_{By ractapopulous on pixabay.com}

---

This story is brought to you by @alexs1320 , who suggested the words “printer, flood, tank destroyer” as inspiration for a story, as asked for in my Steem anniversary post. It’s loosely based on the world of an old short story of mine. Enjoy!

---

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

Rain was dripping through the holes in the metal above him. Former bullet holes, leftovers of a war long passed, that had started to rust. Shouldn’t this shit be made from something that didn’t rust? Stainless steel or something? Apparently not. Or maybe someone had just tried to cut corners and got cheaper materials than they had been supposed to. Nothing brings more profit than war, right? And nobody would notice if a random tank destroyer starts to rust one day. They weren’t supposed to exist for that long anyway. The war should end before, or new machinery should be bought.

It didn’t get that far in this case though.

Alex wiped the water off his face and stared at his wet hand for a couple of seconds. When was the last time that he had slept somewhere warm and dry? Even the summers were cold and wet. He was awaiting the next winter with dread. The last had almost killed him, hadn’t it been for the group of survivors that had taken him in. _@suesa

They were all dead now.

He was responsible for most of those deaths.

But they hadn’t left him any choice.

Not after they had tried eating him.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

The frequency of raindrops that were hitting his face had increased, and it started to drive him mad. He couldn’t stay in this place any longer. He just couldn’t. It wasn’t much better outside, but he needed to find someplace dry. He was so tired of being soaked.

Groaning, Alex pushed open the door and climbed out of his makeshift home. Mud splashed up his trousers when he landed on the ground and started walking into no specific direction. He didn’t know where he might find a better place to stay so every choice could be the correct one. And he was sure that he wouldn’t have survived this long if he had terrible instincts. So he just trusted his feet to carry him to where he was supposed to be.

He didn’t encounter another living person for a good two hours. He encountered plenty of dead bodies, some so old that there were only skeletons left, some relatively fresh and bloated from the gases building up below the skin. It was mostly adults, children were rare these days. Most had died during the war, or right at the beginning of the end. Right when the virus had swept the lands …

Several nations had tried developing a number of bioweapons, some unsuccessfully, some stopped by an ethics committee. And then, one group succeeded in creating a virus so aggressive that it eradicated half of humanity before it even reached the news. The good thing about a highly aggressive virus is that it has a hard time spreading if it kills the host too fast. Ultimately, that fact lead to an eradication of the pathogen.

But it had already been too late for humanity. Governments had started to fall apart; civil wars had broken out and became more dangerous than the original great war that had caused all this suffering. And all that was left now was a destroyed planet, inhabited by a dying species.

The water had started to rise, almost unnoticeable. But now it was slowly reaching up to his knees, and that worried Alex. If he got caught in a flood, it’d be over. There were two rivers in this city, if they both left their river beds, he’d be fucked. He needed to get to an elevated position, and that fast. Screw dry, right now he needed safe.

To his dismay, there were no mountains or hills nearby, everything was flat. He would need to enter a house and climb on the roof. He hated houses. They tended to be full of desperate survivors, willing to kill, and he didn’t need that. He didn’t want to spend energy on fighting.

But energy wasted swimming in cold water wouldn’t be much better.

Alex braced himself, pulled his machete from his belt, and kicked in the door of the house that was closest. The wood crashed to the floor inside, followed by a silence that seemed to hold its breath. Inside, it was dark, but with all electricity gone, that wasn’t particularly surprising. On top of that, candles were hard to come by, so even those were not a viable option for most people.

Maybe he was lucky. Maybe nobody lived in this house. Maybe he could stay here, inside, dry. Maybe …

A bone crunched under his boot, and he winced. Human? The bones were small. Child? No. Cat. He had stepped on cat bones. Alex wasn’t sure if that was much better, although he might have thrown up the little food he had eaten the past few days if he had discovered that he had stepped on the remains of a child. Loss of innocence still hurt him in a way he couldn’t explain.

The wooden stairs in front of him smelled like rot, neglect and, to his slight surprise, cat pee. How long had this poor animal been locked in before it had died?

Alex walked up the stairs, carefully placing every step; in case the floor would give in. It didn’t, and he arrived at the top safely. Three open doors lead to three rooms. On the doorstep of one of them sat a teddy bear.

No. No. No no no. Not a child. Please. Not a child. Not today.

Against his better knowledge, he approached the stuffed animal and reached out for it to pick it up when a printer hit him in the back of his head and made him fall over. His vision blurred, as he crashed to the floor, and he could feel one of his teeth being knocked out. The taste of blood filled his mouth and crept up to his nose.

”Did you get him?” Asked the breaking voice of a teenage boy about to grow into a man.

”I think so”, a girl of presumably similar age replied. ”But he’s still moving. Should I hit him again?”

”We can’t take the risk. The last one killed our parents. Take him out.”

Alex couldn’t tell them he wouldn’t hurt them.

The printer took care of his painful thoughts.

---

_{GIF was created for me by @saywha and @atopy , rest of the signature by @overkillcoin}