Metal and Ash (Apex Trilogy)

by Jake Bible

  “Right,” Jethro said. “Serviced by a team of bored, unmotivated Railers.”

  “Good point,” Jay replied. “Be sure and watch the knee hydraulics on Capreze’s mech. That shit’s been a fucking nightmare.”

  Capreze and Jay walked their mechs out of the hangar then broke out into a sprint as soon as they were clear.

  ***

  “You still there, Jethro?” Mathew asked as he locked eyes with a fairly fresh looking deader.

  “Never left, Matty,” Jethro said. “Jay and the commander are heading your way.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Mathew said. “Wouldn’t happen to have any ideas on how I can get out of this shit sooner, would ya?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Anytime.”

  “Hey, Jethro?”

  “Yeah, Matty?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Hugs right back.”

  The deader girl turned her head to the left then to the right, her eyes leaving Mathew’s and focusing on the cockpit frame. Mathew jumped as she slammed her fist down on the frame again and again. She stopped for a second and snarled at the deaders mashed up against her. Several shifted to give her more room and she started her attack on the frame again. As did many of the deaders around her.

  “I’d say I’m witnessing some pretty fucking strange deader behavior,” Mathew said. “But that would get in the way of me saying FUCK!”

  “What are they doing?” Jethro asked. “Your vids are down. I can’t see the external feed.”

  “They’re knocking on the door,” Mathew said. “And I think they’re coming in whether I open up or not.”

  Mathew watched a bolt on the inside of the cockpit frame shudder and the metal begin to warp. He slowly unstrapped himself and reached over for his carbine. He checked that it was fully loaded and rested the butt against his hip, the barrel pointed right at the deader girl.

  “You keep aknockin’, but I don’t think you really want to come in,” Mathew said.

  “Matty?” Jethro asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “You cool? Your heart right is a little too high for comfort.”

  “Gosh golly, Jethro old pal,” Mathew laughed. “I wonder why.”

  “Just saying it would suck if Capreze and Jay get to you in time, but you die of a fucking heart attack. Take some deep breaths, man.”

  “I am so unplugging you when I get back.”

  “Fair enough,” Jethro said.

  The ground began to shake about Mathew’s mech and the deaders, except for the girl, all turned their attention from the cockpit to what was coming at them.

  “Wow, Jespers,” Jay said over the com. “That’s quite the deader orgy you decided to throw.”

  “What is it with mechanics being total assholes?” Mathew asked.

  “Hey,” Jethro objected. “I’m now a semi-omnipotent mainframe consciousness, thank you.”

  “You can’t be semi-omnipotent, Jethro,” Capreze said. “You are either omnipotent or you aren’t. It’s an absolute.”

  “Oh, I know, Commander,” Jethro said. “I was making a joke. I heard that using humor is the way you can meet new friends and influence people.”

  “Will you people shut the fuck up and get me out of here!” Mathew yelled.

  “Oh, is the mechy-wechy piloty-wiloty scared?” Jay mocked.

  “Are you drunk?” Mathew asked.

  “Just a little courage of the moon, Jespers,” Jay said. “Stay out of my shit.”

  “Let the man have his 0500 cocktail, Mathew,” Capreze said. “It’s hard being Chief Mechanic.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” Jay laughed.

  “Fuck you all,” Mathew said.

  ***

  Capreze headed for Mathew’s mech while Jay laid down a blanket of bullets, his 50mms barking fire until they started to glow red. Deaders flew every which way as Capreze yanked them off Mathew’s fallen mech. As the undead flew through the air, Jay sent mini-rockets after them, turning their putrid bodies into a rotten spray before they could hit the wasteland dirt.

  “Almost got ya, Mathew,” Capreze said as he ripped fistful after fistful of deader weight away from Mathew’s cockpit. “Let me know when you can pilot that thing upright again.”

  “Oh, you’ll be the first to know,” Mathew said as he concentrated on his systems, waiting for the hydraulics to go back into the green. If he pushed it too early he’d blow out a joint and be crippled all over again. No mech pilot wanted to have to do the crawl of shame back to the hangar.

  Rows of deaders turned on Jay and shifted this way and that, coming at him with a ferocity that surprised the Chief Mechanic.

  “Jethro?” Jay asked. “What readings are you getting off these things?”

  “Two readings, Jay,” Jethro answered. “Jack and shit.”

  “They aren’t acting like normal deaders,” Jay stated, ignoring Jethro’s sarcasm. “You aren’t seeing any nano signals coming off them are you? These things are acting all teched out.”

  “Hmmm, let me check again,” Jethro said. “Oh, wait, here’s something.”

  “What?”

  “Two more things,” Jethro said. “Fuck and all.”

  “Asshole.”

  “You got my back, Rind?” Capreze asked as he continued the task of getting to Mathew. “I’m focusing on Matty so you better not let those fucks sneak up on me.”

  “Oh, right,” Jay said. “I forgot what I was doing here. Those fifty over there almost tricked me by hiding behind that light pole. Thanks for getting me focused.”

  “It’s all the amazing love and support that keep me here,” Jethro said. “That and the amazing vacation pay.”

  The deader bodies piled up ten deep, row after row, as Jay unloaded everything he had. The sheer numbers were astounding and Jay really wanted to know how they could have gotten so close without Jethro noticing. He would have to run some independent diagnostics on the mainframe when he got back to the Stronghold. And as the deaders kept coming and coming the “when” turned to “if” in Jay’s mind.

  “Hey, Jethro?” Jay asked, trying to sound casual. “What Railers have you outfitted with Reaper chips?”

  “None yet,” Jethro said. “They keep failing the simulations. No point in wasting the chips if they can’t pilot the mechs.”

  “Lovely,” Jay gulped.

  Capreze’s mech shuddered as almost as many deaders he ripped from Mathew’s mech started to cover his own mech.

  “Goddammit, Jay!” Capreze shouted. “Keep these fuckers off me while I work!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, for fuck’s sake!” Jay shouted back. “There’s just too fucking many!”

  “Ah, crap,” Jethro said. “I’ll get the Railers out in ATVs with carbines. Hopefully they don’t get eaten.”

  “Stop talking and just fucking do it!” Jay shouted.

  ***

  The claxons had finally stopped echoing through the Stronghold and June let her hands fall from Stan’s ears as they huddled on a cot in the infirmary.

  “You okay?” June asked as she looked into Stan’s deformed face.

  He nodded, but June could see the pain in his eyes that the claxons had caused on his ultra sensitive ears. Stan winced as a smaller alarm bleeped across the room.

  “Crap, what now?” June asked as she crossed to Rachel’s bed. “That shouldn’t be going off.”

  June did her best to study what the diagnostic screen was showing her.

  “Uh, Doc?” June asked over the com. “Doc?”

  Themopolous didn’t answer and June rubbed her forward, unsure what to do next.

  When Rachel’s eyes opened wide and she sat straight up, June jumped back, nearly tripping over a supply cart.

  “Holy fuck!” June cried out.

  Rachel turned her head and locked eyes with June.

  “Where’s my mech?” Rachel croaked, her throat raw and parched from being comatose for months. Sh
e shoved herself from her bed and stood on wobbly feet. “Get me to my mech.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” June exclaimed, her hands out towards Rachel. “Lay your ass back down, girl. You aren’t leaving the infirmary, let alone getting in a mech.”

  Rachel looked at June and smiled. “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” she said as she pushed past June. June fell back, surprised by the strength Rachel had.

  “Rachel!” June shouted after her as she made her way out of the infirmary. “Fucking wait!” June turned to Stan and pointed at the other way out of the infirmary. “Find Themopolous now!”

  ***

  Those in the mech hangar didn’t know what was crazier: that some of them had to drive out in only ATVs and go to battle with a horde of deaders that three experienced mech pilots couldn’t handle, or the sight of a woman that everyone figured was lost to the world as she climbed her way up into an open mech cockpit.

  “Rachel!” June shouted from below the mech. “You have been in a fucking coma! Get out of there!”

  “Hey, Rachel,” Jethro said over the com. “While I’m very glad to see you up and about I am going to have to agree with June on this one. Uh, plus, the mech you’re in isn’t fully operational. Still needs some work with the cerebral integration.”

  “Don’t need it,” Rachel said as she started up the mech’s systems.

  Jethro was at a loss for words for once.

  The mech pushed away from the harness dock in the hangar wall and Rachel piloted out of the hangar door and towards the action. Oh, how she had missed the action.

  In her gut she knew what was happening was wrong. She shouldn’t have woken up, she shouldn’t have been able to hurry to the hangar, and sure as shit shouldn’t have been able to pilot a mech that had its cerebral integration system offline.

  But she did all of those things and she knew she’d have plenty of time to think it through later. For that moment she was running a mech out into the wasteland to save two men she loved. And Jay.

  ***

  “What the fuck do you mean Rachel is on her way, Jethro?” Capreze screamed. “That is not fucking funny!”

  “Not a joke, sir,” Jethro said. “She woke up and is in a mech coming to rescue your ass.”

  “Good for her,” Jay said. “I knew she was faking it just to be able to nap all day.”

  Gunfire came from behind the mechs and Jay checked his rear vid and smiled at the sight of a mech barreling towards them.

  “Whoa, hold on,” Jay said. “That mech’s offline.”

  “No shit,” Jethro said. “That’s what I told her, but apparently it doesn’t fucking matter.”

  Capreze squeezed his eyes shut for a second. What he’d been afraid of was coming to pass and he wasn’t sure he could handle it.

  “Forget about the mech,” Capreze said. “Just make sure she’s okay, Jethro. You watch her vital signs, got it?”

  “Got it, sir,” Jethro said.

  “Hey, Papa Bear!” Rachel shouted into the com. “Need a hand?”

  “Glad to hear your voice, Baby Girl,” Capreze said. “If you’ve got the time then I wouldn’t mind a little help.”

  Deaders all around Capreze’s and Mathew’s mechs were ripped apart by perfectly aimed bullets. In an almost surgical fashion, Rachel took out layer after layer of the undead until the corpses that littered the wasteland ground were truly still.

  With that task taken care of, Rachel turned her attention to the swarm that wouldn’t stop coming. By the time her guns were empty there wasn’t a moving body left.

  “That all?” Rachel laughed. “You boys got rusty while I was asleep. What have you been doing all this time?”

  ***

  “I’d call that a successful trial,” the man said as he lowered the long range binocs and handed them to the woman next to him in the ATV. “Wouldn’t you, Sister?”

  “Yes, Pope,” the woman said, bowing her head as she took the binocs.

  The man, Pope John Paul Ringo George the Eighteenth, looked at the woman and frowned. “Problem?”

  “Well, Your Holiness,” she began.

  “JP, please,” the Pope said. “I hate all this formality. I’m still just a man, Sister.”

  “Yes, Your Holi-...uh, yes, JP,” the woman said.

  “Go on now,” the Pope urged. “You were going to say something?”

  “Well, just that I don’t see how it was a success when all of the Disciples were killed,” the woman admitted.

  “I understand your confusion, but it took four of them,” the Pope smiled. “Four. And really if it wasn’t for that last one I don’t think they would have made it.”

  The Pope stretched and started up the ATV’s drive.

  “Ready to get back?” he asked.

  “Yes, uh, JP,” the woman nodded.

  “Me too,” the Pope said as he wheeled the ATV around. “I can’t wait to get a shower and sleep in my own bed. The wasteland is no place for a good night’s rest.”

  Fifteen

  “Come again?” Desmond asked, his stunned face joining the rest of the command crew as they all stared at Colonel Masterson.

  “The Canadians are no longer part of the fight,” Blue stated plainly. “Their Council has been co-opted by the Three and their Control has taken all outposts. Leave it to politicians to fuck up a perfectly winnable war.”

  “Was it ever really winnable, Colonel?” Melissa asked. “I mean, come on, we were just going to join up with our long, lost American cousins and everything was going to be peachy? Am I the only one that thought that might have been stretching it a bit?”

  “No,” Beth added. “You weren’t the only one. Just the only one being a bitch about it.”

  “Don’t start, you two,” Blue ordered. “And yes, Ms. Bretton, I did think this was winnable. We may be a fraction of their forces, but we know how to fight. They’re using techno-zombies as their forces. That means they only know how to die.”

  “We’re pretty fucking good at dying too,” Melissa countered.

  “Yep, we are,” Blue nodded. “Yet we never give up. You saying you want to give up, Ms. Bretton?” Blue leaned forward in his chair and locked eyes with the young Ghost. “That your plan? To roll over and just let it happen?”

  “No, of course not,” Melissa snarled. “I want to kill every last one of those mother fuckers.”

  “And you will get to,” Blue said. “But first we have to get the shield down so we can rendezvous with Capreze’s people.”

  “Has he sent anyone yet?” Charlie asked. “To Monterey?”

  “No,” Blue said and everyone in the room could tell he was keeping something from them.

  “Dad?” Charlie asked, leaning forward in an almost exact parody of his father. “Have you told Capreze about the Canadians?” Blue scowled. “Jesus Christ! He needs to know that!”

  “I’m letting him get his house in order first,” Blue said. “I dropped a bit of a bomb on him. I needed to know how deep the infiltration was first.”

  “I’m sorry, infiltration?” Melissa asked. “Like spies? There are fucking spies in with the mechheads?”

  “American command had a deep cover operative,” Beth explained. “He was one of my uploaded personalities, Dr. Brian Lisbon.”

  “Right, but he’s dead,” Melissa said.

  “Yes, but he was working with someone else,” Beth explained. “She was the one that was able to get the cerebral matrix of Rachel Capreze mapped and downloaded so Dr. Lisbon could work out the stability issue with the Vessel. With me.”

  “So who the fuck is this chick?” Melissa asked. “And why does it matter?”

  “She is Canadian,” Blue explained. “Under the Council’s command, not under American command. It was the only way they could get someone into the mech base. Genetically she couldn’t show any American traits or DNA manipulation. The UDC would have found out.”

  “So shoot her in the fucking head and move on,” Melissa snapped. “End of story.”<
br />
  “Capreze won’t do that,” Blue said. “Although I agree with you 100%.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with this asshole?” Melissa yelled. “Why protect her?”

  “I have an idea,” Blue said. “And it has absolutely nothing to do with us or anyone else.”

  ***

  “Commander, relax,” Themopolous said as she continued her scans of Rachel. “I’m still me, sir. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her or anyone in this base. I’m mech, sir. That was decided for me a long time ago.”

  “I still don’t understand who the fuck these ‘Canadians’ are,” Mathew said. “Don’t you have anything on them, Jethro?”

  “Pre-wasteland, sure,” Jethro said. “There’s bits and pieces. North America was made up of three powerful countries: The United States, which we live in, Mexico, which we know nothing about after they built their wall, and Canada, our neighbors to the north.”

  “And they did what?” Jay asked as he kicked back on one of the infirmary cots. “Just stood by and watched? Why didn’t they die?”

  “Because they were too busy babysitting you ungrateful assholes,” Themopolous said. “You ever wonder why we don’t have aircraft, Jay? Come on, you’ve seen them in the ancient vids. You’ve had to be curious.”

  “Yeah, a little,” Jay replied. “Mechanics were just taught that the atmospheric conditions of the wasteland would rip any aircraft to pieces.”

  “And you bought that?” Themopolous laughed.

  “Watch your tone, Doctor,” Capreze warned.

  “Sorry, sir,” Themopolous apologized. “Let me ask you this: what’s on the coast?”

  “The what?” Mathew asked.

  “The coast,” Themopolous repeated. “Where the ocean meets the land.”

  “I, uh, huh?” Mathew puzzled.

  “Exactly,” Themopolous said as she checked Rachel’s breathing. The newly awakened mech pilot took it all in stride, listening intently as everyone worried around her, letting Themopolous finish her examination. “The coast is off limits. Every person is taught that the ocean doesn’t exist anymore, that it’s worse than the wasteland itself. Beyond toxic. Maybe some of the survivor pockets, those outside the city/states, knew it was just a story, but that knowledge stayed within those inbred tribes. Even the Railers didn’t have tracks that went within sight of the coast.”