The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (22 page)

They don’t want this spreading across the sea. They don’t want this in their backyard.

I
t’s the third day in the same town and we’re on our way to the local supermarket—Lissa and I have agreed on some music, Simon and Garfunkel, which is better than the Abba she suggested, and I just knew she wasn’t in the mood for Aerosmith—when I notice the black car following us. I don’t like the way it feels.

We pass the supermarket and start heading out of town. Lissa glances at me.

“We could be in trouble,” I say.

Lissa looks behind us. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Country towns, eh? You go out shopping and this happens.”

The car’s going fast, even for the straight stretch of road we’re on, and it stinks of Stirrers. I put on a bit more speed but the Corolla doesn’t have too much to give. We take a corner, way too fast, and the wheels slip a bit. The car shudders, but we stay on the road. The stereo hisses with the Stirrers’ presence, the music rising and falling in intensity.

The black car’s closing the gap between us, and then I realize I’ve seen it before. It’s the Chevrolet Lissa and I had watched race down Milton Road after Sam. Its grille is dark with dead bugs. It’s been driving all night.

I put the pedal to the metal, squeezing every bit of speed out of the car, my knuckles white around the steering wheel. But in every moment that passes I get a clearer, closer view of our pursuers. Don and Derek! At least Lissa’s not there. The Chevy’s V8 engine is soon drowning out my sputtering four cylinders.

Don neatly swings the car into the next lane and it roars up beside me. The stereo’s breathing nothing but static now.

Derek smiles at me. There’s a rifle in his hands and a predatory look sketched across his face that somehow combines the Stirrer’s hatred of life and Derek’s almost palpable dislike of me. His shirt flutters in the wind and I can see the gaping hole where his chest should be.

He fires through the window. I’ve got the windows open—the only aircon you can get in a ’74 Corolla—so there’s no explosion of glass. The bullet misses me by just inches. I’m so glad Stirrer Derek isn’t using a shotgun or most of my face would be missing now in a red spray of shot.

The road narrows up ahead. I smack my foot down on the brakes and the tires smoke. The Chevy shoots past. I’m already spinning around, my foot hard on the accelerator, choking on the smell of burning oil and smoke. Lissa’s yelling, I’m yelling—shrieking, really. Various forces that I’d understand more about if I’d listened in my high school physics classes tug at us as we turn, and it’s a near thing between rolling the car, colliding with a tree and getting back on the road. We make it, somehow, judder up to speed and head back the way we’d come. Simon and Garfunkel crackle back into life.

“Thank Christ,” I say, though my relief’s short-lived. In the rear-view mirror the Chevy turns neatly, far more neatly than I could ever have pulled off, and tears back after us. What else was I expecting?

“Steven!” Lissa’s pointing frantically in front of us. That’s when we nearly collide with a police car, head on.

It’s only through luck that we both veer to our left.

I keep going, and the cop performs a textbook handbrake turn.

Then the Chevy clips the back of the cop car and hurtles through the air, flipping over. It slides down the road on its roof.

I bring the Corolla to a shuddering, squealing, rattling halt. I can’t leave the cop with these Stirrers, even if the Chevy is totaled.
He’s a target, and if they take him they’ve just got another agent for their cause, and a cop car. Time to put an end to their aggressive expansion.

I take a deep breath and turn the Corolla around. This would be all so very
Mad Max
if I was driving a V8, and if it wasn’t me. Lissa doesn’t say anything until I stop the car off the road by the smoking wreck. She knows what I have to do. I swing open the door. Lissa follows, staying back, the Stirrers’ combined presence pulling at her.

Only one of them is getting out of the car. Don. I slide my knife across my palm.

But that’s bad enough. I’m gagging at the sight of him. Most of his chest is crushed against his back and his heart flutters beneath the wreckage of his meat and bones. He’s the perfect picture of a Romero zombie, except the bastard is lowering a rifle to point at my chest. I’m thinking about the standoff at Albion, only this time Don
is
going to shoot me.

Why couldn’t the gun have been totaled in the crash?

“Hey!” the cop shouts.

Don spins and aims the rifle at the cop. I sprint toward him, grab the Stirrer by the arm and feel him slide through me. But almost at once there’s another one in the body. It stalls through, too, and then another one. Every stall is rough and breath-snatching. The Stirrers are getting stronger, and the rate at which they are re-entering bodies is rapidly increasing. I feel each one’s rage at its too-swift passing, and there’s so many of them.

Lissa’s frantic behind me. There’s nothing she can do. We both know that. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

Stirrer Don is a bloody spinning door, and I’m standing on the precipice of a vast and horrible invasion. The body jerks and I grit my teeth against the motion. Each Stirrer gets a single movement in. They’re orchestrating it, each entering spirit moving in sync with the previous one. Jesus knows how they’re doing it, but I’m getting an
elbow in the head. The movement is little more than a series of stop motion convulsions, but the elbow is no less persuasive. And every stall is tearing through me, so I’m hardly at my best.

This is going to kill me. I let go, and the gun rises up again. But I’ve not stopped. My knife is out again. I slice open my hand, deeper this time.

The Stirrer snarls at me, the rifle against my chest. He fires. The bullet must just clip something, blood’s washing over my face. I swing my head hard against his and with that bloody contact the body drops to the ground.

The cop has his gun aimed at me.

I lift my hands in the air, then remember the weapon, and let the knife fall.

“Don’t shoot!” I’m almost screaming. I don’t want to die like this. The car is now an inferno behind me, and my back is hot. I’m dripping with grimy sweat and blood’s sliding down my wrist and face.

“Get down,” the cop roars. He hits the ground, covering his face with his hands.

I’m on my chest with a bone-juddering dive. The Chevy explodes. And there’s more heat striking me, and bits of car spilling from the sky in a heavy metal rain. I stay there a moment, coughing with all that smoke and dust, then slowly get to my feet.

The cop is already up, peering over at the corpse.

“He’s dead,” I say. “He was before I touched him.”

“I know. That body’s been dead for a couple of days at least,” the cop says. His eyes widen at something behind me. He shakes his head. “I’ve seen some flaming weird shit lately. But this, you’ve got to be kidding me…”

The second Stirrer has pulled itself from the car. Derek’s body is burning, but it doesn’t stop it from shambling toward us: another rifle raised. Shit, give dead people firearms and soon enough it’s all they know. Shoot this, blast that.

The cop doesn’t hesitate. He fires twice, both scarily accurate headshots. “Supposed to work on zombies, isn’t it?”

“Only in the movies,” I say. “Slows them a little though.”

The Stirrer hasn’t done more than stumble though there’s barely anything left of its head. It shoots, and misses. If it still had eyes it wouldn’t have. And its presence is offending me, driving me mad. This isn’t Derek, but this is as close as I’m going to get. I know what I need to do.

I rush at the flaming body. My knees almost hit me in the chest I’m running so hard. My shoulder slams into Derek’s stomach, tipping him onto his arse, and he lands with a grunt. I drive my bloody palm against his flesh, and then roll away, extinguishing flames as I go.

Not well enough, obviously, because the cop drenches me with a fire extinguisher.

“My hair! How’s my hair?” I demand, and the cop laughs, and then we’re both laughing the crazed laughter of the utterly terrified.

“You’re insane.” He stretches. Joints crack, and he looks from the corpses to me, and back again. “Sorry about this, mate, but you’re going to have to come with me.”

“I’ve got a number for you to call,” I say, and I can’t quite hide the desperation in my voice.

He raises an eyebrow. His shoulders tighten belligerently almost instantly.

I give Alex’s special number to him. The cop walks away and when he comes back, holding two shovels and some gauze, he’s pale.

“You’ve got some very powerful friends,” he says. “He said to tell you that it’s getting bad in the city. And not to use that number again. Oh, and you’re to help me, so dig.”

After I bandage my hand (the wound in my scalp has stopped bleeding) we dig two holes for the bodies. My back’s screaming by the
time I’m done. I’m a Pomp, not a gravedigger. My hand’s not much better.

“You all right?” the cop asks, wiping sweat from his brow. We’ve worked in silence, though I can see there’s a good dozen or so questions he’s desperate to ask me, and that he can tell I have no intention of answering them.

“Not really,” I say. “About as good as you’d expect.”

He laughs at that. “Yeah. You seem to have a complicated life.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

The cop goes back to his sedan. The back end is dinged up badly but it still looks driveable. The radio’s already screeching with something or other. He says a few things into the handset and looks set to drive away, but doesn’t. He comes back to me and shakes my good hand.

“Good luck.” He looks at me, grimly. “Yeah, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t come back through my town again. Not if you’re bringing this kind of trouble.”

“No problem,” I say. “Trouble’s probably going to come anyway.”

“Thought as much. Anything I can do?”

“Run, if you get the chance.”

He nods. He doesn’t look like the sort who would run.

Lissa’s waiting in the car. “That was close.”

“You’re telling me.” I start the engine. God, how I want to kiss her, but that’s not going to happen.

We drive for hours, heading to the coast, me pushing the car as hard as I dare. I’m running but I’m not sure where.

I stop at a deserted truckstop. While I’m washing my hands, and splashing water on my face, cleaning off as much of the sweat and blood as possible, I think about what needs to be done. I have to bring
this back to Morrigan somehow. I can’t keep running, and Morrigan is sure to find me eventually. If that prick were here right now, I’d—

I look up, and Morrigan’s walking out of a cubicle. I blink and he’s still there. I scramble for my gun.

“You really should think before you start wishing for things, my boy.” He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The tattoos of sparrows on his arms are no longer bloody. The last time I saw him—wounded and frail—couldn’t be a greater contrast to this Morrigan before me. I have never seen him looking so strong. He almost glows. Wholesale murder does wonders for the complexion, it seems.

On the other hand I’m pale, washed out, and what fingernails I have that aren’t broken are dirty and black with blood. I wave the pistol in his face. “Get out of here!”

“Why are you so frightened? If I really wanted to kill you right now, you’d be dead. All in good time.”

I steady the pistol, aim it at his face. It’s one thing to know that he’s behind all this, another entirely to hear it from his lips. I hesitate.

He blinks. “Are you going to shoot me with that?”

I pull the trigger. Nothing happens. Morrigan laughs dryly. “You always were such a stupid little fuck. You will see my messenger soon, just so you know how serious I am.”

He’s gone before I release the safety. I feel Number Four—I feel the Underworld—open then close.

Lissa’s through the wall, her gaze swinging this way and that. “You’re shaking.”

I am, fear’s running through me. I want to cry. I want to hit something. “Morrigan was here. How the hell did he do that?”

Lissa grimaces. “Morrigan is Ankou. He can shift.”

“Shift where?”

“Anywhere he wants to.”

“I thought that was an RM thing.”

“It takes some effort, but Ankous can do it, too. Besides, his powers
are increasing. That bastard really kept you in the dark. And I didn’t feel anything, not until he was gone. He must have been waiting. You should have called for me.”

“And what could you have done except put yourself in danger?”

Lissa shrugs. “I could have been here.”

I try Tim’s phone. No answer, it just switches through to his voicemail. I don’t leave a message, there’s no point. He’s in trouble, he has to be. Lissa suggests that he might just have his phone switched off, but even she looks worried.

We head down the coast, driving until I’m too exhausted to drive anymore which is far too soon, but I know that I’m going to wake up with the car wrapped around a tree if I don’t stop. I pull into the first motel in Noosaville with a vacant sign, not caring that I look a sight, though the bored teen at the counter hardly glances at me as I pay for a room.