Judge Dredd - Rat Town

A short story by Jonathan Clements

When Megazine editor Alan Barnes asked for a Judge Dredd short story, he specified "no internal monologues" for Dredd himself. So I decided to write internal monologues for everyone else, in a story with seven points of view, and my own mini-hommage to the TV series Boomtown. Rat Town featured a rookie law enforcer out of her depth, called to a hostage situation in a bank where all three robbers may (or may not) be undercover cops who can't blow their cover. Rather than lead the reader by the hand, I left the ending open to interpretation. Who was undercover and who was a real criminal? And if there was an undercover judge on the scene, who was it? I followed the arguments about it by lurking over at the 2000ad message board. I've been waiting for someone to work out what really happened from the evidence presented, but so far, nobody has got it 100% right. Here is just one of the seven viewpoints.

___

Robinson said "Bullseye!" And then him and Enus are high-fiving it, and doin' that dumb dance thing they do, waving their guns around. And I'm up from behind the counter, 'coz I know if something was getting them that happy, it's not gonna be good news.

"What did you do?!" I shout. They just giggled for a moment.
"Top score on the slitch!" says Robinson.
"Right in the head!"

I nearly lose it right there, but I try to keep my cool. I kinda fail.
"You shot a Judge! You drokkin' moron! They'll nuke this bank before they let us out alive. What were you thinking!"

The guys are all placating, shushing me and pointing at the people on the bank floor.
"She's okay!" says Enus. "She had a helmet on! Calm down, man."
"Easy now," whispers Robinson. "You don't wanna scare the hostages."

They're pretty scared already. There's lots of sobbing and moaning and the guys givin' me the hard stare - like, you know. You and me, pal. Without the gun, you and me. Put the gun down and let me kick the drokk out of you in front of Lucy from Account Services, so she knows who the hero really is.

I know Lucy's name 'coz it's on her little badge. And she's been my teller of choice all week, when I came in with the creds to change, and the foreign currency, and all the other excuses we had for casing the joint. And I'd always stand in her line, no matter how short the other queues were. I think she kinda saw that, and thought I had a crush on her. I've got her carrying the bags of money up from the safe, because she's too skinny to fight back. She's only a little thing, too. Mascara's all ruined now, and she's got this little sniff thing going because her nose is starting to run, but she's bringing the money up like a good girl. And we got most of the bags in the centre now, and there's just the minor problem of getting the drokk out of here.

"Listen, honey!" I shout down the steps at the lady Judge. "Sorry about the bullet in the head thing. No hard feelings, okay?"

And she gets to her feet and gives me the silent treatment. And I think, this is really bad. Because when my girl would - never mind. I just know it's bad. So I try to keep her talking and I say:

"I mean, we don't wanna hurt anyone, and that includes Judges, okay! We thought you were ninety-nined just now, and we're real sorry about that."

"Are you tryin' to get her phone number or something?" says Robinson, and he's psyched. He's loaded for bear and he's got this glint in his eye.

"She's just a kid," I say. "I don't think she knows what to do."

"Boohoo," he says, lifting his rifle and looking down his sights straight at her. "Now you tell her we want a safe route outta here with the cash. Or we start shooting the hostages."