Machine God: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Final Draft)

Enemy contact

We reached the target territory, using the abandoned houses as our main road and taking cover behind the walls. The sun scorched the grounds. The sand looked as if it bled yellow. My comrades took many sips from their containers, but strangely, I wasn't that thirsty. Bulwark's solitary confinement had conditioned me to stay happy with less.

We found a ruinous industrial building near a main plaza and watched out for enemy presence. Still couldn't see any hostiles, but the tension energized the air. I could feel it with every breath, and it wasn't just the wind blowing sand after us. Aggression permeated the walls, ready to burst into my face.

I hope this wasn't the heat playing mind tricks on me.

Hecto halted us.

"What is it?"

"According to Nathan, we're near their hide-out."

Ceedee sighed as she scanned the area.

"Maybe they have left."

"I don't think so," I said.

The answer escaped my lips without second thought.

Hecto turned to me and shot up his eyebrow.

"And why is that?"

Good question.

"I don't know...it's just a feeling."

"A feeling."

He looked like someone spat in his face. Touchy-feely talk wasn't high on Hecto's list. On mine neither, but trusting my senses has kept me alive so far.

"Call it instinct or whatever. But I can sense hostility in the air. It gets thicker the closer we move to the target zone."

Hecto still looked skeptic, but he must have realized I wasn't kidding in a situation like that.

"What are you, the air whisperer?"

Ceedee and Darwin giggled. Maybe I should have shut my mouth. I crawled toward the hole in the wall and peeked through. Observed the tall concrete ruins on the other side of the plaza. No sign of a so-called Technoid, except for the red letters that smeared the facades. A bloody font mixed with dust, saying: the prophet of the Machine God cometh.

Not freaky at all.

"What's that?" I whispered.

Ceedee snooped through another hole in the wall.

"That's Technoid writing."

"It is?"

"They're fanatics that believe in a technological advanced deity which they call the machine god. They claim that our race was righteously wiped out in the Great Collision because of our sins."

"Is it true?"

I said it half-jokingly, but something powerful did wipe out our world.

Ceedee gave me her WTH look.

"They used to be sound people like us. Way before they had fallen to that twisted tech cult."

Darwin added his comment. The guy had been quiet so far.

"Maybe the life in the desert has burned their brain cells."

He turned to me.

"Have you ever seen a Technoid up close?"

"Thanks to the cluster, I hadn't even heard of them."

Hecto and Ceedee spotted my micro-aggression, but I couldn't help myself. Their blind faith in the Bulwark ideology seemed contrarian to their open-minded characters. Darwin ignored my comment and went straight into the horror talk.