"James Swallow - Judge Dredd 4 - Eclipse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swallow James)

what they were saying, but the meaning was clear. The Judge drew her
daystick in a single fluid movement and brandished it in a wide arc,
stabbing at the air with her free hand. Whatever she said appeared to
have no effect; some of the people grabbed pieces of garbage and threw
them.

The Judge blurred; Ernesto heard the high-pitched crack of the stick as
it broke bone, and one of the citizens spun away trailing blood, hands
pressed to a ruined face.

"Gee, that was a nasty thing 2 do," said the billboard.

With a roar, the crowd surged forward and the blue-black of the
Judged uniform vanished under a dozen kicking, punching, yelling bodies.
Ernesto had to choke back bile when he saw something ragged and bloody
- a limb, maybe? - go arcing up into the air to land on the pedway.

The screen began to show pictures, images from street cameras in
different parts of Kepler, places that Diaz recognised like the zoom
terminal, the shoplex on Clarke Avenue, the free clinic. There were people
brawling everywhere, not just picking on Judges, but each other, fights
breaking out all over as buried rivalries and petty disputes were given
sudden, bloody purpose. He watched as the guy from the used droid place
on the corner strangled some ugly kid with his bare hands, slamming the
boy's face into the road over and over even after it was clear he was dead.
Ernesto threw up and stumbled behind the counter to conceal himself,
trying not to choke on the sickly cooked smell of the frying hotties.

He lost track of time; all he could hear was the rolling murmur of the
mob outside, incoherent shouts and snarls melding into a landscape of
violent noise. Glass broke and people screamed. Once, a brick shot over his
head and smashed the bio-lume sign over the counter, showering him
with flecks of plastic. Then there was a new sound that joined the rioting:
the staccato popping of gunfire.

Diaz knew that sound all too well. He'd grown up in Banana City where
the law of the spit gun had been the only law there was, but he had got
out, gone to the Moon and found a life that, while not exactly better, was
just a little less lethal. But now that sound brought it all flooding back to
him, and Ernesto's gut knotted.

He took a careful look over the top of the counter and saw someone
brandishing a pistol, cracking off shots at random, shooting out what
windows were still intact or putting rounds into fleeing figures. The street,
which before had been a decrepit permacrete avenue lined with dull little
shops and limp moon-palm trees, was now a war zone. Cars were burning,
sending palls of sooty smoke up to cluster in a thick disc at the apex of the
dome, consuming vital draughts of oxygen. Plasteen lay in drifts around
the yawning shop fronts and here and there dead bodies were lying like
knots of discarded rags.