The Empty Ones (11 page)

I could see it working already. The cabbie's shoulders lost tension, he turned around in his seat, and looked Randall square in the eye. He laughed. “Eh, it's all right. I been known to bash it up in my younger years too. Where's home for you lads?”

“I…” Randall looked at me.

I gave him the hardest shrug I could manage. We'd been crashing at a hostel.

Oh, hey, yeah, sorry, Andrew: We know we're not supposed to be out past eleven and no guests, but we thought we'd bring this severely mangled girl back to our communal bunks at two in the morning for a bit of a good time.

“Hospital?” he whispered to me.

“I don't know, the burns don't look as bad anym—”

“No.” Meryll slapped me weakly across the chest. “Bermondsey Wall West.”

“You've gone insane. You're not putting words in the right order,” I told her, gently.

“I got it, boys,” the cabbie said. “I know the place.”

He pulled away from the curb. The world outside the cab was lights and blurry water. No radio on. Just the sound of tires pushing water around and windshield wipers thunking and squeaking like a drumbeat. Meryll's eyes roved around the interior of the cab—to the windows, to Randall, to me—but they couldn't seem to find what she was looking for, so she closed them. The adrenaline was starting to fade, and I could feel my hip burning again. I tried shifting weight off of it, but nothing doing. The bastard was determined to hurt no matter what I did. At least my shoulder wasn't quite so bad anymore. I rotated it—stiff, but nothing fucked up in there too badly.

Randall was staring out the window at nothing. At rain streaks and traffic lights.

“What?” I asked him.

“What?” he asked me.

“You're all quiet and shit. What's your problem?”

“Her burns aren't as bad.”

“That's a problem? You and me, we got different definitions of problem.”

Randall glanced down, made sure Meryll was still out. It was hard to tell, but she wasn't moving and her breathing was deep and regular. He risked it.

“I saw them too,” Randall whispered, “down in the stairs. They were halfway to the bone. Looked like she got choked out by the devil.”

“Ah. I thought so too,” I said, barely whispering. If Meryll was awake, I was damn well planning on getting some points for defending her. “But we were freaked, and it was dark.”

“No, man. That girl was
dead,
” Randall said. He turned back to the window.

“Well, I'm glad she changed her fucking mind, then. I don't get what the problem is.”

I reached down to push some of Meryll's hair off of her face, and she slapped my hand away.

I got them points, Randall.

Turns out Bernardsey Wall or whatever was a street. Or at least it used to be. It looked like somebody had dropped a bomb on a sadness factory and nobody'd ever bothered cleaning up the debris. Must have been a port or something in its heyday. Big brown brick buildings, lots of concrete, not a lot of windows. There were lights on in a few of them. Tinny music filtering through the bricks from somewhere far above. Somebody was living here. It smelled like water, and we'd crossed a bridge a ways back. Must be near the river, though I couldn't see it. The street was barely big enough for a single car, and the warehouses looming on either side of us made an urban canyon.

Randall and me had gone to drag Meryll out of the cab, but she was alert enough to take our hands instead. We had her in a soldier's carry.

“So…” Randall said.

“So we just stand in the street for a while?” I supplied.

I shuffled Meryll a bit, trying to rouse her.

“Rape office,” she said.

I laughed.

“Girl's got a concussion,” Randall said. “Knew we shoulda gone to the hospital.”

Then I spotted it. Sure enough: Rape Office.

It was tall, four or five stories, but thin. Bricks that probably started off red, then turned to shit brown after somebody rubbed a few decades of shit on them. Every single window was broken and boarded over, but the doors were intact. Above them, in severe metal letters: Rape Office.

It used to say “Trade Office.” You could still see an imprint in the grime from the now-missing “T.” The “D” had lost a few retaining bolts, so it hung upside down, now a lopsided, rusting “P.”

“Huh,” Randall said, now spotting it. “Good name for a band.”

We hobbled Meryll up the steps. They were concrete, chipped damn near out of existence. Old newspapers and what was probably bloody fur splayed across them. I gave up counting after I spotted about a dozen needles. I didn't even try to count the crushed beer cans. You'd have to straighten the place up a bit to call it a squalid hellhole.

“You're sure this is where you wanna go?” Randall asked Meryll.

She pulled her arm from across my shoulder, and almost fell. I went to catch her, but she shrugged me off. She steadied herself against Randall with one hand. With the other, she knocked a pattern on the flaking metal doors. One knock. Slight pause. Four knocks. Long pause. Two knocks.

Shave and a haircut. Two bits.

Nothing happened for a long, suspicious minute. Two thrashed-looking American punks on an abandoned wharf, holding a beaten, nearly unconscious British girl between them, standing outside of a building called the Rape Office. I just knew a cop was gonna come by right then. Do they have the death penalty in England? If so, we would get it on general principle.

Finally, the door swung inward. A short, ugly guy with scars all across his lips wobbled in the doorway. He peered out at us with hooded little rat eyes. He belched, and I smelled cheap beer.

Well, hell, now I'm thirsty.

“We, uh…” Randall started, but there was no need to finish.

The ugliest man in the world had turned away and was already staggering down a short, narrow hallway filled with soiled mattresses and broken shopping carts. Halfway down, he looked over his shoulder at us, and gave us an exaggerated wave. Nearly knocked himself over doing it.

Follow me to my den, says the troll.

We did.

Meryll was walking on her own now. Not very well—she'd get booked for public intoxication if she went to the mall like that—but she was moving, and that was good. It was not at all disturbing for a girl to be moseying about an hour after getting strangled by an acid monster. Totally normal. So normal it would be stupid of me to think about it anymore.

The hallway ended in a soggy pile of T-shirts that reeked of ammonia. I could see Randall eyeballing them hungrily. The man just cannot turn down a free shirt. But the troll was moving along at an unsteady clip, down the hall to the right and nearly out of sight. We followed him, and wound up in a skinny room with a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadows. It looked like there had been floors to this building, at one point. But something came through from above, a long time ago, and blasted most of them out, one by one. The ground beneath our feet was one great big shattered crater, sloping from the farthest edges right down to the center of the room. Old, black water had collected at the deepest point. Somebody had posted a crude, hand-drawn sign that said “
Swimmin Pool.
” The whole place was lit with gas lanterns. Some hung from hooks embedded in what little ceiling remained. Most were just shoved randomly into the debris. One corner had been given over entirely to band equipment—amps, guitars, a partially kicked-in drum set held together by duct tape. The other corners were filled with torn couches, broken recliners, and smashed TV sets. Kids sporting Mohawks and patchwork jackets were wrestling across the wreckage, passed out on the couches, and playing drinking games by the lanterns. A record player tucked into a broken safe was playing The Adverts' “No Time to be 21.”

I was here. I was home.

I looked around for our guide-goblin, but he wasn't there. Took me a minute to spot him. He was climbing a ladder lashed up against one wall that looked like it had been part of a fire escape, once. It poked right up through the blasted ceiling. The light from the gas lanterns was thin and didn't carry far, so I couldn't see it until my eyes adjusted: Every floor, or at least what little that hadn't been caved in yet, was occupied. I could hear other songs from up above, tinny guitars rattling around unseen speakers, voices laughing and yelling. One was just making monkey noises over and over. Or shit, maybe they had an actual monkey!

Calm down, Carey. There's probably a very slim chance that you will finally be able to get drunk with a monkey tonight. Just concentrate on the task at hand.

I hollered up at the ugly guy, who was quickly ascending out of sight into the gloom above us. He turned around to glare at me.

“What are we supposed to do, drag her up there?” I asked.

He motioned for us to sit, then silently resumed his climb.

Me and Randall steered Meryll over to half a row of folding seats that had been boosted from some upscale theater. They smelled like ancient butts and dust mites, and they tilted crazily when we put weight on them, but they held. Meryll slumped gratefully, laid her head on Randall's shoulder, and closed her eyes.

I made up my mind to get over that shit as soon as possible. What good was fucking mooning over her gonna do if she's made it clear the only pole she wants to slide down is attached to that doofus Randall? I mean, so what if she could fill out a skirt
and
uppercut a guy out of his own shoes? I'm sure there are plenty of fish in the sea … with sexy freak strength … who'll jump out of a moving bus with you.…

Fucking Randall.

I looked around for other chicks to annoy with my presence, but there were only guys around. Not even particularly girly ones that I could ogle if I squinted hard enough—they were all ropy boys with broken teeth and black eyes. I held out a thin sliver of hope that they segregated the sexes by floor, and the second story was all slutty punk rock coeds with low standards. But that seemed about as likely as the monkey fantasy.

Not impossible, but no sense counting on it.

I watched the punks hollering, throwing cans at each other, and making a huge point of ignoring us. I was waiting to see which foolish cub would unwittingly lead me to their beer stash. The one who finally did it was a kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with a head shaved like a monk and two front teeth missing. He stumbled toward a kicked-in TV set, reached through the shattered glass, and pulled out two cans.

“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.