“Yeah. Where did all these guys come from?”
“Pending Regional Apocalypse,” she says, matter of fact, and shoots another Stirrer in the head.
“Not anymore.” I lift my hands, a motion perhaps too cinematic, too contrived, but I’m new to this shit. “Get out,” I snarl at them, and my voice is louder and stronger than I remember it.
The Stirrers turn toward me, and they howl. It’s a cry of distilled rage, a sound too much like the one I made in my fight against Morrigan. They are many, but I am Death here. I am the master conduit of this region, and I understand what that means at the most visceral level. I really do, and that almost shocks me to a stop. But the momentum’s still building, and it’s that momentum that takes me.
One of the Stirrers, Uncle Blake, still in his golf gear, raises a gun and fires. The bullet passes through me. It hurts, but then the hurt is gone.
“It’s too late for that,” I say. “Far too late. You didn’t get what you wanted. You got me.”
Oh, and they have my Pomps. I call them now and they come crashing down George Street, where another wave of Stirrers has gathered. The crows are pure death, as powerful as anything I have ever encountered. We are here. We are here, they caw. They beat at the sky with a thousand midnight-dark wings. For a moment I’m viewing the world through thousands of eyes, hearing the whooshwhoosh of wings finding rough purchase in the air. Amazingly, I’m dealing with the vertiginous vision easily.
The crows descend in a storm of claws and beaks, and every Stirrer they touch is stalled.
It’s hard keeping them under control. These aren’t human Pomps, they’re easily distracted, and the way they stall these bodies is different, more violent. It is a steady tearing of flesh from bone. But there are so many that the Stirrers can’t keep up, they can’t fill bodies fast enough. And the crows are taking their toll.
I can taste the meat, feel it pulling away from dead bones. It should turn my stomach but it doesn’t. These crows are mine. I am so intimately connected to them that this act, this devouring, seems natural. I wonder if this is what Mr. D had referred to as the Hungry Death.
But it isn’t enough. Number Four is full of Stirrers, and the region itself, from the Cape to the Bight, is far worse than that. There are hundreds of them throughout the country. I look over at Lissa.
“So, are you open to becoming a Pomp again?”
“I want a raise,” she says without hesitation. “A big one.”
“Sounds good to me.” I grab her hand, and transfer my essence into her, my fingers tingling as energy runs down my arm. For a moment I feel like I’m not just touching her flesh, but her soul again. It’s frighteningly intimate. And the transfer is two-way, I feel something of her in me, something that gives me strength.
“Hey,” Tim says, free now. “I want to help, too.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you sure?” I’m not sure I really want to share that experience with anyone else, just yet.
“Just do it. Now. Do whatever the hell it is you have to do before I change my mind.”
I glance at Lissa. She nods. We’re going to need all the help we can get.
I reach over and hold his arm. The ability slides into him. He seems to fight it for a moment—a lifetime of Black Sheepdom I suppose—then gives in to it.
There’s usually much more ceremony than this, not to mention contracts to be signed—and a bit of gloating, after all he was a Black Sheep—but we don’t have time. Now, I have two Pomps. It’s hardly an army, a once-dead girl and a Black Sheep, but I feel my strength increase, and the Stirrers are pausing, staring at us with their flat, undead eyes.
I open myself up to the Stirrers in Number Four, and I pull them through me. It is like nothing I have ever felt before. It is terrible and gorgeous at once. It is life, and it is life’s ending, and there’s so much wonder, so much pain, so much joy. Because death-like life is the contradiction and the certainty. It is the terror and the inescapable truth. And I embrace it.
I blink.
The Stirrers in Number Four are gone. The bodies are gone. Is that it? I think. Surely that can’t be it.
And then it tears through me, worse than any pomp I’ve ever performed, because there are hundreds of souls, not just from here, but from all across the country, carried to me by the force and the will of the crows, the souls of Stirrers and people. Lost souls, angry souls, souls desperate for absolution, souls gripped in terror or madness, and I take them all because I am Australia’s Death. I direct that raging torrent to the Underworld. I realize why a Regional Manager needs all his Pomps, and why he is so fragile without them. This is hard and awful, and utterly necessary.
I’ve stopped a Regional Apocalypse, but at a cost. People all across the country have paid with their lives. The Stirrers worked as fast as they could to turn people. There are hundreds more dead than there should be. Now I’m paying, because this dying business stops with me.
How could anyone want this? How could anyone kill for this?
Tim and Lissa grow paler by the moment, their lips bloody and cracked, but I’m taking most of it. I have to. This could kill them, and it may yet.
The Stirrers come first and each one is rough, a howling soul hurled into the abyss. But they’re soon gone, all of them banished from my region. After them are the usual deaths. The misadventures and illnesses, the pointless tragedies as slow as cancer or as abrupt as a gunshot. It’s all that dying darkness which the world holds up at the end though, of course, it’s not the end. Not by a long shot. There’s so much more. Every stage is precious and discrete, I understand that now. But there is continuity, and the responsibility of that begins and ends with me. I infiltrate the worlds of the living and the dead in a way I can hardly believe is possible.
And it’s a dreadful agony.
Then I’m in a different space. If still feels like Number Four only it’s different, somehow. Darker, colder, the only light a sickly green.
Stirrers surround me in their true form, narrow-faced, sawtoothed. Their vast emptiness is palpable and insulting, and all of a sudden I know them a little. Better than Morrigan ever could, deal or no deal.
I enter the dialog of their existence, see their world and ours through their eyes. They are old, older than death itself. I’m slammed with an epiphany. To them, the living world is the aberration, the new thing. They are not so much invaders but the usurped. Their time passed so long ago, but they refuse to acknowledge it. I could almost respect them for it if they didn’t hate so desperately.
They cannot think of anything but our destruction. For two billion years at least they have focused on it. And we are but the latest opponent in what has been such a long campaign for them.
This is just the beginning.
Now I know why they were so eager to deal with Morrigan, why they sought such a disruption to the order of things, and that it wasn’t just to cause mayhem.
Something is coming. Something big and dark—rising out of the darkest depths—and it was ancient before life began. I know at once that the Stirrers worship it and fear it in equal measure. It is drawing near, and I know that it has been here before.
In that moment of utter clarity, I look up, and it is not the ceiling of Number Four I see, but a space, an inky desolation through which howls a wind as cold and bleak as any I ever encountered in Hell. My body clenches, reacting against this place. My newly possessed power slides around me, sheathing me from this realm’s touch, but even that is not enough to take the cold from it, nor the terror from what I see.
An eye the size of a continent rolls toward me in its orbit.
Its vast bulk strains against the dark and I cower beneath its alien scrutiny. There is a part of my brain that starts to lock down, a part of me that wants to curl up into the smallest ball it can and never look into that dark again.
But I hold its gaze for a fraction of a moment. The god’s endless hatred and cruel hungers crash against me, but I do not quail, even as every bit of
me chills. This is the creature that the Stirrers serve, the beast that their death and destruction feeds. Why have I not been told about this? It’s one more thing to add to the misinformation that is my life.
The Stirrers call to it, and it shrieks back, a long sharp cry that sets reality rippling. Although I can see it clearly, the god is still so far away that my mind cannot fathom it. I am Death, but I am nothing compared to this. And it is coming.
But it isn’t here. Not yet, not today.
I snap back into the land of the living.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone but when I wake, Lissa’s looking down at me and squeezing my hand.
“Where were you?” Lissa asks.
Tim’s not far behind her, looking sick with worry and exhaustion. “You right, Steve?”
Maybe I should be asking him that.
I blink. I feel like I’m newly born or newly dead. Everything is tender. But that’s not all of it. The world itself is clicking along at a slightly different pace … or am I? “I went everywhere,” I say. “And I saw what’s crashing toward us and it’s terrible.” I realize that I’m on my knees. There’s a lot going on in my head, so many thoughts spinning tight orbits around each other, so many terrors. And there’s so much to do.
For Christ’s sake I’m holding a Death Moot in December. What the hell do you do, or even wear, at a Death Moot? But that is for later. Right now I can stop running. “It’s done. For now. We’ve won, I guess.” I touch Lissa’s face. I could never get sick of that contact. “You’re alive. We did it. We made it.”
Tim clears his throat. I glance over at him.
“Mom, Dad. Did you see them?”
I shake my head. “They were gone.”
Tim nods his head. “You tried though?”
“I didn’t have much time.”
“Yeah.”
“Morrigan’s gone,” I say. “He paid for what he did. I made him pay.”
Tim seems satisfied with that, and it’s all I can give him. Lissa helps me get to my feet. I’m not that steady on them. She lets me hold her, and it feels good. Everything about her feels good.
“You’re even cuter alive, you know,” I say.
Lissa arches one eyebrow, her lips twitch. “Do you ever take anything seriously?”
“My hair. I take my hair way seriously.”
“I hate to say it, but I think you’re thinning on top.”
Tim snorts. “She’s right, you know. I didn’t want to say anything but…”
“Really?” Shit, I know that baldness is hereditary, but I’d been doing so well.
Lissa glances over at Tim, then me. “Nah … Maybe.”
“You are such a bitch.” These two are going to be trouble.
“Aren’t I adorable?”
And she is, and I’m staring into those green eyes, and there’s still all that je ne sais quoi stuff going on, and I think there always will be, if we get a chance. If this job, and everything else, gives us a chance.
I hold her face in my trembling hands, and then I’m kissing her. There’s so much to be done. So much to absorb, to rage against and mourn the passing of. All of that confusion is inside me, churning madly, demanding attention, and I can’t pretend it isn’t.
But I get that moment, that kiss. And it’s a start.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You only ever get one first book. And, being the first book, I could fill it with a book’s worth of people to thank. So here’s the stripped-back version.
Off the bat, I’m in no way the first to play with Death. This book is very much a fusion of my love for Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Deaths, and Charon from Clash of the Titans, not to mention Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse. All of these have left a wonderful and, no doubt, influential impression.
Now to the people I know.
Thanks to Marianne de Pierres for getting the ball rolling. Thanks to Travis Jamieson and Veronica Adams for reading early drafts, and to Deonie Fiford for pushing the book to the next level, and giving support at the right time.
And of course, there’s my brothers and sisters in writing, ROR. They’re the best writing group you could ever want, really.
For the last stages, a big thank you goes to my publisher Bernadette Foley, my structural editor Nicola O’Shea and my copy editor Roberta Ivers. You’ve helped make this book better than I thought it could be.
And a thank you to every bookstore I’ve ever worked in, and the wonderful people I have worked with. Thanks to everyone at Avid Reader Bookstore (and the cafe) for being amazing, and for putting up with the least available casual staff member in the universe (particularly Fiona Stager and Anna Hood). And a massive thank you to Krissy Kneen, and to Paul Landymore, my SF Sunday compadre.
Oh, and there’s Philip Neilsen at QUT, my mate Grace Dugan, and Kate Eltham at the QWC, and the SF Writer’s group, Vision. And the city of Brisbane, with which I have taken some liberties … I really better stop—well, not yet.
Thanks to my family, always supportive. And finally, to the one who puts up with everything, and who has never doubted me, Diana, thank you, my heart.
BOOK TWO
MANAGING DEATH
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
EMILY DICKINSON
PART ONE
THE SHIFT
1
There’s blood behind my eyelids, and in my mouth. A knife, cold and sharp-edged, is pressed beneath my Adam’s apple. The blade digs in, slowly.
I’m cackling so hard my throat tears.
I jolt awake, and almost tumble from the wicker chair in the bedroom. And I really didn’t have that much to drink last night.
Dream.
Another one. And I’d barely closed my eyes.
Just a dream. As if anything is just a dream in my line of business.
These days I hardly sleep at all, my body doesn’t need it. Comes with being a Regional Manager, comes with being Australia’s Death.
And I’m a long way from being used to it. My body may not need sleep, but my brain has yet to accept that.
But it wasn’t the dream that woke me.
Something’s happening. A Stirrer … well, stirring.
Their god is coming, and they’re growing less cautious, and more common: rising up from their ancient city Devour in greater numbers like a nest of cockroaches spilling from a drain.
Christ.
Where is it? I scramble to my feet.
Unsteady. Blinking, my eyes adjusting to the dark.
Stirrers, like their city’s name suggests, would devour all living things.
They’re constantly kicking open the doors between the lands of the living and the dead; reanimating and possessing corpses in the hope that they can return the world to its pristine, lifeless state.
It’s the task of Mortmax Industries, its RMs and Pomps (short for Psychopomps) to stop them and to make sure that the path from life to death only heads in one direction. We pomp the dead, send them to the Underworld, and we stall Stirrers. Without us the world would be shoulder to shoulder with the souls of the dead. And Stirrers would have much more than a toehold, they’d have an empire built upon despair and billions of corpses.
But sometimes the serious business of pomping and stalling can get lost in all the maneuvering, posturing and backstabbing (occasionally literally) that modern corporate life entails.
Work in any office and that’s true. The stakes are just a lot higher in ours.
My heart’s pounding: fragments of the dream are still making their rough way through my veins.
For a moment, I’m certain the monster’s in the room with me. But it’s a lot further away.
Lissa’s in our bed: dead to the world. I don’t know why I’m surprised at that. After all, me wandering in here drunk an hour ago didn’t wake her.
She’s exhauste
d from yesterday’s work. That’s the downside of knowing how things are run, of having the particular skills she has. I feel guilty about it, but I need her to keep working: finding and training our staff. As well as pomping the souls of the dead, and stopping Stirrers from breaking into the land of the living.
Lissa’s heart beats loud and steady. Fifty-five beats per minute. But it’s not the only heartbeat I hear. They’re all there, wrapped inside my skull. All of my region’s human life. All those slowing, racing, stuttering hearts. They’re a cacophony: a constant background noise that, with varying success, I struggle to ignore. Mr. D says that it becomes soothing after a while. I’m a bit dubious of that, though I’ve discovered that stereo speakers turned up loud can dull it a little; something to do with electrical pulses projecting sonic fields. Thunderstorms have a similar effect, though they’re much more difficult to arrange.
Someone dies.
It’s a fair way away, but still in Australia. Perth, maybe. Certainly on the southwest coast. Then another: close on it. The recently dead souls pass through my staff and into the Underworld, and I feel a little of that passage. When I was one of the rank and file it used to hurt. Now, unless I’m doing the pomping directly, it’s only a tingling ache, an echo of the pain my employees feel. So that I can’t forget, I suppose.
At least Mortmax Australia is running smoothly. Though I wish I could take more credit for that. Our numbers are low after the bloodbath that occurred just two months ago. But with my cousin Tim being my Ankou, my second-in-command, master of the day-to-day workings of the business, and Lissa running our HR department and leading the Pomps in the field, our offices have reopened across the country. It seems there are always people willing to work for Death. And we’ve found many of them. Some from the old Pomp families, distant relatives or Black Sheep who’ve decided to come back to the fold. But most of them are just people who had heard things, whispers, perhaps, of what we’re about.
Who’d blame them? The pay’s good after all, even if the hours can be somewhat…variable.
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 26