One of the senior doctors meets me near the reception desk.
“I’m here to deal with your problem,” I say.
“Thank Christ. We’ve never had to wait this long.”
I can tell. Everyone here is strung out and weak. The Stirrer is drawing their essence away. There’s a vase of dead flowers by the reception desk. The doctor looks at that.
“Not again,” he says, tipping the dead things into a bin. “Keeps happening.”
And there’s no stopping this, until I do something about it. Soon, the sicker, older patients will pass on, and more Stirrers will appear, and more life will be drawn out of the world. It’s reaching tipping point and I’m gripped with a sudden urgency to get this thing done.
“Where is it?” I ask. I hardly need to, I can feel it.
“The Safe Room,” he says.
Out here in the regional areas it can take a day or so before someone is available to pomp a Stirrer. They don’t make a big fuss about it, but most regional hospitals have ways of dealing with their Stirrers.
We walk through the hospital, descending a level by way of a narrow stairwell. With every step, the sense of wrongness increases. The air closes in, grows heavy with foulness.
Another senior doctor’s waiting by a door. He mops at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.
“We’ve had to lock the lower room,” he says, relieved as all hell to see me. “This one is a bit more active than usual.”
I nod, hoping that I look more confident than I feel.
“This is too dangerous,” Lissa says again, though her eyes say otherwise. I’m doing the right thing, the only thing.
The door is marked in all four corners with the brace symbol. My Pomp eyes can see them glowing. They’re lucky, Sam made these markings.
“Sam’s alive,” I say to Lissa.
The doctor looks at me questioningly. He can’t see Lissa, of course. “Sam’s one of my workmates. She’s in trouble.”
This guy doesn’t know the least of it. “Yeah, we all are.”
My fingers brush one of the brace symbols. I swear and yank my hand away from it. “Hot,” I say, blisters forming on my fingertips.
The Stirrer has pushed its will against this door for quite some time. The sort of will that can generate friction is unnerving. Actually it’s downright terrifying. A muscle in my left thigh starts to quiver, fast enough to hurt. Suck it up, I think. You’re here to do a job.
I turn to the doctor. “The moment I’m through, lock the door and refresh those symbols. The brace is weakening.” I toss him a little tin of brace paint. “Don’t open this door until I ask you.”
He nods. I look over at Lissa. “Don’t go in there,” she says.
“I have to.” She looks away, but just as quickly turns back to me. “Don’t let it hurt you.”
The doctor glances at me.
“Sorry,” I say. “Nervous tic.”
“Just watch who you’re calling a nervous tic,” Lissa says.
I open the door, and it closes behind me. Maybe I should just turn around, head back out and think this through. I can’t see the Stirrer, but I can feel it. I realize that with all that talk of trouble and doom, I’d forgotten to ask who was in here, or how big they might be.
Then it grabs my legs with its hands. Huge hands. They squeeze down hard.
Big mistake. My touch stuns it, but not enough. I slice open my palm and stall it, but it’s painful, rough as all hell. This Stirrer’s grown fat on the energy it’s drawn from the hospital. I can feel its pure, wild hatred as it scrabbles through me like shards of glass, or knives slicing, cutting inside me. Almost the moment it’s gone there’s another Stirrer within the body. I stall that too, an easier stall since the soul’s not been as long in the body, hasn’t put down roots. I reach for my knife. I need more blood to do this properly. The next Stirrer to inhabit the body crash tackles me, knocking the breath from my lungs. The knife flies from my hands and skitters along the floor.
I scramble toward it, knocking over a tray of instruments. Sharp things tumble on me, stuff sharper than my knife. I feel around, both hands scratching over the tiles. Who the hell puts blades in a “safe room”?
The Stirrer is up. It’s clumsy but quick, stomping toward me. One of its boots crashes down on my hand and words slur in its unfamiliar mouth: “Not this time.” Then I see the flash of a blade, a cruel, hideous looking mortuary instrument.
I howl as the Stirrer’s boot grinds down on my knuckles. It’s a purer pain than that of a stall. I clench my teeth. All I can smell is blood, and death. Things have never been so clear. It lifts its boot up to put in another grinding stomp and I drive my shoulder into its leg, hard. Something snaps—I pray that it isn’t my collarbone—and there’s another swift stall. Then I’m cutting my hand on the nearest knife I can find … hell, there’s a dozen cutting edges scattered across the floor. I slam my bloody palm against the Stirrer’s face, just as its eyes open.
“Not this time,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
Pure hate regards me, then all life, and un-life, slips from its features and it’s just a dead body.
I limp out of the room.
“Steven, Steven,” Lissa says. “What did they do to you?”
I look at her. I realize just how frightened I was that she wouldn’t be here when I came through the door, but here she is. Relief flows through me. I find myself shaking.
“I’m OK,” I say. “I’m OK.”
The doctor frowns at me.
“Sorry,” I say, “just mumbling to myself again.”
He drags a chair toward me. “Sit,” he demands.
I look at the door out of here, then the chair. Gravity decides for me. Before I know it I have a blanket over my shoulders and a cup of tea in my good hand.
“You’re not going anywhere until I look at that hand.”
“And when will that be? I have to keep moving.”
“When you finish that tea.”
As determined as I am to get out of here, it takes me a while to drink the tea. It’s sweet and too milky, everything I hate about tea, and it’s the most delicious cup I’ve ever had.
“Nothing broken,” the doctor says. “You were lucky. Now let’s look at that palm.”
He winces. Even Lissa winces. “Any deeper and you’d have needed stitches.”
“Yeah, I was in a bit of a rush. I’m not usually so amateurish.”
He looks at the scars that criss-cross my palm, and shakes his head. It’s all part of the job these days, it seems, deeper and deeper cuts, more blood.
I get slowly to my feet. I’m still a bit shaky. “I have to go,” I say, and nod back at the open doorway to the morgue. “Burn the body. As quickly as you can, and any other body that comes down here. These are strange times.”
“It’s going to get worse?” he asks.
“I think so.”
“Jesus, it’s real end-of-days stuff.”
“Regionally, yes,” I say, and when he looks at me questioningly, I shrug. I don’t have time to explain Pomp jargon. “I have to go. Someone will be coming for me, it may be too late already.”
“Thank you,” the doctor says.
I wish I could do more. But I’m only one person, and I’ve got my own problems. I get into the Corolla and head out of town.
“They know where to look now,” Lissa says.
“I don’t know how long we can stay out bush.”
“A few more days,” Lissa says. “We’ll come back when he least expects it.”
And then what? A few more days for things to get worse, for more horrible dreams? “I think he’s going to expect it whenever I go back to Brisbane.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I drive up north, inland across the dry plains. The land is flat and vast, but it doesn’t feel anywhere near big enough to hide me.
We find a caravan park in a small country town, as far from anywhere as I’ve ever been. I pay cash for a couple of nights.
The owner doesn’t look at me, just my money.
It’s hot and dry during the day, and cold at night, with a sky clear enough to see the wash of stars that make up the Milky Way. You can lose yourself in that sky. Morrigan certainly couldn’t get me there.
If I sense a Stirrer—and I do, even if it’s hundreds of kilometers away—I go to it. And every night I use a different sim card and try and call one of the other regions. No one answers. The Regional Managers know what’s going on, Lissa’s absolutely certain of it, and they’re not going to help.
They don’t want this spreading across the sea. They don’t want this in their backyard.
24
It’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 tha
n 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.”
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 16
