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Novelo Rectangle

The rain hasn’t stopped since the machines took control and not for the first time I wonder what will happen if they ever do. 	Perhaps I’m being too hard on myself. I was just a child when the invasion occurred. Barely out of single digits, my fate was decided by adults in faraway places as I ran and hid and cried whenever the Purifiers showed up on land and in the sky. Sometimes it seemed as if the sky had been ripped open when they appeared.	We weren’t even their primary target. 	Of course, we had no idea this was true because they didn’t bother to tell us. Why would they? Do we consult with the wild animals before invading another country?	My grandfather knew why they were here. As a tribal elder, he’d been privy to all of the old stories. Sadly, nobody outside of the reservation listened to him, dismissing him as an old crank with too much of an affinity for the past.	Maybe because I was still a kid, I believed every word that came out of his mouth. He’d often sit me on his lap and tell me about the “Apistotoke,” the Blackfoot name for the god who supposedly created the Above-People. These beings were said to have their own land above the clouds but, it wasn’t what came from above that should have concerned us.	Below us, existing as if the surface world hardly mattered at all, was a race of beings that had only been hinted at for centuries. They had been given many names and the descriptions ranged from human-looking to reptilian, depending on who one asked. It didn’t matter what they looked like, however, because no living human being has ever seen one and told the story.	Whatever grievance existed between the Sky People and the ones dwelling underground, we might as well have been insects buzzing around as far as they were concerned. 	There was nothing subtle about the way it all went down either. One moment humanity was living its collective life and the next corrosive rain fell all over the planet as massive machines emerged as if from the very raindrops to wreak havoc on the surface of the Earth.	It happened so fast. No militaries were deployed, no resistance mounted. Those massive earthmover-type machines just&nbsp;rolled over everything in their path, leaving behind blood and death everywhere they went. Plus, the rain ate away at even the toughest structures, reducing towering spires of metal to so much rust and slag. 	So many people died in the first few hours, an accurate count of the death toll was impossible.	To this day, I have no idea how my grandfather got us to safety. His last words were something like, “Nothing’s gonna happen to my girls” and then darkness. My older sister said he must have picked up some tricks from the Sky People but I guess we’ll never know. What I do know is we wound up inside a cave without physically leaving the reservation. Fortunately for us, it was a cave the machines never came near and it was filled with rations.	“Grampa knew,” my sister said through tears. “They prepared him and he sacrificed himself so we could live.”	I couldn’t argue with that, although I felt like she was missing something. I felt like we were all missing something.	#	The day my big sister decided to die was the worst day of my life so far. I begged her not to do it but she said she’d had enough and needed to leave the cave and see what the world had become. The machines hadn’t fully taken control back then so there were days when the burning rains didn’t come down. She chose one of those days to step out of the cave and get a look at what had become of the world.	She was only gone for an hour. When she returned, she stood in the entryway to our cave and wept for several minutes before speaking. I took a few steps toward her but she held up her hands and told me not to come any closer.	“We were so wrong,” my sister said. “This isn’t a war between two races of creatures at all.”	I shook my head, telling her that made no sense. It was plain to see. The Sky People were rolling through the surface, rooting out the underground inhabitants and engaging them in battle. Giant all-terrain machines of pure destruction slammed into one another, firing projectiles and spewing flame while scorching rains pelted the Earth’s surface. Only a fool couldn’t see that.	“You need to come in and lie down,” I told her. 	She stopped crying, looking at me as if I was the one who’d lost her mind. A moment later, she erupted with hysterical laughter, the tears of sadness now replaced with a storm of amusement running down her sharp cheekbones. Doubled over, she clutched her stomach with both hands and uttered something incoherent.	“I didn’t understand,” I said.	My sister’s head snapped back up as if yanked from behind by a chain, her facial expression filled with fear and sadness. “I said it’s the rain!”	Still not understanding, I opened my mouth to question her further when she cried out as if something deep inside her was trying to claw its way out. “It’s in everything,” she said, sounding as if she was both laughing and crying at the same time. “It is everything!”	“What are you saying?” I wanted to run to her and shake her until she started making sense. She was all I had left in this increasingly messed up world and now I was losing her to grief and madness. I thought of my grandfather sacrificing himself with one final act of magic to save us and I wondered if it had all been for nothing.	Stalling the inevitable wasn’t the same as being saved from tragedy, was it?	Smiling as tears rained down her face, my sister told me the rain moved from world to world, feeding, delighting in the destruction in its wake. I felt tears sting my eyes as well; she had finally lost her mind. I’d always thought I was the tightly wound one but insanity had claimed her first after all.	Despite all my coaxing and pleading, my sister never re-entered the cave. She never had a chance. The machines arrived before she could even entertain the thought. Without a word, she turned away from me and held her arms out as if supplicating the gods and, maybe, that’s exactly what she was doing, for it took no time at all for her to get swept up into their enormous treads.	I like to think she didn’t have time to scream but deep down I know she did. But no sounds came from here as she was smashed into pulp and fluid. 	And the rain, it kept falling.	#	I doubt it will ever stop now. It’s been weeks and it continues falling at the same rate day and night, covering the world’s surface with its corrosiveness. I’ve begun running out of food in here so it’s only a matter of time before I’m forced to leave the relatively safe confines of my grandfather’s sanctuary. I know the rain will tear at my flesh but what choice do I have? I will never answer its call.	Oh, yes. It calls to me, maybe even to all of us. 	The machines roll ever-onward, colliding with structures and running over who or whatever gets in their way. Sometimes I think the underground creatures are long gone, genocide having claimed them months ago. 	It’s the rain.	That was what she’d said. And while I still didn’t, would never, fully understand what she’d meant, some ancient, sequestered part of me knew something more than I would ever allow myself to admit aloud. There is nothing natural about it. There are no warning sign weather patterns, no black clouds hovering above us. There is only the rain and the machines and death.	I do not fear them, not anymore. They are my normal.	But there is still fear in me. Fear of how things will wind up, of what will happen to the human race. Some nights I listen for the rain and am comforted by the sound of it because what will happen if it ever stops?	&nbsp;	&nbsp;	&nbsp;	&nbsp;	&nbsp;

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Scorched Earth Policy

cnadeau123

Christopher Nadeau

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Scorched Earth Policy

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Christopher Nadeau

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