Metal and Ash (Apex Trilogy)

by Jake Bible

  “Or they are facing a fuck load of deaders that are pissed off and under no one’s control,” Jethro replied. “Odds point to the latter.”

  “Fucking great.”

  ***

  Brother Reynaldo, Sister Gloria and Sister Candide stood next to the Pope as he watched the Disciples form into a wide line of defense around the perimeter of the Stronghold. The Disciples were six deep and spanned the entire length of the perimeter, almost stretching them out of sight.

  “The commander is coming,” Sister Gloria said and they all turned to Capreze’s approaching ATV.

  “Looks like we’ll need you pretty soon,” Capreze said. “We’ve lost contact with the northern front.”

  “And those riders of Eden?” the Pope asked. “How do they fair?”

  “They’re struggling,” Capreze said. “There’s some new weapon at play that we weren’t aware of. The Mayor says they have it under control, but I think he is being optimistic.”

  “So these wonderful creatures are the last line of defense?” the Pope asked. “Humanity’s only hope.” He smiled broadly. “Fitting.”

  “I’m going to assume you are referring to some irony that only you get,” Capreze said. “I just need to know that you can control these things. If we get hit then your Disciples are all that stand between whatever is coming and the Stronghold. If we go down then there’s really no chance anyone can stand against them.”

  “And that ‘them’ is still a mystery, correct?” the Pope said. “Since we don’t know what is actually coming towards us.”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Capreze said. “We’ll know soon, though. Once anything gets clear of the EMP blast then we’ll be able to pick it up on sensors. But nothing’s shown up yet.”

  “Well, let us pray that your people haven’t completely fallen and are still fighting for us all,” the Pope said.

  “Yeah, praying is a good idea,” Capreze answered.

  ***

  “Ah, fuck me!” Masters shouted as he kicked at the cockpit hatch over and over again. “Fucking open!”

  The hatch finally broke free and Masters grabbed his pump-action shotgun, his 9mm, and all the shells and magazines he could stuff into his uniform’s pockets. He pushed the hatch open and climbed out onto his mech as it lay on its back, surrounded by a sea of techno-zombies. Masters would have taken himself out right there with the numbers he faced, but luckily all of the techno-zombies were flat on their backs and unmoving. He guessed that the EMP had disabled the nanobots and sent them to the mat.

  He grabbed his binocs, put them to his face, then tossed them back into the cockpit. No good, the electronics were fried. He slowly spun in a circle and took in what he could see. Which was a lot.

  There were mechs down, transports on their sides, and what looked like a few BTTs in various states of impact. The main thing that took his attention was remnants of a small mushroom cloud billowing up into the sky. It was a few miles off, but he could see by the damage around him that the shockwaves had reached that far. He thought about radiation for a minute, but shoved it aside. There was nothing he could do.

  Masters squinted and shaded his eyes as he searched the battlefield. He thought he saw a few mechs that weren’t Canadian, but he couldn’t find the exact one he was looking for.

  Harlow.

  He had an idea of which direction from him she was when the blast came, but after the slam his mech had taken he wasn’t really sure where he was anymore. Masters started to slide down the side of the mech then grabbed a strut and froze halfway.

  One of the techno-zombies had stirred.

  Masters waited until he was sure he didn’t see anymore movement then slowly made his way to the ground. He tiptoed his way around the zombies, careful not to make a sound, and started off in the direction he hoped Harlow was in.

  ***

  Jay trudged across the wasteland, carbine at the ready, his eyes sweeping the landscape. He still couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the Hybrid or Murphy’s team. He knew he had one, maybe two more ridges to crest before he could get to the Railer train. He doubted that the train wasn’t affected by the EMP, but he at least wanted to be with others. Safety in numbers was a rule to live by in the wasteland.

  “There it is,” Jay said, as he stood on the first ridge, the Railer train a mile off. “Oh, sweet Jeezus.”

  Beyond the train was a scene of total devastation. The mushroom cloud in the distance had reached far into the sky and was being blown apart by the intense winds the blast had created. Around the cloud was a crater that could have held two Strongholds in their entirety.

  Surrounding the crater were husks of transports and parts of mech exoskeletons. The damage was less severe further from the crater, but for all Jay could see, nothing moved, everything was still. But Jay had been alive in the wasteland long enough to know that nothing stayed down forever. He started to jog towards the train, hoping he could make it to the relative safety of one of the cars before something did start to move.

  ***

  “I want every inch of this train visually inspected!” Marin shouted as she ran from car to car. “Get your feet on the ground and let me know what you see. We can’t just sit here, people! I want solutions and I want them now!” She rammed into one of her mechanics and shoved him aside. “Dammit, Watts! Watch where the fuck you’re going!”

  “Sorry, Marin,” mechanic Randy Watts said. “I was heading to the back engine. Moss had an idea.”

  “Moss? Jonathan? Since when did that moron have any ideas worth a crap?” Marin laughed.

  “I don’t know,” Watts shrugged. “Usually he just likes to sit up in his seat and shoot things down, but he sent someone to find me and they said he’s pretty fired up.”

  “Why you?” Marin asked.

  “He married my sister last year,” Watts shrugged. “He kinda follows me around like a puppy.”

  “Isn’t that cute,” Marin mocked. “Take me with you. If he’s got an idea on how to get us moving when every single electronic component has been fried then I’d love to hear it.”

  Watts shrugged again and they made their way to the back engine. More than a few people had also heard that Jonathan Moss had an idea and the compartment was crammed.

  “All non-essential personnel need to clear the fuck out!” Marin ordered. When no one moved she pulled her sidearm. “I will start shooting you motherfuckers.”

  The engine compartment cleared out quickly, leaving only Marin, Watts, Jonathan Moss, and two other mechanics he’d called to consult with.

  “So?” Marin asked. “What genius idea do you have?”

  Marin noticed that Moss was holding something in his hands. He gently set it down on a useless control console. Marin blanched when she saw what it was.

  “Have you lost your mind, Moss?” Marin asked, willing herself not to take a step back. “That’s a fucking missile core! You fucking sneeze and that will blow us all to hell!”

  “Not if the blast is directed properly,” Moss replied. “And if the other cars are shielded. That little guy, and the hundreds we have on board, can get us out of here.”

  Marin looked from the missile core to the other mechanics. They all had fear in their eyes, but each one nodded in agreement.

  “You’re wanting to detonate the cores to push us forward?” Marin asked, the implications of what could happen if it went wrong speeding through her mind. “You want to literally rocket propel this train?”

  “All of the electronics and firing mechanisms have died,” Moss said. “But we can use what we have and rig new manual detonators. We set this up right and we can be shooting across the wasteland in just a few hours.”

  “One wrong weld and we all die,” Marin said. “You know that, right?”

  Moss nodded. “I’ve also been on top of the train and can see what’s out there. Those things wake up and we’re dead. No mechs to save us. No BTTs to blast them from above. This train will be overrun in minutes and we’ll all be fucking
deader food.” He looked at the other mechanics and straightened his back. “I’d rather be blown up trying to do something than eaten doing nothing.”

  Marin watched him for a while before speaking. “Yeah, well, so would I. Get everyone that you need on this. I want us moving down the tracks as soon as possible.”

  ***

  Blades drawn, Harlow stepped around the motionless techno-zombies that littered the ground. She’d fought off her fair share of zombie hordes, but even she didn’t think she could take all that surrounded her. Each footfall was carefully planned and executed. She had zero intention of a misstep being her downfall.

  She thought she caught movement far off out of the corner of her eye, but every time she looked she saw nothing but the haze of the wasteland as the nuclear winds blew sand and dust into her eyes. Just like Masters she had to shove the thoughts of radioactive fallout aside. She’d deal with that once she knew she wouldn’t be zombie food.

  By the angle of the sun she knew she was heading towards the Railer train, her only hope to make it back to the Stronghold. She had no idea if the train was out of the EMP blast radius, but she didn’t care. It would at least put some metal between her and the undead. She felt completely naked walking the wasteland, stepping over inert zombies, with nothing but her uniform on.

  Even the heft of a long blade in each hand didn’t put her at ease. The feel of the carbine across her back and the 9mm on her hip helped, but she would be kidding herself if she thought she could shoot her way out of the horde if they all decided to wake up. To pass the time she started calculating how many she could take out if she was attacked. With each step she was in a new situation and she revised her plan constantly, step by step, until she had a hundred scenarios in her head.

  Harlow had to smile at her own ego. In more than a few scenarios she actually thought she could do enough damage to get away. She knew she couldn’t kill them all, but as she saw an end to the mass of techno-zombies off in the distance, she believed she could cut a path to open ground and then outrun them.

  She ignored the thought that the techno-zombies probably could run just as fast as she could. Maybe faster. That thought ruined every plan and made every footfall seem heavier than before.

  Harlow was a few more yards when she noticed twitches of activity about her. She’d hoped that the EMP had fried the nanobots enough to destroy the zombies’ cerebral cortexes. Basically just like the Reaper chips. But from the movement that started to build around her, Harlow knew her hope had been foolish. She was never that lucky.

  In seconds Harlow let go the idea of stepping softly and started to pound her feet against the dirt as she picked up speed. She was in a full on run by the time she saw the first zombie sit upright, its dead eyes focused on her, its teeth bared, mouth hungry. A second one sat up then a third. She watched hands reach for her and mouths moan. Whatever the techno-zombies had been before the EMP, they were just plain deaders now.

  Her right blade slashed out and severed the heads of two deaders. They tumbled from their undead necks and rolled against the legs of other deaders that were getting to their feet. Harlow buried her left blade into the abdomen of a deader and ripped upward, slicing the zombie in half from its navel to its forehead. She lowered her shoulder and shoved it into three deaders that were coming at her.

  A hand gripped her ankle and Harlow took a hard fall, one of her blades skidding out of reach. She kicked out at the deader that had her, snapping its neck as her heel slammed into its face. Harlow rolled to her feet, dove for her blade, grabbed it, rolled, and came up slashing. Four deaders were split apart at the waist. Their torsos fell to the ground, their mouths still chomping and moaning. They weren’t going anywhere so Harlow didn’t waste a moment even thinking of ending them.

  A group to her right charged her and she ducked under swiping arms, taking legs out at the knees with one blade, and clearing a path ahead with another. She had to shoulder more deaders out of her way and a claw grabbed her by the hair, almost pulling her off her feet. She kept her footing and reached back, snapping the clawed hand off at the wrist and tossing the appendage aside.

  Her eyes could see the edge of the zombie line, but that line was up and turning towards the sound of her struggles. If the deaders had been slow shamblers, broken like many in the wasteland were, she knew she could make it. But her heart sank as she watched the speed with which the deaders charged her. She dropped a blade and pulled her 9mm, blasting away at the ones blocking her path.

  Two fell, three fell, then her slide locked back and she released the spent magazine. Letting the metal fall to the ground. She slammed another mag from her belt into the pistol, but couldn’t rack the slide before the 9mm was knocked from her grip.

  Teeth pierced her fingers as a deader grabbed her forearm and brought her hand to its mouth. Harlow screamed, not so much from the pain as from the shock of having been bitten. A sure death sentence. She didn’t know if the techno-zombies had the same virus inside them as what had ravaged the continent, but she doubted she would have to wait long to find out.

  If it walked like a deader and bit like a deader then it was a deader. And she was as good as gone.

  Harlow clutched her hand to her chest and swung wildly with her other blade. She took some heads, opened some chests, and made sure a few deaders would be walking around without arms for the rest of their undead existence, but there were just too many. She almost wanted to cry as she could see the break in the deaders just ahead. There was open ground only a few yards in front of her. If she could get through she could make it. The adrenaline coursing through her system told her that.

  But the hands that grabbed her, the teeth that came for her throat, told her that the last thing she would see wasn’t empty wasteland before her, but the hungry mouths of death.

  Then a deader head exploded right next to her. And another. And another. The gunshots reached her ears as the fourth head was obliterated.

  A path was being opened in front of her and she didn’t waste the opportunity. Even with her hand pouring blood from the deader bite, she had hope that she’d at least be alive for a little while longer. She shoved everything around her out of the way as more and more deaders were dropped. When she reached the end of the line, with all deaders behind her, she saw something that she’d never thought she’d be so happy to see ever again.

  Mitch Masters stood about twenty yards away with one of the undead troopers’ rifles against his shoulder. She could see the shit eating grin on his face as he took aim and made sure she wouldn’t be grabbed from behind. Harlow didn’t even flinch when she felt the air crack next to her ear as a bullet came just a fraction of an inch from her head. Normally she would have ripped Masters’s head off for the close call, but at that moment all she wanted to do was get to him. She just needed to reach him and it would all be okay.

  “Hey, baby,” Mitch smiled when she was only a few feet away. “Miss me?”

  “God, yes,” she said as she skidded to a stop next to him. She wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed him hard then pushed him away quickly. “We better keep moving.”

  “I have to agree with that,” Masters said. Then he saw her hand. “Oh, baby, no… No, no, no!”

  “It may not kill me,” Harlow said, but neither of them believed that. “So let’s just keep moving.”

  Masters nodded and emptied the rifle into the zombies that were running for them. He picked up two more rifles that were on the ground and slung them over his back. He pulled his own 9mm and fired behind him as he and Harlow took off in the direction of the Railer train.

  ***

  Bisby watched from under his mech as the techno-zombies started to stir again. He’d had several grabbing at him, trying to pull him from under the nook he’d wedged himself into, but the EMP had dropped them before they could get at him. The only problem was that he was trapped. The bodies of techno-zombies blocked his way out and with only one arm he couldn’t get the leverage to shove and push them
out of the way.

  What he thought was a saving grace had ended up being a nail in his coffin.

  The deaders began to take notice of him, their noses finding the smell of his living flesh almost instantly. Bisby, his firearms already empty, just had to sit there and watch as the undead fought each other to be the first to get to him.

  The ground shook slightly and Bisby figured somewhere some ordinance was detonating. Then the ground shook again and again in a rhythmic pattern that suggested something else.

  Footfalls. Very large footfalls.

  A mech? No fucking way, he thought. The EMP would have taken them all out.

  The footfalls got closer and closer until he saw a massive foot stomp down on the deaders right in front of him. Several missed being squashed because they had wiggled under the mech and were only inches away from grabbing Bisby.

  But that was solved quickly as Bisby’s mech was lifted into the air and tossed across the wasteland.

  “Pilot Bisby,” One Arm said over his loudspeakers. “I am not surprised to find you in the middle of this chaos.”

  “Holy fuck,” Bisby said. “But you…wait…huh?”

  “You and your comrades left me,” One Arm said. “Once my systems rebooted I was able to make some repairs and began following the army’s path here. I was luckily out of the blast range of that nuclear detonation.”

  “Yeah, fucking lucky for me,” Bisby said then laughed. “You know what?”

  “I do not.”

  “You could be the only functioning mech in this wasteland!” Bisby exclaimed. “A one armed mech and a one armed mech pilot! Fucking hilarious!”

  “I am unsure about the humor,” One Arm stated. “Or the offensive language. But I am sure that there are a lot of undead about. Would you like a lift?”

  “You bet your metal ass I would,” Bisby said. He took a look at One Arm’s leg. “That doesn’t look too functional.”