I pushed my back hard against the wall.
An alien executioner was searching the streets of this town, and it was looking for me.
There was a faint crack of grey in the sky now, the first sign of light, but it was unusually humid. A machine patrol had captured me the night before. It was pure bad luck. The area I had fled to was being patrolled by machine guards searching for a runaway who had escaped from the penal colony that was based close by. I originally thought it was Santiago, but I was to be proven wrong.
I was well guarded, but the guards spotted the real runaway silhouetted against the skyline, and all of them went after him. I took my chance and ran away in the opposite direction, covering a considerable distance before I heard the sound of the machines in pursuit. As darkness fell, they became disorientated and turned back.
I had taken shelter in an abandoned settlement overnight and was about to move on when I saw a pulsating ball of matter, the height of two men, appear at the end of the road. The monstrosity resembled a gigantic fly agaric toadstool and had a pocked and fibrous red surface dotted with circular white spots. A jet of gas raised the skirt of the hybrid to reveal tank-like treads that bit into the roadway, and shoots of organic matter appeared from vents at the top of the canopy.
On entering the atmosphere, the soft tissue metamorphosed into a nest of snakes that thrashed wildly in a fury of creation, hanging from the sphere like locks of hair on the head of an alien Medusa, and rapidly became much larger. When grown to the size of pythons, their tails escaped from the clinging lips of the birthing vents, and the hideous creatures dropped to the ground, writhing their way down the main street in a huge cloud of noxious gas.
The machines at this stage were experimenting with the creation of hybrids, half machine, half biological, and this monstrosity was an early result; that is not to say it was ineffective.
The poisoned air billowed into the doorway where I was sheltering, and my legs instantly gave way. I tried to hold my breath, but I sank to the floor like a rag doll with my head lolling on my chest. Still conscious, I saw the pythons checking out the entrances of each hut like sniffer dogs trying to pick up a scent.
The machines must have decided to kill me.
I tensed up, wanting it to be over, as a python slid noiselessly across the ground toward me, casting its head continually from side to side. Even though I was in plain sight, the creature did not see me. Rearing up its head like a cobra about to strike, it detected some other marker of my presence and instantly flattened itself on the floor in a defensive posture.
I watched in morbid fascination as the head of the beast slid back into its tubular body and began to extend itself, section by section, until it had constructed a bridgehead between us.
Sensors extended from the leading section: living antennae that waved blindly in search of their prey.
My heart was pounding, and I gasped for air as the soulless obscenity crawled closer toward me with its sightless feelers clawing the air. One antenna contacted my bare skin, and the tube crackled like a Geiger counter, glowing a neon red.
Like a mother in search of her offspring, the distant sphere emitted an ear-splitting screech of recognition that cut through the air like a siren. The searcher had completed its task, and the extended sections of its body retracted like a collapsed telescope to form a single tube. It withdrew rapidly from the entrance and vanished from sight.
Then came the distant rumbling of what sounded like an approaching tank with steel caterpillar treads splintering the surface of the road as it lumbered towards where I lay. The colossus came into view, stopped for a moment, like an old man catching his breath, and then rolled into the doorway of my hut.
The alien chimaera exuded great presence, and I fought to suppress a surge of primordial fear emanating from the depths of my unconscious mind.
Returned to their original size, the snakes burrowed like maggots into the outer skin of the sphere, and as the last tail disappeared into the body, the lips of the birthing orifices pursed together to form an unbroken surface.
The outer membrane of the ball gently pulsated, and I felt as if others were watching me through the prism of the gas. I experienced excruciating pain as the intruders entered my mind and inspected my body, looking for defects.
I prayed for the final cut that would lead to oblivion, willingly laying my neck on the executioner's block, but the axe never fell; the pain began to ease, and the probes withdrew from my mind.
To my astonishment, the sphere began to move away. A keen wind dispersed a residual smell like burning sulphur, and the blood rushed to my extremities, reddening my face.
The strength returned to my muscles, and clarity returned to my mind. I breathed deeply and rejoiced in my escape, but the mystery remained as to why it had spared me. The sphere was far beyond the resources of a force commanding a penal colony and would not have relinquished the opportunity to destroy me. However, my freedom was short-lived, and I rose to my feet as a machine from the regular patrol glided down the street towards me. It was too powerful for me to even attempt to resist, and after I surrendered, the robot guard escorted me to the work camp. Little did I know that the reason I was spared was that I had been found suitable for modification as a hybrid.