Trembling With Fear 11-12-23

With Hands Unstilled, by Addison Smith

From the debris of Westfield, the machine collected parts and melded them to its body. Some of the parts were steel and circuit—robots who fell to steel bat and iron rod. Those pieces wove their wires into the creature, fingers and toes flexing as their circuits connected and became a part of something new and monstrous.

Not all parts were metal, however. I closed my eyes and lost myself to the dark and silence in our shelter beneath the rubble of the old rifle shop. Though I heard nothing, I imagined what Sarah heard from below my wardrobe perch, peering out the thin basement window. Bodies lay in the street, unburied in our haste to hide. The machine approached the bodies, recognizing salvage for its purpose.

Shoulders dislocated and arms ripped from bodies like tissue beneath its strength. It pressed arms to its body with its own metal appendages.

In recent weeks, the machines changed, and within them they carried a core of pulsing flesh. They wanted to be human, I thought, or some combination of us and them. Now, the destroyer held the arms to the flesh within. The flesh reached and probed and subsumed until even the human arms stretched their fingers and waved in the street, new tools of the strange creature.

I felt Sarah moving, the change in the air that meant she was near. She tugged gently at my shirt and I looked down to barren eyes. “What is it?” she signed, hands quick in the ray of daylight.

I dropped from the wardrobe into the basement below. I put my arms around her, and horrors filled my nightmares. In my thoughts the machine found us, but I pushed that aside, not wanting to think of the tearing and stillness. Even so, I saw Sarah’s arms upon the machine, used for its own efficient purpose like tentacles writhing in unison.

“It’s a monster,” I signed. My hands were filthy and scratched and conveyed my fear. Tears stung in my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. Death had come for us like we knew it would.

Sarah jerked her head toward the window, staring into the open day. I wondered what she heard out there, but I knew I couldn’t change anything. It didn’t matter if the creature fled down the street or stood among the rubble of our fortress. It would find us.

“Sarah,” I signed. “We need to run.”

She nodded and it was tired and broken, but still alive. She still held hope, despite all that had happened.

We gathered our weapons from behind the furnace in the corner. Dust fell with every shift of debris, flecking our hair. There were no guns, and I was glad for it. The shop had been ransacked long before we came to be there. Guns made me nervous, and even now I wasn’t eager for their protection. I hefted two long steel bars from the floor. They were heavy, but I could swing one in each hand. Sarah brushed back her hair and retrieved a dull axe. She leaned it against her hip to free her hands.

“Together,” she signed. Her movements were sharp and insistent.

“Of course,” I signed.

She looked into my eyes, seeing the lie in my words. We did what we must to protect each other. I would give anything for her safety. I saw the dread that put in her stomach.

We stepped through the basement and up the stairs, feeling the tactile snap of chipped concrete beneath our feet. Sarah was my ears, and she gave the signal that the way was clear. When we stepped into the light, I knew it was wrong.

The machine stood above us, a dozen arms waving. I screamed for Sarah to run, words coming strange and unheard from my mouth, a cry of anguish as I swung a steel rod at the center of the machine’s mass.

It caught my weapon in metal hands. I stood struggling against its grip, granting Sarah an instant to run, to get away from the foul thing.

Sarah didn’t run. She stood at my side, staring up at the machine. It stretched its human arms, long and bleeding and of every skin tone. With its human arms it signed words I didn’t understand.

“It’s okay,” the machine signed. “We’re going to be okay.”

Sarah stepped up behind me and tugged gently at my shirt. I turned and she signed, that same brokenness in her eyes. “We’re going to be okay.”

Sarah and the machine signed in unison, repeating their words. The things took our bodies and controlled our parts. I let the tears fall and knew that I would not be silenced. When my body was torn and separated, still my hands would speak.