The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Read online

  So I keep moving.

  7

  Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean the Hill…”

  I’m sitting in the train heading west along the Ipswich line, out of the city, my forehead resting against the cold glass of the window. People sniffle and cough all around me. The carriage is heavy with the odors of sickness: sweat and menthol throat lollies duke it out. It’s flu season all right, I can feel something coming on myself—or maybe it’s the last remnants of the hangover, combined with the ache of all those pomps.

  I pat my suit jacket. “At least I’m dressed for a cemetery. Do you have any better suggestions?”

  Lissa shrugs. I know she wishes that she did. So do I.

  “The Hill’s the only place I might get some answers,” I say. Problem is, the answers I’m after are just as likely to kill me as save me.

  I try Tim’s work number. Can’t get through. His mobile switches straight to voicemail.

  How do I tell him? I need to warn him. I need to tell him that his mother and father are dead. His voicemail spiel ends and I’m silent after the beep, working my mouth, trying to find words.

  Nothing comes. The silence stretches on. Finally: “Tim, I don’t know what you know. But I’m in trouble, you too, maybe. You have to be careful. Shit, maybe you already know all this. Call me when you can.”

  I hang up.

  Lissa stomps up and down the aisle. People shudder with her passage, burying themselves in their reading matter or turning up their mp3s. She’s oblivious to it, or maybe she is taking a deep pleasure in the other passengers’ discomfort, the dreadful chill of death sliding past life. I don’t know. Our carriage is emptying out fast, though. I find her movement hypnotic. Her presence is tenuous and vital all at once. I’ve never seen a dead person like this. Nor a live one, if I’m honest.

  She catches me looking at her. The grin she offers is a heat rushing through me. My cheeks burn and for a moment my mind isn’t centered on life or death. I’d thank her for that, if this was going anywhere but Hell.

  I’ve fallen in love with someone I cannot have. Someone who isn’t really a someone anymore. How bloody typical. But even this misery is better than the ones that crowd around me, grim and cruel, on that train. At least it’s bittersweet rather than just bitter.

  The train rolls into Auchenflower. The Hill’s presence is already a persistent tingle in my lips like the premonition of a cold sore. Every place has a Hill, where the land of the living and the dead intersect. In Brisbane it’s Toowong Cemetery. I know the place well. Used to picnic there with the family. Lost my virginity on its grassy slopes when I was seventeen. Mary Gallagher. Didn’t last. None of my relationships ever had. I’m thinking of Mary as the train stops at the station. I don’t even know what happened to her. Married, I think, maybe has a couple of kids. Robyn was just the last in a long list of failures.

  I get off the train, Lissa with me, and I’m sure everyone in the carriage behind me breathes a sigh of relief. The train pulls away, leaving a few people on the platform. All of them walk in the opposite direction to me. I’d find it funny, but the nearby Wesley Hospital distracts me. My perception shifts. There’s an odor as unsavory as an open sewer coming from there. Something’s going on in the hospital’s morgue.

  Lissa drifts that way. Face furrowed.

  “You sense it too?”

  “It’s not good.” She coughs as though clearing her throat. “Something smells well and truly rotten, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Stirrers, I think.” I wonder if they’re like the ones Morrigan described, different.

  “Nothing you can do about that now.”

  Yes, but I don’t like it. The air around there is bad and a kind of miasmal disquiet has settled into the building’s foundations: an unliving and spreading rot. Someone hasn’t been doing their job, I think. Who’s left to do it? Who’s going to sort this kind of stuff out? These things can get quickly out of control and then you’re rushing toward a full-blown Regional Apocalypse. Think Stirrers and death in abundance. Civilizations tend to topple in the wake of them.

  I try not to think about it. Lissa’s right, there’s no time. I head in the opposite direction; take the underpass beneath the station and away from the hospital. If I get a chance I’ll come back. I push the hospital to the back of my mind, where it settles uneasily. Nothing good can come of this day.

  My head is pounding again. Then a caffeine craving hits me all at once. It’s a deep, soul-gnawing pit in my stomach. I’m tempted to swing into Toowong, casually order a coffee—a nice long black—and sit on the corner of High Street and Sherwood Road and watch the bus drivers try and hit pedestrians; tempted till it’s a throbbing ache. Now, I’m hurting. The last time I remember talking to my living, breathing mom was over coffee. Both of us had been real busy, like I said—flu season.

  We keep moving through inner-city suburbia, up and down the undulating landscape of Brisbane, swapping the disquiet of the hospital for the jittering energy of the Hill. We reach Toowong Cemetery in pretty good time, though I have to catch my breath. Squat, fat Mount Coot-tha rises up before us like the great dorsal fin of a whale. My eyes burn as though there is suddenly too much fluid within them. Something else is straining to inhabit my vision.

  This close to the Hill, Pomps get flashes of the Underworld. I can hear the great tree creaking. I can even see it. This is why Mount Coot-tha and the cemetery were once called One Tree Hill. For a moment this other view stops me—the tree, a Moreton Bay fig, is spectacular, all sky-swallowing limbs and vast root buttresses. Then Mount Coot-tha’s silhouette returns, marked only by blinking rows of transmission towers.

  A traffic chopper is flying low over the Western Freeway like some predatory bird hunting snarls and head-ons. As we climb the undulations that lead to the hill there’s a hint of the city to the east, gleaming red in the afternoon sun. We’re out in the ’burbs, the beginning of a vast carpet of houses that stretches almost to the granite belt in the west. Hundreds of thousands of homes. But here, it’s old city, Brisbane’s CBD isn’t too far away. It’s close to sunset and I’m still not sure what it is I’m doing. I circle around the base of the Hill, keeping clear of the open areas, and staying as close as I can to the trees among the tombstones. The Hill has multiple nodes: connection points with Number Four. The Mayne crypt is one, but that’s too obvious, with its ostentatious white spire and curlicues, and it’s big and toward the top of the Hill—we’d be too easy to spot. I’m heading to a quieter node, near the place Tim and I used to sneak off to, to smoke.

  “Listen,” Lissa says. She spins around me, gesturing at the lengthening shadows. I’d almost forgotten she was there. We haven’t said a word since we edged into the cemetery. “I’m serious, listen.”

  “I’m listening,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Not to me. To this, the cemetery.”

  And then I’m really listening. I’ve never known a place to be so quiet. Where are the crows? Where are the chattering, noisy myna birds? There’s not a sound, not an insect clicking or buzzing. Even my footsteps in the dry grass seem muted.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Lissa says, right into my left ear.

  I jump. “I never said it was a good idea, but it’s the only one we have.”

  “The only one that you have.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “Head for the hills, not the Hill.”

  “I promise, I’m being careful.”

  “Is that what you call it?” She darts away from me. Runs up the hill and back again. In this light, she’s a blue-stained smear of movement. She’s back by my side in a breath.

  “Didn’t even break a sweat,” she says.

  “See anything?”

  “Nothing. But that doesn’t mean they’re not closing in.”

  “You’re making me paranoid.”

  She swings her face close to mine, her eyes wide. “Good.”

  I find the right tombstone halfway up
the hill, a David Milde, RIP 1896. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but the spot recognizes me. The stone shudders, becomes something more than a mere memorial.

  “Watch yourself,” Lissa says.

  I glance at her. This close to a node, her form is losing some of its clarity. “Maybe you should too.”

  She raises a hand toward her face. “Oh.”

  The node would take her to the Underworld, if it could. But I’m in control here. I wait until Lissa steps back, and then I reach over and settle my fingers on the rough stone, wincing at the electric shock that strikes my fingers on contact. My teeth clamp shut, and I taste blood.

  The cemetery is gone. I’m in Number Four. And it’s not pleasant.

  The air is alive with exclamations: bullet hard. The last thoughts of the dying, before the mind and body scatter.

  There are other Pomps here. Not just Morrigan and Derek.

  The first thing I feel are their deaths.

  Each one smacks against me, and I try to hold onto them, and work through these errant memories. But it’s no good. There’s nothing there. Nothing of use anyway, merely pain, the unsuspecting howls of the executed. Jesus, I’ve been lucky to get even this far. For a moment I envy those gone, that it’s over for them, that they’re not left flailing in the dark. I concentrate, move through the muddy haze of dying minds and then: There are upturned desks, reams of paper scattered around them like the shattered stones of a stormed castle. Mainframes have toppled. And there’s blood, every-fucking-where. My heart’s doing 160 BPM easy. I almost drop out of the node then.

  There’s a man bent over, hacking up blood onto his yellow tie. He’s wheezing, “Fuck. Fuck. This is. Oh—”

  Blood crashes in my vision as a bullet makes a crater in his chest. He lifts his head, and there’s a moment of recognition, just a moment. The bastard even manages a scowl.

  “Derek,” I say. Poor old officious Derek.

  But he’s dead; he falls almost gracefully onto the floor.

  There are no answers here. I have to get out.

  Then a head peers over the desk. Morrigan looks over at me, his eyes wide with terror. “Steven, what on earth?”

  “I needed to find out what was happening,” I mumble.

  “Jesus, Steven, get away from the Hill!”

  “Who’s doing this? Can I—”

  “There’s nothing you can do. We’re being slaughtered. They hit us hard, more people than we first thought, and at the same time as I called you.” He pats his arm, there’s a bloody wound there. Shrapnel scars his cheek. “Steven, you need to get moving. Get away from the Hill and keep away from Number Four.”

  “I need to get moving? What about you? I can get you out.” Morrigan scowls at me, the facial equivalent of the stone you’d throw at Lassie to get her to run away.

  “There’s a Schism—maybe one of the other regions, wanting to muscle into our space. I don’t know, but they’re good.” He fires a pistol over his desk. Someone fires back; woodchips explode from the table he’s hiding behind. “I can’t get to Mr. D. He’s closed himself off. Don’t trust anyone, Steven. Leave your phone on. I’ll call you if I can.”

  Still, I hesitate.

  “Steven, you will go now! GO!”

  I break contact with the tombstone and reality whoomphs around me. I shake my stinging fingers, my heart pounding in my chest, blood streaming from my nose. Everything’s moving too quickly. I drop to my haunches, gulp in air, try and slow my breathing down.

  “Steven? Steven?” Lissa’s voice pulls me out of it. I blink and look up at her.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say. “Number Four’s gone, or soon will be. Morrigan’s wounded. He told me to run, that he’d try to get in touch with me. I can’t see him making it. Lissa, there was blood everywhere.” I peer around the tombstone, careful not to touch it again. There’s nothing, just Lissa and her ghost light. “Morrigan thinks it might be one of the other regions trying to take over.”

  Lissa glares at the tombstone, as though this was its idea. “That’s unheard of. Why would anyone want to shut a region down, Steven? Because that’s essentially what a take-over would do. Regional Managers can be ruthless, but that would be stupid, it’s too much extra work for no gain. And what about the Stirrers?”

  “Maybe something’s changed. Maybe the Stirrers are just taking advantage of the whole thing.”

  “No, things don’t change that much. You don’t understand the system at all if you think otherwise. There’s no advantage to a Regional Manager if they take another region. And then there’s the increased Stirrer activity. That’s been happening for weeks. They’re in on it, somehow. Mr. D would know.”

  I shake my head. “Morrigan’s been trying hard to contact him. No luck. Maybe he’s in the dark as much as we are.”

  “Now you’re scaring me,” Lissa says.

  “I’m scaring both of us. We have to get out of here.”

  Lissa nods.

  “And quietly,” I say.

  “I’m dead.” Lissa gives me a dark look. “I can’t make any noise.”

  “I was just trying to remind myself.”

  We’re as silent as a pair of ghosts as we come down the hill. Easy enough, I suppose, when half of the couple is a ghost. And we’re moving pretty quickly, which is why I almost stumble upon them, and why they don’t see me.

  And this is the first time my fear turns to something else. No fucking way!

  My parents are weaving around the tombstones ahead.

  Not my parents, just their flesh. They’re not moving like Mom and Dad, and that’s the oddest part of seeing them. Mom and Dad, my mom and dad, but they’re all wrong. The creatures that inhabit them haven’t got the hang of the real estate yet. Dad holds a rifle, Mom is speaking into a phone.

  “Stirrers,” Lissa says and I roll my eyes at her. Of course they’re Stirrers—zombies, I suppose, in the common vernacular. The second part of our jobs as Pomps, the things we’re supposed to stop stirring. These aren’t your “Grr, brains” zombies. Nah, that shit doesn’t happen. These are more perambulatory vessels. My parents aren’t infected or blood crazy; Stirrers inhabit them.

  It’s the only way that Stirrers can exist in our world. They were long ago banished from the land of the living, but they want back in any way they can. I’ve heard that if they tip the balance—inhabit enough bodies, get more than a toehold—they might just be able to return in their real form, whatever that is. If that ever happens, we’re all screwed.

  These aren’t my parents. They’re just the place of death. My parents have gone over into the Underworld.

  I’m taking it pretty well. My blood is only partially boiling, I’m only clenching my fists until they hurt, not until they draw blood. I groan as another soul passes through me, another Pomp. Real pain. Someone is hurling souls at me.

  Normally we’re directed to a specific location to physically sight and sometimes touch a spirit. But now, maybe because there are so few Pomps left, or because most of the dead today have been Pomps, they’re actually hitting me wherever I am. These are really violent deaths, and they’re coming hard and fast.

  Those spider webs are starting to grow more hooks. It’s like having a cold, and a constant need to blow your nose—at the start the tissues are soft, but by the end they’re more like razors wrapped in sandpaper—except that the razor burn runs through my whole body.

  On top of that I can now sense the Stirrers. And if I can feel them…

  “Shit,” Lissa says.

  I do a double-take. I look at Lissa—and then to Lissa. “That’s—”

  “Somebody has to pay for this.” She covers her face with her hands, but the rage and the hurt radiates from her.

  Stirrer Lissa strides down the hill, away from the tall white spire of the Mayne crypt, talking on a phone. And she’s walking toward me.

  “The Hill is compromised,” I say at last.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Lissa says, and I’m alr
eady backing away. There’s a distant clattering sound, like someone hurling ball bearings at a concrete wall.

  Great, we’re being shot at. It’s my dad with that rifle. He fires again. I wait for the bullet to hit me, but it doesn’t come. His aim is out, still not used to the body, I suppose. A tombstone a few meters away cracks, exhaling shards of dirty stone.

  “Run,” Lissa yells, and once again, I’m sprinting.

  8

  Two blocks away from the cemetery, after a dash through suburbia—streets filled with jacarandas dripping with blooms, and with enough cars parked on the road that we have some cover—we come across a bus shelter.

  Miracle of miracles! There’s a bus pulling in, on its way toward the city, but I don’t care where it’s going, I just need to be heading somewhere that isn’t here. I’m on it. It’s the first time in my life that a bus is exactly where and when I want it. With what little sense of mind I have left, I realize I still have my pass and I flash it at the driver. He looks at it disinterestedly, and then I’m walking to the back of the bus, past passengers all of whom assiduously avoid eye contact. Ah, the commuter eye-shuffle. I must look a little crazy. I certainly feel it.

  I’m breathing heavily. Sweat slicks my back, and is soaking through my jacket. It’s only the middle of spring but the air’s still and hot. For the first time in about an hour I’m aware of my body, and it’s telling me I’m tired, and hung-over. The adrenaline’s not potent enough to keep that from me forever. Sadly, I feel like I could do with a beer.

  Lissa looks as fresh as the first time I saw her, if you discount the bluish pallor. You’re never fitter than when you’re dead.

  Finally we’ve time to talk with no rifles firing.

  “So why are you back there? And how?” I ask beneath my breath, but it still comes out too loud. People turn and watch.

  “That’s not me!” Lissa is furious, and I can understand. I wouldn’t want someone wandering around in my body, either. But I’m also wondering why she’s so worried. Worry’s a living reaction; it’s not like she needs that body. She is acting most unlike a dead person, but then she has from the start. “That’s not me,” she says again. “Don’t you dare think of that as me.”