by Cate Gardner
"Do you mind?" she said.
"Not at all." Yarker bowed and stepped aside. "Apologies for your friend, but he does bore me at times. Make sure you never bore me."
Peter had frozen, wound down like a clockwork toy; eyes vacant and chin drooped and resting on his chest. Yarker clicked his fingers. Peter didn't respond.
"Oops," Yarker said. "No, wait. I meant to do that. Delete the oops."
"What have you done?"
Yarker pressed himself against Katy, forcing her to back up until she was jammed against the lift door and him. His breath tasted of week-old chicken left to rot in the sun. She figured he shouldn't have breath at all.
"Were you slaughtered in a meat factory?" she asked.
His cheek muscles tightened; lips and eyes offered a scowl. "I believe I told you how I died. Or maybe I didn't. Window, dangling… ringing any bells? Pay attention. Someone wants to kill you here and I may not be talking about me."
"Did you slaughter yourself in a meat factory?"
Glynn had not committed suicide. Whatever witnesses said about how he walked into the traffic, she knew Glynn and he wasn't capable of taking his own life. Besides, why would he want to? He had her.
Yarker grinned. Again, as if he'd read her mind. Or saw the pain in her eyes. Katy lifted her chin and met him attitude to attitude. She would not cower before this monster; he could do no worse to her than the world already had.
"You're one of us now," Yarker said. "You follow. You think of me as the Pied Piper, dragging your feet to my tune."
"Never."
In the office, the dead stood. They filed into the lobby and gathered at the door. Yarker turned on his heels and skipped to the head of the group. She'd not become his puppet. Partially reanimated, Peter pushed by her to join the dead. He walked stiff, his gait unnatural. The doors onto The Strand opened. Once they'd left she'd search the building, log onto their computers and try to figure out the truth of the place and of them. Isobel wouldn't disturb her. Hopefully, she wouldn't disturb Isobel. Glynn hesitated in the doorway. He turned. He waited. She wouldn't go to him.
His hand remained outstretched. "Katy," he said. "You came back to me, Katy."
She'd misheard. He hadn't spoken to her. He didn't recognise her. A trick. Glynn blocked the doorway, making it impossible for the remaining dead to leave. They turned to her, Peter amongst them.
"Katy," Peter said.
"Katy, please," Glynn said.
Behind the desk, Isobel whispered, "Katy, don't."
FOURTEEN
The factory whistle blew.
Through a veil of pink netting, Isobel watched her world empty. The pink cast added no warmth to dead skin. Her neck creaked, a smidgen of movement. If she concentrated on each joint perhaps she could rise from the chair and stumble after the dead. She owned rage too. So much that it threatened to crack skin and sanity. If she wore skin? If this was sanity? It may all be the dream of a decomposing brain trapped in a worm-riddled coffin. Peter may be living his life away from here. She should want that.
She'd rather Peter were dead than his arms were wrapped round someone else.
Fist punched out. A sudden movement not previously experienced in this dead form. Isobel tried to pull her arm back but it remained outstretched, fist clenched so tight her fingers would snap. She would break free of whatever spell Yarker had cobwebbed about her. She stared at her outstretched arm. It took a moment to recognise the delicious movement of the twitch of her left eyelid, a pulse of life where death should be.
The last of the dead (accompanied by a heart that beat) stepped through the doorway and back into the world. Isobel wanted to escape to the places she'd haunted in life, return so she could destroy those who had buried her.
How dare they'd decided she was done?
They should have laid her to rest in a glass coffin. They should have waited for her breath to mist the glass or for her eyelids to flutter open.
Before leaving, the living woman turned and looked at Isobel. Katy. The girl's name was Katy but Isobel didn't know how she knew that.
"Katy, don't," Isobel said, the words scratching against her throat.
Katy, don't what?
FIFTEEN
The moment Katy joined the swell of the dead Glynn let go of her hand; turned away from her; treated her as a stranger. She wanted to hope it was a survival mechanism-although survival was an oxymoron in his situation. The world faded to a stream of colours, the dizzying sweep of the dead carrying her away. Then the world righted itself (or as near to as it could). They'd arrived at their destination.
They always had a destination.
Katy stood in a perfect bubble of stillness while around her chaos unfolded. The dead crashed into a dilapidated three-storey house. The door swung from its hinges, creaking against the invasion. Windows smashed on the second floor. None of it touched her. She stood as if caught between two worlds. She could feel the warmth of the streetlight above her although its light had extinguished along with the lights in all the houses along the road, occupied and unoccupied. She stood on the edge of the world, boxed in, unable to step back into her world where the living continued unaware of their dead.
Peter hadn't followed the dead into the house. He stood on a patio of sorts with cracked paving slabs and hip-height weeds and kicked at a wheelie bin until it tipped and spilled its contents. He dropped to his knees. She wanted to go to him, to pull him away and bring him back to himself. To do that, she'd have to enter their world and she wouldn't lose herself to their anger as Peter had done. She wouldn't stay among the dead. Glynn didn't want her. Glynn didn't need her. Heck, he probably wasn't even her Glynn-just some copy, some fake boy, some illusion. Katy stepped off the pavement and into the road. The wind slapped against her calves and thighs as a car swerved-a car that hadn't been there a moment before.
"You don't get to leave," Peter said, standing. "We're in their world now."
No. She was in the same world she'd always inhabited and there would be a way home. Peter may have allowed the dead to infect him, but she wouldn't stay amongst the dead, she couldn't. She looked along the road. There was no sign of the car now, no traffic at all. Stillness.
"I'm leaving," she said.
Peter shrugged. "If you say so."
A window shattered, raining glass on the street, on Katy and Peter.
"If you say so," Peter repeated, and then ran up the stairs and punched into the house.
Legs shaking, Katy ran too, fled up the street determined to put as much space between her and the dead. A stitch nagged at her side. She stopped, rested her hand against a lamp-post, its rough gravelled surface sharp against her palm. Caught her breath. To her left a door opened and a man stepped out of a three-storey house that had been converted to flats. Paint peeled from the doorway. The man looked along the street, his gaze resting on the house the dead destroyed. He jogged down the front steps.
"What's going on there?" the man shouted.
The light emitting from his house drew Katy in, its brightness a sharp contrast to the other houses, all of which remained in darkness and appeared uninhabited. Here was a corner of her world, its glow a possible passage back to streets where the dead did not play. The man stood to the left of the steps and didn't complain when she climbed them. Along the street, a wooden chair tumbled from an upstairs window, shattering on the pavement below. Warmth enveloped her arms. She hadn't even realised she was cold. She'd stand in his hallway and if he complained and threatened to call the police then that would mean she still lived, that the dead did not have her.
The dead roared from the house they'd destroyed and offered the night whoops and hollers. The man fell back, hand clutching his chest. He stumbled up the steps.
"Shoo," he said to Katy. "I want no part of this."
As he stepped into the house, the warm glow faded to a grey dead-light. The man fell against the newel post, back sliding down it until he sat alongside his corpse.
"No," Katy sa
id.
This man was to be her salvation, her way home. He couldn't be dead. Her heart thudded, drowning out the victorious cries of the dead. Katy raced down the steps and up the road, searching for traffic, for any signs of life. A car engine snarled. Katy stopped, tried to determine from which direction the noise was coming. It had come from her left and from an old car parked on bricks, its rusting engine exposed to the air. The car's engine revved and its body nudged forward, front chassis dropping off bricks. No ghost sat in the driver's seat. No corpse intent on running her over.
The car jolted again, aiming its bumper at Katy's shins. She stepped back. Metal screeched. Flames sparked. The car dropped fully onto the pavement and began to crawl. For a moment, Katy froze. It couldn't hurt her, she thought. It was going too slow for that, she hoped. All it could offer was a need for a tetanus injection. She was safe. The hood popped open, gnashing its metal to gobble her up. She backed up and turned the corner. A metallic chorus joined the scrape and screech of the car.
She stood outside a car scrapyard. With a piercing shriek, the gates creaked open. The tower of cars began to dismantle.
Yarker materialised beside Katy and pushed her into the scrapyard. The gates clanged shut. Behind her, cars began to fall, their metal smashing onto concrete and ricocheting about the yard. A rusting bumper flew towards her face. Katy ducked but it grazed her arm leaving an orange welt in her skin.
"I don't like to hurt folk," Yarker said, from the other side of the gates. "Oh wait, I guess I do."
Katy rattled the gates, trying to unlock that which had no padlock. The gates fastened together by magnets or fixed with superglue. A wing mirror slammed into her lower back. The dead gathered outside the gates, surrounding Yarker. Peter stepped from their group. Glynn pulled him back, hand fastened around Peter's wrist. Katy turned. A broken collection of cars began to scrape their way across tarmac. They'd crush her to the gates.
No, they wouldn't, Katy decided. She'd clamber over them. Tear them apart.
"All you have to do is agree to come with them," Peter said.
All she had to do. Katy shook her head. Peter smiled at that.
"Think of the little children who will skip by this yard on their way to school. Do you want them to see your innards hanging from open bonnets or oozing through grilles? Do you really intend to allow your severed head to grin at them from a passenger seat?" Yarker said. "Ooh, I'll stay and watch. I'll enjoy their reactions. Maybe prod a few of the blighters into the middle of the road."
The cars creaked closer, forming a half-moon, blocking her in. If they rammed as one she'd be skewered, flattened, one of the gang. Her heart pounded, blood rushed, sounds thudding through her ears to drown out the rev of dead engines. There was no way through the dismantled weave of cars. Katy turned, hooked her fingers into the chainlink gates and began to climb.
"Oh that's not very sporting of you," Yarker said.
A rusting white van slammed into the gates. Despite vibrations from the collision trembling through her fingers and arms, Katy clung onto the gates and continued to climb. At the top, she hesitated. The drop would land her amongst the dead. There was no other choice. Hooking her leg over the top of the gate, regaining her balance as the white van recommenced its attack, she began to clamber down the gate, dropping to the pavement and avoiding the slam of metal on metal. The gates crashed open. The dead did not run. Yarker pressed his hands to the car bonnet, stilling its engine.
"Do you still want him?" Yarker asked.
Katy assumed he meant Glynn. She didn't answer.
"Although, the question should be does he still want you?"
Moving away from the gates but not leaving the vicinity of the dead, Katy turned her back to Yarker. Her stomach churned. Glynn no longer wanted her. Glynn no longer remembered her or cared who she was. No one should know this about their dead.
SIXTEEN
They returned to The Strand. Glynn stood before her, Peter to her left. She wanted to trace Glynn's neckline. She'd lie awake in bed and trace his stubble, giggle as he scratched where she'd touched. Now she was a different sort of irritant. Inside the building, Peter resumed his position by Isobel's desk and the dead settled to work at their computers. Yarker walked amongst the dead.
"Do you still want her?" Katy asked Peter.
Isobel looked to have shifted in her seat. The dust about her disturbed, cobwebs disarranged, veil shifted. Goosebumps peppered Katy's arms. They peppered Isobel's too.
"She doesn't know me." Peter paused. "Yes."
Katy looked at Isobel but detected no movement. Glassy eyes stared through pink netting.
"I'm sorry I found Glynn again." There she'd said it.
In the office, Yarker stopped and turned. Although he should be too far away to hear her, Katy knew he had. He grinned. Did he think he'd won something? Stupid dead zombie-ghost.
Peter scratched at the tattoo on his wrist-Property of the Bureau of Them, Us, and You. He said, "I feel the same."
At Peter's words, there was definite disturbance to the cobwebs dangling from Isobel's fringe.
"I think she's a habit. Something I expect to want. Someone."
Katy stole back her veil, brushing off cobweb silk. She stared at Isobel, daring her corpse-eyes to blink. Isobel played rigor-mortis well. Katy clicked her fingers in front of Isobel's face.
"Leave her be," Peter said.
Someone tapped Katy on the shoulder. Sharp fingernails. She turned. Yarker grinned, black lips painted onto flaking white skin. She wanted to swat him. A good kick and maybe he'd crumble to the dust he should have long ago become. Yarker dug into his pocket and withdrew a self-inking stamp. He placed the stamp on the reception desk, winking at Isobel as he did. He rolled up his jacket sleeves and flexed his fingers.
"No," Peter said. "No, I won't allow it to happen."
"Who were you?" Katy asked Yarker. "I bet you were a coward. I bet your blood ran yellow when you died."
Yarker picked up the stamp and slammed it against the desk. The Property of Them, Us, and You inked onto pale wood. Outside the building, echoing in the frosted glass door, people passed by. A car horn beeped. A lorry hissed as it stopped at the lights, the container it carried reflected in the window. The world waited for her, a step or five away from this monstrous man. She could leave. Of course, she could leave. The Glynn she'd known would expect her to and this new Glynn didn't matter at all. Yarker grabbed her wrist.
"Hey."
The chatter outside the building increased in number and volume. Exhaust fumes travelling on cold air slipped under the door. Yarker pressed the stamp onto her wrist.
"Ow."
The Property of Them, Us, and You . Katy pulled her arm away from him. She spat on the ink and rubbed the edge of her jacket across it until her skin burned. The stamp remained. The echoes of her living world faded.
"This doesn't mean I belong here."
She shook her arm. The tattoo did not slide off. Yarker placed the stamp into his pocket, turned on his heels and crept back to his dead. Katy rubbed her wrist. She marched after Yarker, pushing by him to get to Glynn. He would react to what was happening to her. He would care. She shoved her wrist and its tattoo before into Glynn's face. He looked through her hand as if she were the ghost.
"You'll remember who I am. You'll remember who you were," her voice cracked.
She grabbed his arm. A lead weight determined to drop back to the table.
"You have no idea who I am. I bet you're not even him."
Glynn looked up. "I'm him."
A perfect bullet to kill her. I'm him. Yet, she kept breathing.
"I don't need you to want me, Glynn. I want you to remember yourself. This isn't you. Don't play his puppet. You were never anyone's puppet."
Katy wiped snot from beneath her nose. Her wrist itched. Glynn returned to silence as if he'd never spoken. Maybe she'd imagined it. Sure sounded like him. Colder though.
She turned to Yarker. Said, "I'm leaving."
<
br /> He raised an eyebrow, tapped his feet not in impatience, more in dance.
Katy kissed Glynn's forehead. "I'll never forget you."
This was it then. Without further words, she turned and marched towards reception. Did Yarker or Glynn realise she was leaving? Would either attempt to stop her? Tears ran down her cheeks. She kept her head high, her chin tense, with no wobble to her steps. In the foyer, she pulled at the door. It would open. It had to open.
It didn't open.
She'd smash the glass. In a dark corner, to the right of the lifts, Katy found a plant pot containing a decaying yucca tree. She tipped out the plant and its dry soil, hurled the pot at the door. It rebounded. She picked it up and threw it again, and again, and again, until the pot cracked and shattered into several pieces. A shadow stood on the street side of the door, hands cupped to the glass.
Katy banged her fists against the door. "I'm trapped."
"It's just him," Peter said. "It's just the tramp."
The shadow spread, pressed against glass until it was a dark blot and nothing human at all. She'd find a back exit. A green exit sign blinked above a door to the left of the dead lifts. The bulb sparked offering intermittent light. Behind the door were a stairwell and a fire escape door. Katy's breath hitched. Her fingers curled around the bar that locked the door, metal cold and rusting. She pressed on the bar. Cold air drifted around her ankles. A hand gripped her shoulder, fingers squeezing.
"Katy-Kate."
Glynn. No, he didn't get to do this to her now. At his words, her fingers slipped away from the door. The trick would be to trap her-you don't get to leave. She'd double bluff. Pull Glynn out into the world with her.
"Glynn."
"Katy-Kate."
The fire exit door slammed. Already faint light died, plunging them into darkness. Glynn pulled away. She reached out but couldn't find him. Another door clicked shut but she hadn't seen it open into the foyer. He'd gone. That much she knew. Katy turned and fumbled until her fingers found cold, rusting metal. She pushed down the bar and stepped into the street. I loved you.
