A Perfect Machine(3)

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 needed 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.