Monstrous Devices

by Damien Love

  But this was no wasp. The steel coil was thrashing powerfully. He could feel it whipping inside with a force that set his arms quivering. The bin was beginning to buckle.

  The girl was stalking fast up the alley, one arm outstretched, fingers gesturing strangely. Her teeth glinted as she smiled. It was only when he heard its furious buzz that Alex remembered the flier. It came ripping from the shadows, an angry little orange glow. Without thinking, he let go of the bin, rushed to lift its lid as a shield.

  At the edge of his vision, he was aware of the spring smashing free, but he was focused solely on the machine screaming at his head. The girl was drawing closer, raising her arm. The spring contracted to strike. He had a flashing memory of his grandfather swiping at the fliers on the roof, the girl’s head jerking back as he struck them. Donor. Connected. Maybe get one and you can get them all.

  Alex swung the lid savagely at the flier, turning so the entire force of his momentum was behind the blow. He didn’t quite catch it full on, but he hit it hard, driving it against the alley wall. As it smashed against the brick, its nasty little blade arm was caught outside the lid, severing off with a satisfying snap.

  He heard the girl gasp. She dropped, clutching her forehead. The spring and the flier instantly fell lifeless. Alex took his chance. He saw her reach out weakly as he hurtled past, then he was out in the streets.

  He ran a long time, sprinting, then jogging, dodging across roads and around corners until finally he had to stop. Pressed into another doorway he fought for breath, searching faces in all directions. The street was smaller, but still busy.

  What to do?

  What would his grandfather do? Alex swallowed, tried to concentrate, turned that question over. Thinking about the old man was painfully raw. Finally, an answer swam into focus:

  Have yourself something to eat.

  He sniffed and laughed. Then he thought. He was freezing, hungry, and exhausted, shivering from more than cold. Food wasn’t a bad idea.

  He stepped warily out, joining the current of passing strangers. After a while, he spotted a small, crowded café, people lingering at tables in the blushing window.

  Conversation buzzed as he entered. A bank of six or seven computers lined the back wall under a neon sign that read CYBERC@FÉ.

  A bored-looking teenager with half her hair shaved off and the rest swept into spiky black bangs leaned at the counter, nose in a book, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne. Sandwiches glowed in the blue light of a cabinet. Alex scoured his bewildered memory for anything of the French he had learned in school. As the word for tea slipped away, he recalled something his grandfather once declared: “Basic rule of travel, Alex. Remember this and you’ll never go wrong: you can’t get a decent cup of coffee in Britain. And you can’t get a decent cup of tea anywhere else.”

  “Uh, bonjour,” he tried. “Eh, une café et une . . . uh.”

  The teen lifted a pierced eyebrow at his disheveled state. She aimed a sniff in his direction, wrinkled her nose, and sighed before saying in English:

  “What kind of coffee?”

  “Oh.” Alex had never drunk coffee before. He pictured his grandfather. “Just a black coffee, please.”

  “Sugar?”

  Alex nodded. The girl pushed two packets and a wooden stirrer at him.

  “Uh, and can I have that, please?” He pointed at an open baguette. “And can I use one of the computers?”

  “Five euros for thirty minutes. No point buying a card for any longer, we close in twenty. I’ll bring your sandwich over.”

  He sat at the computer in the farthest corner, stirred in sugar, and tried a sip. Bitter but sweet, the burning drink made his eyes water, then they were watering from something else. The white light reflecting in the steaming surface became a moon pushing through wispy clouds above a high roof.

  Alex slumped. He felt his dead phone useless against his trembling thigh. He needed a plan. He stared blankly at the keyboard. All the letters were in the wrong places.

  He logged into his email account. Another orchestrated campaign of messages from Kenzie and Co. lined up bold in his inbox. He almost had to admire the dedication. One from David, with an attachment: is your phone broke? phoned your house, your mum told me you’re in paris!!! sneaky! old mr pin asked me to send you this sheet for an early xmas present its your favorite . . . quadratic equations!! Hahahaha give me a shout bon voyage.

  He read in numb panic, barely taking it in. A message from another life. He flinched as the girl from the counter slid a plate down beside him.

  “Enjoy.”

  He sighed, swallowed, tried to think of a way ahead. Hunting among the keys, he pecked a shaky message to his mother’s address:

  Mum, you need to come get me.

  Grandad’s gone. I can’t find him.

  I think he’s dead. I think they killed him.

  Still in Paris. People were after us. They’re after me. I don’t know what to do.

  I’m alone. I need to hide.

  I’ll stay here another 15 minutes.

  If you get this now, reply. But then I have to go. Phone’s broken.

  If you don’t answer, I’ll hide until tomorrow.

  Then I’ll come back in the morning and email you again and you can come and

  He stopped typing. And what?

  He suddenly pictured his mum getting his message: her tablet pinging as she sat watching TV in the soft light of their living room, or reading in bed, or at breakfast tomorrow. Her panic, her face crumbling.

  He had always tried to shield her from his troubles, if he could, as far back as he could remember, ever since the time of all his hospital visits. Those were the grieving years, when her sorrow was constant and she would still cry at the smallest things. Spilled milk, misplaced keys. A photograph she thought was lost. She was vulnerable to his vulnerability back then, and so he’d taught himself to avoid adding to her worry, avoid trouble and damage. The same way he had learned to stop asking her and his grandfather about his dad—because he could see the hurt, even though they tried to keep it hidden. He was an architect. Here are all his books and pens, his drawings and his vinyl records. And there was an accident in a street far away before you were born . . .

  He read over what he had written. More terrible news from another distant street. He deleted the message.

  Strangers chatted and laughed around the warm room. The girl by the cash desk stretched and looked at a clock behind her, scowled over the busy tables, then returned to her book. A heavy sense of isolation and desolation settled on him.

  If he could hide out tonight, he could get a train for London in the morning. He still had his ticket. Just say his grandfather had sent him home. Make up a reason. Sometimes the old man disappeared for months on his travels without a word, so his mum wouldn’t ask much at first. He suddenly realized that, all these years, he’d had no real idea just what it was his grandfather did for a living.

  Used to do.

  So: he could get home, just say nothing. Then take the toy robot somewhere, somewhere remote and lonely, bury it deep by moonlight where no one would ever find it, and then just keep quiet and . . .

  He cut off this line of thought, ashamed to be thinking it. The idea of his grandfather’s death had twisted into a hard knot in his chest. If he sent his thoughts too close to it, his entire body started to shake and shut down.

  He couldn’t just leave. Not without trying to do something. Not without knowing what was going on. If he had to tell his mum anything, at least he could find out the truth first. Besides, he suddenly realized: they knew where his house was. They would surely come after him eventually, looking for the robot. He couldn’t risk his mum.

  Drumming the table, mind a jittering blank, he forced himself to concentrate, pushing his thoughts forward, through all the bizarreness and horror, through his swarming panic and pain,
to find the way ahead. An answer. There had to be one.

  He thought briefly about the police but gave it up as he tried picturing what he might say. The unread emails from Kenzie’s gang hung in a dull, mocking list before him.

  What you gonna do about it?

  Alex frowned at them.

  What you gonna do about it?

  His frown straightened. Sitting forward, he wiped his eyes, took a deep swig of coffee, and started typing:

  Hi Mum—

  Having a great time. Up late!

  Going into the country to see Grandad’s friend’s house.

  Txt you soon.

  Love,

  A

  He hit SEND before he had time to change his mind, then clicked into the search box and typed:

  travel from paris to fontainblue

  The results page asked:

  Did you mean travel from Paris to Fontainebleau?

  He supposed that he did, clicked that, clicked the first result, and studied the screen. Fishing a pen from his rucksack, he copied timetables and directions onto a napkin between hungry bites of sandwich. He called up a map. He typed:

  fontainebleau barbizon

  He looked at more maps, scribbled and sketched more. As he finished, he noticed his hands had stopped shaking. He drained his coffee and left the café.

  Then he turned around and went back in.

  “Excuse me. Do you know how I get to, uh”—Alex glanced at the napkin in his hand—“the Gare de Lyon?”

  “Métro.” The girl at the register pointed a long lazy finger. “Line one. There is a station just along the street.”

  “Merci. Thanks.”

  Alex left again, turned around again, came back in again.

  “Do you have any salt?”

  XI.

  GOING UNDERGROUND

  A GLOBE LAMP glowed across the street, illuminating an elegant iron sign that read METROPOLITAIN.

  Alex hurried purposefully down the stairs, then gazed around, at a loss, trying not to look lost. Ticket machines lined the wall. He stared at the buttons and screens in incomprehension.

  A boy and girl of about seventeen appeared beside him, leaning into each other, giggling. Alex watched carefully as the boy touched carelessly at buttons, then dropped coins into the slot as they went into an oblivious hanging kiss. When they had gone, he hit the same buttons, fed in some of the coins his grandfather had given him. A pinkish ticket popped out.

  Through a turnstile. He squinted at a map on the wall. Down more stairs.

  On the platform a few stragglers waited in weary fluorescent light, wending their ways home before the Métro shut down for the night. A train appeared, rattling out from the tunnels. Alex got on, took a seat by the doors. The doors closed. The train bumped off.

  The carriage was around a third full. Tired-looking people under harsh gray light. A few empty seats along, the young lovers sat draped around each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. Next to them, a young woman in a thin coat with dark rings around her eyes cooed quietly to a burbling baby in a stroller.

  Looking at the mother and her tiny child, Alex sensed sadness welling from some place deep inside and turned away, watching the darkness rush past the windows. In the reflections, his grandfather fell endlessly. He pretended to yawn, tried to blink away the burning behind his eyes.

  At the next station, a large group of men in soccer shirts boarded. As the train moved off, they stood around the doors in a rowdy huddle, singing a raucous song, loud even above the tunnel’s roar.

  Two more stations rolled past, looking like deserted fish tanks in the greenish light. At the third, the soccer fans started spilling noisily onto the platform, followed by everyone else in the carriage except Alex.

  Looking up to watch them go, he recognized the name of the station on the tiled wall and realized with a pang: it was the station beside the hotel, the one his grandfather had pointed out on a street map a million years ago. The train had carried him back the way he had come.

  He half rose, sat back. They would be long gone by now. He would stick to his plan. Get to Harry. Tell him what happened. Give him the robot. Hope he could tell him what to do next. What was going on.

  The line of people trying to get off had come to a muttering, impatient halt. Half the soccer fans were out on the platform, half still inside. Those outside seemed to have decided it would be a tremendous joke to stop their friends getting off. Behind them, two tall men in black coats, hats, and sunglasses stood waiting to board, one carrying an enormous white double bass case.

  Inside the carriage, the soccer fans had taken it upon themselves to help the young woman with the baby get her buggy off the train, despite her protests. So far, they had managed to get themselves tangled in the stroller’s wheels while they sang a drunken song to the infant. Hoisted between them, the baby sat in his chair like a triumphant little king on his throne, waving a tiny, happy pink fist at the hullabaloo.

  Finally, with a lot of pushing and pulling and to an angry hail of advice from the passengers stuck behind them, the fans wrestled the stroller out onto the platform, cheering one another and accepting the thanks of the harried young woman. As the last passengers departed, the two men pushed their way on and sat awkwardly at the far end from Alex, case propped between them. No one else boarded. The train lurched off into the thundering tunnel.

  Aside from him and the two men, the car was now empty. Alex’s eyes wandered while his mind raced. He looked down at the men with the double bass. They sat with heads bowed sleepily, hats tugged low, coat collars pulled up.

  He gazed at the signs and strange advertisements without taking any of them in. He looked at the double bass case. He looked at his own reflection distorting in the rushing window. He looked at the double bass case again.

  There. On the curving side, near the bottom. A smear of red. And just above it, sticking out from inside, an edge of gray cloth.

  Dove gray. The exact dove gray of his grandfather’s coat.

  Alex sat frozen. He pulled his eyes from the bloody smear to the men’s faces. As he looked, the man closest turned his head. Fresh horror broke over him.

  Beneath the hat, the face was unfinished, made of dull, silvery metal.

  Life-sizers. The word popped starkly into Alex’s head.

  The thing sat utterly still, seeming to stare at him. Its companion hadn’t moved, remained head bowed, one huge, leather-gloved hand resting on the double bass case. The train’s rattling roar rang between Alex’s ears, one clattering thought pounding out over and over to the rhythm:

  They’re-hi-ding-his-body-they’re-hi-ding-his-body-they’re-hi-ding-his-body-they’re—

  Drenched by an icy wave of fear, he got to his feet.

  The things sat motionless.

  Feeling weak, he started backing away, stopping only when he got to the end of the carriage.

  The things remained immobile.

  The rucksack on Alex’s back pressed against the door to the next car. Pulling his eyes from the silver giants, he quickly studied the door, opened it with difficulty, slipped hurriedly through.

  The carriage was empty except for a solitary man, slumped asleep. Alex shook his shoulder. A smell of alcohol rose from him.

  “Please. Can you help me?”

  The man grunted an angry snore.

  “Please, I think there’s . . . a body.” The words jolted him as he spoke them. He felt sick.

  The man snorted in his sleep, turned away, breathing louder.

  The tunnel howled. Alex turned back. Through the glass door panel he could see the robots just sitting there. The one nearest still faced in his direction. Everything in him told him to flee for the opposite end of the train. He saw his faint reflection, framed in the glass. He looked small and pale. A familiar sense washed through him, the frozen feelin
g of being trapped forever inside that photograph from his childhood, the helpless little creature.

  He pushed out a trembling breath and muttered aloud: “What are you doing, Alex?”

  He went back through the door.

  The life-sizers didn’t move as he reentered. He stood with his back against the door, trying to gather courage, trying to think of something to do. Reaching slowly into his pocket, his fingers closed around the salt packets from the café. He took a tentative step forward.

  Nothing happened.

  The scream of the train boomed to the same thundering tempo as his heart. Another step. Nothing. Another step. Another.

  The closest machine shot to its feet. It stood well over six feet tall, face glinting in the flat light. The sunglasses stared blindly down at him.

  He started backing away. The thing stood, seeming to watch him. Then it came at him.

  As Alex drew level with the doors in the center of the carriage, the life-sizer whipped out its arm like black lightning. Alex stumbled and fell back more than he actually dodged the blow, but it was enough to carry him just out of its reach. The giant gloved fist swiped viciously over his head, smashing into the steel pole by the doors, buckling the metal, tearing the pole from the ceiling.

  Alex scrambled backward along the floor, the robot striding after him. Getting to his feet, he flung himself at the door to the next carriage. It wouldn’t budge.

  He fumbled desperately, turning just in time to see another vicious blow swinging at his head. As he ducked, the thing’s fist smashed through the door’s thick safety glass. When it tried to pull back its arm, its heavy coat sleeve snagged on the broken pane. It stood there, momentarily caught, silently trying to yank itself loose.

  Alex was trapped, pinned against the door by the struggling machine. It smelled like coins, oil, and sweat. Digging frantically in his pocket, he pulled out two salt packets and ripped them open with his teeth, tasting the salt. Without thinking, he rammed them against the life-sizer’s mesh mouth, scraping hard along the grill.