Part Four- The Dead Mechs

Essential to a mech’s operation was a modified Reaper chip which allowed the pilot to have near complete cerebral integration with all of the mech’s systems, creating response times of nanoseconds. The mech became a fifty ton extension of the pilot’s reflexes. Pilots didn’t think, they acted.

No one foresaw that a mech could become a fifty-ton extension of a zombie. And a zombie that was as hungry as all the rest, except now equipped with city leveling armaments.

Zombie pilots did not need to sleep or piss or ever leave their cockpits. They could hunt 24/7.

And they did.

***

The first observed dead mech was a berserker. The mech’s former pilot, now zombie, raged as hard as any other zombie not strapped into a fifty ton machine.

It turned on anything and everything in its path, smashing, destroying, annihilating. It fired weapons at random, the zombie pilot no longer in control of its faculties, the military training lost in death.

And just like the zombies crawling the earth without mech armor, the dead mech pilot was hungry.

The need for flesh forced the mech to learn, to gain some control of itself.

The metal golem was free. And starving.

***

The dead mechs roamed the wasteland, searching for food. They could cover several square miles a day, where a zombie horde could only move so far, so fast.

This led to some of the smaller wasteland outposts, the rural survivors, to be taken by surprise when the mech approaching turned out not to be friendly, but instead hungry for their flesh.

Now a good, strong, reinforced wall couldn’t hold out the horror.

Little communities had to abandon their hard work and search for others to join forces with, whether they wanted to or not, all for the sake of survival.