With all the Zombie Crawl craze, we decided to hold off on posting our last two Writing Prompt winners so these awesome winners could have the spotlight to themselves. So without further ado, here is John Gregory Hancock‘s winning story! 

To see the photo and prompt the story is based on, visit this link. 

I had searched the city high and low. I thought I was the only one left. I was barely surviving day to day, and then HE showed up.

He said his name was Albert. But I knew it was AL-Br8t. It was right there on his chest plate. I didn’t know if he was pretending he wasn’t an android to make me feel better, or if he really didn’t know.

They made some of them like that, unable to know they weren’t real. It was supposed to make integration of the androids easier. A lot of things were supposed to make it easier.

“Have you found any food caches?” He asked me. Going along with the ruse, acting as if Albert needed to eat, I nodded.

“Good. I’ve been looking everywhere. All I found was this,” he held out his fingers, and showed me the can of peaches he had stowed in his backpack. The fingers were beautiful, graceful. More perfect than perfect.

He looked up at me, with silver-hued irises.

Expectant. Awaiting orders, whether he realized it or not.

“That’s great. I haven’t had peaches in a while. If you want to share, we can go to my stash.” I offered.

So we climbed the stairs and the levels overgrown with moss and lichen. Not quite rock, and not quite metal, the building refused to decay or die. But the world, the plants, birds and insects tried in vain to grow over it.

By the time the sun had set, we found my stash of unopened cans and jars I’d been saving up for a long while.

“That’s impressive,” he said, whistling.

“Your name is Sally, right?”

I stopped. “How did you know that?”

“It’s right there on your breast plate: SA-LLE12.”

I looked down.

“Damn.”