Free Dredd VS Death by Gordon Rennie Page A

times out of ten, her Lawgiver shots went exactly where she wanted them to. This time was no exception.
    The two shots punched into the white-faced freak's chest, knocking him backwards. A second later, though, he was back on his feet, reaching for his dropped weapon and snarling in even greater hatred.
    Body armour, thought Anderson. That's what he must be wearing under those robes. There's a couple of light and flexible armour types - stuff like the new shokk-hard jackets favoured by Mega-Mob blitzers - that can stop anything up to a Lawgiver AP round.
    Then Anderson saw the freak's face again, felt for a moment the burning hatred in those unnatural red eyes and sensed the awful hunger behind that hatred, and suddenly knew that, no, there was no armour hidden underneath those robes. She had just put two shots straight into this freak's chest cavity, and it hadn't even phased him.
    The other three were getting ready to fire again too. One of them was fumbling with an object in his hand, and Anderson got another psi-flash as, in her mind's eye, she saw the object leave the cultist's hand; saw it explode against the front of her bike; saw both her and the Lawmaster burning furiously, wreathed in unquenchable flames. Saw herself falling screaming from the saddle as she burned alive in agony, her body smashing into the surface of the road and then lying there lifeless and yet still burning. By the time the nearest back-up unit arrived a few minutes later, there would be hardly anything left of her to scrape up and deliver to Resyk.
    Phosphor bomb! her mind screamed to her in warning at the weapon in the cultist's hand.
    Her own hand stabbed the handlebar-mounted fire control switch for her Lawmaster's main armament, sending out a long, roaring stream of shells from the twin-linked cannons on the bike's front. Large-calibre shells raked the rear and interior of the hov-van, ripping through metal bodywork and human flesh with equal ease. The phosphor grenade, blown out of its owner's hand, exploded inside the van with devastating effect, and Anderson had to manoeuvre hard to avoid the ferocious fireball which suddenly burst out of the vehicle's open rear doors.
    Its whole interior ablaze, including its driving compartment, the vehicle swerved violently across the lanes of the sked. A flailing figure covered head to toe in flame fell out of the still-open side door and hit the surface of the road with a sickening crunch. Anderson followed the vehicle on its careering course, hitting her bike sirens to alert all oncoming traffic of the danger, although the sight of the fiercely burning and out-of-control vehicle was surely enough to make the driver of any oncoming vehicle sit up and take notice.
    Suddenly, without warning, something detached itself from the flame-filled furnace that was now the van's rear compartment. It was a human figure, covered in fire. It leapt - flew, almost - from the rear of the van, covering the nearly ten-metre gap between the burning van and Anderson's position in an astounding feat of strength, landing on the bullet-scarred front of the Lawmaster with a bone-jarring impact.
    Anderson recoiled back in her saddle in disbelief, finding herself staring into the inhuman eyes of the thing as it launched itself upon her. Most of its clothes were burnt away by the fire which crawled over almost all of its body, and Anderson could clearly see the gaping holes on its torso from the wounds inflicted by the bike cannon shells and her two Lawgiver shots. It was the same freak she had already shot twice in the chest.
    It leapt across the front of the bike at her, forcing her to relinquish control of the bike's handlebars as she brought an arm up to block a lunging bite from that fang-filled mouth. With her onboard computer knocked out by a lucky bullet hit, the Lawmaster was now effectively out of control.
    The monstrosity locked its hands round her throat, pressing forward eagerly toward her. Her nostrils were filled