Amongst Machines

The Night I Was Saved

The husband knew it was coming. He had known it all along. But he also knew that he could do nothing.

"Wake up Samantha."

His wife, Kaitlyn, looked up from her spot on the worn couch, surprise clear in her raised eyebrows. "Are we going somewhere?"

He turned away from the window, from the small speck of light in the night sky, signaling something. Something.

"We need to leave. Tonight."

"What?" She got up, stretching her legs and aching back, unsure of what he had said. She was five months pregnant with their second child.

"We're going to my mother's house."

"Your mother lives in the country, Charles. It would take three hours to drive there. I don't understand what's happening."

The light was growing bigger now. It looked like a signal fire. He stared at it, willing it to go out and fade to nothing but the ashes of paranoia.

She stood by him, pressing her hand against the cool glass of the window.

"What is that?"

He said nothing, but walked up the stairs to wake their child.

"Charles?" She called after him, her voice weak. She knew that it was a signal. She knew why he was tense. She knew why they had to leave. But she wanted him to tell her something different. She wanted him to laugh at her and say, "what? Oh, Kaitlyn, I think you've read too many books."

But no one laughed that night when he came downstairs with a sleeping Samantha in his arms.

They left without turning off the lights, and Kaitlyn felt the urge to check if the stove was off, but instead she held her husband's hand as they descended the steps outside their flat, not even bothering to lock the front door.

The road was dark and empty, but the windows from the apartments glowed with a soft yellow light that made Kaitlyn wish for a cup of hot tea while curled up in front of the television.

Charles pulled her into the shadows, and asked her to stay there with Samantha. "I'm going to find a car."

She cradled Samantha as he jogged away, listening to his footsteps echo against the metal road until there was nothing but the sound of their breathing and the distant city traffic. She wondered, for a single dark moment, if he had left her and the child for good. But her thoughts were interrupted as she heard the familiar sound of mechanical footsteps approaching, so she withdrew further into the darkness of the alley and prayed that she would stay hidden.

"It will officially start in an hour."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, we need to warn the others to get out of this part of the city."

Their voices were toneless, cold. Inhuman. Kaitlyn shivered. Robots. Her heart thudded faster as she contemplated what they were planning.

They moved away, the gears in their joints quietly working with every step. All was silent again, and she allowed herself to breathe once more.

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The car that Charles found was old, but had a smooth engine. Kaitlyn guessed that was why he chose it. They kept the headlights turned off, but there was no one on the road.

No one left the city. Ever.

His wife stared out the window at the cracked road and the overgrown vegetation, wondering if their life would ever be the same again. She rubbed her stomach without thinking about it.

"I heard them talking, Charles. What's going on? We left everything behind," her voice broke.

He squeezed her hand. "I know. I know you're scared, and you don't know what's happening, but right now... you just have to trust me."

Samantha yawned and stirred from the backseat. "Mommy? Daddy?"

"It's okay Sammy. We're just going to visit Grandma for a little while."

Samantha sat in the backseat quietly, not saying anything, her brown hair bobbing along to the bumps in the road.

"Where's Tilly?" She finally asked. Her goldfish.

"Um.. Grandma doesn't like-" An explosion shook the Earth before Charles could finish. A telephone pole seemed to fall in slow motion, and Kaitlyn screamed as he swerved out of the way.

Once he straightened out on the road he stepped on the gas, travelling at 110 miles an hour. "Just a little longer" he murmured behind his gritted teeth.

"Charles slow down!!" Kaitlyn yelled at him while Samantha cried and shrieked in the back.

He turned suddenly onto a dirt road, nearly crashing into a tree, and awaited for the yelling to start, but instead Kaitlyn said, "Charles. Look."

But he didn't need to look. He knew they were being tailed since the explosion. "I see it Kate."

"Charles." Her voice sounded urgent. "They're getting closer."

He saw the forest up ahead, getting closer and closer with every passing tree. A gun rang out into the night and their tire burst in the back. Kaitlyn didn't even have time to scream when they ran headfirst into a tree.

Charles yanked open the passenger door while she sat there in shock, a wailing Samantha on the other side of him. He pulled her out and began running deep into the woods. The car exploded behind them, sending a wave of heat racing after them as he pulled his family behind him.

"Come back here!" Robotic voices shouted behind them, firing guns towards the family. "You have nowhere to go!"

Charles ran and ran, and didn't stop until he thought he had lost them. He finally let go of their hands, and turned around to check on Kaitlyn.

She laid on the ground, covered in dirt. Her dirty blond hair was tangled with sticks and leaves, and she lay lifeless before him, her body stretched out on the ground as the blood from the wound on her back stained her white nightgown and kept growing.

She was dead.

He dropped to his knees in shock.

"Kaitlyn?" He shook her.

Samantha crawled away, crying and clutching her broken wrist. She hid in the intricate root system of great oak and watched her father hovering over her mother.

"Kaitlyn?!"

Once more, a gunshot rang out, and Samantha's father, like her mother, collapsed onto the ground.

Dead.

The mechanic footsteps made their way over to the couple, embraced in death.

"Where's the little girl?"

"I dunno. She probably died in the car."

"No she didn't. I saw the guy pull her out."

"Then she probably ran into the woods or something. Either way, she's as good as dead."

They walked away, and Samantha stayed there until the headlights disappeared. Until the fire died out, and left her in complete darkness. She stayed there until the hints of sunrise shed a light on the wreckage before her and even then she stayed there until her Grandmother found her the next morning next to her parents' dead corpses.