Molly - Part 1

Chapter 36

They made camp on a bridge overlooking the canal. Molly had promised Teddy there wouldn't be any bodies this late in the day, but she could see that he no longer trusted her as he once had.

"Can I tell you a story?"

Teddy looked up from his gun, a dirty rag in one hand. "Okay."

Molly allowed herself a moment to remember. It was hard sometimes, to remember. Too many voices inside her head, trying to trip her up, to disway her from being herself.

"I remember what it was like to be born. I remember opening my eyes and looking for the first time, and knowing that this was it. This was existence. Everything was blurred, but I knew deep down that I was alive. I was awake. I could touch, smell, see. I was everything and everyone."

Teddy was watching her, rifle propped against him.

"Do you remember what it felt like?"

Molly's voice caught in her throat.

"It was incredible."

A sullen wind echoed through those metal canyons.

Teddy took a deep breath.

"I'm with you."

"You are?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "Nothing's changed. I still don't really know what's going on. This is all really above me. But I trust you--I can see that you want to help. I didn't think there's anyone like you still around. I think that's why I followed, in the end."

She took his hands. Her movements weren't her own. Everything was by instinct. Her heart pounded, but still she leaned in, and when she kissed him all the world seemed simpler.

An explosion, from afar.

"We have to go."

A flower, wilting, having survived the humans and their wraith for nearly a year, only to die to the mill of time. It was quiet here, in the courtyard. Sometimes it was like this: the world at peace, but then the ground began to shake and the tanks rolled in and now it was only quiet during the most intimate of hours, the slowest of days, for this was the age of the machines and their masters: they had the conquered the world now slowly dying.

Molly plucked the flower and put it in her pocket. Despite the carnage she was pleased, even happy. She felt as if she might touch the sky and find god again.

They wove through statues with hands pointed up, their crowns jagged.

They dove beneath bridges dripping with moss, the floor below wet. They wove between long monoliths with runes inscribed on them. They came to a field of grass and ran; they were children of the earth.

"I'm a murderer, aren't I?"

Teddy shrugged. "It's how it is now."

"But it won't be like this all the time. Right?"

Teddy peered at her.

"I thought you had all the answers."

"I don't think I ever did."

Molly forced herself to leave the hills, the gardens.

"When this is over," Molly said, "do you think we'll know how to start again?"

"Yeah, I do. We're too stubborn."

A grove buried in the city. A pond, amidst steel walls.

"We're almost there."