A Perfect Machine(28)

Just a few more hours, Henry. Hang in there. Just a handful of hours, then we’re safe.

And there was that word again. No matter how often she said it in her mind, it never felt true. What did she think was going to happen once he was inside? He’d get a job, they’d be roommates, and everything would work out just fine? Ridiculous. This was easily the stupidest thing she’d ever done, and she had no clue why she was even doing it. Sure, they’d been dating for about a year, but there was something more than that at work here. She felt it like a baseline thrum under her skin. Something compellingly, inherently strange. She didn’t understand her actions, but somehow they felt right. Was she saving him from something terrible? Probably. But what? What would actually happen to him if he was discovered?

Thinking these thoughts, puzzling over things from every angle, she drifted off into a fitful sleep.



* * *



Milo had huddled inside the dumpster with Henry, waiting for darkness.

Every once in a while, a building tenant would dump a bag of garbage or a piece of furniture on them, but other than that it was fairly silent. Just the sprinkling of snow and Henry’s strange heartbeat.

Milo wasn’t sure if it changed, but for whatever reason he was able to hear it quite distinctly. It wasn’t the regular heartbeat he’d had (and assumed Henry had, too); this one was a triple beat: thud-thud-thud… thud-thud-thud…

Henry nodded off a couple of times while Milo watched – each time groaning in his sleep, as if distressed by something. Milo could only imagine what weird new dreams Henry must be having. What dreams come when someone physically transforms into something else?

Once night fell, visits to the dumpster petered out entirely, and it was just the susurration of the nearby traffic that interrupted the quiet. Even the snow had let up for the most part.

Then, a few hours later, an engine that Milo recognized: an ambulance. He lifted himself out of the dumpster, hovered above the lip to see Steve pulling in.

What the hell was he doing back?

Steve got out of the vehicle, headed toward Faye’s building.



* * *



Faye’s breathing had steadied, and she was in a deep sleep when she heard faint knocking coming from somewhere. The knocking became more insistent as she surfaced through the thick webbing of her dreams. Suddenly, it was like the knocking was coming from inside her skull.

She groaned, sat forward, rubbed her head, then headed toward the door, wondering who the hell it was. She was expecting no one, and she didn’t have friends who just dropped by.

She opened the door a crack to see who it was, looked out into the hallway.

“Steve? Why are you here?”

Steve stood in the hallway, trying to put a look of concern on his face. It fit about as well as ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.

What Faye didn’t know, and what Steve wasn’t about to tell her, was that he’d thought of little else but Henry all day – and that, coupled with the fact that Henry’s transforming body had actually stuck in Steve’s mind (where in his normal form, it wouldn’t have), explained his presence here now.

“Just thought I’d see how everything went. Didja get him in yet?” He poked his head around the side of the door, trying to get a peek inside.

“No, I was –” she glanced back to the couch where she’d fallen asleep “– just watching some TV, playing some games, then I guess I nodded off.”

“Oh, well, you gonna get him? Want some help?”

This from the guy who couldn’t get away fast enough earlier that day, terrified – rightly so – of losing his job, or at the very least facing a harsh reprimand. Faye wanted to ask how he’d talked his way out of the situation, but found that she barely cared. Her mind hadn’t fully awoken yet, was still swimming between sleep and the waking world, as yet undecided which it preferred.

“What time is it?” she asked, looking around the room, trying to remember through the fog of sleep where on the wall the clocks in her living room were located.

“Just past eleven,” Steve said, then just stood there, waiting.

“Christ!” Faye said and opened the door wider, letting Steve in. She motioned him to the couch. “Sit down. I just wanna change. Been in this uniform all day. Be back in a second.”

She scurried to her bedroom down the hall. Came back a few minutes later wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She carried a big blanket. Much bigger than the one from the hospital. “Alright, let’s go.”

Steve’s odd behavior niggled a little at the back of Faye’s brain as they headed out into the hall. She had known Steve would help her when she asked this morning, but he’d never been the type to follow up in this manner once he’d lent a hand. He wasn’t the overly considerate type in general. Maybe his return was tied to his apparent romantic interest in her – which she’d never suspected before he’d tried to put his arm around her.

Or maybe it was just that he was privy to an incredible secret, and was simply intensely curious now. Perhaps a combination of these factors.

Whatever the reasons for his return, she had no time to consider them right now; they had to get Henry out of the dumpster – it was already well past the time she should’ve gone for him, and she was terrified now that she would look inside and he would no longer be there.