“Wanna beer?” I asked Meryll.
She struggled one eye open a crack, sighed, and closed it again.
“So … is that a yes?” I asked, confused.
“I’ll take one,” Randall said.
I pushed up out of the folding seat and a cloud of gray dust followed me. I crossed the room, skirting the Swimmin Pool, which was full of the most poisonous-looking water I have ever seen, and reached into the set as casually as possible.
Something ate my fingers.
“Motherfuck!” I yelped, and drew my hand back too fast. My wrist scraped on the broken glass, drawing neat and precise lines of blood.
All the punk kids bust out laughing.
There was a mousetrap closed across three of my fingers.
Out of obligation, I swore at them for a good twenty seconds, but I couldn’t really blame somebody for protecting their stash. I’d just never thought to use mousetraps, myself. Good idea. I’d have some new tricks when I got home—travel really does teach you things.
When I finished calling their mothers my usual laundry list of filth, I pulled the trap off my hand and reached back into the set.
The kids stopped laughing.
Keeping eye contact the whole time, I felt around inside it.
You watch me, motherfuckers. You watch me steal your beer.
I was all Clint Eastwood on the outside, but inwardly I dreaded that metallic snap with every movement. None came. I emerged intact with three room-temperature cans of something called “lager.” Weird name for a beer. The punks glared at me while I crossed the room, took my seat, and handed out drinks to my friends.
Meryll looked down at her hand, surprised to find a beer in it.
“I didn’t want one,” she said.
“What? Seriously? You should have said something.”
“I glared at you when you asked.”
“But you didn’t say no…” I eyeballed the unwanted beer, waiting to see if this was a trap.
“It was implied.”
“Listen, girl. Unless you specifically say ‘please do not get me a beer’ I am always going to assume beer. It’s the only reasonable assumption to make.”
I snatched the can out of her limp hand just seconds before Randall got to it. He snapped his fingers.
Finally, a point for Carey.
I cracked open my pilfered can, stuffed the reserve in my jacket for emergencies, and killed half a beer in one long pull The bubbles bit pleasantly at the back of my throat. It was as bitter, thin, and warm as the embrace of an ex-lover. It was the best beer I’d ever had, just like all the rest. This one maybe a little better than usual. It was coming at the tail end of an aborted buzz, just as the headache was starting to set in. There’s no way I could have felt it that fast, but I swear my hip stopped hurting quite as much after the very first taste. Pictured those beer molecules down there, fizzing about, knitting up bones and sewing back together the torn muscles. My little doctors.
“Ahhhh…” Randall and I said, practically in unison.
“I’d tell you to make yourselves at home, but you seem to have gotten that message already,” a voice like wet sandpaper came from above.
A really old guy (like, probably at least fifty), was climbing down the ladder. He took it slow, both legs on one rung before he moved to the next. He was wearing a faded green jacket that I associated with the army for no particular reason. Gray trousers, baggy. Didn’t look intentional, like for style or anything. Seemed like he just used to be a bigger man and had held on to the pants. He was thin now, but still solid. You could tell by the way he heaved himself down that ladder. He was moving carefully, like he had something wrong with one leg, but the rest of him worked smoothly and easily to compensate. He reached the floor and turned into the light. Now I could see he was more beard than man. A big, poofy gray nest took up most of his face. Eyes like metal were set deep into dirty wrinkles. He unhooked a nasty-looking piece of rebar from its resting place in the crook of his elbow. It was three feet long, rusty, and curved at one end to form a handle. He used it like a cane.
He crossed the room quicker than I would have thought. Definitely favored that right leg, but it looked like he’d had a long time to get used to it.
“The name is Tub,” he said, and offered a hand.
Without thinking, I reached out and shook it with fingers still stinging from the mousetrap. He mashed them into dust with his handshake.
“What kinda name is ‘Tub’?” Randall asked.
“Got a big old tub up there on the top story. I sleep in it,” he offered. That was plainly the only explanation we were going to get.
Tub offered Randall his hand, but Randall saw through that trap and just raised his beer a bit in greeting.
“Randall,” he said. “That’s Carey and this is—”
“He knows who I am, dipshit,” Meryll croaked.
“Girl’s slept in the bathtub with me.” Tub laughed. “I don’t think we need to stand on formality.”
Randall made a face like somebody had slipped shit between his lips while he wasn’t looking.
“Not like that!” Tub whapped the frame of the theater seats with his cane. “She’s practically my daughter.”
“Tub…” Meryll warned.
“I said practically, didn’t I?” he protested.
Tub eyeballed Meryll’s neck. He took her face in his hand and turned it this way and that.
“I don’t like the look of that burn. Better get Annie to take a look.”
“I’ll be fine,” Meryll said, but the words died in the air.
“Beaver!” Tub yelled, and the monk-headed kid with the missing teeth jumped to attention like an army private caught napping. “You help Meryll over to Annie’s place. Get her fixed up. And make sure she gets the good pain pills.”
“I don’t need any pain pills,” Meryll whispered, fading.
“Yeah, but I might like some.” Tub laughed. He slapped Beaver on the ass with his cane as he passed. Beaver winced.
Tub sure liked to gesture with that thing, which would be fine if it wasn’t fucking rebar. I sure hoped he never needed to emphasize a point for me.
“Now, you boys,” Tub said, settling into Meryll’s empty seat, “are gonna tell me what happened, and how much you saw.”
Randall sighed. “No,” he said. “I don’t wanna do the recap again. Carey?”
I took a long pull from my beer. Then I burped as loud as I could. That was my answer.
“Long story short: There are monsters. We know all about them. We fuck ’em up,” Randall said. “Why don’t you give us the rundown instead, while we sit here and get shit-faced off your beer?”
I think Tub smiled back behind that deep dandelion puff of a beard.
“Right!” He snapped his cane against the concrete, sending little chips flying. “A couple of professionals. About bloody time.”
I laughed.
Professional! Never heard that one before. At least, not without “asshole” or “cocksucker” at the end.
“Usually I have to spend the first hour just fighting disbelief. ‘There’s no such things as monsters.’ ‘You’re just some crazy old hobo.’ ‘You have to let me go or I’ll call the police.’ Good to be able to cut to the chase. You boys have seen it all already, so I won’t mince words. It’s bad. We think Meryll’s candidate cycle is almost up, and we’ve neutralized twenty-eight of them, but have no leads on the last seven. Not to mention that we have no idea where the Faceless are planning to summon the Flares. There are Sludges in greater numbers than we’ve ever seen—maybe hundreds of thousands, all waiting in the Underground for … something. Who knows, with them? Now, we always had our fair share of Husks here, but it seems like we’re bloody importing ’em these days. They’re coming in from all over—you know, one of my boys said he saw the Council of Six in the West End? The Council itself! You know it’s bad when those tepid old child-eaters all gather in the same city. I mean, clearly we’ve got the mutat
ion in our ranks, and she’s training up fine. But this doesn’t look like another run-of-the-mill Division. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Trial of the Blitz. And I don’t need to remind you boys how that turned out.…”
I stared silently into the opening of my beer. I figured I could just crawl in there and go to sleep if I tried hard enough. I looked at Randall, and he silently mouthed “W-H-A-T?!” I shrugged wildly in return.
Tub looked at each of us, then frowned. Or I assume he did. His beard drooped. “Were you not following?” he asked.
“I uh … I understood some of those words as words that I know,” Randall said carefully.
“I got ‘bloody’—that’s how you Brits say ‘fucking,’ right?” I added.
Tub exploded out of his chair, spun, and lashed his rebar cane down at my leg. I dodged, but only by flailing so hard that the row of theater seats tipped backwards. The rest of my open beer emptied onto my face. Me and Randall scrambled to our feet and tried to get between him and the door.
“You think this is a game?!” Tub hollered, his colorless eyes boring into each of us in turn. “You think we’ve got time to hand-hold idiots while our people die in the dark by the bloody hour?! You’re useless, the both of you. Get the hell out of our house before we string you up and use you as Sludge-bait.”
Randall was already turning to go, and it was a good move. We came here for Gus, to end the thing that killed our friends, not to volunteer for some wacky Brit’s crazy magic war.
But if you stay, Meryll will be here. She’ll see how Randall wanted to go, but you bravely volunteered to stick around, and she’ll leap on your dick like an offensive tackle.
Not good enough, brain.
They also have plenty of beer and a place to sleep that’s not filled with German tourists.
Shit.
“Wait!” I said, sheltering behind the overturned folding chairs, my eyes glued to the wavering piece of rebar. “We didn’t understand pretty much all of that. True. But we been through this shit. We’ve taken out tar men—Sludges—and we’ve tangled with the Unnoticeables plenty of times and came out on top.”
“Faceless,” Randall clarified.
“Right, Faceless. We’ve only messed with one uh … Husk. We call them Empty Ones. His name was Gus, and he killed our friends. All because some fucking lightbulb wanted to jump in my head and—”
“What?!” Tub lunged at me with his cane. I hurdled the seats, took several desperate strides, and jumped over most of the Swimmin Pool. One of my Chucks slipped and slid right into the black water.
I’ll have to burn these shoes.
I now had a ratty green couch between me and the psychotic bearded guy with the club. It did not feel very reassuring.
“The Flare came for you? You were the successful candidate? You helped them bloody procreate?”
“Whoa.” Randall laughed. “You fucked that angel, Carey? Nice.”
“No! I … I don’t know what they were there for. They lured us into the tunnels and there were gears and kids jumping into them and … shit. I just wanted to save my friends. And I did. And now I just want to nuke the bastard that killed the ones I couldn’t save. That’s all we want. Just let us help.”
Tub seemed to deflate.
He muttered one long, soft string of obscenity as he hobbled toward the beer TV.
He reached his hand in. There was a loud snap.
The fucking mousetrap.
I steeled myself for a rebar enema.
Tub didn’t even blink. He pulled his hand out, removed the trap, tossed it on the ground, and came out with an entire six-pack. He hobbled back over to me, and I skittered around to the other side of the couch, ready to bolt. He just sighed and settled heavily into it. He sunk nearly to the ground. Frame must be busted.
“If we weren’t so shorthanded already, I’d shank you both in the gentleman’s area and leave you to sing the Orfeo for bobs on a Brixton corner,” he said, cracking open the first beer.
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds awful,” I said.
On the one hand, I was wary that this whole couch gag was an elaborate trap to slip a length of filthy rebar up my ass. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that was the last of the beer.
“Sit, boyo,” Tub said, sounding tired.
Randall vaulted over the back of the couch and landed hard on the cushions. Something snapped in the frame. I sunk beside him. We stared quietly at the fire for a few minutes. Finally Tub held a beer out to Randall, then to me, and started what I guessed was a very familiar speech.
“Something lives beneath London. Right under our feet. Thriving, fucking, eating, and killing our kids as we go get the bloody paper and sip our bloody tea. The Faceless are the most common. They pass for people, but they got this aura that makes you forget to pay attention to them. They’re grunts, pawns in the game. Plentiful and expendable.”
He paused to look at Randall before continuing. Randall nodded.
Yes, yes—we’re total dipshits, but some things we know.
“All right. If this is familiar territory, you get the abridged version: The Sludges, giant man-shaped things made of black acid. Make a noise like somebody stabbing a train crash, messes with your balance. The Husks also look like people, but they’re not … what did you call the Faceless?”
“Unnoticeables.”
“Right. They’re not … noticeable … Jesus, that’s stupid.”
Me and Randall rolled our eyes, but not so much as he’d notice and take our beers away.
“But the Husks are just that: Shells. They’re empty inside. Something got in them and hollowed out all the parts that mattered. The Husks make the Faceless. They spread their emptiness like a sexually transmitted void: semen, saliva, blood—”
Tub made like he was going to continue, but he must have seen me making a dumber-than-usual face.
“Didn’t know that part?”
I shook my head.
“There may be other ways. Bodily fluids is all we’ve been able to confirm. With sex or saliva, you’ve got a few minutes to limit exposure before you’re emptied out completely and wake up Faceless. But if they get their blood in you somehow, it’s game over. Luckily, they seem to like sex best.”
“Who doesn’t?” Randall laughed, holding up his hand for a high five.
Tub growled at him.
Randall’s hand went down slowly.
“Then we take a big step up the food chain and find the Flares,” Tub continued. “Big balls of light that scream inside your head when you look at ’em. They make the Husks.”
He checked with us again. I raised my beer, motioning for him to continue.
“Though it seems to be an accident.”
“What?” Randall said.
Tub leaned forward and rubbed his bad leg. He spat on the floor and killed his beer before speaking.
“The Flares want to reduce people. They reach into your head and pick out the stuff that makes you … you. They yank at a few specific bits—memories, impulses, and tendencies that are like keystones to your personality. When it all comes tumbling down, they get some weird kind of energy from you. The ground shakes when it happens, so there must be a lot of it. Sometimes the process don’t go right, and a body doesn’t reduce all the way. You wind up with a Husk and a Sludge: the empty shell where a person used to be, and the living embodiment of all the garbage that was left over.”
“And that’s an accident?” Randall asked.
“Seems to be.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “We’ve seen them call an angel just to make more of those things. They did some kind of ritual, and a ball of light came down and started lighting fires behind people’s eyes. Making more Empty Ones. That’s the procreation thing you were talking about, right? We’ve seen it. We were there.”
Tub laughed bitterly. He tapped a little song on the concrete with his rebar cane. “The Husks worship the Flares like … hell, maybe you got us beat on that o
ne term. They worship Flares like gods, or angels.”
Randall sprouted a shit-eating grin.
Damn it, and I gave him credit for naming them.
“But they don’t work together. The Husks may know how to call the Flares, but the bastards don’t exactly take orders. The Flares aren’t there to make more Husks. They’re there to make more of themselves. They’re procreating. Reproducing. That’s what you helped make happen, son.”
It felt like somebody’d kicked me in the balls. Not one of those good, meaty, I-mean-it kicks either. No, one of those sinister numbers that just grazes the sack, and leaves a nasty nauseous ache for hours.
“Shiiiiit,” Randall provided, helpfully.
“They seem to need human involvement to procreate. I got a theory about that. I think, to make something as big and strange as a Flare, they don’t need to get rid of stuff in your head like they do with the Husks. They need to change it altogether. And that’s a problem. The Flares aren’t like us. They’re not builders—they don’t produce anything. They only take things away from the universe. To make an actual change, they need a creative force. They need another human. Somebody with a compatible personality, that they can use like a guidebook while they’re pecking away in there. That’s what the ritual the Husks use is all about: putting the candidate—that’s what we call people like you, son—through some shit that the host has been through already. Walking a few hard, bloody miles in each other’s shoes. Forcing the candidate to have something in common with the host, then using the candidate’s brain to twist the host into a Flare.”
“I got a feeling like that, down in the tunnels in New York,” I said. “It was hard to explain, but I knew there was somebody else nearby that I couldn’t see, and they were using me against him.”
“That’s about the truth of it.” Tub nodded. “But the angels don’t give a cold damn about the Husks, or the Sludges, or the Faceless, or any of that. Far as they’re concerned, they’re just leftovers. Reducing people is like a nuclear reaction. The energy is the whole point, and all those monsters are just a bunch of toxic waste.”
The Empty Ones Page 9