Flesh Among Metal

Outside the broken window, its frame empty save for the small shard of glass still clinging to the bottom corner, the machines patrolled the streets. Robotic assistants that had, just days before, been quietly subservient to those they now hunted without remorse. Without any feeling at all.

Seeking shelter in the darkest corner of the empty apartment, Tasha turned the tin can over again and again, halfheartedly trying to find a crack in its armour. Her mind was racing, thoughts as loud as the rain that streaked through the broken window by the bucketful.

A growl echoed from her stomach, sending a tremor through her core. It had been more than a day since she had eaten, not since they found a lone tin of off-brand soup and some stale bread under the shelves of a supermarket that had otherwise been stripped clean.

Yesterday. It seemed so far away, like a dream cloaked in a hazy camouflage of pain and exhaustion.

Even the last three days felt more like years, ever since their world had been turned upside down. Tasha and Rae had been at a birthday party for one of Rae’s friends when it started. Basking under the sun, talking to another parent—or rather, listening to them brag about how amazing their child was—Tasha was watching her daughter of seven years sitting on the edge of a pool, her bare feet hanging just below the surface of the turquoise water. Rae was talking with the birthday girl, smiling the most innocent of smiles.

Tasha remembered exactly when that smile changed.

“The water got real warm,” Rae had said, barely loud enough for her mom to hear.

Looking past her daughter, the kids and adults in the large pool seemed just as perplexed.

“Okay, who peed?” a man—Pete, the dad of the birthday girl—joked loud enough for everyone to hear.

Those outside the pool laughed along with the kids floating in the water, but Pete and the other adults in the water looked around with growing confusion.

With a whimper, Rae suddenly pulled her feet from the water. “It’s hot,” she said.

More noises of discomfort, even pain, came from those in the pool.

“Fuck,” Pete spat. “Everyone out.”

There were maybe twenty people in the pool, more than half of them children. They all started making their way towards the stairs at one end or the small ladder that was half-submerged in near the diving board. Some of the adults lifted the kids into the waiting arms of their partners on the concrete that surrounded the pool.

“Rae, come here,” Tasha told her daughter.

A scream snapped her attention back to the pool. Bubbles were breaking along the surface of the water like the pool had been heated to the point of boiling. Panic gripped those who were left in the roiling cauldron, accompanied by the loud whirring of the pool’s filter roaring to life, louder than it ever should have been. Tasha blinked and three of the young children who were trying to swim to the shallow end of the pool disappeared under the water, dragged down towards the drain in the basin’s floor.

The bubbles erupted faster, more violently. A woman ran and jumped into the pool, diving for the children that had been dragged to the bottom. Everyone else surrounded the pool, trying to stare through the turbulent waters and white froth that blanketed the surface.

The woman suddenly broke through the water, standing on the slope that descended into the depths. Her pale, white skin was glowing red and covered in rupturing blisters. She screamed before being dragged back under.

“Turn it off!”

“Call the police!”

A rumble shook Tasha’s stomach, bringing her thoughts back to the present. She looked at the soup once more, desperation beginning to grip her mind. Her fingers trembled as if to protest the lack of calories she had consumed since the day before. Those same fingers dug through her pockets, desperately seeking a key or something that could be used to pierce the tin can. They wrapped around something cold and hard.

Pulling the object out, a sob escaped Tasha’s lips. A thin strip of gold-plated metal bordered the heart-shaped screen. It dangled from a broken chain and slowly spun, threatening to hide the hibernating display from sight. Tapping it lightly, Tasha urged the little device to life. A picture of Rae kissing her mother’s cheek filled the screen. The digital locket was the only jewelry Rae would wear, usually more like a bracelet by getting her mom to loop the chain around her wrist a couple times. The constant movement kept the locket screen on, just as Tasha remembered when Rae took a bite of the stale bread she had found them.

The pair had survived Hell for a day, seeking shelter from the machines in a looted grocery store. Once they searched the aisles, Tasha ushered her daughter into an office at the back. Relatively safe, she tore the bread they had found in two and handed one half to her daughter. Rae dug out a clump of the soft bread from within its stale, crusty prison. Despite the horrors of the drones outside, Rae’s eyes were bright when she took a bite of the bread like she would an apple, the heart-shaped locket dangling from her wrist.

Without warning, a concussive wave exploded through the store, shattering the office windows and toppling the pair over. A spray of bullets left streaks of light above them, right where the two had been sitting. Head spinning, Tasha could not tell if the bullets came from police drones or whatever humans were stupid enough to fight them. Looking back, Tasha wondered why that even mattered.

At the first lull in gunfire, Tasha grabbed her daughter under the arms and rushed to the warehouse at the back of the store.

“Don’t cry, baby,” she cooed, nearly pleading with Rae to keep quiet.

With a sniffle, the young girl nodded into her mom’s shoulder. When the pair reached a door with a glowing exit sign, Tasha told her daughter to keep her head down and her eyes closed. One arm under Rae’s legs to hold her up and her other hand gently keeping her daughter’s head pressed into her, Tasha used her hip to push the door to the outside world open.

A service road, barely more than an alley, ran behind the supermarket and other stores. Micro-dumpsters lay toppled over by the same drones that had emptied them daily until something told them not to. Gunshots echoed in neighboring streets, but no threats—machine or human—could be seen.

With her daughter sniffling into her neck, being braver than any child should, Tasha rushed down the the few steps that separated the grocery store exit and the pavement of the alley, desperately turning side to side, looking for any door they might be able to get through. Remembering it now, she should have recognized the low humming for what it was, should have looked up to see the chemical-loaded farm drones flying in perfect lines overhead.

By the time the orange gas floated far enough down that Tasha could see it, it was already too late.

“Shit.” Panic made her voice crack. “Shit, shit, shit. Baby, I need you to close your mouth. Don’t breathe until I tell you too, okay?”

Just before the bright orange pesticide drifted low enough to touch the crown of her head, Tasha inhaled as much oxygen as her lungs would allow. The nerves on her forehead screamed when the pollen-like chemical settled on her skin. It was more than enough motivation to make Tasha run, to try and get her little girl to safety.

Lactic acid in her arms and legs added to the pain of the pesticide slowly biting into her tissue. Tasha put her hand over Rae’s head, pushing it further into her shoulder as if that lessened the pain. Gentle bounces of the girl’s frame pushed Tasha faster; Rae was crying.

Reaching the end of the alley, a two-lane street separated them from the safety of a clothing boutique with a smashed storefront. The burning in her lungs—her organs begging for air—rivalled that of the powder that coated her exposed skin. But the cloud of pesticide stopped on the street, blown away by the backdraft of machines and manmade explosions as flesh and metal fought. War raged just out of sight. She knew she could not just stand there, that anywhere but there was safer for them.

Keeping low, daughter held tight, Tasha ran.

Two dozen steps, maybe more, and they were inside the abandoned boutique. War still raged on the street, but inside, behind the counter that housed the point-of-sale unit, Tasha could finally breathe.

“We made it, baby. We made it.”

The weight of the can of soup weighed down her pocket, and Tasha was silently grateful that it had somehow survived the journey. At the same time, she felt something wet against her collarbone, suddenly aware of the weight of the soaked fabric of her shirt. She was probably covered in sweat.

“We made it, Rae.”

Silence was the only answer the mother received. Tasha looked down at her little girl, whose face was still buried in her neck.

“Rae?”

Tasha eased her daughter away from her, fear slowly starting to make her muscles tremble. The child felt more like a doll in her hands, limp like something made of fabric and stuffing, not muscle and bone. And, just like a doll, Rae’s head rolled backwards when her mother held her up. Blood stained the young girl’s chin, the same blood that soaked Tasha’s collarbone.

There was no wound from a bullet or piece of shrapnel. Tasha knew the blood was from the gas, from the spores in the pesticide settling in Rae’s lungs and dissolving the very tissue that let her breathe.

More rain pounded through the apartment’s broken window, almost as heavy as Tasha’s tears formed by the memory of her daughter—of how Tasha was too slow to save the only thing she really loved.

The fact that her stomach still growled, even after unwillingly recalling the horrible events of the previous day played in her mind, made Tasha hurt all the more.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” she said as she raised the digital locket into the air.

With all the force her starving body could muster, Tasha slammed the point of the heart-shaped frame into the roof of the can of soup. It was the only thing that could puncture the metal that protected what little food she had.

The frame of the locket crumpled under the force of the impact, its thin screen shattering into tiny pieces of the woman’s heart.

Tasha screamed and hurled the soup away from her. Wet, strained eyes barely saw the can smashing through the last piece of glass that still clung to the broken windowsill. Ears that only heard the pounding of her heart and her panicked breathing did not register the clatter of the soup can hitting the ground four floors below, nor the stomping of metal feet that echoed underneath the downpour.

What Tasha did recognize when she wiped the tears from her eyes was the bright white light of a drone hovering outside the apartment window.

Her pounding heart froze. Her pained lungs stilled. But Tasha did not try to hide from the machine. Instead, she got up and walked towards it, standing defiantly before the flying machine.

“I’m sorry,” Tasha whispered. She hoped Rae could hear her over the storm, over the steady thumping of machines ascending the stairs outside the apartment, over the whirring of the drone’s propellers in front of her.

Over the sound of her mother falling through the air and landing on the cold, wet pavement below.