Human

Chapter 1: Dust

On the horizon, a car was kicking up dust.

It was unusual to see many working cars anymore. Between the shack and the city there were hundreds of broken down cars, collected in a graveyard of sorts, becoming more and more dense leading to the limits of the city, the city that never stopped smoking, like an alarm that never stopped ringing. I leaned against the doorway of the shack. Our dilapidated lawn gave way to acres and acres of land, once used for crops but now brown and dead.

In the dim room behind me, Trevor was at his workbench tinkering with some technology that looked like it had come from a couple decades ago. I looked back at him and he gave me a tight lipped smile. He had a warmth about him, looking up at me with his pale eyes, wearing his old leather jacket and frayed jeans. I always had to remind myself that we were not friends, and that he was dangerous.

"There's a car." I said.

Trevor set down his invention and came to stand behind me. The car was odd, it was silver, not a spot of rust. Usually when cars showed up they were patchwork quilts of rusted metal, and people would haggle and threaten Trevor until they reached an agreement to get their car back to barely running.

The state of the car gave me a bad feeling, but I didn't retreat into the shack, it wasn't much safer than standing in the middle of the road. It was like toothpicks hot glued together, so I figured I could face whatever was coming.

It felt like hours passed, standing in the dry heat, watching the car come closer and closer. It finally rolled to a stop in the front yard, almost too bright to look at. The driver's side door opened and all I saw was a barrel of a gun peeking over the driver side window. I jumped but before I could react I felt a stinging in my knee. I looked down and saw a red dart in my leg, then I was falling. Leathery ams caught me,
wooden floor,
darkness.