The rain hasn’t stopped since the machines took control. Perhaps it’s nature’s quiet protest, the tipping of the scales in our favour. It’s an easy revenge, watching the deformed creatures fold themselves under tarpaulins and old cloth rags, rattling under corrugated iron shelters and cowering from the steady downpour that floods all of the south village. The smaller ones slip into cracks between crumbling bricks, or hibernate in rusted tin cans or empty food cartons, discarded microwaves or kettles. But it’s harder for the larger ones, their hulking figures trickier to fold away into a corner. The stronger ones battle for space under the domed apse of the cathedral, the last part of it left intact after the bombings. They turn on each other ruthlessly for shelter, cranking and whirring under the stained glass nativity, the gilded crucifix hanging cracked and dusty overtop of them. The weakest machines slink away, dented and battered, and continue the search for a new spot to shield their counterfeit bodies from the rain, fearful of the one thing they cannot understand, nor less control. To see the great metal beasts cowering under the mercy of nature, their decrepit forms browning with rust under the dark sky; to hear the steady hum of their machinery fade just slightly as another engine splutters and fails, sparks the tiniest of hopes amongst the defeated. For whilst we may be no match to an engine with unparalleled force and strength, under the might of the open skies, they are just as vulnerable as we. 

But nature will not hold them for long. It continues to goad us, keeping our enemy weakened, willing us to make our attack. This should be our opportunity to secede from the settlement, to rearm, and take back what is ours. Yet the days pass, and nature grows angry at our inaction; storms whip the shelters, harrowing winds pierce the nights and the days are thick with a dense, shivering smog. We are just as much its enemy as we are its ally, for we are just at its mercy as the machines that clatter along deserted alleyways as they are swept into the howling winds and ripped for parts. In truth we cannot regroup; the collective we once were died the second they entered our camp. Now we hide out in small groups, chewing on plaster and crumbled brick, tending to our wounded and mourning our dead. So many dead. But the flood will have washed away their bodies so we cannot be reminded each time we venture outside to search for more supplies. We feel little empathy in natures frustrations, for the flood wrecked our remaining resources, starving our children and haunting our elders with illness and fatigue and cold. It would be difficult not to feel anger at these things, if the cold hadn’t numbed most of the senses; we have become not unlike the machines that rot in the rain outside. Sometimes, on the harder days, it is difficult to feel anything at all, when the body is wracked with chill and the mind aches with the remains of the dead. It would be so peaceful to just disconnect, wire by wire, until all conscious thought is stripped away. It would be so easy; we are mechanical in our new life already, living with a prosaically structured similarity. Sitting in the same damp room chewing wallpaper and staring blankly at the sheets of rain out of the holes in the plaster each day for hours on end. It's our minds only that keep us alive, and not just a beating heart in a vessel full of wires; thoughts spinning through our collective minds as we struggle through what we have done. At night the darkness speaks to the limits of our imagination; old friends and lovers appear before us, chastising us for not staying with them, or crying out their injuries. Guilt is something we wish we could unplug; it hangs upon the group like mould growing on our backs. The machines do not feel guilt as they dig through corpses for new parts, severing chains and sawing off aluminium with oil coating their claws. We wish we held that little respect for the dead, but hate that we feel jealous of what inflicts our suffering. Maybe, slowly, our whirring brains will unplug and begin to gather dust. Some of us have already begun to shirk away from the rain, fear taking a hold of them like it did for the electrics as they see the damage it has done to our landscape. 

The remains of the city smells metallic with burnt engines and dry blood, and only hasty footsteps and light whirring of cogs would indicate a sentient presence. But any sound is drowned out by the heavy roar of the rain echoing hollow on the plastic roofs and dampening walls until the smell of blood is subdued by mould. It feels like a divine punishment, one of the elders said once. For the destroyed cathedral, for when we couldn’t pray because we were scared to speak. We wondered if the machines prayed, if they felt anything at all. What divine power would they pray to, if they have no brain to think, nor mouth to speak, nor hands to pray? Yet they moved to the cathedral, hid under upturned pews and altars, watched the rain pelt against the stained glass Mary as she held her child. It was silly to think of the machines that ripped apart the great stone building cowering beneath Mary for divine protection. It was silly to think of, because there is no use humanising what is not human- once the rain stops they will burn the rest of it down. They will destroy it all, we know. Nature will only hold them off for so long. Soon the landscape will be dry with smoke, and they will burn us out of our hiding spots and quirk their greasy antennas up in a greedy smile for they know they have taken everything from us, and all we can do is sit and watch it burn with us. So for now we will take as much delight in their cowering sputtering forms as we can, their waterlogged engines, the erratic beeping and whirring distant but still audible behind nature’s thunderous barrier, before the rain eventually stops.