A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

Started the engine. Backed out.

  And drove away.

  Henry watched the car turn up a ramp, the engine sounds drifting farther and farther away. His neck relaxed, head drooping. A dandelion too heavy for its stalk.

  “Henry,” Milo said. “Henry.”

  But Henry just stared at his heavy, gray-black hand, still plastered against the pillar. And breathed.

  Waiting for whatever came next.

  * * *

  Milo hovered nearby, of two minds about watching his friend go through another change. On the one hand, he wanted to be here for Henry – as physically ineffectual as he was; on the other, he didn’t want to witness again what he’d just seen: the mad thrashing, the roaring, the pained look on his face of a kind Milo could scarcely imagine – his face that was now beginning to look like something else’s face. What made it Henry was the way the body moved. Milo had run enough with his friend that they knew each other’s physical movements inside out. Henry had always been fluid, sleek. Even changing into whatever he was becoming, Milo saw that he had not lost that.

  Henry gained control of himself, leaned against the car he’d bashed up, near the front-right wheel well. He examined his hybrid hands, moved them around in front of his face, rubbing them, clinking together fingers nearly the size of screwdriver handles. He held them up to his ear as he clinked, as if trying to figure out what they were made of.

  What he was made of.

  He knocked his deformed knuckles on the car’s panelling. Metal clanged loudly, reverberated off the wall. He tilted his head to one side, positioned one knuckle to stick out farther from his hand than the others. He raked it across the panel he’d just rapped against. A thin strip of paint curled under the pressure, flaked off, fell to the ground beside him.

  Milo watched as Henry’s face contorted. Metal grating against metal. A Frankenstein’s monster of steel, patched together, forgotten before it was complete.

  Move on, Henry, Milo thought. You can’t stay here forever. Someone’s gonna come down here and see you. Come on, brother, let’s go.

  But Henry was fascinated with himself. Intrigued by his transformation.

  He opened his mouth. A thin gray sliver about the width of a watchband slipped out from between his serrated lips: pink tongue mixed with gray metal. Henry bit down gently with iron-tombstone teeth, grimaced. Snaked his tongue back into his mouth.

  A few minutes passed with Henry just staring ahead, breathing, perhaps feeling the power, the efficiency, of his new lungs. Milo heard doors slamming shut in the stairwell nearby.

  Henry, please…

  Henry stood up slowly, back bent. He opened his mouth again, this time looking as though he were trying to speak. He fish-gaped for a few seconds, then clamped his lips shut, closing his eyes, defeated, when nothing came out. Then he put one foot in front of the other – just like in his old life – and shuffled toward the exit ramp clumsily, nearly falling over several times.

  Milo followed his friend out into the cold white of the storm. Followed him as his balance improved, his step became surer, his footing more solid. Followed him when others would run in the opposite direction. But Milo believed that a friend is a friend is a friend. And he soon saw that Henry had a purpose, a direction.

  Henry stuck close to the sides of buildings, hunkered behind cars, dumpsters, anything big enough to hide him when people came into view. Though it would be hard for them to see him through the blowing snow, Milo knew Henry realized what he was – or if not what he was, he knew what he certainly did not appear to be: human. And yes, people somehow forgot their encounters with his kind, but how much of that was tied to the fact that they looked human? Would this mysterious force continue to work when people were confronted with a giant metal/human hybrid bumbling around their streets? Probably best not to find out.

  The storm picked up, dumped layer after layer of crisp, crunchy snow under Henry’s feet. The sun dipped below the horizon. Gas lamps flickered on. Henry moved carefully down back alleys, crossed nearly deserted streets with special care not to get caught in the pools of thin yellow light from the lamps above.

  As deeper darkness fell, Milo caught sight of a large blue “H” limned against the swirling white.

  Where are you going, Henry? Milo thought, drifting above the snowy ground. What’s drawing you here? But then it hit him: Of course. The hospital. Faye.

  Henry trudged across a muddy field, ducked under several trees with low-hanging branches as cars in the hospital parking lot drove by, their lights cutting conical swaths through the curtain of snow. Light shone out of one of the rooms on the first floor of the hospital. It bathed a patch of sidewalk a well-defined white, as if cut with scissors.

  Without understanding where the thought came from, Milo found himself repeating, Henry, I’m here, I’m here, over and again in his head.

  Henry moved away from the last tree he’d stuck himself against, headed toward the light from the room on the hospital’s first floor.

  Milo followed Henry across the remaining patch of field, the snowflakes feeling colder than ever where they passed through him.

  S I X

  The day after Faye left Henry’s apartment, she walked to work through the new storm that had started the previous night. A squat man in an ill-fitting suit and overcoat approached her, stopped her before she crossed the street to the front entrance of the hospital.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Yes?” Faye replied, glancing across the street, reflexively checking that she was in plain view of other people.

  “Do you know Henry Kyllo? I believe you do,” the short man said, speaking quickly; his words meshed into one another to the point that Faye wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him correctly.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Kyllo,” the man said, took a step back, perhaps to ease Faye’s obvious discomfort at being stopped in the street by a stranger. “Do you know him?”

  The little man had squinted eyes, which were not helped by his horizontally thin glasses. His close-cropped helmet haircut only added to the severity of his other features – hawk nose, thin lips, pointy chin – and Faye found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his words rather than his off-putting appearance.

  “Um, sorry, who are you?” Faye glanced nervously across the street again. Gerald Haines, a co-worker, was out front having a smoke. She unwound a little, knowing someone she knew was within view.

  “You helped him yesterday, didn’t you?” The man sniffed sharply. “Don’t lie to me. I saw you with him, right out front here –” he swept one of his stubby arms around and pointed to the front of the hospital where Faye had helped Henry into the cab the previous day “– so just nod yes like a good little girl, and we can continue.”

  Faye raised her eyebrows at the man’s rudeness, but nodded. “Yes. Yes, I helped Henry Kyllo.” Memories of Henry swam up from the back of her brain, edited, distorted, changed slightly to minimize things that may have struck her as odd about him. This always happened, but due to her repeated exposure to him on a near-daily basis, enough of what made Henry Henry stayed with her. “He was in no shape to help himself, which, if you were watching us yesterday, as you say you were – which is creepy, obviously – you should know. Who are you, anyway, to stop me in the street and–”

  The man held up a pudgy hand. “Ah-ah,” he said. “No need to get your knickers in a twist, my dear.” He smiled. Most of his teeth were black, as though stained by soot. “I just want to know what happened to our Mr Kyllo, that’s all.” He spread his arms wide, palms open, facing her. Crudely drawn tattoos covered his hands, snaked up into his coat sleeves. Faye tried to make out some of the shapes before he brought his arms back down, but could only see that they were symbols of some kind.

  “Why do you–”

  “I want to know because I am an interested party, young miss. That is all. I am a friend of Mr Kyllo’s and his wellbeing is of great importance to me.”

  Faye’s friend,
Gerald, butted out his half-finished smoke and headed back inside the hospital. Faye felt suddenly desperate. The man continued to block her way, and there were no other people around now. There might have been someone farther down the street, but the heavily falling snow obscured her view, and she couldn’t be sure if the thin black lumps she saw were people or short lampposts, bicycle stands, post office boxes.

  “Well, he’s dead,” Faye said, a wave of sadness falling over her. “At least I think he is.” She didn’t know why she added that last. Surely he was dead. She must have simply imagined the heat coming from his body. Wishful thinking. The clear light of day had convinced her of this. There was no breath. No breath equals no life.

  “He’s not dead, miss. The dead do not walk around. The dead do not vanish from their tiny apartments in the night. At least not the dead I know.” He winked, and it sent a small shiver creeping down Faye’s back.

  She ignored the content of the man’s words, and just reacted to his haughty tone. “If you’re his friend–”

  “Oh, I am probably his best friend right now, I assure you,” the man interrupted.

  “–then you’ll know far more about where he might be than I do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”

  She made to move around him, but he stepped quickly in her way again.

  “You will let me know if you hear from him, won’t you? It really is in his best interest.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll let you know.” She made to move around him again, and again he stepped in front of her, head tilted to one side.

  “Now how will you let me know, if you don’t have my contact information?”

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or what exactly you want, but–”

  “Here’s my card,” the man said, his voice dropping several octaves. Deep, dark wood. He slipped a business card into Faye’s hand, wrapped his stubby fingers around her long, elegant ones. “I’ll never be too far away.”

  The man turned around quickly and walked into the storm, hands in his coat pockets.

  When he disappeared into the swirling snow, Faye looked down at the card. There was a telephone number and a name: Edward Palermo.

  * * *

  All throughout that day, Faye felt odd. Somehow just off. As if she’d done something out of habit, and it had put her out of sync. It wasn’t just the visit from Edward Palermo on her way to work. It was the combination of the ceaseless storm, the visit from Palermo, Milo’s death, and now Henry’s death – and surely he must be dead, despite Palermo’s insistence to the contrary. All of these things, plus something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that made her feel cold inside. Empty. Something that replaced her general feeling of loneliness with a hollow ache.

  Then a thought struck her: If I truly believe Henry’s dead, why haven’t I called anyone? Why haven’t I at least reported the body to the police? She had no answer, and the niggling feeling that perhaps this Palermo was telling the truth would not go away. And why aren’t I more upset? If I knew in my heart he was gone, I’d be a wreck. Or at least I imagine I’d be a wreck.

  As the sun went down – the storm picking up even more, wind battering against metal doors, shaking them on their hinges, snow pelting windows in furious sheets – Faye neared the end of her shift. She was on the first floor, changing an old man’s bedpan in the bathroom, talking with her friend Marjorie, who was changing the patient’s sheets. Marjorie had a strong lisp, but loved the sound of her own voice nonetheless. Short, broad-shouldered, and a tiny bit cross-eyed. You couldn’t really tell unless she got mad at someone.

  Marjorie stripped the sheets from the old man’s bed, snapped them tight as she folded. One room away, another nurse bathed him; Marjorie and Faye did not envy this other nurse whatsoever.

  “That old man is one dirty motherfucker,” Marjorie said, snapped another sheet briskly.

  “I know,” said Faye. “The other day he tried to kiss me. Full on the lips. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “I can believe it. Old bastard grabbed one of my tits when I leaned over to change his pillow. Little shit. Tries it again, I’m gonna sock him one.”

  Faye smiled, came back into the room with a clean bedpan. Marjorie folded, continued detailing ways in which she would beat the crap out of the old man if he so much as looked at her for too long. She soon got bored of this topic, though, and switched to bitching about one of the other nurses.

  A shadow crossed the window. Marjorie kept talking.

  Faye didn’t notice the brief darkness. She continued listening.

  “… so then she asks me to take her shift! I ain’t taking that bitch’s shift, not after what she said about Herman. Herman wouldn’t do nothin’ to nobody and there she is badmouthing him right in front of me! ’Course she didn’t know I was listening, but that sure as shit…”

  Marjorie blathered on and on. But her lisp soothed Faye and she found herself drifting off. She helped Marjorie put new sheets on the old man’s bed. Tucked in the corners good and tight, smoothed it out flat. Not a wrinkle in sight.

  She drifted further into her own thoughts, Marjorie’s voice becoming a dull brown tone at the base of her neck, its pitch wavering ever so slightly, creeping up into her brain, massaging her consciousness.

  Snap. Fold. Tuck. The soft murmur of linen hugging bed corners.

  On to the pillows.

  Suddenly, Palermo popped into Faye’s head. Henry, she thought. He seemed to float in and out of her thoughts – sometimes right at the forefront, other times just the flicker of a memory that she had to concentrate on very hard to pull near the surface.

  If he is dead, it’ll get harder and harder for me to remember him, until he’s completely gone from my memory. How long will it take? A week, a month, a year? The thought caused a lump to form in her throat – the closest thing she’d had to tears since leaving Henry’s apartment last night.

  Another shadow whipped by outside the window. Again, Faye did not see it.

  Marjorie prattled. Pillows swished into pillowcases.

  More darkness. Only this time, it lingered at the window, a hazy figure, unclear had anyone been looking from the inside. But no one was.

  Breath fogged up the window. Close now. Closer still. Almost a discernible shape.

  Then it backed off, moved away. This time the movement did catch Faye’s attention. The condensation from the breath dissipated slowly. Nearly gone. Faye caught sight of a tiny wet circle on the window just before it disappeared.

  The nurse who’d been washing the old man returned with him in tow. He leered at Marjorie’s breasts as he passed. Marjorie warned him to watch his step. Then Faye and Marjorie changed sheets on the next patient’s bed.

  A whisper of dread threaded through Faye’s body as she stepped near the window.

  Snap. Fold. Tuck.

  * * *

  Outside the window, Milo hovered near Henry’s back, trying to make his voice heard. I’m here, I’m here were the only words that made any sense to say, stuck in his head like sticks in mud.

  When Faye turned her attention to the window, Henry ducked back out of sight, leaving a small circle of breath dissipating in the cold. He whipped around, his back to the concrete wall beside the window. His face creased up. Etched pain. He slumped down against the wall, folded his legs under him as best he could, panted quick breaths into the night.

  Finally, the logjam in Milo’s head cleared enough to let in another thought. All night? You’re just going to sit out here all night and wait for her? For what, Henry? If anything, you’re just gonna terrify her, and she’ll run screaming into the night.

  Milo sighed. Drifted over to his friend, sat cross-legged, floating several inches off the ground, like a genie out of his bottle. But he had no magic carpet. And no matter how much he wanted to, he could not grant Henry three wishes. Could not even grant him one.

  Concentrating as hard as he could – as he’d done back in Henry’s room when he’d tried to
close the curtains for his friend – he reached his hand up to a part of Henry’s head that was more or less completely turned to metal. His fingers brushed through the solid steel there, no friction whatsoever. He tried again, this time slower, eyes closed, visualizing his fingers gaining purchase on the smooth, blackened metal of Henry’s skull – this close to it, it looked scorched, as if burned by fire. But again, it just passed right through.

  Around them, the snow piled up thicker, blown into drifts by the wind. Above the nearby street, a gas lamp flickered, blew out, deepening the shadows cast by the other lamps around it.

  One more try.

  His eyes as tight as they’d go, Milo imagined harm coming to his friend, imagined this transformation leading to nothing of any worth, of Faye running screaming from Henry, of Hunters killing him out of fear, or simply reprisal for what he’d done to one of their number. Milo imagined these things and felt the near-tangible dread of being left alone in this new world – this world that, to him, was a world in which only he existed, in which he could communicate with no one else.

  His fingertips touched Henry’s head, then, just the tiniest bit. An emotional and physical connection formed, however briefly. Milo brushed his fingers near Henry’s left ear, which now looked more like a blistered spike jutting from his skull, and Henry turned his face slowly in Milo’s direction, squinted hard gray eyes against the wind and snow, as if someone had called his name.

  I’m here, Milo said, taking up his mantra again, I’m here, Henry. I won’t leave you tonight. I won’t.

  Henry, unsure what he was feeling, moved his head away from Milo’s hand. Furrowed his brow. Metal crunched as he lowered his head and waited for the night to end.

  S E V E N

  At the far north end of the train track that ran through the city’s center, an abandoned caboose sat huddled against the winter storm. Inside, a lantern burned. By the lantern’s light, Edward Palermo, leader of the Runners, wrote on a yellow notepad. He gazed out one of the little windows in the caboose that he’d turned into his home, and documented the storm.