The Hollow City (31 page)

It’s a deep pit, dark and hollow like an empty well. The sides are rough and uneven, full of gaps and hollows and sharp flares of rock—this wasn’t built, it formed naturally, hollowed out by water or torn open by an earthquake. I gasp, my breath catching in my throat. This is the pit that’s haunted me; this is the pit that’s lurked in the back of my mind and worked its way into so many other memories. I know this place.

“I’ve been here,” I say. “I’ve been … down there.”

Vanek nods. “This is how we merged. The first time was an accident; one of the farmers broke through the surface and fell into the sinkhole—your friend Milos, in fact. When he finally gained enough control to realize what had happened—that he was safe, that the pain was gone—he started throwing the others in so we could join him. Imagine the pain we must have been in to agree to such a mad endeavor—to give up our lives and seal ourselves inside of a lesser creature. It would be like you choosing to live as a vegetable.”

I stare at the pit, imagining the darkness, the pain, the terror on both sides. Innocent beings attacked by their own world. “I can only imagine.”

“That was 1952. Now imagine how much worse it’s gotten since then. Your technology has outstripped every other electrical force on the planet.” He bows his head, looking reverently into the empty pit. “You stand on holy ground, Michael. You stand over the last haven of our people.”

I turn on him, angry and frightened. “And now what? How does it end? With traitors in the right positions and a massive stash of cyanide? Why not just nuke the world and kill us all?”

“If our host body dies, we die, because our electrical patterns become dependent on yours during the merging. We can leave a body voluntarily, but we must immediately enter another.”

“So you’re protected,” I say, “but you’re trapped.”

He nods. “A necessary evil.”

“Then what happens next?”

“We will undo you. We will destroy your capacity to hurt us. We will return you to the pastoral life you used to lead, before you poisoned the sky.”

“You can’t.”

“We already are. The poison is already in place, the water system already mapped and routed exactly the way we need it—in this city and in dozens of others, scattered to every corner of the country. In a matter of days your glorious city will be a ruin, quiet and empty, home only to shadows and echoes and a vast, open grave.”

TWENTY-NINE

I STARE INTO THE PIT
, searching for some sign of life—a flicker of movement, a glimmer of color—but there’s nothing to see. Instead I feel it, vibrating through my body like a wave of energy.
We are here. We are your brothers. We are your death.

A hundred faceless spirits, intangible and invisible, hell-bent on the destruction of all mankind.

What can I do to stop them?

Vanek smiles in grim satisfaction. “You see now that there’s
nothing
you can do to stop us. We’re smarter than you; we’re more prepared than you. And the only human being who knows of our plans is a dangerous schizophrenic, well-known for his ridiculous delusions and, now, wanted for murder.” He smiles. “We’ve already won.”

“The police will come,” I say. “They’ll come to look for me, and they’ll find your nursery and they’ll put you all in jail forever.”

“Forever is a very long time,” he says, “and we can afford to wait much longer than you. Do you know how old we are, Michael? Do you have any idea the things we’ve seen—the glories my mind contains? I was here when the Earth cracked open and the continents split apart; when the dinosaurs rose and fell; when the first man raised his spindly arms to deify the sky. I watched him do it, or one like him, squirming like an insect in a jar, railing idiotically against a world he couldn’t possibly understand.” Vanek walks toward me, seeming to grow larger as he approaches. “Do you have any idea how insignificant you are compared to us? How little it would bother us to snuff you out like candles? We’ve seen your infantile political systems: you’d kill yourselves if we gave you an excuse.” He looms over me, malevolent eyes mere inches from my face. “You’re alone and you’re helpless. There is nothing you can do to stop us.”

I feel a hand on my arm; Lucy is here. “You’re not alone, Michael. Don’t listen to him.”

Vanek laughs. “An imaginary friend: how terrifying.”

“You’re just as imaginary as I am,” Lucy snaps.

“I am more real than any human could possibly be.”

“Then why am I still in control?” I look up, meeting his eyes, forcing myself not to shy back from the force of his gaze. “If you’re so powerful, why are you still trapped in my mind?”

He hits me, a shocking blow across the face that sends me reeling against the far wall. “Do not mock me!”

Lucy tackles him from behind, but he throws her off with ease; she nearly falls into the open pit, but catches the edge of the bed and pulls herself away. I steady myself against the wall.

“You’re a prisoner in my head, Vanek. You said so yourself.” I let go of the wall, legs still shaky, and step toward him. “That means you’re weaker than you say you are. It means I can beat you.”

“It’s not my weakness,” he says, rushing toward me, “it’s yours!” He hits me again, knocking me into the chairs; they clatter to the ground around me, bruising my arms and slamming solidly against my chest. “Your mind is broken!” Vanek growls. “I can’t control your body because no one can control it—it’s a hopeless wreck of faulty connections and crossed wires.” I try to stand and he hits me again, slamming my head against the wall. “You’re a useless bag of meat!”

I crawl away from him, scattering the chairs and trying to keep them between us. Lucy meets me, crawling from the other direction, and wraps her arms around me protectively. She has a cut on her cheek from when Vanek threw her.

Dr. Vanek shakes his head, looking down at us with disdain. “If I’d known twenty years ago that your mind was this twisted and useless, I’d have killed you on the spot and merged with someone else.”

I’m shaking, trying to regain my breath and bearing. Lucy strokes my cheek, whispering, “It’s all right—you’re still in charge. He can rail and yell all he wants, but you’re still in charge.”

“You’re trapped in here with me,” Vanek snarls at her. “Don’t make me angry.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head, “she’s right.”

“Shut up!”

“You’re trapped,” I say. I brace myself on a fallen chair and stagger to my feet. My left eye feels swollen, and my ribs throb with pain. “I thought my schizophrenia was part of what you did to me, but it’s not—it’s an accident you weren’t prepared for. You can’t even choose a new host, the way the others can, because you can’t find your way out of my mind.” I stand up straight. “For all your talk you’re still just a prisoner, and I’m not useless because I’m your prison.”

“I can control you.”

“Sometimes,” I say, “but not often enough, and not consistently. The other … Children of the Earth, whatever you are … they could take over their hosts’ bodies in just a few years because they figured out how the nervous system worked: which electrical pulses connected to the senses and the muscles and the memories. But I’m schizophrenic—none of the systems you’ve tried to master make any sense, and half of them are complete fabrications. You hear things that aren’t there, you see people that don’t exist. You trace mental signals that start nowhere and end in another nowhere completely different from the first. It’s a web you can never hope to untangle.” I set my jaw and stare him down. “I can see you and hear you, I can feel your attacks, but no one else even knows you exist. You can’t talk or act or communicate with anyone. As far as the real world is concerned, you’re just another hallucination.”

He roars and charges me again, but this time I stand my ground and deflect his swing with my arm, throwing him back.

“You live in my mind, Vanek! You can’t hurt me!”

“But I can,” says Ellie. I look to the kitchen and see her standing in the open doorway, one arm limp at her side, the other hand holding a gun. Her blank face is smeared with a blur of blood, like I’m looking through a cloud or a TV pixilation.

“I thought you were dead.”

Vanek barks a humorless laugh. “I told you she wasn’t.”

Ellie steps forward. “I’m sorry, Dr. Vanek, but this is the only way to stop him. It pains me that you will die with him, but I will not sacrifice our people to save you.” She swallows. “I’ll use a gun to avoid any more … unpleasantness.”

Lucy steps in front of me, blocking the path between me and Vanek. “I can’t protect you from her,” she says, nodding at Ellie, “but if Vanek attacks you he’ll have to get through me first.”

“I don’t need to attack anyone but Eliska,” says Vanek. “I have not come this close just to let her kill me!”

“Don’t attack her!” I shout. “She’ll shoot me and kill us both.”

“I’m sure he’s enraged,” says Ellie, leaning tiredly against the door frame. “He was never as selfless as the rest of us—that’s why he insisted on claiming one of the newer, younger bodies.” She smiles cruelly. “I guess we see what greed will get us, don’t we?”

“Just think about this,” I say, fixing her with my eyes. “You’re talking about the destruction of an entire civilization. Can’t we find some kind of compromise?”

“Do humans compromise with cattle?” asks Ellie. “Do they make deals with insects? Humans are nothing but a nuisance to us—an infestation to be culled and farmed, as casually as you would watch a goldfish in a bowl.”

“We can communicate with each other!” I say. “Do you have any idea how incredible that is? To find intelligence right here, right under our noses! We have ideas to discuss with each other—cultures to share and explore.”

“We have explored your culture since the day your invasive technology forced us to pay attention to it, and we have found nothing of any value.” She glances at the ceiling, as if looking at the sky beyond. “We heard the stars singing, Michael; before you drenched the world in electrical blather we felt the Earth stir within us, we felt the movements of the sun and the moon as they danced across the sky. What could you possibly have to compare with that?”

“We have…” I stop. What do we have? I’ve lived a life of fear and hatred and neglect; I was teased at school, tossed helplessly from job to job, beaten by my own father. I have lived for twenty full years without ever experiencing peace or happiness. Now, I search for an impassioned defense of humanity, and I can find nothing.

“We have love,” says Lucy.

I look at her standing in front of me, her clothes ripped and bloody, her small frame dwarfed by Vanek’s terrifying bulk. She’s a nothing—a frail figment of a diseased imagination—and yet she’s prepared to sacrifice everything to save me. Me. The child no one cared about; the man everyone wanted to forget. She loves me.

Her voice is firm and fierce. “Do you people even know what love is? Do you have any idea what love can do to you—how it can crack you open, how it can beat you down and scour your soul and leave you more joyful than you’ve ever been before?” She talks proudly, and I realize that I am talking with her, mirroring her words. “You were married, Ellie: Ambrose and Eliska Vanek. Did that mean anything to you at all? Even if your kind have no emotions of your own, did you gain nothing from your hosts—no feelings, no memories, no hopes or dreams?”

Ellie snarls. “Nothing.”

“But he felt something for you,” I say, stepping forward. “Vanek’s thoughts were in my head, his memories mingled with mine, and one of them must have been his love for you.” I look at Lucy and she turns to me, brown eyes brimming with tears. “Why else would my ideal girlfriend—the most perfect woman my mind could imagine—have your face?”

Ellie’s arm falters. Vanek looks at her. “There was something,” she says, “long ago. It was not love but loss, a sadness I couldn’t understand.”

“Loss?”

“When Ambrose left—when he merged with the child and his old host died—I felt … grief.” She shakes her head and snarls. “I felt my host’s
weakness.
” Her arm straightens, the pistol again trained squarely on my chest. “It was not a sensation I have any desire to repeat. I’ve raised every child since then to ignore it.”

“But you can’t,” I say, remembering Arlene. She missed her human family. “It’s a part of you now. You didn’t feel emotions as spirits, or fields, or whatever you were, but you feel them now—your entire race, everyone who’s bonded with a human host. They were raised with us, they feel a kinship with us.” I step forward. “When the time comes, and you give the orders to destroy us, will they even follow you?”

Ellie hesitates, her arm wavering. I watch her closely, fists clenched in anticipation. Put down the gun! She shakes her head.

“I don’t have time for this,” she says. “The Red Line Killer is here—I must go and deal with him, and I can’t risk you getting away. Whatever this means for our plan, whatever changes I’ll have to make … either way I still can’t let you live.”

“Wait,” I say, confused. “The Red Line Killer? When I heard the shouts I thought they were talking about me.”

“You?” asks Ellie. “You’re not the Red Line Killer, it’s your—”

Her chest explodes with a deafening boom, spraying blood against the wall. Her body slumps to the ground, blank face staring vacantly at the ceiling, and as I watch it the smooth blur over her features starts to distort. Light and color swirl and fuse, and all too soon they dissipate and die. Lucy’s face stares blankly from the floor, old and wrinkled.

“No!” Vanek wails.

A figure steps into the room: first a shotgun, then a pair of black-clad legs stepping over the corpse, then a face: my father. He trains the shotgun on me.

“Are you one of them?”

My father. I look at Ellie’s corpse, then back at his face. “Is it really you?”

“Answer me, Michael.” He raises the shotgun to his cheek and sights down the barrel. “Are you one of them?”

“They tried,” I said, glancing at Vanek, “but I’m still me.”

He doesn’t move. His finger hovers over the trigger.

“Father?”

“Prove it,” he says.

“You can’t even stand up to your father,” says Vanek. “Give me control and be a man for a change.”