The Empty Ones (15 page)

Tub stared at me. He grumbled deep in his throat and spat on the floor. “What's that?” he finally said.

“I want a goddamned beer, and I want to kill Gus so bad my dick is hard.”

“Gross.” Meryll laughed.

“Well, I—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, holding up my hands. “You can't kill 'em. We hit that fucker with a train and he practically skipped away. I got it.”

“That's … not quite right,” Tub said.

I felt my heart turn over like an engine.

“It's true enough that
you and I
can't take out a Husk,” Tub continued. “We're just people. But a mutation can do all sorts of things.…”

“Great, let's just go out and get our hands on one of
them
.” I rolled my eyes and went for the broken TV set where they hid the beer. I'd already raided it twice and came up empty, but I guess I'm an optimist.

I patted around blindly inside the hollowed-out innards of the old TV. A little tube here, a spiky bit toward the back. Some cables with something hard beneath them. I felt a little deeper. I pushed them aside. Round. Metal. Slippery with dust.

Oh God, oh God please …

I brought my hand out and my heart sank. It was a can of something, all right. A red label, with white lettering that said P
ARTY
S
EVEN.
But it was way too big to be beer.

“We don't have to go anywhere,” Tub said from the couch behind me.

I turned back toward him and saw Meryll. She'd taken off one of her combat boots. Her bare foot was pointing at me. She wiggled her toes.

All six of them.

“You look surprised,” she said. She smiled, proud and a little cruel.

“I'll be honest,” Tub said. “I thought you'd figured it out ages ago.”

“He's a bit slow,” Meryll said.

Tub sighed and started thumping the barrel fire with his rebar cane. It flared to life with a sound like a shopping cart falling down an elevator shaft.

Randall jumped awake, snapping off a long string of drool that spiraled across the room and landed on Meryll's foot.

She sneered down at it, then wiped it off with her sock.

I don't even have to compete. The poor bastard is losing the game all by himself.

“Tell you what,” Tub said, settling back into the busted couch, now that he'd gotten the fire going again. “You crack open that beer and we'll go over it all again. I'll use real small words this time.”

I looked down at my hand. D
RAUGHT
B
ITTER
, it said in smaller letters toward the bottom. You could've stuffed a baby in that massive can.

We might have a way to kill Gus, Randall had spit all over the foot of the girl we both liked, and I just found a fucking monument to alcohol. Maybe things were going to be all right after all.

*   *   *

“It's a pain in the ass, is what it is,” Meryll said.

She took the god-sized beer can with both hands and took a long sip, then passed it to Tub.

“Gotta buy two pairs of boots in different sizes,” she continued, stretching her toes out to stare unhappily at the extra one. “Gotta add an extra piggy to the song. But I guess if it means I get to nuke those bloody Flares, it's a fair trade.”

“No,” Tub said, “the deformity itself doesn't do anything. You're not poking at them with your bloody extra toe. It's just a sign of something bigger going on inside you.”

“I got s—” I started, but Randall cut me off.

“I think it's kinda hot,” he said. Meryll blushed and gave him a crooked smile.

Damn it! I was going to say “I got something bigger that could go inside you.” She would've
loved
that.

Tub tapped his cane against the fire barrel and gave Randall a look that could kill a man from two states away. Randall didn't notice. We were halfway through the ogre of beers, and his face was flushed, his eyes unfocused.

“Seems like you really hate the angels,” he said, and Meryll winced.

“Sorry, Flares. You hate the Flares,” he corrected.

“Yeah, of course. What are you, best friends with 'em?” She passed him the minikeg, but he just shuffled it right off to me.

Aw, shit. I know that move. He only turns down booze when he's hoping to get lucky. Trying to avoid whiskey dick. Well, whiskey and my dick are best friends, sucker.

I chugged from the can, distantly hoping the girl would be impressed by the sheer volume of alcohol I could consume. They never were. But a man can always try.

“No,” Randall said, and laughed, even though it wasn't goddamned funny. “I mean, it seems personal with you.”

“It is,” Meryll said.

And nothing else.

She hopped off the edge of the couch, stuffed her bare foot into her boot, and headed for the ladder to the second floor.

“I'm tired,” she called over her shoulder, and started climbing. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

Hahahahaha—eat it, Randall!

“Crap,” he said. “What did I do?”

“Sometimes there's crossover with who the Flares go after,” Tub said. “They like bloodlines. Something in the genes. They often revisit the same family. Usually over generations. But, Meryll—a Flare came for her nan one day. They were close. The old lady took care of Meryll while her parents were working. It came for her while she was cooking. Meryll walked right in on her being solved. Saw the Flare, saw her nan crumple up like paper, fold into herself screaming, and then just stop being.”

“Shit,” Randall said.

“Shit,” I agreed.

“They found Meryll hours later, still sitting on the kitchen floor. Shell-shocked. She didn't talk for days, and when she did, when she told them happened, well…”

“Well, what?” Randall asked.

“What do you think?” Tub growled. “It sounds nuts, doesn't it? Her nan was gone. No body, no signs of struggle or violence. And Meryll with her crazy story—they figured, best-case scenario, the old lady had bugged out and Meryll was some kinda pathological liar. Worst-case scenario, something bad had happened and it broke Meryll's mind. Either way, it was the institution for her.”

“And you brought it up while hitting on her.” I laughed.

Both Tub and Randall glared at me.

Oh, what, I'm the asshole here?

“I got her out of the asylum, once we figured out what she was. Boys keep an eye on admittance papers. People start babbling about sludge giants and immortals and balls of light, we take an interest. When we saw the medical records, the extra toe, we knew. Busted her out the next week, and she's been with us ever since. Five years, it's been. I trained her up, and we've killed two of the Flares already. Well, she killed 'em. I mostly stood around and watched. Maybe clapped afterward, if it was a good show.”

“Holy shit,” Randall said, motioning for the beer back now that his prospects had dried up. “She's really killed those things?”

“Yeah, and I figure she's not finished yet. This bloke you've come all this way after … what was his name?”

“Gus,” I said. It spat out of me like a curse.

“Maybe there's a way we can help each other. We've got to make a move soon. We don't know what all this buildup is about—the Sludges in the tunnels, the kids going missing by the drove. But we can't just sit here and wait for them to do whatever it is they're going to do. If you got history with a Husk, we might could use that. Have you lads draw him out, and either we take him, or he takes you and we tail him. See where this is all coming from.”

“Wow,” Randall said, “you didn't sugarcoat that at all. You want to use us as bait, maybe even hand us over to the psycho that killed our friends?”

“That's about it,” Tub said.

“Are you fucking insane?” I asked.

“Probably,” he conceded. “You boys didn't strike me as the cowardly type. If you're not up for it—”

“Obviously we're up for it,” I said. “We just want it on the record that you're crazy as a shithouse rat.”

Tub laughed, thick and laced with coughing. It sounded like somebody trying to push-start a tugboat.

“Dick!” he yelled.

Me and Randall giggled reflexively.

“Dicky boy, get over here!” He drummed on the fire barrel again and woke the gaggle of punks sleeping on the chairs and couches behind us.

“What, man?” Dick said.

He was a tall kid. Wide shoulders and long, skinny arms that hung down halfway to his knees. Looked like a malnourished ape. Had a Nebraska face—square forehead, close-set eyes, big lips … I don't know, you can just tell when somebody's from the Midwest. They always look incomplete without a tractor.

“You and yours have been tailing Husks in the south end, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dick answered. He rubbed at his eyes, puffed out his cheeks, shook his head. I knew that dance. Trying to shake off a buzz that was right in the middle of melting into a hangover. “Husks? Yeah. I think…”

“Up, Dicky boy!” Tub cried, swinging his length of rebar into the ground at Dick's feet. He jumped and nearly fell over.

“I'm up! I'm up!” Dick pleaded.

“Husks. South end. Yeah? One of 'em was in a band, you said.”

“Right,” Dick's brain was finally starting to catch up to him. “In a band. The uh … The Talentless. Good name. Playing at the Marquee tomorrow. I hear they're fucking crazy live. Strip naked and cut themselves and shit. Sounds cool.”

The Talentless. Gus's band.

Tub was watching me. He saw the name register. Saw my face draw tight.

“Well,” he said, “looks like we're going fishing tomorrow.”

 

TWELVE

1986. Miami, Florida. Meryll.

The boy is pretty, I'll give him that. A bit too limp for me, but I see what the girls like in him. He's got eyes like pond water, murky and deep, just a bit of glittering green in among the brown. Skin the color of creamy coffee. Cheekbones you could cut yourself on. He's tall, and fit, and stylish—wearing a pristine white blazer with thick shoulder pads, no shirt, dark purple slacks, pink loafers with no socks. His hair is dark and thick, like a shampoo commercial. Lots of hairspray. Real, real pretty.

If you're into pretty boys.

I like my men rough. Well, not
too
rough—but there's nothing like a handsome bloke who looks like he's been on the wrong end of a fight or two. I just can't get behind the flawless, magazine-pretty boys that are all the rage these days. They don't look like men to me. But this one is a man. I can see that through those tight gemstone slacks. He made sure everybody could see it.

Looks like the boy's saving a salami for later.

I wonder if that's just a pair of socks or something. I'm curious, so I slide through his personality like an oiled cobra and comb through his data. I'm lost in a sea of irrelevance. First dates and one night stands. Primping. Prepping. High fives and crying girls. These are his memories, and the vast majority of them revolve, in one way or another, around sex. Thinking about sex. Bragging about sex. Having sex. Avoiding the repercussions of sex.

I slide into a memory that stands out from the rest. It glows hot and bright blue. A keystone. A bit of it plays out: He's fifteen. His cousins are laughing and pointing at the bulge in his tight, bright-red shorts. He's embarrassed, cringing away from them, but he doesn't see the girl behind him. He bumps into her. In one smooth motion, she reaches out and yanks his shorts down.

The girls gasp.

They're not laughing anymore.

That's the first time he realizes that what he has down there isn't normal. It's a weapon, of sorts. Power.

Huge chunks of his persona branch out from this moment. His confidence comes from his cock. Nothing else. He knows he's not smart, or funny, or kind. He learns to take advantage. He knows he intimidates the other boys—and the girls, too. But that's okay. They're curious. They come to him. Some of them love it. Some just think it hurts. He likes either way just fine.

Weapons are supposed to hurt.

It's the smell of his cousin's perfume: obnoxiously girl. Slathered on from a magazine. And a shade of red, textured like polyester. Bright, with a white stripe through it.

Those two symbols will collapse all the branches that come after that memory, simplifying them back to just the one moment behind the shed, at a Labor Day barbeque with his giggling cousins.

Huh. I guess he wasn't stuffing after all. Good for him.

I've solved a few people recently. Took an old lady just down the street from here this afternoon. I'm all good on energy. I don't need to solve this boy. I just want to practice. I want to see what I can make from his pretty but vacant little body.

I look into his code and try to track the simplifications. See if I can figure out what I'll be left with if I take away certain portions of his life.

I think if I solve the paths that branch out from the barbecue, and also that time he stood naked, coked out of his mind on the beach watching the sunrise, and that other time his mother bought him a Rocket Pop from a cart on the promenade, I can turn him into …

Haha. Oh, shit.

That can't be right. But what if it is…?

I have to know.

I pull out the perfume, the shade of red, the feel of wet sand, the body-buzz of a good coke high just starting to fade, the texture of cheap wood pressed against the tongue, and a stabbing, frozen headache. I weave them together. I have a solution.

I show him the secret moments that have dictated so much of his life, and I laugh as he starts coughing. Blood from his nostrils, eyes, ears. His legs collapse, too weak to hold him. He drops to his knees and tries to grab at his crotch, but his arms are withering now, too. All of his muscle mass is retreating, migrating elsewhere. His skin goes pale, parts of it already atrophying. His face is gaunt and skeletal.