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    Judd's Errand
    Judd's Errand
    Judd's Errand
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Judd's Errand

    By Greg Krojac

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    About this ebook

    Judd Witherspoon is a throwback, different from his fellow Duoterrans in that he has the round pupils of his Terran ancestors, and not the cat-like eyes of the majority of the planet's inhabitants.

    ​

    Finding a niche for himself, he sets himself up as a courier, ferrying packages and documents between the planet's settlements, via the inter-city corridor network that protects travellers from the searing heat of the surrounding desert.

    ​

    It's a dangerous job, not just because of potential bear-wolf attacks but the risk of being ambushed by sifters, roving bandits who prey on the corridors. And this time his cargo is different.

    ​

    In a Mad Max-style story, Judd is willing to risk his own life if necessary in order to protect a precious graphene package and deliver it to Paradise Cove.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Krojac
    Release dateMar 11, 2021
    ISBN9781393617679
    Judd's Errand
    Author

    Greg Krojac

    Born in 1957, Greg Krojac grew up in Maidenhead, England. He is the author of nine published novels: the dystopian Recarn Chronicles trilogy (comprising of Revelation, Revolution, and Resolution), the post-apocalyptic love story The Boy Who Wasn’t And The Girl Who Couldn’t Be, the foreboding First Contact novel, Immune, and the Sophont trilogy (The Girl With Acrylic Eyes, Metalheads & Meatheads, and Reuleaux’s Portal). He is also writing a Mad Max style series of novellas, the first of which has been published as Judd’s Errand. He ventured outside of the science fiction genre recently to write a comedy-horror novella, WTF? And in addition, has published a short story Oppy about the fate of the Mars Opportunity Rover. His most recent work is a scifi thriller titled The Weatherman. He currently lives just outside the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, with his partner, Eliene, and their dog, Sophie, and two cats, Tabitha and Jess, and teaches English as a foreign language (TEFL) at a local language school.

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      Book preview

      Judd's Errand - Greg Krojac

      1

      Judd kicked the body with a boot that looked like it had seen at least five wars and lost three of them, the force of the impact causing dust and sand to drop hastily back onto the desert floor. There was no need to be gentle; the man was already dead – just how Judd wanted him to be. He didn’t like killing people, but sometimes he had no choice. The man had tried to steal his precious box and had ignored all requests to go on his way unharmed, demanding – at gunpoint – that Judd hand over the graphene-coated container. That was never going to happen. Judd wasn’t overly protective of the box because of its inherent value, even though it was almost indestructible and actually worth a lot of money in itself, but he would rather die than give up its contents.

      He’d built up quite a reputation as a courier. He was driven and didn’t allow himself to be distracted from his task by anybody or anything. If you wanted a package delivered, Judd was your man. He had a 95% success rate which was quite a feat when most of his competitors could only muster 52% – those that were still alive, that is. Of those 5% failures, only one could have been avoided; he had trusted someone who didn’t deserve his trust – he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

      He could tell by the tattoo on the man’s forearm – two suns overlapping like a celestial Venn diagram – that he was a follower of the twin sun gods Suncé and Sunon. He didn’t believe in the gods himself, but many did and, even though this man had tried to kill him and steal his property, he would respect the man’s burial traditions.

      He gathered a few rocks together and covered the man’s face with them. It was important to followers of the Sunsu religion that their life spirit should find its own way to the Resting Place, and they needed eyes in order to be able to do that.

      Stopping momentarily, before crouching down and positioning the last two stones over the corpse’s eyes, he took a pair of mirror sunglasses out of the breast pocket of his jacket, placed them on his nose, and glanced up at the suns which beat down mercilessly on anything that wasn’t in shade. If he was taking the trouble to protect a dead man’s eyes, it didn’t make sense to leave his own eyes unprotected.

      He reached over his right shoulder and drew his razor-sharp machete from its sheath. Raising the blade above his own head he swung it down on the dead man’s neck with such force and accuracy that just the one downward sweep sliced the head clean apart from the torso. Laying a few more stones to cover the vulnerable stump of the still visible neck, he had a final message for the dead man.

      I warned you but you wouldn’t listen. I only did what I had to do. But I bear you no ill-will on your journey to the Resting Place. I’ve adhered to your customs – even though, personally, I’m a non- believer – so your life force should pass on without problems. May your gods go with you.

      Those closing words spoken, he walked the ten metres to where his buggy was parked and returned immediately to the decapitated corpse with a length of strong rope wrapped around his right shoulder. He slid his arm underneath the headless body just enough to allow him to thread the rope under its back and leave enough cord free to fasten a knot, securing the corpse tightly in its loop. He attached the other end, to the tow bar of the buggy. Settling back in the driver’s seat he pressed his thumb onto the card-key and the engine purred silently into life.

      The car edged forwards as his right foot applied pressure to the accelerator. He didn’t push the gas pedal down hard yet as he didn’t want to disturb the sand too much when he left the scene – that would have been counterproductive.

      Once he’d travelled about three hundred metres distance from the buried head he stopped.

      Well, Ruby? Ready for a drive?

      The vehicle didn’t answer him; it never did.

      He opened up the throttle and Ruby lurched forwards, her tyres fleetingly clawing for grip. Once found, the car rocketed onward, kicking up a large dust trail behind it; the decapitated body tumbled and somersaulted as it was dragged behind in Ruby’s wake. After another kilometre, Judd stopped the buggy, climbed out of it, and released the now battered and bruised corpse from its bonds. He returned the rope to its place inside the buggy’s meagre trunk, tucking it beneath a dark brown trench coat.

      Returning to the driver’s seat, he slid his hand underneath the passenger seat to confirm that the box was still there; of course, there was no way it wouldn’t be there but he felt better for feeling its familiar touch.

      Ruby accelerated away and what was left of the body faded into the distance. Judd patted the buggy’s dashboard.

      I know, girl. It’s messy but dragging the guy’s body behind us has given the sand-jackals something else to find and fight over. They’ll leave his head alone for a while and his life force will have time to make its journey. We did a good thing.

      2

      The suns were beginning to set and the light was starting to fade. Soon it would turn pitch black and the night-time temperatures would drop to a biting chill of minus twenty degrees. Judd needed to find shelter and find it fast. And it wasn’t only the low temperature that made the night dangerous – darkness gave cover to the many predators that roamed the desert.

      The sand-jackal’s larger and more terrifying cousin, the bear-wolf, was the most dangerous of them all, seemingly devoid of all fear. Once a bear-wolf got your scent it would pursue you relentlessly until one of you dropped dead. Its Achilles heel was that despite its aggressive nature, evolution had decreed that it should live a solitary existence and avoid contact with its own species at all costs – except for the purposes of mating. The animal would only approach a female bear-wolf when she was on heat, they would mate several times over a few days – a pretty violent experience and hazardous for the male – and then both disappear back into the desert separately, never to be seen again.

      Judd learnt at a young age how to deal with bear-wolves; spending his early years in the desert, he had no choice. His father had been killed by a bear-wolf when he was ten orbits old and his mother had been determined that her son wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

      One day, hearing the screech of an adult bear-wolf in the distance, she decided that it was time to pass on some valuable survival tricks to her son. She locked the boy inside their small cabin and all he could do was watch as, not wanting to ruin her clothes, she stripped off and smeared bear-wolf faeces all over her body.

      Judd was accustomed to his mother’s eccentricities – she had never been the same since the death of his father – but this was a new low, even for her. He was disgusted – he could smell the putrid stench even from their home – but he was also immensely impressed by what he saw next.

      A bear-wolf emerged from the nearby woods and galloped towards the homestead,

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