The Mechanical Man

1) When I Found You

I could feel my heart beating loudly within my chest. Each thump bringing his footfalls closer and closer to my hiding place amongst the beaten up cars of a junkyard. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes but I refused to allow my hunter the satisfaction of hearing me cry. Chase me tirelessly and hunt me mercilessly, but the day I let tears dribble down to my chin will be of relief in the moment he dies. A clattering of metal vanquished the silence and at the last moment his feet travelled in the opposite direction. After a few moments of listening to heavy boots trudging through the rocks and dust I began to move again. I lifted myself from a crouched position up to my feet but I held my breath as I peeked around the trunk of a white honda to ensure that he had indeed left me. Thankfully the path before me was empty of the monstrous figure with a dirty red bandana covering his mouth.

It had been five years since the third world war had begun. Every town, city and village became a battlefield filled with rubble and ash. Chaos found its home amongst the flames that erupted from the earth and they haven't stopped burning since. I remember what it was like before all of this. I was happy. Unafraid of the demons lurking in the dark but hopelessly naive of what was to come. Yet like most survivors, I'm not sure how it started. Bombs began to fall from the skies and we were forced to flee from our home to find cover at the borders of the city. That was what brought my family and I here. We thought we were safe from harm but as time went by we realized that there were strange men lurking through the cities, hunting down survivors. Their eyes flickered with red lights as if tiny computers lived inside within their human exteriors. You must not let them catch your eye. If you do then you become their next target. I made that mistake once now I'm being chased by a mechanical assassin.

I hesitantly moved across the destroyed pavement lifting my feet over fallen bricks and bits of broken concrete. My body shaking in fear as I tried to make my way out of the abandoned lot. As I made my way towards the front gates my boots hit connected with what was probably a brick and I tumbled face first into the dirt. As I looked back however, I discovered that it was someone's arm laying sprawled unmoving amongst the rubble. My eyes followed along its length and discovered a boy around my age had collapsed behind a car. Probably from exhaustion in an attempt to escape from the assassin like myself.

Propping him up against the car, I took a good look at him so that I could figure out if he was injured or exhausted. I relaxed a little when I noticed the steady rise and fall of his chest revealing he was in fact alive. His eyelids weren't clenched together in the way of a man in excruciating pain, yet he actually still looked quite peaceful. Anyone who looked at him could see that he was handsome. With creamy white skin, a few beauty marks and those high cheekbones he might have had girls lining up for miles just to look at him. But in this day and age, it was the pretty ones you had to be careful of because they could easily rob you blind of all your possessions by distracting you with their appearance. Dust covered black locks grew in a fairly organized fashion from his skull and flopped over to one of his head, trailing a few pieces over his eyes. Years ago that had been the style for local boys but when the war began they decided to simply cut it all off. His old fashioned hair wasn't the only thing unusual about him either. The clothing he wore was an ensemble of black from head to toe. Apparently, he wasn't aware of the fact that black heats up in the sunlight and that you could run the potential of overheating (which was almost as deadly as being caught by an assassin in this age). But the garments seemed to suit him well enough giving him kind of an edgy appearance.

After a couple seconds of observation I began nudging him with a nearby tire iron to see if he would wake from his comatose state. I didn't want to be too close in case he lashed out when he woke up. Frankly, I didn't blame him for wanting to stay asleep in this miserable world. But at the moment the help of someone human in the act of getting out of this junkyard unscathed is a high priority. The tire iron didn't seem to work out very well though, he didn't even flinch. I wasn't fearful of this character though. So I reached up towards his face and touched him on the cheek gently.