A Perfect Machine(14)

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.

If one recorded the weather, Palermo believed, documented each snowstorm, each calm day, each rainfall, how much rain or snow fell on any given day, the temperature, and other variable factors, one might glean just a little of what events lay ahead. He’d learned this practice from his father. Not everyone could do it, but Edward and his father seemed to just have a natural knack for it.

There were no calculations, no formulae, no mathematical equations to apply to it. Palermo just recorded the weather in a journal in his own words, described it with whatever emotions it stirred within him. As he wrote, images came into his mind. Sometimes he recognized the events playing out in his head; other times, they were foreign to him, like scenes from someone else’s dreams. He then recorded those scenes in a separate journal. Palermo – as well as those under him – believed this attempt at reading the passage of time through shifts in the weather had successfully guided him in his decision making.

But this snowstorm was like nothing he’d ever seen before, had lasted longer already than any in recent memory, and showed no signs of abating. It had caused his dreams to darken, his visions of events to blur, become indistinct, shadowed. A white curtain dropping on everything.

The wind whipped the caboose, rocking it on its tracks. Nearly two feet of snow lay on the ground, which would make tonight’s Run more challenging… if Palermo decided to continue with it. Given what had happened with Henry Kyllo and his friend, Milo, Palermo thought maybe a cooling-down period of at least a day or two might be advisable. Although what might happen if the Run was cancelled was something Palermo didn’t want to deal with. Under his guidance, a Run had never been missed – one had happened once a night for as long as he’d been in control. Nearly thirty years now. Individuals occasionally missed a Run, and that came with a heavy price, but to cancel the entire thing? Palermo shuddered at the thought.

If no one showed up, would we all just disappear? Or would people defy the order, too scared to think of the consequences? Happier to face my wrath than… whatever or whomever truly runs the show?

What Palermo didn’t know was that upcoming events would render the question moot, anyway.

He finished writing his entries for the day – including as a side note the fact that he’d located Henry Kyllo through various intelligence sources earlier that day – sat back in the antique oak chair at his little desk, and closed both journals. The lantern light flickered briefly, a particularly strong gust of wind sneaking in through a small crack in the wall.

The wind died down for a few seconds, and Palermo heard boots crunching snow beside the caboose. Closer. Now the ring of metal steps. Palermo turned in his chair, waited for the knock on the door. When it came, it sounded thin, the latest gust whipping it from the knocker’s knuckles.

“Enter,” Palermo said.

The door opened just a crack, closed a little, opened again as the opener struggled to keep it from being ripped out of his hands. Snow blew in, dusting Palermo’s dark red Persian rugs and Sri Lankan wall hangings. To Palermo, the elephant was the most exquisite of animals and everywhere in the caboose sat statues, photographs, miniatures, and paintings of the creature.

“You’ll do well to close that door in a hurry, Marcton. Either in or out, make up your mind,” Palermo said calmly.

Another few seconds of struggling with the door and finally Marcton squeezed inside, the door battering him on the shoulder as he did so. The door slammed shut behind him. A final puff of fine white powder settled on the floor at his feet.

“Kendul’s here, sir.”

“I told you not to call me ‘sir,’ Marcton. You know my name; I expect you to use it.”

“Right,” Marcton said, uneasy in his own skin. “Well, he’s here, like I said. Shall I bring him in to see you, or will you go out to see him? Derek and Cleve patted him down already; I gave him some coffee. Warm him up.”

Then Marcton just stood there, head bent, chewing his lips. His thin frame shivered from the cold. He’d gone out into the storm – as always – wearing only a thin black T-shirt and loose fitting blue jeans.

“Send him in here,” Palermo said. “You get him, and only you come back with him. I don’t want Derek and Cleve in his company for too long, understood?”

Marcton nodded, swallowed, shivered harder. He turned toward the door in his heavy boots, the laces flapping behind him. He burst outside this time, rather than play push-and-pull with the wind. The door cracked on its hinges, nearly flew off, then slammed shut again, Marcton’s boots now thundering down the metal steps. Boots crunched on snow again, the top layer a thin sheet of ice driven through with every step.

Palermo knew that when Marcton came back with Kendul, he would not step in the holes already made by his boots, but would go out of his way to avoid them. Palermo never asked why. Just as he’d never asked why Marcton refused to wear a coat, a hat, or anything else that might help keep him warm in winter months. He respected his people’s privacy above all else, and never wanted to pry into their personal lives – unlike Kendul, who made it his business to know everything he could about his Hunters. But then Hunters and Runners had always been fundamentally different – always would be.