I had been asleep when the attack happened. I was resting off my arm on the floor of the bedroom while Marley slept in the bed. Hanson stayed up on night watch. They must have snuck up on him.

I woke up to the sound of struggling outside of the homestead. I jumped out of my sleeping bag, Marley was already awake. I put my finger up to my lips.

“Stay here.” I said to her. I walked over to my overalls and pulled my rusty Beretta out from the pocket, sneaking my way out of the bedroom.

As I entered the hallway someone began pounding on the front door. They were trying to get in. Entering the kitchen, I grabbed a small steak knife off of the counter. As I approached the front door, the pounding stopped, but a small shuffling continued. Suddenly I heard the sound of a key entering the front door and a shotgun blast going off. Surely they had just blown Hanson’s face into oblivion. As the door swung open, I threw the knife. It plunged itself right into a raiders neck. Gurgling, gasping for breath, he hit the floor. This drew the attention of the other five raiders, who began sprinting for the house, guns a blazing.

I tried to shut the door, but the raider was in the way and I had no time to move the body. I turned around and ran down the hallway and into the bedroom. Marley was shaking.

“What was that noise?” She whispered.

I didn’t answer. I just ran to the window and opened it up, jumping outside and reaching my hands back through.

“Marley, come here!” I hissed.

As she got out of the bed, the door flew open. Next thing she knew she was surrounded by all five of these brutes. The bullets flying at the window made me fall over. One of the bullets grazed my hair.

I ran, it’s all I could think to do. I couldn’t kill all of them. The worst of it all was Marley’s screams as I ran farther and farther away, eventually silencing them through distance alone.

In the cold dead woods in nothing but my underwear, I walked through the forest pistol in hand. God knows what a man could come across at this time of night.

The sun had just begun to spot over the horizon when I noticed a man riding a horse in the distance. He spotted me and started to approach. I gripped onto my weapon tight. As the man approached me in his horse, I noticed that this man looked like something straight out of an ancient book. He wore a black dress coat, a white dress shirt, a black bowtie, a top hat, and tight black dress pants. Surely I had gone mad.

“Why, hello there!” The jolly chap said, his mustache wrinkling.

“Help… I need help…” I said feebly. Although immortal, walking all night still does a number.

“And what do you need help with, son?” He asked me.

“Back… Back there…” I said, pointing behind me. “There’s a girl in danger.”

The jolly chap seemed shocked yet excited upon hearing this.

“What? A girl? In danger?” He said as he pulled a rifle out from the saddle. “Well hop on back, old boy, we’re going for a ride!”

I got on the back of the horse, and he handed me the rifle, pulling an identical one out of the other side of the saddle. Surely I had gone mad.

It only took an hour before we got back to the homestead, and the sun had already come up. I got off the horse and ran into the house. It was dead quiet.

Blood had been stained all across the walls. Everything was destroyed. Half of one room even looked like it had been set on fire.

Then I got to the bedroom; Marley’s body was on the ground, skinned from head to toe, blood pooled all around her. Her clothes were completely missing and her breasts and vagina had been cut off. The sheer amount of cuts sprawled across her small body was terrifying. This poor girl spent the last few hours of her life in agonizing pain, constant suffering, wishing she would just die.

I hadn’t cried in years. I fell on my knees and broke down right there. No amount of time on this world can prepare you for seeing the kinds of horror that humans are capable of. As I flooded the floor with my tears, the jolly chap had entered the room behind me.

“Oh my god.” He said, all humor drained from his voice.

“God?” I said. “There is no god. Nobody would let this happen if they could stop it. Nobody.”

The tears came back. The jolly chap stood in silence behind me the whole time. I cried for what seemed like an eternity, occasionally screaming to the heavens in pure agony. After I had quieted down, the chap began to speak.

“We need to bury her.” Is all he said, and he was right. We spent the next few hours retrieving some shovels we found in a shed and burying two graves; one for Marley Burrows and the other her headless father. We found old pieces of wood and made two gravestones with 2x4 and nails. I wrote ‘Hansen’ and ‘Marlie’ on the headstones by accident.

***

The Jolly Chap told me over supper that his name was Emmanuel Stevenson IV; he was an explorer from a wealthy family and one of the rare mortals born with a silver spoon. He told me his life story of how he has dedicated his life to roaming the wasteland with the sole purpose of helping others and bringing justice to a lawless land.

For a young man of only 29 I told him he was doing a great job.

“Thank you, sir! I really appreciate that!” He said to me, sipping on a cup of tea. “And you call yourself The Mechanic, you said? Now how did you get such a silly name like that?”

“That girl you saw earlier. She gave me that name.” I said bluntly. He looked incredibly guilty.

“I’m sorry… I… I didn’t know.” He said.

“It’s okay.” I said before cracking a weak smile. “You know, it is kind of a silly name.”

He and I both shared a laugh, that’s something you don’t often get to do in this world. Not with others.

“So you’re a guy like me, just trying your best to help the small guys.” He said very matter-of-factly.

“I guess so, except I’ve been doing somewhere around two hundred years. But to be honest, I’m not much better at it then you.” I said.

“Well, hold on, you haven’t even seen me in a firefight yet. For all you know I could be a piss poor shot.” He joked.

“I’m sure you’re not that bad.” I said as I ate into a hot meat sandwich.

“Eh, maybe not. I’m still alive today so I guess I must be pretty good.” He said, continuing with his tea.

We shot the shit for the next few hours as the sun died down. Emmanuel made us a good fire outside the homestead and we sat and drank some mead that he had in his saddle, it tasted much better than the alcohol that Hanson offered me. In the saddle was also an acoustic guitar that he played and sang as the early morning hours came around. One song in particular I found quite beautiful. He told me it was called “Don’t think twice, it’s alright”.

As the night went and our intoxication grew, our conversations grew increasingly meaningless.

“… A Mechanic is someone who works on Cars; they were a mode of transportation before the war.”

“No… Immortals can’t have sex because Xenopram makes them impotent. Losing the reproduction eventually loses the pleasure.”

“I couldn’t… No, there’s no woman out there for me.”

“I don’t know where my overalls went, actually… I tried looking for them when I got back, but I guess one of them must have stolen them. It’s good there’s a fire, though.”

I guess Emmanuel must have felt bad for me, because he reached into his seemingly bottomless saddle and handed me a pair of clothes. It was cool because I actually looked pretty snazzy. It was lame because I was dressed exactly like Emmanuel.

“What do you think?” He asked me.

“It looks awesome.” I said, which was the biggest lie I think I had ever made. They were clothes, but if it weren’t for any clothes at all I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing this get up. We danced and drank until all the mead was gone. We both passed out beside the fire with no sleeping bags, with nothing but the moonlight and burning wood to keep us warm.