Dead Mech

Published by Samannah Media

Copyright 2010, 2011 Jake Bible

Book Cover By Ed Delaney Copyright 2010

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. All
characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s
imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

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of this author.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, let me thank all of the fans of DEAD
MECH that sat through hours upon hours of listening to the podcast.
Without y’all, none of this would have happened.

I have to thank my wife, Marti, and my kids,
Sam and Annah for living with me while I wrote, recorded, edited,
wrote, recorded, edited, wrote, well, you get the picture. Thank
you for being so patient. I love you very much.

I also have to thank my Dad for handing me
those boxes upon boxes of paperbacks when I was in middle school.
The worlds he helped me discover: Robert R. McCammon, Roger
Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Frank Herbert.

Thanks to my Mom who loves books also, but
most of all, loved to talk about books. Hours spent dissecting the
cultural and historical significance of horror and scifi characters
and worlds.

I want to thank all of my friends that I
grew up with that challenged me artistically and intellectually.
Without y’all I would have just been another bored kid with dreams,
but zero motivation to act on those dreams.

Finally, I want to thank all of the teachers
(my wife included). Without teachers this country would be a
cesspool of bland, lifeless crap. You, teachers, are the spark that
ignites the creative fires and fans those flames into greatness. I
remember you all and thank you for every single word of
encouragement and for never giving up on me even though I was
pretty annoying and hard to deal with.

Thank you everyone!

FOREWARD

What Is A Drabble Novel?

Since writing the novel and podcasting it to
over 6,000 subscribers, the number one question I am asked is: what
is a drabble novel?

Well, to understand what a drabble novel is,
you have to understand what a drabble is. So let us start at the
beginning, a drabble is a piece of micro-fiction exactly 100 words
long. Not 99, not 101, but 100 words precisely.

Having to hit that kind of word count can be
a bit challenging, but after a little practice it begins to flow
rather easily.

So I worked on a few drabbles and became
quite hooked on the style. Of course, since just writing 100 words
wasn’t enough, I asked myself, “Self, could drabbles be strung
together in a longer narrative?”

Thus, the Drabble Novel was born!

Well, there was a little hit and miss in the
beginning…

Basically I started writing character
sketches, action scenes, plot twists, really, anything that popped
into my head, just to see if I even had a novel in me. After a
hundred or so of these disjointed snapshots of the idea in my head,
I realized I actually had something. Something that I could
legitimately write and call a Drabble Novel. So I dove right
in.

Now, the actual process of writing the novel
wasn’t quite so free for all. Pretty much I would write 100 words,
go over it a few times, then a few more times, then a few more
times, until the pacing and wording was just right. Then I’d print
out that page and move onto the next 100 words. I was pretty much
doing what all writers say not to do: I was doing final edits as I
wrote. Yep, I was polishing one piece before moving onto the next.
And there really wasn’t any other way to do it.

You see, in the beginning I couldn’t hit 100
words on the first pass. Usually I would hit 183 words or 217 words
then have to chop, chop, chop. Some of my best prose was axed in
order to keep the story strong. As I became more experienced with
the flow of the style, I would actually hit 100 words about seven
out of ten times on the first try. Which actually made my job
harder because I would re-read the piece and realize something
didn’t work and almost have to re-write the entire thing to get the
right flow and pacing and still hit 100 words.

I’ll tell you one thing, you learn economy
of words when writing a Drabble Novel! There really ain’t no space
for flowery description and exposition. You have to get to the meat
of the matter right away and stick with it. Don’t dilly dally.
Every single word counts.

So, that’s the nuts and bolts of a Drabble
Novel.

I put my heart and soul into this novel and
went a tad cooky writing it, but I loved every word of it.

I hope you do too.

-Cheers,

Jake Bible

February 2011

It would be decades after the restructuring
of human society before records were found declaring that the virus
that caused the zombie apocalypse was not the first. It wasn’t even
the second.

According to scientific records, there had
been at least four earlier outbreaks of related viruses. Government
organizations had been successful in all cases until the final
virus. Prevailing theory was the virus’s mutations finally outran
the scientists.

The final mutation was all the virus needed
to survive.

It is unknown how many people were spreading
the virus among the world’s population before the first carrier
died and re-animated.

***

It is believed that every member of the
human species became a dormant carrier of the virus. Thus, every
human that died came back as a re-animated corpse. No cure could be
found, no recourse.

However, worse than the fact that people
knew their body would come back as a voracious nightmare, was the
discovery that a bite from a zombie would mean death and
re-animation within 24 hours.

And that those bitten became contagious
within twelve hours, infecting friends, family, co-workers, anyone
they in turn bit.

And bite, they did. No exceptions, no
remorse, no reasoning.

Madness was unleashed.

***

Only one thing could be confirmed regarding
the virus: everyone infected became a zombie.

No one was spared. No matter what anti-viral
drugs were used, immuno-suppressants, gene therapies, nothing
worked. Nothing even slowed it down.

Once the living died it took less than
twenty minutes for the corpse to re-animate with only two things on
its mindless brain: kill and eat.

Killing seemed to be its first priority.
Feeding would not distract the virus driven undead from their need
to kill. Too many citizens learned the hard way, thinking a zombie
was distracted by flesh; thinking they had a chance.

***

The zombies the virus created were not
shuffling, foot draggers, but active, homicidal, very hungry
re-animated corpses bent on killing every human they could and
feasting on their flesh. They were unbelievably strong and
fast.

They were driven to kill, first and
foremost. This insured the supreme dominance of the virus.

Feeding was secondary. And feeding on fresh
flesh was the key. While never proven substantially, the belief was
that the zombie was able to feed off the energy still stored. Old,
decaying, rotten flesh was of no interest to the zombies. Thus they
did not feed off each other.

***

The zombie physiology differed greatly form
its original human form. No longer were organs needed for survival,
since they could not digest or process what they caught.

All energy, all sustenance went into
building and maintaining connective tissues.

While bones could not be reset, they could
be healed, the break fusing and strengthening. Tendons, cartilage,
ligaments and muscle could be rebuilt and re-grown. As long as the
zombie fed, the zombie stayed fit and deadly.

This was another triumph of the virus. It
gave the zombies a sense of self, a reason to fight, to kill, to
feed. To survive.

***

The virus learned and encouraged
learning.

It had the potential to allow its victims,
the zombie hordes, to process, store and analyze information. It
was a stripped down, simplistic way of reasoning, but the zombies
could think and learn.

They learned to hunt in packs. They learned
to split up, to surround their prey, to actively catch their
victims instead of just running them down.

They learned to listen, to smell, to
watch.

They learned to be predators, not just
scavengers.

Worst of all, they learned their limitations
and adjusted accordingly.

The fast pursued, the slow waited, the
broken hid.

***

The speed with which the virus took control
of a dead body astonished the doctors and researchers assigned to
find the cure. In minutes their test subjects would go from corpse
to zombie, ready to kill, eat and kill some more.

Too many lab assistants and eminent
scientists lost their lives by underestimating the power and scope
of the virus. Soon many of the researchers became the researched.
Their re-animated corpses dissected and studied using protocols and
procedures they themselves had created.

By the time the virus was isolated nearly
half the world’s population had succumbed.

The other half cowered.

Population centers were the first to go. The
density of people made it impossible to control the spread of the
virus. Within months both the East and West coasts were lost.

Communication with Europe, Asia, the Middle
East and other world regions soon amounted to sporadic info bursts
from short wave stations. Eventually, those too ceased.

The seat of power was moved to deep within
the Colorado Rockies. What was NORAD became the United Defense
Council.

The UDC hunkered down and waited, issuing
surgical, tactical strikes to the former great cities of the
nation.

Most of the country became
uninhabitable.

***

Nuclear cleansing was the only option for
many population centers. Up and down the East and West coast, and
places in between, cities were laid to waste, their poison scoured
from the planet.

New York, LA, Chicago, DC, Atlanta, San
Diego, Seattle, Denver, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, Miami. All
gone.

What was left of the country was called the
wasteland.

For several generations, human kind became
hermits, forced into indoor seclusion to avoid the toxic air and
rains that swept through.

When they emerged and the rolling skies
didn’t produce boils and blisters upon their exposed skin, they
found themselves lost.

***

The wasteland: deadly gas clouds, acid rain,
freak mega-storms, earthquakes, scorched earth. This was what the
human race had to fight through to survive.

Before the city/states, many survivors lived
in caves; burrowed under buildings, adding basement levels as
needed; found sanctuaries in the mountains.

Even fighting for their lives, they still
fought to preserve history and society.

When they did emerge, they brought their
memories with them. But, those memories were just that, memories.
Not instructions, not plans, not a future.

The UDC gave them all of that.

And for their trouble, the UDC only asked
for complete loyalty.

***

Human civilization and society had never
been about money, race, gender, looks or even power. It had always
been about class.

When society finally started to pull itself
back together after the first dark years of the zombie virus, it
pulled itself along class lines.

Small city/states formed, walls went up,
armaments placed. It became the battle of the urban vs. the rural
all over again.

Once those left outside realized they had
been abandoned, it was almost too late.

Some pockets survived, but most didn’t.

The brutal took control and ruled.

As much inside the walls as outside
them.

***

Frontier Town. Adventure Land. Six Flags.
Windy City. Foggy Bottom.