Dead Mech Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One- The Virus

  Part Two- Society Re-born

  Part Three- Warnings And Weapons

  Part Four- The Dead Mechs

  Part Five- The Ride And Arrival

  Chapter One

  Part One- Introduction & Tragedy

  Part Two- Grief & Anger

  Chapter Two

  Part One- Welcome To Reality

  Part Two- Moonshine & Blood

  Chapter Three

  Part One- Red Legs & Ranchers

  Part Two- Little Friends & Large Foes

  Chapter Four

  Part One- The Commander & The Boss

  Part Two- The Cage

  Chapter Five

  Part One- Death & Undeath

  Part Two- Leaving Hell & Leaving Home

  Chapter Six

  Part One- Storms & Stompers

  Part Two- Pit Fights & Pitfalls

  Chapter Seven

  Part One- Of Skinners & Shiner

  Part Two- Bargains & Balls

  Chapter Eight

  Part One- Rescue, Interrupted

  Part Two- Railers & Lights

  Chapter Nine

  Part One- Betrayal For All

  Part Two- The Archbishop

  Chapter Ten

  Part One- Mechs, Meet Ranchers. Ranchers, Meet mechs.

  Part Two- Sorrow & Harlow

  Chapter Eleven

  Part One- The First Wave

  Part Two- Masters & Johnson

  Chapter Twelve

  Part One- Countdown

  Part Two- Firewall

  Epilogue

  About The Author:

  Dead Mech

  Jake Bible

  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.

  Smashwords Edition, License Note

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work 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

  Prologue

  Part One- The Virus

  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.

  Part Two- Society Re-born

  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.

  These were the city/states left under UDC control.

  Each had its own set of laws, ruling structures, police/security forces, judicial systems. Each survived alone, on their own resources and the energies of their respective populations. But, the final word on all matters of survival came from the UDC. They had the troops, the guns, the bombs, the technology to effectively hold back the zombies roaming the wasteland.

  There were many more city/states at one time, but most ignored the UDC, choosing to make their own way.

  They chose certain death.

  ***

  Even with the small size of the city/states, all it took was one or two deceased to get over looked and an epidemic quickly spread within the walls.

  The Reaper chip became a necessity for human survival. And the UDC controlled the chip’s application with an iron fist.

  Thus the UDC ignored the rural survivor pockets and focused on the main centers of population. This left the survivors on the outside of the walls to fend for themselves, to develop their own warning systems and protocols.

  Mix rural fear with religious zealotry and a new scourge was born: the Cults.

  ***

  Basic trade routes were established quickly between the city/states, each sending out heavily armed convoys through the wasteland that separated human society.

  In the beginning, the losses that resulted from these trading expeditions were worth it. Resources were scarce and each city/state seemed to have many strengths, but no single city/state could provide everything for its populace.

  However, once the Cults figured out the armed convoys’ trade schedules, the losses soon outweighed any benefits. Communication and physical trade between the city/states dwindled until each became their own self-sufficient fiefdom. />
  Those that dared to trade did so at their own risk.

  ***

  The Cults only believed their people should be allowed to live. All others were heathens and infidels; the very reason the virus was brought upon humanity.

  Those survivors that were unfortunate enough to cross paths with the Cults met with ends some said were a million times worse than being eaten alive by a horde of zombies.

  Tales of vivisection, cannibalism, being burnt alive, weeks of rape and mutilation, were spread through the slow grapevine that worked the land. Often by the time a message reached a small group, it was too late to flee; the Cults were upon them.

  Part Three- Warnings And Weapons

  The UDC realized they needed two things to survive: better warning and better weapons.

  They already had the weapons. Technology that was on the drawing board before the zombie apocalypse decimated the earth, was still viable. The mechs. Massive, armored combat robots designed to fit around a human pilot and mimic the pilot’s every move and action. However, there were design flaws with the control interface.

  Developing the warning wasn’t very hard. The Reaper chip came about in a burst of brilliance.

  That same burst of brilliance showed the chip to be the answer to the mech pilots’ control issues.

  ***

  The beauty of the zombie hordes was once they ran out of food they simply starved to death. This allowed the human race to bounce back from almost certain extinction.

  The virus, however, did not die with the re-animated corpses. It floated in the air, waiting for the living to expire and provide the perfect host. It was a patient, indestructible virus.

  Once the Reaper chip was invented and implanted in every living person, humanity had an early warning system. Trackers locked onto the recently deceased and squads dispatched to dispose of the threat.

  But nothing is ever that simple.

  ***

  The Reaper chip was to be the saving grace of the human race. It was to solve all of the unreported deaths, the overlooked, the lost, the underbelly.