"What is it!?" I frown down at the.... Whatever it is.
It's taller than me, and bears a slight resemblance to a large beetle. It might once have been red, but the dented, cut, decaying and singed plastic-like stuff is so mutated and burned and dirty and rusted, so warped by some massive event of destruction, that it is barely distinguishable as any color at all. One thing is for sure- It's a pre-apocalyptic machine.
"It's like a piece of history," Coal murmurs at one point, after we thoroughly examine the outside. There are the remains of glass, some of it melted, some of it shattered, in openings all around the plastic-like frame. There four crescent shapes cut out of the bottom of the frame, and half-eroded spokes of wheels and hubcaps are visible. "I once saw pictures of things like these in books back in the Palace. The people of the Old World called them cats, or maybe it was, like, nars, or something like that." He shrugs, pulling on the handle of one of the two doors, but it dissolves to rusty powder in his hands, and he tugs in vain on the door frame, but it's rusted shut.
The wind howls, and the clanking begins again. It is a lonely sound, like the voices of long lost souls, fleeing for their lives from the end of the world.
Suddenly I'm hit with a vision, like a crippling force. I can't move. I can't speak. I can only watch as time is reversed and the Wold is whisked away, and the world is ending.
YOU ARE READING
71
Science FictionThe world ended a long time ago. Some humans survived. But in order to do so, the original Survivors enhanced themselves with animal DNA, adopting traits that allowed them to live in this mutated wilderness of giant Beasts and vast, unexplored swath...
