Advanced Clockwork: Young Writers Prize 2014

Chapter 21

"All righty boys." Gig said with a huge grin on her face, cheeks rosy from the exposure to the sun. "You two are heading home."

"We were told by Samuel to keep you safe." One of the cyborg men said flatly, looking up from their shades spaces behind a wagon. "Besides, like hell are we going to be able to find our way home out here in the middle of no man's land."

"Oh," The white haired cyborg mused, arching an eyebrow at them. "so you telling me that you can't do exactly what you did to find me only with their sibling that you left behind? Or am I hearing that you are being lazy?"

Both the men looked at each other, the one with the robotic eye sighing in defeat. "Give us ten minutes and we'll be gone." Gig grinned and started skipping off to the head wagon, her ears twitching in the wind as her trench coat trailed behind her. As soon as she was out of their sights, the clockwork eyes man groaned with old age and tiredness. "I hate that woman."

"You hate all women." The cyborg next to him stated, readjusting back into a comfortable position. "Just like you hate bugs, sand in your shoes, eating raw fish, and kissing babies."

"Those little monsters should he squeezed by their bed sheets, not kissed so they can bop ya one in the nose." The cyborg shot back, his robotic eye moving slowly. "Besides, I love my wife. So I don't hate all women. Just that devil of one."

" Careful." The other cyborg with the two legs said jokingly. "She has ears that can hear for up to three miles."

"Says who?" The one with the clockwork eye spat. "Samuel? The bar boys?"

"Eve." The other spat back, a serious look on his leather tan face. "And don't you think if the woman made it, she would know?"

They sat there in the shade in silence, waiting as the sun's rays seemed to start to dip behind the endless sand dunes and disappear into a sliver of the moon that hung in green haze above them. Without much words, they stood up and made there way to their clockwork animals, both men really not in the mood for yet another ride through the blistering heat and freeing cold. Yet, it seems that they had no choice in the matter on this one.

"So are we screwed getting back to the city?" The man asked, looking up at the sky as if it would give him some answers. The man with the clockwork legs shook his head in defeat and sighed.

"Yep."

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Samuel waited patiently in the shop, looking out the window as the rain that kept pouring down on them with it's green sludge-like qualities. he would imagine that the sun would be going down behind the city walls right about now, the same walls that separated the capitol city from the rest of the sand covered border cities and minor towns. But in his mind, these walls were what separated him from the two people in his life that he would die protecting.

"I see that you have put some thought into my proposal?" An old voice asked, the sound of the door closing beside him making the large cyborg man jump out of his dark chocolate colored skin. "Or is this just one of those calls where you wanted to just have a nice cup of tea in the evening?"

"I didn't expect you so soon." Samuel said flatly, turning to look a the drenched stranger in his shop. "Nor did I think you would be stupid enough to be caught walking in the rain."

The stranger that had walked in chuckled, the cloak he was wearing as well as his cloths starting to disintegrate from the acid eating away at the fibers in them, revealing the old worn face and silvery green eyes of a man that he knew too well. He stood there until all the cloths had been eaten away, his skin untouched it seems by the acid as if it were only water.