Made to Endure

Chapter 03: What Came Before

The seized gears inside the tarnished front door screeched loudly as Melanie applied enough force to push the door back into place and close the entrance. If any undead were around to hear the noise, and they nearly always were, they'd be unable to get inside.

She turned from the door to look at Eddie, wondering about this person to whom she'd suddenly been linked.

"Something wrong?" Eddie asked after several moments of her staring at him.

"I've been turned into a machine to fight the undead responsible for destroying the world, and I'm having to answer questions from a stranger living in my house," she stated flatly. As always, no anger or any emotion colored her voice; they were simply words. "What part of that doesn't seem wrong?"

"Fair point," he conceded. "Allow me to rephrase. For what purpose are you staring at me?"

"After Delkin was killed, I haven't spoken to or even seen a living human in almost two years," she explained. "I was considering you, and this situation, as it is unfamiliar to me."

"Well, I've never met someone so heavily enhanced before, so it looks like this is a new experience for the both of us," Eddie responded, his smile widening enough to be visible through his beard. The smile faltered momentarily. "Who's Delkin?"

Melanie didn't answer right away. Opening up a few pockets on her vest, she removed several items and crouched down to work with them. She pulled out four long pins from a palm sized box of gleaming brass. Plugging the pins into the lower corners of the box, she set the box down like a small table. A key wound the mechanism inside the box, and as it activated, the interior of the box, visible through slots in the side, began to glow red hot.

"Delkin was a survivor I located in a small town near the Silver Falls mine," Melanie said while working. She flicked her wrist sharply, and the disk she'd retrieved from a pocket unpacked into a metal cup. She placed the cup on top of the box and used the water flask, hanging at her hip from a shoulder strap, to fill the cup. "The town was overrun, and those with him had been turned or killed, sometimes one after the other. He was the only one left, badly injured but alive and still fighting. After the undead were purged from the area, he offered to come along. He was bitten while clearing the fishing village of Deep Water, and at his request, I ended him."

Her voice was steady, unclouded by emotion of any kind for there was no reason for emotion. He lived, fought, and eventually died. It was simply the facts of the events as they occurred, and Melanie stated them as such.

Taking out a small pouch of powder, she sprinkled some of the silvery dust in at the precise moment the water began to boil. The water turned deep purple for a moment, but it cleared as the liquid thickened.

"Where did you get nutrient powder?" he asked in wide-eyed wonder. "It's incredibly rare these days."

"The people who repaired me had a large supply of it," Melanie answered. "Over the last five years, I've nearly exhausted what they provided me, even with my limited needs."

"Who were they?" Eddie asked.

"I don't truly know," she admitted, adding a pinch of a red powder from another pouch. The boiling mixture solidified into a dark brown shape matching the exact dimensions of the cup holding it, and the sound changed from bubbling to sizzling. "I was in an old warehouse formerly used for storing volatile chemicals. One of the containers must have corroded over the years because it breached, exploding on contact with the air. The chain reaction was considerable. Fading in and out of consciousness, I barely remember shovels clearing away the debris and strangers pulling me out. When I awoke, there were seven of them, inventors or researchers by the tools and equipment they wore strapped about them; one of them explained I had been dying, and they used their skills to repair me, making me perfect for surviving the harshness of the world."

Melanie pressed a switch on a circular and flat piece of metal the size of her palm. Latches released, and metal plates slid out one after another from a slot on the side. Each thin plate had a small upward hook on its forward edge and a downward hook on its trailing edge, causing each one to catch on the next in sequence. The plates fanned out in a widening spiral until all of them had been deployed to create a dish in her hand. Removing the cup from the heating box, the glove of her hand protecting her still human fingers from the hot metal, she dumped out the cooked food on the dish, handing it to Eddie.

"What about you?" he asked.

"I need very little as I have very few organic systems remaining," she countered.

He accepted the offered dish of food, taking a sharpened table knife from his pack and cutting into the nutrient loaf. Skewering the slice he'd created, he popped the morsel into his mouth, closing his eyes for a few seconds as he chewed slowly.

"I haven't tasted anything like that is some time," he admitted after he finished the bite. He began slicing another. "You were saying they'd rebuilt you, but what happened next?"

"They showed me how to maintain my internal workings," Melanie went on. She didn't know why she was explaining so much to this man, but she didn't know why she shouldn't either. "They provided weapons and supplies, pointing me in the direction of the nearest horde of the undead."

"Did you find out their names?" Eddie questioned, the mouthful of food stuff into one cheek muffling his words slightly.

"For what reason?" Melanie asked, tilting her head slightly. "Their efforts had enhanced my capability to carry out my mission of fighting the undead. How would knowing their names have changed that in any way?"

"They did save your life," Eddie pointed out. He paused eating as his focus shifted more to the conversation. "They might've been able to help you more in the future. Knowing their names and where they were going could've helped you find them again."

"They didn't make me to find them," she countered. "They made me to kill zombies, to endure where all others had died. I would either succeed in my mission, and they would find me, or I would be simply a failed project no longer worthy of their attention. Either way, it doesn't matter if I know them. The world that came before the undead, along with everything and everyone in it, no longer exists. Only what has emerged remains - survivors and zombies. Knowing the identities of the past is of no significance."

"If that's true," Eddie suggested softly. "Why did you come back to your old house?"

Melanie paused while considering the unexpected question.

"I don't know," she admitted.

Eddie finished his meal without another word, and Melanie didn't break the silence. She lacked either the proper words or the reason to say them.