The Unquiet Grave Read online

  DURHAM RED

  THE UNQUIET GRAVE

  Red bounced to her feet, snarling. The bald man was lying still, but his companions had dropped their chains and were racing towards her. Plasma fire ripped out across the deck.

  She dived aside, behind the axle, letting off two shots as she went. Each shot hit a man in grey; superheated blood and bone fragments exploded back into the walls. Red peered back around the stone column, just in time to see Ketta blur out of the corridor and into the surviving attackers.

  There was a sudden cacophony of screams, blows, and breaking limbs. It ended mercifully quickly - in five seconds, maybe less - until all the grey-clad men were dead. Red didn't even see it happen. She was already looking up at Godolkin, trying to see how the cuffs would come off.

  A heartbeat later, she was flying back into the axle, her face a mask of pain.

  DURHAM RED

  -Peter J Evans-

  #1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE

  #2: THE OMEGA SOLUTION

  #3: THE ENCODED HEART

  #4: MANTICORE REBORN

  #5: BLACK DAWN

  JUDGE DREDD FROM 2000 AD BOOKS

  #1: DREDD VS DEATH

  Gordon Rennie

  #2: BAD MOON RISING

  David Bishop

  #3: BLACK ATLANTIC

  Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  #4: ECLIPSE

  James Swallow

  #5: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

  David Bishop

  #6: THE FINAL CUT

  Matthew Smith

  #7: SWINE FEVER

  Andrew Cartmel

  #8: WHITEOUT

  James Swallow

  #9: PSYKOGEDDON

  Dave Stone

  JUDGE ANDERSON

  #1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon

  MORE 2000 AD ACTION

  ROGUE TROOPER

  #1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie

  STRONTIUM DOG

  #1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene

  FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT - David Bishop

  #1: OPERATION VAMPYR

  #2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY

  #3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD

  THE ABC WARRIORS

  #1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

  #2: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES - Mike Wild

  To Nicola

  Who makes everything work

  Especially me.

  And to Kent

  Who came up with the goods.

  Durham Red created by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Carlos Ezquerra.

  A 2000 AD Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  www.2000adonline.com

  1098 7 65 4321

  Cover illustration by Mark Harrison.

  Copyright © 2004 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

  All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S."Durham Red" is a registered trade mark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trade mark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.

  ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-072-3

  ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-113-3

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  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.

  DURHAM RED

  THE UNQUIET GRAVE

  PETER J EVANS

  The Legend of Durham Red

  It is written that in that year of 2150, the skies rained down nuclear death, and every family and clan lost father and brothers and sons. The Strontium choked our beloved homeworld and brought forth mutants, squealing and twisted things.

  Yet such mutants were not weak things to be crushed underfoot, for the same radiation that had created them warped their bodies, making them stronger than any normal human. They became hated and feared by all, and were herded into ghettos and imprisoned in vast camps. There they plotted rebellion and dreamed of freedom amongst their own kind.

  Some, it is told, were able to escape from the shadows of ruined Earth, to join the feared Search/Destroy Agency. They tracked wanted criminals on worlds too dangerous for regular enforcement officers. They became known as the Strontium Dogs.

  The one they call Durham Red became an S/D Agent to escape the teeming ghettos of her devastated homeland. Shunned even by her own kind because of a foul mutant blood-thirst, she soon found that her unsurpassed combat skills served her well as a Strontium Dog. The years of continuous slaughter took their toll, however, and the tales relate that in the end Red willingly entered the deep sleep of cryogenic suspension, determined to let a few years go by without her.

  All know of the unexpected twist that the legend took. Her cryo-tube malfunctioned. Durham Red woke up twelve hundred years late.

  While she slept, the enmity between humans and mutants had exploded into centuries of total war, leaving the galaxy a shattered shell, home only to superstition and barbarism. Billions of oppressed mutants now worship Saint Scarlet of Durham - the mythologised image of Red herself! The bounty hunter from Milton Keynes has now become almost a messiah figure for mutantkind - and a terrifying blasphemy in the eyes of humans.

  Half the galaxy is looking to her for bloody salvation. The other half is determined to destroy her at any cost. The future is a nightmare, and Durham Red is trapped right in the middle of it...

  1. GLOW

  Judas Harrow was late arriving at the Chamber of Sensation. By the time he got there, the orgy was already in full swing.

  The gallery was overflowing, lesser acolytes of the Osculum Cruentus jammed against the handrail in their dozens; a solid wall of crimson cowls. Harrow had to force his way to the front, sliding through the ranks of the faithful with an equal mixture of stealth, apology and brute force. No one complained, even though Harrow was certain he'd felt someone's rib crack after a particularly vicious shove. The owner of the rib might have gasped but the chamber was already ringing with gasps, and worse. Nobody paid any heed to one more.

  Harrow reached the rail, inwardly cursing himself for not getting to the chamber sooner. Part of his problem was the cowl. Its previous owner had been taller and the garment was too big, voluminous and long. He had to be on constant guard not to trip over the cursed thing. Falling flat on his face would do his attempts at subterfuge no good at all.

  Neither would the look of shock on his face when he peered over the edge of the gallery, but there was nothing he could do about that. Luckily the cowl's hood covered his expression and no one seemed to be looking at him anyway.

  They were too busy watching those participating in the orgy.

  It was the first time Harrow had managed to gain access into the chamber, and from what he saw with his own eyes, it was far worse than he could have imagined.

  The chamber itself was a broad, circular cavern, maybe a hundred metres across and a similar distance from floor to ceiling. The walls were hung with huge tapestries; scenes of gruesome debauchery so extreme that even Judas Harrow, who had seen some sights in his time, took one quick look at them and decided that he would see no more.

  Above the awful hangings, diamond-analogue windows formed a wide, domed ceiling. Distant starlight speckled in from outside, through coloured panes that formed images almost as foul as those on the walls. Halfway up the chamber was a ring of metal walkway, bolted precariously into the dark stone - the
viewing gallery on which Judas Harrow, and almost a hundred sweating acolytes, now stood. The floor below was lost in darkness, but from the centre rose a blunt cylinder of black iron, its flanks stained and pitted with rust. The upper surface of this, the dais, was where the attention of the ranked acolytes was fixed. Harrow forced himself to turn his gaze the same way.

  What he saw sickened him.

  Down on the dais, lovers writhed in mindless abandon. Harrow tried to count them, but gave up after a few seconds. Ten, twelve, maybe more, he couldn't tell. There seemed to be no division between one bacchanalian and the next: the dais was a tangle of limbs, a squirming mass of pale, sweat-slicked skin and glittering metal.

  Despite the rapt, lust-soaked stares of the acolytes, Harrow could find nothing arousing in the multiple coupling below him. The lovers moved spastically, like failing machines. A physically active associate of the orgy on Harrow's side of the dais fell slightly away from her fellows shuddering uncontrollably, and he saw that the curve of her spine was studded with interface jacks, black metal sockets stapled brutally through her white skin and into the vertebrae beneath. Rumour had it that those who engaged in the orgies spent the long hours between rituals in a storm of neural transfer; plugged directly into the temple's data-engines and force-fed imagery both erotic and terrifying, priming them for the rigors of ceremony. Harrow saw that the woman's mind had already been driven apart by days of torturous hypnotic input. All that was left to her now was pain and raw, animalistic desire.

  The woman turned her head. She had no eyes, just another two interface sockets, riveted into the bone of her skull.

  Harrow gripped the rail hard and tried to keep his stomach from reeling. The stench of those who partook in the orgy - musk, vanilla and bitter machine oil - was assaulting his nostrils and the harsh glare of the spotlights illuminating them hurt his brain. He found a spot on the dais that appeared to be empty, and fixed his attention on it, trying to breathe through his mouth.

  Abruptly, the section of dais he was staring at moved.

  A jagged section of metal dropped and then slid away. With a soft whine of concealed hydraulics, almost lost amidst the cries and groans of the sexual debauchery, a long, gleaming blade rose up, slowed and locked into place.

  More blades were emerging from the dais - long, curved knives on hinged poles, little serrated scalpels peeking from the iron floor, spikes, needles. In seconds, the grinding and pumping bodies were surrounded by a lethal glitter of edged steel.

  Despite himself, something in Judas Harrow soared. He had been wondering if he was in the right place, or if he had stumbled on another deranged pleasure-cult. This, however, told him that he was indeed on the right track, even though the sight of it stopped the breath in his throat.

  The eyeless woman cried out, her back arching, her head thrown back. In doing so she met a blade and the razored edge parted her bald scalp down to the bone.

  Blood flowed from the exposed wound like crimson lava and began to slick down the woman's neck and shoulders. If she noticed the horrific injury, she made no sign of it. Nor did the other writhing participants, as they too found sharpened metal with pale skin.

  In moments, the surface of the dais was bright red with blood. Its sickly sweet odour rose to meet Harrow, strong enough to block out the musk and oil, and for that he was grateful. He had smelled enough blood in his time to make the reek of it almost comforting.

  The dais was carved with dozens of intricate channels. He hadn't noticed them before, but now they stood out against the black iron as they filled with warm blood, taking it from the lacerated bodies and down into a system of open drains. Harrow squinted, trying to see where the blood was forming up, and as he did so he noticed movement below the dais. He strained to see into the darkness.

  There was a platform below the dais, a mesh ring set further down the cylinder. Harrow saw two men there; mutants. One had arms that moved with a boneless fluidity under the sleeves of his robe, the other bore a random, unfocussed mutation that turned his face into a maze of rifts and scars.

  Judas Harrow was a mutant too, although his genetic changes were far subtler.

  The snake-armed man was lifting a wide bowl and the other operating a valve set into the cylinder's iron flank. Liquid, dark and thick, gurgled faintly as it flowed into the bowl and filled it.

  As Harrow watched, the man at the valve turned a control, stemming the flow, and then reached into his robes. He brought out a vial and held it with a reverent pride. As his companion held the bowl close, the man uncorked the vial.

  From the mouth of it poured a sickly, greenish radiance.

  Harrow held his breath. There was little doubt, now - he was where he needed to be. And, of course, in mortal danger just by his very presence. One false step and he'd be down on the dais by tomorrow night, eyeless and brains pulped to a sexual mush, bleeding into a bowl. A shiver inched down his spine, and at that moment he was quite glad of the cowl's heavy fabric.

  His life had been simpler once. He was sure of it.

  Concentrate, Harrow! There was no time for reverie now; the man with the bottle was already dipping into it with a long spoon, taking out a tiny measure of fine powder. The spoonful gave off a ghostly light as he lowered it to the bowl and carefully, lovingly stirred it in.

  The powder's strange radiance faded into the liquid, but it never quite went out. Harrow watched the luminous disc bob in the gloom as the scarred man lifted the bowl above his head.

  "Blood!" he roared.

  His voice was harsh and powerful, as deep as a funeral drum. It cut effortlessly across the weakening cries of the grinding bodies. Harrow felt the acolytes around him tense.

  Was this the moment?

  "Blood," the man called again. "Blood born of pleasure, born of pain. Blood born of sensation, true sensation. True enlightenment!"

  The acolytes cheered, howled and beat at the rail with their fists. They had been waiting for this moment as well, but for different reasons to Harrow. For appearances, he slapped the rail a couple of times too. "Hooray," he croaked weakly.

  The snake-armed man joined his fellow. "This blood is the libation we give to our high-priestess, so that she may bless its creation for us." As he spoke, there was a grinding hiss: a door was grumbling open, down near the floor of the chamber. Light flooded in, blue-white and fluttering. In the staccato glare Harrow saw that the men were standing at the top of a shallow ramp, which led from the platform down to the doorway.

  The door itself was massive, armoured and saw-edged.

  The robed mutants turned without another word, and strode down the ramp, holding the bowl of gleaming blood between them. Harrow was too far around the gallery to see what lay beyond the opening, and he couldn't risk moving and losing his place. He needed to see what would happen next.

  What happened for several minutes was nothing, save the continued gyrations of those partaking in the blood-spattered orgy. Harrow noticed that a couple of them had lost too much blood and had fallen still and silent. If their fellows had any sanity left at all, he thought to himself, they would have envied their fallen companions. Instead, horribly, they continued to couple with them. They couldn't have enough wits left to know the difference between the living and the dead.

  Thankfully, the robed priests returned. The snake-armed man raised the bowl sinuously above his head and as one the acolytes gasped.

  It was empty.

  "Rejoice!" the scarred mutant roared. "The priestess has tasted our libation and pronounced it good. Now you shall taste enlightenment as she has done."

  With that, panels concealed around the wall of the gallery slid aside with a rusty groan. Inside were filthy metal beakers, brimming with dark, faintly glowing blood.

  The acolytes rushed at the open panels, grasping for the stained beakers, gulping the contents down. Judas Harrow, however, was already making his way off the gallery. There was nothing for him here, and he had no desire to sample the blood taken from the cut and
wounded bodies. He had been dosing himself with an antidote to Glow, the luminous narcotic powder, for three days now, ever since he had arrived at the temple, but there was no sense pushing his luck. The vile stuff was everywhere, even in the air, and he would not risk drinking it as well.

  Once outside, in the corridor that led to the accommodation cells, he allowed himself a single curse. "Sneck!" he swore.

  He had been hoping that the priestess would show herself, that somehow the priests would bring her forth and present her to the faithful. Just a glimpse would have been enough.

  Enough to prove that he was right, that after all his months of searching he hadn't come here in vain. Enough to show him that she was alive.

  Because if he was right, the high priestess of the Osculum Cruentus was the woman he would love and worship until he died. Saint Scarlet herself.

  Durham Red.

  Harrow had come to the temple of the Osculum Cruentus well prepared. Hidden beneath the folds of his cowl was a variety of equipment more suited to the professional burglar than the religious adept: the crimson fabric concealed a light-drill, a data-pick, a reel of mono-bond climbing line, a plasma-derringer and a long, wickedly curved knife. The last item hadn't been part of his original kit, but almost as soon as he had entered the temple an acolyte had tried to stab him with it. Which had been something of a mistake - Harrow was no warrior, but he knew how to take care of himself.