I said I wouldn’t post, but…
From DESCENT, Chapter IV, “Trail of Dead, City of Thorns”
“Who do you seek?” Darius asked them. “Where are you going?”
“We follow the voice,” said a boy with no eyes.
“We seek our salvation,” an old man whispered. He laid his hand over a festering wound on his chest where tiny insects furrowed and buzzed; he nodded at Darius, hand over his heart. “We seek the one who calls us, the one who will save us. We go to the priest.”
“Not me,” said a tall man who stood back from the others, his voice raw with what sounded like gravel. The tall man’s head was shaved and gleaming. He held a battered paperback at his hip as if the book were the hilt of a sword. Darius caught a glimpse of the book’s title. Blood-something. “I follow no priest,” the tall man said. “I only stand and judge.”
“Oh yeah?” Darius said. “And who might you be, tall, bald and gruesome?”
“I am,” the tall man said, “The Judge.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said the woman with the dead baby.
“He’s not one of us,” whispered the boy with no eyes. “Not really.”
“I am of nothing and no one. I am The Judge.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the old man. “We go to the priest.”
Save The Judge, the others all nodded in agreement.
“The priest,” they chorused.
Darius considered the little pilgrimage of dying humans. Sick as they were, at the mention of this “priest” their faces were transformed, enraptured. Priest? The Hollow Priest? Ryder’s enemy?
“I seek him, too,” Darius said. “Let’s go see him together.”
•
They made camp that night in the skeletal torso of a crashed military cargo plane.
“A what?” Darius wanted to know.
“Military cargo plane,” said the boy with no eyes. “A Titan C-60.”
“How the hell do you know? You’re blind.”
The boy sniffed deeply. “I can tell.”
“Please, shut up and sleep,” whimpered the man with terrible burns.
“I do not sleep,” said The Judge from his dark corner. “I watch, and I judge.”
Demons don’t sleep either, Darius thought, and he shoved aside several tattered corpses—the doomed plane’s crew, Darius assumed—and he sat with a huff, folded his arms over his knees. And waited. Listened. One by one the humans sank into their miserable slumber of twitches and shakes, all except the one who called himself The Judge. He watched Darius with eyes like crescent moons in the dark, unblinking. Darius stared back. This creep was nothing special, Darius told himself, just another human with a head full of self-important noise—
Darius blinked, frowned at the oblique shadow of The Judge.
There was no “noise,” no neurons swirling in that bald ugly head, no hum of human thoughts. The Judge sat immobile, yielding nothing. And for the first time in many centuries Darius questioned his own abilities; this brute was human, wasn’t he? Had Darius overlooked a [wolf in sheep’s clothing]? He—
There came a sudden whisper in Darius’ ear: “You hear him too, don’t you.”
“Yah!” Darius jerked back, seized the creeper by the side of his face.
“Ahh! Don’t—!” It was the boy with no eyes. How the hell had the brat snuck up on him? Darius barred his teeth, shot a glance at the still immobile Judge, then shoved the boy away. “Hear who?” he snarled. Skoth, what was wrong with him? First unable to penetrate the mental defenses of a simple human, then caught unawares by a boy who was blind. “Hear who?” Darius demanded.
The boy gingerly probed the area of his face Darius had nearly chrushed. “The Voice. The Priest. I know you hear him, because I hear him calling you, too.”
“Really. And why would this priest call me?!”
“He calls you by a strange name in a strange tongue,” the boy said.
“Ha!” spoke The Judge, the sound like the snapping of a tree. “Strange name, strange tongue.”
Darius glowered at The Judge, but the boy went on. “The Priest calls you because he wants to save you. He wants to save all of us. Everyone. Even the others who aren’t with us, now. The Priest wants to save the world.”
“Others?” Darius said.
“Strange name,” The Judge said. “Strange tongue.”
Darius couldn’t believe it. “Hey, do you want to die?”
“Others,” the boy persisted. “We’re not the only ones out here struggling for life. There are other people, just like us.”
“Doubt they’re like me,” Darius breathed, his eyes still on The Judge.
“They want the same thing,” the boy whispered. “They want to live. We’ll see them soon. Tomorrow, I think.”
“Strange name, heh,” The Judge sneered, and he lifted his chin. “I know your name.”
“Oh, that’s it. You’re dead.” Darius pushed the boy aside and crossed with two easy steps to where The Judge sat still and unmoving. Darius drew back his fist for the most casual and uncaring of killing blows…
…and Darius was on his back, The Judge towering above him.
“Try it again,” The Judge said.
In a flash Darius was up. The Judge dealt him two savage impacts with the flat of his big hand. “Rraa-ugh—!” Darius roared, but The Judge delivered a shower of boulders in the shape of fists blinding and unstoppable. Darius reeled; again he found himself flat on his back, staring up at the bald crescent skull of The Judge.
“One more time?” The Judge asked.
What happened next was less than a blur. Darius leapt up again, but this time he was caught in a tangle of arms and urgent words as the humans rushed in and tried to hold him back. The Judge waited with a thin and patient smile. “Stop it, stop it, you’ll wake my child!” the woman said of her dead baby, and the boy with no eyes warned, “He’ll kill you, he’ll kill you. He’s done it before…”
_________________________________________
Hmmm. McCarthy would, of course, kick my ass.
But The Judge is dog food.
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In the 60s, the Pontiac car company offered a muscle machine called the GTO. The Ramones mention the car in the song “Rock N Roll High School” The GTO is my favorite car ever. In the late 60s, Pontiac introduced a super-charged, deluxe version of the GTO called “The Judge.” The advertising slogan? “Here Comes The Judge.”
Thanks, Fulci! I just hope you’re not too upset when The Judge meets his spectacular end…