Metro (22 page)

“This is a nightmare . . . a
nightmare
 . . .”

“You're crying, Jollie. That's so pathetic. I'm very disappointed.”

“You . . . pig . . .”

“Poor Jollie Meeker. Activist and smart girl for hire. Always on the run, always sharp with a remark. Reduced to tears in the face of her life bottoming out. Are you going to
really
lose it now? Are you going to let the pain in your heart and the estrogen in your blood cancel out
everything
you know about survival? You're doing nothing right now but proving me right.”

“. . .
YOU PIG!
”

“And now you sound like a little boy in a prison shower, cringing at the feet of his own rapists.”

“
YOU GODDAMN PERVERTED PIG!
”

“Say it again, Jollie. Prove me right. Prove that the only real truth in this world is the truth we find when we are blindsided by something we never expected—when everything in the world we ever relied on is taken away. Prove it to me, girl. Prove it to me now.”

“You . . .
you
 . . .”

“You are almost broken. You are almost to the truth. Now all you have to do is tell me what I want to know . . . and I will
withhold
the secret of love and freedom. I will make the pain go away and you will go back to sleep. Tell me now.”

“What . . . do you want to know?”

“It's a simple question, and I'm only going to ask it once. Do you understand?”

“Yes . . .”

“Say it again. Say it stronger.”

“Yes, I
understand
.”

“Okay, here goes. This is important. Everything rides on it. Many lives are at stake, including yours. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Where did Mark Jones hide my drugs?”

• • •

S
he looks at him right in the eye, tears streaming down her face.

And she says:

“Fuck
you.”

• • •

D
arian smiles. The calmness on his face never breaks. He chews his gum slowly, the air between them full of uneasy tang. He gets up and tells her to follow him back down the hall.

• • •

T
hey walk in silence. Are joined by three men in white. Three huge guys who could break Jollie in half. They all get in an elevator and head down. It opens directly into Darian's hallway.

The corridor of love and freedom.

• • •

T
here are screams that linger here, even though the rooms are empty.

Jollie can hear them, just like she can hear her own heartbeat, pounding in her head, as she follows him. The breath of the three men on all sides of her, making it impossible to escape.

The hall is a hundred feet of marble floor and ceiling, like in a mausoleum, white and piercing, lit by overhead florescent tubes. Doors every few feet on either side. They lead to dark open chambers.

So much death, on every side of her.

And I'm dead too
, she thinks.

• • •

J
ollie's tears are gone, but her heart drops to the floor when they enter the operating room. It smells like cold steel and anesthetic here. And something else too. A weird undercurrent of
something
. Smells raw and rough, but she's never sensed anything like it before. It's also very dark, except for a lamp that illuminates something that looks like a dentist's chair on rollaway wheels.

She can't see much else.

“It's just past midnight, Jollie,” Darian says. “A perfect time to die.”

• • •

D
arian removes his jacket and hangs it on the wall.

He tells her to have a seat.

She sits.

And the men surround her, one of them strapping her arms down to the cold steel of the chair, another doing her legs. The restraints are thick, heavy duty leather and steel. The pale, stark light from the lamp shines right in her face, almost canceling out the rest of the room, making Darian into a strange silhouette as he rolls a tray of metal instruments over to her. The light glares off his tools, sparkling. She stays calm.

Darian smiles at her, peeling a fresh stick of gum. Pops it in his mouth. Snaps on a pair of rubber gloves.

Finally, Jollie speaks: “So this is the special room?”

“No, my child. This is
my
special room. The children are spared, whenever possible. Some things should only be enjoyed by those who've earned the right.”

“By being bad?”

“By growing up.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?”

“You
are
scared, Jollie. Just moments ago, you were crying like a little boy cries. Are you going to tell me that's all gone away now?”

“No. But . . . I wasn't crying because of you.”

“I know that. You're sad because of your friends. Because of what happened to them. All that's left now . . . is
this
.”

He picks up an instrument, which looks like barbed wire fused to a razor sharp blade. It glints, just inches from her eye.

“Do you know what that is? We call it a Wirchcow 9.7. A next-generation autopsy knife. Surgical tools all have names and designations and histories that go back to the beginning of the profession. This one is brand-new on the market—designed to scrape away layers of scabby flesh on burn victims, post mortem. Have you ever seen a
live
burn victim? They actually have to be peeled regularly or the skin becomes infected. They don't even
feel the pain
, Jollie, because their nerves have been destroyed. The screaming only comes because they see what we are doing to them with this terrible thing. They see that their flesh is scraped away like black pulpy coal and their beauty is ruined forever. They see their lives grinding into an endless nothing, where all they are is a creature of torn and mutilated flesh.”

The blade, just an inch from her eyes now.

“They see it all, right here, Jollie. And you'll see it too.”

She hocks up a ball of spit and aims it right at his face, but it hits the Wirchcow instead, dripping there like alien slime. He still just smiles, the air between them sharp and sweet. “One last time. Tell me where the drugs are.”

“You said you were only going to ask me once.”

“I guess I must have lied.”

“And if I answer, you'll let me go, just like that?”

“No. But you won't have to endure what's coming. You'll join the children. You'll become their new teacher. Everything will work out just fine.”

She tries to spit at him again, but her throat chokes dry. “Even if I knew what you wanted to know, Darian, I'd never tell you.”

“I've heard that before.”

“It doesn't matter anyway. Mark never told
me
anything. He said he had a storage locker somewhere, but he never said where it was. That could be anywhere in the city. He wouldn't even tell the lady who brought us in. I don't know anything.”

“You probably do and you don't even know it. I've been here before also. That's how I found the three of you eventually. Your friend Jackie-Boy told me a lot.”

“Jackie.”

“Excuse me?”

“His name is
Jackie
, not Jackie-Boy. Jackie-Boy is a little kid's name.”

“But that's all he really was in the end. That's all you will be too. And there's nothing wrong with it. Nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of.”

“What did . . . what did you
do to him
?”

“Not much, really. He was almost dead when he came to me. Your friend Mark saw to that. Did he tell you?”

“You . . . you're . . .
a liar
.”

“I am many things, Jollie. But I'm sure by now you've gathered that I am
anything
but a liar.”

“Mark wouldn't have . . . he . . .
wouldn't have
 . . .”

“Oh yes, Jollie. He would have. And he did. Jackie-Boy Schaeffer was just one other obstacle in the way of his big score. Jackie-Boy described to me how Mark Jones cleaned house during the deal. Told me so many details. It was fascinating to watch his face and wipe his tears away. His whole world was pretty much ruined. I might have been able to save his life in the end, but I don't think he
wanted
to go on living. His heart was broken, like all our hearts break eventually. So I loved him, Jollie. The same way I will love you.”

“No . . . Mark wouldn't . . .”

But.

She pieces together the chronology of that terrible night—remembers that Mark and Jackie went off together to do the deal.

And only one of them came back.

She remembers his words, when she asked Mark directly. Because Jollie sees words and memorizes him. She asked him if he let anyone hurt Jackie.

And Mark said:
I didn't. I mean . . . I think he's okay.

• • •

S
he wants to scream again. She forces herself not to think about Jackie, but it keeps slamming into her, over and over.

Mark's lie. The worst lie of all.

She barely chokes out: “Why don't you
just get on with it
, you sick maniac? I've had enough of your fucking games.”

“Nonsense. You've never had enough of
anything
.”

He smiles, then winks.

Then reaches up for the light, and aims it right at Andy.

• • •

H
e was there all along

In the dark section of the room, just out of sight. Spread out on a table with a white sheet over most of his body. He's not strapped down, but he's not moving either. She sees him now as the lamp hits his features, and he stirs in semiconsciousness, half his face consumed by some terrible black shadow.

The rest of the lights come on and he stirs some more, almost awake.

Booyah.

The terrible black shadow turns out to be a series of burns that reach across Andy's skin and through his hair, splitting him right down the middle. The other side is smooth and beautiful, just like he always was. The rest, charred. Her stomach vanishes. She realizes now what that indefinable s
omething
she still smells in the air actually is.

It's Andy.

“Notice how his eyes are completely intact,” Darian says, wheeling the instrument tray over to him. “That's the interesting thing about many third-degree-burn victims, Jollie. The eyes very often remain. Even the really bad cases. The genitals very often emerge unscathed as well. This is because of certain instinctive reflex actions that the human body possesses. The eyes always roll back in our heads, for example, when faced with cases of extreme heat. Same with a man's penis. It'll just shrink right up and the genitals will suck back into the lower body, while our legs close shut to protect the goods. It might seem a little too good to be true, but evolution has placed the most sensitive parts of our bodies optimally for just such occasions.”

Andy almost moans now, his head lobbing side to side, the rest of his body unable to move. His eyes open, bloodshot and watery. They see Darian. They see Jollie. He almost smiles.

“There. The patient is now very nearly awake and his vision is probably not even damaged. With any luck, he'll be making babies soon too. After all, the burns only extend to his upper right arm. He was really very lucky. Not so lucky with the right
hand
, however.”

He grabs it gently and holds the fingers up for Jollie to see.

The awful stitched-up wound.

“The cast he had on his arm when the house blew up was burned pretty badly. It was hard to get off. Almost lost the thumb, Jollie. It was barely still attached to the rest of the hand—as you can see—by an absolutely penny-dreadful stitch-job. I'm assuming that's Mark Jones's work, or maybe even yours. Amateur night.”

He turns and looks at her, selecting something that looks like a set of bolt cutters from the tray.

“I think we'll lose the thumb now. For my brother. After all . . . it was Marnie's idea to get rid of it in the first place, yes?”

Jollie almost says the word
please
before he does it.

Andy doesn't scream at all when it happens.

• • •

T
wo of the three white suits assist Darian. They work like professional surgeons. One of them even wipes his brow periodically with a piece of gauze. The third man rolls Jollie's chair closer so she can see every detail of the operation. Darian never takes one eye off his work. Single-minded. Terrifying. A phantom MP3 player somewhere in the room is suddenly playing wordless show tunes Jollie can't identify.

Andy mouths the words, “I love you, Jollie.”

She doesn't let herself cry. She says she loves him too.

• • •

D
arian spits his gum into a sink filled with blood and sets Andy's thumb on a white tray. Says his ear will be next. Then they'll start scraping. Andy Culpepper will be a sight to see in a few moments. Peeled like a blood orange if she doesn't start thinking hard about what she knows. About the things Mark told her in five years of living together. Where he might have hidden the drugs. Only she would know.

Andy is too far gone to say a damn thing, obviously. Except “I love you, Jollie.” Which he says again, just under his breath.

Darian peels a new stick of gum, smiling.

• • •

S
he thinks hard, dives deep. Looks back over everything in five years for any clue about that damn storage locker. Her mind moving fast through
images, names, dates, faces—anything at ALL.

Darian readies the bone saw, which he says is so much better for removing a human ear than a sharp knife or a razor blade. The serrated action against the cartilage and all that.