The Empty Ones

by Robert Brockway

  When the jungle broke, it was like stumbling out of the desert and onto the Vegas strip. There was a great big bonfire dancing at the far end of a clearing. A series of spotlights pointing at the sky were dotted all around it in a massive circle. They were hooked up to a generator, dutifully thwacking away somewhere unseen. Wherever the light touched, I could see people.

  It didn’t take a genius to guess what came next.

  I focused on their faces. I suddenly thought of a hundred things more important than looking at them. I focused again, and was met with a scratchy migraine blur. Unnoticeables, a crowd of them. They were all intent on something up by the distant fire.

  There were no spotlights up there. The figures they were watching were just silhouettes before the flames.

  I didn’t come this far to turn back now, and I got the feeling the tar men wouldn’t be so passive if I did. I had been invited to this shindig. Might as well put on my cocktail dress and make an entrance.

  “Hey, assholes,” I yelled.

  A few dozen featureless faces swiveled in my direction.

  “I come in peace. Take me to your leader.”

  I laughed at myself. Nobody else was going to, and it was either laugh, or tear my own hair out and never stop screaming.

  Three of the figures broke off and rushed at me. I pocketed the Zippo, then held my hands up. Two of them grabbed my arms and twisted them painfully behind me, while a third put something sharp against my back. He dug the blade into my skin, and I moved forward involuntarily. They marched me through the crowd, weaving from spotlight to spotlight until we were close enough to the conflagration to navigate by firelight. I could hear it now—this wood must not be great for burning. It was snapping and popping like Chinese fireworks, shooting out errant sparks in random directions. There were two silhouettes by the fire, both small and female. One of them didn’t seem to care that tiny comets rocketed from the bonfire and bounced off of her face. The other silhouette flinched and cursed at every pop. I recognized Jackie by her voice. The other figure, I had to assume, was Meryll. Another silhouette joined them, this one tall, muscular, and male.

  “It is here,” Marco said. “The thing from the chapel.”

  “Well, no shit,” Meryll said. “I’m holding her bloody hand right now, aren’t I?”

  “No,” Marco said. “The other thing. The profane thing. The arrogant little bitch of a thing that destroyed a Tool of the Mechanic.”

  “This isn’t her?” Meryll asked, sizing up Jackie.

  Marco gave a poor simulation of a laugh. It came out like a bark. “That thing is garbage,” he answered.

  “Hey, buddy,” Jackie said, “you’re B-list at best, yourself.”

  “Do not take offense,” Marco said. “All humans are garbage. We are here to clean.”

  “I don’t see her,” Meryll said, though I was only maybe ten feet from her now. I could see her clear as day, thanks to the massive and barely controlled bonfire.

  “There.” Marco pointed.

  “Where?” Meryll asked.

  “There.” Marco pointed.

  “Where?” Meryll asked.

  “There.” Marco pointed.

  “Whe—”

  “What is this, a vaudeville bit? You gonna do this all night?” I said, losing patience.

  Yeah, you’re super eager for them to chuck you in that fire, right, Kaitlyn? Better be sure to hurry that right along.

  “It is the one speaking,” Marco said, those black eyes of his reflecting nothing. Not even the erratic light from the flames.

  “Nobody said anything,” Meryll said. “Are you fucking with me? Is that a thing you freaks can do now? Play pranks?”

  “You cannot see her,” Marco observed. He stepped forward, and was on me before I could even react. He grabbed my arm and jerked it downward. I fell to my knees.

  “Bloody hell!” Meryll laughed. “You just disappeared! That was fantastic. Do it again.”

  Marco let go of my arm, and Meryll clapped. “And you’re back!”

  “I do not understand,” Marco noted.

  “I get it,” Meryll said, “she’s like me, but different. She took down a Flare, so now she can do things. I got to see a little bit of the code behind the universe, and learned how to manipulate it. I guess she gets to be invisible to things like me. Wow, seems like you got the short end of the stick on that one, honey.”

  “Tell her I’m here now,” I said, “so she can let Jackie go.”

  “It asks you to release the other thing,” Marco said.

  His hand spasmed open and shut like a dying spider. It flew out from his body and struck me across the face. The whole world flashed red, and I was on my side, cheek in the cool dirt. Marco was punching the ground beside me so quickly that his arms blurred. He frothed at the mouth and screamed. Then, like somebody had hit his reset button, he was back upright, standing calm and expressionless. His hands were ragged, bloody mittens.

  Meryll giggled. “He does that sometimes,” she said. “What little bit of humanity is left in the Husks surfaces now and again. They just don’t know how to handle it. I think he might be a bit cross with you.”

  I tried to talk, but my mouth was numb. The sky swam and the stars bulged. I felt like vomiting.

  Is this a concussion? Do you feel it that quickly?

  “Well, as novel as all this is,” Meryll continued, “it doesn’t really change anything. Let’s get on with the show.”

  Marco grabbed my hair and pulled me to my feet. I thought about hitting him in the neck—knowing full well that it would do nothing but make me feel better—but I couldn’t move my arms very well. They felt mired in the air. Lifting them was like trying to punch underwater.

  Marco leaned in close to my face and went through a rapid series of expressions—his mouth twisting in agony, his eyebrows raised in surprise, his cheeks pulled in—before finally settling on his trademark smirk.

  “We’re gonna have us one heck of a fiesta, girl!” he bubbled.

  Meryll pointed to the husk of a stripped tree, ten feet high, just beside the fire.

  What does the tree mean? I’m so dizzy. I’m supposed to be doing something, but I forget what it was.

  “Fiesta means party en espanol!” Marco explained, needlessly.

  “Leave me alone for a minute,” I tried to say, but it came out slurred and incomprehensible. Something cold latched onto my wrist. I looked down and saw a hand, but couldn’t fathom it. Another joined it on my arm. It felt like my head was on backwards. I tried to understand and failed miserably.

  Hey, look at all these hands I got now!

  More hands on the other arm. Now they were dragging me somewhere, which was good, because walking seemed hard. The new hands pulled me up against the withered old tree, and then bound my own hands behind it. This served to keep me upright.

  Smart. Otherwise I would absolutely fall down.

  A spasm in my gut told me this situation was bad. I looked around, but it was like trying to hold a conversation with a native after briefly glancing at a phrasebook: the framework of understanding was there, but there were too many specifics that just wouldn’t fall into place.

  Marco rummaged through a duffel bag on the ground by my feet. He grabbed hold of something and held it above his head. Everybody cheered.

  That must be a great thing, whatever it is.

  He turned and showed it to me. A brown length of metal. Cheap rubber handle in a camouflage print. Took me a minute to place what it was: an old machete. The bulk of the shaft was covered in rust, but a narrow strip along the blade’s edge shone like starlight.

  Awful pretty.

  Something in Jackie’s face worried me.

  Marco leaned in and held the tip of the machete against my hip bone.

  Jackie was screaming.

  It was like a magic show. I was on the edge of my seat.

  What on earth would he do next?

  He pushed the tip of the blade into my skin. It gave way.
Clarity hit me like a pissed-off heavyweight.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  1978. Purfleet Rifle Ranges. Meryll.

  Carey was standing over me. That’s not accurate. He was standing 38.6 inches to the left of the leftmost part of my body, which, due to the awkward way I was sprawled, was my superfluous pinky-toe. I twitched it. It didn’t hurt. That was not news. It had not hurt in ages, not since I took the first Flare.

  Angel.

  Tool.

  That’s what they call themselves: Tools of the Mechanic. I say I “took a Flare,” but what I mean is that I “took one down.” But I see there is more accuracy in that statement than I intend. At the time, I had unconsciously exploited the inherent weakness in the Tools of the Mechanic. Their vessels in our world are based on human thought patterns. They need a template with which to interact with this dimension, and ours is the most suitable for occupation.

  Where the hell is all of this information coming from?

  Ah. The light. A ball of luminosity hovering in the air between Randall and Tub. Sharp and distant things shift within that light. I did not understand them at first, but I see now. They are abstracts. Fractals. Shapes representing dense strings of information. It is trying to network.

  With me.

  Why me?

  Oh, I get it. I’ve taken down a few Flares—Tools—but they did not suddenly cease to exist. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only manipulated. I dissipated much of the Tool’s energy aimlessly in a blast that burned away the nearby Husks, Faceless, Sludges, and anything else influenced by their touch. But I had also unwittingly taken some of their energy into me. The energy meshed with my own, and now I am compatible with the other Tools—to some degree.

  Oh, fuck. I’m part Flare.

  I should be scared, or disgusted, or at least angry, but it’s like there’s just an empty closet where I used to keep those things.

  I see Tub. His jaw is set. His fingers are clutched white against the length of rebar he uses for a cane. I see Randall. His eye twitches. He’s up on the balls of his feet. He is about to do something very stupid. I see Carey. He’s Carey. He’s always about to do something stupid.

  I’m up and moving before either of them can start.

  I push off the plywood. It bends beneath me. It is wet with my blood. I feel my body protest. It wants to die, but that’s just biology. I shunt some proteins around and fire up a few hormone factories, and its complaints begin to quiet. The Tool of the Mechanic is still networking with me, exchanging information at a rate beyond understanding. I see stars collapse and planets spin out of orbit. I see a shape like a triangle that folds onto itself, and inside there is a series of tunnels like tentacles that weave in and out of the borders. I hear the sound of cosmic gears, grinding to a halt. It is a sound that hurts me deeply but implacably, like seeing an ex-boyfriend laugh at another girl’s jokes. It is something that I feel I must stop, at all costs. Life, love, loyalty—what use are they if the gears stop turning?

  This isn’t me. This shit isn’t me. This is the Flare. I don’t give a damn about exoplanets and dimensional drift; I just want a warm place to sleep at night, food in my belly, and drugs on the weekend. I want a boy with strong hands and soft eyes who’ll listen to me without giving me advice, like he knows so much more than me. I want somebody to punch my dad in the mouth and buy me the new Misfits record. I don’t want to funnel the excess energies from fleeting life forms and use it for the greater preservation of an interdimensional ecosystem. I don’t even know what the fuck that means. Get. Out. Of. My. Head.

  The information flow stops. My brain feels like it went skinny-dipping in the Atlantic. In January. But I’m me again. Well, mostly me. Sorta me. Everything is so cold and clear, but it’s already warming up, and the details are fading. I know—I don’t know how I know, I just know—that I have a few minutes of this left. A few precious minutes of thinking like a Flare, before it all melts away.

  I see Tub, and know he’s thinking about ducking out while the boys start a fight. I see Carey and it’s like there’s a shadow image of him, from ten seconds into the future. He’s running forward, trying to land an ill-advised dropkick on Gus, who, for the record, is still on fire. I see Randall about to knock Carey unconscious and attempt to drag both him and me out of here while a Husk and a hundred Faceless try to tear us all to pieces.

  I see Gus, and know that he’s going to catch Carey’s feet. Hold him close and burn him up. I see Tub, and know he’ll get away. But there’s something else there—something eating at him. He’ll put a gun in his mouth by the summer, but I can’t see why. I see Randall, and, oh god—how stupid is this? He totally likes me!—but he won’t make it ten steps carrying both Carey and me.

  Me.

  I see me.

  I see a thousand of me, branching off in as many directions. One runs into the crowd of Faceless and gets raped to death. One flees toward Gus, his burning scarecrow frame dancing giddily up the hillside after it. One just sits here and stares as everybody around her dies.

  But this one, she does all right. I decide to follow her.

  I hop down from the makeshift stage, my feet sinking into the bog. It’s the easiest thing in the world to just follow in her footsteps. It’s like one of those little dance routines they paint on the floor in gymnasiums. Left foot here, pivot—a Faceless careens past me; it was coming up behind me, going for a tackle. Right foot here, half a step back, left foot here, right on the Faceless’s groin. Now a few more steps, these a bit quicker, and duck low. I’m crawling in the space beneath the stage. There’s yelling from above. The plywood above me booms. It bows and cracks, but doesn’t give way. Then some lighter, more hollow sounding thumps—footsteps, approaching. Another boom, and another. The plywood finally breaks, and Tub comes crashing through it. His face is a bloody mask. I see my future self, like my own ghost, pause and listen to him breathe for a second. Tub stirs, and says something to her. She nods and moves on.

  From that, I can tell he’s alive, so I figure there’s no need to check like she did. Suddenly she blurs, a dozen different paths with subtly different movements branching away from her.

  Shit.

  I can feel the foresight fading already. I feel limited. The pressure of reality pushing all against my body, like being at the bottom of the ocean. There’s no time. I pick the centermost girl and follow her up through the stage, pulling myself over the jagged lip of the busted plywood. Its edges look like Weetabix. The splinters grab my leggings and pull long rips in the fabric. Future girl rolls to the side, so I do too. A second later, a black hand, the skin split and still smoking, claws at the spot where I climbed up.

  Gus looks like a stop-motion skeleton. He was always skinny, but there’s barely any muscle or fat left on his frame. What flesh is there is barely hanging on, just wisps of black ash sloughing off as he moves. His face is gone. His eyes have boiled away. His lips are peeled back, revealing teeth you can see all the way back to the roots.

  Jesus Christ, we have so much teeth hidden by the gums. He looks like he has fucking fangs.

  I’m distracted. I’m not following the ghost girl quickly enough. She’s already moved so far ahead that her afterimages are starting to fade. I move before it’s too late. She slides right between Gus’s legs. He grabs for her, but misses. The exposed bones of his fingertips sink into the wood. Ghost girl doesn’t turn to attack him, like I figured she would. Instead, she breaks into a dead run toward the Flare. She doesn’t even pause. She just dives right into it.

  I’ve taken down a Flare before. I know this is how it happens—I burn them out from the inside—but I’m always pretty fucked up afterward. The first time I was out for days. The last time I was out all night. I can’t afford that now. I gotta help the boys.

  The foresight is giving out. I saw it all so clearly at first, but now I can’t remember how this all turns out. But I was sure this was the right path, at first.

  Yeah, but you also screwed up down there, ben
eath the stage. You did like you always do, and you didn’t follow directions. Is this still the right way?

  Do you have any better ideas?

  I jump at the Flare, and it all happens like it did before. Feels like crashing through thin ice into cold pudding. I can hear music, but it’s not music. It’s static. But it’s not static. It’s screaming. But it’s not human. It’s bright—so bright I can’t see. But in the blind spots, there are things moving. Shapes that hurt to look at. I remember they meant something before—information?—but about what, I can’t recall.

  I know what to do next. I tap into the old fury.

  I remember Nan and her terrible cooking. She’d burn the toast, every time. I ate it that way for so long that any other way tastes weird to this day. I remember her dancing, alone in the backyard, while she hung up the laundry. I remember the light. The chimes. I remember the floorboards shaking, and the smell when she disappeared. Like pine trees.

  There it is. Anger so bright the light around me dims in response. It starts in my back. It tingles. Spreads out through my chest, flows into my feet. I don’t think I actually have a body here, inside the Flare, but I imagine myself pulling my boots up and stomping holes in this motherfucker. I imagine the light freezing and shattering, my feet crashing through into reality. And as I imagine it, it happens.

  Beyond the cracks, it’s dark. But not black. Things are moving out there. A shadow flits by, then something falls. I kick again, and the cracks expand. I kick again, and the world comes back in a supernova.

  The Faceless nearest the blast just vanish. The ones farther away wither first, like watching fruit rot in time-lapse. Maybe two hundred feet out, and they just burn. The shock wave picks up Gus and sweeps him off into the trees. His hands are pulled from around Carey’s throat. Carey’s body rag-dolls onto the ground, landing right next to Randall’s. Neither of them move. The explosion doesn’t touch them for some reason, but whatever Gus did to them while I was gone apparently wasn’t a party.