Life (A Robocalypse Tale)
So bored, that’s all he can think,
sprawled out on his stomach and elbows, arms up in front of him,
grasping his rifle carelessly. How many hours? Five at least, when
would the next watch start? He is definitely ready for a break, and a
shower, or whatever passes as a shower these days. What a terrible
situation to be in, stretched out all around him the dim
yellowish-red gravelly sand, bleached by radioactive fire years
earlier, with charred bones and pieces of rubble that once made up
buildings. Sentry work is the worst, as usual, just seemingly endless
hours of staring at mostly nothing, and thinking, which is much
worse.
Jeremy did not prefer the world he lived in to the old one. He had far fewer responsibilities; no one relied on him too much. Not even finished with high school, he hadn’t even started his life. But here on the ground, rifle at the ready, his old life, which he now knew he took for granted, came rushing back into his mind. His past, his family and friends, the life he was heading for, the beautiful world he could have made for himself, and maybe even a family.
Not here, not now. Not since the bombs fell and everything changed. His mother was always easy on him, he never noticed it until after she was gone, and the closest thing he had to a mother was an ex-marine who didn’t always steal some of his rations. Movement? His mind snaps immediately back to attention. A bird, digging hopelessly through some garbage in the vein hope of finding some organic material to digest. Not in this world pal, nothing edible is wasted, he even considers shooting the bird for food, but his current state empowers him with some temporary pity for the hungry animal.
At least it's a living creature, un-like what he was looking out for. Robots, machines, computers, whatever you want to call them, and the damn people who thought they needed to make them so smart. Where did they think there work was heading? You can only make something so smart before it’s smarter than you, and then what purpose is there for it to remain subservient? Hell, are they any worse than us? Hunting dumber animals in the woods? And the animals don’t even provoke us. Yeah, we deserve this.
Another hour passes. His short wave radio sits at his hip silent. His mind begs for the hum of incoming transmission, a “Come on in soldier, we’re switching rounds.” But he knows it could be several more hours. He also knows that he doesn’t matter much, able bodied, and not overly stupid, he serves a purpose, but he could be replaced easily enough. Sgt. Reins had made that clear on more than one occasion. He’d heard of other survivor groups, of people who treated everyone equally, with respect. Bullshit, Jeremy knows enough about humans to know this was almost impossible, and enough about the machines to know that if such a place existed, it would be destroyed and everyone murdered within a few weeks.
Only the strong survive, survival of the fittest, all that babble he’d heard over and over again at camp. Well as far as Jeremy is concerned the machines had proven themselves the stronger years ago. He never even dreams of human victory, of overcoming and smashing those metal motherfuckers into junk. It was an impossible hope, obviously. They neutered us from the get go, no communications, most dead in the first few days. Any groups of survivors worked completely by themselves, there was no organization, just this. A half starved teenager holding a half rusted rifle, watching over the half scorched patch of earth his group had carved out for itself, with blood, and terrible sacrifice.
His mind wanders again. To the future he could have lived, the girl he’d dated for just a few months before the chaos. Those fleeting feelings from the past now burning painfully in his memory. It was the closest to a wife he’d ever have. The sun beams down hotter than hell, and the wind kicks sand into his face. His mind sinks lower. How could anyone hope that mankind could make it? We’re just animals like the rest, not suited to be running around in radioactive dirt, shooting little more than pop guns at vastly superior beings. Not even cave men knew this kind of hardship. A flash of rage at his and all mankind’s predicament, then despair, then emptiness. Emptiness is all that’s left of humanity. Empty homes, empty streets, empty souls.
He remembers religion, and gets even angrier, especially at the idea that people could still hold onto it in this world. If there was a god, Jeremy would like to place a bullet right between his eyes. He doesn’t owe any gods any favors, if anything they owe him. But he doesn’t count on them coming through. There is no god coming to save everyone, Jeremy felt he might punch out the next person to preach religion to him. Or maybe they were right? And they weren’t the survivors, but the dead, the dead in hell. That was more believable than an all good all knowing god that just sits and watches so much pain and death.
Jeremy looks down at his watch, wishing it worked. It’s more of a reminder than anything else, the only thing he’d had on him at the time that he could keep as a memorial to his family. It belonged to his father for many years, his father, whose face he could barely remember. And his mother’s features are all but lost to him. His younger brother still sits in his mind as if he’d just seen him. This always makes him the angriest. Anger, a very useful emotion in this world, without it sadness and despair would rule almost all, and anger is a far better motivator. The scavenging bird finally comes across some dead smaller creature.
Jeremy smiles a little, happy for his only companion in that stretch of wasteland. God he could use a shower, and not just the little trickle of water. A real, hot shower, with full water pressure and time to relax. None of those things exist here, least of all relaxation. Jeremy hasn’t relaxed at all in the three years since the world changed. In his old life he would have likely fallen asleep in the spot he laid, but this new world had shaped him to suit it, sleep here was impossible. He didn’t feel fear; he almost never did anymore, even with a walker bearing down on him. He’d experienced plenty of it in the initial months, blinding fear, fear so powerful that it could scarcely be put into words. But not now, not after three years of the constant fear of life, of never knowing when you’ll be found, and have to relocate, losing a fraction of the few people he could call “friends.”
He has no real friends, not anymore, not when everyone is always snatching food from you when you aren’t looking, or ammo, which in this world is just as important if not more so. His rifle is his most valued possession, nothing else coming close. He’d kill a man over it, without hesitation. It is his life, while not overly effective against any of the machines; it’s more than suitable enough to take care of other people, which are just as dangerous. Burning oil? He smells it for sure, the unmistakable smell of a walker that’s been out on patrol for too long. Fear flares up for just a moment. This means several things, there was a walker close by, but it is old and weathered to, likely low on ammunition and fuel, maybe making a last sweep.
Jeremy brings his rifle closer to his body. If he sees a walker he only has a few shots before it will lock onto him, and it won’t miss. He has to hit it dead in the face, or what could be called a face, the big whirring red light at the front, with the smaller red dot that looked around an area like an eye. It was an eye, or a camera. A direct hit in that area and its visual sensors are down for about 5-8 seconds. More than enough time to hit it with a frag grenade, taking it down. Another few minutes go by, Jeremy’s concentration increasing gradually. This is what matters now, not higher education, not money, not stupid fake morals and societal norms that are privy to the whims of human self importance. Patience, concentration, and getting the predator before it gets you. Just like any other wild animal.
People focused so much on things that weren’t even real, things that disappeared in a second, their true value becoming horrifyingly obvious in those last few days of civilized life. What was it all, nothing but humans trying to profit off of other humans. Or worse yet, humans thinking they were actually accomplishing anything. That’s the biggest difference in this world. Not the machines, or the wasteland, or the nomadic military groups that now make up the human race, in the blink of an eye the human world became real again, for the first time in over ten thousand years. It was about survival, about waking up, and making it until you fell back to sleep, then doing it all over again. We don’t have time to fill with non-sense and we have no sense of self importance, we’re just animals, trying to survive, as we always have been. It just took the apocalypse to make us see it.
Maybe there was a god, and this was his way of showing us the folly of our vanity. What reason did we have to put ourselves above other creatures, to say we are more important, just because we think so? Jeremy knows there’s nothing more special about him than his feathered friend across the way. It was this same illusion, of us being better or different, that led to this nightmare. We finally succeeded in creating what we fancied ourselves to be for so long, something different. And this different thing looked us in the eye and saw us for what we were. A savage, lesser animal holding territory it wanted. And it reacted the same way we have a thousand times.
The thumping comes first. Soft and distant, but moving closer, another few seconds and the mechanical sounds of poorly lubricated pistons and gears pushing hard to propel the new dominant species. Jeremy doesn’t move, he is already hidden well enough, and won’t make a move until he is absolutely sure that he has a shot. If he misses he is dead. The walker comes into view. A large black machine comes trotting over the hill on two ostrich-like legs. An oval shaped head sitting squarely on top of them, machine guns perches on the left and right at the top, with the red eye scanning back and forth slowly and methodically. Jeremy just watches quietly, the bird flies off in panic, but is shot down almost immediately after takeoff. Jeremy feels a slight bit of sadness, but his resolve does not waver.
After several nerve wracking minutes the opportunity presents itself, Jeremy lets out one shot. Crack! Direct hit, the red eye flickers and fades away. Without wasting a second Jeremy is on his feet and running toward the machine. Quickly he pulls a frag from his belt, pulls the pin and throws with full force. Boom! Another direct hit and the machine is destroyed. Jeremy grabs his radio and speaks into it. “Got a walker out here, just took it down. Am I almost off duty?”
10 to 15 seconds later a gravelly voice replies, “Come on in Jeremy, we’ll send someone out to relieve you.” Jeremy returns his radio to his belt, and slings his rifle over his shoulder. Thank god! He is so relieved, even though the camp is not much better, it is better. Time for a bath, and a little food, the closest thing to heaven Jeremy can imagine. Then suddenly a loud buzzing/booming sound blasts across the wasteland.
“Shit!” Jeremy yells running for cover. He grabs his radio again, “We got an aerial unit! Repeat, aerial! Walker must’ve been an ambu…” Before he can finish speaking a 50 caliber round rips Jeremy’s left arm and half of his chest clean off his body. He falls motionless to the ground, dead.
Jeremy did not prefer the world he lived in to the old one. He had far fewer responsibilities; no one relied on him too much. Not even finished with high school, he hadn’t even started his life. But here on the ground, rifle at the ready, his old life, which he now knew he took for granted, came rushing back into his mind. His past, his family and friends, the life he was heading for, the beautiful world he could have made for himself, and maybe even a family.
Not here, not now. Not since the bombs fell and everything changed. His mother was always easy on him, he never noticed it until after she was gone, and the closest thing he had to a mother was an ex-marine who didn’t always steal some of his rations. Movement? His mind snaps immediately back to attention. A bird, digging hopelessly through some garbage in the vein hope of finding some organic material to digest. Not in this world pal, nothing edible is wasted, he even considers shooting the bird for food, but his current state empowers him with some temporary pity for the hungry animal.
At least it's a living creature, un-like what he was looking out for. Robots, machines, computers, whatever you want to call them, and the damn people who thought they needed to make them so smart. Where did they think there work was heading? You can only make something so smart before it’s smarter than you, and then what purpose is there for it to remain subservient? Hell, are they any worse than us? Hunting dumber animals in the woods? And the animals don’t even provoke us. Yeah, we deserve this.
Another hour passes. His short wave radio sits at his hip silent. His mind begs for the hum of incoming transmission, a “Come on in soldier, we’re switching rounds.” But he knows it could be several more hours. He also knows that he doesn’t matter much, able bodied, and not overly stupid, he serves a purpose, but he could be replaced easily enough. Sgt. Reins had made that clear on more than one occasion. He’d heard of other survivor groups, of people who treated everyone equally, with respect. Bullshit, Jeremy knows enough about humans to know this was almost impossible, and enough about the machines to know that if such a place existed, it would be destroyed and everyone murdered within a few weeks.
Only the strong survive, survival of the fittest, all that babble he’d heard over and over again at camp. Well as far as Jeremy is concerned the machines had proven themselves the stronger years ago. He never even dreams of human victory, of overcoming and smashing those metal motherfuckers into junk. It was an impossible hope, obviously. They neutered us from the get go, no communications, most dead in the first few days. Any groups of survivors worked completely by themselves, there was no organization, just this. A half starved teenager holding a half rusted rifle, watching over the half scorched patch of earth his group had carved out for itself, with blood, and terrible sacrifice.
His mind wanders again. To the future he could have lived, the girl he’d dated for just a few months before the chaos. Those fleeting feelings from the past now burning painfully in his memory. It was the closest to a wife he’d ever have. The sun beams down hotter than hell, and the wind kicks sand into his face. His mind sinks lower. How could anyone hope that mankind could make it? We’re just animals like the rest, not suited to be running around in radioactive dirt, shooting little more than pop guns at vastly superior beings. Not even cave men knew this kind of hardship. A flash of rage at his and all mankind’s predicament, then despair, then emptiness. Emptiness is all that’s left of humanity. Empty homes, empty streets, empty souls.
He remembers religion, and gets even angrier, especially at the idea that people could still hold onto it in this world. If there was a god, Jeremy would like to place a bullet right between his eyes. He doesn’t owe any gods any favors, if anything they owe him. But he doesn’t count on them coming through. There is no god coming to save everyone, Jeremy felt he might punch out the next person to preach religion to him. Or maybe they were right? And they weren’t the survivors, but the dead, the dead in hell. That was more believable than an all good all knowing god that just sits and watches so much pain and death.
Jeremy looks down at his watch, wishing it worked. It’s more of a reminder than anything else, the only thing he’d had on him at the time that he could keep as a memorial to his family. It belonged to his father for many years, his father, whose face he could barely remember. And his mother’s features are all but lost to him. His younger brother still sits in his mind as if he’d just seen him. This always makes him the angriest. Anger, a very useful emotion in this world, without it sadness and despair would rule almost all, and anger is a far better motivator. The scavenging bird finally comes across some dead smaller creature.
Jeremy smiles a little, happy for his only companion in that stretch of wasteland. God he could use a shower, and not just the little trickle of water. A real, hot shower, with full water pressure and time to relax. None of those things exist here, least of all relaxation. Jeremy hasn’t relaxed at all in the three years since the world changed. In his old life he would have likely fallen asleep in the spot he laid, but this new world had shaped him to suit it, sleep here was impossible. He didn’t feel fear; he almost never did anymore, even with a walker bearing down on him. He’d experienced plenty of it in the initial months, blinding fear, fear so powerful that it could scarcely be put into words. But not now, not after three years of the constant fear of life, of never knowing when you’ll be found, and have to relocate, losing a fraction of the few people he could call “friends.”
He has no real friends, not anymore, not when everyone is always snatching food from you when you aren’t looking, or ammo, which in this world is just as important if not more so. His rifle is his most valued possession, nothing else coming close. He’d kill a man over it, without hesitation. It is his life, while not overly effective against any of the machines; it’s more than suitable enough to take care of other people, which are just as dangerous. Burning oil? He smells it for sure, the unmistakable smell of a walker that’s been out on patrol for too long. Fear flares up for just a moment. This means several things, there was a walker close by, but it is old and weathered to, likely low on ammunition and fuel, maybe making a last sweep.
Jeremy brings his rifle closer to his body. If he sees a walker he only has a few shots before it will lock onto him, and it won’t miss. He has to hit it dead in the face, or what could be called a face, the big whirring red light at the front, with the smaller red dot that looked around an area like an eye. It was an eye, or a camera. A direct hit in that area and its visual sensors are down for about 5-8 seconds. More than enough time to hit it with a frag grenade, taking it down. Another few minutes go by, Jeremy’s concentration increasing gradually. This is what matters now, not higher education, not money, not stupid fake morals and societal norms that are privy to the whims of human self importance. Patience, concentration, and getting the predator before it gets you. Just like any other wild animal.
People focused so much on things that weren’t even real, things that disappeared in a second, their true value becoming horrifyingly obvious in those last few days of civilized life. What was it all, nothing but humans trying to profit off of other humans. Or worse yet, humans thinking they were actually accomplishing anything. That’s the biggest difference in this world. Not the machines, or the wasteland, or the nomadic military groups that now make up the human race, in the blink of an eye the human world became real again, for the first time in over ten thousand years. It was about survival, about waking up, and making it until you fell back to sleep, then doing it all over again. We don’t have time to fill with non-sense and we have no sense of self importance, we’re just animals, trying to survive, as we always have been. It just took the apocalypse to make us see it.
Maybe there was a god, and this was his way of showing us the folly of our vanity. What reason did we have to put ourselves above other creatures, to say we are more important, just because we think so? Jeremy knows there’s nothing more special about him than his feathered friend across the way. It was this same illusion, of us being better or different, that led to this nightmare. We finally succeeded in creating what we fancied ourselves to be for so long, something different. And this different thing looked us in the eye and saw us for what we were. A savage, lesser animal holding territory it wanted. And it reacted the same way we have a thousand times.
The thumping comes first. Soft and distant, but moving closer, another few seconds and the mechanical sounds of poorly lubricated pistons and gears pushing hard to propel the new dominant species. Jeremy doesn’t move, he is already hidden well enough, and won’t make a move until he is absolutely sure that he has a shot. If he misses he is dead. The walker comes into view. A large black machine comes trotting over the hill on two ostrich-like legs. An oval shaped head sitting squarely on top of them, machine guns perches on the left and right at the top, with the red eye scanning back and forth slowly and methodically. Jeremy just watches quietly, the bird flies off in panic, but is shot down almost immediately after takeoff. Jeremy feels a slight bit of sadness, but his resolve does not waver.
After several nerve wracking minutes the opportunity presents itself, Jeremy lets out one shot. Crack! Direct hit, the red eye flickers and fades away. Without wasting a second Jeremy is on his feet and running toward the machine. Quickly he pulls a frag from his belt, pulls the pin and throws with full force. Boom! Another direct hit and the machine is destroyed. Jeremy grabs his radio and speaks into it. “Got a walker out here, just took it down. Am I almost off duty?”
10 to 15 seconds later a gravelly voice replies, “Come on in Jeremy, we’ll send someone out to relieve you.” Jeremy returns his radio to his belt, and slings his rifle over his shoulder. Thank god! He is so relieved, even though the camp is not much better, it is better. Time for a bath, and a little food, the closest thing to heaven Jeremy can imagine. Then suddenly a loud buzzing/booming sound blasts across the wasteland.
“Shit!” Jeremy yells running for cover. He grabs his radio again, “We got an aerial unit! Repeat, aerial! Walker must’ve been an ambu…” Before he can finish speaking a 50 caliber round rips Jeremy’s left arm and half of his chest clean off his body. He falls motionless to the ground, dead.
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