Sea of Rust (Sea of Rust, #1)

by C. Robert Cargill

There were jets screaming overhead. Bots were dropping all over the place. I just started shooting. It was . . . it was . . .” “Awful.” “Yeah. It was awful. Pulled through that night okay, but we were under siege there for a week. I had to kill a lot of people. That was the worst of it. I didn’t know most of them, but one of them . . . well, he was a regular. At Marty’s. Nice guy. Married the wrong girl, spent his time in the bar regretting it, wishing he’d married the right one when he had the chance. But he loved his kids. Always talked about his kids. I found him manning a makeshift defense line built from burned-out cars and sheet metal. He’d mounted a pulse rifle to a car door, where the window used to be, and was just firing blindly, swinging back and forth, screaming and howling. Dropped half my unit. I had to sneak up behind him and crush his skull. When I looked down, I saw he’d carved the names of his kids into the door, taped a picture of them next to the carvings. He lived in a part of town that had been hit earlier in the week. I know, because we were the ones that hit it. Ended up finding my way into the air force shortly after. Flew drones for the rest of the war. It was easier to kill people from a distance. Even if you didn’t know ’em.”