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I see justice as a construct and I would agree that it’s relative. (One culture believes that “an eye for an eye” is just, another would say it’s not). I think the usefulness of justice is to police us and give us expectations of behavior, rules. 

In Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, one of the ideas that Culler proposes is that novels can serve to internalize social norms and then question them. Along these lines, I think that Camus’ story displays an interesting contrast: In the natural world, we don’t expect the notions of reason and predictability that are inherent to justice (for example, lions don’t get together to decide whether it’s just to kill a zebra or which one to kill…spare the women and children?). In our constructed world, we have come to expect justice and specifically consequences, good or bad, according to our actions. I think that the presentation of a bacillus from the “natural world” in opposition to our constructed world, serves to question our notion of the existence of justice and our agency in policing it.  Perhaps the reason that it's garish, hideous and witless because we are living in a "fool's paradise " if we think that we can believe in justice.