The Empty Ones (5 page)

I watched every Van Damme movie ever made. They were all on TBS. He did the splits in every single one. Even if it wasn't appropriate, even if he was just standing in the kitchen in his underwear, a bad guy would run in with a Taser and they would find a way to make Van Damme do the splits.

I saw it so many times, I could write a thesis on it:
The lateral extension of Belgian appendages in male power fantasies and its greater impact on archetypal roles in society.

That was where we were now. But that didn't answer the question: Where did it go wrong? It started with Marco, but did it end there? Thinking back, I'm pretty sure it was Jackie who first asked him to take me home. I don't think it was his idea. What if she had never asked? Would we still be here? What if I had said no? What if … God, I shouldn't even think it—what if I hadn't gone looking for Jackie? What if I'd taken the hint at the police station and let it drop? What if I hadn't chased Marco when he showed up at my apartment that night? What if … what if I'd seen Jackie being hollowed out, and I didn't help her? What if I had just run?

Nobody could have blamed me. Most people, I think, would have bolted. It's too much to handle: caustic monsters; immortal, soulless things that only look like people; girls being mashed into jelly by giant gears; angels that rearrange people's souls, getting rid of the pesky inefficiencies like humanity and morality and personality, and burning everything human away, like fuel. That's enough. That's enough to break somebody's mind and send them running for the hills, no matter who might die because of it.

I should have run. But I didn't. I turned, and I jumped headfirst into the burning ball of light.

Why the hell did I do that?

But here's the really disturbing question, the one I really don't want to ask, the one that keeps me up at night, desperately trying not to answer it:

How did they know I was going to do that?

The Empty Ones, the other things like Marco standing around in the church that night—they were all waiting for me to do it. They celebrated when it happened. That's what Jackie and Carey said. They flipped out. They clapped with their bloody hands and cheered with their broken mouths. They wanted me to do it. No, they didn't just want it: They knew it would happen.

But it was such a stupid thing for me to do. How could they possibly count on it?

I knew the answer. I could feel it creeping up on me like some big, unseen predator. I couldn't fend it off forever. I sat there running down recent history, night after night, like I could have found the answer in those events. But that wasn't right, because it didn't start with Marco. It started a long time ago. It started the night of the fire. The night my sister died, and I saw—

“The fuck off my stuff!” Carey hollered, bolting awake.

He looked around the room with sleep-blurred eyes, expecting to see another hobo making off with his shoes, or his booze, or his shopping cart full of recycling, or whatever it was he valued. When he didn't find one, he turned and spat on the floor, then rubbed his tongue against his filthy T-shirt.

“Gross, dude, come on,” I said.

“What?” he asked, with utter innocence.

“You can't just spit on the floor.”

“Haha, yeah? That's what you're worried about? You know how many truckers fucked some cheap trick right there, on that exact spot? That's pretty much all places like these are used for. I bet somebody even died there. I bet somebody died there
while
getting fucked by a trucker. My spit is the cleanest thing that will ever touch that carpet. My spit is practically shampoo, as far as this poor bastard carpet is concerned.”

“You believe all that, and you still slept there?” I watched Carey executing his morning wake-up routine: A series of stretches, like hobo yoga, seemingly designed to get the kinks out after sleeping a night on rough, flat ground. It was punctuated by occasional coughing fits and some gagging.

“‘Slept' is a stretch. I passed out here. And sweetheart, I have passed out on far worse. I once passed out on top of a sick horse, when I woke up there was this black spray ev—”

“God! No! I do not want to hear any of that!” I threw the pillow I'd been clutching between my knees at his head.

He was far too slow to duck it. He laughed after it hit him, then you could practically see the room swim behind his eyes, and he crawled desperately toward the bathroom. He bumped Jackie's leg as he crawled over her. She stirred.

“Noooo,” she groaned. “Just noooo.”

“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” I said. “You've probably got super-lice from sleeping on that floor.”

“What? Dammit!” Jackie jumped to her feet and fell facefirst on the bed. “Why did you let me sleep on the floor?”

“Let you?”

We both tried to ignore Carey dry-heaving in the other room.

“If it was you, I would have dragged you up onto the bed,” Jackie said. She tried to slap at me, but was unwilling to open her eyes. She missed by a mile.

“No you wouldn't.” I'd had the TV on so long I stopped noticing the sounds it made. It was playing cartoons now. Maybe it was Saturday.

“I would too,” Jackie protested. “I would have tucked you in and brought you water and bacon, a cool compress for your fevered forehead…”

“A nice tall glass of straight vodka,” I filled in for her, and she groaned. “Some cottage cheese, maybe a side of raw salmon…”

I started bouncing in place on the bed.

“God damn you,” Jackie spat, and stumbled wildly into the bathroom. There was a commotion as she and Carey fought for the toilet. I turned the TV up. I didn't need to hear the details. It was playing some crazy anime thing. All children screaming and rapid flashing—something about collecting a bunch of Super-Tongpus to defeat the Octopus Who Lives at the End of Time or other such nonsense.

I shouldn't have taunted Jackie like that. She wouldn't be mad at me or anything—she does worse to me all the time—but I needed her in good shape this morning. I needed both of them as clear as possible. I'd had nothing to do all night but listen to the pair of them snore, and think. I came to some conclusions. Serious ones, and we needed to talk about them as soon as possible. I couldn't do that if she and Carey spent all morning fighting for toilet space and yelling for me to go get them increasingly stupid hangover cures.

“Kate,” Carey yelled, as if on cue, “run down to the corner store and buy us a loaf of plain white bread.”

“No,” Jackie slumped backwards against the bathroom door and made a valiant effort to look in my general direction. It was a failed effort, but she made it. “No bread. Meat. Get beef jerky and, like, the biggest thing of water. Do they sell barrels? Buy me a barrel of water.”

“Make it two barrels,” Carey added, “and the bread. And a tallboy of PBR.”

“I'm not going to the store,” I said, and they both instantly started whining like children being denied a snow day. “But I'll tell you what: If you get yourselves together enough to move, I'll buy you both breakfast at that shitty diner across the street.”

“Oof. Moving,” Jackie said.

“They'll have bacon,” I told her, then to Carey: “And bread, and unlimited tap water. Sweet, sweet tap water.”

*   *   *

The Bearly There Diner seemed to have been based entirely on bear puns, and not at all on food, service, or atmosphere. It looked like a hunting lodge drawn in crayon by a meth fiend. Our waitress was named Sally, and she looked like she'd been born an orphan, got divorced this morning, and accidentally backed over her cat on the way to work. She had deep frown lines etched permanently into her face, and big, watery gray eyes. But then she opened her mouth, and it was all bubbling enthusiasm and “honeys” and “sweethearts.” She looked like that sad donkey from Winnie the Pooh got his wish and became a real person—but she was friendly, happy, and very understanding about hangovers.

She brought water, first thing, without even being asked.

Carey hadn't stopped talking about wanting to fuck her since. Jackie joined him, after Sally set an extra-large plate of bacon down in front of her with a knowing wink. I let them get a few mouthfuls in before I started:

“We're going to Mexico,” I said.

Jackie blinked, but continued silently tucking neatly folded wads of bacon into her mouth.

“Fuckin' A,” Carey said. “About time we got serious about the fugitive life. We'll head down south. Pound cervezas on the beach and throw bottles at the tourists.”

“We're going to Mexico because Marco's down there,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Jackie asked, barely audible through a mouthful of fried meat.

“I saw him on TV last night. He was talking about a new show he's filming right now in his home town. Tulancingo, I think it was called.”

I sipped my watery coffee. At least it was hot. At least it was caffeine.

“Why do you want to
find
Marco? All we've been doing the past few weeks is trying to put as much distance between us and him as possible. Those schoolgirl hots come back or what?”

“I haven't slept in weeks, Jackie. Not since … whatever it was that happened in that church. I can't do it anymore. I can't keep running. I need it to end.”

I fixed my weariest stare on her. I wanted to let her feel how utterly beaten I was. I put all of my exhaustion, fear, resignation, and hopelessness into my eyes. I needed her to look, really look, and understand how raw I was—realize that I had considered every option and settled on this only as a last resort.

“You're serious?” Jackie asked.

“I am. This isn't going to stop. Not on its own—that much has become clear. If we ever want to have anything like a normal life again, we can't just hope they forget about us. We killed their god, or whatever that ball of light was to them. People don't generally just let that type of thing go.”

“But that can be good too,” Jackie said. “I mean, yeah, they'll hunt you to the ends of the Earth and beyond, hoping to pull out your guts and hang you with them while—”

“Jesus, Jackie.” I set down my coffee, momentarily overcome by the mental images.

“But I'm saying: You killing their god pisses them off, sure, but it leaves them directionless too, right? I don't remember much, but Carey said that Marco was taking orders from some chubby guy, that night in the church. That dude made like Silly Putty in a microwave when you nuked the angel. Say what you want about him—he's a freak, a pervert, an inhuman monster with absolutely killer abs—but Marco does not strike me as the thinking or leading type.”

“But what about…” I started to protest, but couldn't come up with anything.

Why couldn't this be the end of it? Who says I didn't already win the big boss fight, and now it's just a matter of cleaning up the little guys?

When Marco first started coming after me and Jackie, his little band of freaks wouldn't shut up about gears and angels and the turning of the universe. Crazy, pretentious gibberish, obviously, but at least it all sounded like real big picture stuff. The Unnoticeables we'd seen since the angel died hadn't said anything like that. They just seemed to want us dead. I'll admit it: At first, I just wanted to go after Marco as the last act of a desperate woman. If only because death sounded pretty close to sleep, and I could sure use a nap. But now, I was starting to think we had a chance. Then something occurred to me that I should have thought of sooner.

“Carey,” I said. He stopped ogling Sally the Saddest Waitress's saggy ass to point his bloodshot eyes in my direction. “Why did Marco let me live, after I took out the angel? You said he wasn't hurt when the angel went up, and it's not like any of us were in any shape to fight after that. Why not just kill me then and there?”

“He ran,” Carey said. “After the angel shattered like a dropped disco ball and his psychopath pals starting melting, Marco took one look at you, screamed like a little girl, and ran away as fast as he could.”

I didn't have anything to say. Jackie smiled, then it spread to Carey.

“Wow,” I finally managed, and downed the rest of my mug of what I could only call “flat coffee.”

“Let's do it, then,” Carey said, waving Sally over for either the check or a filthy proposition. “Let's go kick the devil's ass.”

 

SIX

1978. London, England. Carey.

There were two Unnoticeables coming toward us down the aisle from the front of the bus, a couple more from the rear, and maybe a half dozen still in their seats and just starting to move. The girl with the striped leggings was fixing the ones ahead of us with a stare like Clint Eastwood after somebody shat in his cornflakes, which I guess left me with the ones behind. I uncapped the hair spray I'd lifted from the girl at the Rainbow and flicked my scarred and singed bumblebee Zippo once, twice. On the third time it caught. I tried to think of something clever to say to the blurry face nearest me, but I wound up going with “Here's fire in your face, fucker.”

I hit the little tab and shot out a fucking monumental gout of flame. It was like watching a volcano orgasm.

Holy shit, girls put this crap on their heads?!

The Unnoticeable on the left seemed more startled than hurt, but the one on the right was wearing some bullshit polyester disco blouse. He lit up like a roman candle.

Serves you right for having no class, you molten bastard.

I turned around to reap some cool points with the little punk rock chick, only to find that she'd already bashed one of her guys' heads nearly off his neck and had the other in a leg lock, using her brass knuckles to pummel him into a refreshing mist.

I would not be scoring anything today.