Death most definite sds-1

by Trent Jamieson

  30

  I reach the first branch, and know at once that it's not the right one. It's a sensation buried in the meat of me, a certainty that is almost comforting, because it suggests that I might know where I'm going.

  A little further up there is the scent of familiar souls, of family-cinnamon, pepper, wood smoke, a faint hint of aftershave and lavender. Maybe it'll be the next branch, or the one after that.

  I stop to catch my breath and peer along the wooden limb. It's a gently swaying woodscape, and all along it there are people. Most are lying down, some stand, but the tree is absorbing all of them. Wood sheathes their flesh. It's a macabre yet somewhat serene vision. There is no pain here, just a slow letting go.

  Then I see the Stirrer. A big one. It'd take two of me to fit in it. It's walking between the dead, peering at this body or that. Above its head heat shimmers, but that's not what catches my eye.

  In one hand the Stirrer's holding a machete. It looks at me and grunts loudly. Shit. Mr. D's key means it can't feel me, but it certainly recognizes me. I lingered here too long.

  It runs toward me, along the branch, and I don't wait around. I start up with a stuttering, desperate sort of run. I get back to the next set of stairs.

  By the first circuit up from the branch it's obvious that it's going to catch up with me, and soon. My legs are burning, I don't have much pace left. I pass one then another of the dead, making my way around them as quickly as I can on the vertiginous stairway. The Stirrer isn't far behind me. I hear him push them off and their screams echo up to me.

  "The bastard," Wal says. "They're going to have to do that climb again."

  It's hard to find much sympathy for the dead, the worst has already happened to them. I know how resilient souls are. Me, on the other hand… I'm doing my best to avoid that outcome. I get flashes of the machete and the easy way the Stirrer holds the weapon in its hands. The thought of it slicing into the back of my legs is about the only thing that's giving me any strength.

  I manage to reach the next branch, and I don't have any climb left in me. I stagger-run out onto its flat, windy, shuddering expanse. I'm panting and dripping with sweat, my legs rubbery. The edge is too close. I stare around me. In the distance a helicopter circles, looking for something that I suspect is me. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I need to do it here.

  I only have a few moments to catch my breath.

  "Stirrers are different here," Wal says.

  "How so?"

  "The Stirrers here must still inhabit bodies, but in this place between the living world and their city in the Deepest Dark, the bodies are tenuous things. The Stirrers don't fit well. There's a kind of friction of wrongness that exists between the bodies they inhabit and the Underworld."

  "That's good, right?"

  "Not really, they're stronger. The Underworld is much closer to their element and their true form will struggle to escape the flesh."

  Wonderful. Exactly what I wanted to hear.

  But there's no time to worry. The Stirrer's here and it comes at me, waving its machete in the air. Its host body is smoking, overheating. Flesh bubbles almost hypnotically, and ectoplasm the color and consistency of mascara streams down its cheeks. I'm fighting a zombie Robert Smith.

  "You don't belong here," the Stirrer says in a sing-songy sort of voice.

  "Neither do you. Morrigan should never have brought you here."

  The Stirrer shakes his head. "Come the Negotiation he will be the new RM. This will be his kingdom to rule."

  So it hasn't happened yet.

  The Stirrer swings the machete at my head, and I duck. My legs, weak from all that stair-climbing, shake beneath me, but they still have enough spring in them for me to swing up and drive the palm of my hand into its chest. It grunts and something shifts beneath its skin: the true Stirrer within. The form within the form strikes out at me. Its little claws or teeth rend its host's flesh. I tear my hand away. The Stirrer's skin is hot and there's a stinging red welt across my palm.

  It's not what I was expecting. The Stirrer hasn't gone anywhere.

  "Oh, yeah. Stalling won't work for you here," Wal says.

  Now he tells me.

  But the Stirrer is regarding me cautiously, and where my hand touched its flesh is a palm-sized black hole. It backs away. I've hurt it somehow, and I need to press the one advantage I have. I charge the Stirrer.

  It hurls the machete at me, an easy, brutal gesture, and the pommel strikes me hard in the sternum, knocking me off my feet. The Stirrer looms over me and Wal's wings are a desperate blur to my left, as though he's trying to lift me through wing power alone.

  "Get up, get up, get up," he urges, and I try, but it's too late.

  The Stirrer grabs me and lifts me above its head. Smoke streams from its points of contact with my flesh. I can smell myself cooking, but I'm not the only one suffering-bits of its undead fingers are falling away like wet sponge cake and slopping onto the branch.

  It stumbles and curses in an alien tongue, then something collides with it. The Stirrer stops, shakes its leg. Its fingers loosen their grip now, just when I don't want them to. We're a long way up, and the edge of the tree is so near. I can see the city and the dark beyond. I'd very much like to stay up here rather than go hurtling down.

  There's an oddly familiar growl coming from the Stirrer's ankles. I look down and there is Molly. Her jaws are wrapped around the Stirrer's ankles. She looks at me and her expression is like, Well, come on, help me out here!

  I slam my fist into the Stirrer's temple, hard enough that my knuckles crack. It shudders, releases its grip on me, and I fall. I swing out at the branch, grabbing as I go, but my grip is slippery at best. I slide over the edge until I'm holding on by my fingertips, my feet dangling over all that empty space. I get the feeling that if I fall I won't be climbing back up as anything living. Wal's wings are a hummingbird blur again; as though that's going to do any good.

  Molly grabs at my wrist, as gently as she can, and pulls. Together we get up onto the branch and I lie there panting. I reach up and hug her. "Molly," I say. "Molly, I'm so sorry."

  The Stirrer stays back. Bits of it have fallen away, and whatever's left has slipped so that it looks like a poorly made human collage.

  Molly's smiling that beautiful grin of hers. She stays by my side for a moment, then crashes toward the Stirrer, barreling into its legs. The Stirrer topples forward, sliding past me and over the edge of the branch. Its slide slows and Molly leaps onto its back. She starts to burn, but she's everywhere, snarling and biting. The Stirrer's eyes are wide with terror or rage, Molly snapping at its neck. It reaches out for the branch, and gets a grip. Then, with the sound of wet paper tearing, wrist and hand separate. And they're gone.

  I stumble toward the edge.

  I watch Molly and the Stirrer fall away like some sort of flaming comet, rushing to the dark earth beneath us. The earth opens up, or low dark clouds scud in, because they are suddenly out of sight. Besides, I can hardly see at all. My eyes are wet with tears.

  "Molly," I say. "Molly Millions."

  I stare down at the dark where they fell. I'm beginning to understand this place better and what it means to come here. In essence it's just a way of losing what you love a second time. "Maybe I should have let Lissa go," I say.

  Wal's head turns up toward me. "Ah, bullshit," he says. "Think of all the people who have suffered to get you here. Everyone suffers to get here. And you're ready to give up."

  "Maybe."

  Wal sighs. "That's just the Underworld talking. It's going to get worse, but if you want Morrigan to rule here, if you're happy to have him get away with all the killing, then who am I to argue? After all, the best I can get is living on your arm. It's not inhibiting at all."

  Wal's right. I give myself a few more moments at the edge and then I climb again, following the stairs up into more crowded branches. Here, the stairs and the branches intertwine. We climb a tight bundle of fleshy tendrils, and we follow wood
en handholds, hammered into the trunk of the tree, sticky with sap. Upward, always upward, and soon we're on another broad branch.

  And, there, I see my parents. The tree has begun to wrap around Mom and Dad's legs with woody vines rising from the trunk. Mom looks up, her eyes are dull. Death is already settling down her humanity, letting her sink into the tree and the universal thought or whatever it is that exists beyond the flesh and the memory of flesh. Soon she and Dad will be nothing but whispers and light dripping from the roots of the tree.

  It's always faster with Pomps, maybe because we have an idea of what to expect, and we're cool with it. Slipping into some sort of universal truth is so much better than spending your eternity in heaven or whatever. Still, when Mom sees me her eyes widen and the dullness fades away.

  "Steven. Oh, no. I was hoping that-"

  "It's OK, Mom. I'm not dead."

  Mum gives Dad a significant look. She might as well be giving him the crazy signal. Dad frowns.

  "Seriously, both of you. I'm not."

  "Then what in the seven bloody hells are you doing here? The living aren't meant for this place, Pomp or not."

  "I'm looking for Lissa."

  "Oh, the Jones girl! An Orpheus Maneuver, eh?" Dad gives me an extremely wicked look. "You know where she is, love?"

  Mom has always had a greater sensitivity to the dead. We both look at her. Mom lifts her head and breathes deeply. "Oh, but there are a lot of Stirrers on the tree! They're like termites. They're going to be hard to get rid of, and it makes it difficult to… Yes! I can feel her. She's on the next level. She came in fast, which means she'll leave fast. If you weren't here I'd think you were with her." She glances over at Dad. "He was certainly all over her."

  I redden at that. "Yeah, well…"

  Dad winks at me, and Mom sighs. "But Steven, if you are here, it's not bad. It's marvelous, in fact. I've not felt… It's… Well…" Finally she shakes her head.

  I know what she means. It is terrible and marvelous at once. The things I've seen getting here, things not even hinted at from our vantage point at Number Four. It's the sort of stuff you're not supposed to know until you're dead.

  I don't know what I am here in the Underworld, except I'm not that. Definitely not dead, not yet. I kiss Mom's forehead. Her skin is cold against my lips. I'm finally getting the chance to say goodbye, but it isn't any easier.

  "I love you, Mom."

  "I love you, Steven." She blinks. "Get out of here as quickly as you can."

  Dad nods. "Go get her, Steve," he says. "She's a good one."

  "I could try and send you back," I say, and there's a slight pleading tone in my voice.

  "No, I've died once. That's enough for me, Steve. I'd like to say I miss you but that's for the living, and your mother and I, well, we're not living anymore." He smiles, looks over to Mom, and she nods her head-wow, they actually agree on something. "Get her, Steve," he says. "And then, stop Morrigan. I can feel what he's doing even here. He's an idiot. You can't deal with the enemy and not expect grim consequences."

  I look at them one last time, then clamber up the interconnecting branch.

  "Oh, and I'm glad you got rid of that beard!" Mom shouts after me.

  31

  I look down and notice that, not too far below, there are Stirrers with machine guns. One of them points up at me. I hear a distant crack, crack, cracking and the wood near my feet explodes. I get out of the way, quick smart.

  Even more worrying is the helicopter racing over the city toward this branch.

  I don't know how long I've got, but I can hear the chopper drawing nearer. It's a peculiar looking thing, with huge, flat tear-shaped blades that look as though they're made of brass. But the Stirrers in its cockpit are grim- and melty-faced and all of them are carrying guns-old AK-47s. Morrigan's ambitions are huge, but he's still obviously working on a budget. One of the chopper crew points in my direction.

  "That can't be good," Wal says, less than helpfully.

  All I can do is try and climb faster.

  The wind is picking up: salt driven on the air. A storm rushes along the surface of the sea, pelting toward the city. I grin into the wind, feeling somehow recharged by it. Out there beyond the edge of the city the great dark sea is crashing against the shore. Even here things rage and swell and live a kind of life, and my cares fall away from me all at once.

  I'm wearing that smile on my face when I see her, but it doesn't last.

  The One Tree has bound itself around her with rough fingers of bark. Lissa's eyes are milky with death. There is no recognition there. I might already be too late.

  One of her fingers wiggles.

  I touch it, and feel the slightest warmth, just the barest hint of life.

  I don't want to be here and, above all, I don't want her to be here. If I could tear down the Underworld I would. But I don't have that power, just my love and my will. I'm terrified of failing, I'm terrified of succeeding. The only thing I don't doubt are my feelings for her.

  The branch fights me all the way. It grows thorns. It snaps at my fingers with little teeth. I bleed pulling the bark off her, and maybe that's what does it, because the tree gives her up at last. I lay her gently onto the branch.

  I touch her face. There's a flat warmth to her flesh that is almost worse than the cold I was expecting. Her eyes are dull, barely green at all, and nowhere near the startling, quick to fire color that I remember.

  I hold her in my arms. She is still. I can't feel any more warmth. I lower my lips to hers and a force, a presence, a fire passes through me in a brief, agonizing flash. The tree shakes. Something howls, the light dims and I get a vague sense that the whole Underworld has paused. Even the storm seems to be waiting.

  Then Lissa coughs and shudders. Her eyes widen. "Steven?"

  "Lissa." My darling Lissa.

  Her face wrinkles. "Steven, this isn't some sort of cruel joke, is it?"

  "It better not be." I'm grinning again, a smile so wide that it hurts. My hand rests on her cheek; her skin is warming. And her eyes, they're no longer as flat, as lifeless. Shit, of course that could just be wishful thinking-that's gotten me here as much as anything else, even if Wal doesn't believe it.

  "So how do we do this?" I ask her, and she frowns.

  "Do what?"

  "I'm taking you back."

  "There's no… You can't. Not an Orpheus Maneuver," Lissa says. "You'll get yourself killed."

  "That's been on the cards for about a week now," I say.

  "No, you have to leave me here. You can't."

  "Another bloody optimist," Wal says. "How do you two get out of bed in the morning?"

  Lissa's eyes regain some of their gleam. "Who's your little friend?" she asks.

  "Little friend!" Wal snorts. "This woman lacks sensitivity. Throw her back, Steve. There's more fish in the sea."

  "Hmm, I don't like him either," Lissa says. "He's much better as a tatt."

  Introductions are quickly made above the increasingly vocal wind. The dark clouds bunching up near the horizon are sliding toward us fast.

  "I'm getting you out of here," I say.

  "But the thing is that Orpheus Maneuvers always fail."

  "Paradigm shift," I say, then kiss her.

  She kisses me back. Her flesh warms, then burns. I feel her excitement. Her hands are getting busy at the back of my head, pulling me in closer, and I'm holding her face. When we finally pull away she looks into my eyes.

  "I love you, Steven. Find me," she says.

  There is a sudden blinding brightness. I'm on the One Tree alone. Lissa's gone. I'm not sure where, the Deepest Dark or back to the land of the living. I stand there looking out at the Underworld, and stare at all those bodies closest to me, wrapped in tree. Most of them are Pomps. The nearest one is Don.

  "How about a kiss then," he says and grins lasciviously.

  I roll my eyes.

  "Good to see you, de Selby," he says, though he's already slipping into that post-caring d
ead state. "Morrigan. Did he send you here?"

  "No, Mr. D, after he died. Morrigan tried though, and he's going to pay."

  "You make sure he does. I'd just paid off the place in Bulimba and Sam had moved in. Not bad, eh? I spent my childhood in a bloody caravan in Caboolture, and there I was with a classy lady like Sam. She's still alive, isn't she?"

  "Yeah, I haven't felt her here."

  "Good."

  "He'll pay, I promise." I feel that sense of urgency winding up in me again. I need to find Lissa again. And then we'll make Morrigan pay for what he's done.

  "Good on you, kid," he says. "Now get going, there isn't much time."

  There are cries in the distance. Stirrers. I walk to the edge of the tree. Peering over it, I can see dozens of them rushing up the stairs. Bodies tumble everywhere as the Stirrers push them out of the way.

  "I'm not sure how I get out of here."

  "There's really only one way," Derek says. He's standing behind me. The tree has yet to take him. "Make sure you get Morrigan." The bastard has his hand in the small of my back. He hardly has to push at all.

  I tumble off the tree. There are cries, I hear gunshots, but they can't hurt me now. I'm moving too fast. I spin in slow circles as the ground rushes up. It's terrifying, my stomach is a dozen flips behind me, and I think it's so unfair that, even here, my body holds on tight to vertigo.

  "Sorry," Wal says, "sometimes this doesn't work."

  "Now you tell me."

  The ground beneath me opens its great earthy maw and I'm enveloped in loamy darkness, and then I'm out, and once more in the whispering Deepest Dark.

  Lissa's soul is a brilliance in the dark. It coruscates, and I recognize it immediately with a certainty that only years of pomping, and true love, can provide. Oh, how I love her. She's my Lissa, and I'd go through Hell a thousand, thousand times to find her. And if I lost her I would do it again.

  I reach for her soul and it bites me, bites and scratches in a way that no light should. I yowl into the void, but I hold on. The soul is chaos in brilliant form. It is all that is love and hate, it is all that is passion and hopelessness, and madness. It is so definitely madness. But so is what I'm doing.