"Are you all right?" Lissa asks.
"Can anyone in that bland suit be all right?" Tremaine says.
I'd be better if he shut up. I've never been a fan of Tremaine, but then again, he's never been much of a fan of me or my family, either. He sees us Queensland Pomps as a bunch of slackers and, sure, I may have gotten drunk at a couple of training sessions, but the guy's about as boring as they come.
"You and your taste." Lissa shakes her head.
Tremaine gives her a smug smile. "Darling, it was yours for a while."
"We all have to regret something, Eric."
I glance at these two-Lissa scowling and Eric giving her the sleaziest, most self-satisfied smile I've seen outside of a porno. Bastard. Oh God, Lissa and Flatty Tremaine!
I'm jealous: bloody burning with it. But there's no time for this. I scan the bus; people are slowly recovering from the shock of the collision. I was the only one who had a moment's warning, and I'm still as shaky as all hell. There's a few nosebleeds, but that seems to be the worst of it. I have to get out of here fast, or someone is going to die. It may not be me, but it's sure as hell going to be my fault. I run for the front door of the bus.
"Have to get out," I say.
The driver's on the radio, calling it in. No one seems to know a rifle was involved. Everyone is shaken but not as disturbed as they should be. The driver waves at me irritably. "No, you're staying on the bus until I say so. Council policy."
Fair enough, but not today. I reach over, turn the release switch. The door sighs open.
He grabs my arm; I tug my arm free, and bolt for the exit.
"What? You! Get back-" I hear him slamming down on the switch.
I'm almost through and the door closes on my leg. It's a firm grip and I'm hanging, suspended by the door. I yank my leg like some sort of trapped and clumsy animal, and something gives because I'm dropping onto the road, the ground knocking the breath from me.
"Smooth," Tremaine says.
"Screw you," I manage, which is stupid because I shouldn't be wasting any of the breath in my lungs. Blobs dance in my vision.
"And ever so charming."
I give him the finger. Tremaine raises an eyebrow. Lissa's watching the bus.
"Get up," she says. "Get up, get up."
Winded, I lie there on the side of the road. Even with the adrenaline coursing through me that's about all I can manage. I stare blankly at the looming city with its skyline of genuflecting cranes. I'm on the verge of slipping into manic, gasping chuckles. The sky is lit up by the city, everything's calm… and I've been shot at-twice-by my parents.
"Get up," Lissa says. "Now."
At last, after what really can't have been more than a few seconds, breath finds my lungs.
"I'm trying." I get very unsteadily to my feet. Which is when the bus driver comes crashing through the door and tackles me.
I'm back down on the road. More cuts, more bruises.
"Get the fuck back in the bus!" he growls, his arms wrapped around my legs.
"No, I can't!" I scramble, kicking and twisting and flailing, to my feet.
We circle each other. He's taking this personally, his face beet-red, his hands clenched into fists. The driver is a big man. I'm not, just tall and thin. He also looks like he might practice some particularly nasty form of martial art that specializes in snapping tall, thin people in two.
"I don't want to have to fight you," I say, mainly because I don't want to have to fight him.
"Then get back in the bus." The way he says it suggests there's no gentle way of getting back into the bus.
He advances, his eyes wild, obviously in shock, or just extremely, extremely pissed off. I lunge to the right, then sprint around the side of the bus. He crashes after me, swearing at the top of his lungs. There's not much room to move-we're hemmed in by traffic, though none of it is moving that quickly, on account of the accident and the show we're putting on. We get around twice; I've got the edge on him, speed-wise, which is kind of meaningless because all I'm going to do is end up running into his back.
There are cars pulling up everywhere. Some industrious and extremely helpful guy has stopped and is directing traffic, and there's a woman over at the crumpled, smoking Echo. She sees me and starts waving at me to come over, maybe to help. I yell at her to get away. Someone is moving in the car, and I suspect that someone is going to have the rifle. Every passing second improves his or her hand-eye coordination.
The bus driver's boots crunch on the gravel behind me. "Get back here, you prick!" the bus driver yells. I glance around to see how close he is. He catches a mouthful of smoke and bends over, coughing. The air is positively toxic. For a moment I worry that he might just drop dead. But at least he's not running after me anymore.
"This is all going so wonderfully," Tremaine says, startling me. I ignore him.
I pull my sunglasses over my eyes and sprint-sneak over to the helpful guy's car, a green hatchback. I feel like an absolute bastard. The keys are in the ignition, which is a relief. I start up the car, and shoot down Coro Drive, fishtailing around the bus, and nearly smash into oncoming traffic. I straighten the hatchback at the last minute, not knowing where in Christ I'm going.
In my rear-vision mirror the bus driver is roaring away at me between coughs, the helpful guy with him. He's not looking that helpful now, and I don't blame him. I feel awful, like I've mugged a nun.
"Was that wise?" Tremaine is grinning at me, now also in the rear-view mirror. I've never seen a dead guy looking so full of himself.
"Shut the fuck up."
"It's so nice to see that you can keep your cool in a crisis."
Tremaine's lucky he's dead already. "Well, only one of us is still alive," I snarl.
Low blow, but true. Tremaine is a prick, and being cruel to him is the least of my crimes today.
"What the hell else was he supposed to do?" Lissa asks him.
They flit around each other in the back seat of the car, two aggressive and luminous blurs.
"Not breaking the law might have been a good beginning," Tremaine says prissily.
Yeah, I could have fled the scene on foot. Not having the police chasing me as well as Stirrers would have been a good idea. But the Stirrers would have caught up with me for sure. I needed to get out of there fast, even if that meant stealing the Good Samaritan's car. I glance back at Tremaine. "Next time we'll follow your plan. Which was… Hey, didn't we already ascertain that you were dead?"
"You're deadest." Tremaine clenches a fist in my face. "That's what you are. Which really doesn't surprise me, you bloody hick Queenslanders."
"Come a little closer, and I'll fucking pomp you, dead man."
"Oh, shut up," Lissa says. "Both of you shut up."
Four blocks later, and heading back into Paddington away from the city, I ditch the car (leaving whatever money I have on me in the glove box for the owner's trouble) hoping that there are no CCTV cameras around. There's nothing to connect me to it. I should be safe, particularly when I shave off my beard, which I am going to be doing very soon. Clean-shaven, I'll look like a different person; certainly not the kind of guy who would steal a car, anyway.
OK, so that's the story I'm running with, because I have to believe something.
I walk another four blocks looking for the right bus. I must be a sight: bloody hands, torn pants and edgy as all hell, glancing up and down the streets, ducking for cover at the slightest noise. Any second I expect a bullet to come driving into my brain or worse, into my back, driving me to the ground where I'll writhe like road-kill. If I'm going to be killed I want it to be as quick and painless as possible.
Finally, the bus I'm after is trundling down the street. Why does public transport travel at such glacial speeds when people are trying to kill you? I flag it to a stop, flash my pass and get on board. The driver barely gives me a second glance.
"Where are you going?" Lissa asks.
"My question exactly." Tremaine's voice drills into my
skull.
"Home," I say, keeping my voice low and spinning toward the dead couple. "Is that all right with you two?"
Lissa slaps her forehead disdainfully, and looks at me like I'm an idiot. "Surely you wouldn't be so stupid as to-"
"Exactly. Surely I wouldn't be," I say. "There's a back way-well, it's actually someone's yard. They're not going to expect me to go home, anyway. They're going to expect me to go to Mr. D."
"He has a point," Tremaine says, which immediately makes me suspect my own logic. "Besides, you can bring Mr. D to you."
"I don't like it." Lissa frowns.
"Any more than you don't like being dead?" Tremaine winks at me. He's certainly taking a bipartisan approach to pissing people off.
"Hey," I say. "That's below the belt."
Tremaine shakes his head, even manages a laugh. "Boy, you've got it bad."
Lissa is looking at me, with that mocking expression I'm getting to know so well. I feel about two inches tall. "He does, doesn't he?"
"Yes, he does, and he's not going to get far with that. And if he thinks so then he's as big an idiot as any of the Queensland crew."
"Stop talking about me as though I'm not here." I glare at Tremaine. "Just tell me how I bring Mr. D to me."
"All right, it's difficult, and location specific, but not… Oh-"
And then he's gone. But not smoothly. Eric struggles in a way that I've not encountered before. As though he's trying to take me, too. I grit my teeth, feel dizzy, shout, "Not yet, you bastard! Not yet."
Half the bus is staring at me, or trying to ignore me, but I can't afford to give that too much consideration. Finally he releases. I feel it as a sort of shocked sadness, as though he can't quite believe it. I have to admit, the man had stamina.
Lissa groans. I look over at her, she's getting hazy. Fading out.
Eric's passage through me must have opened the door a little, or left a sort of wake. It's threatening to take her, too.
"Keep your distance," I say, teeth clenched. I close my eyes and try to find some sort of center to the chaos of Eric's passing. It hurts to delve so deep into the process, like shoving your fingers in the guts of a machine while it's ticking over. I find something.
Yes. There's a calm space there. The door closes, the wake subsides. Now, that wasn't pleasant. Not one little bit.
I open my eyes a crack, Lissa's still here, looking more substantial than she did a moment ago. I'm beginning to wonder why she's sticking around. What exactly it is that's holding her here? She reaches toward me, and then pulls back at the last second.
It taxes her, or whatever it is that is left of her. My body is trying to draw Lissa in, and no matter how much I don't want it to, I can't switch it off. I don't even want to consider the effort it must be taking for her to resist the pomp. She grimaces and sits a seat away from me. The two nearest seats are empty.
"Your nose," she says. "It's bleeding."
I grab a tissue from my pants pocket and wipe my face. Blood, and plenty of it. "Shit. Eric even pomps roughly. You OK?"
Lissa nods. "I'm OK. I'll be joining him soon enough."
"Both of us," I say. "I've lost my one chance of getting in touch with Mr. D."
"Not at all. I know how to bring Mr. D to you," Lissa says. "It's not very pleasant, and will be rather painful."
Of course it will. Messing around with death offers that as a given.
"I need to go home first." And I do. Dangerous as it is, I have to. "I can't keep wearing this suit, and I can't be walking around with this beard." I lift my bloody paws. "And these need seeing to. There's no way I'd be any safer at a hospital."
I remember Wesley Hospital and shudder.
Lissa gives me one of her disapproving stares. "I don't think you should."
"I've got no other choice."
And whether she thinks it's a good idea or not, she has nothing to say about that.
10
The back door hasn't been broken down or even tampered with, as far as I can tell, which is a good sign. And the brace symbol above the door is whole. Another good sign, literally, though it's glowing even brighter now, but that's to do with the increased Stirrer activity. I take a deep breath and open the door.
There's another reason I had to come home, and she almost knocks me off my feet. That's how pleased she is to see me, though not half as happy as I am to see her. I crouch down and give Molly a hug, scratch behind her ears, and apologize for her horrible treatment. She's forgiving.
"Lovely dog," Lissa says.
Molly is sniffing at my heels. She glances up at Lissa, isn't fussed by her being dead. Seems if she's good enough for me, she's fine with Molly. I get Moll to sit then throw her a treat. "She's my best girl, my Molly Millions girl," I say, and rub her behind the ears again. She grins her big, border collie grin.
Lissa snorts. "Molly Millions, hah. You are a geek."
"So, I like Neuromancer. Who doesn't?"
"But, Molly Millions…"
I glare at her, then smile down at Molly. "I just had to make sure she was OK," I say.
And I'm thinking of the time when I brought her home, the tiny bundle of fluff that she was then. Puppies, particularly bright ones, can be trouble but she never was. She grins up at me again, and I grab another treat from the bucket by the fridge. She catches it in one smooth motion, then crunches it between her teeth.
We walk through my place and Molly sticks to my side. I know it's because she can sense how unsettled I am. I can tell no one has been here-there are no unfamiliar presences, and there's certainly no stench of Stirrers. And Molly isn't acting too weird. I stop in the living room.
There's a photo of Dad and Morrigan on my mantelpiece.
Those two have been pomping as long as anyone at Mortmax, other than Mr. D. Both had graduated from Brisbane Grammar and both had had something of a reputation as hellraisers in their day. The stories I had heard from each about the other, and always without implicating themselves, were told with relish, and were usually accompanied with a lot of eye rolling from Mom.
Morrigan is family in the best sense: family you choose. I feel a twinge of worry for him. But that's all I allow myself, I can't wallow in grief and fear. There are walls building inside of me. I don't know how sturdy they are, but I'm unwilling to push them too hard. At least I know that there's an afterlife.
Dad and Morrigan both came from a long line of Pomps; they could trace their line back to the Black Death, but Dad's focus had always been family. Not so Morrigan, death had been his life, and he'd risen in the ranks faster than any other Pomp in the business. He knew more about the processes than anyone except, of course, Mr. D.
But where Mr. D was aloof and, let's face it, creepy as all hell, Morrigan was extremely hands-on. He'd set up the automatic payroll, all from Mortmax Industries' accounts. Before then Mr. D had paid Pomps with checks, and those bastards always took a week to clear, partly because Mr. D's handwriting was so bad, but mostly because banks like to take their time with other people's money. Morrigan had also set up the phone network. Sparrows had been used prior to that. We still used them on occasion but only in trials and ceremonial events, and mainly to humor Mr. D who is decidedly old school. None of us enjoyed the sparrows that much, because they were bad humored at the best of times, and the process involved a little pain-a short message for a drop of blood, a longer one for an opened vein. Blood and pomping go hand in hand, from the portents to the paint used in brace symbols. And without blood you couldn't successfully stall a Stirrer. But the sparrows were different. They insisted on taking it for themselves, and they were pretty savage about it. Like I said, old school.
Above all, Morrigan had actually done something that no other member of the organization had ever achieved: turned Mortmax into a profitable business. There's no money in pomping, and it was the side businesses, the companies that Mortmax owned that made the money-a couple of fast-food chains, a large share in a mining collective. Once Morrigan had started working
that side of the business our pay packets had all increased rather dramatically, which is how I can afford to live the way I do. It's not that extravagant, but I can certainly afford to pay my mortgage and eat takeaway once-well six, maybe seven, times-a week.
Dad never really approved of the changes, though he was happy to take the pay rise. He used to say that pomping was for Pomps and business was for arseholes. I think he was quite shocked by how good he was at the business side of things. Mom often said he was merely proving his axiom.
"Great music," Lissa says, and I lift my gaze toward her in the corner of my living room, checking out my neat racks of CDs. "The Clash, Dick Nasty, Okkervil River. Shit, you've got all the Kinks' albums, and Bowie's. Don't you ever get your music as downloads?"
"Yeah, I'm eclectic," I say as she follows me into my bedroom. "And I don't like downloads, I want my CD art and liner notes."
"I see, so you're not quite geeky enough to do everything as downloads, and not quite cool enough to buy vinyl."
Lissa is already digging around the bedroom. "And it's a relief to see a little mess. Walking through the rest of your place I was beginning to worry that I was hanging out with a serial killer. A serial killer obsessed with peculiar bands, and science-fiction DVDs. A geek serial killer."
"Thank you," I say. "You really know how to charm a fella."
Lissa grins and shrugs.
I grab a backpack and start throwing clothes from my floor into it. A cap, T-shirts, socks, underpants and jeans. Most of them are clean. There's a bottle of water on my bedside table and I throw that in, too.
"What I like about you," Lissa says, peering under my bed, "is that you don't leave your porn stash lying around. Clothes, yes, but not the porn. Can't tell you the number of dates I've-"
"This isn't a date. Could you get out of there… please?" Her face is buried in my cupboard, and I'm trying hard not to admire her from behind. She's dead. She's dead, you idiot. And people are trying to kill you. Now look the other way, dickhead.
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