The Mechanical Bird

An abstract post-apocalyptic tale, written while listening to Elliott Smith and Radiohead. The bird was inspired by Vah Medoh from Breath Of The Wild.

There’s a fire down the road. Nobody ‘round here knows how it got there, but it’s been burning as long as anyone can remember. Things just aren’t the same as they used to be anymore. We still manage, but things just aren’t the same. There’s nobody to fix our communities problems anymore, since the incident, our government’s just kind of…faded away. We fend for ourselves, and it works out just fine most of the time, but I wasn’t sure if I could take it anymore. So I decided to pack up my life into a car and set out for new land. Out on the road, it seems for a moment that everything’s the same, it seems so..normal. The same moon, the same sky, it almost makes me forget about the crumbling buildings and the dying world behind me. The trees rust and decay on the hills around me, all their fruit rotten on the ground. This possibility had crossed my mind before, but I was now positive that I couldn’t go back, assuming there was even anything to go back to in the first place. I had crossed the borders into Texas now, and my first thought was to make it as far as I could until I made it to a new community, maybe to a larger city like Dallas, or maybe just another town, but I knew that after too long I wouldn’t have much of a choice, once resources became more scarce. I stopped at a gas station seemingly in the middle of nowhere, stars hang above me, constellations point themselves out to a patient eye. If I got lost out here, it would surely be the end. I stepped out of my car, I didn’t expect any gas to be left, but I needed to clear my head for a moment. A man leaned on the side of the brick walls, his clothes ragged and torn, had he even noticed me? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to risk getting myself into a potentially dangerous situation. He slowly leaned up and said 

“I need to go, will you take me?” His voice was hoarse and raspy, his beard a smoky gray. He didn’t seem like much of a threat, so I took him with me. We scarcely talked, but he only asked me to take him somewhere else, didn’t matter where. We had both left everything behind, nothing left but whatever the future held. Once we had gotten over a clearing in the trees surrounding the road, I saw a large mechanical bird circling the sky as the sun slowly rose and cast a tint of orange on the horizon. It was man-made, 3 propellers on each wing, it was the size of a zeppelin, unlike anything I had ever seen before. It just circled the sky above this town, never landing. We stepped out once inside the town, the man thanked me and went his way, I never even caught his name. I walked over to what seemed like the town square and asked an official looking man in a suit what was up with the bird thing. He told me “You must not be from around here, are you?” “No, sir.” I replied. “That thing protects our town, it can spot anyone trying to come from miles away, long before they see it. If anyone tries anything aggressive, it’s chest opens up, and a smaller mechanical bird, more like a vulture than anything else, will go down and attack them. It may sound ridiculous, but that thing’s been there since the calamity, and it allows us to function as a proper town, we just kind of get used to it.” I knew this was the place for me to settle. “Do you mind if I live here, my town was falling apart, so I had to depart. “You’ll have to ask the mayor for permanent residence, but I can set you up in the inn for now.” “Thank you, sir, I’m sure I’ll become a valuable member of your community.” “Not a problem. The name’s Breece if you need me.” I sat in my room, lantern flickering in the darkness, and I just couldn’t handle the silence right now, so I took a walk. My mind was the only place I was truly safe anymore. I sat underneath an oak tree, and I looked up at that mechanical beast blocking the sun, I had no idea what to make of it. I was aware I had this first day off before I started working or anything like that, so I met the townsfolk, looked at the scenery, it seemed like a nice town overall. Well, these days a man will take anything he can get, and it seemed I had lucked out. That night, I headed off to sleep, completely unaware of what this town was hiding from me. The next morning, I felt the earth rumble beneath me, I looked out the window, and I saw an all out war, buildings on fire, corpses laying in the streets. Not long after I stepped outside, someone grabbed my collar and held me against a wall. “Are you from this town, sir?” He asked me in a slightly aggravated voice. “Yes, I just arrived.” “Come with me, sir.” He took me just outside of town and put in what seemed like some kind of underground bunker. It seemed like he was going to tell me what the hell was going on, and that’s exactly what he did. “There’s a reason that town sustains itself so well. That beast in the sky ravages other towns, steals their resources just to supply that town with more, they’re the scourge of this whole province. Now’s the time to take everything back. Come with me, it’s almost time for the show.” He brought me up on a hillside. The mechanical bird was falling from the sky, engulfing in flames, it was the end of an era I had never even known. It crashed down on the mountain with a sound that seemed like the whole world would hear it. “I know you couldn’t have known, but please be aware that not everyone is as they seem.” I took those words to heart, I still wonder to this day what might have happened if I hadn’t been saved. Would I have become one of them, would I have become the villain in my own story? I try not to think about it, only about carrying on. I stood on that hillside, looking out at the scorched ruin of the town, and my only thought was “where do we go from here?”