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

  She bit the inside of her lip. "It looks like there's food here. We should take what we can with us in the morning when we have to leave again."

  Shaun's smile flickered on his face, and he looked at her incredulously. "Leave in the morning? What the hell do you mean? We could survive here for weeks, Ais." He looked around at the functioning freezers, the racks stocked full of candy bars and chips. He hadn't seen a place like this in months, and it almost made him forget about the hell hole the world had turned into.

  Until there was a click at the back of his head.

  You see, zombies are easy. They fumble around, making a shit ton of noise. They have no reason to be quiet.

  Humans, however, do.

  "You planning on doing what, boy?"

  Aisling's blood ran cold. Oh no.

  She whirled around, dropping the screwdriver she was holding in favor for her bo staff, which she held with both hands and narrowed eyes. "Put the gun down." Her voice was calm, but Shaun could tell the tone of her voice. It was the 'I'm going to pretend I'm calm but I'm screaming terrified' voice. She shifted a little to try and get a look at who was holding the gun, though he was doing a good job at staying hidden behind Shaun.

  She took a deep breath, squaring her jaw and focusing on keeping her hands steady. "We don't mean any harm. We're trying to get to the other side of this pass and we needed a place to stay for the night. I'm sure you know how cold it gets out here, and he put his leg through the ice on that river." She tilted her head towards Shaun.

  The man shifted a bit, and revealed himself to her.

  He was a burly, forty-something-year-old ex-miner. That much was obvious by the oil stains present on his clothes, gloves, and the smell of the gun. Shaun slowly raised his hands into the air, his face one of pure serenity. He had mastered the art of a calm face in terrifying situations. He couldn't express how much this actually terrified him. The zombies weren't scary, as much as they were a sign of imminent demise. People, well, they were unpredictable. People could pretend.

  "I didn't know that you were here; please, just let us stay the night. We won't take any supplies." Shaun's voice held steady, though if Aisling listened closely, she would have been able to hear the telltale shake within it.

  The man very, very slowly pulled the gun away from Shaun's head. He kept it raised, however, and aimed it between the two of them.

  "I don't got no beds, and nothing you fuckers can take wit'chu when you go. But if you hunker down here, I'm gonna expect some payment." And then the man looked at Aisling, licking his lips with a twisted, ugly smile.

  Shaun was on him in an instant.

  He’d always had a problem with men who treated girls like that. Like… Objects. It disgusted him, and this time, it pushed him over the edge. Especially considering it was directed at his only friend.

  The gun fired, and for a terrible, blind moment, it wasn't apparent if anyone had been shot.

  Then Shaun came away with the gun, a wide expression of anger lacing his face. There was a bullet lodged clean in the man's temple.

  "Shit!" Ais’ eyes widened with a yelp, and she lifted her hands to protect herself. Her ears were ringing, and she pressed her eyes shut with a wince. Guns were loud, and this was no exception.

  After a moment, it occurred to her that someone had been shot, and Shaun wasn’t the one who originally had the gun.

  She moved her arms away from her face, eyes wide as she took in the scene in front of her. Her gaze settled on the dead man on the floor, before they slowly lifted to Shaun. Her lips parted somewhat with shock, and she took a hesitant step towards him.

  "I- holy shit." She could barely hear herself talk, no thanks to the ringing. "Are you okay?"

  He had not meant to shoot the man.

  The man had pulled the trigger.

  Shaun had not shot him.

  It was all he could do to think these thoughts as the gun fell from his hand, though he knew that they were untrue. Shaun knew that he did shoot that man, but hadn't he deserved it? That way he looked at Aisling… Shaun couldn't let him get away with that.

  He couldn't hear.

  His ears were ringing.

  Why is everything so bright?

  Shaun fell to his knees in front of her, the gun a few paces beside him. The gurgling man finally went still.

  "I couldn't let him say anything like that to you."

  Aisling could barely make out what he said, and her breath hitched in her throat. Her legs were stiff, liquid adrenaline running through her veins. "I- let’s go."

  She spurred herself to move, walking forwards and putting her hands on his shoulders. "Let’s go." She restated, louder so he could hear her. "He isn’t going to turn, and we should just- go into another room for the night."

  After a moment, she knelt down and hugged him tightly from behind, squishing her cheek against the back of his shoulder. "… Thanks."

  That was all he needed to hear.

  He had to know that he had done the right thing. That he hadn't just killed a man for no reason. He had to know that she understood why he did it. And that one hug did it for him.

  It terrified him that his own moral compass wasn’t worried about killing a man. He was only worried about what Aisling would think of him.

  Shaun nodded his head at her and looked around the place. He took a box of granola bars, some jerky, a box of cookies, and two ice cream sandwiches from the freezer. It would be a feast, compared to what they were used to. He hadn't had food like this since before everything started.

  He opened the door to a small closet, which had been completely cleared of everything besides a one-person armchair. A radio sat beside it, and Shaun grimaced. He knew that it wouldn't work. None of the electronics worked anymore.

  "We'll stay in here." He said, almost whispering. He sat down on the floor, and began separating the food into two equal piles.

  "Okay." She nodded and stepped inside, shedding her backpack and her coat as she sat down against the wall. She peeled her boots off with semi-numb fingers, and afterwards slumped against the wall.

  After a second, she laughed and dipped her head. "I can’t believe that all this shit happened." She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. "What the hell happened to us?"

  He laughed a short, cold bark. "Well I, for one, almost froze to death and then shot a man. But you know. Average Tuesday." He tried his best to play it off, but it was obvious he was scared. Terrified. He had never killed anyone, besides the zombies that had come after them. And he didn't particularly consider them people.

  "We should keep moving if we want to get to the settlement. We'll take as much of this stuff as we can carry and then set out tomorrow." His demeanor about the place had changed. Although they had heat, and electricity, they also now had the thought that anyone could come by; and if the man they had just found was anything like the others out there, Shaun didn't want to meet them.

  "Today's been a hell of a day, Ais." He muttered, biting into a piece of jerky. "But we'll make it through. Eventually."

  "Yeah. I sure hope so." She sighed and shut her eyes. After a second she reached for her bag and pulled it over to herself. She untied the rope that held the sleeping bag to it and set it beside herself. "Are you okay, though?" She looked up at him with a frown. "You should take it easy. You’re probably exhausted."

  She had a tendency to worry, after all, and the tendency to put others’ needs before hers. "Let’s eat, and then I’ll take first watch. I don’t know if there are other people around here and I’d rather not be caught off guard on the biggest fucking snooze of my life."

  He laughed. He was at ease around her, at least. Shaun was glad to have someone he could trust, when so many people in the world could be like the man he had just shot.

  "I'll be fine. I'm not saying that I'm not completely shaken, and I'll probably go into shock during the night. But you know. I always come out alright." He sounded determined, like he wasn't going to let anything keep h
im from making it. It was a good attitude to have, but one that could be broken so easily.

  He pulled out his own sleeping bag, which he had bought on a whim from the college campus. He was not the outdoorsy type at all, but he had figured it wouldn't be a bad thing to have.

  "Wake me up when you're tired." Shaun muttered, already closing his eyes. He was asleep before his head hit the ground.

  "I will." She reached up to pull her hair from the bun, reaching up to ruffle her hair with her fingers to ease her aching scalp. "Have a good snooze."

  The Radio

  "Hey." Aisling shot a hand out to shake Shaun by the shoulder. "Shaun. Get up. Check this out." Her hair was loose, but pushed back away from her face with an elastic headband she kept wrapped around one of her wrists. She was sitting cross legged on the floor, and had the radio on the floor in front of her, studying it with semi-wide eyes. The back panel was open, and a screwdriver sat on the floor beside her. "There's a channel on here that's working, get your ass up."

  ---------------

  "I hate you, don't you know that?" Krystalynn said, a smile lacing her face. She held the ring in her hand and tears in her eyes, but she had said yes.

  She had said yes.

  Shaun smiled, tears crawling down his own cheeks as he hugged her tightly. He had never expected this day to come. They had been together for four years, but he had never expected-

  ---------------

  "Shaun. Get up. Check this out."

  He sat bolt upright, adrenaline quickly filling his veins as he looked around. No Krystalynn. No ring. No clean suit, with a bottle of illegal champagne in a cooler in the car. Only his dirty, ragtag Canadian north wear, and Aisling staring at him expectantly.

  The reality of the world slowly rushed back over him, and it almost brought him to tears.

  Then, he registered what she had said.

  "Wait, what?" He said incredulously, making his way over to her. She had torn the radio apart, or so it seemed to his non-technologically gifted mind. "The radios haven't worked in months. What channel? What's it saying?"

  "Well I mean, I tinkered with the back for a bit because I was bored, but it's not like I could do much with it. I mean-" It occurred to her that he probably didn't want to know about how she was planning to viciously dissect the radio, and rather the fact that it was working. "I was flipping through channels and found this."

  She took the radio in her hands and turned up the volume, as she had turned it down to keep the static from waking him up previously. She flipped it towards him, sitting it on her lap, and studied his face to watch his reaction.

  "-Kudos to you who are still listening. As the cameras show, we've got most of the hordes contained in the big cities-" There was some shuffling, as if someone was sifting through some papers. "But by the looks'a things there are some smaller ones sweeping through forests all 'round the province. Be careful out there folks, doesn't take much to get bit these days."

  "He calls it Z-radio, whoever he is." She murmured. "From what I listened to, I think he's holed up somewhere with satellites or he's using security cameras or drones to monitor what's going on outside."

  Holy hell.

  All Shaun could think about was the fact that someone was wasting ungodly amounts of electricity to run a radio station. It took a lot of power to run one, that he knew. He couldn't think about that, though. He had to think about how this could come to their advantage. There wasn't much of a chance they could find the guy, unless…

  "Can you like, rewire it so you can talk to him?" He honestly had no idea how radios worked, but there were two-way radios, right? Maybe she could pull some techy business or something.

  "I'm pretty useless in this department, so umm… Anything you need me to do?" If there was something he hated, it was sitting around and doing nothing.

  She pursed her lips, setting the radio on the ground and running a hand through her hair. "Hard to say. This thing is just kinda a generic, shitty music radio." She hesitated, and picked it up again to examine the contents. "I don't think I can do much with this. But maybe if I had a walkie-talkie or something along those lines… Although, I might be able to rewire it if I had a microphone I could hook up, or-" She stopped herself when she realized she was rambling again, and cleared her throat awkwardly.

  She set it back down on the floor and drummed her hands on her knees with pent-up excitement. "I can't do anything with the radio on its own, but I can look through this place and see if there's anything else I could use." Her brows furrowed. "Or I could possibly trace the signal, but that's harder to do and we have no clue where he's located. He could be up in the territories for all we know."

  Her eyes lowered somewhat towards the floor. "I can probably find a way. My mom was better at this stuff than I am." Her lips curled sweetly in a small smile, before it faded and she looked back up at Shaun. "Either way, even if it works, it'd take me a day or two and more supplies to get it done."

  She was passionate about this, he could tell. He hated that she restricted herself on his behalf.

  And though he wasn't the most technologically brilliant, he did know what a microphone was. And he did know that he, himself, was a sentimental bastard, and kept things from before the apocalypse that meant the world to him.

  And so he pulled out his phone, which had died months ago. He knew that pictures of him and Krystalynn were still on it, so it kept him going. But if it could be of better use now…

  "Can you… Tear the microphone from this, or something?" He didn't want the pictures to be lost forever. Maybe she could save them, somehow.

  Her lips parted somewhat with surprise. "I- fuck- maybe?" She reached out to carefully examine it, and bit the inside of her lip. "The problem with phones is they're just… So small." She sighed. "I could take apart the radio no problem, but if I don't have the supplies to open up the back of this thing. The only other option would be to smash it open, but…"

  She noticed his hesitation, and handed it back to him. "It's too risky doing it that way. I could damage the microphone, and then we'd be even more fucked over." She leaned back against the wall and rubbed her eyes. She'd been staring at mechanical parts for too long. "I think a walkie-talkie would be my best bet, and they probably have some here. I can take a look around in the morning when we're packing up."

  He nodded. He was kind of glad she wouldn't use the phone, even though he knew she probably could if she really needed to.

  "You should get some sleep; you've been up for a while. I'll take watch." Shaun said, rolling up his sleeping bag. He wanted to be packed and ready to go when she woke up, so he could look for a walkie-talkie while she packed.

  He positioned himself in front of the door, so she could have the single armchair if she wanted it. If not, he left plenty of floor space for her.

  "I'll wake you when it's time to leave."

  "Okay." She yawned and stood up to stretch, arching herself backwards as far as she could to get the tension out of her stiff limbs. She pulled the headband from her hair and walked over to her sleeping bag, shaking it out and crawling inside. She bundled up her jacket beneath her head as a pillow and practically collapsed onto it with a sigh. "Alright. Goodnight." She mumbled, closing her eyes.

  Luckily, it never took her very long to fall asleep, and she was out like a light within a good five minutes.

  Shaun was never really good at sleeping.

  He'd had nightmares before, but the ones regarding Krystalynn had been all his mind had played for him since the zombies first came alive. The thing was, they weren't even nightmares; they were wonderful dreams.

  The nightmarish part was waking up.

  Shaun sat against the wall, the door open so he could see the rest of the store. The fluorescent lights flickered chaotically, but at least they were working. The snow blew past the door outside, and he was glad, oh so glad, that they had a place with heat.

  He listened to Aisling's breathing for a moment, and thought about her and Kry
stalynn. They were rather alike, but remarkably different. That's why Ais was able to survive out here, and Krystalynn… Well, she wasn't.

  Thoughts like this plagued him, and his eyelids never even flickered toward closing. He simply sat, staring at the blizzard raging outside, until the sun began to peek through the windows. Still, he watched. He figured Aisling could use a bit more sleep, considering she'd been worrying about him all day.

  Eventually though, he did wake her.

  "Hey." He muttered, his voice raspy from a night of not using it. "I let you sleep for seven hours, that's long enough. Wake up." He said it compassionately, but stress was evident in his voice.

  He just wanted this to be over.

  "Mm." Ais grunted and rolled onto her side away from him. She wearily lifted a hand to rub her face, and after a moment opened her eyes, squinting at the bright light in the room around them. "Damn, I am stiff, okay-" She took a breath and propped herself up in one swift motion.

  She had a rather comical case of bedhead, her hair a fluffy mess of orange. Her eyes were half-lidded, and she took a moment to rub the sleep from her face before her gaze finally settled on him. "… What time is it?" She squinted and kicked the sleeping bag off of her with her feet.

  Shaun laughed a bit, not answering her question until he came back with a brush from one of the store shelves. "Nearly ten, by the look of the sun." He muttered, running the bristles through her hair. Eventually, he had gotten a majority of the tangles out, and gave her a warm smile as he packed the brush into her bag.

  "You'll need that." He muttered as he left the room. He still had to find the walkie talkie, so he'd do that while she packed. There was probably one at the clerk desk, so he walked behind it.

  No good.

  He cursed a bit as he rummaged around, coming up with a few empty coffee cups and candy wrappers, but no walkie-talkie.

  He eventually decided to look around back, and walked to the far end of the store.

  "Oh hush." She scoffed half-heartedly once he’d left, and moved to roll up her sleeping bag. She stuffed it in the bag, and put on her jacket and her boots. She leaned forwards so her hair fell in front of her face, and from there tied it back up into a high bun. The less hair that was grabbable, the better.