Dead Mech (27 page)

Spots swam before his eyes and he verged on
unconsciousness. He helplessly watched the mouth of the cavern
crumble and collapse, sealing it off from the wasteland.

“Oh, shit… No…” he whispered, but before he
could think further, all light was blocked out and Masters watched
the Stomper reach for him again.

Jay choked on the rock dust filling the now
dark cavern. He switched on his halogen. “Hey kid, you okay?”

“Get that shit out of my eyes!” the Rookie
coughed painfully. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Jay turned about and pointed the light at
what was the cavern entrance. “Shit, that’s not good.” He tapped
his com. “Masters? You there?” Silence. “Well, I don’t know if
Masters is alive or not, but if we plan on being part of the census
count we had better find that river of yours.” Jay turned and
hopped back in the mech. “Just one more thing.”

***

Masters found himself and his mech flying
through the air once more and then impacting with the ground so
hard the armored windshield shattered. Masters tucked his head
down, but shards of windshield still drove gouges across his
face.

“…mother…fucker…,” he rasped. All alarms and
warnings were cut short as Masters’ mech died. “…that…sucks…”

He unstrapped and struggled to open his
cockpit, but the hatch was too damaged. “Great. Gonna die in my
mech. Not how I wanted to go. I always assumed there’d be sex
involved, but I guess we can’t choose how we go out, huh?”

***

The Rookie watched Jay step from the cockpit
with a long steel tube in his hand. “What the hell is that?” the
Rookie asked.

“Blueprints,” Jay responded casually.

“Blueprints? You mean, like
paper
blueprints?”

“Yep, good ole fashioned blueprints. It’s
how I do all of my designing.” Jay saw the look on the Rookie’s
face. “Blueprints can’t be lost with a hard drive wipe or memory
dump, now can they?”

“No, I guess not,” the Rookie responded.
“But, why are you bringing them with us?”

“Because I’ve worked two years on these
fuckers and I’m not fucking losing them now.”

***

The dead Hill Stomper lifted Masters’ broken
mech off the wasteland ground as the waste storm began to
intensify.

“Hey! Fucker! You suck! Yeah, I said it! You
fucking suck! I’m way too much meat for you to handle! You mother
fucking deader piece of shit!” Masters screamed as the Stomper
brought the mechs cockpit to cockpit.

Masters held his breath as the stench coming
off the zombie pilot reached him, despite the raging winds.
“Jeezus! You’ve gone off there buddy!” The zombie pilot weakly
groaned. “And you ain’t lookin’ so good.”

Waste storm debris began to pelt the
mechs.

***

“You sure you can do this?” Jay asked the
Rookie.

“Yeah, my legs are fine,” he answered as the
two left the main cavern and entered the mouth of the cave. “Give
me my pack.”

“No, I’ll carry both. I’m not a doctor and
your chest could start bleeding again at anytime.”

The Rookie smiled. “Jay Rind, are you
worried about me?”

“Yeah, I’m worried about you! You’re the
only one that knows how to get to the river!”

“Admit it. You want me to live.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, I…
you’re an asshole.”

The Rookie laughed.

***

Masters watched the Stomper’s other hand
come at him. He grabbed the edge of his cockpit and waited.

The Stomper’s cockpit opened in anticipation
of the meal that would be thrust inside. Masters drew his side arm.
“Night, night stinky.”

Masters aimed and fired, the shriveled head
of the zombie pilot exploding in a mass of rotted flesh and bone.
The Stomper shuddered and stumbled causing Masters to almost lose
his grip. He felt his own mech shake and leapt to the deader’s
cockpit just as the Stomper let go of Masters’ mech.

Masters watched it plummet to the
ground.

***

June stared at the empty bowl in her hands
knowing it wouldn’t be the last meal she would be forced to eat.
She took a deep breath and set the bowl aside. A hand gripped her
shoulder and she jumped, looking up to see Olivia once again at her
side.

“Come on, dear,” Olivia said, her eyes sad
and apologetic. “You need to come with the others.”

June looked about and realized most of the
villagers had left and were walking to the other end of the
village. “Where are we going now?”

“I told you it would get worse.”

***

“How far down do you think it is?” Jay
asked.

“I don’t know, it’s been years since I was
here last,” the Rookie answered. “But, if I had to guess-”

“Which you do,” Jay interrupted.

“If I had to guess,” the Rookie continued.
“I’d say maybe three or four hundred yards down.”

“Okay, we should get there in a few minutes
then,” Jay calculated.

The two men walked a few more paces then Jay
held up his hand. “Hold on. Be quiet. Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shhh! Listen.” Faintly, behind them, came a
series of quick scratching sounds.

***

Masters yanked the zombie corpse free from
its harness and tossed it out of the cockpit. It was so incredibly
emaciated it weighed nothing and was blown nearly a quarter mile
away by the storm winds before it hit the ground.

Masters studied the cockpit and the
controls. It was very similar to his mech, but with some major
differences. Mainly the lack of weapons systems. It was equipped
with a wide sensor array, though, which would have been handy back
in its construction days.

Masters felt the Stomper sway, buffeted by
the winds. “Hmmm… Looks like I’m still fucked.”

***

“I can hear that now,” the Rookie whispered.
“What is it?”

“Shhhh!” Jay commanded. The scratching grew
louder and became more pronounced. “Oh, fuck! That’s-”

“Claws!” the Rookie finished. Both Jay and
the Rookie shone their halogens back the way they came. Yards away,
the mouth of the cave became obscured by bodies. Undead bodies.

“Fucking deaders must have run from the
storm! I bet the entire cavern is crawling with them!” Jay yelled,
lifting his carbine and firing. The zombies roared as one and
charged. “Move kid! Run!”

Jay and the Rookie turned and ran through
the earthen tunnel.

***

June and Olivia took a seat on a wide bench
next to Rebecca. The entire village was seated at benches set in a
wide circle looking down into an open pit.

“What’s going on?” June asked.

“Shhh!” Rebecca hushed her.

“Fellow villagers, friends, family, we have
worked hard today. Worked hard against the adversity the wasteland
threw at us,” the Boss announced stepping to the edge of the pit.
“We lost some folks today to injury. More importantly we lost
supplies. We lost food.”

The Boss turned in a circle, watching the
faces, until he found June’s. And he winked.

***

Masters pushed the mech’s sensors to full,
checking the screen. He had maybe fifteen or twenty minutes before
the waste storm was fully on him. “Shit.”

The Stomper, some semblance of awareness
still intact, reached up to the cockpit, but safety protocols
kicked in preventing it from doing any damage.

Masters stood up and grabbed the cockpit
hatch and tried to yank it closed, but knew it wouldn’t move, not
unless…

Masters eyed the cerebral integration
console then looked out into the swirling maelstrom of the
wasteland.

“Well, I guess I’m dead, either way,” he
sighed, flicking the activation switch.

***

“Go! Gogogogogo!” Jay yelled, pushing the
Rookie ahead of him. “Do not stop running!”

“I’m going! Fuck! Stop pushing! You’re going
to knock me- WHOA!” the Rookie came to a screeching halt. “Oh
fuck!”

Jay stopped himself just before slamming
full force into the Rookie. “What the fuck, kid?!? Why the hell…?
Oh, shit…”

Jay and the Rookie both stood at the edge of
a fifty foot drop. They shined their halogens below and the light
reflected off a massive, churning river. And on the banks of that
river, were several hundred zombies.

“Guess we found the river,” Jay said.

***

Masters stared out at the waste storm. He
could see a cyclone had formed and would be on him in a matter of
minutes. The debris inside the cyclone wouldn’t completely destroy
the mech, but it would shred him while the cockpit remained open.
He sighed.

“Okay, Mitch. Now or never,” he said to
himself. “No fucking guts, no fucking glory!”

Masters activated the cerebral integration
process. Immediately his head snapped back and he screamed in pain
as his mind was forced to share a system with another, very
foreign, very dead consciousness. Masters struggled to keep his
psyche intact.

***

“What’s going on?” June whispered.

“Hush!” Rebecca scolded.

“Now, we have someone new to our ways here
this evening,” the Boss continued. The villagers kept their gaze on
the Boss, ignoring June’s presence. “So I am going to explain this
to her.” The Boss turned and faced June. “You see, Pilot Capreze,
we don’t have the luxury of regular supply shipments. We live on
the edge of starvation at all times.” He paused, feigning sadness.
“Sometimes we do not have enough to go around. When that happens,
like it has now, we have to, well, thin our numbers a bit.”

***

“How deep do you think it is?” Jay
asked.

“Pretty fucking deep… I hope,” the Rookie
answered, eyeing the river. He looked from the water to the zombies
on the bank and then to Jay. “The real question is whether we can
make the jump and survive.”

The roars and growls were getting louder and
Jay could smell the deaders bearing down on them. “I don’t think we
have much of a fucking choice, do you?” Jay responded.

The Rookie looked behind them at the zombies
nearly on top of them. “No, we don’t.”

“Then let’s do this,” Jay said.

***

Masters struggled to keep his sanity intact
against the blackness that was the dead mech.

“I AM MITCH MOTHER FUCKING MASTERS! THE BEST
GODDAMN MECH PILOT IN THE MOTHER FUCKING WASTELAND!” he
screamed.

He focused his will against the deader’s and
pushed, shoved and kicked the mental shit out of the abomination
that tried to take him over.

“I DO NOT WANT TO DIE!” He pushed harder,
but the deader started to push back, looking into him, into his
mind, searching for the breaking point. And then it touched a place
in Masters’ mind it shouldn’t have.

Harlow.

Masters growled.

***

June watched as Chunks carried an earthen
jar about the circle, each villager putting their hand in and
drawing a small tile.

“What’s going on?” June whispered.

“Hush!” Rebecca scolded again.

“Yes, pilot, hush,” the Boss mocked. “This
is a seriously grave moment for us. Please show some respect.”

Chunks, having made the full circuit
approached Olivia and Rebecca. They each drew a tile, neither
looking at them. Before Chunks offered the jar to June, the Boss
stepped forward and took the jar from him.

“No, please, allow me.” The Boss tilted the
jar towards June and she reached in.

***

The Rookie hit the water and felt every bit
of air squeezed from his lungs. He was thrown about like a dead
twig, his body tumbling, slamming into rocks.

He struggled, lungs burning, screaming. He
reached out, touched the sandy bottom and pushed, orienting
himself. Reaching, he felt his hand breach the surface and he
stretched, broke free and gasped in the sweet air.

He turned about, but with his halogen lost
in the rapids, he was blind.

He gasped again, but this time the air was
not sweet. This time it smelled like rotten flesh. It smelled like
deaders.

***

“Yeah, you see that you deader fuck?!? Big
fucking mistake! You shouldn’t have gone there!” Masters screamed
mentally, opening up the part of himself that held Harlow. “You
know what that is you fucking waste of scrap metal?!? That’s love!
That’s devotion! THAT’S MY MOTHER FUCKING SOUL!”

Masters fought, fought within his very being
and could feel the deader weaken, feel it grow confused, lost.

“You don’t know love, do you?” Masters
laughed aloud. “You never will!”

Masters focused all his energy. The mech’s
cockpit hatch began to close in stops and starts.

“That’s right! I’M MITCH MOTHER FUCKING
MASTERS!”

***

June stared at the tile in her hands. It was
small, and off-white, made of bone she figured, knowing this lot,
knowing the Boss. On the tile was a faded red diamond etched into
the bone itself. She looked at the tile and then up at the Boss.
The grin on his face was so big it nearly split his head in half.
He closed his eyes and lifted his head to the twilight sky above.
The village remained silent.

“Now, to be fair,” the Boss finally said,
breaking his reverie. “I’ll draw also.”

He did so and grinned slyly.

***

The Boss held his tile up for all to see. It
was blank. He tossed it back in and handed the jar to Chunks who
proceeded to collect all the blank tiles from the villagers. Those
with marked tiles remained unmoving and June could see some of them
struggle with their emotions. She looked at her own.

“What’s this mean?” June asked. She looked
over at Olivia, who had tears in her eyes and then looked at
Rebecca, who was busy staring down at her own marked tile. A tile
with a red diamond.

“It means you fight,” Olivia choked.

***

The rotten smell grew stronger and the
Rookie realized he wasn’t alone in the water. “Jay!” he yelled.
“Jay! Where the fuck are you?”