A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

  “Why doubtful? What else could it be?” Milo said.

  “Look, we always go round and round on this, Milo, and I don’t want to do it again. You know I don’t believe in any of that shit. I don’t know where they go when they disappear – just like I don’t know what happens when we ‘ascend,’ or whatever the hell you wanna call it. If that’s even true, and there’s no proof that it is.”

  “Alright, alright, settle down,” Milo said. “Just trying to give their lives a little more meaning than if they’d vanished into the fucking void, you know?” He took another swig of beer, glanced sideways at Henry. “So sensitive, my word.”

  Milo grinned, nudged Henry with his elbow, trying to lighten the mood, but Henry wasn’t having it.

  “Nah, man, I’m just not interested in assigning magical explanations to real-world events. I don’t know where they go, but who’s to say that real people don’t come and take them away? We don’t know that for sure. All we know is what Kendul and Palermo tell us, and what our ancient –” and here Henry put down his controller to make air quotes with his fingers “– holy books –” picking his controller back up again “– have to say on the subject. And that’s less than useful, since they’re as vague as humanly possible in their descriptions, saying only that they’re ‘removed from the offender’s life.’ Shit, I’d be more inclined to believe aliens steal them than some god has anything to do with it. What kind of shitheel of a creator would do that? And if he did, then fuck him.”

  The two clattered their controllers for a while in silence, destroying aliens on Henry’s TV screen, then Milo said, “God doesn’t give a shit what you think, Henry. If he exists, he will fuckstart your face for that level of blasphemy. And then your mom’s. And then your cat’s. He will fuckstart all the faces, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

  Milo grinned, glanced over at his friend.

  After a moment, Henry grinned a bit, too, said, “Shut up, dickhead. I don’t have a cat.”

  * * *

  Tonight, shadows moved quickly against a backdrop of random white, like the snow on a TV screen. Same running crew as always. Same Hunters, too, save for a few new faces on both sides. Young faces – fathers teaching sons.

  Each side of the city attracted different kinds of Runners and Hunters. But with one thing in common: both operated below the collective conscious. For most intents and purposes – invisible.

  Everyone in this particular Run thought the gas lamps in this part of the city – east of the railway tracks that cut through the city’s center – made for the best ambience; the electric streetlights to the west side of the tracks were too garish. Too modern.

  Henry and Milo sprinted side by side, two strips of black cut out of the fabric of the storm. Henry had brought a gun this time – to present a danger, keep interest up. Prevent boredom: Hunters’ flesh was not nearly as bullet-friendly as Runners’. Officially, Runners bringing weapons was intensely frowned upon, but certainly not unheard of. There were consequences, but you had to be caught to suffer them, so as long as you could manage to avoid that…

  A shotgun blast cracked nearby. Three Hunters spread out, settled in behind dumpsters in the alleyway Milo and Henry had entered, coming in off a main street. The wind cut to a minimum here. Henry recognized the area – it was very near the same part of the city he’d fallen in last night. He and Milo hunkered down behind some trash bins, caught their breath, listened for movement from the dumpsters.

  “Fuckers hemmed me in last night,” Henry whispered, pointing behind them to the corner where he’d gone down in a quickspray flash of red.

  “Tired of the chase?” Milo said.

  “Must have been, yeah. Though I like to think I provide a reasonable challenge, you know?”

  Another shotgun blast crisped the night, lit up the graffiti-strewn brick walls around them.

  “That’s why tonight,” Henry said, cocking his Magnum, “we piss them off a little.” He stood up fully, in plain sight, popped off a round in the direction of the closest dumpster, where one of the Hunters’ feet was visible through the blowing snow. Henry’s shot pulped it.

  The Hunter fell to the side, propped against the wall. Screamed his lungs out. Henry ducked behind the trash can again, leaned to his right, just enough to see his target’s head through the heavy snow.

  Fired.

  A clump of bone and gristle slapped against the brick wall, silencing the screams.

  Words of anger filtered out from behind the other two dumpsters. It was rare that the Runners fought back.

  “Oh, shit. That did it,” Henry said.

  A shotgun exploded from behind one of the dumpsters; machine gun fire opened up from behind the other. Wails of pain filled the thin spaces of silence between the metallic staccato.

  Henry popped his head up quickly to see if he’d killed the Hunter or just badly wounded him. (He was only aiming to wound, but he might’ve fucked up, blown the guy’s whole head off.)

  Five bullets from the machine gun fire whistled into his cranium. The first two slammed out the back, but the last three stuck hard. Two more sliced through his neck, butted up against several others already lodged there. Henry fell backward, exposed to the gunfire, unconscious. Four more bullets found their home in his chest as he lay there, then the firing stopped.

  * * *

  Milo swore and moved to pick Henry up.

  The two Hunters ignored Milo and shuffled to the dumpster where their friend had fallen. Low, muffled curses whipped by wind found Milo’s ears.

  The Hunters picked up their friend – each to an arm – and dragged him backward out of the alley, his booted feet leaving trails through the snow.

  “Idiot,” Milo said. “Idiot with shit timing.” He hoisted Henry up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. A feeling of distinct unease swept through him, and he hoped like hell that Henry hadn’t killed the Hunter – that maybe by some miracle he was still alive, just very badly wounded.

  Milo trudged through the deep snow of the alley, past the three dumpsters where the Hunters had been, walking in the grooves left by their boots. He squinted against the wind, was nearly blinded by the street lamp’s glaring reflection off the crisp, fresh snow. At the mouth of the alleyway, down and to his right, Milo spotted a dark shape, a man, lying on the ground, most of his head pulverized, a misshapen, bleeding lump in the darkness. Definitely dead.

  Oh fuck, he thought. He looked up from the Hunter Henry had shot, saw the man’s two friends coming toward him. Scowls under hoods.

  The closest one stopped in front of Milo, blocking his way; the other stood behind the first, at his shoulder, glaring, stonefaced. The first one spoke: “This ain’t how the game’s played, motherfucker.” He pointed to Henry, a deadweight sack slung over Milo’s shoulder, still out cold and leaving a trail of blood in the snow behind them: “He killed my friend; now I’ll kill his.”

  “Whoa now, hang on a minute, fellas,” Milo said. “Henry was just trying to liven things up a little, you know? He didn’t mean to–”

  Something metal glinted in the gaslight, catching Milo’s eye. He looked down. The Hunter had pulled a machete from a sheath.

  Milo backed up a step, shook his head once.

  The machete swung, sliced through air, through snowflakes, through Milo’s windpipe, vertebrae.

  Three crumpled heaps, lying still in the dark. Bleeding.

  * * *

  When the machete sliced through Milo’s neck, he felt almost human.

  With hardly any lead lodged in his neck, the blade sliced clean through, only knocking up against one, maybe two bullets. When his head fell from his shoulders, his eyes blinked one last time. And then he was suddenly floating about four inches off the ground, just hovering, swaying in the cold winter wind. Dead but dreaming.

  He stared at his corpse, wished he could reach down, move his body, then grab Henry by the collar, lift him back into the fireman’s carry and move up the street
, closer to the warmth in Henry’s apartment. But he knew now that was impossible.

  He turned his gaze on Henry’s body, watched his chest move up and down ever so slightly. Still alive. Good. Someone will find you in the morning.

  For now, the comforting warmth of Henry’s apartment called to Milo, just three or four blocks away to the north. I’ll see ya soon, Henry. Meet you at home.

  Milo drifted up the street, the sensation of not pumping his legs to walk, of not feeling the ground under his feet, was surreal. Whatever he’d become, it was lighter than what he was before. Everything else seemed the same. Eyesight, hearing, thought processes – all working as they had before. Only his sense of touch was gone.

  Snow created tingling sensations wherever it filtered through him. One block, two blocks. He passed an old man crumpled in the corner of a storefront, mumbling to himself. The old man paid him no mind. He passed a cat. The cat did not hiss at him. The cat saw nothing, sensed nothing.

  The wind died down a little. Milo picked up speed. Rounded a few more corners, then saw Henry’s building ahead. When he got to the bottom of the building, he looked up through the snow, saw Henry’s south-facing apartment window. A dim light glowed inside.

  He tried to will himself straight up, felt he could drift right up through the night, coast inside Henry’s apartment through the window like a ghost. But no dice. All he got for his mental effort was a silly look of intense concentration on his face and a sincere flush of embarrassment.

  As though people could actually see him trying to fly.

  He shook his head, frowned, and floated forward, through the same front door that the living used. Up the stairs, instinctively maintaining the four inches he’d had outside on the street. Up to Henry’s apartment on the third floor. Through the locked door.

  Inside, it was probably warm, Henry’s living room radiator hissing out heat. But Milo couldn’t know for sure. It felt the same temperature to him as it did outside. Cold.

  The coldest he’d ever felt.

  Milo floated into Henry’s bedroom, saw the covers on his bed flung back. Clock on the nightstand flashing 12:00.

  Outside, the sky was getting lighter. Someone would soon find Henry’s body, even if the usual society cleanup crew was asleep at the wheel: a waitress on her way to work, a construction worker crossing the street for his morning coffee.

  Milo considered leaving Henry’s apartment to wait for Henry at the nearest hospital, but he couldn’t summon the courage to go back out. The apartment was comfortable. Familiar.

  The curtains were open and the light coming in was thin and wan. Milo moved over to the window, reached up a hand to close them, but couldn’t get a grip. His hand didn’t pass right through; it brushed the curtains a little, made them move, but it was as if he wasn’t strong enough to grip the material.

  Morning hands, he thought.

  He concentrated harder, felt his grip tighten a bit. The curtain moved a little more, as though being brushed by a draft. Milo tried a few more times, but couldn’t get a firmer grip. He left the curtains alone, stood by the foot of the bed. Stared at the flashing clock.

  Waited for Henry to come home.

  * * *

  An hour later, when the sun tinged the sky dark red, a passerby noticed Milo’s and Henry’s bodies in the street (the Hunters had taken their friend home to be buried): one was headless, and the other might as well have been. But the latter was still breathing. The passerby called 911; an ambulance picked Henry up, took him to the hospital he’d been at the previous night. Upon examination, the paramedics on duty quickly figured out what he was, had seen plenty of his kind during the course of their jobs, but since there had never been any clear directive about how to handle them – and since the memory of treating them would fade from their minds like a photograph in the sun, anyway – they just treated them like they were normal people in need of assistance. Let someone else deal with them once they got to the hospital.

  Henry woke up a little during the bumpy ride. He wondered briefly what his percentage was now. He guessed it wasn’t a hundred percent because if it had been, shouldn’t… something have already happened? He wondered, too, if maybe Milo had been taken in another ambulance. Maybe Henry would see him at the hospital.

  Henry closed his eyes, wished he were outside again, feeling the night’s fat snowflakes falling gently on his lips.

  * * *

  Again – hospital green.

  And again, the same nurse. His girlfriend, Faye.

  “You here again?” she said, smiled a little, leaned over Henry, fluffed his pillow. Faye was used to seeing Henry brought in to the hospital, had come to relax about it much more than when they’d first started dating. Back then, about a year ago, she regularly panicked, didn’t know how to react, what to do, what to say. But you get used to anything, as the saying goes. She knew what Henry was – to a certain extent, anyway. Her repeated exposure to him – day in, day out – helped shore up his personality in her mind, like sandbags against a flood. In this case, the flood was a mysterious memory wipe that came, presumably, from the same place the bodies of loved ones went when they vanished.

  Henry’s mouth felt stuffed with cotton, his head packed with burnt chestnuts. “Sure looks that way. Not for long, though, I suspect, once the doctors get wind of it.”

  Faye said nothing, just kept smiling.

  Looking up at her pretty face, Henry suddenly remembered something Milo had said on the phone last night: You need a woman’s touch over there, my friend. Someone to bring some fucking life to that shitty little hole you call home.

  And he decided to give it a shot… before his head fully cleared and he was capable of talking himself out of it.

  “Hey, uh, so, when I’m feeling better and stuff, you wanna maybe, I don’t know…” Shit, this was going well. “Like, kinda… fucking, um, move in with me?”

  A few seconds passed. Faye smiled wide, said, “Yes.”

  Henry was blushing, and was prepared to backpedal the moment her refusal was out of her mouth. When she didn’t refuse, he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t banked on an acceptance.

  “Uhh, OK,” he said. Then trying to act cool, added, “Good deal.”

  Henry, wanting desperately to change the subject now, asked where Milo was.

  “Henry, listen…” Faye said, her smile quickly vanishing, brow furrowing. She took his hand, squeezed it. “Milo’s dead.”

  Faye waited a beat, swallowed, locked eyes with Henry. “I’m so sorry.”

  Inside Henry, metal shifted. Bullets and shot moved slowly, piecing themselves together. Like a puzzle.

  “I, uh… I have to go now,” he said, some base instinct taking over. A need to be home. To be warm, somewhere familiar.

  Henry swung the sheets back from his legs, got to his feet. Staggered, nearly fell. Faye caught him, steadied him.

  “Henry, your head. Jesus. You can’t just walk out of here with–”

  “Jesus Christ, I’ll be fine!” he shouted in Faye’s face.

  Henry took a breath, put a hand to his head – the walls swam and rippled. “Look, I’m sorry, Faye, I just… I can’t be here right now. I need to…” He moved forward, hugged Faye hard, kissed her head. “I’ll call you later, OK? We’ll sort out moving in and all that, and we’ll figure out Milo’s… arrangements, or whatever.”

  Henry’d never had anyone die on him, and he’d only ever been to one other funeral in his life – his grandfather’s. Three quarters full of lead, but dead simply of old age. He hoped he’d be as lucky.

  Henry turned and walked out the door.

  Faye followed, trying to convince him to go back to bed, stay and talk for a while. Just until he calmed down. But he kept walking, would no longer look at her.

  She gave up at the front door, where it was clear she wasn’t going to stop him, no matter what she said. She watched Henry from the hospital’s front-entrance window. Watched him stumble slowly out into the blowing snow.
Trip. Fall. Collapse on his side.

  She cursed under her breath, threw her coat on, ran through the double doors, across the parking lot. She knelt down, tried pulling him to his feet, but he was too heavy.

  Faye stood up, left him lying in the snow, ran to the curb, flagged down a cab. The cabby pulled over; she approached the driver’s side and explained the situation. The cabby put on his hazard lights, jumped out of the car, moved to help Faye.

  Together, they lifted Henry to his feet, shuffled him through the snow and ice to the back door of the cab. Faye ran quickly inside the hospital, fished around for some bills in her purse, came back out, paid the cabby, told him Henry’s address.

  The car pulled away from the curb, soon lost in a white sheet of snow.

  T H R E E

  It snowed for another three days straight, then cleared up suddenly to usher in sunny, blue skies. But colder now. Much colder.

  Henry shivered in his apartment. Not only had the temperature dropped, but his bedroom radiator had shut down. So much for getting warm.

  He was too tired to move out into the marginally warmer living room, so he wound the blankets around him as tightly as he could to keep in the heat. But no matter how many blankets he curled around himself, or how snugly he wrapped them around his frame, the cold still got in.

  The cold of ice on steel.

  His teeth chattered. He swam in and out of consciousness. Several times he hallucinated Faye coming to see him, stroking his brow, telling him it would be alright, that he just needed to rest to get through this, just needed to sleep a while longer.

  Sometimes during the three nights of the storm, he dreamed of Milo: Milo standing at the foot of his bed, floating a few inches off the ground, smiling. Just smiling. Snow in his hair. Then he’d drift out of the room, disappear, and Henry would wake up. Cold and alone. With pieces of the metal puzzle inside him still shifting around. Faster than at the hospital, steadily picking up speed.