The Empty Ones

by Robert Brockway

  Which does not come.

  I’m staring past his armpit, watching a flaming T-shirt hang from my wrecked car.

  “So uh…”—I finally break the silence—“is this cuddle time or…?”

  Carey carefully unfolds himself and stares back at the Jetta. The flames have traced themselves up the shirt and into the tank. They’re starting to spread across the rear of the car, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to explode. It just looks like it’s going to burn for a while.

  “I thought that was going to be way cooler,” he says.

  “Nice atmosphere, though,” I say, trying to sound all calm and flippant.

  That’s me. That’s firmly within my funny-girl character to say. It would not be within my funny-girl character to scratch Carey’s ugly face and scream and cry and beg the encroaching horde not to melt me and my best friend. That’s what I want to do, but it just doesn’t seem like “me.”

  We watch the fire burn for a minute.

  “Can you move?” he finally says.

  “I don’t know,” I answer, and I try my legs.

  They’re responding now, just a little. I might be able to hobble away, but …

  “I’m not leaving Kaitlyn,” I say.

  It surprises me, too.

  Is this loyalty, or are you just performing for an audience? Would you sit here and die with her if you were alone, with nobody to judge?

  I don’t have any answers for myself.

  Carey loops one of his arms under Kaitlyn’s and drags her to her feet. He motions for me to follow. My legs are overcooked spaghetti, but they get me upright. I put an arm around Kaitlyn’s other side, but it’s just a gesture. I can’t take much, if any, of her weight. I’m leaning against her for balance as much as I am holding her. We start to make our way around the boulder, out of the flickering orange light, and into the darkness of the desert. But it’s like I thought—we’re in the middle of a much larger crowd of tar men. A few dozen paces away there’s a river of black acid, peppered with dully shining brass.

  But the boulder is lopsided. It’s lower to the ground on the back end. We get Kaitlyn rolled up there, though “we” is being pretty generous. Really, I stand and rest my hand on her hip while Carey, shirtless, all ropy muscle and scars and shitty tattoos, wrestles her off the ground. He pulls me up after her, and together we drag her up as far as the slope would allow. It’s not very far, maybe ten feet off the ground. One of those tar men could probably just reach up here and grab us. Anybody could walk right up that little slope and eat our screaming faces.

  But they don’t.

  The tar men that had been closing in on us back on the highway follow our path around the boulder, then just keep going. They merge into the mass of tar men on the far side and shamble away.

  “What just happened?” I ask Carey.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think they were after us.”

  “What are they doing, then?”

  “It looks like they’re … migrating.”

  I ask if we shouldn’t make some sort of tourniquet for Kaitlyn’s head. Carey says that’s a great idea, and waits for me to take off my shirt—he already lost his while performing “acts of stunning heroism.” I tell him I’m not wearing a bra—I don’t generally need to; I’m not exactly packing heat—and he says he doesn’t mind. I finally convince him to give me his jacket. I make sure there’s no tar remnants in it that will burn my flesh off when I slide into it. But it’s clean.

  Well, that’s a relative term. I mean, it’s still Carey’s. But it won’t melt my skin. Probably. At least not right away.

  Carey tears my Adventure Time shirt into strips and ties them around Kaitlyn’s forehead, neck, and upper arm. They’re soaked through with blood in seconds.

  We watch the tar men flow like a glacier toward the horizon. We watch the car burn itself out until it’s just a steel skeleton. Like some huge, bizarre turtle died and was picked clean by gigantic vultures. We watch the sky turn from black to clear and blazing blue.

  We watch Kaitlyn bleed out onto the rock. It flows down the slope and pools on the ground. We watch the blood stop, and wonder if it’s coagulating, or if she’s just run out.

  ELEVEN

  1978. London, England. Carey.

  Meryll had her own stash, and she was eight beers deep already. I was eight beers more in love with her. She could drink like a fucking longshoreman, and it was literally the hottest thing I had ever seen. All I wanted to do was hold her and feed her beer until we both grew old and died from liver disease, together, in each other’s arms.

  Shit, I’m getting all sappy here. Head in the game, Carey.

  Tub was still talking. I couldn’t even process it anymore. There was too much already. Randall had done the smart thing and fallen asleep an hour ago. He was drooling onto his own shoulder.

  Here’s what I gathered before my attention span hit empty: The angels don’t give a shit about humanity. They show up at random, collapse some poor bastard into his own chest cavity, then skip off into space to the planet of celestial assholes, or wherever it is they go. It’s the Empty Ones who have forced structure on them. They’re some sorta number freaks, like my drunk-ass mom who actually bought lottery tickets using the numbers on the backs of those little slips of paper in fortune cookies. The Empty Ones have developed all sorts of rituals to manipulate the angels. Ceremonies that can summon the bastards to Earth, or even force them to solve specific people. But then there’s the big one: Every thirty-six years they conduct a ritual to try to birth a new angel. The problem is, for each angel, there are only thirty-six candidates in all of humanity who qualify for the “honor,” and only one will make the cut.

  “You can see this reflected in mythology,” Tub was saying. “Jews called them the Nistarim and believed they were the thirty-six saints whose existence justifies humanity to God blah blah fart Bob’s-your-uncle Mary Poppins.”

  That’s where I tuned out.

  But one of those candidates is born with a mutation. An extra digit on their left hand or foot. Most times, this mutant doesn’t do a damn thing except maybe die horribly, crushed between some sacrificial gears or melted by a tar man. But if they figure it out in time—if they know what they’re doing when the Empty Ones and the Unnoticeables and the tar men come for them—the mutation has the power to fight back.

  They almost never figure it out in time.

  Tub couldn’t even shut up long enough for me to make a move on Meryll. She seemed to be mostly fine now. Her voice was still a little raspy, and there was a massive red handprint across her neck. But, let’s be honest: I’ve fucked girls with worse wounds.

  She should be dead, though. Do you think that makes her more or less game to screw around?

  “Early Christianity often depicted saints and other holy entities as possessing a sixth finger, or extra toe,” Tub had said. “You can even see it in some depictions of Jesus on the cross such as yadda yadda pip-pip cheerio I’m a fucking beer hog.”

  Seriously, the guy grabbed the last six-pack out of the broken television, gave me and Randall one measly beer each, then sat down and drank all of the rest. I mean, yeah, I would’ve done the same thing if I were him—but I was starting to lose my buzz. You try processing a mountain of crazy guru-yogi crap on the cusp of an early hangover. If you’re going to destroy a man’s entire understanding of the world, you give him the lion’s share of the six-pack. Maybe even chip in for a half rack. Damn.

  Something else I picked up before Tub’s voice turned into background noise: The mutations all get a kind of Superman gig—stronger, faster, heightened senses, better reflexes—but as they kill angels, they start to take on some of their powers. No idea how much of this to believe, but Tub swore that, way back in the day, one of them could melt people by looking at them. Another knew what was going to happen ten seconds before the event. One of them could even control the tar men. Bet that was a nasty surprise for the Empty Ones. Would’ve loved to hav
e seen that happen with Gus—his stupid donkey mug going all slack as his cronies turn on him. As they put their acid hands on his skin and melt his gangly frame into a dickhead milkshake. Push their fingers into his eyes, shove their fists down his throat, and burn him from the inside out, like he did to Thing 2 back at our place in NYC. I’d love to see his spine cracked and—

  “You all right?” Meryll was looking at me funny.

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking myself out of the fantasy.

  “You looked pretty cheesed off just then.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing, hell—you were punching the air a little bit. You were turning red.”

  “What are you all worked up about?” Tub said, draining the rest of the last beer and tossing it into the barrel fire. “I was just getting into pre-Germanic myth cycles.…”

  “Jesus Christ,” I moaned.

  “Well, no,” Tub said thoughtfully. “That’s a tenuous link at best, although there is something to the mutation and the messiah figure in many reli—”

  “Stop it!” I stood up and kicked a piece of cinder block. That was dumb. I felt my toes fold up through my flimsy canvas Chucks. “I don’t give a shit about cycling myths or pre-Germans. There’s only two things I want from you, and you can’t give me either.”

  Tub stared at me. He grumbled deep in his throat and spat on the floor. “What’s that?” he finally said.

  “I want a goddamned beer, and I want to kill Gus so bad my dick is hard.”

  “Gross.” Meryll laughed.

  “Well, I—”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, holding up my hands. “You can’t kill ’em. We hit that fucker with a train and he practically skipped away. I got it.”

  “That’s … not quite right,” Tub said.

  I felt my heart turn over like an engine.

  “It’s true enough that you and I can’t take out a Husk,” Tub continued. “We’re just people. But a mutation can do all sorts of things.…”

  “Great, let’s just go out and get our hands on one of them.” I rolled my eyes and went for the broken TV set where they hid the beer. I’d already raided it twice and came up empty, but I guess I’m an optimist.

  I patted around blindly inside the hollowed-out innards of the old TV. A little tube here, a spiky bit toward the back. Some cables with something hard beneath them. I felt a little deeper. I pushed them aside. Round. Metal. Slippery with dust.

  Oh God, oh God please …

  I brought my hand out and my heart sank. It was a can of something, all right. A red label, with white lettering that said PARTY SEVEN. But it was way too big to be beer.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere,” Tub said from the couch behind me.

  I turned back toward him and saw Meryll. She’d taken off one of her combat boots. Her bare foot was pointing at me. She wiggled her toes.

  All six of them.

  “You look surprised,” she said. She smiled, proud and a little cruel.

  “I’ll be honest,” Tub said. “I thought you’d figured it out ages ago.”

  “He’s a bit slow,” Meryll said.

  Tub sighed and started thumping the barrel fire with his rebar cane. It flared to life with a sound like a shopping cart falling down an elevator shaft.

  Randall jumped awake, snapping off a long string of drool that spiraled across the room and landed on Meryll’s foot.

  She sneered down at it, then wiped it off with her sock.

  I don’t even have to compete. The poor bastard is losing the game all by himself.

  “Tell you what,” Tub said, settling back into the busted couch, now that he’d gotten the fire going again. “You crack open that beer and we’ll go over it all again. I’ll use real small words this time.”

  I looked down at my hand. DRAUGHT BITTER, it said in smaller letters toward the bottom. You could’ve stuffed a baby in that massive can.

  We might have a way to kill Gus, Randall had spit all over the foot of the girl we both liked, and I just found a fucking monument to alcohol. Maybe things were going to be all right after all.

  * * *

  “It’s a pain in the ass, is what it is,” Meryll said.

  She took the god-sized beer can with both hands and took a long sip, then passed it to Tub.

  “Gotta buy two pairs of boots in different sizes,” she continued, stretching her toes out to stare unhappily at the extra one. “Gotta add an extra piggy to the song. But I guess if it means I get to nuke those bloody Flares, it’s a fair trade.”

  “No,” Tub said, “the deformity itself doesn’t do anything. You’re not poking at them with your bloody extra toe. It’s just a sign of something bigger going on inside you.”

  “I got s—” I started, but Randall cut me off.

  “I think it’s kinda hot,” he said. Meryll blushed and gave him a crooked smile.

  Damn it! I was going to say “I got something bigger that could go inside you.” She would’ve loved that.

  Tub tapped his cane against the fire barrel and gave Randall a look that could kill a man from two states away. Randall didn’t notice. We were halfway through the ogre of beers, and his face was flushed, his eyes unfocused.

  “Seems like you really hate the angels,” he said, and Meryll winced.

  “Sorry, Flares. You hate the Flares,” he corrected.

  “Yeah, of course. What are you, best friends with ’em?” She passed him the minikeg, but he just shuffled it right off to me.

  Aw, shit. I know that move. He only turns down booze when he’s hoping to get lucky. Trying to avoid whiskey dick. Well, whiskey and my dick are best friends, sucker.

  I chugged from the can, distantly hoping the girl would be impressed by the sheer volume of alcohol I could consume. They never were. But a man can always try.

  “No,” Randall said, and laughed, even though it wasn’t goddamned funny. “I mean, it seems personal with you.”

  “It is,” Meryll said.

  And nothing else.

  She hopped off the edge of the couch, stuffed her bare foot into her boot, and headed for the ladder to the second floor.

  “I’m tired,” she called over her shoulder, and started climbing. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Hahahahaha—eat it, Randall!

  “Crap,” he said. “What did I do?”

  “Sometimes there’s crossover with who the Flares go after,” Tub said. “They like bloodlines. Something in the genes. They often revisit the same family. Usually over generations. But, Meryll—a Flare came for her nan one day. They were close. The old lady took care of Meryll while her parents were working. It came for her while she was cooking. Meryll walked right in on her being solved. Saw the Flare, saw her nan crumple up like paper, fold into herself screaming, and then just stop being.”

  “Shit,” Randall said.

  “Shit,” I agreed.

  “They found Meryll hours later, still sitting on the kitchen floor. Shell-shocked. She didn’t talk for days, and when she did, when she told them happened, well…”

  “Well, what?” Randall asked.

  “What do you think?” Tub growled. “It sounds nuts, doesn’t it? Her nan was gone. No body, no signs of struggle or violence. And Meryll with her crazy story—they figured, best-case scenario, the old lady had bugged out and Meryll was some kinda pathological liar. Worst-case scenario, something bad had happened and it broke Meryll’s mind. Either way, it was the institution for her.”

  “And you brought it up while hitting on her.” I laughed.

  Both Tub and Randall glared at me.

  Oh, what, I’m the asshole here?

  “I got her out of the asylum, once we figured out what she was. Boys keep an eye on admittance papers. People start babbling about sludge giants and immortals and balls of light, we take an interest. When we saw the medical records, the extra toe, we knew. Busted her out the next week, and she’s been with us ever since. Five years, it’s been. I trained her up, and we’v
e killed two of the Flares already. Well, she killed ’em. I mostly stood around and watched. Maybe clapped afterward, if it was a good show.”

  “Holy shit,” Randall said, motioning for the beer back now that his prospects had dried up. “She’s really killed those things?”

  “Yeah, and I figure she’s not finished yet. This bloke you’ve come all this way after … what was his name?”

  “Gus,” I said. It spat out of me like a curse.

  “Maybe there’s a way we can help each other. We’ve got to make a move soon. We don’t know what all this buildup is about—the Sludges in the tunnels, the kids going missing by the drove. But we can’t just sit here and wait for them to do whatever it is they’re going to do. If you got history with a Husk, we might could use that. Have you lads draw him out, and either we take him, or he takes you and we tail him. See where this is all coming from.”

  “Wow,” Randall said, “you didn’t sugarcoat that at all. You want to use us as bait, maybe even hand us over to the psycho that killed our friends?”

  “That’s about it,” Tub said.

  “Are you fucking insane?” I asked.

  “Probably,” he conceded. “You boys didn’t strike me as the cowardly type. If you’re not up for it—”

  “Obviously we’re up for it,” I said. “We just want it on the record that you’re crazy as a shithouse rat.”

  Tub laughed, thick and laced with coughing. It sounded like somebody trying to push-start a tugboat.

  “Dick!” he yelled.

  Me and Randall giggled reflexively.

  “Dicky boy, get over here!” He drummed on the fire barrel again and woke the gaggle of punks sleeping on the chairs and couches behind us.

  “What, man?” Dick said.

  He was a tall kid. Wide shoulders and long, skinny arms that hung down halfway to his knees. Looked like a malnourished ape. Had a Nebraska face—square forehead, close-set eyes, big lips … I don’t know, you can just tell when somebody’s from the Midwest. They always look incomplete without a tractor.