Made to Endure

Chapter 07: The Bridge

Melanie pulled a golden pocket watch from her vest and thumbed the release to open it. The ornate hands showed her how early morning it was, and she clicked the cover back into place. Returning the watch to her pocket, she set about the work necessary to dismantle the camp and put everything back in its proper container for travel. Halfway through her work, she spared a glance toward Eddie to find him watching her.

"Good morning," he offered with his usual smile.

Melanie kept her face impassive, but her mind was racing. She hadn't slept at all last night, normally she could've passed it off as a part of her mechanical nature not needing rest, but she couldn't lie to herself convincingly enough to deny the reality of it. Her mind had been unable to rest because of her previous conversation with Eddie and the questions he'd planted in her mind like aggressively growing weeds in an untended field.

She cooked a quick breakfast to make sure they both had the energy for the journey. Eddie didn't say anything while she worked, for which she was relieved. Melanie didn't like feeling relief as it came from her human half, reinforcing what Eddie had said about her being more than a machine, but her dislike of emotions was just as bad. The machine part of her identified emotional feeling as chemical reactions to stimuli by her organic neural tissue and regulated such as non-essential information, but ever since she'd started talking with Eddie, keeping the lid on the box where her emotions were held in storage had become a greater and greater challenge. It made her wonder if her systems had been damaged in some way and that was the reason her efficiency in maintaining focus was not as great as before. Whatever the reason, she was certain it was Eddie's fault.

After breakfast, they moved away from their camp and continued toward the mountains. It was nearing midday, when the cobblestone road, nearly buried under thick grass, transitioned to beams of iron in the form of a bridge. The construction spanned a canyon carved by the river far below. The bridge was old and covered in years of flaking rust. Just the passage of the wind across its framework made the entire assembly softly creak and moan as if ready to collapse.

"To limit stress on the structure, we should probably cross one at a time," Eddie suggested.

"I'll go first," Melanie decided, marching forward without waiting for a response. Her alterations made her much lighter than a fully human body would be, so she knew she was a better choice to cross first, checking for potential weaknesses along the way. Additionally, she was much faster if the bridge should begin to fail.

The bridge groaned ominously when she put a boot on the metal plating of its walkway. She analyzed the ratio between the yield of the metal and its resistance in order to better understand its predictable tolerance levels. Satisfied it would hold for the time being, she took another step. Fortunately, there were no stalled or wrecked vehicles adding to the weight or obstructing her path. In less than a minute, she had reached solid ground where the overgrown cobblestone road began again.

Melanie looked over the trees and green hills nearby, searching for potential threats before turning back to the bridge and gesturing for Eddie to follow.

Eddie swallowed hard and began to traverse the suspended platform, his eyes repeatedly flicking toward the edge and the plunging drop. His steps were slow and cautious, never placing his full weight on one foot until certain the plating underneath would hold.

Melanie considered telling him to hurry, but she realized a faster pace lowered efficiency and could lead to an accident. If he were killed by falling from the bridge, the body striking the rock walls on the way down would be rendered into such a poor state, it would be unable to move or function, even if it became a zombie. Her mind was still considering the possibility when the low groan from the bridge increased in both pitch and volume to a nightmare shriek. The entire left half of the bridge twisted, dropping low and knocking Eddie off balance. The end of the bridge furthest from Melanie broke free of several supports, threatening to send the entire structure to the bottom of the canyon.

"It's going to break!" Melanie shouted.  "Run!"

Eddie sprinted the remaining distance, the bridge shaking under him even more violently. Collapsing on his stomach as the bridge lurched under him again, Eddie grabbed for the railing or anything else to keep from falling off the side. He latched onto a support rod, but the aged metal of the bridge had become as resilient as old parchment. The rod crumbled and broke off in his hand, but it lasted long enough for Eddie to regain his footing. He didn't reach the other side before the bridge gave way.

The majority of the bridge fell away into the depths, smashing and shattering itself against unyielding rock walls on the way down. A few struts and deck plates remained, hanging down from the edge of a cliff like the panting tongue of a rusted metal dog.

"Melanie!" Eddie called up from where he clung for dear life to the last pieces of the bridge.

She didn't answer him as she had already turned away and started walking. She knew when Eddie fell, he'd either be killed or so badly damaged he wouldn't be a threat even if he became undead. Since his condition no longer mattered, she'd decided to return to her mission. Her mission was to destroy the undead, and Eddie had been a distraction from that mission long enough.

Eddie's shouted plea reached her a second time. She didn't know why she stopped, and even less why she turned around to look in the direction of the ruined bridge. Her thoughts were a confused knot again, and before she could try and sort them out, she acted without thinking.

Melanie's hand clamped around Eddie's wrist, and her enhanced muscles allowed her to lift him up with only one arm, setting him back on solid ground.

"Thanks for the save," Eddie remarked. He was breathing hard, and he grinned before adding, "Good to know you care."

"It isn't that," Melanie denied immediately.

"Then why did you?" he questioned.

"I don't know," she admitted. The reason behind her action refused to be justified in her mind as Eddie's life or death didn't affect her mission one way or the other as long as he wasn't turned, and the only other possible motivations she could come up with were illogical and therefore irrelevant.

"Saving someone without knowing the reason," Eddie mused. "It isn't a very mechanical thing to do, but it's very human."

Melanie didn't respond.

"If you keep this up," Eddie told her, "you won't be able to even convince yourself that you're only a machine."

Melanie thought about her various weapons, considering which one would be the most efficient at making him shut up.