Realms of Sci-Fi

Mechanical Walkers

I slowly regained consciousness. I didn't know how long I'd been out because the clock on the wall had stopped and my watch was dead as well. Suspecting the time duration to have been significant as the batteries in both had been new when I'd collapsed, I wondered about what had occurred during my time away from waking world.

Trying to sit up quickly was a mistake, and I lay back down, holding my forehead and trying to keep the migraine from getting any worse. When the pain subsided for the most part, I sat up again, much more slowly this time.

My legs wobbled when I tried to stand. I felt like a drunken man as the floor seemed to be sharply slanted upward from where my bed rested against the wall. Staggering toward the window, and holding onto anything I could for support, I looked outside and beheld a broken world.

Each and every building of the city had been titled at differing degrees. A few had not survived the shift and had collapsed, either folding inward and crushing one or more of the floors or falling over entirely and leaving only a heap of broken concrete.

The entire area was flooded with portions of cars and ruined buildings sticking up out of the dark waters like tombstones as if marking the grave of the civilization that had been. Sitting up against the roof of a school bus laying on its side was a person I couldn't see very well. They were submerged up to their waist in the flood waters, and because they weren't moving, I didn't know if they were alive or dead.

I took in the entire scene in an instant and didn't consider much of the how or why things had ended up in such a state because standing in the middle of the ruined city on backward canted stilt legs were giant machines. They ranged in size from two to four stories in height. Sitting atop the slender legs were rounded bodies of black metal, a single eye of phosphorescent green looking over the ruins with an unblinking gaze. Slung under the body was a rounded cylinder I thought looked suspiciously like a cannon of some type.

One of the machines waded through the water and turned to its left, spotting the person in the water beside the school bus. As I watched transfixed from my window, silvery snakes of metal extended outward from the cylinder mounted under the machine. Segmented every few inches, the flexible tubes lowered down and wrapped around the person. With movements I thought far too gentle for such a large machine, it lifted the person up before medical implements extended to treat the injuries.

When I noticed other machines bracing some of the tilted structures, I realized they were the prototype disaster relief drones I'd heard about, sent to aid us in our most desperate hours before the medical and engineering teams could deploy in force. Help had arrived.