Short Story: Mechs

The metallic banging and screeching made her want to scream. She kept her hands over her mouth and tried to calm down. The outside world thundered as the bombs rained against the metal, but they kept going. She knew humans couldn’t win. Not against those monsters. The hilt of her gun pressed against her rips. It had kept her alive thus far, but only against other humans and not against them. The first search party passed the house she was in, but the second would soon come. The mechanical war machines always came in waves, annihilating everything in sight. She had survived thus far by hiding and moving only at night. Luck and time would soon run out of favors, and the aliens would get her. The screeching stopped outside. So did the bombs. Resistance was still left, and she had been slowly working to reach them. She would die for them if it meant she would bring down even one of those mechanical monsters that had killed everyone she knew. They had obliterated her entire hometown. It had been a miracle she had survived a collapsing building. She had crawled out of the basement to find out a new world order had been set.

She let go of her mouth and dared to glance out from the crack on the wall. The second wave was coming. The towering mech mimicking humans stood at the next street over. It had found something, and it was trying to catch it. That was what the aliens had started to do, learning from their captures and using humans’ worst fears against them. The machines had been formless at first. Now, they were almost hellish versions of all the nightmares she had had as a child. The horned beast with hooves and a human-like appearance screeched onward, holding a huge gun.

She took her gun out, focused on the scope, and looked past the mech to the skies. Somewhere in the sandstorm was the mother-ship. There was nothing humans could do about them. They had taken out the most sophisticated missile systems the governments had with one electric pulse. She returned her scope to the mech, watching the grey alien operating the machine. She drew a deep breath in and squeezed the trigger. The bullet flew in the air as she breathed out, reaching the target precisely where she wanted it to. It cracked the panel, shielding the alien. The mech let out a loud scream and turned its attention to the building she was in.

She took a deep breath in, focused on the alien, and fired. This time, the bullet scraped the alien. The mech began running towards the building, washing it with its bullets. She scrambled up and ran from the apartment into the staircase. She flicked her head up and down the stairs, unable to decide where she should go. She hadn’t planned to shoot. It felt good. But there was no time to feel good.

She ran down the stairs, wishing she had time before the mech came crashing in. Something scraped against the stairs, coming up fast. She turned around to run back up but then thought better of it. She knelt on the platform and aimed her gun. A grey beast stood at the staircase. It was a dog-like creature made from scraps. She squeezed the trigger, the dog leaped, and the bullet landed on its metallic claw. She loaded the gun again and then closed her eyes. It was too late.

“Heel,” came a loud voice.

The dog landed over her and sat down.

A woman ran up the stairs. “Don’t just sit there, move,” she shouted at her.

She hurried up and glanced at the dog with yellow eyes.

“Move!” the woman shouted again.

She ran past the dog that followed her with its eyes. The woman came after her, and so did the dog. The mech outside crashed into the building, making it shake.

“Keep running, if you want to live,” the woman commanded.

They ran up to the roof. She could see that other mechs were also approaching the building, and the one she had shot had torn out the barricades.

“Down the slide.” The woman pointed at the corner of the building. There was a trash chute. She got in and prayed that there was something soft to land on. She rolled on the street over a pile of trash. The woman came out behind her, and her dog leaped down the building, landing next to her.

“Get up,” the woman ordered.

The woman half dragged her up, guiding her through the streets. The building behind them collapsed, making it hard to breathe as the dust took over the entire neighborhood. The woman kept tugging her onward, and she pushed her in from a sewer grate and sealed it over them as the mechanical dog came in.

“We stay here until they have moved on, and then we get back up. I don’t want a word out of you until I signal you to go up. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Welcome to the resistance. I’m Carla.”

“Valeria.”

Thank you for reading! Have a lovely day.

© K.A. Ashcomb

P.S. Last night as I was readying to go to sleep, I listened to a loud cargo train go past my home and imagined this story as the metal rattled against each other. I wrote the first lines to my phone and I had to finish it this morning.