Robotics and Necrotics (Book 1): As Nations Fall Read online

  As Nations Fall

  Silas Vale

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Silas Vale

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  First ebook edition March 2019

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  Valearith

  Valearith is the world in which all of my novels will take place. This book takes place in the second series I have created, though Aisling Grace is the daughter of Willow Grace from The Circuit Saga. For information regarding her origin, please consider reading the first series.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Walking On Eggshells

  On The Hunt

  The Radio

  The Gas Station

  The Smell Of Bullets

  A New Home

  A Rude Awakening

  Then They Were One

  The Morning After

  A Demon Returns

  When The World Ends

  In My Time Of Dying

  Forgetting Everything

  Waiting For Disaster

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the wonderful coffee shop employees who have dealt with my constant rambling about this story as they brought me the same exact order every single day. They have the patience of Gods.

  Walking On Eggshells

  Shaun was no stranger to a stupid deed, but this was downright ridiculous.

  Crossing the frozen-over river, where the ice couldn't be more than half an inch thick? He had walked on eggshells thicker than this, and yet here Aisling was, holding out the wooden staff and staring expectantly at him. He couldn't believe that a mere year ago, this girl had simply been his roommate. The person that took his money at the end of the month. Now, he trusted her with his life. And apparently, she trusted him with hers, because there she was, stepping out onto the damn ice-

  "For fuck's sake." He swore, taking the staff in his hand and holding her steady. He was aware that they couldn't maintain life in their compound anymore. The resources were exhausted, and they had maybe three days' rations left. They wouldn't have lasted much longer in there, that was certain. It didn't make it any easier to leave the place that Shaun had known for so little time, and yet felt so much like home.

  There wasn't much he could do to stop her, because as Shaun knew, she wouldn't change her mind simply when he wanted her to. She was as hard-headed as he was, which often got on his nerves. It had saved them more times than he would have liked to admit, however.

  "I'd love to have an honest-to-goodness cheeseburger right now; you know, just a big-mac or something. Seriously. I would love to not have to climb over a frozen river to get to a place where there might be food." He muttered. But he held on tight anyway. No matter how big of a game he talked, there was no way he was letting anything happen to her.

  Ais sputtered and gave the staff a bit of a tug to try and get it back in her sole grip. Who was he to tell her what to do?

  "Do you have any better ideas?" She huffed at him and tilted her head to the side, as if to further the impact of her question. "It's not like we can just go back now, considering we don't have enough rations to make it back to the city to look for more food. Not to mention that if we're camped out on the bank of this river and a horde rolls through, we're fucked." She kept her grasp on the staff even though he had grabbed onto it. There was no way she was letting him take it.

  She took a deep breath and sighed it out. Looking up at Shaun, she held his gaze as she spoke. "If there really is a settlement on the other side of that pass, that means that two days from now, after we've crossed this river, we're gonna have warm food in our stomachs and walls around us. This ice is probably thick enough to hold our weight one way or another, so we have to at least try." She released the staff with one hand to tuck an annoying strand of sunset orange hair behind one ear. "Our only other option is to turn back, which really isn't that much of an option, because we're gonna starve and then get eaten."

  Shaun sighed. She was right. As usual.

  "Yeah, I get it. But it really isn't safe to walk across ice, and you know that. So, you go first, and you know full well that if you fall in, I'm coming in after you." There was a strange mixture of compassion and anger swelling within his voice, but it was nothing that couldn't be satiated. "Just… Please don't fall in. I really, really don't feel like freezing my balls off today." His voice was light-hearted, but there was a weight behind it. One that spoke of how weary he was already, and how he knew that it would be a long journey ahead.

  "Go ahead. Step lightly, and make sure you only use the ball of your foot; don't spread your weight out across the ice. Try to only have one foot on the ground as much as you can." It wasn't like his liberal arts major was doing him any good out during the apocalypse, but at least his professor had been one of those batshit end-of-the-world preppers.

  Well… Not so batshit as they had seemed. Hopefully he remembered that part of the speech correctly.

  "Go ahead. I'll come after you."

  The slightest of smirks started to spread across her face, before she quickly stopped it with a nod.

  "Right. Just don't come running after me right away. If I can pull myself up, that's better than you running over and falling in too." She gripped the wooden staff with both hands and held it at waist level. "Even if I get my fine ass soaked, I have a change of clothes." She snickered and turned back towards the river, carefully stepping a foot out onto it. Her humor wasn't always appreciated, as it was often poorly timed.

  … No cracking. That was a good sign.

  She took a breath to relax, and carefully brought her other foot onto the ice. She waited a moment to test its strength, silently measuring the give beneath her feet. "I think I'm okay." She nodded to herself and shuffled another step forward, sliding her other foot up to meet the first after she was satisfied that the ice wouldn't give out beneath her feet. "I don't know about you though. You're heavier than me, so you should be careful when it's your turn."

  She was right, they did have spare clothes. But Shaun really didn't want to think about having hypothermia in the middle of the apocalypse.

  He watched her cross the river, adrenaline pumping through his veins as fast as his heart was racing in his chest. He was panicky, that much he knew, but seeing her fall into the ice-cold river would absolutely push him over the edge. Because he knew himself, and he knew he would jump in after her. And then they would most likely both freeze to death. And he really didn't want that to happen.

  He waited for what felt like hours, until she had finally reached the other side. As she took her last step off of the ice, Shaun felt a pressure release within his chest. He let himself smile for the first time in a while, and slowly, hesitantly, put his foot on the ice.

  It would be a long walk.

  Ais let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding as her foot hit the solid ground, and quickly turned around to look at Shaun. Her brows furrowed somewhat with worry, and she pursed her lips as she examined the stretch of ice between them. "Should I throw this over to you?" She called, holding up the staff. "If you fall, it'll keep you from getting sucked under."

  She adjusted her c
oat, slinking her hands most of the way into the sleeves to keep them warm. She had a pair of fingerless gloves on, but they didn't keep her hands completely warm. Anxiety started to pull on her stomach, a sinking feeling that was all too familiar to her. "Be careful, okay?"

  Extending an arm, she pointed to her footprints in the snow on the ice. "The traction is pretty good, but it gets a little iffy around the middle. If you slip, you'll go right through, so take your time. Follow my tracks."

  Shaun nodded his head. It couldn't be that hard. Simply follow the tracks. Follow the footprints on the ice, that were slowly being covered by snow. He didn't need the staff; he just wouldn't fall. Carrying something across would make it more difficult.

  Slowly being covered by snow.

  He cursed. Once he’d reached about halfway across, the entirety of her path had been covered by the light snowfall. He was on his own now. He looked up to her, slowly, and could see that she was already panicking. He didn't want her to worry any more than she had to, so he didn't say anything; he simply continued his way across, oblivious to what patches of ice were good enough to step on, and which would break if he took a wrong step-

  Crack.

  Shaun's heart leapt into his throat as the ice beneath him gave way. The hole was only centered around his right leg, and he fell so that his hands and knees were pressed against splintering ice. The sharp crystals dug into his skin, but he held perfectly, perfectly still. Only his right leg was submerged. If he could pull it out, he'd be fine. He'd be fine. No one ever fell twice. That's just bad karma.

  Shaun gasped as he tried to move his leg. He could feel the cold setting in, through the two layers of pants that he wore. The Canadian north was unforgiving, and he knew that this would be one of those times. But he could pull through. All he had to do was get his stupid leg out of that stupid hole.

  And he did it.

  Shaun's mind wasn't in the best of places at that moment, so he could barely remember how he actually got his leg out of the freezing cold water. He could barely remember crawling across the frozen river, until he finally reached solid ground.

  He collapsed next to Aisling, shivering and curling up into a ball.

  But he had made it.

  "Shaun!" Aisling's heart jumped to her throat, her eyes widening in horror. She had moved to step back out onto the ice when he had fallen, but hesitated, turning away instead to look for something to help him with. "Fuck, fuck, fuck-" She hissed under her breath, looking around frantically for anything useful. When she lifted her gaze, however, she had found he had pulled himself from the ice, and was crawling towards her.

  God, he looked cold.

  When he was close enough, Ais reached over and grabbed him by his shoulders to help haul him further up onto the ground. She turned away from him for a moment and tossed her staff and her backpack to the ground, before kneeling beside him. "Come on, get your ass up, you need to get out of those pants-" She pulled him upright and moved behind him to dig through his bag. He had to have something in there, and she highly doubted that he'd want to wear her extra jeans.

  "You bastard-" she clenched her teeth, "-you scared the shit out of me." She bit her tongue, as she knew it wasn't his fault, and yanked a pair of pants from his bag. "… Are you okay?"

  Cold.

  So so cold.

  Is she speaking?

  Shaun pulled himself out of his own cold-numbed thoughts to hear her cursing at him. He understood; he would have done the same. And where he normally would have come up with some snarky remark, all he could manage was a sad, pathetic, "Sorry…". His teeth chattered as he spoke the word, and his lips were a dreadful shade of blue.

  Normally, Shaun would be embarrassed as hell to be seen without pants around her. At that moment, however, he didn't care. He stripped the drenched denim from his skin and slowly, deliberately, pulled on the dry pair she had given him. He curled in on himself, conserving his own body heat, trying desperately to stop his teeth from chattering. Eventually, when that didn't work, he looked up to her with embarrassment and cold lacing his irises.

  "I… I'm n-not u-used to h-hugging, b-but b-body h-heat…" He couldn't finish his sentence as he wrapped his arms around her, his skin as cold as ice.

  Ais jolted, her body tensing as he wrapped his arms around her. It only took her brain a moment to register what was happening, and then she wrapped her arms around him tightly. She buried her nose in his hair, trying to curl herself around him as much as possible to warm him up. "You're gonna be alright. Fuck, there’s gotta be an old rest stop or viewpoint around here somewhere." She lifted her head briefly, but unfortunately couldn't see over the lip of the bank of the river.

  She lowered her head back down, and after a moment closed her eyes. "Let me know when you're warmer, okay?" She rubbed his back with one hand. "After you are, we need to get you moving. The exercise will heat you up."

  Though she was stubborn and headstrong, she was certainly not mean. She was quite the softie, truthfully, but she claimed that it was just her getting people to let their guard down. That way, she could strike if necessary.

  Shaun didn't know how to feel about that.

  He also didn’t know how to feel about the hug they were sharing.

  Before the apocalypse, he had been with a girl; Krystalynn. That had ended when he had seen her eating some guy’s brain, and honestly, it had screwed him up. He hadn't been able to think straight for days. And this, this felt… Intimate. And try as he might, he couldn't let go of her for a good couple minutes. Eventually, though, his body had returned to a semi-normal temperature. He pulled away from her with a hint of hesitation.

  After that, however, he was back to his sarcastic, assholish self.

  "So tell me; how worried were you about me?" His voice held a hint of humor, but also thanks. He wasn't good at thanking people when they helped him, but his eyes said it all. He wanted to work with her until the entire apocalypse shit blew over.

  "You're right; there's probably a miner's stop somewhere around here. They mined for coal, and the old dudes needed to defrost eventually." Shaun was nearly rambling to himself now, but his words made sense; he began to walk, making sure she was following him.

  They needed to find something before the sun set.

  She stared at him for a moment, before she snorted. "You have half of our food. If you fell in I'd be fucked." She was being sarcastic, and stood up to brush herself off. She leaned down and hauled her backpack up onto her shoulders and grabbed her staff. "We should be careful though. If there's anything, uh- unliving in there, we could get our asses handed to us on a silver platter."

  On The Hunt

  Aisling stabbed her staff into the snow, using it to haul herself up onto the river bank. "… I don't see anything." She peered down the road, then glanced back down at Shaun over her shoulder. "But there's a bend in the road not far ahead, so there could be something past there." She held out a hand to help him up the bank. "Come on, asshole." The hints of a smirk tugged at her lips, and she tilted her head to the side.

  Snarky as ever. Though it was typical when she was in a good mood, which was definitely a good sign.

  He rolled his eyes and made his way up the bank, taking note of the bend in the road she pointed out. He looked towards the sky. They had, at best, a half hour before the sun would set. They couldn't be caught out in the dark; that would be suicide.

  "There has to be." He said aloud. There was no mistaking the dread in his voice.

  He began to run, making sure that she followed suit. He had to stretch his leg, make the muscle work. He felt the cold slowly dissipating, which was a good sign, though he made sure to work extra hard while he sprinted. The last thing he needed was to lose a God damn leg.

  They ran across the snowy road, eventually coming to the bend. And around the corner, in all of its magnificent, wonderful glory…

  Was a Shell gas station.

  She skidded to a stop behind him and put her hands on her knees to cat
ch her breath, because running in the snow sucked. She lifted her head, and furrowed her brows for a moment before a grin broke out across her face. "Oh fuck yes." She stood up straight, taking a couple steps forward as she examined the gas station.

  After a moment, the smile faded.

  She glanced to Shaun. "Do you think there are walkers in there?" She tilted her head towards the gas station and pulled a screwdriver from a small side pocket in her backpack. A quick stab with it to the back of the neck typically shut down the remaining motor control in zombies, leaving them crumpled heaps on the ground that were quite easy to kill from there.

  "Woah there, Clementine." Shaun muttered, nodding at the screwdriver. He rolled his eyes and walked up to the doors. The glass wasn't broken, and there didn't seem to be any obvious entrances.

  "If there are any of those things inside, we'll deal with it then. Right now, it's freezing outside, the sun is almost gone, and holy mother of fuck this place still has electricity-" Shaun only noticed it after he started talking, but it was true; the overhead light inside the gas station still buzzed away, illuminating the inside.

  That was it for him; Shaun pried the doors open and pulled her in after him, and they were both graced, for the first time in months, to a fully working, fully functioning, heating system.

  "Shut the fuck up before I shove this up your- it has what?" She blinked and followed after him willingly. "Dude oh my god there's electricity." The words fell out of her mouth in a breathy whisper, and she looked to Shaun with a big grin. Cute. She fumbled inside behind him and peered around quietly.

  The excitement of electricity was dulled with the rising suspicion that something else was in the gas station with them. Silently, she moved away from the counter and looked over it. Satisfied when she saw nothing there, she turned back around. "Let's check this entire place out before we settle down." She murmured, walking back over to him. "We don't want to let our guard down and find three of those fuckers in the bathroom."