TODD by Turi T. Armstrong

Today, I decided to post my short story "Todd" from The Beginning and End of All Things.

(written under my pen name, Turi T. Armstrong, I use to separate my fiction writing from my editing.)

I thought that since I talk a lot of game about writing, some readers might want to know if I practice what I preach.

I hope you like it.

Todd by Turi T. Armstrong

(Taken from The Beginning & End of All Things, Science Fiction Short Story Anthology)

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In that moment, we all deserved to die.

Every last one of us. The machine may have destroyed her body, but it was man that killed her.

For a long time, all I could see was her face when I closed my eyes. She wasn’t a dynamic image; I didn’t get to recall Joyce like some men remember their darlings, all slow motion smiles and spins, flashes of the sweet little moments through a sparkling fog of romantic maudlin. No, the image I was left with was the look on her face when that thing whittled her down to fit into the cavity in its middle. That compartment taking the place of a stomach. Its titanium plates dripped with her blood. And when I’d managed to sever a cable from its pelvic joint with a shovel, blood streamed into it, and it sparked.

I remembered that.

You know, they all say it was the AI that got us in the end, but really it was a technology developed years before that did it. Somewhere along the line, some asshole came up with the brilliant idea to make a machine that gets energy from organic matter. Using the heat generated by the decaying process to charge its batteries.

Sure, it sounded great on paper. Nobel worthy, they said. The problems this could solve were endless, they said. Would change the world.

Well, change the world it did. Because like any other technology worth a damn, the army got hold of it. Before we knew it, they’d created walking war machines that could fuel themselves on their own carnage.

And then came the AI. I don’t know who made it happen, and I don’t know why they did it—I ain’t no science man— but somebody decided these artificial soldiers who were able to dispose of the bodies they made, should also be able to think for themselves.

Not a year passed before the machines figured out that fresh organic matter gives off more energy than the old, and that rotting meat gives off more energy than plant life. I hated those things. After one of them took Joyce, I was filled with more hate than any person could possibly contain. It left me blank and soulless. I was her husband. It was my job to protect her, and that purpose was the only thing keeping me going from the day they came down on us…at least until Todd.

Let me tell you about Todd. A real survivor that one. I often wonder what became of him. Knowing how things go, he’s probably dead. That seems to be the way it always goes. But I like to think that Todd made it somewhere safe and is watching the sunrise on a cold Alaskan coast somewhere.

Todd was the kind of feller you read about in books. He was smart and courageous and always had a plan. When he came to me that one day, I knew he’d change my life forever, I just didn’t know how yet.

The Zots had leveled everything looking for a bit of something to devour. For something that might give them even the smallest amount of energy. It was what they were built for after all. The basic learnin’ skills of a toddler, and the instincts of a wrecking ball. Created by a species already spread like a plague across the world, the Zots spread and replicated themselves twice as fast as their makers. At the time I met Todd, that had been ten years ago. Ten long years since the world was normal. Since someone could live out their days not worried about becoming the power you could trust.

I spent my time scrounging like a raccoon, at night if I could help it. The days in Reno seemed then to be even god damn hotter than before the world ended if that were possible. It was like hell had opened up and sucked most everyone into the pit. Those of us left behind were doomed to wander this sweltering dustbin for eternity with the devil breathin’ down the backs of our necks.

That idea didn’t bother me so much then. All mankind deserved hell, and I was no different. I can’t say there’s ever been any room in my heart for strangers. The indeterminate We.

But one morning, when the air was makin’ waves of the world before the sun had even made it over the Silver Legacy, I heard a white noise, followed by breaking glass and finally the crumbling of stone and crashing metal. I normally wouldn’t emerge from my recess for such a thing, but that day, curiosity drew me out and led me down the road to a building that once had four solid walls but now had only two.

With no Zots in sight, I made my way through the rubble, looking for something that might be useful. A subtle scraping brought me over a heap to the interior of the building. I stumbled over concrete and rebar then looked down to see a fox. The first live animal I’d seen in so long it was alien. The mangy creature whined softly, probably learnin’ not to make much noise if it were to survive in this new world. Its leg was pinned under the rock and it scampered its front legs forward, trying to pull its way out with no success. When it spotted me, it didn’t recoil or bare its teeth, rather it froze.

I immediately thought of Joyce. She loved these wily critters. This one was a bonafide Sierra Nevada Red too, I think, though I ain’t no expert by half. Joyce would have known. For some reason, I liked the idea that the only surviving animal I had seen in almost a decade was something that was thought endangered before all this. The thing managed to survive the apocalypse but had struggled to survive man.

I never did help it out. And I still mull over that decision to this day. Instead I decided to return to my hole in the ground and wait out the sun, but when I climbed back over the rubble, I noticed something else. What was left of the wall had been painted since I’d seen the building last. At least I was fairly sure it hadn’t been there before. There wasn’t much of it left now. Just the head of a neon orange arrow.

I shook off a queer feeling, deciding that it must have been there before, hidden behind something. Hell, I was getting old and hadn’t spotted it was all.

But on my way back, every few buildings shone like orange beacons. I could read these messages clear enough. Some were simple arrows pointing north, others were accompanied by ‘Turn Around.’ A few pointed south with the word ‘Danger’ or other similar warnings. The hairs stood on the back of my neck, but I wasn’t sure if it was due to the ominous nature of the messages or the fact that their existence implied I wasn’t alone in the world after all. It’s like Reno suddenly burst with life.

Now. You find yourself in a dark forest, you can quite quickly feel like the only living thing in it. That is until something big and bad approaches, and suddenly the birds take from the trees and rodents and snakes scurry past your feet. They was there all along, even if you couldn’t see ‘em.

I was out that night when Reno was still dark, morning was on its way, but no trace of it was in the sky yet. I had just enough time to finish scavenging and find my way back when I saw it. A jar in the distance shaped like a bear.

Honey.

Someone must have dropped it at some point. It wasn’t even covered in the thick layer of red dust most everything is coated with out here.

I cautiously made my way toward it, making sure to move silently. I wasn’t gonna chance any Zots catching wind of me before I retrieved my bounty. I heard the click of a falling stone to my left and ducked inside the nearest open door into a two-story office building. From the outside, the heavily-tinted floor to ceiling windows only reflected back a hickory-hued visage of the world. Inside, my view was clear.

I crouched behind a dulled steel desk and peeked over the top, waiting for the coming Zot to reveal its position.

From around the corner of the alley across the street darted something that made my jaw drop and tighten all at the same time. A person. A real live person.

Even before Joyce had died, it had been ages since we had seen another human being. This one was a lithe young man, probably no older than thirty-five. He had hair so black it shone blue under the quickly disappearing moon. He tucked a spray can into the hiking pack he carried as he emerged.

I came out from behind my blind and crept forward. Curious more than anything else. As with the fox before, it was like seeing something out of legend—bigfoot; the ghost of civilization’s past.

I stared at him dumb until he went for my jar. I was ripped out of my daze and overcome with hate. This little bastard was going to take my honey. I ran for the window with a speed I shouldn’t be capable of at my age, ready to bang on it like a gorilla being taunted at the zoo. Just before I reached the window, a metal behemoth burst through the wall of the building across the road. Mere yards from the honey thief.

He took off down the street and the hungry Zot gave chase. I followed from behind the safety of the glass. Afraid I might lose sight of the action, I ripped open the stairwell door and heaved up to the second story. I reached the next window just as they turned the corner. I turned with them. The Zot gained quickly, but the man sprinted forward without so much as a glance behind him. He was fit, I would give him that much.

I scurried from window to window. Something carnal inside me savagely wanted to see him finished. The thing about to finish him was only feet away. They turned the corner again. I lost them.

Inside the building, I couldn’t hear anything, not a scream, not the sound of metal scraping and bones crunching. Nothing. Nothing but the quick thump-thump of my own heart. I pressed my face to the glass hoping to gain a few more inches of sight but I was sorely disappointed.

Oh well.

I would wait out the day there, and at least come nightfall I could still claim my prize. The rotten part of me thanked the Zot for coming when it did.

I awoke to the sun’s orange death throes streaking the ceiling, and within minutes it was gone. I crawled to the door, not bothering to stand, wildly tossing my head side to side like a deranged animal as I checked every direction for signs of that morning’s Zot. When I found nothing, I darted across the street, low enough to drag my fingers along the ground, and searched for my honey jar.

It was gone.

In the commotion, I must not have noticed that asshole take it, and now it had probably ended up in the belly of the bot. Hoping that I might get lucky again, I followed the route to the man’s demise, around the side of the building and down the alley to the back of it. There was no jar of honey in that alley, but there was something far more interesting. I had expected pools of blood and possibly a dropped article or two.

What I found instead was a heap of metal.

People are a pestilence on the earth. Like an unfinished round of antibiotics, you think the infection is gone, but unless you kill every trace, it’ll come back twice as strong the next time. I’d never seen nobody take out a Zot. I’d seen them try and fail. But in true human fashion, we figured out a way to destroy. To destroy the destroyer.

From the look of it, he had jammed a crowbar into its lower back and jumbled up some of its innards. Not an easy task, in my mind. The thing still buzzed like an old fluorescent light as it lay there, dead by all accounts.

The day had opened up a sore in my gut. From seeing the fox, then seeing the man—and now looking at the scraps in front of me, it was all too much to take. The black Reno night condensed on me. I shut my eyes tight and there was Joyce. Her face contorted and screaming.

Then I started kicking. I kicked and stomped until my legs hurt, my boots barely denting the outer shell of the Zot, crumpled on the ground. One of my kicks knocked the bar from the thing’s back, and I heard a sound like an old computer booting for the first time in years, buzzing and groaning. Turns out, whatever that man had done didn’t kill it, only put it on pause.

The humming got faster, and its body shook as it began to rise.

I ran like hell. Out of the alley and down the street. Moments later, the Zot’s metal feet clanged on the pavement behind me. I pushed my legs to move quicker, my left ankle aching from the fury I had unleashed a moment earlier. I didn’t know how I would escape or where I was running to.

Turns out, I was running to Todd.

I was coming up fast on a pile-up of abandoned cars. My only hope was to make it to one and hide inside, then just pray that thing didn’t find me. The closer I got, the more unlikely that outcome seemed. It gained on me faster and faster. But out in the distance, from behind the canopy of an old Ford, popped up that head of black hair. He jumped down and ran at me full on. Instinct told me to run back the other way, but adrenaline threw me forward. I readied myself to attack if need be. I started devising plans to grab him as I flew by and throw him to the Zot.

As I got closer I could better see his features. The man looked…I can only describe it as serene. See, Todd always had a calm look to him and a smile that said he had all the knowledge in the world. He knew something you didn’t. He ran until he reached me then turned one-eighty and ran back the way he came right by my side.

We sprinted together for about half a block before I saw my chance. An open manhole under one of the vehicles. I could slide in and hide. Depending on what was down there, maybe even make my way further north from below. It would take time to crawl in, but if I could manage to trip the fool beside me at just the right moment, I might stand a chance.

I was mere seconds from executing my plan when Todd pulled ahead and, with a swing of his chin, pointed to an alley coming up on the right. He dashed down it. Dammit. I followed, and we found a fire escape up the side of a crumbling four-story. Not that ladders are a particular challenge for these things, but they were made more for knockin down doors and stoppin’ tanks, not climbing. It’d follow, but it’d be slow going.

Once we found an open window, we crawled inside, got to a bathroom and hunkered down in the tub. See, bathrooms are the best place to sit and wait out these things. You stay still long enough and keep real quiet, they should pass you by. The tub keeps you from being spotted under the door by heat sensors. At least if you’re lucky.

It was intimately squeezed together in that tub that I first got to know the man that is Todd. Well…as much as you can get to know someone, sitting in a cramped space speaking fabricated sign language while waiting to see if you die a violent death in the near future.

I sat grieving for my failed plan to escape both him and the Zot, but my thoughts quickly drifted to amazement that I was looking at another human being so close up. I’d come across not one but two living things in the past day.

Though, like the birds taking from the forest trees, I should have known something big was coming.

He humored my glares for a while then pulled out his wallet and showed me his Utah driver’s license and stretched out his other hand to shake mine. Still smilin’ like we were meeting for the first time at a local watering hole, not under a rusted-out shower head. But the detail that was the most fascinating was this had to be the only man left in the world who still bothered to carry around his driver’s license. Never made no sense then, and it still don’t now.

Todd Hule Stanton, it said.

What a name. Maybe that was why he carried the card for all those years. So he had a reason to show people that full, irrepressible name.

Hours must have passed in that tub, looking over Todd and the glint in his eye contrasting the raven black of his hair, and other such features for as long as was comfortable, then spending the rest of that time staring at the wall or the insides of my eyelids. Eventually, I heard him speak. A deep baritone, yet jovial, quick, and just on the brink of joking.

He told me all about where he was going and from where he had come. Utah, working as a night manager at a small town K-mart, making a surprisingly decent living. Unmarried and raising two sons by himself. The way he spoke of them gave me the impression that nothing bad had ever happened to them in their whole lives. But he never gave any indication that they’d traveled with him either. If not with him, then with who? They were dead, but he never said it. He didn’t have to.

I was one of the lucky ones, I suppose. I had lost my own boy back in Texas, twenty years before all this started. The one thing I was always grateful for was that he didn’t have to live in the world as it is now.

Eventually, we stretched our cramped legs and slithered out of our hole.

I should have hated Todd. In my bones, I wanted to hate him for his mere existence like I did everything else. But I couldn’t. The way he talked like a bass guitar and walked with a bounce while still managing to drag his feet, calmed my soul and kept the ghost of Joyce away.

I convinced myself that if I were to survive I needed to stick with him. He would prove himself as base a creature as any other man, and I would leave him for dead somewhere out of the city.

We wandered the apartments on each floor, looking for supplies and chance foodstuffs. As we pilfered cabinets and ransacked through the memories of lives forgotten, we talked about the future and Todd’s hopes for such a thing. Splayed on the cracking leather couch inside a three-bedroom corner unit, hazy with the light of the comin’ morning, he folded his arms behind his head and told me about Alaska. How he longed for the cool air and the icy waters. But Alaska wasn’t the destination. He waxed about some place off the northern coast of Canada, under the Alaskan border. Port Edward, a small town where his mother sprouted from a few generations of cannery workers. She’d birthed him in the family home before meetin’ his step-daddy and uprooting him to Utah.

Todd was bred for the cold, salt-water air. Born for the sea, and he was going back to it, so he said. As I watched him tell the ceiling his dreams with a look of complete tranquility, I admired how much zest for life he seemed to have. How even after all the horrors men like us saw on the day to day, he could still find the nerve to look ahead to a time where he would no longer suffer. I realize now, that was a sort of miracle.

Maybe I’d just been too old. Coming up on retirement when the Zots hit, I coulda—maybe shoulda—laid down and let myself die right then. But I didn’t. After Joyce, and before Todd, that felt like one of the great regrets in life, but after Todd, I realized that was just short of a miracle in itself.

While we sat, I asked him how he’d managed to take down the Zot in the alley. To my disappointment, he only gave me a snort and a shrug. He told me how the thing had cornered him, and he’d just started swinging. He hadn’t even been sure he got it until I confirmed it for him. Just lucky, he guessed.

The next day we loitered on the outskirts of the building for a time until we were confident the war machine had moved on, at which point we headed along the road. Every once in a while Todd would stop to paint a warning on the side of a building. He told me some horror story about all the Zots amassing in a big army just south of us. Honestly, it all sounded a little cracked. I’ve seen these things work together before if that’s what you wanna call it. But there was nothing intelligent about it, more like the weak scavenging after the strong. When their best energy sources got scarce in those last few years, you’d see them competing when they’d come upon each other. When I was a young boy, robot battles were something I used to fantasize about, but the real thing wasn’t nearly as cool as I had imagined.

Todd’s story sounded something like the fantasies of a little boy.

But he spotted the pulsing reflection of the sun’s light on metal in the distance, it wasn’t long after we heard the groan, pisss, sch-twank of the Zots, and light materialized into hefty steel and resin bodies. After a few moments, I realized there was definitely something different about the sounds coming from this group. I voiced this opinion to Todd, though he didn’t appear to be particularly worried at the news. The look in his eyes said ‘I told you so’ even if his mouth didn’t. He led me through a broken window of the Eldorado, now just the Eld-o-do. Inside, we scuttled around mildewed sculptures—Tritons blowin’ into conch shells, and white horses galloping out of the turbid fountain water. Finding the stairwell, we wound our way up to the sixth floor and by the time we arrived, I was grasping at my chest.

Todd’s presence parted the thick dust in the air as he made his way to the time-sooted window and inspected the goings on below with the mystique of an angel watching man’s exodus from Eden.

I dragged myself over to the window beside him and placed my hand on the ledge in an effort to keep my knees from givin’ out. I looked down at the street and feasted my eyes on a horde of Zots like I had never seen. It was said they’d made about two thousand of these things in the beginning, and it only took five or six to decimate a town. Once they started replicating themselves, things got out of pocket, you might say. I have come up against groups of three or four but never anything like this.

Todd glanced my way for a second and smiled a sorrowful smile. But I could tell the shadow in his eyes was cast for me. He probably could have stayed ahead of this thing if not for the old man he’d been dragging around for two days at this point. I resented that look.

He chuckled, a dark bass rhythm from his diaphragm, as he looked out below. The machines climbed over and around one another. If I were to think of a robot army, I would have envisioned some clankin’ high-stepping fourth reich. But this was more like watching a river of titanium rats the way they clawed at each other.

They obliterated everything in their wake, leaving Zot bodies in twisted mounds on the street. The ones on the edges of the rolling pile of metal broke off and crashed through the windows of buildings, ransacking the offices and shops like looters in a riot.

I stood mesmerized by the sight until Todd grunted something about them getting desperate. I looked closer. He was right. They weren’t just climbing over each other, they were ripping the weak apart, pilfering the precious resources from their cavities and leaving them to rust in the Nevada sun. The others weren’t ransacking but were frantically looking for something to fuel themselves before shutting down.

In the distance, stragglers, apparently low on juice, walked ever slower before stopping altogether. These wouldn’t be the first Zots I’d seen who’d run down their batteries. Every once in a while you’d come across a body still in its last position, mid-movement, an everlasting statue commemorating the end of the world.

And then they made it inside.

The Eldorado’s steel frames grieved as the machines started their demolition. Too soon, they crashed their way up the stairwell. They grew steadily louder. It was only a matter of time until they reached us. My hands started to tremor, and my first thought was to pull Todd to the door and throw him in before he could do the same to me.

Todd reached for my shoulder, and I panicked. Stumbling back, I ran for the nearest exit—Todd calling my name. I continued running, not sure where the next door would take me or what surprises might be waiting behind it. The first one I came upon led me to a large windowless corridor. It went pitch-black as the heavy fire door fell shut on my backside. I stopped running and tiptoed my way along the wall looking for another door. I grabbed a handle in the dark. Locked. I went onto the next and next, finding the same. Finally, a latch clicked, and I turned the handle, but it wouldn’t open. I held my breath. Just as I stepped back, the door came bursting off its hinges, and a Zot crashed through, slamming against the opposite wall. The dry-rotted gyprock crumbled around it as it staggered to its feet.

The flood of bright light now streaming in from the bare doorway and clouds of old dust and plaster stung my eyes. I scurried away but struggled to see anything at all. I reached for a door. It would be locked, but I didn’t care. It would open for me now. I backed to the far wall then ran, throwing all my weight at the door. My shoulder cracked on impact, and I bellowed a sound I’ve only ever heard before when shooting bucks. The Zot came at me, and I threw myself at it again. This time, the frame gave way and the door swung open; the Zot flew past me down the hallway. I stumbled into a stale hotel room, sweltering from the bright afternoon sun. I dove into the bathroom and locked the door. Dragging myself into the tub, I laid down and tried to steady my ragged breath.

The pain in my arm grew, and I shut my eyes tight. I could hear the Zot in the room now, the hiss of its hydraulics as it made slow movements, looking for me. No matter how hard my adrenaline tried to keep me awake, I slipped in and out.

The last thing I remember was Joyce’s face. But this time, she wasn’t looking at me through horrified dead eyes. She was shaking her head, disappointed. She had come back to life just to tell me what a failure I was.

I drifted off.

When I woke, Joyce’s face was replaced by Todd’s. He poured some rancid tasting water down my throat and made a joke that he never took me for the spastic type—that we should probably try to stick together from now on. He helped me out of the tub with a patient smile, and I grumbled at the geriatric picture it must have made.

The pain in my shoulder was unbearable. Todd apologized while he went to resetting it. He didn’t know how, but he’d seen them do it in the movies. He calmly got to work with that ‘we’ll laugh about this later’ smile of his, and popped it in on the third torturous try. Outside the bathroom stood the Zot that pursued me, now forever bent forward to probe its heat sensor under my door. I often think about how close I came to being done-in that day. Todd told me we were lucky; the horde passed us, and we were safe to leave, but they had made ruins of Reno outside the casino.

They were ahead of us but slow moving. We could easily get around them if we went east and then north at a fast pace. Once out of the city we could take a wide berth on higher ground to better track the quickly diminishing herd. This was just a bad storm. But once it was done, I felt like things might get better. At least in the survival department. Their batteries were running low, and soon that’d be the end of it.

Within the hour, we’d come neck and neck with the horde. We could hear them a few blocks over like a clamorous junkyard pride parade. Every so often we would spot a straggler, but nothing difficult to evade. A few hours later, we overtook ‘em by about half a mile.

Hitting the 659, we came upon a group of people in the distance. All sorts. Old, young, male, and female, what remained of their lives strapped to their backs. They were headed west turning onto the 395, right in the path of the storm. Todd judged from the speed they were traveling, the horde would come on them fast and hard. There was nothing but barren land all around them, no place to hide except the burned-out Mother of Sorrows Cemetery. They’d be shredded.

I shrugged my shoulders and told him we should head east again to avoid getting caught up in something. I could tell by the way Todd scoffed that he didn’t agree. As if he had just decided between steak and chicken on the menu, he told me very matter-of-factly that he was gonna go warn them and meet back up with me down the road. At that moment, I realized Todd had evolved at some point during our time together. He was no longer one of ‘them,’ part of the indeterminate we—just another member of the species who made the machine that ended the world. Todd was better than that. Better than me, surely. And I didn’t want him to leave.

See, to me, Todd was a hunk of gold, living among the excrement, but he had somehow managed to stay clean. The idea of him running off and shaking hands with who knows what manner of devils made me feel like I could chew up nails. So I started yelling. I yelled so loud my chest burned. I reamed out that boy; I told him what a damn fool I thought he was, how his spray cans and savior’s complex was gonna get him killed. How even saving me had been an idiot decision. Todd stood patient till I was done then smiled all the meaning in the world. Above it all. Not a scratch on him. It silenced me and made me feel as much shame as I felt the day I lost Joyce.

Joyce. Just shaking her head at what an old sack I’d become before the image of her screaming face flashed behind my eyes again.

My yelling drew the attention of the group, and they worried around each other trying to decide if we were friendly. The way they shied, I assume they’d figured at least I wasn’t. Then a flash of red caught my eye, and I looked across the highway toward a dry-stack stone wall behind a row of creosote bushes. A mangy looking Nevada Red skipped down the road, its hind leg tucked up under its belly. It stopped to stare at me.

I wonder if it knew who I was—if it remembered me leaving it to die. It peeled its eyes away from me and looked behind it, waiting. A sand-covered boy climbed over the wall and jogged to the fox. He stopped to look at me as well before running off to catch up with the group, the fox hobbling along behind him.

I turned and left without another word. I could feel Todd watching me go, but when I looked back, he had slinked his pack over one shoulder and was already chasing after the boy and his pet.

I ambled east, not going anywhere in particular. Trapped in my head with Joyce. Angry at her for always looking at me like that. Angry at the Zots for taking her, and people for needing saving. Angry at Todd for leaving me. But more than anything, angry at myself for all the reasons I could come up with, rational or not.

I only went ten minutes before I turned back west. Being alone didn’t feel like it used to. There was something deep inside me that felt sick now. Like I was the one with a rotting corpse down in my gut.

What if Todd couldn’t convince the others to turn tail and run before the horde came upon them? I’d thought he was nuts when he told me, and I almost didn’t make it out alive. Two people are much easier to hide than twenty. And now he was runnin’ headfirst into danger with barely a bush for cover. I knew what I had to do. I needed to go back for Todd. I needed to make sure he made it to wherever it was he was going. The rest of the world might be swine, but Todd wasn’t like the rest of us. Saving these people would lead him to his death, but hell, I would save him first.

I made it back to the 395, but I was too late. My detour had taken long enough that the bulk of the horde passed me up the highway. I needed to hang back longer, heading south so the stragglers wouldn’t catch up to me. By the time I made it back to the wall where I spotted the boy, the Zots had ravaged every bit of life. Even the creosote.

I’d failed.

Joyce laughed maniacally at me, her eyes bulging, her teeth brown and rotten. I was alone again. My plan to save the only living soul worth a damn in this world was a joke. My selfishness had probably gotten him killed. If I had been there, I could have talked some sense into him.

Todd was dead.

I remember believing that completely as soon as I set eyes on the horde again. Reflecting on it now, it was probably cowardice that made me think that way. Whether I was scared to fail or succeed, I’m still not sure. Perhaps I just didn’t want to admit to him that I’d been wrong if he were alive.

I’d been balancing on the edge of a mental crater for a long time, and I’d finally fallen into it. The only option I could see in front of me was to head back to where I started and climb the tallest building I could find.

Then throw myself off it.

I dragged my feet the whole way and passed plenty of buildings worthy of the task. I didn’t want to end it that way. But as soon as I’d begin to doubt the plan, Joyce would start laughing again, and I could think of nothing outside of dying. When the weather grew humid and mixed with the heat, it got hard to breathe. I couldn’t make it another step so I headed into the nearest building, an eight-story apartment complex, the ‘Leasing Now’ sign swinging from one corner above the parking garage entrance. The metal security gate blocking the garage had been ripped down and lay crumpled on the pavement. Guessing the doors would be locked, I climbed over and headed up to the second level of the garage.

I heard a sound like a swinging metal door. The thought of a single Zot crossed my mind, but the sound was too repetitive to hold it there. The upper level of the garage was still filled with dust-covered cars. Against my better judgment, I searched out the noise among the vehicles. After all, what would a man about to throw himself off a building need to be worried about? Rounding a family-sized SUV, I found what I was looking for.

On the ground was a pile of warped metal. It looked like it had been smashed to pieces. Crouching over it was the biggest Zot I had ever seen. It spun the dead Zots arm around in a circle until it ripped off clean at the shoulder. Its work done, it stood.

All Zots are shaped basically the same, although there are a few key differences between the man-made varieties and the machine replicated ones. But this was like none other. It was tall, standing at least ten feet on legs that looked to be patched together out of scraps. The head was heavily plated and set low like the beast was made without a neck. Its chest was twice as wide as it should be, and worst of all, the energy center in its middle—its stomach—was made up of three separate compartments where there should only be one.

I stood still, not able to breathe. Not able to run or even collapse into a ball on the ground. I watched as it ripped the arm open, savagely, but not destructively. It pulled out four intertwined cables from the inside and began fastening them to its own. I immediately recognized what it was doing. It was making itself stronger. It was growing. And it was ripping others apart to do it.

How human of it.

The titan began to turn around; the movement resurrected my survival instincts. I bolted down the ramp and for the exit before it could see me. Of course, it was far too late for that. Emerging onto the street, I stumbled over the fallen gate in my fear. My boot caught on the metal, and I struggled to free myself.

The Frankenzot burst from the upper level of the garage. It landed hard in front of me, pulverizing the pavement under its weight. Joyce looked at me with her yellow eyes and smiled. This was it. The end. I looked at my executioner dead on. I was ready.

It stared at me too. Calm, like it was sizing me up. A chill went through my entire body; I felt like it was thinking about what to do with me. A creature caught in the rubble, and it was just blankly watching me suffer.

Then came the rain.

I felt the cool wet on my face for the first time in what seemed like years. It came hard and fast, clouding over the sky and blocking the sun in mere seconds. I couldn’t help but smile at the divine timing of it. The Zot before me looked up at the sky and contemplated. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought for a moment it looked to be enjoying it as much as I was.

Soon, both me and the maneater were drenched. I shuttered.

It sparked.

From the joint where its metal pelvis met the leg, it sparked.

Memories of Joyce screaming as her first leg was torn and broken, and then the other. Me grabbing the only thing I could find. A spade. Hacking at it while it was busy carving its meal. Slicing through a cable and watching the blood on it spit and sizzle. Taking one last look at Joyce’s face. Running.

I ripped off my shoe and ran again, conjuring up all the will I had left in me. The beast took off after me with a giant leaping stride. I dodged and zigzagged around cars, just barely turning out of its grasp every time it reached out to seize me. I ran not from the monster behind me, but from the memories, and I have never run so fast in all my life.

The rain poured down so hard, I couldn’t see more than a few hundred feet ahead. Out of nowhere, another Zot charged at me from the left, and I skidded to a stop. It circled back, looked at the Frankenzot behind me, and turned to run too late. He grabbed it and ripped it to shreds in an instant. I didn’t wait around to see what happened this time. I took off again. I glanced behind me only once to see it staring after me. Still and thoughtful.

I think I sprinted for about a mile, then jogged at least three after that. Then I walked until I collapsed to the ground. My chest felt like it was being crushed, and my legs melted into the pavement. My one bootless foot no longer had much skin left. I didn’t know how, but I had to go on. I knew that thing would follow me. It was going to hunt me down and live on my flesh. Only hours before, I had wanted to kill myself. But now I knew if I let that thing do it, I would be doomed to see Joyce’s demented face for all eternity.

The rain stopped when the sun went down, and I finally found the wherewithal to stand again. I continued down the road until I saw baseball diamonds with a covered complex at the center. I needed to rest and this place was as good a shelter as I was gonna find.

As soon as I got on the field, I saw him. Todd leaned against the wall of the pavilion and nodded to me like we were supposed to meet here all along. When I got close, he motioned another man to take me under the arm and lead me inside. Several people were camped out on the floor.

I remember my eyes falling on a boy and his limping fox just before I fell asleep.

When I awoke, a woman about as pretty as a sunstroked pig was mending my foot. I kicked out and she leaped back, packing up her gauze and scurrying away without a word. My hand on the wall beside me, I hauled my old, rusty body off the floor and went in search of Todd. I needed to tell him what was coming. I needed to get him out of here. We had all been lucky up to this point, but I knew that luck was about to run out for everyone.

I had no idea how long I had been out, but the sun was hanging high in the sky. In my imagination, the Frankenzot had picked up my trail and was coming for me. Maybe it was already here, watching from some hiding spot, just waiting for the right time to pick everyone off.

At last, I found Todd among a group of people huddled around an old map of Nevada discussing the best plan of action. A tall middle-aged Hispanic man was determined to go back south into the heart of Reno. Now that the Zots had moved passed, maybe they could set up a stronghold somewhere. To do what? Was beyond me. I guess to live out the remainder of humanity’s dominion over the world in a puddle of their own sweat.

Others spouted off equally bad ideas, all the while Todd stood in silence on the outskirts with a sparkle in his eye that said he knew the best place to go, but he never did reveal its location.

I hobbled to his side and pulled him close. I rambled off my concerns so wildly that Todd just stared at me with pursed lips and a flying eyebrow. When I was done, he waited for me to take a few breaths before returning a chuckling “huh?”

Frustrated, I grabbed him by the shoulder and away from the group, whose narrowed eyes I could feel all over me. I asked him what had happened with the horde. Not much. He told me how when it finally reached them, it was moving considerably faster than when it had come upon us at the Eldorado. Assuming, because by that time, most of the weak had been culled from the herd. Todd and the group ran for the baseball diamond, expecting to be sought out and taken out, but the horde just whizzed by them. Lucky again.

But it wasn’t luck, was it? The Zots back in the casino were desperate alright, and they were ravenously scrambling for any amount of energy. But it wasn’t for the reasons we thought. I knew, after witnessing the apparent fear in the Zot trying to escape the mutated beast, that they were desperate to escape. Just like millions of people before them in those last ten years.

It sent shivers down my spine thinking that this whole time the Zots weren’t merely mindless killing machines—robotic zombies looking for their next brain to eat. They knew enough to be scared. They were aware enough to understand the need for survival on a level I didn’t think possible. I suppose the AI was doing exactly what it was supposed to. Evolving.

I begged Todd to go with me. When the thing you fear runs scared, it’s probably a good idea to run with it. But now it was Todd’s turn to look at me like I was touched. I’ll fully admit I sounded like an old man who had lost his vertical hold. Everything that had happened the day before felt like a fevered nightmare. The way the Frankenzot looked at me like it remembered me, the way it contemplated the rain, the noise the other Zot’s arm made when it was wrenched from the socket...

Todd refused to leave. He dropped his arms to his side and put on the most serious demeanor I had seen from him yet. If the rest of these nomads were in danger, he couldn’t in good conscience leave them, though I got the feeling he just plain didn’t believe me. I couldn’t understand it at the time. Why should he care what happened to those people who he had no connection with, nothing in common beyond having made it this far?

I thought about leaving without him again, though the times before hadn’t worked out so good for me. I hated the idea of needing anyone, but I accepted that I’d grown to need Todd in the short time that I knew him.

I’d have to stay, and if saving Todd meant saving all those other assholes too, I would do it.

The night fell hard and hot as usual. The day before’s showers were already a vague memory. I perched myself next to the fence that gave me the best vantage point of the south and kept vigil through the whole night. My body ached from my injuries and my mad dash. If Frankenzot did come around, I don’t know how much good I would have been. I was so stiff I might have just snapped like a dry old twig. But he never showed that night or the next day. Or the ones after that. I spent the days sleeping and the nights back in my spot alone. Often, Todd would come down from the pavilion and sit with me, telling me stories of life before and after the world ended. Although I tried hard to remain serious and watchful, I’d more often than not forget about my self-assigned duties after a few minutes talking. Most of the time we’d end up next to tears laughing as the night grew late and the conversation would turn absurd in our exhaustion. I never talked to the others, and they never tried me. My disdain stayed plastered over my face, and it kept them well away.

Coming up on a week, the group was ready to leave. Todd must have told them my concerns because they chose to set out east and north in search of workable prairie land. Someplace they could settle and build a ‘community.’

I don’t think I have to tell you what I thought of that idea.

It was on that fateful day that my worst fears were realized. Like Lee Van Cleef making his entrance screen right, a sinister air blew over the ball diamonds, and weeds tumbled across the fields. I poked my head up to sniff the air for signs of predators and immediately focused my sights on the sun’s bright glare off his metal body.

Zots can move quite stealthily when they need to. But once they spot you, they’re quick and graceless. It’s not pretty, but their programming is effective.

I could have sworn he was looking right at me, but he walked toward me with a gawking gait. Steady, and never once breaking his even stride. He’d grown since I’d seen him last. His new arm was accompanied by a large shoulder plate that peaked up past his head in a horrible spike.

I forgot myself and watched him in silence, a cocktail of adrenaline, hate, and fear injected into my veins, and I shook from the load of it. At some point, the others took notice of him and scattered, their horrified faces made the shapes of screams and wails, but their instincts wouldn’t let them make a sound.

Joyce screamed for them. So high pitched it was no longer human, but the sound of metal violently scraping against metal.

Todd grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. I blinked my vapid eyes a few times before realizing who he was. We ran together, but there weren’t too many places to hide, and every spot we came upon was already filled to capacity.

And then we saw him.

The boy stood paralyzed on home base; his scruffy little friend stood before him panicked and makin’ an awful sound like the scream an old woman might make falling down the stairs.

Frankenzot made his way toward him cautiously but amused. The way a pup might play with a frog or a snake. For the first time since I’d met him, I saw real fear in Todd’s eyes, revealing a pain that I knew had to be there but that he’d kept so well hidden away. The pain that only a father who’d lost his boy would recognize. Nothing broke my heart more than that look. It shattered an image I’d made of Todd as a fun, strong, and angelic figure—smashed down in an instant. He became as human as you or me, and at that moment I loved him for it. I knew what I had to do.

I ran for the boy, touching down with my bad foot and leaping strides long enough to make up the difference with the other. I was there in a matter of seconds, but it was not quick enough to save the fox that unfailingly fought for its friend. The Mega Zot, tired of playing with the creature, scooped it up in one fluid and lightning-fast motion. Its grip around the animal’s small body tightened, crushing it, then it stuffed it into the rear chamber of its stomach.

Tears flowed from the boy’s eyes in cartoonish squirts, and his chest heaved as he struggled to catch his small breath. Frankenzot crouched in front of him, bringing itself to the child’s level. I reached it before its knee hit the ground and pushed the boy hard. He flew a few feet before landing with a thud on the red earth. The violence of it put a fire under him, and he ran for the dugout; from the corner of my eye, I saw Todd scoop him up and disappear.

The Zot rose slowly, never taking its mechanical gaze off me. The space between us grew as it stood, and I felt small. We stared at each other. This time I knew he recognized me. And he understood the hate I held for him. I didn’t lose my resolve. For once, my feet were planted in place. I wasn’t going to run no more.

Joyce appeared before me. She had the dark tan of long days spent in the garden; her gray hair still highlighted with gold. She looked as resolute as I felt.

“Kill him, Hap.”

I drove my fist into his middle and grabbed hold of the cables leading from the decomposition cavity to his chest. I didn’t pull them out, but held my hand there and looked into my enemy’s eyes. It peered down at my arm and cocked its head to the side. I twisted my hand and wrapped the cable around my wrist.

The machine seemed to grow irritated and grabbed my arm to pull it out, the force of it snapped my elbow. I screamed in pain, but the cable around my wrist kept me attached to him. He wrenched my arm to remove my hand, but the twisting in its gut gave it pause. The lights that lit up its makeshift face flickered.

My arm gushed blood. I couldn’t even be sure that it was still attached to my body. The blood poured down over the Zot’s pelvis, and I once again heard the sputter of its bare wires.

A loud clang came from behind the monster, followed by another.

The Zot lurched forward and stumbled, his heavy body pressing down on me. I tried to focus my spotted vision but could not. I heard shouting and more clanging.

“Kill him now!”

I reached up with my good arm as far as I could and grabbed its spiked shoulder. With all my might, I yanked. It wrenched off, taking a square plate of shoulder with it. I ripped my arm free of the cable. The flesh on my hand tore. I was quickly losing blood. I tried to scurry out from under him, but couldn’t find the strength.

Frankenzot writhed on top of me, trying to find something to grasp, but we both slipped against the ground and each other, slick with my blood. Many arms I couldn’t see gripped me under the shoulders and pulled me out into the cold air. The sudden weight off my chest and the chill of the sharp breeze brought with it a clarity of mind I hadn’t felt before. Spike in hand, I threw myself at my wife’s murderer and forced its own shoulder into the small of its back.

Frankenzot buzzed as he powered down, and then there was silence. He toppled at the feet of the human circle that surrounded him.

I swayed. Todd smiled, and I fell.

The world switched from day to night as I lay there, breathing through labored snorts and wheezes. I saw Todd’s face appear above me, and I gargled a wet cackle.

“You knew…this was gonna end like this…all along, didn’t you?” I coughed out the last of those words as blood from my throat. Todd wiped my mouth and put his backpack under my head. Others murmured around me, some grabbing at me and pulling on my clothes.

Someone somewhere said it was going to be okay.

“Yeah…it is.” I let myself slide out again, closing my eyes to focus on the slowing of my awful heart when Todd sat down beside me and looked out to the far end of the field. Then he said the words that I will never forget in all my remaining time on earth.

“When we’ve got nothing left you can end the game. Or I guess keep playing, keep fighting even when you’re sure you’re beat. It’s always gonna be the same game, but you can make different choices. We can’t ever forget the people we lost, and we can’t bring them back either. We failed them. You and me. And they suffered because of it…though it wasn’t for lack of trying. We can live haunted by that fact forever, or we can find peace in it, let go of the guilt. End our own suffering.”

He looked me in the eye, his face slowly fading to black. “Let go, Hap.”

I closed my eyes and Todd was gone. Joyce’s beautiful face smiled at me as she trimmed the roses in the front yard, the sun catching the dust in the air and making it sparkle.

When I awoke next, I was inside a canvas tent dim with the pale light of morning. I instinctively lifted my arm to inspect the damage and was pained but not surprised to see that most of it was missing. Groaning, I rubbed at my face, thick with straggly facial hair. I had been asleep for some time it would seem.

I turned my head to see a tiny face. It was gone in a flash as the little boy ran out of the tent and started yelling something to someone. A few moments later, a young man came in. He told me his name was Gabriel, and he was a doctor. He had sewn me up as best he could, though it was obvious to him right away that the arm would have to go. That was fine because, for the first time in my life, I was happy just to be alive.

I asked to see Todd. Gabriel told me Todd had left as soon as he was sure that I was going to be okay. He headed north. I was disappointed of course, but I understood. Canada is cold, he needed to be gone and on his way before the winter hit.

Something tells me, someday, I will see Todd again. I keep hope alive. Whatever he is doing, I hope he is not suffering. I hope he found home.

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"Todd" was featured in the sci-fi anthology, The Beginning & End of All Things. Pick up a copy on Amazon or anywhere else books are sold.

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