Metro

by Stephen Romano

  “You will live, my son. And you will be stronger yet.”

  No . . .

  Please, Father . . .

  Please . . .

  Darian looks up to see the gun in his face.

  And he smiles at Jollie as she snarls. Her finger on the hair trigger, her eyes burning inside a galaxy of blood.

  • • •

  And in this moment, Jollie’s finger curls.

  The gun feels so right in her hand.

  Yes.

  She sees Mark’s bloody face and Darian’s wicked smile and so much else beyond that. Sees herself standing here, holding the gun, about to blow everyone’s head off so she can escape and murder it all.

  So she can blow it all right the hell away.

  “. . . I want . . . to be free . . .”

  She sees herself pull the trigger, Darian’s head vanishing in a liquid BOOM, his evil smile replaced by nothing. And then her own mind explodes in the aftermath, her screams that follow her sanity, deep into the abyss. All of it gone now, raining down in muddy brainy chunks . . .

  • • •

  But she doesn’t do it.

  She can’t do it.

  She backs away and lowers the weapon, the slug unfired.

  Mark watches her fall to her knees and cry.

  • • •

  “And that’s that,” Darian says, cradling Mark. “The promised land awaits us. These are the birth pains.”

  Jollie just looks at him, the gun still in her hand, unable to kill anyone, not even Mark. Especially not Mark. As he lies dying in his father’s arms.

  “Come, my children. Let us heal our wounds.”

  16

  together again

  Jollie watches the operation, sitting in the same wheelchair.

  Darian lowers the lights, except for the lamp he uses. Puts Mark on a table opposite Andy’s and gives him a shot for the pain. Then sews his wound shut. Works silently, like a smiling sentinel. Never takes one eye off his work, just like before. Single-minded. Professional. Terrifying. The operation doesn’t take long. Not much blood. The room still smells like burned flesh. The phantom MP3 player drones an awful tinny instrumental version of “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin. Darian’s instruments clink and tink, like fancy cutlery at a fine restaurant. He tells Mark it will be fine—everything will be just fine.

  Mark stares off into space.

  Jollie watches it all with something like horror—but she can’t really name the feeling. She wants to scream and yet she can’t scream.

  And then.

  • • •

  “Darian, tell me something,” Jollie says. “Do you always plan these little chess games of yours? Or do you just improv them?”

  “Chess games?”

  “You’re a manipulator.”

  “No more than you, Jollie.”

  “I will never do what you have done.”

  “You say that now. But there will come a time when you’ll do what you must. Look how you’ve gone beyond your limits tonight. You almost killed poor November Twelve, just because of your anger with him. It had nothing to do with manipulation.”

  “Stop calling him that.”

  “What? November Twelve? That’s the name I gave him. His secret name. We’ll use it among ourselves, to remind us of this night, Jollie. To remind ourselves never to let our emotions rule among family, ever again.”

  “You’re not my family. You’ll never be my family.”

  “So I’m just a man you’re playing chess with?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who exactly won tonight?”

  “Take a look over your shoulder and find out, Darian.”

  Darian smiles.

  She means Andy, of course.

  He turns his head from his work to look.

  • • •

  “FUCK YOOOOUUUU!!!”

  Andy’s voice comes like an explosion in the silence, like gunfire breaking the calm. It shatters the moment into fragments, and Darian sees the scalpel like a butcher knife in Andy’s one good hand, then feels the awful, cruel steel driving hard into flesh and then bone—right at the base of his skull. There is a big meaty impact that cancels out everything else—a sound like a side of beef twisting and snapping in half. Darian is instantly paralyzed when the blade severs his upper spinal cortex. Darian swallows his gum again and chokes on it, just as blood blasts up his throat in a tortured deep-spasm cough, and it all jams inside there, cutting off his air as he struggles for just one instant. He thinks about Rashid—the beautiful beast who mutilated his face. He thinks about Marnie—his brother who might have been a king. He thinks about Jollie—the smart girl he underestimated one too many times. It almost disgusts him. It almost shames him. Then his entire body locks up and freezes, sending the final shock wave blasting upward at a million miles an hour. It reaches his brain and pings him there in a mule kick from hell, throttling everything he ever had into a roiling meaningless soup that bursts through his sinuses and oozes through his eyes.

  As the Boy Prince of the Kingdom hacks Darian Stanwell to death, right in front of Jollie and Mark, with his one good hand.

  Darian finally goes down smiling.

  Knowing.

  That this was the only way it could possibly end.

  Checkmate, he thinks, just before he dies.

  • • •

  Andy stands over the body as the last bit of life runs from it.

  Stumbles there in his hospital rags, his face charred and his hand mutilated, his mind half-there over the rush of the drugs. He has only the most instinctive memories of being chopped up on the table, being held down by those awful cocktails pumped into him. He only vaguely recalls ripping the IVs out of his arm and sliding quietly off the table. Hearing that awful version of “Corner of the Sky” and almost recognizing it, somewhere deep in his warped memory and sluiced consciousness. Watching Jollie distract Darian with her voice as he came over. Darian’s back to him, like a big red bull’s-eye, just waiting to be scored. Picking up the scalpel from the floor where Darian set it. Doing something bad with it. The scalpel, still in his hand. Still covered in the madman’s blood. It’s a terrible rush of unreality, flowing through him like weird cheap wine. He hardly feels human in this moment.

  But he is free. They are free.

  “Jollie,” Andy says.

  “Jollie,” Mark says.

  And the three of them—the House of JAM—are together again.

  17

  the emperor’s game

  They raid the medicine cabinets, bandage up, and collect the guns.

  Then they get the fuck out of there.

  Little Gretchen is still in the special room when they ascend the elevator for the final time and look in on the children. All the grown-ups are gone. The special room is white and featureless, except for a desk and a chair and a cot.

  It’s the very same room Mark met his father in, all those years ago.

  Jollie tells her she is free, that people are coming to save her. The girl asks if she can come with them, and Jollie says no, because where they are going is not for children. It hurts Jollie to leave her, but they have to.

  Gretchen watches them go, waving good-bye in the playroom.

  They run through the woods and get to Mark’s stolen Ferrari Spider, thirty minutes before the police respond to an anonymous 911 call and arrive in force.

  • • •

  It’s almost six in the morning when Gretchen sits in the back of a squad car, in the cobblestone driveway of Darian Stanwell’s house. The children have all been awakened from a deep sleep and they are being organized by EMS workers, questioned by police and social workers. It’s like a carnival, Gretchen thinks. Like a pretty fairground full of blinking, tumbling lights and noise. Strange faces, all melti
ng into one another, becoming one another. A million faces that are one face. A billion eyes, who are one set of eyes—the eyes that watch, the eyes that know.

  And kids too.

  All the kids, who never really spoke to her before tonight. Those were the rules. You never spoke to a special kid, because they were better than you. They learned things you did not.

  The rest of them, they all belonged to the Monster Squad.

  Gretchen shivers at the thought.

  She wonders what will become of her. She is eleven years old and smarter than any child in Austin. She’s been shown the beauty of love and freedom. She’s been taught how to wear a mask in the darkest places. She’s been trained.

  A man in a black coat who looks like a shadow comes over to her. Sees her face and seems to recognize it. He is not like these others.

  “Honey,” he says, and his voice is gentle. “Can you tell me what happened here?”

  She looks into his eyes, and they are blue and endless. He gets closer to her, and his face is carved out of the darkness. Into something almost loving. But not quite.

  “Don’t worry, child. You are safe. Tell me what you know. About the man who did all this.”

  • • •

  The Austin Motel.

  A legendary dive on Congress Avenue, next to the Continental Club.

  You can see a dazzling slice of downtown from here, glimmering like diamond dust on concrete all the way to the Capitol building, and the old man on the front-desk night shift says so, cracking a few random remarks about city life and hippies and how this side of town is the best because everything is homespun and overdeveloped at the same time—like open-sandal free love and honky-tonk gloom rushing to meet some gaudy-chic clothing store. The old man is pretty damn eloquent in his description of this town, but Jollie won’t remember any of it a minute from now. She checks them in fast while the Mummy Twins hang back in the car, Mark and Andy like undead alterno-rockers decomposing under thick blood-stained bandages, waiting for their road manager to clear the motel digs for tonight’s tour stop. Mark jokes that it’s a good thing they’re not vampires—they’d have to travel with coffins. Jollie thinks it’s a lousy joke and says so, telling him to fuck off in the bargain.

  Mark only rolls his eyes.

  She really hates me now.

  But she’s still wearing the ring.

  His cheap piece of ten-cent plastic.

  Maybe she didn’t notice it’s still there.

  • • •

  They have only one room at the Austin Motel, on the bottom floor. Room 150. The key is an old-fashioned thing—not a card with a magnetic stripe. Real old-school. She unlocks the door and takes a look at the digs. It’s a tiny room with only one king-size. She doesn’t like the idea of sharing a bed with Mark, but they have to stick together, in one place. They have to sleep with their backs to the wall. And the walls have ears, of course. Mark parks their car in the empty space, just outside the door, and he helps Andy inside. Then he gets the package and rolls it in. Thinks about doing something all secret agenty and cool, like hiding the bag in the ventilation shaft—No Country for Old Men stuff. But he just sighs and stashes it under the bed. True Romance will have to do. He’s too tired and beaten for anything else. His neck stitches feel weird, but they don’t hurt yet. He’s grateful for the pharmacy-grade dope. Feels like Dilaudid or high-grade morphine. They have plenty more, from Darian’s secret stash.

  Darian.

  He forces himself not to think about him.

  While he hides the stash, Jollie stands outside, checking out the motel. It’s a crappy old place that’s been remodeled three times since it started falling apart in the mid-seventies, built at a weird angle off the side of a really busy street. The swimming pool still works, perched on a rise near the parking lot. Jollie wonders if they could have been a little more conspicuous about where they holed up, but then she flips her head and tells herself she doesn’t care. Tells herself they’re hiding in plain view. It doesn’t even matter now. METRO will find them, if that’s what they want. Mark smashed his magic phone and left the remains in a Dumpster six blocks away from the motel. Before that, they cleaned the operating room and didn’t touch anything else at Darian’s place. They even took Andy’s severed parts with them. But that doesn’t guarantee anything. At all.

  It’s almost 6:30 and Congress Avenue is dead.

  The neon lights of the Continental Club stutter and blink across the street. The air is cold and her bones feel it now.

  It’s November 10.

  • • •

  Andy slips into a coma fast, his mind still hammered by the drugs.

  Jollie watches over him for a few minutes, sitting at the edge of the bed, her back to Mark, trying to stay calm. She’s afraid of Mark now. She’s afraid of herself too, of what she will become around him. Mark just sits in a chair and stares at the ceiling. Finally, she says she wants to speak to him. Gets up and opens the door and walks out into the cool air. Mark gets up and follows her. She shuts the door and leaves Andy inside. The two of them face each other. And the first thing she says to Mark is this:

  “I was thinking about the Emperor in Star Wars.”

  • • •

  “Which Star Wars?”

  “All of them, I guess.”

  “The Emperor isn’t in all of the movies, Jollie. Just four of the first six, really. You see him on video for about a minute in Empire, but he’s played by a different actor. At least that was before Lucas rewrote everything later.”

  “Still playing your part, huh? Still the King Nerd Killer.”

  “You brought it up, not me.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Were you making a point?”

  “Not about you. I really was thinking about the Emperor in Star Wars. Remember in Return of the Jedi? How he tricked Luke into fighting Darth Vader?”

  “Yeah. The master manipulator.”

  “I was thinking about how Luke went crazy in that scene. How he just let loose and poured his anger all over his own father. I always thought there was so much tragedy in that.”

  “Do you think that was you back there, Jollie? Do you think you were Luke?”

  “Wouldn’t that make you Vader?”

  “Yeah. But I’d accept that, I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t. I think maybe we were both Luke. And that bastard . . . that horrible, eloquent, terrifying man—”

  “You were smarter than him, Jollie. He didn’t break you. You never gave in, not really. You stopped yourself, just like Luke did. You even threw away your weapon, just like Luke did.”

  “But Andy . . . look what he did . . .”

  “He did what he had to do.”

  “I don’t think I could ever kill anyone. I’m not like you. And I’m not Luke Skywalker either.”

  “Nobody is. And I’m glad you’re not like me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mark. I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”

  “Don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it. I need to cry. I need to feel something.”

  “Jollie, we made it out of there. The three of us. We were meant to survive. I won’t let any of you get hurt again.”

  “None of that makes us really safe. It doesn’t make me safe from you. It doesn’t make me safe from how I feel about all of this.”

  “Then maybe that’s just the way it needs to be. At least for now. We can go our separate ways if you can’t stand the sight of me. I won’t say that I don’t care. But I’m cool with it, so long as I know you’re okay. So long as I know it’s really all over.”

  “Isn’t it? Didn’t we kill the Emperor?”

  “The bad guys always come back. They’re just played by different actors.”

  “That’s real funny, Mark.”

  “I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”


  “No. It really was funny. I’m sorry I can’t laugh right now.”

  “It’s hard for me to laugh too. My neck feels weird.”

  “I’m so sorry . . .”

  “I wish I could hold you, Jollie. I want that so badly.”

  “Part of me wants it too. But another part of me . . . the biggest part of me . . . thinks something else.”

  “Thinks I’m a monster.”

  “No. Something else. I don’t know.”

  “We’re all in strung-out shape, Jollie. Shock and horror are terrible things. I learned about it a long time ago. But you need to know—”

  “What? That you’re not a monster? That you’re nothing like that evil manipulator back there? That’s bullshit, Mark, and you know it. You lied to me for years with blood on your hands.”

  “I never would have hurt a child. I never would have done what he did.”

  “Then what about Jackie?”

  “I . . .”

  “Did you really shoot him?”

  “I . . .”

  She closes her eyes and he says it, finally, crying.

  “Yes, Jollie. I shot Jackie.”

  18

  freaky-risky

  She leaves Mark with his tears.

  Tries not to think about him.

  Sick to her stomach.

  She remembers that the ring is still on her finger and takes it off, disgusted. Shoves it deep in her pocket, amazed that she still doesn’t have it in her to throw the fucking thing on the ground and stomp on it.

  She can’t. Just can’t.

  She walks a block away from the motel and hits the Shell station on the corner. Two pay phones there. No prying eyes.

  Okay. Time to bust my own fucking move.

  The cold morning air tingles her skin as she picks up the receiver and dials. She doesn’t even need her Google cloud to get at the important numbers she requires—all those are memorized.

  Peanut Williams answers after just one ring, his white-boy rapper voice like some annoying reminder that the whole world is fucked.

  • • •