June 1, 2025

I’m supposed to be on watch, vigilant against the metallic beasts that have murdered so many.

Instead, I’m looking at the flowers. The spindly tree across the street is an explosion of pink. Tulips, daisies, and what I’ve decided to call hydrangeas blossom in the tiny gardens along walks, against foundations, or in window boxes. My station in the corner of what was once my favorite coffee shop offers quite the view of the neighborhood. There’s an entrance to the highway three blocks away, around the corner. The town council’s convinced that if the machines come, it’ll be from that direction.

The most threatening thing I’ve seen in the last two weeks is an angry goose that’s decided he’s king of the nearby intersection. Anyone who’s dared come close has been run off with a honking, flapping, pecking tirade. We’ve all decided the throne is his until he dies of natural causes or chooses to abdicate.

Behind me, Martin snores in the coffee shop’s famous red leather couch. Before, I wrote so much good stuff in that thing. He’s taken his boots off and curled into its soft cushions, his face buried in the corner. Where’d he leave his gun? Ah, over by the window. Further away than it probably should be. Supposedly Martin served two tours in Afghanistan, but you’d never know it just by talking to the lazy bastard.

My rifle’s in my lap. I’ve used it to murder plenty of tin cans, but nothing more. It was this or farm duty. “In these trying times, we all must all band together and work for the common good of the town!” the mayor’s voice reminds me in my head. He’s right, but he doesn’t have to be such a dork about it.

If Martin can sleep, I can write. Hello, new journal. I’m Esme. Nice to meet you here at the end of the world.

June 3, 2025

We’re not sure where the machines came from. Maybe some poor soul out there on what’s left of the east coast knows, but that information didn’t reach California before the bastards hacked the power grid.

There are theories, of course, diverse and often batshit. The Marstons are convinced the machines are extraterrestrials here to wipe humanity off the planet and take our resources. Mary Kruger thinks they’re a DARPA project gone wrong. Martin bet me five dollars they’re the first wave of a Chinese invasion. Kelly blames Nancy Pelosi. Old Rod Wrentham’s been telling everyone the machines crawled out of the basement of a pizza parlor in a murderous quest to prove the superiority of their creator’s meatball subs, but I can tell from the glint in his eye and the way his theory keeps expanding that he’s just having fun with it.

Bill’s idea seems the most plausible to me. “Remember that asshole tech billionaire who proclaimed on Twitter that he was going to build an AI that would save humanity from itself?” he said in between puffs of our last joint one night. “I think he tried and he fucked it up.”

Before the machines cut the power, they flooded the internet with pictures and videos of their attacks on our cities and towns back east. Bill told me it was pure carnage. Like they didn’t think we, as humans, mattered one bit. I’m glad I never saw it.

I look to my right, at the goose guarding his intersection, and I wonder if the machines are just looking for a place to call their own. In their own murderous way.

Fifteen years on the force, ten as the county sheriff, I thought I’ve seen the grisly worst. Mostly ranch accidents. Hooves and horns through skulls, barbed wire through most everything, I got a stomach lined with steel, a gag reflex that doesn’t gag. And here I am, bent over, OJ, eggs, biscuits and gravy on their way out.

Sarah, my deputy, she’s hurling, too. Side by side, buckled over, we’re retching, flinging spittle and digested food from the griddle off our hands. Looking like newbs is what we are, as if we’ve never seen death days after. But this gruesome display defies physics and my iron constitution.

This ain’t no accident.

The victim is a woman, blonde, in her twenties or thirties. She’s wearing urban-camouflaged fatigues, smattered with blood and her insides. Her face unrecognizable. Her body size and type indeterminable. She’s an amoeba of contorted body, crushed from a fall. From where? That’s what Sarah and I got to figure out.

Standing, I block the sweltering sun with my hand and look around. Not a building nor high ground in sight. Brown prairie grass and big Montana sky stretch to the horizons.

“Someone could have dumped her here, George.” Sarah swats at a magpie with her cowboy hat, her long black hair blowing in the wind. The magpie chatters and flutters a few feet away. The flies, too many to do anything about, feast.

“Naw.” I scan the ranch land, inhaling whiffs of fetid air. “No tire marks anywhere.”

“Could have done it by horse.”

“Could have, and a cumbersome transport that’d have been, but heck, look at that.” I point to where the woman’s parts lie scattered. “There’s a crater the size of a buffalo wallow, mostly dirt and such. She fell right here. I’m sure of that…only that.” I crane my neck up at the endless blue above, not a wisp of white anywhere. “An angel in God’s Country.”

Sarah packs a can of Copenhagen and pops a pinch in her mouth, never letting that badge or her condo fool anyone. She’s cowgirl, through and through. Raised on a ranch, her adopted ma and pa still live on that ranch. And get her on that ranch? She outrides, out-ropes, out-wrangles damn anybody. Fine deputy, too.

She spits black juice on the ground. “What’s an angel doing without wings?”

“Dying is what.” I shake my head. “Awful way to go. Tossed from a plane or helicopter, I reckon. Only thing makes sense.”

“You recognize them fatigues?” Sarah creeps to the body.

I follow, careful not to step where blood has sprayed. Grass crunches under each step. My nose is now used to the smell of decay, and I catch hints of the prairie with the wind, a dry, sweet smell, like coriander. The flute-like call of a western meadowlark warbles nearby. I crouch for a closer look, feeling all my forty years, and ignore the tickle of flies on my nose, then ear, then cheek, their buzz a grating constant of my job. “They’re for urban warfare. Anyone with a credit card can order them online. But look here.” I point to a small green flag with six yellow stars sewn onto her breast pocket. “You recognize that flag?”

“New to me,” Sarah says with a smirk I can’t place. I’m about to ask why the grin, then it vanishes as if it never before existed, like a rainbow after the air dries out. Her eyes are misty, a thousand yards away. It’s the look she gets when admiring a newborn foal.

“You all right there?” I snap a picture of the flag with my phone.

She sniffles and wipes her eyes. “Sometimes this job just gets to me. It burrows under my skin. Makes me want to shed it.” She swallows, gutting tobacco spit.

Her answer doesn’t sit right. It tastes off because of that subtle smile seconds before her tears swell.

“I know the feeling.” I look toward the heavens from where the woman fell. “You know where to next.”

Sarah stands and walks to our two ATVs, which we rode in on from an overgrown dirt road that’s not worthy of a name or map. “Airport.”