The Empty Ones (27 page)

From that, I can tell he's alive, so I figure there's no need to check like she did. Suddenly she blurs, a dozen different paths with subtly different movements branching away from her.

Shit.

I can feel the foresight fading already. I feel limited. The pressure of reality pushing all against my body, like being at the bottom of the ocean. There's no time. I pick the centermost girl and follow her up through the stage, pulling myself over the jagged lip of the busted plywood. Its edges look like Weetabix. The splinters grab my leggings and pull long rips in the fabric. Future girl rolls to the side, so I do too. A second later, a black hand, the skin split and still smoking, claws at the spot where I climbed up.

Gus looks like a stop-motion skeleton. He was always skinny, but there's barely any muscle or fat left on his frame. What flesh is there is barely hanging on, just wisps of black ash sloughing off as he moves. His face is gone. His eyes have boiled away. His lips are peeled back, revealing teeth you can see all the way back to the roots.

Jesus Christ, we have so much teeth hidden by the gums. He looks like he has fucking fangs.

I'm distracted. I'm not following the ghost girl quickly enough. She's already moved so far ahead that her afterimages are starting to fade. I move before it's too late. She slides right between Gus's legs. He grabs for her, but misses. The exposed bones of his fingertips sink into the wood. Ghost girl doesn't turn to attack him, like I figured she would. Instead, she breaks into a dead run toward the Flare. She doesn't even pause. She just dives right into it.

I've taken down a Flare before. I know this is how it happens—I burn them out from the inside—but I'm always pretty fucked up afterward. The first time I was out for days. The last time I was out all night. I can't afford that now. I gotta help the boys.

The foresight is giving out. I saw it all so clearly at first, but now I can't remember how this all turns out. But I was sure this was the right path, at first.

Yeah, but you also screwed up down there, beneath the stage. You did like you always do, and you didn't follow directions. Is this still the right way?

Do you have any better ideas?

I jump at the Flare, and it all happens like it did before. Feels like crashing through thin ice into cold pudding. I can hear music, but it's not music. It's static. But it's not static. It's screaming. But it's not human. It's bright—so bright I can't see. But in the blind spots, there are things moving. Shapes that hurt to look at. I remember they meant something before—information?—but about what, I can't recall.

I know what to do next. I tap into the old fury.

I remember Nan and her terrible cooking. She'd burn the toast, every time. I ate it that way for so long that any other way tastes weird to this day. I remember her dancing, alone in the backyard, while she hung up the laundry. I remember the light. The chimes. I remember the floorboards shaking, and the smell when she disappeared. Like pine trees.

There it is. Anger so bright the light around me dims in response. It starts in my back. It tingles. Spreads out through my chest, flows into my feet. I don't think I actually have a body here, inside the Flare, but I imagine myself pulling my boots up and stomping holes in this motherfucker. I imagine the light freezing and shattering, my feet crashing through into reality. And as I imagine it, it happens.

Beyond the cracks, it's dark. But not black. Things are moving out there. A shadow flits by, then something falls. I kick again, and the cracks expand. I kick again, and the world comes back in a supernova.

The Faceless nearest the blast just vanish. The ones farther away wither first, like watching fruit rot in time-lapse. Maybe two hundred feet out, and they just burn. The shock wave picks up Gus and sweeps him off into the trees. His hands are pulled from around Carey's throat. Carey's body rag-dolls onto the ground, landing right next to Randall's. Neither of them move. The explosion doesn't touch them for some reason, but whatever Gus did to them while I was gone apparently wasn't a party.

The ghost Meryll is gone. The foresight went with her.

I have no fucking idea what to do.

I decide on collapsing into a broken little pile.

It doesn't seem to matter much. The Faceless who weren't caught in the blast are running. They scream as they wrestle through the muck and scrabble up the hillsides. The tar men are moving away, too, but glacially and in silence. The only thing moving toward us is this ridiculous stick figure thing, coming up from the woods. It climbs the stage with difficulty, then crawls over to Carey and Randall, still lying unconscious.

It only has one arm left, and big hunks of its torso are gone. But the face is coming back. It has an eye, some skin, lips.

“Hey man,” it says to Carey, all junkie casual. “I'm real sorry about all this. After all you did for the cause back in NYC, you'll be remembered as a saint! But you gotta die before you become a saint, man.”

Gus wraps his single bony black hand around Carey's throat, and begins to squeeze.

I never understood what Gus was, exactly. I mean, I knew the name for things like him—he was a Husk—but all I really knew about them was that they had to die. Now it was like I could see him. Really see him. It was sad, what he was. He was just parts. Just garbage. The remainder of an equation that couldn't be neatly solved. He was supposed to just disappear when the Flares solved him, but there was junk in his code, and now there are only little bits of him left. He's trying to make sense of himself, trying to figure out why he wasn't just dispersed like he was supposed to be. The only thing he can figure is that he was meant for some greater purpose, because he just can't fathom that he's an accident. He's old leftovers, forgotten in the fridge. He worships the Flares, because he doesn't know they don't give a shit about him. They'd flush him away, if they even cared enough to bother in the first place.

All these little pieces. They make the whole make sense.

I don't have much strength left in me. Burning out a Flare takes a lot. But I have enough to stand. Carey's turning blue. Gus's one arm is shaking from the effort of choking him. I lean close to the burnt space where his ear should be, and I whisper.

Light pours out from inside of his skull. He screeches like a barn owl. There's a burst of colors I've never seen before. The stage shakes so hard that half of it falls off the sawhorses. And Gus is gone.

He was just a remainder. And now I've solved him.

That's something even the Flares couldn't do.

 

TWENTY-SIX

1978. Purfleet Rifle Ranges, England. Carey.

Fuck, I'm blind. I'll have to get a cane and a dog. I don't even like dogs, always looking at you with all that love and adoration. It's too much goddamned pressure, living up to a dog's expectations. Can't hear much, either. Feels like the first few minutes after a really good show, your ears stuffed so full of guitars you gotta yell right in the face of the dude next to you to be heard.

My face feels like I put it on inside out this morning. After dropping it in the dirt. And stepping on it a few dozen times.

Couldn't see much of anything, but there was a pretty decent shape in front of me. Had some nice lines on it. Kinda wanna fuck that shape, whatever it is. Luckily it turned out to be Meryll, and not Randall … again.

That's a long story we'll get into never.

“Whaaabbagush?” I said.

“He's dead,” she answered. “Gus is dead.”

Holy shit, she understood me. She really is my soulmate.

“Whoo! Ahnooitfursht—” I rolled on my side and spat out a solid pint of stale blood and some chunky bits I really hoped were just teeth.

“I knew it,” I said, this time more legibly. “First time I saw you, I said you were a fucking genius.”

She stared at me. Through me. Like she was looking at something a mile behind me. It made my balls pull up a little.

“Hey. Hey! We won, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” she finally said, and the start of a smile broke through the mask. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

I smiled back—well, probably two-thirds of a smile at best, now.

Pop.

Her eyeball exploded.

Warmth and wet sprayed my face.

Meryll fell to her knees, then over on her side. She didn't move.

Tub stood behind her, holding a fucking ridiculous-looking pistol. It looked like something a Confederate would use on a Yankee. That kind of gun doesn't kill people. It sits in a museum. It has a little plaque with a bunch of boring facts under it and it bores the shit out of fourth graders on field trips. It doesn't kill pretty young girls with fists like hammers.

She's fucking invincible. She heals. She gets up.

She wasn't getting up.

“Wh—” I wanted to ask a million questions, but none of them would come out.

I felt like I was gonna throw up.

“You can't let her take too many,” Tub said.

He sounded tired.

“They take a Flare,” he continued, practically collapsing onto his cane, “and a little bit of it gets inside them. It starts to eat away. It changes them. They take two Flares, and maybe they start acting weird. They take three, four—maybe they're not entirely human anymore. They take five, six, and you'll never stop them. They're not Husks. They make you dream of Husks. They're so much worse. You gotta do it right now. Right after they take a Flare, when they're at their weakest.”

“Motherfucker,” was the first and last word that came to me. The rest could be said with punches.

But when I stood up, the world bucked like a stalling motorcycle. I took a knee.

Tub took a step back. “You think I wanted to? I raised that girl like my own. I put the food on her table, and the beer in her belly. I kept the perverts at The Office off her when she passed out. I brought her tea and stew when she was sick. But a man does what a man has to do, boyo. You're in this fight now, and it can't be half-assed, because you best believe your full ass is in the fire. You
stay
in the fight, and maybe someday you'll have to make this decision, too. When a thing like Meryll starts doing things a human being can't, when they start getting that thousand-yard stare, you must put something of significance through their left eye. Do it, or they will do something much worse to you and everyone you love later.”

I grabbed his knee and pulled, but he just swatted me away like I was an excited dog jumping all over him after he got home.

“Why?” I asked. “Why not kill her after she took the first angel, then? Why bother playing house at all? Why pull the trigger now?”

My punches were on the fritz, so I guess we had to go with the last resort: talking.

“Because she was useful, son. Things like her—they're the only ones that can kill the Flares. Not to mention the Husks. They're worth the risk.”

“They're … fucking
worth
it? Messing with her head, toying with her life, and then taking it—just to put out a few fancy lights and kill some immortal hipster dipshit?”

Tub stabbed his rebar cane into the plywood. Then he did it again. And again. He screamed something—not words. Then he took a minute and made some words instead.

“You … you'll see. You stay in this world, and you'll see. The Flares will take everything from you. Everything. And when that happens, you'll do anything it takes just to kill a few of the bastards. Some little girl's life? No matter who she is, that's a trade worth making. It always was. It always will be.”

“It … always was?” said Meryll.

Holy hell.

Meryll.

She's alive.

She should not be alive.

Tub went white. Well, he was Welsh. He went
more
white. Transparent.

“You've done this before?” Meryll's voice was even and measured. Her hands were still. The twitching hole full of gore in place of her eye was the only thing on her that quivered.

“Of course,” Tub said, and he laughed a little bit. A laugh you'd give when your car wouldn't start, so you had to take bus, then it started pissing down rain once you got to the stop. Then the bus blew right by you, spraying you in filthy street water as it went. That kind of laugh. “I wonder if it's me that's off, or the number…”

“The number?” Meryll asked.

“The caliber of the bullet. Well, I guess it's more of a ball. .36. It's a significant number. It always worked on the other girls. It's gotta be me. I didn't care enough.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

“It's how you kill things like this,” he said, and the look he gave Meryll was sad, angry, and scared all at once. Like she was a beloved family pet that had gone rabid. “The weapon's gotta be significant, sure, but the person using it has to
care
. They have to love the mutation. It's the same way she kills the Flares. The bloody lights take all those gooey sentimental bits away when they turn you. You have to give some of it back—anger, sadness, love, something
human
—to destroy them. A thing like her, once she takes enough Flares, the same rules start to apply. Ah hell, it's my fault, I know it. I've just done this too many times. I'm burnt out. I don't care enough to kill them anymore…”

“How many?” Meryll said. “How many other girls before me?”

“Who cares?” Tub said, and spun faster than I'd ever seen him move. His rebar cane whistled through the air, but that's all it did.

Meryll stood a mere inch beyond the strike. She had barely moved. Just enough.

She stepped forward, like she was moving up a place in line at the post office, and touched Tub's hand. A spasm went through him. He dropped the cane. His spine bent so far backward it snapped. A sound like Chinese firecrackers. His face was looking straight at me, but upside down. His eyes rolled back in his head. He opened his mouth and a thin black liquid trickled out from the side. Light—pure and without color—poured from his eyes.