Even fighting for their lives, they still fought topreserve history and society.
When they did emerge, they brought their memories withthem. But, those memories were just that, memories. Not instructions,not plans, not a future.
The UDC gave them all of that.
And for their trouble, the UDC only asked for completeloyalty.
***
Human civilization and society had never been aboutmoney, race, gender, looks or even power. It had always been aboutclass.
When society finally started to pull itself backtogether after the first dark years of the zombie virus, it pulleditself along class lines.
Small city/states formed, walls went up, armamentsplaced. It became the battle of the urban vs. the rural all overagain.
Once those left outside realized they had beenabandoned, it was almost too late.
Some pockets survived, but most didn't.
The brutal took control and ruled.
As much inside the walls as outside them.
***
Frontier Town. Adventure Land. Six Flags. Windy City.Foggy Bottom.
These were the city/states left under UDC control.
Each had its own set of laws, ruling structures,police/security forces, judicial systems. Each survived alone, ontheir own resources and the energies of their respective populations.But, the final word on all matters of survival came from the UDC.They had the troops, the guns, the bombs, the technology toeffectively hold back the zombies roaming the wasteland.
There were many more city/states at one time, but mostignored the UDC, choosing to make their own way.
They chose certain death.
***
Even with the small size of the city/states, all it tookwas one or two deceased to get over looked and an epidemic quicklyspread within the walls.
The Reaper chip became a necessity for human survival.And the UDC controlled the chip's application with an iron fist.
Thus the UDC ignored the rural survivor pockets andfocused on the main centers of population. This left the survivors onthe outside of the walls to fend for themselves, to develop their ownwarning systems and protocols.
Mix rural fear with religious zealotry and a new scourgewas born: the Cults.
***
Basic trade routes were established quickly between thecity/states, each sending out heavily armed convoys through thewasteland that separated human society.
In the beginning, the losses that resulted from thesetrading expeditions were worth it. Resources were scarce and eachcity/state seemed to have many strengths, but no single city/statecould provide everything for its populace.
However, once the Cults figured out the armed convoys'trade schedules, the losses soon outweighed any benefits.Communication and physical trade between the city/states dwindleduntil each became their own self-sufficient fiefdom.
Those that dared to trade did so at their own risk.
***
The Cults only believed their people should be allowedto live. All others were heathens and infidels; the very reason thevirus was brought upon humanity.
Those survivors that were unfortunate enough to crosspaths with the Cults met with ends some said were a million timesworse than being eaten alive by a horde of zombies.
Tales of vivisection, cannibalism, being burnt alive,weeks of rape and mutilation, were spread through the slow grapevinethat worked the land. Often by the time a message reached a smallgroup, it was too late to flee; the Cults were upon them.
Part Three- Warnings And Weapons
The UDC realized they needed two things to survive:better warning and better weapons.
They already had the weapons. Technology that was on thedrawing board before the zombie apocalypse decimated the earth, wasstill viable. The mechs. Massive, armored combat robots designed tofit around a human pilot and mimic the pilot's every move andaction. However, there were design flaws with the control interface.
Developing the warning wasn't very hard. The Reaperchip came about in a burst of brilliance.
That same burst of brilliance showed the chip to be theanswer to the mech pilots' control issues.
***
The beauty of the zombie hordes was once they ran out offood they simply starved to death. This allowed the human race tobounce back from almost certain extinction.
The virus, however, did not die with the re-animatedcorpses. It floated in the air, waiting for the living to expire andprovide the perfect host. It was a patient, indestructible virus.
Once the Reaper chip was invented and implanted in everyliving person, humanity had an early warning system. Trackers lockedonto the recently deceased and squads dispatched to dispose of thethreat.
But nothing is ever that simple.
***
The Reaper chip was to be the saving grace of the humanrace. It was to solve all of the unreported deaths, the overlooked,the lost, the underbelly.
But, that wasn't to be.
In theory, a person died and their Reaper chipactivated, alerting the authorities. It also sent a lethal shock tothe cerebral cortex, frying the brain and adding another safeguardthat the dearly departed stayed dearly departed.
But, in order for mech pilots to connect with theirmech's computer, they needed that feature disabled.
Eventually, it was and the door for the dead mechs wasopened. Wide.
***
The mechs came online ten years after the Reaper chip.They were almost a direct extension of that technology, working onthe same principal of cerebral and computer integration.
The first mech pilot died a quick, painful death, hiscerebellum frying like an oyster in hot oil. It was chalked up toequipment failure.
The second mech pilot died screaming into his com thathis "brain is on fucking fire!". His eyeballs melted in his head,while grey matter oozed from his ears.
The scientists and engineers went back to the drawingboard. The UDC waited patiently for their army.
***
Try as they might, none of the scientists or programmerscould retain the Reaper chips' brain frying features and allow itto fully connect with the mech's computer systems without killingthe pilots.
They finally had to face the fact that the feature wouldneed to be disabled, still allowing the pilots' vital signs to bemonitored and tracking signature to be located, but no longer capableof administering a final brain death.
A single assistant composed a memo about the possiblerisks of pilot death while still connected to their mech.
The assistant soon became a silent test subject.
***
A mech and its pilot were designed to be one organism.The mech's AI and the pilot's consciousness were to meld easily,allowing the pilot to control the mech without any delay orhesitation. If the pilot moved, the mech moved with it like a suit ofarmor, but with hydraulic assistance.
This was the worry of what would one day be called theLost Memo: that the mech and pilot were too intertwined, tooenmeshed, too complete. Mechs did not know the difference betweenlife or death. A pilot was a pilot, whether living or undead.
Monsters were born.
***
The day the mechs came online was hailed as the end ofthe zombie war, the politicians crowed.
No longer would humanity have to risk sending inhundreds of soldiers against thousands of undead, hoping not to beoverrun and infected then turned themselves.
Now, just two or three specially trained mech pilotscould take their massive robotic war machines into the middle of theundead masses and lay waste.
Soon battles were won in minutes and hours, not days andweeks.
Of course, it all went horribly wrong the moment thefirst pilot died while still operating his mech.
Part Four- The Dead Mechs
Essential to a mech's operation was a modified Reaperchip which allowed the pilot to have near complete cerebralintegration with all of the mech's systems, creating response timesof nanoseconds. The mech became a fifty ton extension of the pilot'sreflexes. Pilots didn't think, they acted.
No one foresaw that a mech could become a fifty-tonextension of a zombie. And a zombie that was as hungry as all therest, except now equipped with city leveling armaments.
Zombie pilots did not need to sleep or piss or everleave their cockpits. They could hunt 24/7.
And they did.
***
Thefirst observed dead mech was a berserker. The mech's former pilot,now zombie, raged as hard as any other zombie notstrapped into a fifty ton machine.
It turned on anything and everything in its path,smashing, destroying, annihilating. It fired weapons at random, thezombie pilot no longer in control of its faculties, the militarytraining lost in death.
And just like the zombies crawling the earth withoutmech armor, the dead mech pilot was hungry.
The need for flesh forced the mech to learn, to gainsome 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 hordecould only move so far, so fast.
This led to some of the smaller wasteland outposts, therural survivors, to be taken by surprise when the mech approachingturned out not to be friendly, but instead hungry for their flesh.
Now a good, strong, reinforced wall couldn't hold outthe horror.
Little communities had to abandon their hard work andsearch for others to join forces with, whether they wanted to or not,all for the sake of survival.
Part Five- The Ride And Arrival
Mech pilots weren't chosen for being the bravest, forbeing the smartest or for being the best fit. They were chosenbecause they volunteered … and no one else did.