A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

  A Perfect Machine

  Brett Savory

  Contents

  O N E

  T W O

  T H R E E

  F O U R

  F I V E

  S I X

  S E V E N

  E I G H T

  N I N E

  T E N

  E L E V E N

  T W E L V E

  T H I R T E E N

  F O U R T E E N

  F I F T E E N

  S I X T E E N

  S E V E N T E E N

  E I G H T E E N

  N I N E T E E N

  T W E N T Y

  T W E N T Y - O N E

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Sandra Kasturi – best of all possible monkeys

  O N E

  The bullet tore a thin strip of flesh from his cheekbone, drove into the brick wall behind him.

  He turned a corner, cut swaths through the steam rising from sewer grates – smoky ghosts wrapping around his skinny legs. Dissipating.

  Gone.

  More bullets flew past his ears as he ducked around another corner, legs pumping hard, breath coming in thick rasps. He didn’t know this section of the city very well, so it was just a matter of time.

  Always just a matter of time.

  Voices. Loud, harsh. Guttural bursts exploding from thin lips, wide mouths: find him, fuck him up. The words didn’t matter, but their speakers did. The people who spoke these words could run hard and for a very long time.

  Gas lamps swam by on his left, shining, flickering, watching the man run. Chasing away the shadows in which he wanted to hide.

  The man heard more shots behind him, wished for a dumpster, a garbage can, another brick wall, anything to hide behind. Then one of the bullets slammed into the back of his right knee. He gritted his teeth, continued running.

  Another bullet caught him in the left shoulder. He plunged ahead, driven forward by the momentum, listing to one side, nearly losing his balance. But his left knee held him, and he kept running.

  More shouting. Now coming from two directions.

  He turned another corner, saw four men standing there, weapons raised, aimed in his direction. He stopped, stumbled backward, teeth clenched tight against the pain in his leg and shoulder. Two more men and one woman stood the way he had just come, grinning, their mouths black holes in their faces.

  The shouting stopped.

  Nowhere to go.

  Seven distinct cocking sounds, as bullets entered chambers.

  The man took a deep breath, held it. Closed his eyes.

  The night burst open with muzzled fire. The man crumpled. Red seeped out from under him, glistening in dim gaslight.

  * * *

  Hospital green.

  Walls rippled when he opened his eyes. Fluorescent ceiling lights rotated blurrily. He looked to his right. The woman in the bed beside him wavered, floated on crisp white sheets.

  The man rubbed his eyes, heard a door open, whisper closed. Heard a voice, looked up, saw a young woman at the foot of the bed. A nurse. Her mouth moved, but the man heard no words. She held a clipboard, her eyes sweeping it, her mouth moving again. Her brow crinkled, maybe frustrated she was getting no answers to her questions.

  The man thought the nurse was beautiful, and he would have answered her questions had he heard them, had he been capable of hearing anything but his own pumping blood.

  Faraway sounds filtered into the man’s ears. Mumblings in a tin can. He shook his head, cleared the cobwebs. The sounds swirled, formed words to match the nurse’s red, red lips. She was asking how he was feeling.

  The man put a hand to his head, glanced at the woman in the bed next to him. She had almost stopped floating on her sheets, was now staring at him hard, frowning. The man looked up at the nurse, smiled as best he could, and said, his voice a jumble of cracked rocks, “Not particularly great. Uh, how about you?” He tried to smile, but he wasn’t sure if his mouth moved at all.

  The nurse – very familiar to him for some reason, what was her name? – returned the smile, then mouthed more words to him, lost again to the pounding in his ears. He shook his head to let her know he couldn’t hear her. She reached down and patted his hand. She was warm. He wanted to move his other hand on top of hers, to feel the smooth skin there. He tried, but nothing happened. He looked down and saw the sling in which they’d put his arm. His leg, too, was bandaged.

  He wanted to tell the nurse – Farah? Frieda? – they’d made a mistake. He didn’t need to be here. The sling and bandages were unnecessary. Some kind pedestrian had probably brought him in, or at least called an ambulance to take him away. But they were wasting good hospital supplies on him when they could be used for people who really needed them – perhaps like the woman next to him.

  He looked again at this woman, and saw her frown had softened. The lines in her forehead smoothed out to show that she approved of the nurse’s job, approved of compassion shown to another human being.

  But she didn’t know him. Didn’t know what he was. If she did, the frown lines would most certainly reappear.

  In past hospital experiences, the doctors usually discharged him very quickly once they identified him. But the doctor who’d scribbled the man’s name on his chart might have been in too big a rush to figure it out, or maybe too new to his job to notice the signs.

  The way the hospital staff looked at him – and others like him – was always with a touch of faint disgust, but mostly indifference. Once they realized he was one of them, they’d ask two security guards to walk him down the hall, the automatic doors would slide open, and they’d stand there silent, waiting for him to leave. Just staring. Afraid to touch him. Pushing him out into the cold with their eyes, their fear. Sands in their minds shifting already to cover the experience. They would gradually forget they’d even met him. The memory erased entirely.

  He did not know why this happened, but it had always been so, for as long as he could remember.

  The nurse patted his hand again, released it, smiled once more, and walked out the door.

  The woman beside him looked away, focused on the mounted TV across the room, high up on the wall.

  The man tried to move his injured leg but, as with his arm, no dice. Actually, both arms. He must’ve caught a few more bullets before he went down. His chest felt tight, too, so probably one or two more in there. He’d have to wait another hour, maybe two, before he could walk with any degree of comfort again.

  He gingerly touched the bandage on his face where the first bullet had grazed his cheekbone. He knew by now it would be nearly healed. By the time the program currently on TV had ended, the wound in his shoulder would be closed up, scar tissue already evident. Then, another hour or so after that, his knee would operate as it always had – smoothly, and without a hint of pain.

  Exhaustion overtook him, then, and he slept.

  When he woke again nearly two hours later, the nurse – her name finally came to him: Faye – stood over him and was looking down. She held his hand.

  “How you feeling now, Henry?”

  “About how I probably look.”

  “Oh, OK, so you do feel like shit.”

  The man laughed a little. Faye glanced over at the woman in the next bed. She was scowling, probably at the language.

  “It’s OK,” Faye said. “We know each other. We’re friends.”

  The woman just huffed and looked away.

  “Friends? Is that all?” the man said. Not only had her name come back to him, but his relationship to her had returned, as well.

  “Well, you know. Maybe a little more,” Faye said, teasing. “Look, I gotta go. I can’t walk you out, but call me later, OK? Let me know you got home
safe.”

  * * *

  When he was finally discharged from the hospital an hour later – amidst the requisite complement of security guards, and exactly the amount of indifference he had anticipated from the attending doctor – Henry walked straight home to his one-bedroom apartment, where the phone was ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Henry. Milo.”

  Henry’s friend Milo figured that, despite his best efforts, the flesh beneath his skin was now only about ninety-percent lead, give or take.

  “Caught another few slugs tonight, brother,” Milo said. “What about you? Examined yourself yet?”

  “Not yet, just got home.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “Since I examined myself?” Henry said. “Couple of weeks.”

  “What’s the matter – afraid to check?”

  Fucking Milo. Always on Henry’s ass about the same goddamn thing.

  “Listen, why don’t you lay off me for a while, alright, Milo? Don’t you have anything better to do? Christ.”

  “You know I don’t. Neither do you.”

  Henry sighed, looked out his living room window. Snow was falling – big fat flakes that stuck to the window, melted, vanished. No lights on in his apartment yet, so the lone gas lamp outside his building shone in, illuminating his sparse furnishings with a sickly yellow glow.

  As if somehow sensing Henry’s thoughts, Milo said, “You know what you need? You need a woman’s touch over there, my friend. Someone to bring some fucking life to that shitty little hole you call home.”

  “I’m hanging up now, Milo.”

  “Alright, alright, but check yourself out, chickenshit!” Milo blurted. “And let me know how things’re going with Faye. You really do need–”

  Henry hung up.

  He crossed his living room, touched the base of a lamp. Slightly less sickly yellow light suffused the room. Henry touched the lamp’s base twice more, until the light was closer to white than yellow.

  More than just sparse: stark. Empty. Hollow. Gutted. A home to match his personality. But that was Milo talking. Henry knew better. Tried to convince himself of better, anyway.

  Shower. Maybe some TV, then bed. Fuck the examination. It could wait.

  Henry hung his leather on the coat rack near the front door, made his way to the bathroom. Past piles of mystery novels stacked halfway to the ceiling; past a computer that he never used on a desk at which he never sat; past pizza boxes empty but for the crusts of each slice, turned rock-hard, forgotten.

  Henry flicked a switch on the inside of the bathroom doorway; a fluorescent light above the sink flickered, shot to life.

  He pulled his shirt over his head as he walked in, dropped his pants around his ankles, stepped out of them. He took his underwear off, then stood up straight, turned to his left, saw himself in the mirror. Nearly every inch of his torso was composed of scar tissue; his legs more of the same. There were only small patches of skin left unmarked.

  No way I’m even close, Henry thought. Not a chance I’m anywhere near Milo’s percentage… But fine, fuck it, I’ll check.

  Fingers trembling, heart thudding, Henry brought his hands up from his sides, placed them gently on his chest… and moved them around in slow circles. He rubbed around his nipples, pushed in near his armpits, squeezed the flesh around what remained of his ribs, sank his fingers deep into his stomach. Both arms. Pressing, concentrating, trying to feel as deeply within his body as possible. It was a crude manner of examination for the information he was trying to obtain, but it was all he and others like him had. Someone had stolen an X-ray machine a few years back (Henry had no idea how), but it broke down – got shot up, actually – so they were back to these hands-only self-examinations.

  Down to his legs, pushing, kneading, prodding around the knees. To his calves, the tops of his feet. Standing back up, checking his groin, buttocks, up to his neck, his hands roaming over his scalp as if washing his hair. But feeling gently, listening to the song of his skin.

  Steel-jacketed lead. Not pulsing through his veins, but replacing them, replacing flesh, tissue, organs – everything but bone. And even a good portion of that had been shattered, replaced by rows of bullets or clumps of shot.

  Everything except skin – the skin remained, but forever changed.

  Scarred.

  The bullets in his body pushed flush to one another inside him. When he pressed on his abdomen, he felt them clink together. They rippled under the skin of his forearms, writhed in his thighs.

  Henry had caught up to Milo – had likely surpassed him. He estimated about ninety-five percent, maybe more. His head was the least-affected part of him, as most of the bullets were naturally aimed at his body, but there was still a lot there.

  And when he reached one hundred per cent…

  But no one knew what happened then, because no one in living memory had reached one hundred percent. Maybe no one had ever done it. Or at least that’s what the Runners had all been told. Maybe the Hunters knew different.

  Henry showered, dressed quickly, flicked on the TV, and stared out the window again at the steadily falling snow. He gathered his thoughts, then dialed Milo’s number.

  Milo picked up almost immediately. “Well?”

  “Dunno, exactly, of course, but… ninety-five, give or take,” Henry said, sweat on his brow, hands slick. His voice was edged with a nervous tremor.

  “Ninety-fucking-five,” Milo whispered, then whistled low. “Holy shit, man.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “So – belief?” Milo asked. “Which crackpot theory do you subscribe to these days? Transformation into a steel kraken? Eternity in some kind of bullet-time hell? Just plain flat-out death? Or maybe you finally show up on God’s radar and he strikes you down for the freak of nature you are. Any or all of the above?”

  Henry thought for a moment, chewed his lip. “I don’t know, Milo. I have no clue about any of it.”

  The snow blew hard against Henry’s window, whipping up a white storm of flakes that mesmerized him as he stared outside, lost in thought.

  “… still there, dipshit?”

  “Yeah … yeah, still here, Milo. Gotta go. Have to call Faye, let her know I got home alright. See you at tomorrow’s Run.”

  “Alright, see you there, chimp.”

  Henry hung up.

  On TV, the news had just started. The weatherman called for four inches of snow tonight, another three tomorrow afternoon. Wind chill creating a deep freeze to smash all previous records.

  Henry and Milo, frozen metal statues, running every night. Because they had to. Because they all had to.

  T W O

  This was the only rule that mattered: if you didn’t run every night, someone you loved would disappear. Simple as that. No one knew who took them, or how. But if you didn’t show up for the Run, the next morning they’d be gone without a trace.

  It had never happened to Henry or Milo because they’d never missed a Run. But they’d known other people who had, for whatever reason, and they’d watched that person crumble little by little in the weeks and months that followed.

  One guy in his mid twenties, Jonathan Witters, an old acquaintance of theirs from high school (the Inferne Cutis – the ridiculously pretentious name of their society – weren’t required to run or hunt until they’d graduated high school) didn’t go to a Run because his mother was sick, dying. He stayed by her side the night of her death. He went home, went to bed with his wife. The next morning, his wife was gone. The blankets were undisturbed, a depression still visible in the pillow where her head had been.

  She’d simply vanished.

  Jonathan, obviously severely distraught, tried first appealing to the leader of the Runners, Edward Palermo.

  “She’s my fucking wife, Ed! Bring her back, for Chrissakes!”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Edward said. “You knew the rules. You chose to disobey them. I cannot help you.”

  Jonathan had ne
eded to be escorted out of the warehouse where the Runners met before their nightly Run. He then barged into the Hunters’ warehouse where they met each night before the Run, strode into James Kendul’s office (Kendul being the leader of the Hunters), grabbed him by the throat, slammed him against a wall.

  “Give her back, you fuck!” Witters screamed in Kendul’s face.

  Two Hunters had followed Witters into the office, each grabbing an arm to restrain him. Word of the disappearance had traveled fast through the society, so Kendul knew what Witters was upset about. He maintained the same calm demeanour as his colleague, Palermo, but was perhaps a little colder.

  “We do not know where they go when they disappear,” Kendul said. “I’m sorry for your loss. Go home, Witters. She’s not coming back. The sooner you wrap your head around that, the sooner you can get on with your life. Lashing out accomplishes nothing. This is the way it has always been. You knew that before she vanished, and you know it now.”

  Witters was then roughly thrown out of the Hunters’ warehouse.

  From that day forward, he did nothing but drink – never showing up to another Run – until everyone who mattered to him disappeared.

  Jonathan Witters died alone of liver failure in his shitty little apartment.

  And there’d been more than a few others like him over the years Henry and Milo had been running. They had discussed this particular series of disappearances more than most because they’d known Jonathan so long. Not long enough to get close, to become someone they – whoever they were – would target, but long enough to do more than just register he was gone.

  “Taken by God,” Milo said the day after Witters’ body had been found. They were at Henry’s apartment, drinking, playing video games. “All of them.”

  Henry had remained silent at first; just took a sip from his can of stout, frowned, mumbled something Milo couldn’t make out.

  “What was that?” Milo asked.

  “Doubtful,” Henry said, clearer this time.