The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (17 page)

I remember seeing my first Stirrer when I was five, shambling away from my father, its limbs juddering as it struggled to control the alien body which it then inhabited. I remember the horror of it—the weird weight of its presence as though everything was tugged toward it—Dad squeezing my hand and winking at me, before pulling out his knife and slicing his thumb open; a quick, violent cutting.

He walked over to the newly woken thing and touched it, and all movement stopped. It was the first time I’d ever found a corpse—all that stillness, all that dead weight on the ground—comforting.

“Not so bad was it?” Dad had said.

The first one gave me nightmares. After that… well, you can get used to anything.

Stirrers are drawn to the living and repelled by Pomps. Well, they used to be, they’ve been attracted to them lately, which suggests they’ve realized that they’ve got nothing to fear.

But what it means is, whether I trust Morrigan or not, I have to get to Mount Coot-tha.

M
ount Coot-tha is broad and low, really little more than a hill, but it dominates the city of Brisbane. Inner-city suburbs wash up against it like an urban tide line but the mountain itself is dry and scrubby, peaked with great radio towers, skeletal and jutting in the day and winking with lights in the evening.

I have two options.

I consider climbing the mountain, approaching the lookout and the cafe from the back way, up the path that leads from a small park called J. C. Slaughter Falls, but decide against it. If it’s a trap, that way will be guarded, though our competition has shown a marked disregard for subtlety. Besides, I’m exhausted; the pathway is too steep, and the name is far too bleakly portentous for my liking.

So I take another bus, in my sunglasses, my cap jammed firmly on my head, with Lissa sitting next to me not at all happy with my decision. I don’t blame her, I’m not too happy with it either.

I arrive at 12:58, check the return bus timetable then head up to the lookout cafe. Morrigan is hyper-punctual, as usual. He is sitting at a table sipping a flat white and looking at his watch. The cafe is crowded with tourists. I slip off my glasses and cap, glad my coat is in my bag. The evenings are cold but, even here on the top of Mount Coot-tha, midday is too warm for anything more than jeans and a T-shirt. My shirt’s damp and clinging to me already.

Seeing Morrigan actually centers me a little. In fact, I’m surprised by how relieved I feel. Here’s something I know, despite Don and Sam’s suspicions. Here’s a much-needed bit of continuity. I’m desperate for anything that might bring me back to some sort of normalcy. Morrigan’s gotten me out of trouble before. I can’t help myself—I grin at him.

He doesn’t grin back, just nods, and even that slight tip of the head is a comfort. Morrigan isn’t one to smile that often though we’ve been friends for a long time. His face and limbs always move as though contained and controlled, and never more than now. There’s a rigidity to him that is at once comforting and scary. Morrigan has always been a bit of an arse kicker, expecting everybody to lift to his level. A lot of people have resented him for this trait; some have even resigned over the years because of it.

Morrigan and I share very few traits, if any. I’ve never met a more disciplined man. He jogs every morning and lifts serious weights, though he has the lean, muscly build of a runner. His gaze is usually as direct as Eastwood’s Man With No Name, only harder.

But for all that I have never seen him look so old, or so fragile. The last couple of days have wounded him, but there’s no surprise there. The job is Morrigan’s life in a way that it has never been mine. I doubt if Morrigan has ever made a friend outside of the pomping trade. This must be tearing him apart, almost literally if he’s experienced as many pomps as I have recently. The front of his shirt is streaked with dark patches that can only be blood.

But he’s alive. Can’t say that about many of my friends these days.

“You’re late,” Morrigan says, looking up at me and wincing with the movement. And all at once I am unsettled and back on the defensive.

“Not according to my watch,” I say, and stare at him with as much suspicion as I can muster.

“Enough of this bullshit. You don’t trust me. I don’t blame you.”
Morrigan coughs and wipes his lips with a handkerchief. Blood dots the material. He looks in pretty bad shape, his face colorless, his hands shaking as they bring his cup to his lips. “Yeah, I was winged,” he says, in response to my expression. “I’ve got a cracked rib at the very least, and every time I lose a sparrow, I lose more than a sparrow.”

He pulls up a sleeve. Bloody outlines of sparrows track up his arm. The neat Escheresque pattern of birds is ruined. One of the sparrows has lost an eye and dark blood scabs the wound.

I whistle, remembering the brutal efficiency of the crows. “How did you escape?”

“Luck, I suppose. They hit Number Four hard and fast. We’re not a military organization.” He nods to the bulge at my hip. “We’re not killers. Jesus, Steven. I’m so sorry. Your parents. If only I’d seen this coming. But I didn’t. The only one who could have was Mr. D, and he’s gone.”

Tears come—well, try to—and I stanch them. Now’s not the time for crying. We have a Regional Apocalypse to stop. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about,” I say. “And there’s no time. What’s going on?”

“A Schism.”

“A what?”

“I didn’t believe they were real. There are records but only a few. When a Schism is successful, there’s not a single Pomp left to record anything. As far as I can tell, once they got Mr. D, they left Queensland until last. We were deemed the least threatening of the states that make up the region, I suppose.

“Look at us—two days and there’s only you, me, Don and Sam left. And the other regions would stay quiet about it. These things can spread.”

“So you’re saying someone has their eye on Mr. D’s window office?” Lissa says, and I can tell from her tone that she has a fair idea who is to blame, and that he’s sitting directly in front of me.

“Good afternoon, Lissa,” Morrigan lifts his gaze to her, shielding his eyes from the sun. I realize that Lissa has chosen the spot where she’s standing in order to make it difficult for him to see her. It’s not helping me, either, her body doesn’t really cut out the sunshine, rather it is filled with it. She’s not the wan beauty I’m used to but a luminous, translucent figure that stings the eyes.

“Miss Jones, thank you.” Her arms are folded. Well, I think they are. Her voice suggests it at the very least. “You don’t deserve such familiarity.”

Morrigan shrugs. “Miss Jones, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want to see my body parading about, inhabited by a Strirrer.”

“Oh,” Morrigan says. “I’m sorry, I can’t even begin to understand how that must feel.”

“It doesn’t feel good.”

“Feelings are all you have, Miss Jones. And you’re right, it is my fault. If only I had been more focused.”

No one says anything and the silence is long and awkward, until a coffee arrives.

“I took the liberty of ordering you a long black—asked them to bring it over when you arrived,” Morrigan says.

I thank him and sip at it, then grimace. The coffee’s burnt and bitter, but it’s still coffee. “So what do we do?”

“We need to get to the morgues. We need to get to the funeral homes. We have to stop the stirring. If we can contain it here we might stand a chance.”

Morrigan’s phone rings. He jumps, then flicks it open. “Yes… No…If you must, but there isn’t much time…All right.”

He hangs up. Lissa and I are both looking at him suspiciously.

“Don,” he says. “I spoke to him, too. He took some convincing, but he’s swinging around to Princess Alexandra Hospital. Sam’s on her way to Ipswich. I’m going to use the Hill and get to the
North—Cairns and Rockhampton. If we want Queensland to keep going we need to do this.”

“What about the rest of the country?” I ask.

“I’m trying to arrange some support from other RMs, Suzanne Whitman in the U.S. for one, but there’s a hell of a lot of trouble getting calls out. It’s not easy, but I don’t think anyone wants a Regional Apocalypse. That doesn’t matter—I want you to do Wesley Hospital.”

A prickle runs up my spine. The place had tasted terrible yesterday. It’s not going to be any better now.

“You’ll be a target,” Lissa says to me.

“Weren’t you listening, Miss Jones? We’re already targets.” Then Morrigan grabs my arm. “Be careful.”

“I always am,” I say, and almost believe it.

We part company, I don’t know how he’s going to make it down to the Hill. It’s probably better that I don’t. I look at my watch: five minutes until the next bus.

“I still don’t trust him,” Lissa says.

“That’s your call.”

“I want you alive. I want to see you through this. It’s all I’ve got left.”

“You don’t know the man.”

“Neither do you.”

That hurts a little. I think of all the parties, the time he got me out of jail for some stupid misdemeanor involving beer and a fountain in South Bank. “Yes, I do.”

I’m walking toward the bus stop when another voice stops me.

“Mr. de Selby, I need you to come with me.”

“Shit,” Lissa says.

Shit indeed.

“There doesn’t need to be any trouble,” the police officer says.

H
e’s a young guy, no older than me, and tall, though hunched down, maybe self-conscious like me about his height, or maybe because he has a bad back. But I don’t care either way because he is an officer of the law, and here I am on Mount Coot-tha, my house a smoking pile of wood, having stolen a car (well, borrowed a car, and only for a little while) and my own car having exploded. Oh, and I’m
not
happy to see him, that
is
a gun in my pocket. Shit, I’d forgotten about that. I consider my options.

“Just why do you need me to come with you?” Maybe I can talk my way out of this.

“I think you know why.”

Honesty seems the best policy. At least the one most likely to end without bloodshed.

“I have a gun in my pocket,” I blurt out. His face immediately tenses. “I’m going to lie down on the ground. You can take it from me, I’m not going to put up a fight.”

“Just pass it to me,” the officer says. “Handle first. Slowly.”

I do what he says, I’m in enough trouble already. It’s all I can do to stop my hand from shaking.

“Do you want to handcuff me or something?”

“Do I need to?” He’s got a no-bullshit sort of expression. I shake my head.

Well, this is about the worst thing that could have happened. At least I don’t have to wait for a bus. Every cloud, right?

I’m bundled into the back of the police sedan. It smells like pine disinfectant. The seat is immaculately clean, though someone has still managed to scrawl phalluses deeply into the headrest.

The car starts up.

“Hell of a day, eh,” he says, passing me back the gun. I hold it uncertainly. This is not how I expected it to go down. “I put the safety on your pistol, Mr. de Selby, I’m amazed you didn’t blow off your foot. Do you even know how to shoot that thing?”

“I—”

He doesn’t seem to care that much, just keeps rolling on.

“Don sent me. I’m Alex.”

“Don sent you? Thank Christ! You know Don? You know about Pomps?”

“Half the force does, mate.” He glances back at me through the wire. “So who’s the bastard trying to kill my old man?” I didn’t know that Don had a son. Another Black Sheep.

Lissa laughs. “Oh, he’s Don’s boy! Heard he was cute. Now the rumors have been confirmed.” I look at her in disbelief and she winks at me lasciviously.

“You’re not out of the woods though,” Alex says. Glancing at him through the rearview mirror, I can see a lot of Don in him. The lantern jaw, the brilliant blue eyes. He’s the sort of person who should be going through all this, and probably would have gotten to the bottom of it by now. Me? All I have is a passing acquaintance with mortality and a crush on a dead girl. “Stealing that car wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done.”

“Someone was trying to kill me.”

“Yeah, like I said, not the brightest thing, but ballsy, all right. Find out who’s behind this and we can make it go away. Right now,
though, you’re on your own, and pretty much regarded as Brisbane’s, if not Australia’s, biggest sociopath.”

“I stole the car, yes,” I say, “but that’s it. I didn’t have anything to do with the rest.”

“I know that, Dad’s told me. It’s going to take time for people to cotton onto what’s happening. And none of it’s been helped by most of the bodies disappearing. Regardless, there’s nothing we can do about this. This is your domain, and totally beyond our jurisdiction.”

“But people have died. They’re after your dad, too.”

“Yeah, I know, which is why I’m going to help you—though this is entirely unofficial.”

“I don’t have much time,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “So where can I take you?”