.
I’d call what you’re doing here pretty stupid.’
The boy gives a bark
of mirthless laughter. ‘Do you know what they called me? Simple Simon! They
made my life a misery – my family’s too – with their constant jibes and the
regularly beatings they dished out.’
‘So what changed?’
Dredd can feel his finger slowly tightening on the trigger. If he keeps the
creep talking he might weaken the boy’s focus enough to break his concentration.
‘Chaos Day,’ Simple
Simon replies. ‘Charley Rogers was locked down, but it was too late for us; my
family and me. My father was already infected. My whole family succumbed to the
bug. I had to watch them all bleed out through their eyes and die.’
‘But not you.’ Dredd
feels the trigger ease back a fraction more.
‘Turns out I’m one
of the lucky two per cent. No, I didn’t die. Instead, I went to bed an imbecile
and woke up the following morning a drokking genius. Chaos Day changed me.’
‘Changed us all.’
Another millimetre.
‘Ah, but can you do
this?’
The juve turns his
attention from Dredd to the queue of waiting victims again. ‘Simon says, jump.’
With a shrill scream
of hopeless terror a woman – the next in line – throws herself from the top of
the block. And there’s nothing Dredd can do to save her.
‘Not one of them ever
had a kind word for me. Not ever!’
‘You think you’re so
special?’ Dredd growls, the sweat pouring down inside his helmet now.
‘I know I am,’ the
juve snaps. It’s a bitter, desperate sound, like that made by a cornered animal
fully expecting to be put down. ‘Otherwise how else could I do this?’
He turns eyes
blazing with the fires of injustice on Dredd, who meets the creep’s gaze with a
flint hard stare of his own.
‘Shoot yourself in
the head.’
The Judge has faced
down everything from zombies, to alien oppressors, to extra-dimensional super-fiends.
Some upstart psi isn’t going to get the better of him. Not today.
Gritting his teeth, Dredd continues to resist.
Simple Simon’s mad stare
bores into him, the juve focusing all his rage and hatred upon the Judge. But
Dredd sees something else there in those wild eyes now.
Fear.
The creep’s never
met anyone capable of resisting his powers before. Judge Roach certainly hadn’t
been able to, nor Judge Hardy, and the ennui-addled residents of Charley Rogers
hadn’t had a hope.
‘What?’ the boy gasps,
unwittingly giving voice to his surprise, his once indomitable will weakening
still further. ‘Shoot yourself in the head!’
Still Dredd resists.
‘How can this be
happening? Why won’t you do as you’re told?’
He hears the crunch
of boots on the gravel of the rooftop behind him, and something distracts the
boy for a moment.
In that instant Dredd feels the force of the juve’s
willpower loses focus. The tension in his finger fades. He pulls the trigger,
even as the new arrival gasps in horror.
A single round explodes
from the barrel of the gun and hits the boy square in the centre of his
forehead. As it punches out again through the top of his skull, Simple Simon
falls to the ground.
Dredd regards the limp body, looking so like a
marionette with its strings cut.
‘You didn’t say
“Simon says”.’
‘You didn’t have to shoot him in the head, you know?’ Judge Mesmer says as
the stretcher bearing the boy is lifted into the med wagon. The clean-up crews have
almost finished hosing down the pedway outside Charley Rogers Block.
‘Didn’t I?’ Dredd
growls, the stony expression on his face unchanging.
‘Medics say he’ll
live,’ Mesmer goes on, one hand stroking the excessively groomed greying goatee
on his chin, ‘but that shot of yours took out most of his prefrontal cortex. He’s
even more of a gibbering idiot now than he was before the Chaos Bug unlocked
his latent psi-talents and gave him a genius level IQ.’
‘Aim must’ve been
off for some reason.’
Psi-Judge Mesmer
gives a weary sigh as Dredd mounts his Lawmaster once again. ‘It’s a shame you
had to lobotomise the lad. Psi-Division could doubtless have learnt a lot from
him.’
The Senior Street Judge fixes the other with a stare
so cold it could freeze magma.
‘Haven’t you heard, Mesmer?’ he says, revving the
bike’s idling engine into life. ‘Ignorance is bliss.’
The End
As long time readers of this blog will already know, I am a fan of Dan Abnett's writing. Never was this more true that when it comes to his Black Library Inquisitor novels and the Gaunt's Ghosts series.
It is a hugely inspirational place, and I'm clearly not the only one to think so. Take the makers of the '70s TV show Children of the Stones. I only caught five minutes of Children of the Stones when it was originally broadcast in 1976 but that brief exposure haunted me and I've watched the whole series on DVD only recently to exorcise those particular demons.
Avebury - or at least the ancient Wiltshire countryside - has cropped up again and again in my own books over the years. It's most obviously apparent in my Doctor Who Decide Your Destiny gamebook The Horror of Howling Hill but it's also appeared in everything from my first ever published book Spellbreaker through to my short story Fear to Tread that was first published in 2011.
While I was running my YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter, a number of people asked about the possibility of new gamebook content. Well, following on from the success of YOU ARE THE HERO, I'm planning on crowd-funding a brand new gamebook, based on the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.
I feel strange today. Slightly bereft. My email inbox is missing those 'New Backer Alert!' messages.
