Judgement Day

The spindly spider armed man pounced on top of Andrew, Andrew swatted at him but missed pushing him away. Instead only yanking his hood off and dropping his Lawgiver. What he saw nearly made him throw up. Whatever had been done to this man had not been done in kindness. Its head was misshaped and malformed, looking like a seven year old had been given a lump of clay and a buzz saw and told to have at it, yellow teeth all sharpened like canines hid behind infected yellow lips. It smelled of rotten meat and its breath smelled like a warm corpse cooking in one of the cities vertigo joints ovens for a week. Dead white eyes peered at him in malice.

"You invaded my home Judge! now die!" it screeched in that wet, hollow voice. A taloned claw drew back and attempted to slice Andrew's face open.

Andrew reached down to his belt and pulled out his daystick. He snapped it open and swung the heavy metal baton at the side of the things head. It connected with a sickening, fleshy, crack allowing Andrew to shove it off of him. He rolled back and held his daystick up defensively. He needs to find his gun, he wouldn't be able to defeat this thing in close quarter combat for sure.

The thing threw a knife at him from the table after slitting the throat of the amputee on the table. Andrew bent back, his right arm touching down on the floor to balance himself, narrowly dodging the blade, and yelled, "drokk!" as the knife sailed mere inches above his face.

Andrew pushed himself up only to feel a slash run across his face and his helmet get knocked off. Andrew couldn't see anything, the room was pitch black. Andrew swallowed and gripped his daystick tightly. He tried to listen for something but the spider thing was quite. There was a hiss behind him and he swung blindly, missing and hearing it scurrying off into the blackness of the room.

He needed light, so that meant either finding a light switch, or his helmet. His feet began to scuff the floor. Trying to see if he could stumble onto his helmet.

Claws sunk into his side and he let out a wail as he brought his fist back to collide with his attacker. His fist caught the creatures face and swatted him away. Andrews hand grasped his left side and pressed firmly down, trying to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.

Should have gotten those bionic attachments. he thought as he chastised himself for not thinking ahead.

Lights began to flicker on, not many but enough that Andrew could make out the outline of most of the objects in the room. It was an improvement but the odds still stacked heavily against him.

"This is boring me little judge." it rasped. "At least now this can begin to get interesting."

Andrew looked over and saw his Lawgiver. He slowly began to move towards it shen a talon caught his shoulder pad, scraping off it harmlessly. The mans talons were coming down for a second swipe as Andrew dodged it. Its arm swinging past Andrews body, he reached out to grab the arm and brought his daystick down onto the joint. Snapping the bone with a single blow.

The man howled in pain as Andrew dodged a flail of one of his arms. This distracted it enough to allow Andrew to roll and grab his Lawgiver. He aimed it right at the mutant freak and yelled for his hotshot. Andrew exhaled and pulled the trigger, an orange heat seeking bullet exiting from the barrel.

The spider creature looked up and saw the bullet. At the last moment it flipped or did some sort of move that Andrew was unable to see and dodged the heat seeking bullet. Causing it to slam and embed itself into the wall. Andrew swallowed, a more fear and panic arising in his stomach as he aimed at the creature again.

"Rapid fire!" he instructed and let loose a torrent of bullets at the creature. The creature dived, ducked, and dodged every single bullet. Moving as fluid and gracefully as liquid mercury, something that was not evident in its clunky build.

Andrew heard his blood dropping to the floor from his reopened scar. His heart pounding like a jackhammer, feeling the blood pump from his heart to his scar and out onto the cold, metal ground. It was as though his life essence was floating out of him.

"Scared little Judge? Looks like another one bites the dust! It's alright, just throw down your weapon and I'll make your final moments quick. You won't feel a single thing, just a quick snap and then sweet oblivion. Then you can go talk to all of the other failures in hell!"

Andrew felt something grow inside his stomach, it overcame the fear and swelled throughout his body. The reason he had become a Judge in the first place. He regripped his Lawgiver and then snapped his daystick out again. Looking up with clenched teeth and bloodied face full of rage he stared down the creature with a look of fire in his eye.

"Why don't you come here you little pussy?" Andrew growled as he pulled his Lawgiver up. "Armor piercing," he commanded and shot the huge buckets at the spider creature. It was afraid as It barely managed to dodge his bullets until one caught it in the leg and it was blown off cleanly. Blood splattering over the wall as the thing howled in pain.

Andrew walked over as he began shooting the rest of the things limbs off one by one. When he stood over the sniveling wretch he grabbed it by the throat and shoved it into a wall. It looked at him full of hate as its stumps attempted to strangle him.

"Citizen of the Michael C. Hall block, your crimes include homicide, attempted murder of a Judge, cannibalism, and attempted and successful mutilation of another's person without their consent. The sentence is death. How do you plead?" Andrew asked, his words deep and frightening.

"Galah, mother, damn you, judge, the tower, machine!" it screeched nonsense as it tried to wriggle out of his grasp.

"I can't say I knew you'd say that," Andrew said to It as he raised his Lawgiver to Its chin. "But I can say that you are still one ugly motherfu..." Andrew began but was cut off as he pulled the trigger and blew the things head off.

Andrew grimaced as some of its brain matter splattered onto his face. His wiped it off and went looking for his helmet. Finding it in a corner with an arm bleeding onto the cherry red finish. He wiped the blood off, although it had already stained the helmet. Wonderful. I'll never be able to get this to regulation again. he thought as he put the helmet onto his head and walked back out into the hallway after checking to make sure that there weren't block maniacs charging through.

If I can get to a maintenance shaft, I could climb up to the next few floors without worrying about running into anymore of these freaks, he pondered as his hand began to check along the walls for an opening of some sort. There was a small door that opened and said exactly what he needed. Smiling as he opened it up, first checking to make sure it wasn't booby trapped. When it was clear he wiggled into the opening and began to climb through the vents that would lead him to wherever he wanted to go.

It was cramped inside with his shoulder pads, he wished they weren't so big. They could be a hindrance at times. All they really did was look cool in the end, Judge Foreman at the Academy has informed him of their use exactly like that.

He kept crawling along until he approached a vent cover. There was the sound of fighting. Andrew crawled over and looked, there was someone fighting off at least ten people single handily, and it was a Judge.

Andrew squinted and peered closer. It was Judge Yvaine, she must have been separated from Judge Anderson. She had run out of ammo because she was fighting some block maniacs off with just her daystick, they were on the ropes for now but he could see her getting tired and beginning to make mistakes. He had to help but if he didn't aim correctly he could hit her.

One of the block members grabbed her helmet back and another one punched her. Stunning her long enough for the others to group around her like a swarm of flies.

"We got ourselves a good looking one!" one of them yelled. "Time for some fun boys! Enjoy the spoils of war!"

Yvaine screamed as they began to tear at her, Andrew needed to act now. He reached down and pulled a flash bang out of his belt, shoving the vent cover off and crawling forward. Once he was free enough he rolled the flash bang in front of the group. He closed his eyes and pulled his body out as the flash bang exploded.

He counted to five, then it cleared and he ran forward. Yanking block maniacs off of her and shooting them one by one as he called out their crimes. They pleaded and begged but there was a handful of crimes that received a death sentence, attempted rape and murder of a Judge were two of them.

Once they were all taken care of he walked over to Yvaine. "You good?" he asked.

"Fine as I can be Andy." he told him, calling him in that pet name she knew irritated him.

"At least I got here in time, that could have been bad."

"It could have. Or maybe I could have enjoyed it."

"Drokk Yvaine, enough with the jokes, I don't understand how you brush this shit off this easily. Anyway where's your weapon?"

Yvaine walked over to the middle of the room and grabbed it. "I ran out of ammo with my current clip and had to switch to daystick. I was the only tactical maneuver appropriate for the time and situation." she told him as she reloaded and holstered her weapon.

"Where is Judge Anderson?"

"A part off the floor on level nine caved in and we were separated. I was trying to make my way to her position when they showed up. Where's Dredd? I've been looking forward to see if he really does have that giant stick up his ass."

"He does, I don't know. We were separated on the way in. Radio has been down so I can't get ahold of him. Lets regroup on the next floor and see if we can't get access to a computer grid."

"Fine. Let's go." Yvaine nodded in agreement as the two began to walk back to the vents. They had a long fight ahead of them, and it was only just beginning.