The Botflies

A solitary oil bug, atop the washing dunes, the sand collapses, and like a waterfall it crashes buried underneath it, momentarily. It digs out and recovers, marching to its only mission, a fate of all creatures with instinctual intellect: food, shelter, and survival.

It evolved through the years attaining wings, and a proboscis to siphon oil like mosquitos do blood. The proboscis is strong enough to pierce through metals, but usually through crevices in the metals, that were minute for even regular mosquitos to needle through. Through these crevices harbored, veins made of oil, a whole network, run through the whole of robotic bodies, frighteningly exact in anatomy to human beings. Bugs, like mosquitos, have a strange sense where they can locate particular places where blood may be, and it was the same for the oil bug. It could smell it, for miles upon miles, and a hefty amount at that. It swam through the sands, at times, to make it go easier and quicker than sinking through every time, piking every step along the way with its needle-like legs. Its antennae rattled, even when it was drenched in sand, and even the dust couldn’t conceal its oil black skin. But the sun had made it too stressed, and it felt like it was under an attack, it involuntarily activated its counter. When under duress oil bugs secrete a chemical, blistering and irritating skin. But after years with robots, they had evolved to discharge acidic oil. An oil they had consumed and in its digestive organs, somehow, with its own properties mixes it into an acidic substance, that could eat through the toughest of metals. It was a risk in the cities, which is why most immigrated to the dunes. Despite oil bugs, being bugs, they had an intelligent nature to them. Like cockroaches, sly, fast, and cautious. Able to maneuver and sneak up on someone and leave without them ever knowing.

The wind was blowing a stench so cruel, so rancid, it betrayed the rustic smell of the desert. The oil bug caught wind of it in an instant, and it was close by. Though it was close by, there was a smell along with it of metal, at times moving, gliding, he could hear it whipping like a flag. But it was unconcerned, and it went on its way. It would fly, for the exception of the wind so it continued struggling along.

Then it reached its destination. Its right foreleg, caught in a miasmic pool, black, sinking and gas strong enough to make drunks in a bar parlor puke. Some fumes were rising from it and there were flies and gnats, still twitching and buzzing, not for long, but they were alive somehow. It was still wet. Still widening, and the footsteps were becoming harder to define, with sand mounting over it every minute. The steps were moving south, and had little spots of oil behind it, leaving a trail, which made food for the oil bug, the least of his worries. The oil bug, its antennae bouncing around crazily, over the oil and its thin head almost waving at the aroma of the oil, it slowly opened its serrated jaws and thrust its proboscis in the oil and the sand. It was careful not to ingest too much sand, but it frantically sucked up the oil like a sponge. The oil dissipated, and the sand was clear and yellow. Its proboscis reversed back into the hole beneath its pincher-like mouth, taking along spots of sand. It stood for seconds moving onto the next oil spill, then the next, and the next. After a dozen more drinks, it still hadn’t had enough—at least to add to its reserves.

It had reached its fourteen oil pool, having to step onto barely noticeable footsteps, its proboscis thrust again into it, and it took it out.

Then suddenly a sound like thunder, boomed in the sky, and a rapid splice through the air passed through the oil bug’s abdomen, exploding it into particles; and its oil splattered through the sand like an ink blot. A metal, peaking out and shining in the sand, made a large pit and like quicksand, it sank through the center creating a funnel shape. The wind roared even harder, and the oil miasma wafted and waded like a fire, and something other than an oil bug approached the oil bug massacre.

There were two. Two other sets of footsteps, denting the ground hard enough so even when wind added sand to it, it wouldn’t totally bury it. They’re movements were loud, clanging metals, and gearing loudly in their bodies. One led their party, the other shadowed behind, but the shadower was not—by any means—being led. The shadower was confident, with an attitude, the way he trudged along the desert could tell it all. He had no time for bullshit, and he would wait under his own terms. The lead was flamboyant, but engineered to be so, bouncing and kicking his feet in the air, the feet clanging like striking a metal pipe to a metal pole, a total opposite to the shadower.

The lead and shadower were suited for the desert, literally.

The lead donned a plain white turban around its pill shaped, shining metal head. Not even the dust of winds, or the rust of time could remove that shine. A black scarf wrapped tightly around its naked metal neck, a dust brown leather vest over a long sleeved black shirt, khakis with spurs on the heel of the cowboy boots—stars— and halfway in his shoes were filled with hot sand. Didn’t matter though, he couldn't feel a thing. And his eyes were two glowing gold dots an inch long, no pupils, no cornea, eyelashes, just pure colored light. His mouth was an old radio frequency receiver, and the dial would bounce right to left between channels at the volume of his speech, glowing the same color of his eyes to show he would talk. He carried a satchel over his right shoulder, and in his right arm a long sniper held up high.

The shadower was a creeping shadow, his shoulder and back hunched, and the sand never made him stagger, or ever made him sink. The desert was afraid of him, so it led a way for him, and he couldn’t care less, and if he cared at all about anything, was a mystery beyond mysteries. He was a beautiful man, on the right half side of his face, and the other was mangled, strips of flesh still holding on to the hard cold steel of his other half, that the desert heat and the rays of the sun couldn't warm. His beautiful half was human, a deep blue eye, and a stubble of hair at his chin, it was real hair, and so was the hair on the top of his head, unkempt, long, rugged, and black. His left eye was a black hole, and at the deepest, of his eye was a glow of red light, faint but still there, like an animal, like a predator at night in the bushes. His right arm was human as well, and he never let it out of the pocket of his duster coat. With exception to his right arm, his face and his hair and skin on the upper side of his body, everything else was metal, nuts and bolts, gears, screws and oil.

A crocodile dundee, over his head, crooked, to cover his black eye, he could still see through it, but he hated to look out of it, it felt too unnecessarily uncomfortable. The hat he could not remember purchasing, but he could not go without it, he even replaced the fangs originally on dundees with sniper bullets. If anything were to fit on his head it would only be this dundee, all the rest were straw hats, the coily ones, with the netted straw sticking out from its edges, it bothered him. Aside from his brown duster coat, underneath was a black blazer, he wore a bandana scarf at the neck, dust green, had some well off dark boots to withstand any weather, jeans sagging a little; because he didn’t care too much to tighten his belt, and a plain white tee underneath to top it all.

They approached the sludge, and smoke from a heated bullet in that one spot. The lead bent down, and gawked at it, using the sniper butt to stand him still, his eyes beeped and blipped to different colors, crooking his head and inspecting the crime he’d laid out and the prints after it.

The lead awoke from his trance, and jolted, rising excitedly and energetically, his radio receiver mouth began to fluctuate and glow green, he said:

“--Silas!--Silas! We got ourselves a real catch this time! If we just follow along this path of footprints here, we’ll jab ‘em in no time at all-- hmm-- what d’ya think?”

The shadower, Silas, was still under the beating of the sun, looking downward at his feet, above the sand, atop the desert, he had no fear of anything, not even of being turned off, “I know, we’re within range, shoot them down,” Silas said.

“Silas, y’know we can’t just shoot ‘em down, that’s against our orders, don’t you remember, let’s keep following them, blindside ‘em, bag and drag ‘em back, come now you really thought it’d be that easy partner,” the lead nudged his right arm in a playful manner to his right elbow. It was painful he felt, pain, the lead had not laid back his strength. Silas tempered, a silent rage, in his empty chest he vacuumed a sea of air and converted it into pressured mist, bursting through the left side of his jagged mouth. The right half still closed and his lip up and teeth visibly clenched, the jagged line on the other half, open just enough for steam to come loose, like smoke out of a kettle. Silas grabbed him by the collar with his left hand, swept him off his feet, and held him up into the air, constant and unwavering, he hung there like clothes on a hanger. The lead was not shaken, because the whole voyage, he had been in situations like this, and fear is not in his program. He clutched Silas’s arm, enough to dent it a little, and his eye, turning orange, a color for warning, and detection, red being murder on sight, and Silas was cutting it close.

But Silas stared right back at him, closing his blue eye, and staring directly at him with the black one, raising his head to meet him face to face, concealing it.

“ Calm yourself Silas, you're not wanted anymore? You're my partner but, if you stand in the way of our mission, I’ll need to exterminate you along with the criminals, ok, partner?” He had a silent eariness to him, a cool tone, and the radio bar on his mouth a shade of orangish-red the same as his eyes, he was held up limp but he wasn’t carefree for nothing, he was carefree because he knew he was just as dangerous as Silas. “Let’s enjoy ourselves, while we’re here alright, it'll be a fun journey, you and I, catching criminals, exterminating criminals into molten metal parts, and I’ll even make ‘em into a new rifle, with all sorts of gadgets, and a better scope--ooh-- and how about I get their parts to fix up any old parts your still lookin’ to change, a new leg? Maybe even an arm to replace that dumb one you got there.”

Silas held him up, the lead’s body swinging side to side, the wind was knocked up and went into his mouth but he was unmoved, and unchanging in his resolve, the remark about his arm bothered him a little. The lead continued, “Isn’t that why you was a criminal Silas? Because you wouldn’t give it up, well maybe you were too shy, I’ll help you out, don’t worry your little head, I’ll--” Silas dropped him and kicked him a ways, his back and sides scrubbing the oil in the sand and staining his clothes, burying him in mounds of sand. “Torpido,” Silas said resentfully, looking down on him, “touch my good arm again, and I’ll molt you into liquid steel, get it...partner.”

Torpido, laid in the sand for a while, like a bed, he recollected himself, taking time for his eyes and mouth to glow green again. He straightened up from the ground, slapping dust and sand from his kneecaps to his abdomen. He didn’t need to clean his head, because he always knew it’d be clean as a whistle. “You can’t hide your arm in the shade, when it’s burning on fire Silas—eventually all things will come to light, and when they do, you know what’s going to happen right?”

They locked eyes for seconds, then Silas head down, and left arm limply swinging at his side, blew past him, knocked him a little with his shoulder blade. Torpido hung there for a minute looking at the scraped up prints, a few flies and gnats were buried in it, fluttering still. He turned his head a little, inspecting the critters, how futile, he thought. He took a position, straightened and lifted his leg, and flattened the still bouncing bugs, squishing and knocking up dust and oil, over his cowboy boots, the spurs getting oiled up in the process. He’d done it a few more times, before cleaning himself up again, they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re exterminated, he thought again. He looked about his surroundings, glancing at the sands beneath his feet for the sniper he’d had in his hands, he looked up and saw that Silas had gone yards without him. His original goal was to exterminate the criminals, but it was also to watch Silas, keep an eye on him, never let him out of his line of sight. He went back to the place he suspected he’d been held up by Silas, and saw his sniper had gone barrel first into the semi-large dune. He pulled it out like Excalibur in the stone, the butt of the sniper in his palm and adjusted onto his shoulder. He grasped it, looking through the scope, to make sure sand didn’t jaundice it, and then he looked out of it and at the retreating figure of Silas. He leveled the sniper, and pointed right at Silas, he eyed him with his small glowing eyes, they flickered red and so did his mouth. Torpido murmured to himself, “Oh Silas--dear ol’ Silas, it's a shame, a damn shame.” The reticle spot on, and a clear shot, not even wind to block him from his sights, it was steady, no swinging, just a robotic sure shot, ready to exterminate him in no time. Torpido stationed his finger on the trigger, and he let the silence build up. “Psheww!,” he motioned, bouncing the gun and letting it fall on his hip, “Don’t worry Silas, I’ll at least listen to your final words, before I blast your metal brain off, you bastard.” Silas was beginning to sink below the horizon, Torpido held the sniper to his side and picked up the satchel sitting on the dune where the sniper was. He’d raced to meet up with Silas, running now, sliding on sand, and sinking like he was in a bog. He’d yelled for Silas to wait up, but he didn’t have time to wait, he had a mission to do, and if Torpido wasn’t going to shoot them down with his sniper himself, then Silas was going to wring their necks himself. Almost racing in the desert, Silas’s right arm is still buried in his pocket, sweaty and pulsing with pain. His shadow was black against the yellow and white sand. He stared back at it, Torpido still yards away, and placed his right arm out, scanned it, and turned it, he bent down and sank his arm into the shadowed sand, it felt cool, and then he did so with his other hand, he felt nothing, absolutely nothing. If Torpido would’ve bumped into it he wouldn’t have said a thing, he wouldn’t have been pissed, he would’ve just went about the path. He hovered his hand away from the shadow and into the light, it was stained in oil from the oil footprints. His hand became black, he tried to rub it off, but it dried, now black palmed, he didn’t give it any more thought, and placed his hand back in the duster coat pocket.

The oil path was wetter the more they went on but they knew they were days away before catching up to the criminals. The sun was setting, the sand mounds cast shadows, they were long, blackened, and encapsulated Silas—and Torpido who’d skipped fast enough to end up behind him. Now they were both shadowers and in this new dusk, they were followers of the desert.