Dead Mech (38 page)

The Rookie waited and as Lights was about to
pounce, the Rookie kicked out, planting a foot directly into the
deader’s mid-section. The world slowed as Lights crumpled upon the
foot then was sent flying backwards, doubled up, arms and legs
flailing.

Jay cheered, Timson smiled, Jenny just
gawked in disbelief.

***

Lights got to its feet and roared with
deader rage, but didn’t charge this time.

The Rookie kept bouncing, moving his feet
back and forth, ready for the attack.

“What’s it waiting for?” Timson turned and
asked Jay.

“I don’t know. Maybe trying to figure out a
weak point to attack,” Jay answered.

“They do that?” Jenny asked, alarmed. “I
thought they were just mindless zombie machines.”

“That’s what we all thought,” Jay responded.
“But, things have changed.”

Lights took two steps forward then turned
and sprinted away from the Rookie.

Right at the Railers trying to help their
wounded.

***

“Oh fuck!” the Rookie shouted, watching as
Lights bore down on a group of ten Railers. They never stood a
chance as the deader scooped up half of them in its giant fist,
turned and threw the helpless humans at the Rookie’s mech.

The Rookie rushed forward, catching one of
the Railers, but the others impacted brutally against the mech’s
exoskeleton. The Rookie could hear the choked-off screams of the
victims and stared out his cockpit, stunned, as blood dripped onto
the windshield followed by a mangled corpse rolling off the top of
his mech and to the ground below.

***

“Run! Go! Get to cover!” Timson yelled,
running towards his panicked people. “Save yourselves!”

It was too late for many as Lights focused
his rage and stomped and tore apart dozens of the exposed Railers.
Those trying to put out fires were snatched up and smashed into the
middle of the conflagrations. Lights lifted a derailed car and
brought it down atop a row of wounded, grinding them into the
dirt.

The Rookie pushed aside his shock and
crossed the ground between him and Lights in a split-second, but
the deader rounded on the Rookie, its plasma cannon glowing
red.

***

“Oh, fuck,” the Rookie whispered, knowing he
was too close to dodge a plasma blast. The dead mech’s cannon
turned bright red and the plasma cannon discharged directly into
the Rookie, sending the mech somersaulting backwards.

The Rookie lay there gasping, feeling the
blood trickle between the stitches of his freshly re-opened wound.
He grunted and ignored the pain, righting his mech. The machine
wobbled on unsteady hydraulics, but it stayed upright.

“Jay? How am I looking?” the Rookie called
over the com.

“You’re still in fighting shape! How about
you end this shit?!?” Jay responded checking his tablet’s
readings.

***

Lights moved fast. Way faster than anything
else in the wasteland. It was seeing that speed, that ferocity, as
a child that had made the Rookie want to become a mech pilot. And
as he watched the deader toss a train car at him, he wondered if he
had maybe wanted the wrong thing.

“Fuck me!”

The Rookie piloted under the flying train
car, but didn’t get a chance to exclaim further as the second car
Lights threw smashed into his mech’s crouched form.

He heard struts snap, metal tear and
hydraulics rupture.

“Kid?!? Can you hear me?!?” Jay called.

***

The Rookie tried to clear his head, but he
couldn’t focus. The fogginess was almost suffocating and when he
started to choke and cough he realized he really was suffocating as
smoke filled the cockpit.

Lights sprang, landing atop the Rookie’s
mech and began pummeling the helpless machine. Three punches,
seven, twelve and the cockpit started to collapse in around the
Rookie.

“Jay?” he coughed. “Where’s the…
self-destruct?”

“Fuck that shit, kid!” Jay yelled back.
“We’ll get you out of there!”

“Don’t… bother…,” the Rookie said, his lungs
burning. “You can’t… kill… this thing. Let me… blow it… to
Hell.”

***

Jenny quickly grabbed the tablet from Jay’s
hands. “The Boiler’s right. We need to blow his mech and destroy
that dead piece of shit now!”

Jay reached for the tablet, but Jenny
slapped his hand away. He lunged for her, but she side-stepped him
and extended her leg. Jay stumbled over Jenny’s outstretched leg,
hitting the dirt hard, his face meeting the ground with a sickening
crunch.

Jenny almost had the destruct sequence
programmed when people began shouting and pointing. Terrified
screams were added to the wails of the hurt and trapped. Jenny
looked up from her tablet and gasped.

***

Jay rolled to his side and saw the most
glorious sight he’d ever seen.

A Hill Stomper, carrying his salvage mech,
crested a ridge, stopped briefly to waver then broke into a full
out run towards the carnage.

“Oh, thank God,” he said through broken
teeth and tried to push himself off the ground, but slumped back
down in pain. “Help me up,” But, Jenny just stood there, petrified
before the largest mech she’d ever seen. “Shit, girl! If you aren’t
going to help me then toss me your handheld, damnit!”

Jenny snapped to and gave Jay the handheld
com.

***

Masters heard static hiss and nearly yanked
his com from his ear when a high pitched whine squealed for a
second before Jay made contact.

“Masters! The Rookie’s in the mech under the
deader! Fucking move your gargantuan ass!” Jay hollered.

“Is he happy to see us?’ Stomper asked.

“Oh, yeah, he’s cumming in his pants he’s so
happy. Now wait ‘til he sees what we can do!” Masters responded.
“No worries, Jay my man, Mitch Mother Fucking Masters is on the
job!”

“And Stomper,” the AI joined in.

Masters/Stomper pumped their legs and
doubled their speed, heading for Lights.

***

Lights felt the ground vibrate and ceased
his attack on the Rookie. The dead mech stood and turned to find
the source and became enraged when it saw a new mech coming for it.
Lights powered up his plasma cannon, took aim and fired.

Masters/Stomper danced around the blasts,
like they were nothing more than annoyances. The ground continued
to shudder with every new footfall as the new mech gained
speed.

Lights leapt off of the Rookie and
charged.

In one graceful movement, Masters/Stomper
lowered Jay’s salvage mech close to the ground and let it tumble
carefully from their fist.

***

Masters laughed. “Ahhh, it wants to play.”
He quickly stopped laughing as Lights launched itself from the
ground and onto Masters/Stomper. “SHITPISSFUCK!”

Masters swatted at the deader, but Lights
was too fast, quickly climbing the Hill Stomper’s frame towards the
cockpit.

“The little fucker’s like a goddamn spider
monkey!”

“Spider monkeys have been extinct for three
hundred years,” Stomper interjected.

“Not the fucking time!”

Lights scaled his way until he was cockpit
to cockpit with Masters. The living pilot faced the dead pilot and
time seemed to stop.

Until Stomper took charge and brought both
palms together, instantly crushing Lights.

***

The wasteland went silent except for the
sound of bits and pieces of dead mech crashing to the ground as
Masters/Stomper pulled their hands apart.

“Now that’s how you mother fucking do that!”
Masters crowed triumphantly.

Those able enough cheered as the Hill
Stomper crouched and Masters un-strapped and climbed down from the
cockpit. Ignoring the whoops and hollers, Masters ran to the
Rookie’s mech, beating Jay by a second.

“Kid!” Masters called, climbing onto the
fallen mech, futilely trying to yank the cockpit open. “Stomper!
Open this!”

The massive mech approached the mangled,
smaller machine and carefully reached down.

***

With the precise movements of its
construction programming, Stomper stripped the mech of its cockpit
hatch, tossing the metal off into the wasteland.

“My sensors say his breathing has stopped,”
Stomper announced.

“Shit! Kid, hold on!” Masters yelled,
hopping into the cockpit as Jay walked about the smoldering mech
with a fire extinguisher.

Masters tilted the Rookie’s head back and
performed mouth to mouth, expertly timing the breaths. “Come on
goddammit!”

The Rookie choked and coughed, blood and
spittle flying from his lips and onto Masters’. “Oh, for fuck’s
sake!” Masters yelled, wiping at his mouth.

“Thanks,” the Rookie wheezed.

***

“Get me outta here,” the Rookie said undoing
his straps.

“Sure you’re alright?” Masters asked
reaching under the Rookie’s shoulders and helping him pull himself
from the cockpit.

“No, I feel like fucking shit, but I don’t
plan on living in that thing,” the Rookie responded. “Thanks
again.”

“Don’t mention it. Least I could do after
Foggy Bottom.”

The Rookie nodded and started to ease down
off the mech. Jay set the extinguisher aside and helped the Rookie
to the ground. “Damn kid, I knew you could fight, but I guess you
can take a beating too!”

“Fuck off, Rind.”

***

“Shit! Look what you did to the mech!” Jenny
exclaimed, running up to the Rookie. “Marin is going to be
pissed!”

The Rookie chuckled painfully. “Yes, I’m
fine, thanks.” Jenny gave him a sour look, but a slight smile hid
behind her eyes.

“Where
is
Marin?” Jay asked,
surveying the destruction.

“Here,” Marin said weakly as she was helped
by Lucy to the smashed mech, her right eye swollen shut and her
hair caked with blood. “And from what little I can see with one
eye, it appears you owe me a mech.”

“Oh, I have something better,” Jay
grinned.

***

Jay unrolled the blueprints on the ground
and Marin leaned in close.

“I can’t see shit, so you better spell it
out for me,” Marin said.

“Okay, deader brains are tuned differently
than ours,” he started. “I developed, on a very small scale, a way
to hit the exact frequency of their brain composition so that if
they pass between two points: pop!”

“Okay, so what is all the scribbling
about?”

“I was trying to kick the scale up to mech
size, but I kept running into limitations and problems. At least,
until a random coffee stain changed all that.”

***

Marin turned her good eye on Jay. “Coffee
stain? Are you shitting me, Rind?”

“No, look –oh, sorry- well, anyway, I
couldn’t figure out how to project the frequency out in a strong
enough burst. But, that’s because I had the shape all wrong. I was
still working from point to point, pole to pole, with the frequency
in between. This stain, this
circular
stain, showed me that
by going with a disc…”

“You could fold the frequency back in on
itself,” Marin interrupted.

“Creating an infinite loop,” Jay
continued.

“With all the force you could need!” they
finished together.

***

“So, how does that help us?” Timson asked,
approaching the small group. “With my train shattered and many of
my people dead or dying, how could some disc help us?”

“Well,” Jay began. “The disc isn’t very
practical on a mech.” He stood and took in the remains of the
Railers’ train. “But, it would be
very
practical atop a
moving train.”

“Didn’t you hear me? It’ll take days, maybe
weeks, to get this train back on the tracks and ready.”

“No, it won’t,” Masters said hooking a thumb
over his shoulder at Stomper. “The big guy likes to help.”

***

“Say we can get the salvageable cars on the
tracks, why would I want to let you use my train for your
contraption?” Timson asked angrily.

“Didn’t you hear the Commander? The
wasteland’s about to go to war!” the Rookie said.

“You guys heard that, too?” Masters asked.
“Was that not the most awesome fucking thing you’ve ever heard?!?”
Timson glared at Masters. “Sorry.”

“The kid’s right,” Marin said. “We’ve seen
the signs for weeks. All Hell’s about to break loose and we need to
pick a side or get caught in the middle.”

Timson folded his arms and glowered.

***

“Crawford, everything is changing. Look
around us,” Marin said indicating the chaos and destruction. “The
Railers can’t keep moving forever. We have to choose sides and
choose soon, or we’ll just be like the crazy Cults, rotting and
stagnating in the wasteland.”

Timson shook his head. “I just don’t buy it,
Marin.”

“She’s right, dad,” Jenny spoke up. “The
Rookie put his life on the line for us, they all did, without
hesitating about whether they should. Can you say the Ranchers, or
Boilers or UDC would do the same?”

Timson looked at his daughter and his face
softened slightly.

***

Timson appraised the faces of each person
standing before him. He sighed and turned away, looking at the mess
his people were in. “Okay, if we do agree to help, what guarantee
do we have that we won’t be tossed aside once it’s all over?”

“You have my word,” Jay said.

“Not good enough,” Timson stated. “I don’t
know you, Mr. Rind. And despite your history with Marin, which by
the way doesn’t paint you in the best light, I can’t just take your
word for it.”

Jay pushed the blueprints into Timson’s
hands. “This is yours now. How’s that?”

***

The blueprints crinkled in Timson’s hands as
an internal debate raged in his mind.

“Listen, I’m going to put that tech on your
train,” Jay said. “Even if I don’t, even if I walk away, Marin has
the skills to build it anytime you want.” Jay pointed to the paper.
“That is my guarantee you won’t walk away empty handed.”