The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy

by Trent Jamieson

  The answer is standing beside him. Right now this guy doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but I can tell it is dawning on him.

  “What…” his voice fades away. “Am I?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Can’t talk now.”

  I feel bad, I feel positively awful, but I don’t have time for this. I reach over and touch him, if a sensation like pushing your hand through slightly stinging smoke can be described as touching. The pomp is quick, barely an ache. But it doesn’t mean I don’t suffer in other ways. This man shouldn’t have died. Stirrers are messing with the schedule—if it really was a Stirrer in the V8 and not just some guy who didn’t like the way I looked. Once again they’re ending lives before they’re due, adding confusion to an already confusing prescience.

  “Efficient,” Lissa says. “But hardly compassionate.”

  “Don’t try and change the subject by critiquing my pomping skills.”

  Vulture Street is dense with smoke. People are already running to help, stopping a few meters from Lissa and me. Hesitating, because here, the smoke is thicker. Though it’s not only that. I’m Death, and now, having seconds ago pomped someone, I’m projecting all sorts of feelings that those unused to death find threatening. We’re a deathless society in the main. A reminder that this is merely an illusion is always shocking to punters. Of course, it could just be that I’m holding a bloody big scythe made of stone in one hand.

  “Sorry, it’s my job, remember,” Lissa says. “One of them anyway.”

  “What to critique me?”

  “No, finding and teaching Pomps. I’ll admit there’s a critiquing element. But I’m not changing the subject, I never change the subject.”

  “Yes, you are.” I glower at her. I’m good at the glower. Practiced at it. HD is even better. You can’t face down that combined glowering. Well maybe Lissa could, but not this time.

  She shakes her head. “When I see you in trouble, I just—”

  “I know. I feel the same. But try not to get yourself killed.” What the hell are we arguing about? “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “Then could you help me pop my shoulder back in?”

  Lissa goggles at me. “Your shoulder?”

  “Yeah, it’s dislocated. It’s starting to hurt a bit.”

  “Steven! You should have told me sooner.” She grabs my arm, and wrenches with sick-making force, there’s a satisfying pop. Certainly feels better, but I heal quickly.

  “You did that well,” I say. Lissa never ceases to surprise me.

  “Of course I did,” she says.

  I will Mog to become the two Knives of Negotiation. The scythe shrinks, breaks in two. Both knives mumble a quick hello. I slide the first blade back into its sheath beneath my jacket, the second I keep out. It mumbles at me in the baby talk of death. For some reason civilians never notice the knives—just like they never see the dead—the scythe on the other hand…

  We approach the wreck of the car. Within it, what’s left of the driver is tugging at the seatbelt. It’s definitely a Stirrer. I can see the sharp edge of a fractured humerus jutting through a tear in its shirt-sleeve. Even now the Stirrer draws life through itself, an uncontrolled and continuous pomping that sucks the souls of not just the dead, but the living, too. If you’re not braced or a Pomp, hang around a Stirrer long enough and you’re gone, soul drained away, and there’s another Stirrer shambling about, or driving cars at me and mine.

  I turn towards Lissa. She already has her blade in one hand. I fling my arm out to stop her racing past me. “Let me deal with this,” I say. “I don’t want you getting too close to that car.”

  She doesn’t move. “I can handle myself,” she says.

  “And I know that.” I glower at her again. She glowers back. “You don’t know what kind of carcinogens you’re breathing in here.”

  Lissa stomps away and I slide the mumbling blade down my palm, wincing with the pain—no matter how many times you do it the cutting hurts. My hand is dripping, slick with my warmth, the knife cut deep. You need blood to stall a Stirrer, not just any blood, only a Pomp’s will do.

  I reach in to stall the Stirrer and send it back to the Deepest Dark. It clenches a hand around my wrist, careful not to touch my blood. I’ve made a rookie mistake. I pull, but it doesn’t let go. The thing’s got forearms the size of my thighs.

  “He’s coming,” it says, through the torn ruin of a face. Muscles, revealed behind a hanging flap of skin, move like gore-slicked worms. “And she will die first.”

  Nothing too odd there, they’ve all been like this lately. So damn chatty. What ever happened to a groan, or a sigh, or a moan and a hiss of hatred? But this…I’m so over this. “You try and kill her, and I will cut that god of yours from existence itself. Hang on, I’ve every intention of doing that anyway.”

  “Words, nothing but words. You couldn’t stop him before and you can’t now.” The Stirrer chuckles. What the fuck is it on about, and when did Stirrers start referring to themselves as he or she? “He’s coming. And your words will scatter in the winds of the void.”

  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  I swing my knife hand into its face, break a couple of teeth. The Stirrer grunts (that’s more like it) and I wrench my blood-slicked fist free, wriggling my fingers.

  “Talk to the hand, eh,” I slap my palm against its face, and the Stirrer, that alien soul animating a human body, is sent back to the Deepest Dark. I’ve shut the door on this corpse. I check its wrists. Yes, the bastard has a mask symbol—a bisected half circle—tattooed about three centimeters behind his thumb.

  Pushed on by the nearing god, or just driven to brazenness, Stirrers are inhabiting the bodies of the dead in growing numbers. We’ve managed to contain that growth a little with our blood (literally) and the brace symbol: a triangle with its point facing down and a not-quite-straight line bisecting it. But just as we have a symbol to halt them, they have their own: something designed by Francis Rillman. I’ve started calling it the mask, because that is what it does. Hides their presence from us. More worryingly, it reduces the efficacy of our brace.

  A Stirrer marked with the mask can go anywhere it wants, safe from detection, and is pretty much indistinguishable from your regular punter, unless you touch it. Sure, there are other signs; Stirrers are a long while getting used to their stolen body’s muscles, and they tend to lurch a little. But once we could tell a Stirrer a block away just by feeling their presence, tasting their rottenness on the air. Not anymore. Now, if we don’t see them first…well, you don’t want a Stirrer to see you first.

  Work as a Pomp always had an element of danger, but I’m starting to look back on those dangers of old with fondness.

  I slide my knife into its sheath and back away from the smoking wreck. Vulture Street is a chaotic tangle of cars. More like a war zone than an inner-city-suburban street. The screamer’s still screaming. Sirens build in the distance, overture to a different kind of conflict. State officials are rarely happy to see me; I’m too difficult to explain. The guy playing the harmonica starts up again. Where else is he ever going to get such a good audience?

  “He’s dead,” I say to the gathered crowd, trying to sound at once authoritative and shocked and saddened. Lissa’s already got people standing as far away as possible—the telephone pole might topple, the car could explode … again. Neither is likely. I’d sense the possibility of so many deaths. But there’s always the chance.

  That no one wants to question our presence or why I was holding a scythe a few minutes ago doesn’t surprise me. Project enough authority and people are generally willing to accept it. I know I was. Morrigan called it the sheep factor.

  Lissa looks in my direction, and I nod towards the pile-up, something’s stirring there. My work isn’t done yet.

  “Did you actually say, ‘Talk to the hand’?” Lissa asks coming over to me.

  “I might have. Look, I need to stall the other Stirr
er.”

  She grabs my wrist. “Wait. What did you want to ask me, at the lights, before all this happened?”

  “Nothing.” I pull free of her. “I’ve forgotten.”

  Nothing? I’ve forgotten? What the hell sort of answer is that?!

  “Couldn’t have been too important then.”

  “No. Not too important.”

  “You got another quip worked out?”

  “I don’t quip. I—Hey! I thought that was pretty funny.”

  “Go, before it gets away. Talk to the hand … Jesus, de Selby.”

  I wish I could convince harmonica guy to shut up. HD reminds me there is a way. I tell it to be quiet. I pick through the wreckage, hunting the body. The Stirrer’s presence grows in my mind; I follow it, the back of my throat scratchy with the rough scent of the Stirrer. A woman’s already with the screamer, holding their hand, calming them down. The bravery of some people amazes me.

  The Stirrer has crawled about twenty meters away from the road, and is crouched behind a fence in a garden bed—already the flowers are dying. A crow caws surreptitiously from the telephone wires above, jabs its beak down, staring at me with dark eyes.

  The Stirrer’s revealed to me slowly. First a shiny scalp, followed by the shirt—torn and spattered with blood. If you didn’t know any better you’d think it was a man sick and in shock. However, the Stirrer’s anything but. Each second sees it grow stronger even as the world around it weakens and dies: its essence drawn away into the Underworld. As I approach the fence the Stirrer searches frantically through its pockets. Its lip curls in triumph, fingers clutching a pen, I watch it mark its wrist with the mask symbol, clumsily, but it’s enough. Suddenly I can’t feel it anymore.

  Not that I need to.

  With a groan it lifts itself shakily to its feet. The new stirred thing registers me. Its eyes widen, lips draw back in a grimace of hatred, and it holds the pen before itself like a knife.

  But it can barely hold it steady. I knock the pen from its fingers.

  “No you don’t,” I say, slapping the Stirrer gently on the neck with my hand. There’s enough blood on my fingers to do the job.

  Another stall. I lay the body down, walk away from it. The whole street is backed up with traffic, gawkers and people trying to help. The sirens are almost upon us, firies, ambos and cops. All of them racing to this mess. The blue sky is obscured by smoke.

  I call Alex, my contact in the police force, and a good friend—his father, Don, was a Pomp, one of many killed by Morrigan in the Schism.

  “I heard,” he says the moment he picks up. “I’m en route, stay there.”

  “I had no intention of doing otherwise.”

  “You asked her yet?”

  “What?” I don’t really want to talk about this now.

  “You know what I’m saying—had a beer with Tim the other day. You haven’t have you?”

  “It’s not that easy, you know.”

  “Gutless,” Alex harrumphs. “If it was me …”

  “It’s not you though is it?”

  “I’ll be there soon.”

  I call work, get them to cancel my afternoon meeting with Cerbo, I’m going to be a little late.

  The first police car is already pulling in.

  I wave over at Lissa, signal that I got the second Stirrer and she nods. If she doesn’t get on the road to the Princess Alexandra Hospital soon she’s going to be late. You don’t want to leave a soul wandering, it’s poor form, unprofessional. I watch Lissa stomp off to the car, admiring her from behind, wishing I was walking beside her. Regretting the stupid timing of it all. Angry at what’s happened here.

  And if I sound cold, well, life’s full of tragedies—little, big, slow and fast—my people attend them all at the end.

  But what I can’t stand is when they come from me.

  My presence alone shouldn’t lead to death. HD is angry that there wasn’t more slaughter. I’m circling a dozen conflicting emotions at once.

  When is Alex getting here? I have work to do, but it seems Death must wait for someone after all.

  And HD whispers that one day, soon perhaps, his time will come and all the stars, planets and moons will be snipped, snipped, snipped from their threads, and the world run awash with blood. No waiting, just destruction.

  Death. And Death. And Death.

  Shut up.

  I could do with a drink. That thirst provides a counter beat to HD, though one alarmingly similar. We share more in common than I would like.

  I check on the first Stirrer, just in case. Smoke keeps billowing. The crowd keeps its distance. But the corpse in the car doesn’t move again.

  It just burns.

  4

  It takes me even longer than I had expected to extricate myself from that mess and return to Number Four, Mortmax’s office space on George Street in the city. But it can’t be helped. Alex had done his best to get me out of there quickly, but an exploding car, five vehicle pile-up, multiple deaths, and a guy seen holding a scythe right next to it all means he can’t fast talk it away.

  Though I’m certain I’m not the first person to stand around West End with a scythe. Should be more of it, if you ask me, and fewer buskers. Alex doesn’t mention my haircut. So, Tim isn’t on the phone to him at all hours with updates then.

  I shift into the office, no time to walk across the slow curve of Victoria Street Bridge, instead I step from one bit of earthly reality to another in an instant.

  Smoke, sirens and that awful harmonica—I’m beginning to think the “harm” in harmonica has nothing to do with harmonics—are traded for the gentle hum of my computer, the distant murmur of a busy office and the constant background creaking of the One Tree that overarches the Underworld. Pieter Brueghel’s “The Triumph of Death” hangs in my office. I’m not feeling that triumphant today, and even the painting’s gaudy cheerfulness can’t compensate. I walk to the curtains behind my desk and throw them open.

  Windows to Hell and earth meet at the corner of my office, a trick of supernatural architectural genius that continues to astound me. The Underworld looks pretty dark and dismal today, a complete contrast to the brilliant blue of Brisbane’s sky, the traffic down below moves sluggishly, but so do the cars on George Street. Nothing much going on in either world but the day-to-day life-unlife activities.

  The light of Hell has been worrying me lately. I’ve been watching it run down. Not sure what it is I am doing wrong. I’ve had to move the pot of daisies given to me by Madeleine Danning, East European RM, (RIP) over to the earthly side, there just wasn’t enough light for them streaming in from Hell.

  I close my eyes and lean my head against the cold glass. It throbs in time with the creaking of the One Tree. The deaths of thousands pass through me via those in my employ. Pomps successfully made all over the world. The World Pulse shifts subtly with each death, while remaining pretty much the same. Births keep coming into and falling away from that gestalt beat. And part of me follows each death closely, taking a quiet delight in it all. Another part shudders, wounded.

  I’m not sure which part I am—if there’s a real me, or if there’s nothing more than these two poles of perception. I know it’s an important question, but I dare not think about it too much. There’s madness in those kinds of thoughts—and I have enough in me already.

  Lissa was right, I could have been a bit more compassionate with the poor bastard I pomped today. I wonder how he’s faring in the Underworld, if he’s already started his slow march to the One Tree, or if he’s elected to stay a while and play at the shadow life of Hell—there are always plenty of souls that do, though the Tree has them in the end.

  Punters, they live and die oblivious. Maybe it’s better that way. When you’re born into a Pomp family you don’t get the choice. You’re raised on death, and even if you decide to become a Black Sheep, and work at something other than pomping, you’re always going to be aware of the battle going on, and you’re never going to shake the memories of th
e hundreds of funerals you attended as a child.

  I knew there was an afterlife from the age of three. I knew my parents sent people there. I thought it must be OK. After all, it was where everyone ended up.

  But when I asked my dad just what it was like, he’d said it wasn’t very nice. I’d pressed him to explain, and eventually he had.

  Dad wasn’t into sugar coating.

  I liked my bedroom didn’t I? Yes. But did I like it when I was told to go there because I’d been naughty, or I didn’t want to go to bed? That was what the Underworld was like. Any place where you were sent whether or not you wanted to go wasn’t very nice.

  Like an office. Like a career where you attend thousands upon thousands of downfalls every day, and where underlings call you, not out of respect or desire, but habit.

  Of course, I’ve learned it isn’t as simple as that. Nothing ever is.

  I have an intimate relationship with the Underworld now, and Dad was sort of right. We don’t have a choice over our birth or our death—not really—but we have a choice over what we do in between. It’s fundamental, and obvious, but after my parents and most of my friends were murdered, I’d moped around as though the world owed me something. Fair enough, a natural response, except most people aren’t Death. I’d had to snap out of it quick smart.

  And I don’t think I would have if it hadn’t been for Lissa and Tim.

  My phone shudders out a text in my pocket to the tune of Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”—I’ve got my nineties nostalgia on today.

  It’s Lissa.

  Made it! Time to spare.

  But I knew that. I have an Avian Pomp, a crow, checking up on her as she walks through the big glass door of the main entrance—at a distance of course, I know how she feels about me spying on her. Yeah, it’s creepy, but she’s my girl and I like to know she’s safe.

  She doesn’t look like someone tried to kill her less than an hour ago. She’s everything a professional Pomp should be. Admirable posture, neatly dressed, face the very picture of compassion. You’d have to notice the scars on her hands to know there is a war going on. We all have those, but she has more than most. She’s so damn good at her job.