The Empty Ones (6 page)

Somebody seized my arms from behind, and the can and lighter scattered down the aisle.

Oh right, the other one.

I tried to get my feet up to kick off of one of the benches, but the guy was strong. He was hefting me right up into the air, and I couldn't find purchase. He couldn't hurt me without letting me go, and I couldn't do anything to get away until he did. It was a stalemate. But his eraser-faced buddies were coming to break it for us. An old lady to my left with a ratty gray shawl; a muscle-bound guy in a too-tight tank top to my right. They were closing in, and all I could do was flail and kick at the open air.

Then the girl saw us, dropped the Unnoticeable whose face she'd turned into a meaty pudding, and came hurtling down the aisle like a bowling ball. She scattered the old lady and knocked the 'roid-head down so hard he left a dent in the metal pole with his skull.

Nobody is that strong. Much less this short, chubby, couldn't-be-more-than-seventeen-year-old chick. What the hell is going on? Oh shit, is she going to…?

I ducked just in time as she sent a full-body rocketing jump kick into the guy holding me. I hope he enjoyed the time he'd spent with his ribcage, because those days were over. The few faceless passengers left didn't look afraid, exactly, but even they seemed to acknowledge that they wouldn't be taking us in a fistfight. Still, the driver showed no signs of slowing, and there was no way to the doors without wading through the bastards.

“Up the stairs,” the girl in the striped leggings said, to the empty air.

I'm no dope; I was halfway up them before she opened her mouth. The second I crested that last stair I was looking for an emergency exit, which I guess was stupid. Even if they installed doors on the second floor of a city bus for the more thrill-seeking passengers, what were we gonna do? Jump off the second story of a speeding bus onto another car?

Holy shit, how cool would that be?

The girl came booking up the steps a moment later. She wasn't much to look at before, and now her spiked brass knuckles were dripping blood, her clothes were ripped, and I think she had somebody's ear sticking to her shoulder. She was getting hotter by the minute.

“Here, kick out this window and let's jump off the second story of this speeding bus onto another car,” I told her. “It will be amazing.”

Stop: I'm not a psychopath. I mean, I'm kind of an idiot, but I am aware of the limits of the human body—especially
my
cruddy human body—and though I frequently ignore them (because they're bullshit), I'm not suicidal. Sometimes, when things look bad, I suggest the stupidest plan I can think of, because the people around me will always roll their eyes, call me a retard, and then suggest a better one.

“Sounds good,” the girl in the striped leggings said.

It is so goddamned unfair that I'm going to die on the day I meet my
second
soulmate.

She was trying to get the right footing to bash out the glass when I spotted a pair of owl's eyes in the dark outside the bus. Two darting little lights swerving erratically and quickly toward us.

“Down!” I said, though that was redundant, because I was already tackling her.

We both hit the floor, me on top of her. I managed to get my arms and legs hastily wrapped around the benches in front of and behind us. I barely had enough time to register how her tits felt pressed against my chest (pretty good!) before the car T-boned us, and the speeding bus wobbled crazily up onto two wheels. It rocked back the other way, and I could hear shouts from below as the Unnoticeables were whipped into the walls. Then the wheels caught, and the world went sideways.

I didn't actually manage to hold on to both of us through the whole crash. I would love to say that I did, and that I saved us both, and that the girl took off her shirt and jumped around in pure giddy celebration at the gift of life I'd bestowed on her, before giving me a hand job with the brass knuckles still on, which is a weird thing I'm apparently into—

I got slapped awake.

A guy with an Elvis sneer and a hot pink T-shirt with the words
LEFT IS RIGHT
across the front was staring down at me. He smiled when I opened my eyes. Well, the one that worked, anyway.

“Get up,” Randall said. “Time to run.”

“Fuck you,” I answered, more by reflex than anything else. “Do I even have legs anymore? Where's the girl?”

“My name is Meryll, I'm right here, and I'm not bloody carrying you any farther, so get up.”

One of her arms looked bent a bit funny, but she was apparently in good enough shape to haul me out of the wreckage of that bus. I was laid out by the side of the street, propped up against a little aluminum food cart that smelled like fish farts. I tested my limbs one by one. They weren't happy about it, but they worked. I held out a hand for Randall to help me up. He high-fived me.

Bastard.

I got to my feet. Behind us, the double-decker bus had mostly merged with a smear of blue plastic that I could only guess had once been the car Randall used to ram it.

“How the hell did you survive that?” I asked him.

“I just bailed before it hit,” he said, and showed me a pair of scraped and bloody elbows. “Always wanted to do that. I uh … I wouldn't advise it.”

Meryll laughed, that lilting girlish laugh that sounds too good to be genuine.

“Hi,” Randall said to her, after being reminded of her existence. “Randall.”

“I'm Meryll—oh, but I just said that! How funny.” She laughed again.

God damn it, Randall, I heroically pancake a girl in a bus crash and you still stroll in to snake her from me.

“I like your shirt,” Meryll said. Suddenly all bashful and girlish and awkward.

“Thanks,” Randall said. “I got it off a dead guy.”

She laughed that show-laugh.

Why do chicks always find his accuracy and honesty so hilarious? I helped him yank that damn thing off the corpse myself. He hasn't even washed it yet.

“Hey,” I said, sick of the show, “aren't we running for our lives right now? 'Cause it looks like the fuckin' eighth-grade prom out here.”

Randall shrugged and looked around, trying to get his bearings. Meryll didn't say anything, but the death glare she fixed me with said a bunch of nasty stuff about my mom.

“I have no idea where we are,” Randall finally admitted.

“I think just ‘away' is good enough for now,” I said.

“I've got a place,” Meryll said. “It's safe. Well, safe as you can get these days, anyway. We just have to get to the Underground. Come on.”

She set off down a mostly submerged sidewalk, each stomp of her big burly boots sending up watery haloes. Randall smelled girl-meat, so he happily went jogging right after it. I took some time to sulk about how little recognition I was getting for saving the day and nearly getting myself killed in the process. Well, myself and others, I guess. I nursed my wounded pride for a solid five seconds before it got boring, then limped along in the lovebirds' wake.

“—ever met somebody you forget while you're still looking at 'em? Sure, sometimes those are just dreary numbskulls talking about the weather, but sometimes they're what we call…”

I'd apparently caught up right as Randall was launching into Monster 101.

“Faceless. Yeah, we got those here too.”

“Shit,” Randall blinked. “That is a way better name. We call 'em Unnoticeables. You know about them?”

“You could say that,” Meryll said.

She was walking a bit too close to Randall for him being a total stranger. Maybe it was the rain, or maybe it was a cultural thing, or maybe she wanted to twirl about on his dick like a helicopter.

The bastard.

“Well, that's not the end of it; there's these big black things—”

“The Sludge,” Meryll finished, laughing. “What do you call them, Tar Babies?”

“N-no…” Randall protested. But he didn't tell her what we do call them. Probably too embarrassed. So I helped him out.

“We call 'em tar men,” I said, and Meryll snickered again. “Pretty sure it was Randall came up with that name.”

He glared at me; she avoided eye contact altogether. Stared down at the sloshing urban sea beneath our feet.

“I, uh…” Randall was defused, all hands-in-pockets awkward now. “You know about the rest too?”

Meryll nodded. “There's the Husks, the ones that look like people with normal faces and voices and all that, but they got no life in their eyes. And the Flares.”

“The Flares?” I butted in. “That's new. I don't think we have those.”

“They're the big baddies,” Meryll said. “They start it all. There's not much to them, just a big bright empty spot in your eyes, and static.”

“Oh,” Randall said. “The angels.”

Meryll stopped so quick I ran into her from behind. I didn't even have time to cop a quick feel before she wheeled on Randall. “Angels? You call them fucking angels? Jesus, but you Yanks really are stupid. They're not angels. They're not anything like angels. They're pure bloody evil, through and through. At least with the Faceless and the Sludge and the Husks, they got something they want. Maybe that's just to snatch you up, or melt you, or fuck your eyeholes from the inside out—but it's still an agenda. The Flares don't want a thing. There's no reason to them, no telling what they'll do or why—they show up, and people just stop being and then they're gone, and they don't even care. They're the farthest thing from fucking angels you could possibly get. Jackass.”

Randall was holding his hands up like an old-timey bank robber, trying to figure out how to apologize for something he didn't understand that he'd done.

“I think it's ironic,” I said, not trying to help. “Like calling a big guy ‘Tiny.'”

Meryll glared burning holes into my brain.

“Randall named them, too,” I said.

He started to say something, decided on a more effective means of communication, and slapped me upside the head instead. I jumped up to get a headlock on him and we tumbled into the flooded gutter. I pushed his head down—you know, just a bit of playful drowning—and the dickhead punched me in the kidneys. Totally uncalled for.

“Idiots!” Meryll shouted, booting me in the side.

Oh hey, wonder why you didn't kick pretty lil' Randall with those fucking hobnails?

“Couple of drooling damned cavemen, playing grabass when an army of Faceless are probably on their way here right now.”

“Relax,” I said, dragging my thoroughly soaked butt out of the chilly, greasy water. “They're not exactly the Green Berets. Got no organization. They usually just go away for a while after a good old-fashioned ass kicking.”

“Maybe where you're from,” Meryll said, and she—
you won't believe this shit
—she offered her hand to help Randall out of the puddle.

And he fucking took it!

“They've got their act together on this side of the pond. If you see one, there are more around. If you get away from them, you've got a bloody army coming your way. So would you two morons”—she shook Randall's hand away, a little display of self-conscious toughness—“put off humping each other long enough for us to get somewhere safe?”

“I'll try,” Randall said, sheepish grin nudging its way onto his face. “But you see the way he's dressed. He's asking for it.”

Meryll laughed. I gave him the finger. He gave me two back. I went to unzip my fly, and Meryll rolled her eyes and walked away.

It was a few biblically flooded blocks to the train station. I wasn't much interested in watching their foreplay, so I hung back out of earshot. Either Randall was killing it, or Meryll was harder up than I could have imagined. She laughed at every other word out of his mouth. They bumped into each other a little more than Randall's six-beer buzz would account for. If they hadn't just met in a brutal bus wreck after nearly getting abducted by faceless attackers, the scene would be downright romantic.

I turned my head to look at a chick passing by on the other side of the street—
damn the hippie movement all you like, but I'm all for the lack of bras
—and when I looked back, Randall and Meryll were gone. Just vanished. My guts clenched up and I went into fight mode, looking around for body snatchers. I didn't find any. I jogged up to where I'd last seen them and spotted the culprit: A set of stairs, each a tiny waterfall in this downpour, leading down to the trains. They were halfway to the landing already. I thought about riding the wet railing all the way to the bottom just to beat them there—
surely that'll prove me a worthy lay
—but my hip and shoulder throbbed just thinking about taking another fall. I decided to walk instead.

Must be getting old.

The stairs were slick, and the torrent of water pouring down from above made just keeping on your feet a chore. It took forever to get to the bottom, and my hip ached with every awkward step. I thought I'd probably lost Meryll and Randall in the crowd—there weren't many people up on the street, but this was still New Year's Eve in London; the tube
had
to be crowded—but no such luck. They were stopped right there in front of me, blocking the stairs. They were staring at a solid wall of punks. The whole station standing room only, and every last occupant was wet and nasty and riding the climax of an amped-up drunk.

The fucking show had just let out. I had forgotten all about it. And judging by the impending violence in the air, The Ramones had either done the best set of their lives, or personally pissed in the nostrils of every one of their fans on their way out the door.

It was mostly reflex. I can't see a crowd and not look for things I'm not supposed to look for—the faces I skip over, the people I forget, the overpowering urge toward inattention. I couldn't pick out individuals. There were too many people, too much anonymity—but I recognized that feeling in the pit of my stomach. Those hairs on the back of my neck.