Death most definite sds-1 Read online

  "Don't say that," Lissa says. "You can't think that way. You mustn't."

  "Well, it's true. You spend your life around death like we do, pomping and stalling Stirrers, and it tends to make you numb. Hell, it numbs you a lot. You know it does. I have plenty of free time, and what do I do with it? I accumulate things. Not ideas, just things, as though they're ideas. Shit, half the reason I gave up at uni was that I decided it was easier not to think.

  "And when you decide it's easier not thinking then you're only a short step away from deciding it's easier feeling nothing. I can't remember the last time I cried before today."

  "I remember my last tears," Lissa says. "Like I said, I never wanted to do this job. I cried whenever I thought about that too much."

  "See, I envy you your pain," I say.

  "Don't." Her eyes hold mine in that electric gaze of hers.

  "But at least you strived for something, even if you failed at it. That's incredibly heroic, as far as I'm concerned," I say.

  I tried my hand at non-Pomp work, the regular trades as we call them. I gave up the mobile and the pay packet, and it just didn't fit. Honestly, though, I really didn't try that hard. What I did learn was that I wasn't really a people person-I'm too much of a smart arse for one thing. Anyway, you get hooked on the pomping, the odd hours, the danger. It's certainly more exciting than working in retail: it didn't matter if your clientele weren't always cheery as there was no follow-up, you didn't have dead people coming to see if their order had arrived, there weren't any secret shoppers, and you never had to clean up the mess (a blessed relief in some cases).

  For me, pomping was the perfect job. There was no real responsibility, and it was good money. I had few friends, other than family, and a few people whose blogs I read. There I was, walking and talking through life, not having much impact, not taking too many hits either.

  The problem with that is that it doesn't work. The universe is always going to kick you, and time's waiting to take things away. If my job hadn't made that obvious, well, I'd deserved what had happened to me.

  In my case it had taken everything at once. And put in front of me the sort of woman I might have found if I'd actually been in there, living.

  I realize that I've been staring into her eyes.

  "Don't fall in love with me," Lissa says.

  Too late. It's far too late for that.

  "You've got tickets on yourself," I say softly. "Fall in love with you? As if!"

  I look up. The bus driver's staring at me. Half the people in the bus are. I didn't realize I'd been talking so loudly. Talking to myself, as far as they can tell.

  "I'm serious." Lissa turns her head, stares out of the window.

  "Too serious," I say, not sure that she is even listening. We sit in silence for the next few minutes until we're a stop away from the heart of Albion. I jab the red stop signal like it's some sort of eject button. The bus pulls in, the doors open and I'm out on the street, in a different world. Restaurants are packed to the rafters with diners. The place is bustling.

  That's not where Don and Sam are, though.

  "Aha," I point west. "I can already feel them."

  We wander down the street, a steep curve, the traffic rushing by, desperate for whatever the night has on offer.

  There are some nice parts of Albion. On the whole it's a ritzy part of Brisbane, but no one's told this bit of the suburb. The restaurants are behind us now, and we're descending from the urbane part of suburbia to the sub. It's no war zone but there's a burnt wreck of a bikie club a few blocks down, and a couple of brothels nearby. You can smell petrol fumes and dust. The city's skyline is in front of us, high-rises and skyscrapers bunched together, lighting the sky. You can't see Mount Coot-tha from here but I can feel One Tree Hill, just like I can feel Don and Sam. They must be able to do the same.

  They're holed up in an old Queenslander which would have been nice, once, with its broad, covered verandah all the way around, big windows and double doors open invitingly to catch afternoon breezes. Not anymore, though. You could describe it as some sort of renovator's delight-if they had a wrecking ball.

  "Absolutely delightful place," Lissa says. We both have a little chuckle at that.

  The corrugated roof dips in one corner of the front verandah like a perpetually drooping eye, as though the house had once suffered some sort of seizure. Some of the wooden stumps the building's sitting on have collapsed. It's a dinosaur sinking into itself.

  "Still looking at about half a million for it I reckon."

  "Real estate, everything's about bloody real estate," Lissa says. "That's the problem with the world today."

  "Well, it's a prime location."

  Lissa grimaces. "If you want easy access to pimps and car washes."

  "The train station is just up the road, don't forget that."

  "And what a delightful walk that is."

  I make my way gingerly up the front steps. One in every three is missing. The front porch has seen better days, too, and that's being generous. The wood's so rotten that even the termites have moved on to richer pastures, and whatever paint remains on the boards is peeling and gray, and smells a little fungal.

  As I reach for the door, something pomps through me, another death from God knows where. Not again. There's more of that far too frequent pain, and I'm bent over as the door opens a crack. I'm too sore to run, so I push it and find myself staring down the barrel of a rifle. I know the face at the other end of the gun, and there's not much welcome in it.

  "Hey," I say. "Am I glad to see you."

  "Stay right there," Don growls.

  "Don't be stupid, Don," Sam says from the corner of the room. I can just see her there. She's holding a pistol and not looking happy. "It's Steve."

  "How'd you find us?" Don demands.

  "Morrigan," I say. "He's alive."

  "Of course he is," Don says, his face hardening. "He's the bastard who betrayed us all."

  14

  Don has old-school Labor Party blood running through his veins. Broad shouldered, with a big jaw that the gravity of overindulgence has weakened somewhat, he looks like he should be cutting deals with a schooner of VB in one hand and a bikini-clad babe in the other. He has the dirtiest sounding laugh I've ever heard. The truth is he's a gentleman, and utterly charming, but two failed marriages might suggest otherwise. After a couple of beers, he slips into moments of increasing and somewhat embarrassing frankness. "They were bitches, absolute bitches."

  And after another couple, "Nah, I was a right bugger." And then, "Don't you ever get married, Steven. And if you do, you love her, if that's the way you butter your bread. You do like women, don't you? Not that it matters. It's all just heat in the dark, eh? Eh?"

  Yeah, charming when he wants to be. Which isn't now. To suggest Morrigan is behind all this is ridiculous. Even I'm not that paranoid.

  Don looks ludicrous with a rifle, even when the bloody thing is pointed at my head. Maybe it's the crumpled suit or the beer gut and his ruddy face. But he's serious, and he hasn't lowered the gun yet. No matter how silly he looks, he can kill me with the twitch of a finger.

  He stinks of stale sweat and there's a bloody smear down his white shirt. There's a hard edge to his face, and I recognize it because I'm sure I look that way, too. It's part bewilderment, part terror and a lot of exhaustion. We three have probably been doing most of Australia's pomping between us for the last twelve hours.

  Sam, on the other hand-even in her cords and skivvy, with a hand-knitted scarf wrapped around her neck, and a beret that only a certain type of person can pull off-looks like she was born to hold a pistol. Sam is what Mom would call Young Old, which really meant she didn't like her. I couldn't say what her age is, maybe late fifties or early sixties. Her pale skin is smooth, except her hands-you can tell she has never shied away from hard work. She grips her pistol with absolute assurance.

  Interestingly, it's aimed at Don.

  We've gone all Reservoir Dogs in Albion, and I a
lmost ask if I can have a gun, too, just to even things up a bit. I'm also wondering if I can trust anyone. Don certainly doesn't trust me.

  "Jesus, Don, put the bloody thing down." Sam jabs her pistol in his face. This could all go bad very quickly. "There are enough people trying to kill us without you helping them."

  "You put yours down first," Don says sullenly. I open my mouth to say something, then glance back at Lissa who shakes her head at me. She's still outside, and out of sight of Don and Sam. There's no need to complicate this stand-off any further. I close my mouth again, partly to stop my heart from falling out of it. It seems I'm getting more familiar than I've ever wanted with the actuality of guns-and it's not getting any more pleasant.

  "On the count of three," Sam says.

  Don lowers his rifle immediately. He's not much of a conformist. "You're right," he says. "I know, Sam. It just got under my skin a bit… the whole damn situation."

  "I have a tendency to get under people's skins," I say.

  "So do ticks," Lissa whispers, but I'm the only one who hears her, and I don't even bother flashing her a scowl.

  Don chuckles. "That's what I've always liked about you." He reaches a hand out to me, and pulls me into a sweaty bear hug. At the human contact I struggle to hold back tears. "Sorry, Stevo. Christ, I've just had a bad kind of day."

  "We all have," I say as he pulls away.

  Sam runs over to me and her hug is even more crushing. She smells a lot nicer though, mainly lavender and a hint, just a hint, mind, of some good quality weed.

  "I'm so glad you're all right," she says.

  If you can call this all right, then you're way more optimistic than me, I think. Still, I hug her tight, and this time I can't quite hold back the tears.

  "It's all right," she says. The bloody Pomp mantra: It's all right.

  Does she think Morrigan's responsible? Surely not.

  "You want a cup of tea?" Don asks, looking a little embarrassed. He nods toward a Thermos in the corner of the room sitting somewhat incongruously next to a sledgehammer, a new one, its handle coated in plastic.

  "Tea?" I say, wondering at the hammer.

  Don smiles ruefully. "I'd get you a beer but, well, I haven't had time to run to the bottle shop."

  Too busy worrying about Morrigan, I think.

  "Tea would be great," I say.

  "I'll have one, too," Sam says, then blinks, staring out the open door. "Lissa? Oh, I'm sorry."

  Does everybody know this girl? So I wasn't a member of the Pomp Social Club, but Jesus, how did I never meet her?

  "Don't worry, Miss Edwards," Lissa says. "It was quick. I've had time to adjust."

  "Miss Edwards?" I'd always known her as Sam, and this throws me.

  "Some people are more polite than others. In your case, most people," Sam says to me. "You were lucky she found you."

  I nod my head. "Lissa's the reason I'm still alive."

  "No surprises there," Don says. "You couldn't piss your way out of a urinal."

  Well, isn't this the Steve de Selby support group. I'm about to say something narky but I notice that Don's hands are shaking, enough that I think he may soon spill the tea. I take the cup gently from his grip.

  "No arguments from me," I say, even if I'm grinding my teeth slightly. "How did you two make it?"

  "They got a little over-enthusiastic," Don says. "I was finishing at a wake-no stir, oddly enough-when some bastard just starts shooting. They missed, and I could see something wasn't quite right. Turns out he was a damn Stirrer. That in itself was peculiar, because I should have felt him. Then I realized he was a Pomp… well, used to be. I recognized him, but didn't know his name, though I've since seen a few I do. I blooded up and touched him, too quick to get some answers, and then all I had was a still body and a rifle. Then I got the hell out of there, once I'd made sure." His fingers brush at his blood-smeared shirt.

  It has to be touch, and it has to be blood to stop them. Death is intimate, and bound in life. And blood and death are entwined. Think about all those ancient tales that mix them up, like vampire myths. Stirrers don't feed on blood, but life, and a Pomp's lifeblood is the only way to shut the gate.

  Death is up close and personal and we're all staring into its face. Which is why pomping can hurt, though death is less traumatic than life. If every pomp was as painful as childbirth, the world would be crowded with dead people desperate to cross over to the Underworld. And they'd damn well want to be paying us more.

  "I got lucky, too," Sam says. "I saw the Stirrer before it saw me, stalled it, took its pistol and got in touch with Don."

  "We were both lucky," Don says.

  Sam wraps an arm around his waist. I look at Lissa, she smiles at me. I didn't know that these two were a couple: one of the many things on the list of stuff that I don't know about my friends, family and colleagues. Don bends down and gives Sam a kiss.

  "I'm sorry about your parents, Steve," Don says. "But there was nothing you could have done."

  I don't know how to respond to that. Was there something I could have done? I run the options through in my mind. I was just as much in the dark as anyone.

  Don changes the subject fast. "So you said that Morrigan's alive?" He looks over at Sam as though to say, I told you so.

  "Doesn't prove anything," Sam says. Aha! So Sam doesn't agree with Don!

  "Last time I saw him, via the Hill, he was in Number Four, and he was wounded," I say. "Then an hour or so ago, a sparrow got a note through to me. I suppose he had a fair idea where I might be. Sparrows are good hunters."

  "A sparrow. One of those inklings of his?"

  I nod. "Yeah."

  Don and Sam exchange looks. "He sent you here?" Don asked.

  "Not here, exactly, just the general direction." I don't know where he's going with this, but I'm starting to not like it.

  "We haven't spoken to Morrigan."

  "Do either of you have your mobiles on?" Lissa asked.

  Sam pales. She pulls her phone out of her handbag, it's a hot-pink number. She flips it open. "Shit."

  "Turn it off," I say.

  It starts ringing, and Sam jumps. We all do. She hurls it at the ground and stomps on it with her purple Doc Martens until it stops ringing and is nothing but bits of plastic and circuitry. But still it looks sinister somehow, and puissant, because we know it's too late.

  Other than Morrigan, we're probably the last three Pomps in Brisbane, the lucky ones, and now we're clumped together. If Morrigan is behind all this…"We have to get out of here, right now."

  And then a dead guy appears in the middle of the room. We're standing in a rough circle. He's tugged this way and that by our individual presences.

  He blinks at us. "Um, where am I?"

  We all look at each other.

  "Queensland," I offer.

  He shakes his head, and looks about the squalid room. "Shit, eh? Queensland. What's this? Am I…?"

  "Yes," we all say.

  "Well, what does it all mean?" He scans the three of us, as though looking for a point of egress. He's about to make a break for it. But I'm not anxious to pomp him, my insides are feeling tender enough. Don gestures furiously at me to do it, but I'm pretending I don't notice him.

  "I don't know what it means. But it's all right," Don says. He winces and then gently touches the dead guy on the back. The fellow's gone.

  "We're all playing our A game today," he says, looking from me to Sam and back again. When we say nothing, he shrugs. "I'll check the back."

  I feel like an absolute shit, but I'm so glad I didn't have to make that pomp. Don's at the back door, peering out, his rifle held clumsily in one hand. He stiffens, closes the door softly and backs away down the long hallway to the living room. "There's someone out there." Don's pale as a sheet. "Couldn't see them, but I could feel them."

  Now that he's said it, I can too. It's similar to the darkness that I had felt around the Wesley Hospital. The air is slick with an unpleasant psychic miasma. It's c
atching in the back of my throat like smoke. Don is looking worse and I'm not surprised: he took that last pomp.

  "Time to use the exit plan, I think," he says, glancing over at Sam.

  She nods and lifts up the sledgehammer from the corner of the room. She looks like some weird combination of Viking god-blonde plaits hanging from beneath her beret-and hippy grandma.

  Sam passes it to me and I grunt, the thing's heavy. Its plastic grip crinkles in my hands. I look at her, confused. How is this part of the exit plan?

  "Steve, would you mind smashing a hole in the floor?"

  "Not at all."

  She points to the middle of the room. "About there would be good." Then she runs to the window, peers out and fires her pistol into the dark.

  It's surprisingly easy to make a hole in the wooden floorboards-they're rotten-though every time I strike the floor, the whole house shakes and I wonder if I'm going to bring it down around our heads. Once the hole is big enough, even for Don, I step aside for the others.

  Don drops down first, grunting as he hits the ground. Sam motions for me to go. I hesitate and she grimaces.

  "Steve, I've got the gun. You go, and now."

  I'm down and running at a crouch. Someone fires, and I'm not sure if it's them or us. I look back and watch Sam drop neatly through the hole. Her pistol flashes. Lissa's with me, and I don't think she could look more worried than she does. She darts away into the dark and is back in a heartbeat.

  "There's three of them. Stirrers."

  The moment she says it, their presence floods me. A foulness stings the back of my throat. "At least three," I whisper.

  The house is musty and muddy underneath, and I'm getting mouthfuls of spider web. No spiders yet. I follow Don through a scrubby little garden and onto the road.

  We don't stop running for three blocks, until we reach Don's brown transit van. Don's bent over, and having a spew. It's the perfunctory vomit of a heavy drinker. I wonder if I'm heading that way, too, since I've been hitting the drink pretty hard of late. Well, that's the least of my worries. Don straightens, wipes his mouth, and jabs his rifle butt at the van.