Death most definite sds-1

by Trent Jamieson

  I glance at John. "These won't stir again, and I'll return if I'm alive." I don't tell him how unlikely a proposition that may be when charted against the days-no, the hours-ahead. "But there will be more. I rather suspect that everyone who dies will be… reinhabited."

  I incline my head at his tattoo. "You might want to brace as many rooms as possible with this." I give him a tin of paint. There's a few drops of my blood in it and it should provide some limited protection for the hospital at least.

  John frowns, as he pockets the paint tin. "And where will you be?"

  "If I can come back, I will. I'm just not sure that it's an option."

  I'm still a bit shaky as we walk out of the hospital. Stalling takes a lot out of you. One or two is bad enough, but seven is off the chart. Morrigan was right, we're nearing some sort of tipping point. The Stirrers can sense something is wrong. I can imagine the queues of Stirrer souls just crowding around waiting to get into newly dead bodies. Humans have become prime real estate in a way that hasn't happened since the darkest days.

  A basketball center's to the right of us, on the other side of the train line. There must be a couple of games going, I can hear the screech of shoes, the indignant shriek of whistles.

  "We need to get the system up and running again," I say to Lissa.

  She shakes her head. "Sorry, you need to get the system up and running."

  "Well, running might be a good idea," says a familiar voice. Don's ghost is standing by Lissa. They circle each other.

  "Where's Sam? Is she alive?" I demand.

  Don shakes his head. "I don't know."

  "I'm sorry, Don. Really, really sorry," Lissa says.

  Don fixes her with a stare. "You know how it is."

  His form flickers. He blinks.

  "What the hell happened?" I ask.

  Don grimaces. "I feel stupid." His irritation is without much edge, though. He's already sliding away into the land of the dead, though he manages to fix me with a stare. "It's Morrigan."

  "I knew it," Lissa says. "All that polite bullshit. All that sympathy. What an absolute dickhead."

  "The bastard tried to pomp me, too. But I managed to-" he glances at Lissa. "Christ, how do you keep this up?"

  "It gets easier."

  Don shakes his head like he doesn't believe her. "Morrigan's decided he doesn't need to hide now. And there's something you need to know: every time a Pomp dies, he becomes more powerful. Whatever presence or energy they have, well, he gets it. That's something he let slip."

  Which means he must be pretty powerful now if there's only him and Sam and me left.

  "But I was speaking to Morrigan this morning, at Mount Coot-tha," I say, feeling the blood drain from my face. Then I do what anyone would do in that situation-start with denial. "It can't be him. He didn't look powerful at all. He told me-"

  "Well, he's a fine actor. Must be, to have pulled all this off. Steve, the bastard shot me," Don snaps. "How much more of a definitive delineation of betrayal do you need? We have to get you out of here, out of the city. Morrigan's holding off on killing you now."

  "I met Alex," I say. We're running out of the car park and onto the road, then around under the train tracks and into the basketball court's car park. My head is spinning. I really thought I could trust Morrigan. It had been a good feeling, having a central point in all of this, the idea that someone was guiding the ship again, and now…

  Don grins. "My Alex, a good boy. Total Black Sheep. I love the kid. Was going to go to the footy with him on Sunday. Broncos match. Hate the Broncos, but the boy's dead keen." Don shook his head. "I couldn't believe it, about Morrigan, I mean. I started trusting him when you made it alive down off Mount Coot-tha. I think that was the plan all along. No offense, Steven, but Morrigan reckons he can kill you off when he likes, when the rest of us are done with. But he doesn't count-"

  Don's gone with a soft sound like the ringing of a tiny bell, a sparrow cutting through him, pomping him, its wings whirring. I'm still blinking at the sight of Don sliding out of non-corporeal existence, trying to understand why Morrigan might be keeping me alive. The bird flits past me.

  It's one of Morrigan's sparrows. The inkling twists sharply in the air and hurtles toward Lissa.

  I'm running at her, trying to get in between her and the sparrow. If it gets there first then I'm alone. I just make it, the sparrow hits my chest hard enough to hurt. It thumps off and onto the ground, and I stomp down. Little sparrow bones crunch beneath my boot. And then it sinks away into a tiny puddle of ink and feathers.

  Hope that hurt you, Morrigan.

  And then there are more of them. And more.

  Someone slows in their car beside me, and then picks up speed. I don't blame them, I must look insane thrashing and swinging at the little birds. I dance around as one sparrow, then another and another and another, descends. They're all around us. I can't do anything about it.

  But something else can. Crows crash from the sky, like the eagles in Lord of the Rings. If someone had started yelling "The crows are coming! The crows are coming!" I would have cheered. The black birds are cawing and crying, snatching sparrows out of the air with their dark beaks in a maelstrom of wings above and around us.

  Then the crows are gone and the only remnants of the melee are inky puddles.

  "That was… interesting," Lissa says.

  "Wasn't it just," I say.

  We look at each other. There's another player in the game. The sparrows are Morrigan's; the crows, they belong to Mr. D. So maybe he's not as in the dark as we believe.

  I'd seen Morrigan form an inkling once, at a party. He was charming then as usual. We were talking about tatts, comparing our ink. My cherub had gotten a few appreciative comments, newly cut. Then Morrigan, one never to be outdone, had said, "That's a fine tattoo, boy, but can you do this?"

  He'd pulled up his sleeve to the first Escheresque tangle of sparrows that ran from his sinewy biceps and over his back. He whistled then, a shrill, short note, and a bird pulled free of his flesh. "Inklings are quite simple once you get the hang of it."

  The sparrow flew around the room, picking up snacks and bringing them back to him.

  It had appeared effortless, until I saw him later, coming out of the bathroom. He'd been a bit shaky on his feet. I could smell the sweat on him, even over his cologne. I didn't want him to have a stroke, still, I'd respected his pride and just quietly helped him to a chair. If only I had known what it would come to… Well, I would have kicked the legs out from under him.

  That had been one sparrow, now we had seen tens of them. And he was using them to pomp the dead. Don was right, Morrigan's powers had increased incredibly.

  18

  So what do we do?" I ask, staring at the ink-stained ground. "I can't see how I can keep you safe."

  "First we're going to need cover," Lissa says, and heads back toward the hospital car park. I follow, hurrying to keep pace.

  "You're going to have to bind me to you and this realm," Lissa says.

  "I'm unfamiliar with the process. I've heard of bindings, but never seen it done."

  "There's a reason for that. OK, a couple of them, the first being that it's old. You wouldn't have come across it unless you're particularly interested in the history of pomping. And there really isn't much written about Pomps. It takes quite a bit of research." Lissa smiles, a little too mockingly for my liking. "And, no offense, you don't exactly strike me as the studious type."

  I take immediate offense at that. "Morrigan never exactly encouraged it."

  Lissa nods. "Well, we know why now. Anyway, people don't talk about this stuff, in the specific. You have to really dig. The process is… It's a little confronting." She flashes me another smile. "But if we don't do it, I'm worried that Morrigan will pomp me, and you need me." She's so right, but I rail against that a little. She can see it in my face, and her laugh is both affectionate and mocking. "Don't you try and suggest otherwise, laddy."

  We're under the cover
of the car park. "OK, so how do I do it? How do I bind you? It sounds pretty kinky, you know."

  Lissa reddens, just a little, and I get the feeling that she's more embarrassed for me than anything else. "Well, it sort of is."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Most of these types of ceremonies involve blood, but in this case that's not enough, because you're not pomping, you're binding." Her eyes seem to be having trouble meeting mine. "You're going to need semen. Your own semen."

  "Here?" I turn in a quick circle. There's no one about, but this is a car park. Of course I'm sure there's been plenty of that here, but not mine. "I'm supposed to-"

  "This is no time to be squeamish, or prudish," Lissa says impatiently. "There might be a whole flock of bloody sparrows on their way."

  "Pressured is the word that comes to mind, actually."

  "Performance anxiety, eh? Well, I'm dead, it'll be our little secret. Besides, I've already seen you naked."

  "Well, there's naked and then there's naked." I am utterly exposed out here, and it's cold. The odds of me being able to ejaculate are pretty grim. Lissa leers at me. That doesn't help.

  She rubs her hands together. "Well? Pants down, prong up."

  "Could you look away?"

  "I'll look away," she says. "Just think about some of those busty trollops and you'll be OK."

  Wicked woman!

  There's got to be cameras around here somewhere. I imagine the image as I, um-present-another addition to the caseload against me.

  "Hurry up," Lissa hisses at me. "I can hear a car coming."

  OK, deep breaths: a half dozen of them. I know that I have to do this, that there's nothing else to be done, but I'm feeling very peculiar about it. In fact, I'm feeling very dirty-old-mannish. Friction isn't enough. Nor is strength of will.

  It has to be done. It has to be done.

  And it is. And at the moment of ejaculation, a quick hard orgasm, I see Lissa's face.

  I open my eyes, and I'm looking into Lissa's face. Oh. My. God.

  "You were supposed to look the other way," I grumble, my face burning.

  "Good work," she says, ignoring me, though she seems a bit flushed, too.

  I've got the semen in a handkerchief. I'm not sure if I've ever been more embarrassed in my life.

  "Can I have a look at your, um, handiwork?"

  I comply, careful to keep my distance.

  She frowns, looks like she's doing maths in her head. I'm not exactly sure how the dead perceive the world but she couldn't possibly be counting the little swimmers. "That should be enough."

  "It better be."

  The car drives slowly past. I give it a wave. Nothing to see here, now.

  19

  Crouching down like some maniacal Gollumesque creature, I scrape with a stone the Four Binding Elements (as Lissa called them), basically four triangles, each containing a circle on the cement of the footpath. Lissa stands in the middle of my esoteric squiggling.

  "You need a drop of your doings for the center of each circle," Lissa says.

  I mark each one, then step back.

  "Now, look at me. We need eye contact, and total concentration."

  I take a deep breath and gaze at her. It's not gazing, it's grazing, I hunger for her stare. I could look into those eyes forever, they are a fire in my chest and in my stomach. Lissa holds my gaze. I don't know how long we stand that way; it's intense but pleasurable, how my orgasm should have been. The air around us pushes in. I feel the weight of all that sky, and I am bound in a kind of leaden warmth. And then it bursts. The pressure is gone in an instant. And it's just me and Lissa, and the car park. The air is cold. I let out a breath.

  Lissa stumbles back from the circle of triangles, her eyes wide. She looks at me, her lips moving soundlessly. Whatever moment we shared has passed. She smiles. "Well, you've bound me. I cannot be pomped on this plane, except by an RM, and we haven't seen too many of those about lately, have we? It won't last forever, but for the next few days it should do."

  A few days are probably all I have, anyway, though I keep that thought to myself. I've already shared far too much with Lissa in the last half-hour.

  She winks. "Naughty, isn't it?"

  "Easier than I thought," I say.

  "Well, I was thinking that about you," Lissa says.

  "So what do we do now, have a cigarette?" I'm shaking a bit, my face is still burning with the intimacy of the ceremony.

  "If only… but what we have to do is get you out of Brisbane. We need time to think. To get Morrigan on the backfoot."

  "I'm not so sure. Tremaine said we should contact Mr. D."

  "Let me tell you about Eric Tremaine. He's a bit of a tosser but, of course, you know all about that." She chortles. "I don't know if you can totally trust anything he has to say. Me, on the other hand…"

  Tremaine must have really had it in for me. Sure, I'd let down the tires on his car at a convention last year, but it had just been a bit of fun. Maybe that was one of the reasons; other people had found it a lot of fun too. After all, it was how Tremaine had gotten the nickname, Flatty. "One of my reasons for breaking up with him was that he was too negative."

  "It's hard to be upbeat when you've just been killed," I offer. I can't believe I'm coming to the guy's defense.

  Lissa glares at me. "You're telling me that?"

  Yeah, that's me, Mr. Sensitive. "I'm sorry," I say.

  "I still agree with Don," Lissa says. "You need to get out of here. Out of Brisbane altogether. And out of mobile range. This is Queensland, there's got to be lots of places like that. Morrigan knows he can't let the Stirrers grow in serious numbers. He wants to be the new RM, and if he's going to become part of the Orcus, he needs to keep the Stirrers in check. Leave it up to him. I think you have to take yourself out of the picture for a while."

  "I know a few places that-"

  "No, they have to be places you don't know, towns that Morrigan isn't going to look."

  She's right. And Queensland is perfect for that. I could jab my finger at a map of the state with my eyes closed and find a hundred of them. Once you get out of the south-east corner or away from the coast, most of the country is hot and dry and empty.

  People get lost there all the time. Often they're never seen again. I find some cover after sunset, and try and rest while Lissa keeps guard. I wake from bad dreams to the dark.

  "I have to call Tim," I say.

  We stop at a payphone in a park near the Regatta Hotel. I grab the handset and pause, disturbed by what I'm feeling in the air.

  They're out there in the dark. Stirrers, stumbling through the night. At first they'll gather in the deserted places, the quiet places, and when there are enough of them together they won't bother hiding.

  If Morrigan doesn't get on top of this soon, there will be a lot of suicides over the next few weeks, a lot of unexplained behavior. Bodies will disappear from morgues, people will see their deceased loved ones walking in the street, or wake with them in their bed. And there will be no joy in the occasion, because they are not loved ones, just something that possesses their memories: an imperfect and deadly mimic.

  Stirrers are voids. They will turn a house cold, and they will swallow laughter. They are the worst aspects of time only sped up and grown cruelly cunning. Bad luck follows them.

  They'll keep their distance from me, if they can. If they have a chance they'll try and kill me, from as great a distance as possible, with a gun or in a hit and run. They can sense me, but I can sense them as well. And I'm more practiced at it, and I've only just had to face off seven of the bastards in the Wesley. You could say my palate was refined.

  Which was why I could tell that the man pushing the swing in the park was a Stirrer, even from a few hundred meters off.

  I slide my knife across my palm, wincing a little. And then I come up on him casually, trying not to look like he's where I'm heading. It works for a while.

  He finally feels my approach and turns, but now I've got up
quite a head of steam. The Stirrer runs from the swing set toward me, but he doesn't quite inhabit the body properly. After all, people spend the first couple of decades of their life coming to terms with their bodies. It's one of the most obvious ways of telling them apart.

  Their flesh will be bruised, the nails and hands will often be dirty. The longer they stay in the body the less clumsy they become, but there are limits. They will never attain the kind of grace that even a relatively clumsy person has-this isn't their universe.

  The Stirrer slips, then gets to his feet. I grab his back, and he wrenches away, so I tackle him, a perfect round-the-legs tackle. My hand brushes cold flesh.

  The Stirrer rushes through me, and it is like swallowing glass. I push myself away from the motionless body, my chest heaving.

  "Rough stall?" Lissa looks at me with concern.

  I nod, some stalls aren't too horrible and some are like a punch to the stomach. This was the latter. Jesus. Normally I would have called for a pick-up, someone to take the body and dispose of it, but that's not an option, now.

  The Stirrer opens its eyes, sits up: sees me. Its panicked expression is almost comical. It lets out a groan and struggles to its feet, legs shaking. The blood on my hand must have dried too much to have a permanent effect.

  I reopen the wound, fresh blood flows.

  The Stirrer stands there, unsteadily. Its eyes dart left and right of me, looking for some sort of escape route.

  "Fuck off back to the Underworld," I growl, and slap my hand against its face. The body drops. This stall doesn't hurt as much. The Stirrer hadn't inhabited the body long enough to get a good hold on it, but there's more pain to it than there ought to be.

  "That's not good," Lissa says. And it isn't. That was way too fast.

  The Stirrer's eyes flicker. And I do it again, this time sitting on its chest while I get out my knife.

  I slice open one of my fingers, making a fresh wound, and touch the Stirrer's cheek. There's a definite finality to that stall, like a door slamming shut. The body stills for good. Nothing will get through now, as long as I stay alive.