Fighting Iron 2: Perdition Plains

by Jake Bible

  “Good,” Clay said. “We’ll need the mech to lift the chains into place. I can secure them, but no way I can drag them to the where they need to be.”

  “Understood,” Paige said. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  Clay nodded in response, realized she couldn’t see him, then didn’t bother responding at all. She was busy. He’d started to doze off when another painful shout made him sit bolt upright.

  “What the hell?” Clay snarled.

  “Five!” Paige was yelling. “I had counted five! Clay! There are only four! Clay!”

  Clay knew what that meant. One of the tweener hounds had slipped by Paige, had slipped by the flesh mech and was on its way to the Vernacht. On its way to Clay.

  “I’m up on the deck,” Clay said.

  He dragged himself to his feet and looked out across the landscape. The Vernacht had righted itself, as much as it could, and stood on shaky legs above the muck and mud. There was a slit of dawn spreading across the horizon, but not enough for Clay to make out details in the almost featureless land. Let alone see an approaching shape that was only the size of a dog.

  Except that he did see an approaching shape. It was not the size of a dog. It was the size of one of the bison he and Gibbons had fled from only a few days earlier.

  As it got closer, Clay could see the barbed tail whipping back and forth behind it. He swallowed hard, wondering if the creature did that with its tail to maintain balance, or if it was a truly canine affectation and it was happy as hell to be running towards its prey.

  “Son of a bitch,” Clay muttered and immediately began to search around for a weapon, any weapon, to defend himself against something he doubted would have any problem climbing the Vernacht to get to his ass.

  Twenty-One

  Fire axe. There had to be a fire axe. There was always a fire axe. On a mech the size of the Vernacht, how could there not be a fire axe?

  There was no fire axe.

  Clay searched every storage locker, opened every hold hatch that would open. He worked his way back up to the cockpit, but only found a room filled with smoke and stink. He searched every square centimeter of the Vernacht’s decks, but there was nothing he could use to defend himself with. There were no weapons.

  Clay considered locking himself in one of the holds, but he didn’t think he could manage to get the hatch closed and still keep all of his fingers. He was exhausted and the hatches were heavy. Not as heavy as the chains, but heavy.

  The chains.

  He couldn’t use the chains as weapons, but the hoist was a different matter.

  Clay booked his ass over to the hoist as he heard a long, keening howl from just a few meters off to the side of the Vernacht. If what Paige had said was true, the tweener hound would be able to scale the mech and get to him without any problem.

  “Clay,” Paige said. “I’m coming. The mech is damaged. A lot. I’m barely limping it along, but I’m coming. Hide if you can.”

  “I have a better idea,” Clay said. “But, yeah, hurry if possible.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Paige said. “Do not underestimate one of these hounds. They have more brains than the automatons do.”

  “That’s not saying much,” Clay replied as he reached the hoist and began to crank the cables loose.

  Once the cables were stretched out, he went to work. It didn’t take much work, actually. It was only a matter of unhooking two of the cables from the hoist and hooking them together. He fed one end through the hoist’s pulley system and attached another end to one of the heavy chains. That was the hard part, scooting the heavy chain close enough to the edge of the empty hold. Clay managed to get it where he wanted it then sat down hard.

  He was almost done for. Every muscle in his body screamed with fatigue and a soreness that bordered on pain, but was too tired to fully commit.

  The howl came again, but no longer a few meters off. It came from up around the cockpit. The hound had climbed the Vernacht straight up one of the legs and went for where it thought Clay would be. The thing’s howl was filled with disappointment and betrayal. How dare Clay not be where a pilot should be.

  Clay waited. He sat stock still, barely breathing. He held out hope that Paige would reach him in time and pluck the thing right off the Vernacht like a flea, crushing it then tossing its broken body out into the plains. The lack of Paige’s voice in his head told Clay that was a pipe dream. She wasn’t going to make it.

  “Okay, asshole,” Clay whispered. “Come and fetch some death.”

  He chuckled at the absurdity of his words. Oh, well, if those were the last he spoke then so be it.

  There was the sound of clacking on the steps to the cockpit. Clay waited, his eyes locked on the spot where they met the main deck. After a few seconds, the metal and flesh snout of the great beast appeared. Clay shuddered and wondered how the hell Paige had beaten a hundred of the things. Just seeing one made him want to crap himself.

  “There you are,” Clay said, his voice surprisingly calm.

  The hound had reached the bottom of the steps, and Clay truly saw just how big it was. Easily the size of a full grown male bison, it stood with bunched muscles that were threaded with reinforcing metal and wire. Its teeth gleamed in the dawn light, razor sharp. More akin to blades than canines. They wouldn’t shred and tear so much as slice and dice whatever they sunk into.

  Snout raised, fleshy nostrils open wide, the hound swung its head towards Clay. As tired as he was, his body was still able to give a jolt at the sight of the eyes. They weren’t bison. They weren’t dog. They were very much human eyes, only grown large enough to fit into the hound’s massive head. Clay wanted to vomit as those eyes locked onto him.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said as the tweener hound smiled. It actually smiled. “God, I hate the Midlands.”

  The hound took its time. It was in no hurry. It saw no threat. Clay was obviously not going anywhere. Even if he had his full energy and strength, there was nowhere to go. Try to run? It would be on him before he got more than a few steps. The Vernacht’s main deck was wide open and the intelligence in the hound’s eyes said quite clearly that it knew Clay was screwed.

  “Saying these things have more brains than automatons was an understatement,” Clay said. He waited for a response. None came. “Paige? Hello?”

  Nothing.

  That had Clay’s blood running colder than the sight of the hound. How much damage had the flesh mech taken? Was it enough that she was hurt as well? Or was it only enough that the flesh com was out?

  Clay had no way of knowing, so he focused on what he did know. There was a razor-toothed monster padding its way across the main deck right towards him.

  Right towards where Clay wanted it to go.

  “Nice doggy,” Clay said. “Who’s a good boy? Are you a good boy?”

  The human eyes narrowed, and Clay really didn’t like the look the hound gave him. There was a soul deep hate in those eyes. He’d seen killers, human killers, with the same look just before butchering entire families, including the children. No mercy, no quarter given.

  “Doggy want a treat?” Clay cooed. The hound snarled. “Oh, be nice. Doggy doesn’t get a treat if doggy is a bad, bad boy.”

  His words were pissing it off, distracting it from what it was about to step in. Clay shifted his weight and the hound paused. It paused just half a meter from the loop of cable Clay had set on the deck. Clay stopped moving and waited. After a moment, the hound placed its foot down inside the loop.

  Before it could take another step, Clay stood and shoved with all of his strength, putting his legs and back into the effort. The heavy chain he’d been sitting on went over the edge of the hold and fell fast. The cable loop tightened just as fast around the hound’s leg, snapping taught and yanking the monster onto its side.

  It struggled to right itself, but Clay was having none of that. He got up and grabbed onto the hoist, cranking as hard and fast as he could until the cable pulled the hound cl
oser to the edge of the hold.

  Then Clay shoved the entire hoist into the hold and the hound followed after it.

  The howling the thing made as it fell into the hold was almost as painful as Paige’s shouts directly into Clay’s head. The hound roared with pure fury.

  Clay ignored the fury. He had one job to do, and if he didn’t do it, then he was a dead man. He squatted and lifted the hold hatch then shoved just as hard as he had against the chain, sending the hatch back into place. Clay flung himself across the hatch and scrambled to get the locks secured. The hatch shuddered under him as the hound threw itself against it. Even with a cable tied to a massive chain around its leg, it could still get free and rip Clay apart. That thought was what he hung onto as he got one, two, three, and four locks slammed home.

  The hound raged against the hatch again, making a small dent in the metal. Clay rolled off the hatch and scrambled backwards on his ass across the Vernacht’s main deck. He stared at the hatch for a long while as the enraged hound fought to get free. Dent after dent appeared, but the hatch itself didn’t budge. It stayed right where it was supposed to, and Clay let out a long breath he had been holding.

  “Paige?” Clay called. “I got it. I snared the damn thing.”

  Still nothing.

  “Dammit, Paige, answer me!” Clay yelled.

  “Good,” Paige whispered. “Hey…Clay?”

  “Yeah?” Clay replied, already getting to his feet and looking out across the landscape in hopes of seeing any sign of the flesh mech. He thought he saw a pink mound way off in the distance, but the sun hadn’t risen high enough for him to be sure. “Yeah, Paige? What?”

  “I need help,” Paige whispered. “I can’t…get out…of the harness.”

  “I think I see you,” Clay said. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  “Hurry,” Paige said. “The mech…is dying.”

  “Mechs do that,” Clay chuckled. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll get it powered up again and then make our way home.” He smiled to himself at that last word. Home.

  “No, you…don’t understand,” Paige said. “I’m strapped…in. Full…integration…”

  “Yeah, I know how it works,” Clay replied. “Full integration. You and the mech are one.”

  He did not smile at those last words. The realization slammed into him as hard as the hound was still slamming into the hold hatch.

  Full integration. The mech was made of flesh. The mech was dying. Full integration.

  Paige was dying.

  “Son of a bitch,” Clay said and dug deep.

  He scrambled about pitifully for a way off the Vernacht. The climb may kill him since his muscles were basically the consistency of the muck surrounding the mech, but he wasn’t going to give up. If he gave up, then Paige would be dead. That was not going to happen.

  Twenty-Two

  The ground was damp with morning dew and the remnants of the storm that had passed more than a day before. It wasn’t the mucky mire that the Vernacht had stood up out of, but it wasn’t an easy landscape to traverse, either. Not when Clay’s legs barely obeyed and he felt like stopping every few steps, curling up into a ball, and giving up.

  But he couldn’t give up. Paige was dying.

  That was his mantra. The words that flitted through his head when he was coherent enough to comprehend them.

  He couldn’t give up. Paige was dying.

  “You there?” Clay asked. “Come on, Paige, answer me.”

  There was a quiet moan, and Clay forced a smile. Not because he didn’t want to smile, but because he was so tired his lips barely had the energy to form words, let alone partake in any mirthful exercise.

  “Hold on, ya hear?” Clay said. “Keep breathing. Try to stay awake. Don’t let the mech take you down. You’re the pilot, dammit. You are in control. The mech is an extension of you, not you of it.”

  No moan. No response at all.

  “PAIGE!” he shouted so loud that he strained his vocal cords.

  “Here,” Paige whispered. “I’m the pilot.”

  “Damn right you are,” Clay responded with relief. “You are the pilot. I’m on my way to get you out of there. All you have to do is stay alive. That’s your job. Stay alive.”

  “My job,” Paige replied. “Stay…”

  “ALIVE!” Clay yelled.

  “Alive,” Paige gasped then began to weep. “Clay… I can’t…go like…this. Not after…everything.”

  Clay had no idea what she meant. Was she talking about being lazaroti? Was she talking about having to eat dead, rotten meat? Was she talking about dealing with the folks in charge of Perdition Plains? He didn’t know. He honestly didn’t care. Paige had one job, and that was to stay alive. Clay had one job and that was to make sure she accomplished her one job.

  The lump of mech was getting closer and Clay was beyond grateful. He honestly wasn’t sure if he was actually making his feet move one in front of the other. He only had the growing mound of flesh mech to gauge his progress by.

  “Sweet hell,” Clay said as he got closer. “Now that’s a smell.”

  The entire area reeked of rot. Clay didn’t know if it was from the dying flesh mech or if it was from the myriad of tweener hound corpses that lay broken and shattered everywhere. His guess was it was the hound corpses since they seemed to be leaking every fluid imaginable into the ground that had become nothing but trampled prairie grasses and massive ruts.

  Paige had done one hell of a job fighting off the hounds. As Clay surveyed the area, he marveled that she only let one hound slip by her. Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of bodies littered the earth. They lay as far as Clay’s eyes could see, which was pretty far now that the sun had come fully up.

  “Talk to me,” Clay gasped as a cramp built to a crescendo of discomfort in his side. “Paige! Talk. To. Me.”

  “Still…here,” Paige replied. She sounded lost, so little and far away even though Clay could see where she was. “Hurry…”

  “Yeah, working on that,” Clay said.

  He was just about there. Only a few more meters to go, and he could climb right up the flesh mech’s side and get to Paige in the cockpit. He just had to navigate the never-ending sea of dead hounds first.

  As he passed one, its remaining eye popped open and its jaws began to snap at him. Clay jumped, fell over, landed hard on his ass, scrambled back to his feet, then laughed as he saw that the hound’s head was only connected to a spine. Nothing else, just a spine. Its limbs and the rest of its torso were scattered here and there. Or Clay assumed they were. There were so many hound parts he couldn’t say for certain that the ones he was looking at belonged to the snapping hound head.

  He longed for his revolver. All he wanted to do was put a round in the hound’s temple and be done with it. Instead, he kept moving until he was resting his forehead against the collapsed flesh mech. The surface was clammy and not the most pleasant, but Clay had to take a quick breather before the hard part began.

  “Shit,” he muttered as he stood straight again and looked up at the three-meter climb he had to accomplish to get to the cockpit hatch. “Okay. One hand at a time, just like one foot at a time.”

  He reached up, gripped a handful of flesh, and pulled. Then he reached up with his other hand and did the same thing. Once high enough, he dug the toe of his boot into the mech and pushed. Hand over hand, foot over foot, Clay struggled with his last remaining strength to get up to the cockpit.

  Inside was a pool of blood. Or some sort of blood-like fluid. There were too many floaters for it to be straight up blood.

  “Shit,” Clay said yet again as he saw Paige still strapped into the harness, only her shoulders, neck and head above the fluid. “Paige? I’m here.”

  The woman’s lips twitched into what he hoped was a smile and not a death grimace.

  Clay slid down over the edge of the cockpit hatch and landed waist deep in the fluid. He was positive that if he took a step to the left, he’d end up chest deep, if
his memory of the cockpit was correct. He stepped to the right and stayed at the same level. He kept moving until he was at a point where he could fall forward and grab onto the top straps of the harness.

  Paige cried out as if she’d been struck.

  “It hurts,” she gasped.

  “Sorry,” Clay said.

  His hands worked at the straps, tugging at them, pulling at them, trying to rip them free. They refused to budge.

  “What am I doing wrong?” Clay asked. “Paige? What am I doing wrong?”

  “Tell it…to let…go,” Paige said.

  “Let go, dammit!’ Clay barked.

  The hint of a smile returned to Paige’s ashen face. “No… With your…mind.”

  “Oh,” Clay said.

  He put his hands on the harness again and thought about the straps freeing themselves. They did instantly. Clay was so happy at the result that he missed the danger. Paige slid into the fluid, swallowed up by the liquid.

  “Dammit!” he swore as he took a deep breath and dove under.

  She was slipping to the “bottom” of the cockpit. Clay hooked an arm around her chest and gripped tight as he kicked his legs against where the harness was moored to the floor. It was his last bit of strength and he managed to get them both back up to breathable air.

  He spat and sputtered then slapped Paige’s back until she retched up the horrid fluid, gagging and puking for a full minute before resting her head against his shoulder. Clay swam them over to the edge of the cockpit hatch and found the ledge he’d first stepped on. He wanted to lift her up onto it, but he was done. He wasn’t sure he had enough energy to even sneeze.

  They rested that way for Clay didn’t know how long. Paige’s breathing evened out and when he checked, her pulse was steady, if not a little weak. Around them, the flesh mech slowly deflated as the energy left it.

  Paige had said it was dying; Clay wondered if that was more literal than he’d realized before. The organic machine seemed to do exactly what he’d seen hundreds of corpses do. He could tell the exact moment the flesh mech was out of energy. There was a stillness that hadn’t been there before. There was a lack of presence. It could have been a hunk of concrete or an old log. It could have been a huge rock or an abandoned roller. It didn’t matter, it was no longer a mech, just more rotting flesh in a landscape that seemed to specialize in the substance.