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 than 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."
"You don't know the half of it."
The cop goes back to his sedan. The back end is dinged up badly but it still looks driveable. The radio's already screeching with something or other. He says a few things into the handset and looks set to drive away, but doesn't. He comes back to me and shakes my good hand.
"Good luck." He looks at me, grimly. "Yeah, and I'd prefer it if you didn't come back through my town again. Not if you're bringing this kind of trouble."
"No problem," I say. "Trouble's probably going to come anyway."
"Thought as much. Anything I can do?"
"Run, if you get the chance."
He nods. He doesn't look like the sort who would run. Lissa's waiting in the car. "That was close."
"You're telling me." I start the engine. God, how I want to kiss her, but that's not going to happen.
We drive for hours, heading to the coast, me pushing the car as hard as I dare. I'm running but I'm not sure where.
I stop at a deserted truckstop. While I'm washing my hands, and splashing water on my face, cleaning off as much of the sweat and blood as possible, I think about what needs to be done. I have to bring this back to Morrigan somehow. I can't keep running, and Morrigan is sure to find me eventually. If that prick were here right now, I'd-
I look up, and Morrigan's walking out of a cubicle. I blink and he's still there. I scramble for my gun.
"You really should think before you start wishing for things, my boy." He's wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The tattoos of sparrows on his arms are no longer bloody. The last time I saw him-wounded and frail-couldn't be a greater contrast to this Morrigan before me. I have never seen him looking so strong. He almost glows. Wholesale murder does wonders for the complexion, it seems.
On the other hand I'm pale, washed out, and what fingernails I have that aren't broken are dirty and black with blood. I wave the pistol in his face. "Get out of here!"
"Why are you so frightened? If I really wanted to kill you right now, you'd be dead. All in good time."
I steady the pistol, aim it at his face. It's one thing to know that he's behind all this, another entirely to hear it from his lips. I hesitate.
He blinks. "Are you going to shoot me with that?"
I pull the trigger. Nothing happens. Morrigan laughs dryly. "You always were such a stupid little fuck. You will see my messenger soon, just so you know how serious I am."
He's gone before I release the safety. I feel Number Four-I feel the Underworld-open then close.
Lissa's through the wall, her gaze swinging this way and that. "You're shaking."
I am, fear's running through me. I want to cry. I want to hit something. "Morrigan was here. How the hell did he do that?"
Lissa grimaces. "Morrigan is Ankou. He can shift."
"Shift where?"
"Anywhere he wants to."
"I thought that was an RM thing."
"It takes some effort, but Ankous can do it, too. Besides, his powers are increasing. That bastard really kept you in the dark. And I didn't feel anything, not until he was gone. He must have been waiting. You should have called for me."
"And what could you have done except put yourself in danger?"
Lissa shrugs. "I could have been here."
I try Tim's phone. No answer, it just switches through to his voicemail. I don't leave a message, there's no point. He's in trouble, he has to be. Lissa suggests that he might just have his phone switched off, but even she looks worried.
We head down the coast, driving until I'm too exhausted to drive anymore which is far too soon, but I know that I'm going to wake up with the car wrapped around a tree if I don't stop. I pull into the first motel in Noosaville with a vacant sign, not caring that I look a sight, though the bored teen at the counter hardly glances at me as I pay for a room.
I'm exhausted, but manage to have a shower.
Steam fills the room. Tim's in trouble, he has to be. I've been out here for days and I still know so little, except that Morrigan doesn't seem to have a lot of difficulty finding me. If I stay out here, there's no one to help Tim. How could I ever face Sally again?
The truth is, Morrigan can kill me whenever he wants. It's three o'clock in the morning and I'm standing in the doorway, shaking, after another dream of bicycles. Even here I can feel it-the Stirrers building in the west and the south. I've had as much rest as I'm going to get.
"We have to go back, now. I can't spend another moment out here."
Lissa nods. "This was never going to be easy, Steven. But what do you really know?"
"That this has to stop. I'm learning nothing out here, except that Morrigan can get me."
So much for escape, it really was a bad fit. I'm a Pomp, death is calling me, and the rough madness of the Stirrers. Maybe that's what Morrigan expected, maybe he knew I couldn't keep away for long. "We have to finish this."
"It's going to be tough, going back."
"Yeah. But what else can I do?"
"I'm worried about what it's going to do to you," Lissa says. "I don't want to see you hurting."
"Hurting more than I am now?"
Lissa nods at last. "I guess you're ready. It's time to find Mr. D."
I grab my backpack-it's already packed-and open the door.
Lissa stands there. The Stirrer.
"We need to talk," she says.
25
My knife is in my belt. I can get it out in a moment. I look Lissa-I mean, the Stirrer-up and down. It doesn't seem to be armed.
"Well?" it asks.
I can either fight and run, or step back from the door.
I le
t the Stirrer in. She/it is unarmed and walks quickly by me and sits on the bed. The room shifts with her presence-the life in it starts bleeding away. I can feel all those poor microscopic creatures that fill any space on the earth dying. A silent shriek fills the room.
Lissa fumes at her body, and the Stirrer either ignores her or can't see her.
My eyes dart between the two of them. My Lissa, and this facsimile. Its presence startles me. This is a first, a Stirrer not trying to kill me. Just having her here is unsettling enough. They're Lissa's eyes, but they're not. The mocking wit has been replaced by a hatred that is at odds with her words.
"Morrigan wants you back in Brisbane. The killing's over with. He says it's time you returned."
This immediately rings false. I have no position of power to negotiate from.
She must read this in my expression. "He needs you back, Steve." The informal address is wrong and its callous eyes narrow. "He says it has to stop, for the sake of the region."
"I don't believe her," Lissa says.
Neither do I. Her presence itself is a continuous nexus of death. As long as this Stirrer and its ilk exist, the dying cannot stop-it can only accelerate.
"I don't believe you," I say to Stirrer Lissa. I can see that this is going to get confusing very quickly. I'm so used to waiting for Lissa's opinion. And that's just what he's given me, a deal dressed in the most persuasive face possible for me. The bastard has wrong-footed me.
"He wants to negotiate?" I don't know why, but my words send a shudder down my spine. I move toward the door.
"Yes." Then Stirrer Lissa realizes what I'm doing. She gets up from the bed, but it's too late. "You little prick!"
I dash over the threshold and slam the door shut then mark it with the brace symbol. At once it's hot to touch. It will take a while for her to break through.
She's swearing on the other side of the door. But not as much as my Lissa.
Then I'm in the car, rattling down the road. Heading away from the motel as fast as I can.
"I couldn't stall her," I say.
"Why not?"
"Because it's you."
"It's not me," Lissa says. "It isn't. Everything that it remembers, everything that it knows-that I knew-contains nothing of the me that you know."
"I know, you're right. But it's you."
"Oh, Steven. I could kill you."
Well, I couldn't kill her. Not even a malevolent copy of her. Not ever.
We're on the road to Brisbane. Stirrer Lissa was right, it's time to negotiate, but not with Morrigan. No matter the pain, it's time to talk to Mr. D.
We drive south down the Bruce Highway, heading through the lightening landscape toward Brisbane. The flat plains on either side of us are broken only by the warty ruptures of ancient volcanoes, now silent. It's a tired country, and an old one, and I know what it feels like.
My brain is somewhat similar, my thoughts worn down, broken only by the sudden adrenal jolt that I'm actually doing this, crashing toward the last place any sane person would want to. There's a fair bit of traffic going the other way, people already starting to flee the city. I shake my head at the folly of that, even if it's a lesson I've only just learned. You can't escape death. It has a habit of following you.
We're in Brisbane early in the morning before peak-hour traffic-before even its first suggestion, just trucks and taxis on the road-and I get the feeling that it's not going to get too busy. The souls of the newly dead are hitting me: an altogether different and unwelcome traffic. They're stale and prickly and every one of them turns my stomach. Each has felt the touch of a Stirrer. I wonder if Sam is still out there, and how she might be feeling, having had to deal with all this urban pomping virtually alone.
I head to the inner-city suburb of Toowong. It wasn't so long ago that I fled from here, though it feels like an absolute age. I park the car in a side street, under a drooping poinciana tree, slip on my backpack then walk to the CityCat terminal on the river and wait for a ferry. This is the most convenient place, Lissa tells me. I don't want to telegraph my movements too much, though I already suspect that Morrigan has more than a good idea about where I am.
As we sit on the dock waiting, I sketch an upside down triangle on the bench, pick at a scab until it bleeds and mark the triangle with my blood. Anything to make a Stirrer uncomfortable.
"Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck?" I ask Lissa, because there's never a moment that's too dark to talk cartoons.
"Mickey Mouse. I can't stand Warner Brothers cartoons."
"Shit, are you serious? You can't be serious." So those badges aren't ironic. You can never tell.
"I love Mickey Mouse," she says, tapping the badge on her sleeve. "Finest fictional creation of the twentieth century."
"Finest creation of the-Oh my, you seem to have forgotten Batman, not to mention Superman. What's Mickey Mouse got besides a whiny voice and big ears?"
"Universality," Lissa says. "No Mickey Mouse, no Disney, no manga, no anime. Besides, he rocks."
"He's a bloody wimp. I can't believe anyone actually likes Mickey Mouse, well, anyone above the age of four. Now, I'm a Bugs Bunny man. He's like some sort of trickster god."
"He's just Brer Rabbit."
"That's like saying Firefly's Mal was just Han Solo. He wasn't."
Lissa rolls her eyes. "There's no point in having this conversation with you. You're too much of a nerd."
I'm just nervous as hell, that's what I am. There's a CityCat coasting in, the pontoon rocks with its approach. The blue and white catamaran's engines hum; its forward lights blink. "At least I don't like Mickey Mouse. Next you're going to tell me you don't like the Simpsons."
"Well… Nah, just kidding."
The CityCat docks, and we get on. I nearly buy two tickets-even now it's hard to escape the habit, the belief that she's actually there. It's early and the CityCat's almost empty, but there are still some passengers, all of them looking a little startled by the hour, which is odd. People up at this time tend to be annoyingly bright and chirpy. I wonder if they're feeling what I feel. Being this close to a Regional Apocalypse it would make sense. Unprotected, even the chirpiest of the chirpy would start to present with symptoms of fatigue and despair. I sit out front, and the cat pulls away from the pier. It slides toward the city, the skyline brightening in the distance.
It would almost be a normal day except there are bodies floating in the river. As I watch, someone topples from the edge of the CityCat and what's left of their soul burns through me. No one even notices.
Lissa points to a metal tower on the side of the river across from Toowong. It looks like a lighthouse but is actually an old reconditioned gas-stripping tower. It was used to clean coal gas for the city, stripping it of impurities, but now it's just a landmark on the West End side of the river. "That's where we need to go to get at Mr. D," she says. "I can feel it."
And looking at it, I know she's right. The tower has a sort of gentle gravity-it draws the eye, like Lissa draws the eye. This is why we had to come back to Brisbane. There's a certain density of souls in the city that the rest of Queensland doesn't have. The population here is big enough to make such a place possible. I can't believe I've never noticed it before. Now I find it hard to look at anything else. It's the tower or Lissa. Both entrance and terrify me.
"Why are you sticking around?" I ask. She tilts her head at me. "I mean, how are you sticking around? You should be gone already, even with the binding. Everybody else is gone."
"The Underworld is pulling at me all the time," Lissa says, "but I don't want to go. I'm a Pomp, and I know what I'm doing. I know the tricks, there's all manner of stalls. The binding is just one of them."
I'm wondering how I don't know this. I wish I'd never bought into Morrigan's philosophy. There was so much I just didn't bother learning. I'd been too busy doing nothing, earning money, not really caring where it had come from, and moping after Robyn.
"But that's only part of it," she says. "There are two things holding
me here. Hate-I really want to get the bastard who did this to me-and something else."
"What's the other thing?" I ask.
"You."
The city has never looked more beautiful than it does now. I smile, and Lissa's smiling too. She's never looked more gorgeous. Ah, I tumble so fast, but this is different. I want to hold her hand, but I can't. I want to wrap my arms around her, and I can't. She's all I want but to touch her would destroy her, and take away the little that we have. This perfect moment is nothing but a lie.
Lissa coughs. "You've got that whole geek-cool thing going on, like Cory Doctorow or-"
"Who's Cory Doctorow?"
"Science-fiction writer, and cute."
I don't know what to say about that. So I just say nothing, pull my jacket tight about me, shove my hands deep in its pockets and wait until we get to our stop.
We turn our backs to South Bank and head toward the tower in West End. There's hardly a soul about, though someone's swimming at the little fake beach there by the river. The tower's a half-hour tramp along the bank and it's still a good walk away when it starts to rain. And it's not just rain. I can't believe that I didn't see this coming.
Brisbane is beautiful in the rain, and it doesn't rain nearly enough. The city's been drying up for decades, so I feel kind of mean-spirited cursing it, but this rain is something else. It's the fiercest downpour I can remember. The sky's so dark, and my vision so limited, that it could be the middle of the night. But even then I'd see more clearly, because there would be streetlights.
The wind builds quickly as we walk, growing from breeze to gale to something else, the river churns past us, black as the sky. Storm-tossed things crash past us: outdoor furniture, rubbish and signage. Every step toward the tower is a struggle.
"This isn't normal," Lissa says.
I look at her. "It used to be. This is about as close to a Brisbane storm as I've seen in years. But it feels wrong."
We just grin and bear it, and I find myself almost knocked on my arse on several occasions, but it isn't enough to stop us. • • "So they've built a fence around it," I say. "A high, rattling, shaking in the wind, fence."
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