Pa was always a man to never stand down, if someone proposed a challenge, he’d never stand down. It started off when the American soldiers started showing up, they had dogs, big vehicles and guns. They didn’t seem harmful, rarely coming in our village and when they did, just buying some supplies like food and water. They liked to keep quiet as if they were looking for someone when they came in the village, it seemed odd but most of us disregarded it. But A couple nights after that, in the middle of the night, we would hear heavy machinery pass the village, as if a massive fan was patrolling around. It disturbed some people when they slept but I’m a heavy sleeper so I never noticed it until my sisters started to talk about it. Then people started to go missing, they’d check out what the sound was and in the morning, all that left was blood trails. Everyone was terrifed and they blamed the ‘American Pigs’ for it, so the village stopped selling supplies to them.

One night, my dad who was a Shepard realised that some of his cattle started to go missing, he knew it was because of the Americans and it had something to do with that buzzing at night. So with a rifle he followed the trail of blood leaving the house as silently as he could, but I couldn’t sleep that night so as he was leaving I silently stalked behind him. It was a few miles of walking so being about 20 feet behind him was very risky but the freezing moon left a shadow over the desert, giving this walk a chilling atmosphere. As the night got darker Pa finally found something, decayed animal carcasses, they filled the air with a pungent smell, making me gag. But pa persisted on, until he reached a cave. Pitch black and wet, puddles splashed against his boots and nearly got me caught. Pa’s eyesight was poor in there but fortunately he had matches on hand, the revolting smell got worse and worse until the smell was replaced by a sound, like a buzz of something electronic. At this point I hid behind a rock not going any further ahead but even pa froze, but in shock.

A red light began to flash up about 20 feet away, I could barely make it out but it had gun barrels on the side of this machine, with a rusted paint of coat, the contraption was new and techy but the look was old and rusted up. The red light began to flicker as if to show a sign of decay.

I shouted ‘Pa Run!’ But it was too late. He turned around to look at me but bullets flew from the drone into his back making him spazim to the ground. Time slowed down as he looked at me on his knees. His last word was ‘Run…’ At first I was in shock of what had happened but heard the machine buzzing liked it just did a minute ago so I followed Pa’s advice and sprinted out of cave and ran for nearly 3 miles non-stop. It persisted at first but retreated back to its cave. As I walked back it hit me, pa was dead… I didn’t know what to say to ma, my sisters, how I just hid there as pa was being gunned down by a… Machine.

There i stood halfway to town, tears rolling down my face and a sudden sharp pain hits me in my hip, I look down to discover there was blood all over my clothes, one of the bullets hit me, the pain was nearly unbearable as I cried out for help. I had wasted all my Adrenaline running from the cave and now I was exhausted. Pitch black alone in the desert, bleeding and unable to walk. Sand started to fill my wounds making the pain excruciating, I was sure to die out here.

 10 minutes While stumbling through the sand, I see in my blurred vision the decrepit town hall, I was home. I was too weak to make it through. The village was still a mile away and my body was too weak. I fell to the floor.

As I layed there, I heard rushing footsteps from ahead of me. It was American soldiers. They rushed over to me and picked me up. I heard them talking about something called a ‘drone pilot gone rogue’ I paid no attention because I was on the verge of going unconscious. After a bumpy 10 minutes we arrived on the outskirts on the village where they dropped me off, shouted for help and ran back in the direction they brought me from. Fortunately the doctor was still awake and fixed me up, though sometimes I still think I feel sand in my hip. Ma picked me up from the doctors house and I never told her what happened in the cave. I never told anyone to this day.