Fic: The Brandy of the Damned
Continued from Part One
It was easier to get away from backstage than it had been to find it in the first place.
Within minutes they were weaving through the crowd again, sticking to the fringes. In any other situation Bob would have felt ridiculous trailing along in a My Chem daisychain. Tonight, however....
He had to make sure they made it out of here. That was most important. He couldn’t let them know what he knew now, that he wasn’t going to leave. That he was here forever.
He was one of the crowd. There was a difference between being real and being, and he was on the wrong side of that line.
They made it back to town. The hum of the concert faded in the background, and the locked doors and darkened businesses made the picturesque little town creepier than ever. There were a few small streetlamps buzzing quietly overhead, casting circles of yellow light onto the black pavement.
He looked down the street, and sure enough, their bus still sat where they’d left it, half in the dirt off just off the main road. He wondered briefly what happened to the bus driver, but it felt strangely unimportant.
They had to get to Frank.
In town, they let go of each other’s hands. Well, most of them did- Bob could see that Gerard still had a tight grip on Mikey (or maybe it was the other way around) and Ray kept everyone close, even if they weren’t holding on for dear life.
“Down here,” Bob said, and moved to the alley that he’d seen while looking for Mikey earlier. He lead the rest of the band down it, feeling strangely bolstered by the sound of three pairs of boots scuffling against the concrete just behind him.
The alley opened into a tiny back street lined with broken-down brick buildings. Directly in front of them was a building with a hand-painted sign leaning against its wall: DEAD CAN DANCE. There were Cinco de Mayo-style skeletons dancing around the letters, and the walls of the building were covered in indecipherable graffiti. A battered awning stood over the thick metal door.
Bob glanced behind them, sure enough, at the other end of the alleyway, the pristine street was still visible, perfect and silent as a movie set.
“Should we go in?” Mikey’s voice came dangerously close to cracking.
“Maybe we should see if we can see inside? Make sure it’s not a trap,” Gerard suggested.
Bob shook his head.
“If Frank’s in there, we have to go,” Ray said decisively.
Bob reached forward and tugged open the door. It was lighter than it looked; it banged open loudly from unnecessary force. Gerard jumped, startled, and then let out a nervous laugh.
Music spilled out of the open door, abrasive and simple under muffled, screaming vocals.
Ray took the first step forward. Bob saw his shoulders heave slightly under the steadying breath he took, and then he was inside, the black of his uniform blending in with the darkness of the club.
Bob motioned for Gerard to follow. The brightness of his hair and corpse-pale skin stood out against the darkness until Mikey, close behind, blocked it out. Bob stepped inside, feeling comforted by the smell of cigarettes and spilled drinks that greeted him immediately inside.
But the smell wasn’t quite right, and it took Bob a moment to realize that was because the only smell of unwashed bodies came from his bandmates. No vomit, no piss, no sharp tang of sweat.
A few more steps inside, and all he could see was a crush of bodies pressing against a low plywood stage. A crowd of punks with peacock hair and metal glinting from unlikely places, and Bob was pretty sure they were all ghosts.
(Dead, at the very least.)
“What do you call someone who’s dead but not a ghost or a zombie?” he asked.
“Fucked,” Gerard replied, voice raised against the chaos of the concert. He was squinting into the crowd with the same look of concentration he always got when sketching, like he was trying to make the image in his mind appear fully-formed in front of him right then and there.
In the jumbled mess of limbs and flailing bodies, it was impossible to make out Frank. If only the little bastard was taller, Bob thought, feeling his band close in tight around him.
They always felt close, but in their uniforms, standing united against the crowd before them, suddenly Bob felt like they were less a band and more a team, assembled to stand up for...
He wasn’t sure what, because “going home safe and sound” wasn’t usually the mission statement of the sorts of teams that were featured in the movies and comics they read. He cut his eyes over to Gerard, who was still peering around intently for Frank. Gee wasn’t nearly as together as he was pretending.
None of them gave a fuck about these kids who were stuck here. The nameless crowd, the mouselike creatures who crept through this town, populating it and providing what every performer needed most.
They were the same as all the dead men and women, only his band might still get out of here mostly intact.
There was a girl dancing at the edge of the crowd clad in safety-pinned lace and torn fishnets, and he didn’t know if she’d earned her place here or if she’d just taken a wrong turn into this unimaginable place. Here, in this place called Dead Can Dance, there was little distinction between the crowd and the performers.
The dead danced with the living, the living laughed with the dead, and there was a mounting sense of chaos and tension that Bob had learned to sense from all sides of the stage, crowd and tech and band sides alike.
Something bad was going to happen here.
(They were the catalyst.)
Ray suddenly stiffened, leaning hopefully, and Bob followed his sight line to see a striped uniform jacket sleeve, dusty and familiar.
Ray immediately began to push through the crowd towards Frank, and Bob followed, helping cut a swath through the kids distinct enough for the Way brothers to follow close behind without chancing losing anyone in the crowd.
Pushing, shoving, elbows taken to the stomach and shoulder and cheek. Bob didn’t even feel it; he was focused entirely on getting his entire band together. Safe. Whole.
If they were together, they could leave.
Further into the crowd, staying close enough to Ray that he got the occasional mouthful of fluffy hair, and he almost knocked Ray over when he stopped suddenly.
There. There. Just a few feet away, Frank stood. He was pressed in tight, side-to-side with a lean punk with a smirk on his lips and murder in his eyes.
The crowd was thinner here, and Frank stared at them without a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
“Frankie,” Mikey said, voice sharp and scared. “Frankie, we need to go.”
Frank shook his head sluggishly.
The punk beside him smirked. (How many ways to get what you want) His black leather jacket creaked as he crossed his arms, surveying them.
Bob felt the sort of surge of frustration that made his fists clench, and took a slow, deep breath. They just needed to get through to Frank, like they’d done with everyone else.
Another figure slipped out of the crowd and stood guard by Frank’s side. The two punks grinned at them like jackals from either side of Frank, who still just leaned against the rough plywood table with blank eyes.
Gee stiffened, shoulders square in his crisp jacket. Beside him, Mikey stood taller, chin lifted defiantly.
The crowd’s behavior had shifted, Bob realized. The steady guitar riffs continued, the vocalist still screamed endlessly, no more hoarse than when they’d entered, but now the pit had seemed to have changed patterns, was now circling slowly around them in a jumbled mess. It was like suddenly finding himself in the center of a whirlpool of angry kids, and he flashed back on every broken, bleeding kid he’d ever seen lifted out of a pit.
The punks surrounding Frank looked more predatory than ever, leering.
“Frank.” Gerard’s voice cut through the noise, direct and commanding. “Frank, snap the fuck out of it. We’re here.”
Gerard stepped forward, standing in front of Bob, Mikey and Ray like they were in a photoshoot. The tilt of his white-blond head and his ramrod-straight posture indicated that he’d stepped into his stage persona.
On either side of him, Mikey and Ray were standing taller as well, shoulders squared. Bob automatically joined them in posing, though he felt more outside of the band than he had since he’d first joined. (They were going to escape. He wasn’t.)
The moshing mass continued to churn around them, screams and heckles becoming clear through the constant barrage of sound. The punk on Frank’s left smirked.
“He’s ours.”
It took Bob a moment to realize that both Gerard and the punk had spoken simultaneously.
“Frank, get over here,” Ray tried. Frank’s head turned slowly, bobbling from the effort. His eyes were cloudy.
“Stop fucking around,” Bob said. “Get your ass over here.”
“Now, Frank,” Mikey added, sounding only a little like he was pleading.
Frank didn’t react. It was fucking creeping, staring at a Frank Iero who looked for all the world like someone had finally found that mythical ‘off’ button they’d all wished for.
The punk laughed, staring straight at Gerard. “You’ve got no sway here, you bleedin’ ponce.”
“You have no power over me,” Mikey quoted softly, and Bob resisted the urge to laugh.
Gerard felt no such urge to resist, and let out a sharp bray of laughter. “I don’t need any sway to get my friend back, motherfucker.”
He strode forward, and only stopped when the two punks stepped in front of Frank. Closer, it was clear that the one on Frank’s right wasn’t even really a punk, clad only in tight, torn jeans and an open denim vest. (I’m dirty, mean, and mighty unclean....)
Bob followed Gerard’s lead, and they stood in formation, united as one, glaring. The punks were nonplused.
It was kind of ridiculous, in a way. The whole time they’d been here, there hadn’t been any actual hints of violence. No one had physically harmed any of them, or shown any inclination to. In a lot of ways they’d been almost safer than they were when leaving a show, when Gerard would get mobbed by screaming kids.
But Bob knew that they weren’t safe. It wasn’t just because of the freaky shit. It was something about this place, about the way the dead looked at you like they were sizing you up. Like you were next in line.
(Like he was already in the wings waiting for his cue to go on stage.)
They hadn’t been shown any violence, but they sure as fuck didn’t need to see blood and splintered bone to realize this was serious shit. Not when Frankie was slumped there, with glazed eyes and surrounded by dead idols. Not when he’d felt the crush of the nameless crowd, seen Gerard fucking commanding the crowd like he was born for it, seen Ray lose himself in the wailing notes coming from his guitar. Not when he remembered Mikey’s face in the music shop, ecstatic and uninhibited and childlike in the face of all he’d dreamed of.
Gerard was taking the wrong approach, he suddenly realized. Of course dead men wouldn’t be intimidated with the threat of, what, injury? Who knew if they could be injured? Gerard’s threats only worked on those who thought he might just be a crazyass underneath all that crazy makeup and wild eyes, and these... people...
They weren’t the type to be intimidated even before they’d died.
“What do you want in return?” Bob asked, seemingly to himself. Gerard and the dead men were still having a glare-off.
Mikey and Ray both looked at him, confused.
“What do you want for Frank?” Bob said, louder and more confident.
The punks glared. Frank stayed the same. Gerard pursed his lips and said, “He’s ours, and we want him back.”
“You can’t pay our price.”
Mikey’s grin was sharp. “Wanna bet?”
It felt as though time were standing still. As though everybody in the room were holding their breath, waiting to see what was about to happen.
Bob belatedly realized that this was because all the music had cut off. No guitars, no drums, no screeching vocals. Everyone stood still. Waiting.
After the constant crush of motion and noise, the silent stillness was near unbearable.
“What’s your price?” Ray’s voice was far from intimidating, but there was an edge to his words that Bob had only rarely heard.
“We want what everyone wants,” replied the actual punk. The other slunk up beside him. The rocker’s feathered hair blended in with the punk’s short spikey do, blocking Frank from view. They twined their arms together, forming a barrier between Frank and the rest of his band.
“You’ve already had your lifetime,” Mikey said.
Gerard laughed. “That’s right, boys. So what’s that leave?”
He took a stalking step forward, uncomfortably close to the punks. He looked them over, hand trailing almost delicately through the air over their shoulders.
Bob never quite understood what came over Gerard once he stepped onto a stage. Nothing similar happened to him - sure, he could feel the music in his blood, pounding away as he pounded out the beats and rhythms, but underneath it all was just Bob, just himself, with the worries and thoughts of the rest of life stripped away to just be in the moment.
Frank was always like a possessed, crazy version of himself, cut free from the constraints of normal society. Ray just took on a rock god stance and didn’t let lose, and Bob suspected that most of Mikey’s stage posturing felt more extreme within his mind.
But Gerard was like Jekyll and fucking Hyde, and right now, he was all Hyde. The stammering nerd disappeared, the earnestness and sometimes painful to watch sincerity faded to the background, and all that was left was a prancing, bold, fucking insane motherfucker who wasn’t afraid of anything, no matter how much of a pansy he not-so-secretly was.
Mikey raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. Gerard continued to flit around the punks like a giant deranged hummingbird, grinning every time one of the punks brushed his hand away when he got too far into their personal bubble.
Ray crossed his arms as well. Bob just fiddled with his hands like he usually did, palming a fist and occasionally cracking a knuckle. The threat of violence wasn’t going to affect anything, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt to at least look tough.
They were all playing roles, and that was his part.
The dead men were taking their sweet time with an answer, seemingly having a conversation with each other in sideways glances and lip snarls. Gerard seemed to be unnerving them slightly, like he wasn’t what they had expected.
Bob thought again of the bluesman and his slow gravely words. The difference between real and being.
“We want life,” said the punk.
“We want escape.” The rocker’s body language mirrored the punk’s, all tough poses and careless snarls. Bob thought of the documentaries he’d seen, everything these fuckers had been through and done.
“We want to know about you,” the punk continued.
“How the fuck you made it here alive.”
Bob should have expected it.
“We took the wrong road,” Gerard said, tilting his head as though considering something.
“Of course you took the wrong fucking road,” the punk snapped. “Everyone took the wrong goddamn road. That’s how we all got here. What makes you special?”
“Are we?” Ray blurted out.
The slow turn of the rocker’s head reminded Bob of the freaking velociraptor in Jurassic Park. He half-expected the dude to grin and reveal pointy rows of teeth.
“You ain’t like us,” he said slowly. “And you aren’t one of them. So what the fuck are you?”
Bob exchanged glances with his bandmates. An idea was half-blossoming, uncomfortable as the uniform he was wearing.
Mikey laughed a little hysterically.
Gerard’s eyes were wide, whites showing vivid in the dark room.
“We’re the Black Parade,” he said softly.
“Huh?” the punk said.
“We’re not,” Ray said, picking uncomfortably at his collar.
“That was a story you made up,” Mikey said accusingly.
Bob said nothing, just thought of the million and one interviews they’d sat through, listening to Gerard give his spiel about their album. It had gotten to the point where they all could believe it was about someone else, not about themselves, true, and they had all parroted Gerard’s story.
Put on the uniforms.
Given the kids a show.
Became the Black Parade. The weird feeling they all had after a while, the strange personas that seemed to come with the uniforms, the itchy, uncomfortable feeling that had lead them to abandon the uniforms mid-show, just so they could be themselves again.
And here they were, uniforms back in place, standing in front of dead guys who wanted to know what made them different from everyone else.
Bob would fucking kill Gerard Way and his stupid motherfucking ideas if it would make any difference whatsoever. Right now, though, all that was important was getting his band safely out of here.
The punks looked expectant, one tapping his foot as a subtle hint to get on with their explanation.
Bob had no idea what Gerard was going to tell them. They invented a band and became it? It was too fucking Spinal Tap to be believed. They had magical marching band uniforms?
Their slightly off-kilter lead singer had, in a fit of sleepless delusion, come up with a band that bridged the gap between life and death, and somehow, they had ended up in a real place filled with very dead people, and became that band?
Bob didn’t even believe that shit.
Gerard struck his best diva pose - one straight from Liza, Bob was slightly horrified to realize he knew - and tilted his white-blond head. “We’re the motherfucking Black Parade, and you’re going to give us our guitarist back.”
For a self-confessed cupcake, Gerard had attitude in spades. Bob blamed Jersey - Frank had the worst Jersey attitude of the bunch, but even Mikey could break it out in the right circumstances. Bob personally didn’t get the trash-talking; he was of the put up or shut up school of thought, meaning he put up with a lot until he was driven to shut someone the fuck up.
The Jersey ‘fuck ‘em’ attitude seemed to be the right approach for dealing with this crowd, though, as they looked vaguely impressed for the first time.
Frank continued to sit motionless between them, but his head had stopped lolling listlessly and he seemed to now at least be aware of his surroundings.
It should have been utterly ridiculous, claiming the name of the Black Parade in a way that wasn’t just for show, but...
Somehow it wasn’t. At Gerard’s declaration, Bob felt.... revitalized. Like this was why they’d ended up in this hidden club in a secret town. Like this was why Frank had lead them here.
Like maybe, if they were together, they could leave.
Form a united front. Get the fuck out of Dodge. It made as much sense as anything else in this godforsaken place.
“Give us Frank,” he said, taking a step forward. Mikey and Ray moved closer, completely in unison. They were going to get through this. Bob was going to get his band to safety.
“We told you everything you wanted to know,” Gerard announced.
“You don’t make any sodding sense though,” the punk replied.
“Them’s the breaks,” Gerard said. “Nothing in this fucking place makes any sense. Why the fuck would we?”
He was getting cocky.
“Come on, Frank,” Mikey said. He’d been staring at Frank, as though that would snap him out of it. He walked over to him - brushing past his brother, slipping through the punks as they began to block him off like the freaking cat that he was on stage - and prodded Frank.
Nothing.
“Seriously, asshole,” Mikey said again, hunching his shoulders as one of the punks moved in to grab him. He prodded harder, then kind of flailed his arms and whacked Frankie in the nose with one of his pointy-ass elbows while trying to evade the dead men.
Gerard immediately leapt into the fray, plowing into the punk who had Mikey’s shoulder in his grasp. He didn’t really affect the proceedings, just sort of face-planted into the safety-pin studded jecket.
Through the thrashing limbs that was the Way-punk smackdown, Bob could make out Frank blinking and reaching up to touch his nose, which was bleeding thanks to Mikey’s elbow.
Mere seconds had passed since Mikey had instigated the fight. Bob felt his sluggishness pass, and realized that he was just standing around like a fucking moron while Gerard and Mikey Way fought. They had the combined badass level of a particularly ferocious kitten; their only asset was their attitude, which wasn’t going to last them much longer.
They were going to get annihilated if Bob didn’t do something.
He stumbled into the fight, mind still racing and feeling minutes behind his own fists as they knocked into one of the punk’s head. He pushed Gerard out of harm’s way, taking a whack to the underside of his chin that left him seeing stars for a bright second.
From there, his head finally emptied of thoughts and he could just react to the fight happening. The world shrank to a whir of fists and feet and sharp pains and satisfying thuds; he hit anything that wasn’t wearing a marching band uniform, shoved and threw people to the floor.
The majority of the crowd hung back, like they had no interest in the fight other than as an idle curiosity. Bob reckoned only three or four of the crowd, vaguely familiar faces, had joined the original two.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mikey and Gerard still lashing out against the punks. Ray’s fro bounced around in the background; Bob couldn’t tell what he was doing. He was mostly focused on not getting his ass beat into the stained cement floor.
He wanted to laugh; the world was simplified to hitting or being hit, bright flashes of pain in his fists, wrists, wherever he got hit. After all the fucking terrified tension of being in this hell-town, it was a rush of release. He pounded out his frustration and fear, even as he felt his lungs burning and chest heaving and his hair was plastered down into his eyes with sweat.
Then he did hear a laugh, a stupid fucking familiar laugh, and he turned his head enough to see Frankie gleefully leaping on the back of one of the punks, pulling hard on a mohawk and punching awkwardly at the side of the punk’s face.
Bob let out a sharp breath, then grinned, and straightened up. He kicked at the guy he’d just knocked down, an asshole-ish move he felt he deserved, and said, “About time you snapped out of it, dumbfuck.”
Frank swiped at his nose, smearing blood on his coatsleeve, and grinned.
*
“You guys, I think I have it figured out,” Ray said. He pushed a flyaway bit of hair away from his eyes.
They were huddled together in the coat room just off the front of the club. Bob reckoned the place had started out as the town’s fancy restaurant, but once it had been taken over by kids with a bigger desire for anarchy than fine dining, this room had apparently become used only for the occasional make out, judging by the scuffed layer of dust on the floor.
Frank had hastily shut the door and told them that he didn’t think any of the punks really knew this room was here; he hadn’t seen anyone enter it the whole time he’d been there. Which, as it turned out, had been the entire time, except for when they’d taken him to the concert.
They all turned expectantly to Ray.
Frank had part of his t-shirt shoved up against his nose. More for show now than anything else, Bob thought, because it had to have stopped bleeding by now. Mikey kept twitching uncomfortably and inspecting random parts of his body for injury. Gerard had a bloody lip he kept licking at, as though he didn’t even realize what he was doing.
Bob could feel aches and pains up and down his body, and he had a scrape on his eyebrow that kept slowly dripping blood into his left eye if he didn’t press his torn-off piece of Frank’s shirt to it, and his wrists felt like they were on fire, but he felt more alive than anything else. He was clinging to that feeling, knowing bone-deep that it probably was more an illusion than anything else.
“I was talking to some of the kids,” Ray said, which explained why he was injury-free, “and they said that the concerts can last for ages. Literally. And no one ages, they’re all the same as they were when they arrived.”
Bob didn’t want to think about staying here forever, stuck like this. He loved his band, but this wasn’t where he wanted them to end up.
Ray continued, “And they think if you stay out of sight of the Stars, which is what they call... you know, them, then they won’t stop you.”
There was a pause.
“That’s the most retardedly obvious thing I’ve ever heard,” Frank said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ray said. “Or did you come up with a brilliant plan while you were waiting for us to rescue your possessed ass?”
Gerard spoke up before they gave away their hiding spot with a shouted insult match. “We should just get out there. Stick to the shadows, sneak back to the bus. It isn’t that far.”
Mikey nodded his agreement. There was a brightness in his eyes Bob wasn’t used to seeing. He thought of him charging decisively into the fray, and wondered what, exactly, Mikey thought about this whole experience. If he liked that these were ghosts he could actually fight.
“Let’s go,” Bob said approvingly.
They didn’t look back into the club as they slipped out the door; the music had returned, angrier than ever, and the crowd was screaming its approval.
*
Outside, it felt like a funeral home.
Everything was too still, even for a nighttime small town. The shops were all closed, the lights were all off. The only sound was the quiet buzzing of the wrought iron lampposts that lined the street as they cast perfect yellow circles of light onto the pavement.
Their shoes scraped loudly against the street, and Bob was certain that they’d be caught. He remembered catching sight of a police car earlier and thinking something stupid about Barney Fife.
He sure as fuck didn’t want to meet Barney Fife now.
There was a quiet echo, a near-imperceptible sound of music and cheering. The concert must still be going on, Bob realized, horrified at the thought of the nameless crowd still churning, still hollowly supporting the endless line of musicians.
He’d heard Ray say that the concerts lasted forever, but it felt more visceral somehow to hear it.
They continued, keeping a sharp eye out for any signs of life. Or death, Bob supposed.
They didn’t make it far without hearing the low rumble in the distance; they were barely out of the mouth of the alley. At first, Bob thought it was just the echoes from the concert reverberating through the silent town, but Ray froze, eyes wide with alarm.
“It’s close,” Mikey whispered.
“Too fucking close,” Frank concurred.
Bob listened closer. The low rumble he heard wasn’t drum beats and bass guitar. It was steadier and lacking in melody - he almost laughed when he realized what it was. It was a car, an old one, judging by the rumble of the engine.
It crept closer and closer, echoing off brick walls. They all kept looking around, trying to pinpoint its location.
“There,” Gerard finally whispered, pointing.
Down the street, they could see the black-and-white of the cop car as it rolled down Main Street.
The steady, heavy bass rumble of a souped-up old police car rose in pitch as they dove back into the alley, hunkering down in a doorway, trying to hide themselves in the shadows cast by a neat row of trash cans and stacked crates.
The ground vibrated as the car, bearing the word sheriff on the side in slanted letters, slid slowly past. They could see the figure within, smoking and wearing a cowboy hat. Light glanced off the badge on his chest.
The car disappeared from sight. Bob had just let out his breath of relief when the rumbling engine stopped, cut off. They exchanged glances as a car door slammed shut, and steady footsteps echoed down Main Street.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Bob plastered his hand over Frank’s mouth before he’d even realized he was moving. He held his breath, watching.
The sheriff stopped. Looked from side to side. Snarled up his lip.
They all hunkered down even more. Bob mentally cursed the white stripes of their uniforms, the brightness of his - and Gerard’s, now again - hair. Any bit of light shining on them and they were fucked.
The sheriff turned. His silhouette had an impressive beer belly, and Bob kind of felt like giggling hysterically, thinking of white jumpsuits and sequins. He hoped they would stop Gee before he did something like that.
(He wasn’t part of that ‘they,’ though, was he? No one was going to stop Gee from dressing like a lunatic, because Mikey would just make a dry comment Gee would brush off, and Ray would support whatever crazy thing he was thinking that day, and Frank would let it happen just so he could have something new to laugh at, and then be an asshole over.
He didn’t think he was the backbone of this band, but he had been keeping a steady beat for a while, and whoever they got to replace him...
He hoped they could live up to the job.
...but what if they didn’t find someone? What if they fell apart? He didn’t kid himself into thinking he was the heart and soul of the band or anything retarded like that, and he’d seen them play without him, when his wrists flared up, but...
He remembered what they’d been like when he joined, and he wasn’t sure they could make it through another period like that.)
The sheriff chewed on his toothpick, and sauntered back to his car. “Ain’t no one here,” he snarled into his radio. “Try looking up near the stage again. Might’ve slipped through the barrier.”
He climbed into his car, and Bob could hear Mikey’s shaky relieved exhale. It wasn’t until he felt something wet and warm against his hand that he realized that he still had his hand clamped over Frank’s mouth.
“Gross, man, did you have to lick me?” he snapped, wiping his hand off on his pant leg.
“Did you have to fuckin’ smother me? Bastard,” Frank replied, sticking his tongue out again for good measure.
Ray let out a nervous giggle, familiarly high-pitched, and Gerard grinned, teeth shining bright against the shadows. “We should try to get closer to the bus before they come back.”
Gerard offered Mikey a hand in rising, and they crept out of the alley down the street, trying their best to avoid the lightposts. All those hours of gaming in the back of the bus might have actually come in handy, Bob thought, as Gerard spotted the most shadowed path to the next alleyway and lead them to it.
They all kept looking at each other and grinning. Fucking giddy, just because none of them were fucking possessed by the town of the damned anymore. Because they were themselves and together and they stood an actual goddamn chance of making it to their bus without getting caught by the King of fucking Rock n Roll.
Bob felt giddy, too, even though he knew he wasn’t getting out.
They made it past the diner, past the music store. Bob no longer wondered why there were no records inside; why bother with recordings when the real fucking deals were meandering down the street and giving nightly concerts?
Outside, there were thousands - no, millions - of people who fantasized about getting to see these people perform. Dudes in basements talking about dream bands. Girls sighing over the best combinations of musicians. Connoisseurs imagining the innovation that would happen when the styles of musicians melded. Music store geeks arguing over who would play lead, who would be frontman. Fans wishing for one more performance.
This was the goddamn dream, and all they wanted was to get the fuck away from it.
He thought of the faceless crowd again, and wondered if he’d become part of it, eventually. Was it made up of the audience alone, or were the forgotten musicians part of it, too?
What happened to the ghosts of forgotten men? The most famous held the positions of power here, just look at the fucking police chief. The lesser names, the ones slowly doomed to obscurity, they just seemed to... they just seemed to exist only on the stage.
They existed only when the audience was ready and receptive.
Bob didn’t want to think about what would happen to him once his band was gone. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be hobnobbing with the stars.
Where were all those musicians during the day? How did the punk crowd break into the underground?
Where did the fucking audience sleep?
He must have stopped moving, must have forgotten their escape and what he was doing, because Frank was in his face, shoving at his shoulder and yelling for him to snap the fuck out of it, already.
He blinked slowly, his surroundings coming back into focus. Gerard had a look of extreme concern, Mikey was biting his lip and holding lightly onto Gerard’s sleeve, and Ray looked about four seconds away from freaking out.
“Huh?” Bob said, and Frank let out a sharp, crazed bark of laughter.
“Come on, Bob, we need to get out of here,” Ray said carefully.
“Yeah,” Bob agreed.
“Are you... you?” Mikey said, letting go of Gerard’s sleeve and taking a step forward.
“I’m fine,” Bob lied. They had bigger things to worry about than what was going to happen to his fucking soul once they got out of here. “Let’s go.”
Mikey’s brow furrowed, but everyone else took him at his word.
*
It seemed like their next pause was hours later, but Bob reckoned it was mere minutes. They hadn’t made it very far; it turned out that no one in their band was secretly Batman, and slinking silently through the night was a bit of a challenge.
“What if...” Gerard stopped, then squared his shoulders and continued. “What if this is it?”
“We aren’t dying in this shitty town,” Frank said automatically.
“No, I mean, what if this is what’s waiting for us?” Gerard said. Bob stayed silent. “What if this is what happens when we die? No heaven, no hell, no stupid fucking parade... Just eternity spent stuck somewhere doing the same thing day in and day out.”
“It’s probably... it’s probably, like, alternate versions of everyone,” Ray said, tentative. “Dopplegangers, even. Their souls, or whatever, are probably long gone.”
“Yeah,” Frank said quickly. “These are just, like, ghosts. Not the stuck-on-earth types, but the whatchamacallits. The shades. The impressions that are left on earth, like stains or something.”
Seriously, who would have thought that this band’s fucking obsession with horror movies would ever come in handy?
Mikey nodded. “Like poltergeists, only, you know, corporeal.”
“What this place needs is the fucking Ghostbusters. Think they’re wandering around somewhere?” Frank grinned.
Gerard shook his head, more to himself than in response to Frank. “What if this is the price we pay for success? What if fame, like... Corrodes our souls, until all that’s left for us in the afterlife is the need to perform and receive accolade?”
Mikey bit his lip.
Ray shook his head, hair bobbing. “Don’t even say that, man. We aren’t... we aren’t corroded. We don’t even act like rockstars.”
“This place doesn’t seem to care about that,” Bob said quietly.
“What if we escape, and we still end up back here when we die?” Mikey whispered.
None of them were willing to look at anyone else.
“We really fucking need to get to the bus,” Gerard finally said, breaking the tense silence.
*
When the bus finally - finally - appeared in sight, they all broke into a run, racing down the fresh new pavement to the shoulder of the road where they’d left the bus a thousand years before.
Bob didn’t look back at the town. He figured he didn’t need to, he’d be seeing it again soon enough.
Still, he was in the back of the group - he still ached from the fight, and he’d never been the fastest of the group - and he could see the way his bandmates would glance back, eyes sort of wide and disbelieving like they thought that someone was going to materialize behind them to drag them back.
When they reached the bus doors, they were wheezing and laughing almost hysterically.
Frank kissed the door before trying to open it. Bob let out a sigh of relief when it actually opened. He’d thought... he didn’t even know what he fucking thought, that the bus was a mirage or something.
No one mentioned the bus driver as they clambered aboard, more eager than even the first time they’d gotten a tour bus after years in a van.
Mikey sank down on the couch, fingers pressed deep into the cushions like he thought they would try to get away. Gerard sat beside him, clutching at one of Mikey’s white-knuckled hands and talking fast about nothing, everything in particular.
Ray gave the steering wheel a speculative glance as Frank bounced up and down and yelled, “Fuckers! We kicked your ass, motherfuckers! Hear that? We’re out of here! Hell motherfucking yeah!”
Bob finally let out the breath he’d been holding when the bus, contrary to everything horror movies had taught them about engines in haunted towns, started on the first try.
Safe.
Just maybe they were really safe.
*
Bob wasn’t sure what he thought would happen. The bus lurched slowly through the field, tires spinning in mud as they tried to avoid getting stuck as they turned around. Maybe he would just... dissipate, and reappear in town, like Reese Witherspoon in that movie he’d watched that one time. Maybe he’d get jerked back, like a dog on a short leash. Maybe a fucking door would appear on the bus wall, like in Beetlejuice.
What he didn’t think would happen was nothing.
The bus jerkily pulled onto the dirt road they’d come in on, and, hitting branches the entire way, began the trek back to the real world. Clawing their way out of hell, he thought, watching the branches slowly scrape along the windows and screech along the metal sides of the bus like banshees.
As Ray got more confident, the bus moved faster, almost recklessly fast as it bumped along the dirt ruts of the road.
Their Black Parade uniform jackets were in a heap by the bunks. They all stripped them off, staring uncertainly at the fabric, as soon as they’d gotten on the bus. Bob had halfway wanted to suggest leaving the damn things there, but was worried that it would fuck with the guys’ chances of getting out of Dodge.
Finally Frank said, quietly and almost reverently, “Shit.”
He had kicked at the jackets, foot tangling up in the tangle of fabric and piping.
No one else had anything to add, they’d quickly decided that Ray should drive, and had all held their breath while Ray managed to turn the bus around and start heading back down the narrow, tree-lined lane they’d arrived by.
Bob couldn’t really make out the excited, nervous chatter of his bandmates. The constant stream of movie analogies pouring out of Gerard’s mouth, half only understood by Mikey, who had seen all the same ones during their shared childhood. It was something they did, make references to stuff no one else could really decipher, hidden under years of being an inside joke, and something that didn’t really bother anyone in the band, who knew what brothers meant to the Ways.
Frank had his phone out, pressed against the window, pressing the send button every few seconds, squinting at the signal bar. His addition to the conversation seemed to be a constant stream of cursing and repeating “Did that seriously fucking happen?”
Ray’s high-pitched, nervous tones cut through the chaos, asking questions about driving the bus and direction and casting terrified looks into the side mirrors, as though he thought they would be set upon at any moment by God only knows who or what.
Bob hugged his knees to his chest and waited.
It was only a matter of time before he was reclaimed.
It was easier to get away from backstage than it had been to find it in the first place.
Within minutes they were weaving through the crowd again, sticking to the fringes. In any other situation Bob would have felt ridiculous trailing along in a My Chem daisychain. Tonight, however....
He had to make sure they made it out of here. That was most important. He couldn’t let them know what he knew now, that he wasn’t going to leave. That he was here forever.
He was one of the crowd. There was a difference between being real and being, and he was on the wrong side of that line.
They made it back to town. The hum of the concert faded in the background, and the locked doors and darkened businesses made the picturesque little town creepier than ever. There were a few small streetlamps buzzing quietly overhead, casting circles of yellow light onto the black pavement.
He looked down the street, and sure enough, their bus still sat where they’d left it, half in the dirt off just off the main road. He wondered briefly what happened to the bus driver, but it felt strangely unimportant.
They had to get to Frank.
In town, they let go of each other’s hands. Well, most of them did- Bob could see that Gerard still had a tight grip on Mikey (or maybe it was the other way around) and Ray kept everyone close, even if they weren’t holding on for dear life.
“Down here,” Bob said, and moved to the alley that he’d seen while looking for Mikey earlier. He lead the rest of the band down it, feeling strangely bolstered by the sound of three pairs of boots scuffling against the concrete just behind him.
The alley opened into a tiny back street lined with broken-down brick buildings. Directly in front of them was a building with a hand-painted sign leaning against its wall: DEAD CAN DANCE. There were Cinco de Mayo-style skeletons dancing around the letters, and the walls of the building were covered in indecipherable graffiti. A battered awning stood over the thick metal door.
Bob glanced behind them, sure enough, at the other end of the alleyway, the pristine street was still visible, perfect and silent as a movie set.
“Should we go in?” Mikey’s voice came dangerously close to cracking.
“Maybe we should see if we can see inside? Make sure it’s not a trap,” Gerard suggested.
Bob shook his head.
“If Frank’s in there, we have to go,” Ray said decisively.
Bob reached forward and tugged open the door. It was lighter than it looked; it banged open loudly from unnecessary force. Gerard jumped, startled, and then let out a nervous laugh.
Music spilled out of the open door, abrasive and simple under muffled, screaming vocals.
Ray took the first step forward. Bob saw his shoulders heave slightly under the steadying breath he took, and then he was inside, the black of his uniform blending in with the darkness of the club.
Bob motioned for Gerard to follow. The brightness of his hair and corpse-pale skin stood out against the darkness until Mikey, close behind, blocked it out. Bob stepped inside, feeling comforted by the smell of cigarettes and spilled drinks that greeted him immediately inside.
But the smell wasn’t quite right, and it took Bob a moment to realize that was because the only smell of unwashed bodies came from his bandmates. No vomit, no piss, no sharp tang of sweat.
A few more steps inside, and all he could see was a crush of bodies pressing against a low plywood stage. A crowd of punks with peacock hair and metal glinting from unlikely places, and Bob was pretty sure they were all ghosts.
(Dead, at the very least.)
“What do you call someone who’s dead but not a ghost or a zombie?” he asked.
“Fucked,” Gerard replied, voice raised against the chaos of the concert. He was squinting into the crowd with the same look of concentration he always got when sketching, like he was trying to make the image in his mind appear fully-formed in front of him right then and there.
In the jumbled mess of limbs and flailing bodies, it was impossible to make out Frank. If only the little bastard was taller, Bob thought, feeling his band close in tight around him.
They always felt close, but in their uniforms, standing united against the crowd before them, suddenly Bob felt like they were less a band and more a team, assembled to stand up for...
He wasn’t sure what, because “going home safe and sound” wasn’t usually the mission statement of the sorts of teams that were featured in the movies and comics they read. He cut his eyes over to Gerard, who was still peering around intently for Frank. Gee wasn’t nearly as together as he was pretending.
None of them gave a fuck about these kids who were stuck here. The nameless crowd, the mouselike creatures who crept through this town, populating it and providing what every performer needed most.
They were the same as all the dead men and women, only his band might still get out of here mostly intact.
There was a girl dancing at the edge of the crowd clad in safety-pinned lace and torn fishnets, and he didn’t know if she’d earned her place here or if she’d just taken a wrong turn into this unimaginable place. Here, in this place called Dead Can Dance, there was little distinction between the crowd and the performers.
The dead danced with the living, the living laughed with the dead, and there was a mounting sense of chaos and tension that Bob had learned to sense from all sides of the stage, crowd and tech and band sides alike.
Something bad was going to happen here.
(They were the catalyst.)
Ray suddenly stiffened, leaning hopefully, and Bob followed his sight line to see a striped uniform jacket sleeve, dusty and familiar.
Ray immediately began to push through the crowd towards Frank, and Bob followed, helping cut a swath through the kids distinct enough for the Way brothers to follow close behind without chancing losing anyone in the crowd.
Pushing, shoving, elbows taken to the stomach and shoulder and cheek. Bob didn’t even feel it; he was focused entirely on getting his entire band together. Safe. Whole.
If they were together, they could leave.
Further into the crowd, staying close enough to Ray that he got the occasional mouthful of fluffy hair, and he almost knocked Ray over when he stopped suddenly.
There. There. Just a few feet away, Frank stood. He was pressed in tight, side-to-side with a lean punk with a smirk on his lips and murder in his eyes.
The crowd was thinner here, and Frank stared at them without a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
“Frankie,” Mikey said, voice sharp and scared. “Frankie, we need to go.”
Frank shook his head sluggishly.
The punk beside him smirked. (How many ways to get what you want) His black leather jacket creaked as he crossed his arms, surveying them.
Bob felt the sort of surge of frustration that made his fists clench, and took a slow, deep breath. They just needed to get through to Frank, like they’d done with everyone else.
Another figure slipped out of the crowd and stood guard by Frank’s side. The two punks grinned at them like jackals from either side of Frank, who still just leaned against the rough plywood table with blank eyes.
Gee stiffened, shoulders square in his crisp jacket. Beside him, Mikey stood taller, chin lifted defiantly.
The crowd’s behavior had shifted, Bob realized. The steady guitar riffs continued, the vocalist still screamed endlessly, no more hoarse than when they’d entered, but now the pit had seemed to have changed patterns, was now circling slowly around them in a jumbled mess. It was like suddenly finding himself in the center of a whirlpool of angry kids, and he flashed back on every broken, bleeding kid he’d ever seen lifted out of a pit.
The punks surrounding Frank looked more predatory than ever, leering.
“Frank.” Gerard’s voice cut through the noise, direct and commanding. “Frank, snap the fuck out of it. We’re here.”
Gerard stepped forward, standing in front of Bob, Mikey and Ray like they were in a photoshoot. The tilt of his white-blond head and his ramrod-straight posture indicated that he’d stepped into his stage persona.
On either side of him, Mikey and Ray were standing taller as well, shoulders squared. Bob automatically joined them in posing, though he felt more outside of the band than he had since he’d first joined. (They were going to escape. He wasn’t.)
The moshing mass continued to churn around them, screams and heckles becoming clear through the constant barrage of sound. The punk on Frank’s left smirked.
“He’s ours.”
It took Bob a moment to realize that both Gerard and the punk had spoken simultaneously.
“Frank, get over here,” Ray tried. Frank’s head turned slowly, bobbling from the effort. His eyes were cloudy.
“Stop fucking around,” Bob said. “Get your ass over here.”
“Now, Frank,” Mikey added, sounding only a little like he was pleading.
Frank didn’t react. It was fucking creeping, staring at a Frank Iero who looked for all the world like someone had finally found that mythical ‘off’ button they’d all wished for.
The punk laughed, staring straight at Gerard. “You’ve got no sway here, you bleedin’ ponce.”
“You have no power over me,” Mikey quoted softly, and Bob resisted the urge to laugh.
Gerard felt no such urge to resist, and let out a sharp bray of laughter. “I don’t need any sway to get my friend back, motherfucker.”
He strode forward, and only stopped when the two punks stepped in front of Frank. Closer, it was clear that the one on Frank’s right wasn’t even really a punk, clad only in tight, torn jeans and an open denim vest. (I’m dirty, mean, and mighty unclean....)
Bob followed Gerard’s lead, and they stood in formation, united as one, glaring. The punks were nonplused.
It was kind of ridiculous, in a way. The whole time they’d been here, there hadn’t been any actual hints of violence. No one had physically harmed any of them, or shown any inclination to. In a lot of ways they’d been almost safer than they were when leaving a show, when Gerard would get mobbed by screaming kids.
But Bob knew that they weren’t safe. It wasn’t just because of the freaky shit. It was something about this place, about the way the dead looked at you like they were sizing you up. Like you were next in line.
(Like he was already in the wings waiting for his cue to go on stage.)
They hadn’t been shown any violence, but they sure as fuck didn’t need to see blood and splintered bone to realize this was serious shit. Not when Frankie was slumped there, with glazed eyes and surrounded by dead idols. Not when he’d felt the crush of the nameless crowd, seen Gerard fucking commanding the crowd like he was born for it, seen Ray lose himself in the wailing notes coming from his guitar. Not when he remembered Mikey’s face in the music shop, ecstatic and uninhibited and childlike in the face of all he’d dreamed of.
Gerard was taking the wrong approach, he suddenly realized. Of course dead men wouldn’t be intimidated with the threat of, what, injury? Who knew if they could be injured? Gerard’s threats only worked on those who thought he might just be a crazyass underneath all that crazy makeup and wild eyes, and these... people...
They weren’t the type to be intimidated even before they’d died.
“What do you want in return?” Bob asked, seemingly to himself. Gerard and the dead men were still having a glare-off.
Mikey and Ray both looked at him, confused.
“What do you want for Frank?” Bob said, louder and more confident.
The punks glared. Frank stayed the same. Gerard pursed his lips and said, “He’s ours, and we want him back.”
“You can’t pay our price.”
Mikey’s grin was sharp. “Wanna bet?”
It felt as though time were standing still. As though everybody in the room were holding their breath, waiting to see what was about to happen.
Bob belatedly realized that this was because all the music had cut off. No guitars, no drums, no screeching vocals. Everyone stood still. Waiting.
After the constant crush of motion and noise, the silent stillness was near unbearable.
“What’s your price?” Ray’s voice was far from intimidating, but there was an edge to his words that Bob had only rarely heard.
“We want what everyone wants,” replied the actual punk. The other slunk up beside him. The rocker’s feathered hair blended in with the punk’s short spikey do, blocking Frank from view. They twined their arms together, forming a barrier between Frank and the rest of his band.
“You’ve already had your lifetime,” Mikey said.
Gerard laughed. “That’s right, boys. So what’s that leave?”
He took a stalking step forward, uncomfortably close to the punks. He looked them over, hand trailing almost delicately through the air over their shoulders.
Bob never quite understood what came over Gerard once he stepped onto a stage. Nothing similar happened to him - sure, he could feel the music in his blood, pounding away as he pounded out the beats and rhythms, but underneath it all was just Bob, just himself, with the worries and thoughts of the rest of life stripped away to just be in the moment.
Frank was always like a possessed, crazy version of himself, cut free from the constraints of normal society. Ray just took on a rock god stance and didn’t let lose, and Bob suspected that most of Mikey’s stage posturing felt more extreme within his mind.
But Gerard was like Jekyll and fucking Hyde, and right now, he was all Hyde. The stammering nerd disappeared, the earnestness and sometimes painful to watch sincerity faded to the background, and all that was left was a prancing, bold, fucking insane motherfucker who wasn’t afraid of anything, no matter how much of a pansy he not-so-secretly was.
Mikey raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. Gerard continued to flit around the punks like a giant deranged hummingbird, grinning every time one of the punks brushed his hand away when he got too far into their personal bubble.
Ray crossed his arms as well. Bob just fiddled with his hands like he usually did, palming a fist and occasionally cracking a knuckle. The threat of violence wasn’t going to affect anything, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt to at least look tough.
They were all playing roles, and that was his part.
The dead men were taking their sweet time with an answer, seemingly having a conversation with each other in sideways glances and lip snarls. Gerard seemed to be unnerving them slightly, like he wasn’t what they had expected.
Bob thought again of the bluesman and his slow gravely words. The difference between real and being.
“We want life,” said the punk.
“We want escape.” The rocker’s body language mirrored the punk’s, all tough poses and careless snarls. Bob thought of the documentaries he’d seen, everything these fuckers had been through and done.
“We want to know about you,” the punk continued.
“How the fuck you made it here alive.”
Bob should have expected it.
“We took the wrong road,” Gerard said, tilting his head as though considering something.
“Of course you took the wrong fucking road,” the punk snapped. “Everyone took the wrong goddamn road. That’s how we all got here. What makes you special?”
“Are we?” Ray blurted out.
The slow turn of the rocker’s head reminded Bob of the freaking velociraptor in Jurassic Park. He half-expected the dude to grin and reveal pointy rows of teeth.
“You ain’t like us,” he said slowly. “And you aren’t one of them. So what the fuck are you?”
Bob exchanged glances with his bandmates. An idea was half-blossoming, uncomfortable as the uniform he was wearing.
Mikey laughed a little hysterically.
Gerard’s eyes were wide, whites showing vivid in the dark room.
“We’re the Black Parade,” he said softly.
“Huh?” the punk said.
“We’re not,” Ray said, picking uncomfortably at his collar.
“That was a story you made up,” Mikey said accusingly.
Bob said nothing, just thought of the million and one interviews they’d sat through, listening to Gerard give his spiel about their album. It had gotten to the point where they all could believe it was about someone else, not about themselves, true, and they had all parroted Gerard’s story.
Put on the uniforms.
Given the kids a show.
Became the Black Parade. The weird feeling they all had after a while, the strange personas that seemed to come with the uniforms, the itchy, uncomfortable feeling that had lead them to abandon the uniforms mid-show, just so they could be themselves again.
And here they were, uniforms back in place, standing in front of dead guys who wanted to know what made them different from everyone else.
Bob would fucking kill Gerard Way and his stupid motherfucking ideas if it would make any difference whatsoever. Right now, though, all that was important was getting his band safely out of here.
The punks looked expectant, one tapping his foot as a subtle hint to get on with their explanation.
Bob had no idea what Gerard was going to tell them. They invented a band and became it? It was too fucking Spinal Tap to be believed. They had magical marching band uniforms?
Their slightly off-kilter lead singer had, in a fit of sleepless delusion, come up with a band that bridged the gap between life and death, and somehow, they had ended up in a real place filled with very dead people, and became that band?
Bob didn’t even believe that shit.
Gerard struck his best diva pose - one straight from Liza, Bob was slightly horrified to realize he knew - and tilted his white-blond head. “We’re the motherfucking Black Parade, and you’re going to give us our guitarist back.”
For a self-confessed cupcake, Gerard had attitude in spades. Bob blamed Jersey - Frank had the worst Jersey attitude of the bunch, but even Mikey could break it out in the right circumstances. Bob personally didn’t get the trash-talking; he was of the put up or shut up school of thought, meaning he put up with a lot until he was driven to shut someone the fuck up.
The Jersey ‘fuck ‘em’ attitude seemed to be the right approach for dealing with this crowd, though, as they looked vaguely impressed for the first time.
Frank continued to sit motionless between them, but his head had stopped lolling listlessly and he seemed to now at least be aware of his surroundings.
It should have been utterly ridiculous, claiming the name of the Black Parade in a way that wasn’t just for show, but...
Somehow it wasn’t. At Gerard’s declaration, Bob felt.... revitalized. Like this was why they’d ended up in this hidden club in a secret town. Like this was why Frank had lead them here.
Like maybe, if they were together, they could leave.
Form a united front. Get the fuck out of Dodge. It made as much sense as anything else in this godforsaken place.
“Give us Frank,” he said, taking a step forward. Mikey and Ray moved closer, completely in unison. They were going to get through this. Bob was going to get his band to safety.
“We told you everything you wanted to know,” Gerard announced.
“You don’t make any sodding sense though,” the punk replied.
“Them’s the breaks,” Gerard said. “Nothing in this fucking place makes any sense. Why the fuck would we?”
He was getting cocky.
“Come on, Frank,” Mikey said. He’d been staring at Frank, as though that would snap him out of it. He walked over to him - brushing past his brother, slipping through the punks as they began to block him off like the freaking cat that he was on stage - and prodded Frank.
Nothing.
“Seriously, asshole,” Mikey said again, hunching his shoulders as one of the punks moved in to grab him. He prodded harder, then kind of flailed his arms and whacked Frankie in the nose with one of his pointy-ass elbows while trying to evade the dead men.
Gerard immediately leapt into the fray, plowing into the punk who had Mikey’s shoulder in his grasp. He didn’t really affect the proceedings, just sort of face-planted into the safety-pin studded jecket.
Through the thrashing limbs that was the Way-punk smackdown, Bob could make out Frank blinking and reaching up to touch his nose, which was bleeding thanks to Mikey’s elbow.
Mere seconds had passed since Mikey had instigated the fight. Bob felt his sluggishness pass, and realized that he was just standing around like a fucking moron while Gerard and Mikey Way fought. They had the combined badass level of a particularly ferocious kitten; their only asset was their attitude, which wasn’t going to last them much longer.
They were going to get annihilated if Bob didn’t do something.
He stumbled into the fight, mind still racing and feeling minutes behind his own fists as they knocked into one of the punk’s head. He pushed Gerard out of harm’s way, taking a whack to the underside of his chin that left him seeing stars for a bright second.
From there, his head finally emptied of thoughts and he could just react to the fight happening. The world shrank to a whir of fists and feet and sharp pains and satisfying thuds; he hit anything that wasn’t wearing a marching band uniform, shoved and threw people to the floor.
The majority of the crowd hung back, like they had no interest in the fight other than as an idle curiosity. Bob reckoned only three or four of the crowd, vaguely familiar faces, had joined the original two.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mikey and Gerard still lashing out against the punks. Ray’s fro bounced around in the background; Bob couldn’t tell what he was doing. He was mostly focused on not getting his ass beat into the stained cement floor.
He wanted to laugh; the world was simplified to hitting or being hit, bright flashes of pain in his fists, wrists, wherever he got hit. After all the fucking terrified tension of being in this hell-town, it was a rush of release. He pounded out his frustration and fear, even as he felt his lungs burning and chest heaving and his hair was plastered down into his eyes with sweat.
Then he did hear a laugh, a stupid fucking familiar laugh, and he turned his head enough to see Frankie gleefully leaping on the back of one of the punks, pulling hard on a mohawk and punching awkwardly at the side of the punk’s face.
Bob let out a sharp breath, then grinned, and straightened up. He kicked at the guy he’d just knocked down, an asshole-ish move he felt he deserved, and said, “About time you snapped out of it, dumbfuck.”
Frank swiped at his nose, smearing blood on his coatsleeve, and grinned.
*
“You guys, I think I have it figured out,” Ray said. He pushed a flyaway bit of hair away from his eyes.
They were huddled together in the coat room just off the front of the club. Bob reckoned the place had started out as the town’s fancy restaurant, but once it had been taken over by kids with a bigger desire for anarchy than fine dining, this room had apparently become used only for the occasional make out, judging by the scuffed layer of dust on the floor.
Frank had hastily shut the door and told them that he didn’t think any of the punks really knew this room was here; he hadn’t seen anyone enter it the whole time he’d been there. Which, as it turned out, had been the entire time, except for when they’d taken him to the concert.
They all turned expectantly to Ray.
Frank had part of his t-shirt shoved up against his nose. More for show now than anything else, Bob thought, because it had to have stopped bleeding by now. Mikey kept twitching uncomfortably and inspecting random parts of his body for injury. Gerard had a bloody lip he kept licking at, as though he didn’t even realize what he was doing.
Bob could feel aches and pains up and down his body, and he had a scrape on his eyebrow that kept slowly dripping blood into his left eye if he didn’t press his torn-off piece of Frank’s shirt to it, and his wrists felt like they were on fire, but he felt more alive than anything else. He was clinging to that feeling, knowing bone-deep that it probably was more an illusion than anything else.
“I was talking to some of the kids,” Ray said, which explained why he was injury-free, “and they said that the concerts can last for ages. Literally. And no one ages, they’re all the same as they were when they arrived.”
Bob didn’t want to think about staying here forever, stuck like this. He loved his band, but this wasn’t where he wanted them to end up.
Ray continued, “And they think if you stay out of sight of the Stars, which is what they call... you know, them, then they won’t stop you.”
There was a pause.
“That’s the most retardedly obvious thing I’ve ever heard,” Frank said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ray said. “Or did you come up with a brilliant plan while you were waiting for us to rescue your possessed ass?”
Gerard spoke up before they gave away their hiding spot with a shouted insult match. “We should just get out there. Stick to the shadows, sneak back to the bus. It isn’t that far.”
Mikey nodded his agreement. There was a brightness in his eyes Bob wasn’t used to seeing. He thought of him charging decisively into the fray, and wondered what, exactly, Mikey thought about this whole experience. If he liked that these were ghosts he could actually fight.
“Let’s go,” Bob said approvingly.
They didn’t look back into the club as they slipped out the door; the music had returned, angrier than ever, and the crowd was screaming its approval.
*
Outside, it felt like a funeral home.
Everything was too still, even for a nighttime small town. The shops were all closed, the lights were all off. The only sound was the quiet buzzing of the wrought iron lampposts that lined the street as they cast perfect yellow circles of light onto the pavement.
Their shoes scraped loudly against the street, and Bob was certain that they’d be caught. He remembered catching sight of a police car earlier and thinking something stupid about Barney Fife.
He sure as fuck didn’t want to meet Barney Fife now.
There was a quiet echo, a near-imperceptible sound of music and cheering. The concert must still be going on, Bob realized, horrified at the thought of the nameless crowd still churning, still hollowly supporting the endless line of musicians.
He’d heard Ray say that the concerts lasted forever, but it felt more visceral somehow to hear it.
They continued, keeping a sharp eye out for any signs of life. Or death, Bob supposed.
They didn’t make it far without hearing the low rumble in the distance; they were barely out of the mouth of the alley. At first, Bob thought it was just the echoes from the concert reverberating through the silent town, but Ray froze, eyes wide with alarm.
“It’s close,” Mikey whispered.
“Too fucking close,” Frank concurred.
Bob listened closer. The low rumble he heard wasn’t drum beats and bass guitar. It was steadier and lacking in melody - he almost laughed when he realized what it was. It was a car, an old one, judging by the rumble of the engine.
It crept closer and closer, echoing off brick walls. They all kept looking around, trying to pinpoint its location.
“There,” Gerard finally whispered, pointing.
Down the street, they could see the black-and-white of the cop car as it rolled down Main Street.
The steady, heavy bass rumble of a souped-up old police car rose in pitch as they dove back into the alley, hunkering down in a doorway, trying to hide themselves in the shadows cast by a neat row of trash cans and stacked crates.
The ground vibrated as the car, bearing the word sheriff on the side in slanted letters, slid slowly past. They could see the figure within, smoking and wearing a cowboy hat. Light glanced off the badge on his chest.
The car disappeared from sight. Bob had just let out his breath of relief when the rumbling engine stopped, cut off. They exchanged glances as a car door slammed shut, and steady footsteps echoed down Main Street.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Bob plastered his hand over Frank’s mouth before he’d even realized he was moving. He held his breath, watching.
The sheriff stopped. Looked from side to side. Snarled up his lip.
They all hunkered down even more. Bob mentally cursed the white stripes of their uniforms, the brightness of his - and Gerard’s, now again - hair. Any bit of light shining on them and they were fucked.
The sheriff turned. His silhouette had an impressive beer belly, and Bob kind of felt like giggling hysterically, thinking of white jumpsuits and sequins. He hoped they would stop Gee before he did something like that.
(He wasn’t part of that ‘they,’ though, was he? No one was going to stop Gee from dressing like a lunatic, because Mikey would just make a dry comment Gee would brush off, and Ray would support whatever crazy thing he was thinking that day, and Frank would let it happen just so he could have something new to laugh at, and then be an asshole over.
He didn’t think he was the backbone of this band, but he had been keeping a steady beat for a while, and whoever they got to replace him...
He hoped they could live up to the job.
...but what if they didn’t find someone? What if they fell apart? He didn’t kid himself into thinking he was the heart and soul of the band or anything retarded like that, and he’d seen them play without him, when his wrists flared up, but...
He remembered what they’d been like when he joined, and he wasn’t sure they could make it through another period like that.)
The sheriff chewed on his toothpick, and sauntered back to his car. “Ain’t no one here,” he snarled into his radio. “Try looking up near the stage again. Might’ve slipped through the barrier.”
He climbed into his car, and Bob could hear Mikey’s shaky relieved exhale. It wasn’t until he felt something wet and warm against his hand that he realized that he still had his hand clamped over Frank’s mouth.
“Gross, man, did you have to lick me?” he snapped, wiping his hand off on his pant leg.
“Did you have to fuckin’ smother me? Bastard,” Frank replied, sticking his tongue out again for good measure.
Ray let out a nervous giggle, familiarly high-pitched, and Gerard grinned, teeth shining bright against the shadows. “We should try to get closer to the bus before they come back.”
Gerard offered Mikey a hand in rising, and they crept out of the alley down the street, trying their best to avoid the lightposts. All those hours of gaming in the back of the bus might have actually come in handy, Bob thought, as Gerard spotted the most shadowed path to the next alleyway and lead them to it.
They all kept looking at each other and grinning. Fucking giddy, just because none of them were fucking possessed by the town of the damned anymore. Because they were themselves and together and they stood an actual goddamn chance of making it to their bus without getting caught by the King of fucking Rock n Roll.
Bob felt giddy, too, even though he knew he wasn’t getting out.
They made it past the diner, past the music store. Bob no longer wondered why there were no records inside; why bother with recordings when the real fucking deals were meandering down the street and giving nightly concerts?
Outside, there were thousands - no, millions - of people who fantasized about getting to see these people perform. Dudes in basements talking about dream bands. Girls sighing over the best combinations of musicians. Connoisseurs imagining the innovation that would happen when the styles of musicians melded. Music store geeks arguing over who would play lead, who would be frontman. Fans wishing for one more performance.
This was the goddamn dream, and all they wanted was to get the fuck away from it.
He thought of the faceless crowd again, and wondered if he’d become part of it, eventually. Was it made up of the audience alone, or were the forgotten musicians part of it, too?
What happened to the ghosts of forgotten men? The most famous held the positions of power here, just look at the fucking police chief. The lesser names, the ones slowly doomed to obscurity, they just seemed to... they just seemed to exist only on the stage.
They existed only when the audience was ready and receptive.
Bob didn’t want to think about what would happen to him once his band was gone. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be hobnobbing with the stars.
Where were all those musicians during the day? How did the punk crowd break into the underground?
Where did the fucking audience sleep?
He must have stopped moving, must have forgotten their escape and what he was doing, because Frank was in his face, shoving at his shoulder and yelling for him to snap the fuck out of it, already.
He blinked slowly, his surroundings coming back into focus. Gerard had a look of extreme concern, Mikey was biting his lip and holding lightly onto Gerard’s sleeve, and Ray looked about four seconds away from freaking out.
“Huh?” Bob said, and Frank let out a sharp, crazed bark of laughter.
“Come on, Bob, we need to get out of here,” Ray said carefully.
“Yeah,” Bob agreed.
“Are you... you?” Mikey said, letting go of Gerard’s sleeve and taking a step forward.
“I’m fine,” Bob lied. They had bigger things to worry about than what was going to happen to his fucking soul once they got out of here. “Let’s go.”
Mikey’s brow furrowed, but everyone else took him at his word.
*
It seemed like their next pause was hours later, but Bob reckoned it was mere minutes. They hadn’t made it very far; it turned out that no one in their band was secretly Batman, and slinking silently through the night was a bit of a challenge.
“What if...” Gerard stopped, then squared his shoulders and continued. “What if this is it?”
“We aren’t dying in this shitty town,” Frank said automatically.
“No, I mean, what if this is what’s waiting for us?” Gerard said. Bob stayed silent. “What if this is what happens when we die? No heaven, no hell, no stupid fucking parade... Just eternity spent stuck somewhere doing the same thing day in and day out.”
“It’s probably... it’s probably, like, alternate versions of everyone,” Ray said, tentative. “Dopplegangers, even. Their souls, or whatever, are probably long gone.”
“Yeah,” Frank said quickly. “These are just, like, ghosts. Not the stuck-on-earth types, but the whatchamacallits. The shades. The impressions that are left on earth, like stains or something.”
Seriously, who would have thought that this band’s fucking obsession with horror movies would ever come in handy?
Mikey nodded. “Like poltergeists, only, you know, corporeal.”
“What this place needs is the fucking Ghostbusters. Think they’re wandering around somewhere?” Frank grinned.
Gerard shook his head, more to himself than in response to Frank. “What if this is the price we pay for success? What if fame, like... Corrodes our souls, until all that’s left for us in the afterlife is the need to perform and receive accolade?”
Mikey bit his lip.
Ray shook his head, hair bobbing. “Don’t even say that, man. We aren’t... we aren’t corroded. We don’t even act like rockstars.”
“This place doesn’t seem to care about that,” Bob said quietly.
“What if we escape, and we still end up back here when we die?” Mikey whispered.
None of them were willing to look at anyone else.
“We really fucking need to get to the bus,” Gerard finally said, breaking the tense silence.
*
When the bus finally - finally - appeared in sight, they all broke into a run, racing down the fresh new pavement to the shoulder of the road where they’d left the bus a thousand years before.
Bob didn’t look back at the town. He figured he didn’t need to, he’d be seeing it again soon enough.
Still, he was in the back of the group - he still ached from the fight, and he’d never been the fastest of the group - and he could see the way his bandmates would glance back, eyes sort of wide and disbelieving like they thought that someone was going to materialize behind them to drag them back.
When they reached the bus doors, they were wheezing and laughing almost hysterically.
Frank kissed the door before trying to open it. Bob let out a sigh of relief when it actually opened. He’d thought... he didn’t even know what he fucking thought, that the bus was a mirage or something.
No one mentioned the bus driver as they clambered aboard, more eager than even the first time they’d gotten a tour bus after years in a van.
Mikey sank down on the couch, fingers pressed deep into the cushions like he thought they would try to get away. Gerard sat beside him, clutching at one of Mikey’s white-knuckled hands and talking fast about nothing, everything in particular.
Ray gave the steering wheel a speculative glance as Frank bounced up and down and yelled, “Fuckers! We kicked your ass, motherfuckers! Hear that? We’re out of here! Hell motherfucking yeah!”
Bob finally let out the breath he’d been holding when the bus, contrary to everything horror movies had taught them about engines in haunted towns, started on the first try.
Safe.
Just maybe they were really safe.
*
Bob wasn’t sure what he thought would happen. The bus lurched slowly through the field, tires spinning in mud as they tried to avoid getting stuck as they turned around. Maybe he would just... dissipate, and reappear in town, like Reese Witherspoon in that movie he’d watched that one time. Maybe he’d get jerked back, like a dog on a short leash. Maybe a fucking door would appear on the bus wall, like in Beetlejuice.
What he didn’t think would happen was nothing.
The bus jerkily pulled onto the dirt road they’d come in on, and, hitting branches the entire way, began the trek back to the real world. Clawing their way out of hell, he thought, watching the branches slowly scrape along the windows and screech along the metal sides of the bus like banshees.
As Ray got more confident, the bus moved faster, almost recklessly fast as it bumped along the dirt ruts of the road.
Their Black Parade uniform jackets were in a heap by the bunks. They all stripped them off, staring uncertainly at the fabric, as soon as they’d gotten on the bus. Bob had halfway wanted to suggest leaving the damn things there, but was worried that it would fuck with the guys’ chances of getting out of Dodge.
Finally Frank said, quietly and almost reverently, “Shit.”
He had kicked at the jackets, foot tangling up in the tangle of fabric and piping.
No one else had anything to add, they’d quickly decided that Ray should drive, and had all held their breath while Ray managed to turn the bus around and start heading back down the narrow, tree-lined lane they’d arrived by.
Bob couldn’t really make out the excited, nervous chatter of his bandmates. The constant stream of movie analogies pouring out of Gerard’s mouth, half only understood by Mikey, who had seen all the same ones during their shared childhood. It was something they did, make references to stuff no one else could really decipher, hidden under years of being an inside joke, and something that didn’t really bother anyone in the band, who knew what brothers meant to the Ways.
Frank had his phone out, pressed against the window, pressing the send button every few seconds, squinting at the signal bar. His addition to the conversation seemed to be a constant stream of cursing and repeating “Did that seriously fucking happen?”
Ray’s high-pitched, nervous tones cut through the chaos, asking questions about driving the bus and direction and casting terrified looks into the side mirrors, as though he thought they would be set upon at any moment by God only knows who or what.
Bob hugged his knees to his chest and waited.
It was only a matter of time before he was reclaimed.