The Walker.

The Walker.

He awoke with a start and slowly scanned the tunnel he was in, something was wrong above. With a creak and the thud of one of his massive flat feet slamming into the steel floor of the vault he set out in the direction of the disturbance.

The Walker was a huge robot, created long ago by the race that called this planet home once, his body was the brown of iron and oval shaped, with a huge red glowing eye in the center. He was carried around by two relatively short legs, each of witch ended in a large flat foot, this provided him with extremely good balance, but meant that he could go no faster then walking speed, witch suited him fine.
His extensible arms were a little too big for him, and swung like that of the long dead gorillas in the now frozen mountains had as he walked threw the remains of the last chance vault.

It was a huge steel box like most vaults but was massive, from wall to wall was easily half a mile and it stretched hundreds of feet into the earth. The beings that were left alive after the hellish winter set in and raged for thirty years had moved into this vault, in hopes that the closer they got to the center of the planet, the warmer they would be. But it had been a foolish move, the huge steel box wasn't designed to hold heat in, and so the last survivors had moved into what was, essentially, a giant meat locker.

The Walker wasn't aware of this, as far as he was concerned his job was to keep the vault clean and ready for use, and to keep his masters safe from all dangers, a duty he still fulfilled hundreds of years after they were dead and cold.
He stomped to the door and halted, the sounds of shuffling and growling could be heard coming from the other side of the door, the Walker knew the sounds of his bitter enemy's and took some steps back, placing himself in the shadows next to the massive door.

Now if the vault were still being used as a home, the beings inside would have sealed up the tiny nicks and dents in the door, but there was no one left to fix anything now, and so the holes had widened until they were huge gashes in the rusted steel, and this let the monsters from outside in.

They came slowly at first, shuffling masses of frozen corpses, zombies as they were called, to terrorize the survivors. They were the body's of those who had died from the massive amounts of fallout that had blanketed the planet, and now were no more then frozen piles of rotting flesh that had chased the survivors underground and kept them locked in their vault as they froze to death.
No one was sure how they were even still alive, and no one cared. They were the cleansers, it was as if god had given life to the sins of the past to destroy the present.

But this made no difference to the Walker in the shadows, he hated the zombies with a passion, and hunted any that wondered into his vault. The first zombie threw the door was flattened by his huge hand as it shuffled in. he would have relished this kill is it weren't for the fact that for every one he killed, three hundred more would come to take it's place, or should have. He waited for hours, then days but still no more came in threw the door.

This puzzled the walker, Zombies traveled in huge masses of flesh eating carcases and never strayed alone, (they were tempting meals for the mutated beasts that had survived the endless winter), unless they got separated from their swarm.

The walker still felt a disturbance on his scanner, and this upset him, his job was to keep the vault safe, and if something was still outside then he wasn't doing his job right. But his programming was to stay in the vault at all times, and the disturbance was outside a good five hundred yards, much too far to see even with his eye in the swirling snow outside.
Finely, his guardian programming overrode his need to stay in the vault. And so with a groan of twisted steel, he pushed his way out of the vault and into the snow.

The Walker's massive feet punched threw the snow outside the vault door as he walked. He had been combing the area around the steel door for a half hour, yet still no more shuffles were heard, no frozen feet crunched in the snow. The walker wasn't able to worry or wounder about what could forced a single zombie from it's swarm, he wasn't programed that way, but he was annoyed by the blip on his scanner.

It had been there almost all day, just sitting like a rock and he at first tried to dismiss it, but his experience prevented him from being so careless, so he stayed outside the door, standing in the howling snow and wind like a stone guardian watching over a dead frozen world.

The blip had moved. It had been a little more then two days since he had first stood outside the doors, and the walker was now completely covered in snow and ice, yet he had still watched the scanner all this time, waiting as the blip slowly drew closer to him, and hoping that it came closer.
He slowly lifted his huge arm up and waited. The blip was three hundred yards away....two hundred.....fifty... the walker curled his fingers into a fist and punched threw the hard pack, it cracked and caved in on him as the snow above it quickly filled in the hole.

A small thing was scrambling and trying to escape the sucking snow, but the walker's huge hand shot out and grabbed around it's small body, pulling it right up to his face. He at first though that it was a small zombie, and nearly crushed it to death. But then, deep in his memory banks, a long ago forgotten part reactivated, signals firing up long unused circuits as the Walker drew up the name of the tiny thing frozen in horror in his grip. It was a human. One of his creators.

He slowly stomped out of the snow pit and set the human on the ground gently and tenderly, as if it was a tiny glass figurine. As soon as it touched the snow it was off, yelling something into the distance. The Walker sensed the distress in it's voice and followed behind, the vault all but forgotten as his mind as his guardian programming overrode it.

The human raced in the direction of the blip on The Walker's scanner, it's tiny boots were a little too big for it's feet and kept tripping it up as it franticly raced for what had been a park, but was now just a hunting ground for huge monstrosity's.

The Walker spotted a flash of fur in the trees and started stomping faster after the human, his scanner picking up more smaller blips along with the huge original one, witch had started moving away now. The walker spotted a fast movement threw the frozen trees and started using his arms as forelegs to speed along the snow towards the human, who was still yelling loudly as it ran blindly threw the trees.
Suddenly, a huge shape launched out of the trees at the human, who stopped in it's tracks and stared at it in fear. The Walker lunged threw the trees, slamming into the beast and snapping it's spine instantly, it snapped at him but he impassively just stomped it's head into a bloody mush.

He scooped the human into his arms and curled him up as three more things emerged from the icy trees. They resembled huge dogs with extremely thick and matted white hair covering them, they had massive square heads filled with blunt teeth that could easily crush a human's skull in one swift bite, they were hunched like a hyena but with long retractable claws on their front feet and a bushy tail. One of the beasts stared at the walker with yellow eyes, hunger lighting them like flashlights.

The Walker held the tiny human closer to him, and started walking in the same direction it had been heading in before. The beasts were as big as Clydesdale's, and their huge claws raked his back and sides, but they couldn't pierce his armor and so he kept walking.

He plowed on like this for hours, the tiny human clutched to his chest as the beasts battered at his body uselessly. They followed until the forest was far behind them and only empty snow plains lay ahead, Then decided that this was too much work for a scrawny human, and turned around, snapping at the pack leader as if it was his fault that their meal was gone.

The walker checked the tiny human in his arms, it was sleeping soundly, tiny snores coming from it's mouth. It was young, not more then three years old, and obliviously wasn't meant to be out here alone, he, (the walker found that it was a he), was dressed from head to toe in furs, even his face was covered with a fur flap that hid everything but his eyes and nose in warm hair. He was wearing boots that were two sizes too big for his tiny feet, and it was obvious that he had put them on himself.
The walker wondered what could have lured him out into the freezing snow alone, or had he been left behind?. Whatever had brought him here, the Walker was determined to bring him back to his kind, and find some more humans to protect at the same time.

He cradled the human closer to him and plowed after the blip on his scanner, the hungry howls of the beasts behind them and the snow crunching under his feet the only things breaking the silence.

They were in a blizzard. The same blizzard that had been raging for two days straight. The only saving grace was that the human, (being a three year old) had a steady supply of food stashed in his boots and pockets and didn't need feeding, so he kept quiet. The Walker wasn't having the best of it however. Ice was caked on him in sheets, stalactites of it hung from his arms that were frozen in a curl around the human, and his energy cores needed to recharge before too much longer, witch meant that he'd need to shut down for at least two hours.

He scanned ahead of him with his eye, nothing but snow for as far as he could see, it was a bleak landscape completely devoid of any shelter or resting spot, a true desert of snow, ice, and wind so bitter and sharp that it felt like knives on your face.

The Walker plowed ahead for hours and hours, his wide feet keeping him from punching threw the crust and plunging down into a good three hundred thousand years worth of snow and ice. It was looking like he was going to fail, that his power would die and he'd shut down involuntarily, leaving the tiny human in his arms to freeze to death, so that when he awoke he was holding a stiff body.

However...hope has a certain way of springing up in ways that you never would have imagined as good things, like a zombie horde springing up from beneath the frozen snow pack.

They had been covered up in the blizzard and lay under the snow, immune to cold and hunger, and might have very well stayed there, had they not sensed their bitter enemy on the ice above them. In seconds the Walker was surrounded by thousands of hideous half rotten faces and shredded clothing clinging to skeletal body's.

Had he the capability to feel fear, he would have felt it now, but he felt only apprehension for the human's chances. The zombies were moving slowly around him, forming a circle with him at the center, each looking for a chance to strike at him. The first one launched at his leg and was mashed into the snow by his foot with a satisfying crunch. But this just agitated them more, working them further into a rage.
Two more jumped him, both of witch he smashed into the snow until they stopped moving. This made them launch even faster, ten, twenty, thirty at a time leaping at him, until it was all he could do to stomp them down fast enough. However, all this stomping and leaping wasn't helping the structural integrity of the snow, witch started cracking like glass under all the stress.

The walker spotted the stress cracks running around his feet and froze, but the zombies were still blind with rage and kept leaping at him, clinging to anywhere they could get a grip. The snow cracked more, huge gaps opening up in the crust, until it was all too much, and it gave.

The Walker curled around the child in his arms as they fell hundreds of feet straight down, it was so fast and sudden that he didn't have time to wounder why they were even falling at all. Until he hit the ground that is.

As soon as they slammed into the dirt the walker flipped himself over and onto his feet, ready to squash any zombies that got too close. But he shouldn't have worried, their body's were so delicate that they shattered on impact like porcelain.
The human had woken up and started to cry at all the noise, so the Walker placed him on a nearby rock and let him toddle around a bit as he surveyed the strange world that they had landed in.

At one time it might have been a huge lake or valley but the endless snow had covered the whole thing and killed anything that might have been living there, making it little more then a desert of sandy soil dotted with rocky outcroppings under a sky of snow as far as the eye could see, this snow was held up by huge mountains on ether sides of the valley that were as far apart as several miles in some places, and a huge pillar of rock in the center.

The walker felt a tiny tap on his leg that snapped him back to reality, the child was holding up a small red rock for him. He took it and the child smiled and pointed at him,

“ 'bub”. The Walker didn't understand that he was trying to say 'buddy' but knew that he meant him when he had said it, and so knew that it was his new nickname.

A speck of sudden movement and a flash of sliver grabbed the Walker's eye, and he checked the blip. That was it!, he quickly scooped the human up in his arm and started after the movement as fast as he could.

He ran for hours non stop, his power meter flashing red in his mind, but he ignored it, his duty was to return his charge alive to his parents, and he wasn't going to fail like he had failed his vault.
As the thing came into sight it turned out to be a huge beast of a crawler, with a cracked shield dome over a small city inside the center of two huge caterpillar tracts attached too two battle ships turned sideways, their huge cannons still working as they swiveled around like antenna. The walker felt hope well up within him, he had been wrong, these were the last humans on the face of the earth, and he still had a chance for redemption.

They must have see them approaching, as the swivel cannons pointed at them and a voice boomed over tinny loud speakers, ”who go's there?!”. The crawler stopped and turned sideways so that it could broadside them if the time came, but the Walker kept running at them, totally unafraid of the huge guns.

He kept running until he was staring down one of the gun barrels, and then, slowly, he lifted the baby up into the air. All was silent for a few moments, then a rope flew over the side of the crawler, and three people came down.

They were all wearing scraps of cloth cobbled together into shirts, pants, and moccasins, with scrap metal hung over them like suits of armor. Two of them raised guns that looked like they shouldn't even shoot, but must have if they were still using them. The other one was a man in his late fifty's, tall and straight, with the look of a commander and an air of nobility around him, he was clearly in charge.

He looked the walker up and down, his eyes roving every dent, scratch, and battle mark with distaste. “what do you want with us?” he asked finally, gaze locked with the walker's huge red eye. The Walker slowly set the child down on the ground, waiting for what the commander would say next.
The man scrutinized the little boy with distaste, “hmm...peters!” he barked, one of his guards quickly was standing next to him.
“yes sir?”

“who lost a boy a few days ago?”

“the parsons sir-”

“who?” ,

“William, cadet, first class sir, works the storeroom shift-”

“ah, yes!. The skinny little guard..would you please inform him that we have....” he looked back at the walker, “...found his son”.

The guard rushed back up the rope with the child as the commander turned again to face the walker. “I assume you must be friendly, or I would be dead were I stand” he wiped some grime off of one huge arm and rubbed it between his fingers, “and you weren't built anytime recently, so one thing remains to be determined..”.

He started wiping the dirt and dried zombie blood off of one of the Walker's body panels with his coat sleeve vigorously. “what..um..are you doing sir?” the other guard asked, gun still pointed at the huge robot in case he tried to make any moves. “looking for- oh for god's sake Bradly!, put the gun down!” the guard sheepishly lowered his weapon as the commander continued to berate him.

“ if he drags a god damn child threw the hell out there alive, I seriously doubt that he's going to care if I start cleaning him.....”. His voice faded away and he lowered his arm, “Bradly..come and have a look at this!” the guard peered over the commander's shoulder, “what is it sir-”

“what do you mean 'What is it'?!, read the words in front of you damn eyes you fool!”.

On the now shiny metal were letters, each in capital and hand painted on in black paint. Letters that now meant nothing, but had at one time, signaled hope and freedom for millions. U.H.E United Human Empire.

Word had spread threw the colony that a huge robot was outside, but none knew how huge until the commander opened the doors and let it in.
It stomped inside the cargo doors, huge wide feet thudding on the steel like hammers as it marched in. people fell silent when they saw it, clutching their children close to them as it passed, and following behind as it left, until it entered the glass dome that was the main body of Hope, the last city of humanity.

The buildings were all made of pieces of junk, car doors as windows, cardboard boxes made up the walls, and for those lucky enough to have a roof, it was mostly just a old blanket hung over the walls to keep the sun out. But it was home.

It had withstood multiple attacks in wartime, and now served as a fortress for the last tattered humans on earth as they struggled to survive.

The walker stomped into the center of town, the people following him smacking into each other as the stopped short of touching the metal behemoth.
The Walker hadn't stopped for any dramatic reasons, he was simply shocked by the number of dots that had started appearing on his radar, Red blips spreading like wildfire.

Like lighting he turned and started out, startled citizens fleeing from his way, sure that he was going on a rampage. “were are you going?!” the commander's voice boomed, then he turned and peered out the globe.
The commander wasn't easily frazzled, that was why he had been chosen for the job, but what he saw scared even him.

Zombies. Millions and millions of them. All were converging on the Hope like ants, each wanting nothing more then to feast on the warm humans inside. They were all the zombies on the face of the earth, all aware that this was their last feast, and all in one swarm of over two billion frozen corpses.

The commander quickly regained his old military way of thinking, and immediately began yelling orders. “close the doors and vents!, everyone too your battle positions!-” somebody spotted the zombies and screamed, “WERE ALL GONNA DIE!!-”

the commander grabbed the man by his shirt and looked at the people around him, “ yes were all gonna die, but let's at least do it in style”. He dropped the man and grabbed a shotgun from a solider next to him. “I don't know about the rest of you lady's, but I'm sitting next to Saint Peter for dinner tonight, what about the rest of you?!”. He could see that his rushed speech wasn't working, but before anyone could say a word, they all hit the floor as the Hope started moving.

The commander jumped to his feet first, face red with anger, “who the hell started the engines?!”

“no one sir, were just moving on our own...”.

A sudden silence fell over them all, so this was how it was going to end?, they would be pushed into a wall, or over a cliff. The same way that the zombies had cracked open cars and tanks to get at the drivers, back when the winter had first started.
People started franticly searching for the zombies that they were sure must be pushing the Hope, but much to their surprise, they found nothing.

Suddenly, over the gloomy thoughts in his mind, and the voices screaming all around him, a small voice rose.

“ 'bub”

the Commander looked down at the little boy pulling on his pant leg,

“what?!, oh...it's you again”.

He began shooing the child away,

“Go find mommy and daddy and enjoy them well you still can”.

But the little one would not be stopped, and he persisted, “ 'bub!” he stamped his tiny foot on the floor. The commander looked down at the little boy, who's cute baby face was creased in a frown, and couldn't help but smile,

“all right, what do you want?” he said as he scooped him up in his arms. The little one pointed at the glass viewing window in the rear of the right battleship, “ 'bub” the commander peered out the porthole at the right track.

“I don't see anything out there little guy-” the boy smacked the porthole with his boot, and much to the commander's surprise, it popped open. “is this how you got out then?” he asked, the boy nodded and then leaned out the window, “ 'bub!”.

A deep hum rose above the sounds of the Hope's rattling and grinding tracks, and the Walker appeared from the darkness in front of them. He had hooked both of his arms under the front lip of each battleship, and was hauling them like a steed over the valley floor.

The Commander turned around and grabbed a passing guard, “tell those imbeciles in the engine room to fire it up!”, “but sir-” “NOW!!”.
The old rusted steel groaned in protest as the massive engine fired up and began chugging them over the valley floor.

the Walker felt the Hope start moving on it's own, and released his hold on the lip. His power meter was flashing black now, he had only thirty five minutes of power before he would shut down and recharge, he turned around and looked behind them.
The zombie mass was picking up speed as they spotted their prey trying to flee, and they now were running over the sand, unearthly screams and moans rang threw the air as they began closing in.

The valley floor was dropping now, and it started looking more and more like it had been dug out of the earth by giants, helped by the fact that the Walker noticed it slopped by a half inch down for every foot you walked, as if it had been planned for smooth travel by foot or cart.

But the strange thing was that he knew this because it was how he had been told to dig...
His thinking was interrupted by a boom as one of the Hope's huge guns sounded off into the darkness, the huge shell blasting a good fifty zombies into ice shards, but even this hardly made more then a dimple in the sea of body's.

The Walker turned back from the zombies and almost stopped dead. A huge shape was looming out of the darkness ahead, it seem like it was blocking the whole valley like a gate.....it WAS a gate. A huge gate made of massive steel panels bolted into place in the center of a huge wall of junk. Cars, fridges, and other large pieces of rusted metal were used in place of stone blocks to form a huge monolith of a wall that reached up to the snow above.
There was movement on the gate, and the walker noticed that whatever they were, they looked a lot like humans. One of them must have spotted the zombies because they started blowing on horns and yelling out orders. The sound of the horns slowed the zombies, they knew that sound and knew that it meant death, but hunger and blood lust kept them going.

The Walker saw the gates start opening, and knew that they would never get them wide enough to let the Hope threw and then close them again before the zombies reached them...unless...

With a mighty tug, he ripped a large rock from the earth, and flung it at the oncoming horde. The boulder crashed threw the ranks of zombies like a bowling ball, smashing their frozen body's into red, icy, dust.
Three more flew in quick succession, each plowing almost half-way threw the packed masses before coming to a stop.
The Walker turned around and looked, the Hope was just starting to enter the gate as the beings on the wall started loading what looked like huge cannons.

The Walker turned back to face the zombies, he needed to buy them more time.... his eye fell on a huge sandstone pillar witch was sticking up from the dust at a strange angle. He pulled it out with a huge tug, it slid out easily from the lose earth, and held it like a club.

He checked behind him again, The crawler was half-way threw the gates, he could see the people in the dome looking back at him. A tiny sound drifted over the sound of the approaching horde, “ 'bub!”.

The Walker would have said something then, made one of his low noises, but something huge slammed into his side and knocked him to the ground.

The zombie standing over him was huge, it stood at least nine feet tall and had a huge body and a grotesquely small head perched on it's massive shoulders. It was giving off the same amount of nuclear energy as a small truckload of plutonium, and if The Walker had been made of flesh and bone, he would be a glowing puddle on the ground.

The zombie lifted him off the ground and tried to bite a chunk out of his arm, but only managed to crack a few teeth. This enraged him and he slammed the Walker into the earth, pummeling him again and again with his other fist. He stopped just long enough for the Walker to see the huge gates slam shut, and hear the enraged howling of the zombies.

He started to shut down then, his job finished. Until a sound snapped him out of it.

“ 'Bub?!” both the robot and behemoth zombie turned and faced the tiny human standing on the ground a few feet away. He was holding a bandage in his hand, and held it out to them, “ make better” he pointed at the many dents on the Walker's armor, and began walking over to them.

The huge zombie threw the Walker a good fifteen feet away and advanced at the child, a horse moan of hunger escaping his mouth. The little boy screamed and started running for the Walker, but the huge hand of the massive zombie slammed into him, knocking him out cold and throwing him threw the air.

The scream ripped threw the semi-shut down Walker's brain, and he suddenly remembered a time long ago, when he was new and shiny, and his vault was under attack.

He had been trying to help dig deeper to find warmth, when a scream had echoed threw the air. He renumbered rushing threw tunnels and into the main vault, only to be too late.

Dead body's lay everywhere, blood was smeared on everything and a pack of zombies, lead by a massive beast of a corpse, were feasting on their spoils, their bodys covered in blood and gore as the feasted.

He was about to rush in and take them on, but a small hand grabbed his leg, and he found himself starring into the eyes of a dieing child. She was a little over ten, with both of her legs gone and a huge gash down her front, wounds that would have easy killed a adult. And yet she held on by sheer force of will.

She started up at him, and held out her hand,
“don't leave me here....please...just don't leave me here...”.

He had carried her deep into
the tunnels, and laved her on a warm spot, she was starring into the celling, her hair matted and her face caked with blood. The Walker started to go back, but she had held out her weak hand and grabbed his massive finger, “thank you...for not leaving me...”. And as she died, the Walker made a promise to himself, he would never rest, never leave his vault, until he had killed every last zombie on the face of the earth.

All this rushed back into his mind like a wave. He had failed his vault, failed human kind, and failed that little girl. He had then fallen into a kind of depression as his mind and soul were torn apart, and he did nothing but walk the tunnels for years and years, until he had scanned the Hope and found the boy. And now he was determined that he would save him too make up for how he had failed to save everything, he had failed the world, and all because of one zombie.

He let this run threw his mind over and over again, the little girl's dead body, his vault covered in blood, and the face of the huge zombie, a bloody grin of victory on it's mutilated face. And for the first time, he felt anger.

He slowly rose and turned to face the back of the zombie. The same that had killed off his vault, and doomed him, and doomed that little girl, but he would go to hell before he let it kill another child again.

The men on the wall didn't understand the importance of the duel that was unfolding below, all that they saw was that the hugest zombie ever seen was just seconds away from feasting on a small child, when it seemed as if the earth had sent a iron brown warrior to smite him.

The walker rose from the dust and landed a solid punch on the huge zombie's back, square between to shoulder blades. The zombie screamed a high pitched shriek and dropped the child on the ground, then with a mighty heave, back handed the Walker in the face as he turned around. The Walker took a step back and charged the zombie, slamming into his chest and knocking him onto the ground. But the zombie had expected this, and rolled out of the way of the Walker's huge foot as it crashed onto the dust were his head had been a second before.

He kicked the Walker in the legs and sent him too the ground, leaping into the air to deliver a flying punch. The Walker held up his hands palm up and the zombie's face slammed into it, blood and putrid flesh splattering in all directions as he fell back. The Walker grabbed the stunned zombie by one leg and threw him into a massive stone pillar, were he slammed into it head first.

The walker walked over to his fallen enemy, only to get both of it's feet in his red eye. The Zombie's skull was cracked and fluid was leaking out, but he still kept up the barrage, punches and kicks rained onto the Walker's armor, denting it even more and forcing him back. His arm's crossed over his face as the Walker retreated a good fifty feet, until he was standing next to the downed child.

The little boy's head had a wound from the zombie's hand and he was bleeding. The Walker suddenly stopped, he simply planted his foot into the dust and froze.

The zombie kept pummeling on him, but his blows now felt like nothing more then light flicks. The Walker slowly, ever so slowly, started pushing back in, the zombie growing more frantic with each step. Until Walker and zombie were face too face. Both of the Walker's huge arms shot out and sized the zombie's wrists like rattlers, his grip crushing the bones to shards. The zombie leaned in and roared in his face, but the Walker just stared back impassively.

They stood that way for a few seconds, both titans locked in battle, until with a deaf twist, the Walker snapped the zombie's arms like twigs. The zombie fell onto the ground, bits of his bone piercing the half rotten skin on his arms, and looked up at the Walker.

There was no remorse in his eye as he lifted the zombie up by his neck and threw him so hard that he punched threw the snow that was the roof, the ice crystals shredding him into hamburger. The Walker stared at the spot were he had gone, then slowly, he fell onto his back next to the child. He looked over and gently scooped his tiny body up in his arms, shielding him completely from any harm. And then, finally, he shut down to recharge.

Epilogue:

The zombies, seeing their leader dead and the last source of food on the earth gone forever, left for the frozen world above, to slowly shuffle into oblivion.

The Commander and all the humans on the Hope found themselves in a green paradise, and learned a shocking truth, they were on a colony planet a few light years away from earth.

After the nuclear winter had set in, the government had abandoned them and left the colony to die in the ice. The city they were in was called New Tampa and was the only uncontaminated green spot left on the planet. The vault above them was only a mile away from the Walker's old vault, and was the only place that the zombies didn't attack, witch meant that they had enough time to finish digging down deep enough to find a hot spring, and they had carted the junk down to make a wall to keep the zombies out only twenty years before.

They also said that the Walker was the last of his kind, and that they had enough spare parts that they could fix him up good as new. But, when the Commander and his men went out a few hours later to find him, all that they found was footprints that lead deeper into the valley, the footprints of a huge Walker, and a child with boots that were too big for his feet.

“were do you think he's going sir?” one man asked, the Commander turned and smiled at him,

“I don't know, but he's not going alone anymore”.

Many years later, the government returned to find the planet a thawed paradise, the humans that had survived were rebuilding their homes and city's, freed from the zombie menace, they now were free to relax and recover from hundreds of years of winter. And if you ask them how they did it, they will lead you to a Vault that they have turned into a shrine, it is run by a man who they say is as old as the earth, a man known as 'the Commander'.

He will smile at you when they tell, like he always has to all who ask.

“You are hear to know the story?”

but then he will shake his head in sadness,

“alas, I cannot tell you, for how can one tell a story that has no ending?”

and with this confusing monk like wisdom in their minds, the earth officials left back to report home. Leaving behind them a strange planet, haunted by the horrors of it's past, and yet still holding on. Because, after all, they are being watched over by the best.

The End.