The Unnoticeables (24 page)

“How you doing tonight, darlin'?” he asked me.

“A bit kidnapped, sir,” I answered.

He laughed. Three short bursts, pause, one more, long pause. Repeat.

“Well, we'll try to make this as quick as can be. Don't want to cause you any more inconvenience.” He shot me a look that I guessed was supposed to be paternal but came off perverse and malevolent.

Someone in the line of girls to my left let out a soft whimper. One of the Empty Ones leapt from her front-row pew and wrapped her hands around the offender's neck. A series of snaps, like knuckles cracking. She dragged the dead girl away by the hair, and casually tossed her into a bin against the far wall. It was over in seconds. The woman took her seat, and nodded for the balding man to continue.

“Is she ready?” he asked. There were no cues to direct the question. He had lapsed into the non-state of the Empty Ones.

Marco answered: “Yes. She struggled, was beaten, and came willingly. There is still fight in her, but it is habitual.”

“I take it we have incentive.”

“She's here,” another flat, female voice answered.

A young, dark-skinned woman with an impeccable pompadour emerged from behind the gears. A second later, she dragged another girl into view. I almost didn't recognize her. She was so skinny, pale, and lifeless. I didn't understand. It had only been a few days. She looked like a photo from a refugee camp.

“Jackie!” I cried, and tried to shake loose from Marco.

His fingers clamped down onto my arm so viciously that I went limp from the pain. My skin turned bright purple where it bulged out between his fingers. It looked like it was about to explode.

“Now, you're sure she's ready?” the balding man asked, feigning human impatience.

“The fight is reflex,” Marco answered. “We are ready for the birth.”

“Well, hell, then—let's get this hootenanny started!” The balding man slapped the podium and shot that sleazy smile at the gathered audience.

Three claps. Pause. One clap. Long pause. Repeat.

The car salesman wrapped his stubby little sausage fingers around the handle of the polished silver lever and gave it a pull. The gears turned, slowly at first, but quickly picked up speed. The jewels on them blurred together as the revolutions increased. The gears became a series of shining, interlocking circles.

I thought the first one was an accident. I thought she just fell.

But then they fed the second girl into the whirling gears. And the third. They made a sound like a lawnmower hitting a rock, then a fine mist of aerosolized blood filled the air. Two of the girls screamed, and the Empty Ones were on them in a blink: snapping their necks, dragging them to the side, and tossing them into the bin like you'd heft a particularly disagreeable garbage bag. But those were the only cries. The other girls had lost something inside. They stepped up to the gears, if not willingly, then with a conspicuous lack of resistance. I was looking around. Looking for somebody to stop it, to protest, or at least show some amount of surprise.

It was a stupid impulse.

And I saw her there. The pompadoured woman had led Jackie to the very end of one of the lines and just let her go. The girl at the front of Jackie's queue bent at the waist, reached out slowly, and put her hand into the space where two spinning gears met. It took her instantly, jerking her into the machine and pulverizing her into a bloody fog. When it was over, Jackie dutifully stepped forward one place in line.

“Stop. God damn it! Stop!” I pulled at Marco, trying to get his attention.

His face contorted and he beamed his
Homeroom
smile down at me.

“What's up,
chica
?”

“Please, I don't understand what's happening but—”

“Ha-ha.” He snapped his fingers and shot me with a pretend pistol. “You failed high school biology or something? It was tough, right? I had to get that dweeb Skeet to do my homework for me, but Principal Belmoore found out and—”

“Th-that was on your show,” I said.

All expression drained from his face.

“This is necessary. It is to prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“For the birth. The division. The moment when the nucleus divides from one into two. You are here for a great purpose. The greatest purpose: With your help, a Tool of the Mechanic will be forged today.”

“I don't understand. I don't understand what this is, but please—I will do whatever you want if you just let Jackie go. Don't let her walk into that thing. Please. Anything. Please.”

“That attitude is good. That is where you should be. Your friend is the incentive. She is here to ensure you stay in alignment. If all goes well, perhaps we will not need her to lubricate the gears.”

He flashed me the J. C. Sable grin.

“I mean, we're not monsters,” he finished, laughing.

The machine picked up speed. The noise increased in pitch, like the machine was shifting gears. Then it shifted again. And again.
Wait—that's not—

Daisy smashed through the old wooden doors of the chapel like a battering ram. Shrapnel exploded outward as her roaring engine revved even higher, spinning the rear wheel more freely now that she was off the ground. Time froze, and I saw Carey in a snapshot. His face was a mesh of blood and bruises. Two of his front teeth were broken. He looked to be missing a piece of an ear. And he was sporting the widest, most earnest grin I have ever seen. He looked like he'd just learned to fly. He knew what this moment was. He was a white knight. An action hero, here to rescue the damsel.

And then the snapshot was over.

Daisy's front wheel caught the edge of the closest pew, knocked the front end sideways, and sent Carey skipping down the aisle toward us. He landed on his ass and managed to shoot me a quick thumbs-up, right before the tumbling motorcycle caught him in the back of the head and knocked him unconscious.

My savior.

The Empty Ones barely glanced at him. As soon as it became apparent Carey wouldn't be getting up again, they turned their attention back to the machine. In the line opposite Jackie, a white girl with long dreadlocks put a foot into the gears—and was gone. In Jackie's line, a stunning young brunette with high cheekbones and electric green eyes opted to go facefirst. Jackie was only two spots back now.

Then one.

Then next.

 

NINETEEN

1977. New York City, New York. Carey.

Do you have any idea how heavy a manhole cover is?

Me and Wash sure as hell didn't.

“One,” I said, after we'd looped our fingers through the holes.

“Two,” I said, as we set our feet.

“Three,” I said, and we simultaneously threw our backs out.

The cover didn't budge.

After I finished flipping off the smug, impassive slab of iron, I limped over to where we had dumped the bike. I swung Daisy's kickstand down, put her in neutral, stood at the front end, and got a running start toward the side of a building. It took two shots for the stand to break off, leaving me with about ten inches of solid steel terminating in a jagged wad of metal.

“Here,” I tossed it to Wash.

“What should I do with this?” he asked, looking around for something to hit.

“Pry the cover up, dimwit.”

“Why me?”

“Because you got that retard strength.”

He didn't move.

I rolled my eyes and took the metal bar back from him. I wedged it in between the street and the cover and pried until my eyes lost focus. I fell backward and the cover came with me. Wash slid it the rest of the way aside and stared into the black. I joined him.

There's no black like a sewer at night. Not the woods. Not even underwater. You can strain your eyes all you want, no details will pick themselves out of that darkness.

“I pry, you fly,” I said to Wash, motioning down into the pool of black so thick you could scoop it up in your hand.

Wash nodded once, curtly, and leapt feetfirst into the hole.

“Jesus fuck!” I screamed after him.

There was a distant thump and some quiet moaning.

“There's a goddamned ladder, Wash!”

More moaning.

I swung my legs over the ledge and scrambled down the ladder. When the last cold rung slipped out of my fingers, I swatted around until I felt something Wash-shaped.

“You all right?” I asked him.

“I believe that I have taken most of the fall on my butt and elbows,” Wash answered.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Let's go, then,” I said, and waited for the sound of Wash moving.

Nothing.

“Where are we going?”

“To … to the club, man. Come on.”

“Yes, I know. But which way is that?”

“It's…”

Shit.

The air inside the sewer was stifling. I could feel the dark pressing in all around me, like a tangled sleeping bag. I tried to think how I'd been oriented when I came down, but I couldn't remember. If you pressed me, I probably couldn't have told you which way was down. I knew which way was up: The opening above us shone like the sun, though I knew the street we had just left had been mostly unlit. From one end of the tunnel, I heard a dull and distant rumble. It sounded like garbage trucks perpetually crashing into each other from about two blocks over.

“Hear that?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“I think it's the music from the club. Let's head that way. Here, put your hand on my shoulder.”

I reached out in the general direction of Wash's voice and ended up with my palm flat over his face. He replaced it with his hand, and I put it on the shoulder of my jacket, right over the little metal spikes. I took a half step forward, holding Daisy's mangled kickstand in front of me like a torch.

It took us about six years to go ten feet.

“God damn it!” I lashed out with the metal bar and contacted nothing. “We're never gonna get there in time. If fucking Gus hadn't taken my lighter, we could—”

“Do you want a cigarette, right now?” Wash asked, confused.

“No, dipshit. For light.”

“Oh,” he said, and his hand dropped away from my shoulder. There was a metallic
clack,
and then a fucking meteor flared into life.

“Jesus,” I said, shielding my eyes from the blinding flame. “Are you kidding me? Tell me that you're kidding me, Wash.”

“I am not kidding you. What would I be kidding you about?”

“You had your lighter all this time, and you didn't think to use it?”

“You did not think to ask for it.”

“How was I supposed to know you even had it?”

“You bought it for me last week.”

Point, Wash.

“Give.”

When my eyes finally adjusted, I had to admit that the cosmic flare I'd seen a second ago was actually a pretty meager flame. It illuminated an area maybe five feet around and wavered perilously from the slightest draft. Still, it may as well have been a lightning strike for all the difference it made. At least now we wouldn't stroll obliviously over a sharp drop or into some gator's mouth.

“You think those stories about the alligators in the sewer are true?” I asked jokingly.

“Absolutely,” Wash answered, without a moment's hesitation.

We stopped talking after that.

We followed the rumbling for what felt like miles, watching for an opening into the club, or at least a branching path that might lead to … something. But we didn't find anything. Just a long, straight shot of concrete tube, stinking of mold and shit, pitch-black and forever.

Wash's Zippo got too hot to hold about ten minutes ago. I had it wrapped up in my jacket sleeve now, held aloft in front of me like a magic wand to ward off the dark. It couldn't have much fuel left.

“There's no way the club is this far,” I finally said, breaking the silence.

No answer.

“Right, Wash?”

Silence.

Wash was gone. Wash was gone … and there was still a hand on my shoulder.

I spun about, brandishing the kickstand. I nearly bashed Wash's wide eyes right out of his head. He screamed. I screamed. It was not a dignified moment.

“What the hell, man?”

“What? What did I do?”

“Why didn't you answer me?”

“I did. I nodded.”

I briefly considered bludgeoning him and leaving his body here to feed the mutant goldfish. But with a saintly effort, I managed to repress the anger and shove it into the little cubbyhole in my mind where I keep all the things I hate.

I repeated the question: “So you think we passed the club, too?”

“Yes,” Wash answered, looking up at the sloping concrete ceiling. “Plus, there's no way it's this deep.”

“Deep?”

“Of course. We have been walking downhill for some time now.”

“What? How can you tell?”

“The water.” Wash pointed at the thin stream of brownish gray trickling into the darkness. “It flows downhill.”

“No, that's only … Fuck me. You're right. Why the hell didn't you say anyth—”

Flicker. Waver. Black.

The Zippo had run out of fuel.

We both lapsed into hopeless silence.

“I guess we go back,” Wash finally said. He sounded dismal.

“I guess so,” I agreed, “but at least it should go quick. We know there were no branching paths. No crap in the way to trip over. We can jog it. We'll just go 'til we hit the light from the open manhole. Maybe try the door again. Maybe just light the fucking building on fire and see if we can smoke the bastards out.”

“Or we could just bar the doors and burn them.”

“What the hell kind of talk is that? Jezza is in there.”

“Jezza is dead. You heard him scream and you heard him stop. You saw what they were doing when we left hi—Ow! What was that?”