The Empty Ones

by Robert Brockway

  “The fuck off my stuff!” Carey hollered, bolting awake.

  He looked around the room with sleep-blurred eyes, expecting to see another hobo making off with his shoes, or his booze, or his shopping cart full of recycling, or whatever it was he valued. When he didn’t find one, he turned and spat on the floor, then rubbed his tongue against his filthy T-shirt.

  “Gross, dude, come on,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, with utter innocence.

  “You can’t just spit on the floor.”

  “Haha, yeah? That’s what you’re worried about? You know how many truckers fucked some cheap trick right there, on that exact spot? That’s pretty much all places like these are used for. I bet somebody even died there. I bet somebody died there while getting fucked by a trucker. My spit is the cleanest thing that will ever touch that carpet. My spit is practically shampoo, as far as this poor bastard carpet is concerned.”

  “You believe all that, and you still slept there?” I watched Carey executing his morning wake-up routine: A series of stretches, like hobo yoga, seemingly designed to get the kinks out after sleeping a night on rough, flat ground. It was punctuated by occasional coughing fits and some gagging.

  “‘Slept’ is a stretch. I passed out here. And sweetheart, I have passed out on far worse. I once passed out on top of a sick horse, when I woke up there was this black spray ev—”

  “God! No! I do not want to hear any of that!” I threw the pillow I’d been clutching between my knees at his head.

  He was far too slow to duck it. He laughed after it hit him, then you could practically see the room swim behind his eyes, and he crawled desperately toward the bathroom. He bumped Jackie’s leg as he crawled over her. She stirred.

  “Noooo,” she groaned. “Just noooo.”

  “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” I said. “You’ve probably got super-lice from sleeping on that floor.”

  “What? Dammit!” Jackie jumped to her feet and fell facefirst on the bed. “Why did you let me sleep on the floor?”

  “Let you?”

  We both tried to ignore Carey dry-heaving in the other room.

  “If it was you, I would have dragged you up onto the bed,” Jackie said. She tried to slap at me, but was unwilling to open her eyes. She missed by a mile.

  “No you wouldn’t.” I’d had the TV on so long I stopped noticing the sounds it made. It was playing cartoons now. Maybe it was Saturday.

  “I would too,” Jackie protested. “I would have tucked you in and brought you water and bacon, a cool compress for your fevered forehead…”

  “A nice tall glass of straight vodka,” I filled in for her, and she groaned. “Some cottage cheese, maybe a side of raw salmon…”

  I started bouncing in place on the bed.

  “God damn you,” Jackie spat, and stumbled wildly into the bathroom. There was a commotion as she and Carey fought for the toilet. I turned the TV up. I didn’t need to hear the details. It was playing some crazy anime thing. All children screaming and rapid flashing—something about collecting a bunch of Super-Tongpus to defeat the Octopus Who Lives at the End of Time or other such nonsense.

  I shouldn’t have taunted Jackie like that. She wouldn’t be mad at me or anything—she does worse to me all the time—but I needed her in good shape this morning. I needed both of them as clear as possible. I’d had nothing to do all night but listen to the pair of them snore, and think. I came to some conclusions. Serious ones, and we needed to talk about them as soon as possible. I couldn’t do that if she and Carey spent all morning fighting for toilet space and yelling for me to go get them increasingly stupid hangover cures.

  “Kate,” Carey yelled, as if on cue, “run down to the corner store and buy us a loaf of plain white bread.”

  “No,” Jackie slumped backwards against the bathroom door and made a valiant effort to look in my general direction. It was a failed effort, but she made it. “No bread. Meat. Get beef jerky and, like, the biggest thing of water. Do they sell barrels? Buy me a barrel of water.”

  “Make it two barrels,” Carey added, “and the bread. And a tallboy of PBR.”

  “I’m not going to the store,” I said, and they both instantly started whining like children being denied a snow day. “But I’ll tell you what: If you get yourselves together enough to move, I’ll buy you both breakfast at that shitty diner across the street.”

  “Oof. Moving,” Jackie said.

  “They’ll have bacon,” I told her, then to Carey: “And bread, and unlimited tap water. Sweet, sweet tap water.”

  * * *

  The Bearly There Diner seemed to have been based entirely on bear puns, and not at all on food, service, or atmosphere. It looked like a hunting lodge drawn in crayon by a meth fiend. Our waitress was named Sally, and she looked like she’d been born an orphan, got divorced this morning, and accidentally backed over her cat on the way to work. She had deep frown lines etched permanently into her face, and big, watery gray eyes. But then she opened her mouth, and it was all bubbling enthusiasm and “honeys” and “sweethearts.” She looked like that sad donkey from Winnie the Pooh got his wish and became a real person—but she was friendly, happy, and very understanding about hangovers.

  She brought water, first thing, without even being asked.

  Carey hadn’t stopped talking about wanting to fuck her since. Jackie joined him, after Sally set an extra-large plate of bacon down in front of her with a knowing wink. I let them get a few mouthfuls in before I started:

  “We’re going to Mexico,” I said.

  Jackie blinked, but continued silently tucking neatly folded wads of bacon into her mouth.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Carey said. “About time we got serious about the fugitive life. We’ll head down south. Pound cervezas on the beach and throw bottles at the tourists.”

  “We’re going to Mexico because Marco’s down there,” I said.

  “How do you know that?” Jackie asked, barely audible through a mouthful of fried meat.

  “I saw him on TV last night. He was talking about a new show he’s filming right now in his home town. Tulancingo, I think it was called.”

  I sipped my watery coffee. At least it was hot. At least it was caffeine.

  “Why do you want to find Marco? All we’ve been doing the past few weeks is trying to put as much distance between us and him as possible. Those schoolgirl hots come back or what?”

  “I haven’t slept in weeks, Jackie. Not since … whatever it was that happened in that church. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep running. I need it to end.”

  I fixed my weariest stare on her. I wanted to let her feel how utterly beaten I was. I put all of my exhaustion, fear, resignation, and hopelessness into my eyes. I needed her to look, really look, and understand how raw I was—realize that I had considered every option and settled on this only as a last resort.

  “You’re serious?” Jackie asked.

  “I am. This isn’t going to stop. Not on its own—that much has become clear. If we ever want to have anything like a normal life again, we can’t just hope they forget about us. We killed their god, or whatever that ball of light was to them. People don’t generally just let that type of thing go.”

  “But that can be good too,” Jackie said. “I mean, yeah, they’ll hunt you to the ends of the Earth and beyond, hoping to pull out your guts and hang you with them while—”

  “Jesus, Jackie.” I set down my coffee, momentarily overcome by the mental images.

  “But I’m saying: You killing their god pisses them off, sure, but it leaves them directionless too, right? I don’t remember much, but Carey said that Marco was taking orders from some chubby guy, that night in the church. That dude made like Silly Putty in a microwave when you nuked the angel. Say what you want about him—he’s a freak, a pervert, an inhuman monster with absolutely killer abs—but Marco does not strike me as the thinking or leading type.”

  “But what about…” I started to protest, but couldn’t come up
with anything.

  Why couldn’t this be the end of it? Who says I didn’t already win the big boss fight, and now it’s just a matter of cleaning up the little guys?

  When Marco first started coming after me and Jackie, his little band of freaks wouldn’t shut up about gears and angels and the turning of the universe. Crazy, pretentious gibberish, obviously, but at least it all sounded like real big picture stuff. The Unnoticeables we’d seen since the angel died hadn’t said anything like that. They just seemed to want us dead. I’ll admit it: At first, I just wanted to go after Marco as the last act of a desperate woman. If only because death sounded pretty close to sleep, and I could sure use a nap. But now, I was starting to think we had a chance. Then something occurred to me that I should have thought of sooner.

  “Carey,” I said. He stopped ogling Sally the Saddest Waitress’s saggy ass to point his bloodshot eyes in my direction. “Why did Marco let me live, after I took out the angel? You said he wasn’t hurt when the angel went up, and it’s not like any of us were in any shape to fight after that. Why not just kill me then and there?”

  “He ran,” Carey said. “After the angel shattered like a dropped disco ball and his psychopath pals starting melting, Marco took one look at you, screamed like a little girl, and ran away as fast as he could.”

  I didn’t have anything to say. Jackie smiled, then it spread to Carey.

  “Wow,” I finally managed, and downed the rest of my mug of what I could only call “flat coffee.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” Carey said, waving Sally over for either the check or a filthy proposition. “Let’s go kick the devil’s ass.”

  SIX

  1978. London, England. Carey.

  There were two Unnoticeables coming toward us down the aisle from the front of the bus, a couple more from the rear, and maybe a half dozen still in their seats and just starting to move. The girl with the striped leggings was fixing the ones ahead of us with a stare like Clint Eastwood after somebody shat in his cornflakes, which I guess left me with the ones behind. I uncapped the hair spray I’d lifted from the girl at the Rainbow and flicked my scarred and singed bumblebee Zippo once, twice. On the third time it caught. I tried to think of something clever to say to the blurry face nearest me, but I wound up going with “Here’s fire in your face, fucker.”

  I hit the little tab and shot out a fucking monumental gout of flame. It was like watching a volcano orgasm.

  Holy shit, girls put this crap on their heads?!

  The Unnoticeable on the left seemed more startled than hurt, but the one on the right was wearing some bullshit polyester disco blouse. He lit up like a roman candle.

  Serves you right for having no class, you molten bastard.

  I turned around to reap some cool points with the little punk rock chick, only to find that she’d already bashed one of her guys’ heads nearly off his neck and had the other in a leg lock, using her brass knuckles to pummel him into a refreshing mist.

  I would not be scoring anything today.

  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 R
andall 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.