The air in the tavern is a cocktail of heat and dirt and iron. Liquor burns old sores in the back of the throat and cools the burning hearts inside. Talk is but a gentle, wary murmur. The evening is old and searing.
A man stumbles inside of the establishment. His hat is crooked. Blood dribbles out of his mouth and patters sloppily onto the floor. He falls onto his face. The impact sends a cascade of dust into the stale air, and there is an immediate uproar.
“Let’s get ‘im onto a bed upstairs,” sighs Mrs. Wrenhill. The broad, sturdy woman nods to her husband, who’s enjoying a snack of biscuits and a soda hunched behind the bar’s counter. “Come here and help me, baby.”
Mr. Wrenhill shoves the last of his current biscuit into his mouth and peers above the counter. “Oh-! Right.” He vaults over the thing and immediately lifts the man by his legs. “Who’s this guy? Haven’t seen him around here before.”
The wife tips up the hat of the man - he’s looking much like a cowboy - and gets a good look at his face. Well-stubbled, strong-chinned, older and weary. He’d be quite handsome, although it was hard to tell in his current state, bruised and beaten and bleeding. It was odd. Guys like him would usually settle things the old-fashioned way, with a bullet to the heart. So what kind of scrap had he gotten himself into?
“I’ve got no damn idea.” Mrs. Wrenhill shakes her head, beginning the effort of lifting his limp body. “But nobody dies on my doorstep.”
One particular onlooker in the crowd of customers is staring quite intently at the injured man. His face is speckled with dark markings, and his bright eyes look piercing against his dark hair. Were the injured man awake, he would know very well who this man is. But he isn’t, so he doesn’t. And the onlooker stares on with a great tug in his heart.
~
“Fuck!”
The man awakens with a jolt, an impact, and a hiss through the teeth. There’s a bunk above him that he’s just vaulted his head into. He grabs his forehead - then his stomach, feeling the warm pulse of a wound. A voice above him mutters “Calm the hell down…”
“Give him some grace, Will,” Mrs. Wrenhill chides. She leans down to greet the injured man. “You’re awake. You slept through the night pretty sound. How are you feeling?”
He stifles the nausea creeping up his throat and takes a deep breath through the spreading pain in his stomach.
“Like shit, ma’am.”
She chuckles. “Humor is a good thing in a situation like this.” She holds up a damp rag and motions towards his wound. “May I?”
The man nods, and she leans down to dab at the bloodied area. There must have been some kind of alcohol on the rag, because it burns like hell. The man grimaces and grips the bedside.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“It’s Mickey. Mickey Wilder, ma’am.” He looks away, both bashfully and in pain. “My buddies all call me Mike.”
“Never heard of ya. Now just what happened to you out there, Mikey?” He doesn’t seem too fond of this nickname. “Ain’t you cowboy-types always killing each other the old fashioned way? Who’d you make so angry?”
Mickey bites his lip. His tightened knuckles become just a bit whiter. “Look closer at that gaping hole in my stomach and you’ll get your answer.”
Intrigued but cautious, the woman does just that. She carefully lifts up the crusted, stiff fabric away from his body. He’s sweaty and feverish, so it peels off less easy than she would have liked. But she gets a good enough look at what he’s referring to.
Silvery strands creep up on the skin through the hole of the wound, with pulsating blue dots glowing along them. It’s as though a bit of a machine had blasted into him and had become a part of him. Wrenhill had seen enough cases like this. There was only one cause.
“One of those Machines…” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “You know you shouldn’t be messing around with those.”
“Full well.” Mickey huffs and uses one wobbly hand to try to get himself up to stand. “You don’t want nothin’ to do with a guy like me. They’re gonna be after me, and then…” He loses his resolve, and falls onto the floor once more. The thud is heavy. “Gah- fuck!”
“I’m trying to sleep here, goddamnit!” shouts Will.
“Oh, just give us a minute, for cryin’…” Wrenhill mutters a curse and helps Mickey back up. “You get back in bed there. You’ll be safe here for the day, but after that I want you out. I can’t in my good conscience kick you out without barely even bein’ able to walk.”
Mickey sighs. “Well, that’s mighty kind of you.” He flops, resigned, onto his pillow. “I won’t cause no trouble for you. I promise. It’s just those… things. That’s all.”
“What kind of business are you in to get twisted up with those?”
“None of your concern.”
That’s that, it seems. Mrs. Wrenhill opens her mouth, then closes it, then stands back up. She dusts off her hands and leaves the towel at the bedside.
“I’ll grab you some breakfast and coffee.”
“Thank you kindly.”
~
That night, the cicadas were wailing louder and the fireflies twinkling brighter than they had in a long while. The commotion keeps Mickey up quite late - between that and sleeping once more through most of the day, he isn’t particularly tired. The next morning, he would be leaving the tavern, and be back to his revenge mission. A losing game no matter what. But it was all he had left.
His coffee is cold on the nightstand, but he takes a tiny sip to fill his mouth with something. It’s bitter and cold. He isn’t sure what he expected. But the flavor is appreciated regardless. Even that would be gone soon, after all.
There’s a tip-tip-tap up the stairs of the tavern - the way up to the lodging. It sounds a bit lighter than Mrs. Wrenhill’s; perhaps it’s her smaller, mousier husband. But the person that comes through the door is an unfamiliar one - a bit larger and obscured by shadow.
“Mike.”
No, not a stranger. It’s- -
“Strauss…!”
The figure comes into view. Our dark-haired, freckled man from earlier. His eyes are the strongest thing in the room, visible even through the haze of the night. Brighter than any lantern or candlelight.
Mickey pulls himself back with his arms, somewhat weakly. “Now what the hell do you think you’re doing here…?!”
Strauss, eyes somber and low, kneels down face-to-face at Mickey’s bedside. He reaches out, gingerly, and takes one of his hands.
“Mike. Mike, I heard. I heard all that business you got tangled into. Mike…”
“…Get off of me…!” Mickey growls.
“Mike, why…?” Strauss pulls harder at the man’s hand, holding it steady. “You promised me. You promised you wouldn’t go after her.”
“A promise from me doesn’t mean shit!” Mickey spits. “You of all people ought to know that by now. I do what I need to do, and that’s it. Now get out of my face.”
Strauss leans in a bit more. “I won’t, Mike. I want to help.”
“You’re only dooming yourself.”
“I don’t care. It was you and me for years. I can’t just leave you out to dry.” His stare is steely - more intense than Mickey has ever seen it. “Tell me everything that’s happened. Maybe there’s a way we can fix this.”
Mickey sighs, deeply. “There’s no fixin’ what I’ve done.”
“Then at least just tell me.”
A pause.
“Fine.” Mickey grunts and heaves his legs off of the bed, out from under the damp warmth of the quilt. “I guess you ought to know.”
Strauss doesn’t break his gaze. “Okay.”
~
I was out last week, on one of those days you think the heat’ll kill you. Barely any water left in the can. A bit north of here, near that Machine factory. I was looking for her. Dahlia.
I know they’d taken her somewhere around here, and at that point, I was so sure that was the right place. The Machine scouts were a bit thinner on one side of the structure, so I snuck inside. Pretty easy when none of ‘em spot you. Heh.
I’d only been inside two of those factories before that. Well, I guess you’d know - you were there with me for both of ‘em, huh? Haha, you were a wild little shit. Both of us were. Two kids who didn’t know what lives we were riskin’. I knew full well this time though.
A maze of steel and glass and glowin’ panels. It’s something else. Nothing you’ve ever seen before. They know things we might never figure out. Maybe one day we’ll be able to explore all of these places after the fact. I took a few knick-knacks from the place before I made my escape, but I had to throw ‘em all out before staying here. I wasn’t sure if they had ways to track me down with ‘em. A damn shame.
She was in there, Strauss. I saw her with my own two eyes. Those Machines, they’ve got those ‘holograms,’ those cold gray images of people - this wasn’t that. It was the real deal. Dahlia was alive. They had her in a room. She wasn’t even chained up, caged, or nothin’. She was just standing, facing away from me, talking with one of those things. Like it was a person. Like she wasn’t even thinking of trying to get away anymore. I wonder what they had told her.
Dahlia, I said, it’s me, it’s Mike, you remember. She turned around and stared. Like she was scared. It’s like she didn’t want to see me. There was even something like anger there. I felt like I was gonna puke.
She shouted something that I couldn’t make out. And then all of them were shooting at me. I barely made it out - well, I guess I didn’t. They got me, right on the side, my stomach, here. You know what that means for me, Strauss.
I’m gonna become one of those things. Like Sally, and Marcus, and all of those others. A goddamn Machine. There’s nothing you can do for me, okay?
There’s probably nothing you can do for Dahlia either. She probably doesn’t even wanna leave. They’ll either find me first, and do what they want to me, or they’ll leave me to… change. And I’ll come back to them, like I was never even a person.
Isn’t that the saddest thing you ever heard?
~
Strauss choked back a wail. “Mike.” He lays his head down on the man’s lap. “You’re so fuckin’ stupid, Mike, you know that?”
He begins to sob into the fabric of the quilt. Deep, wracked spasms, barely audible. Mickey watches on. He does not offer any comfort.
“Let’s just get out of here tomorrow, alright?” Strauss looks up, his face a smushed mess. “We can just run away. They might not catch up to us. We can leave a breadcrumb trail, to this town…” He blinks. “These people, we can just… oh, I don’t know, Mike…! What the hell have you done…?” He punches the side of the bed. “You…. You….”
There’s a haughty huff from the top bunk, but Will says nothing.
Mickey smiles. “Yeah. We can do that.” He ignores the all-consuming pain from the wound. He ignores the sear of metal digging into his skin, spread through almost his whole torso, now. He ignores the still-rising fever. He ignores the bucket besides him, washed clean of the silver-green vomit he’d been expelling all day. And he pats Strauss’ back. “Tomorrow morning. Are you gonna be sleeping here?”
“Um-“ Strauss wipes his nose, like he wasn’t expecting that. “Oh. Um, sure, uh,” he stutters. “I’ll have to go next door… no beds left here…”
“Just- here.” Mickey breathes. “Sleep in here, besides me.”
“And we go tomorrow?”
“We’ll go tomorrow. And they’ll never find us.”
“They won’t. We’ll go south, and just keep going. Somewhere with no factories. No Machines.”
“Yeah. And maybe… Dahlia, she’ll…”
“I don’t give a damn about Dahlia anymore. She’s been gone a long while.”
“Oh.” Strauss sniffs. “Then, just us.”
“Just us.”
~
The Wrenhill tavern was found, destroyed, the following dawn. No survivors.