Falling Apart

by Jane Lovering

  ‘So, what? We pretend that none of it happened? We keep calm and carry on? You realise that’s just a slogan, you’re not supposed to actually do it.’

  ‘But I have to, don’t you see? We can’t afford to start flapping about. Any hint that we know something weird is going on will make people sit up and notice us. We’ve got the best cover of all at the moment – the fact that York Council barely bothers to acknowledge we exist.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re like the Avengers, if the Avengers were invisible and underpaid. I get the picture. Keep functioning, keep up the pretence of normality so no-one suspects we know anything.’

  ‘All our normality is a pretence,’ I said. ‘We’re pretending that I’m completely human, for one thing.’ I pulled on my jacket, pocketed the tranq gun and headed for the door. ‘And we’re pretending that you’ve got a full complement of testosterone, for another!’

  I heard the thump of whatever he’d thrown at me hitting the door as I closed it behind me.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I went to the warehouse where Richard worked. Almost the entire workforce was made up of zombies; it was like watching a computer game seeing them driving the forklifts and stacking crates, all with the slightly jerky, imprecise movements that a rotted nervous system and a careless hand with the Bostik gave. The supervisor – human, of course, which gave me a tiny prickle down my spine – stopped the shift to let me talk.

  ‘So, how are things? Any more problems with the bully boys?’

  The zombies looked around among themselves for someone to speak, and Richard shuffled forward. ‘There’s threats,’ he said. ‘They keep saying they’re going to burn us out.’

  My hand travelled to the gun. I hadn’t even realised I was touching it until the chill of the barrel hit my fingers. ‘It’s just talk; they’re always mouthing off that lot. They daren’t do anything. You’ve got rights.’

  ‘But we haven’t, not really.’ Richard said. He’d assumed the sunken attitude that zombies tended towards, as though their necks had collapsed under the weight of their heads, a kind of prolonged shrug. ‘We don’t come under human laws because we’re … well, we’re dead, aren’t we? It’s not our fault we got that Otherworld infection and everything just keeps going … And the Otherworld lot won’t touch us either. So we kind of fall in the middle, well, slouch anyway, there’s nobody backing us up. ’Cept you, Jess.’

  ‘Maybe I could talk to Zan?’ I glanced around at Richard’s crewmates. Lacking the need to drink coffee or go for a smoke or a loo break, they were standing around the factory floor looking purposeless and a bit lost, rather like a bunch of mushrooms that had just broken surface. ‘All your friends, all of you, could be in danger. There must be somebody who’s interested in stopping it.’

  ‘We tried. But we’re practically indestructible, so they don’t take us seriously; they just mutter something about keeping away from naked flames. It’s the glue, y’see,’ Richard said, somewhat sadly. ‘Goes up like a firework.’

  ‘But, someone has to do something. These bullies can’t be allowed to carry on treating you as though you’re just … just …’ I whirled my hands as I tried to search for an appropriate word.

  ‘Things? We’re treated like that by pretty much everyone, Jess.’ Richard creaked his head around at the warehouse. ‘Don’t need sleep, don’t eat … we’re machines that just happen to be shaped like people.’ There was a tired resignation in his voice that really annoyed me.

  ‘Do you want to stay that way? Maybe you don’t have rights at the moment, but you need to make some and then stand up for them! Without anything falling off, obviously.’

  He looked around again. ‘But how would we do that, Jess? We’re the grunts, doing all the grubby, dangerous jobs that nobody else wants to. We’re, like, invisible. All over the world, loads of us, laying undersea cables, getting rid of explosives left over from the Troubles and all that stuff.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll have a think, all right? Just stay together – they won’t tackle you if you’re with your mates – and I’ll get back to you.’

  Another zombie, one I only vaguely recognised, came forward. ‘We can’t even revolt,’ he said. ‘That’s what they don’t realise. We haven’t got the glands. Can’t do anger or anything. All we can do is moan, and no-one takes any notice of the moaning.’

  In my pocket my phone vibrated. Rachel.

  Why not pop round for a cuppa?

  I looked from the screen to the slightly doddery people in front of me and had the merest flicker of an idea. ‘I think I might know someone who could help you do something about your situation, but it might take a few days … I don’t suppose that zombies have a pension scheme, do they?’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  A few days passed with nothing more terrible than the occasional picture and snidey side-bar remark in the paper. I went on a shopping trip with Rachel that netted me three pairs of cut-price slingbacks and some sturdy underwear; visited the hospital, where my Dad was being threatened with discharge, but was fighting a rearguard action to stay in, since, apparently, the food was far better than my mother’s cooking. I even managed some risqué e-mail exchanges with Sil. Things were, if not looking up, then managing to keep a steady horizon-gaze.

  After another long day sitting in front of the Tracker program while Liam made unwise eBay purchases and terrible coffee, I headed back to the place I still couldn’t think of as home. The house was its normal dimly lit and hushed self, but there was a marked absence of dimly lit and hushed vampire about the place, even when I checked in all his usual haunts – hallway, under-stairs cupboard, cellar …

  ‘Zan?’

  I went into the kitchen. As with all the rooms in Vamp Central it was well, if a little sparsely, furnished with ornate pieces that Zan seemed to have bought from a French medieval house-clearance. Some of the chairs were so elaborately carved that it was like sitting on very hard crochet work. But it was difficult for any room that contained a kettle and fruitcake to ever be really unwelcoming, so this was the place I was most comfortable. The sensation of not having to pretend to understand what was happening, or have a plan, or have to keep my life partitioned, came with me, and stayed for as long as it took to make a mug of tea and collapse in the only chair that wasn’t more fretwork than substance. Once I sat though, with my hands around the warm, if rather floral, china, the cold terror came creeping back, filling my mind with ‘what ifs’ and a scenario that seemed to have been pulled from a horror film, if any horror films had Liam padding around in the background saying ‘I told you so’.

  What am I doing? Hiding a Treaty-breaker? The confusion and the stress and my longing for Sil crashed over my head again, accompanied by that drag in my lower abdomen, as though my soul was trying to escape and get to him. My head hunched forward until my chin nearly rested on my mug, and tears sprang into my eyes. My beautiful Sil. Risking … no, not even risking, he had no reason to suspect any of this would ever happen, just undertaking something that he thought would make me happy. Wanting to give me that little gift of knowledge, a glimpse into the person who had been my mother – to know where she’d been born, her own mother’s name, anything.

  I sniffed, and realised that guilt was rising up inside me and pushing the tears out of my eyes. Why had I made such a big thing of never having known my mother? Why hadn’t I just shut up, accepted that I’d been brought up by two loving, if occasionally overly grammatically correct, parents? Did it really, truly matter who my mother had been? A girl, adrift in a time when nothing was safe, with humans and Otherworlders at war and the future seeming to hold nothing but darkness? Or something else, something darker, something that the government of the day had wanted to keep hidden, to the extent of wiping out her birth records? Whoever she’d been, she’d made one stupid mistake, got tangled up with a demon and … here I was. End of story. Did it really matter
so much that I didn’t know which part of me came from her and which from my ghyst father – my chest which strived for an independent life of its own; my dark hair that, come to think of it, was also a life-form in its own right; my complete lack of adherence to the normal rules of filing? Why did it matter?

  I sniffed again and tried to mop my eyes on my wrist, feeling Sil’s absence stinging on my skin. I wish you were here. To hold me. To let me cry, to tell me stories of your childhood to distract me, tales of your absent parents and the string of nannies and tutors passing through your life, until I feel better about only being lectured on my English grammar and not having to worry about Latin and Greek. To hold me … I stifled the sob that hovered like a demon inside my chest. And this is why it matters. Because I want to know who I am. What I might become, or whether I have already become it – I want to know why my mother was so afraid of the child she carried that she handed her over to people she barely knew and then never visited, never tried to make contact.

  ‘Jessica?’ Zan’s voice came from the doorway. ‘Has something happened?’

  I tried to rein in the tears, to perform some kind of misery-suckage that would recall all these feelings into the neat little box I’d kept them in so far. I couldn’t afford emotion, not when I had so much to hide. I relaxed the white-knuckled grip on my mug. ‘No. I was just …’ I sniffed hard, blinked and tried to pretend that the tears rapidly stiffening my cheeks were nothing. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Hmm. I suggest you stop: it appears to distress you.’ He strode into the kitchen, as unconcerned and poised as a cat, and sat elegantly in one of the more semi-transparent of the chairs, the sleeves of his impeccable jacket along the arms and trouser-leg creases lined up with the spindly white-painted wooden ones.

  I stood up so as not to have to face him, not while my skin was still salty and my eyes were still red. I felt awkward, caught out, as though crying had been declared illegal and Zan was some kind of Tear Police. ‘It’s nothing. Just … life, I suppose.’

  When I looked at him over my shoulder he had one eyebrow raised. ‘How very human of you. To be distressed by a life which, to all intents and purposes, will last a mere blink of an eye.’

  I stared at him. He seemed relaxed, or as relaxed as Zan ever was, like a cat that’s just seen a strange dog walk into the room. ‘I don’t think you can even spell “sympathy”, can you?’ I refilled the kettle and carefully counted the tiles behind the sink to give my eyes a chance to dry up and my mouth to not come out with anything more sarcastic.

  ‘I am afraid that sympathy would be misplaced. The Otherworld does not give space for such emotions; they are a waste of personal resources that are better spent in action.’

  ‘I am not going to start this argument again, Zan. I’m human. I was brought up human and I have human values, whatever my bloodline might indicate, and I choose to stay this side of the line, so you can keep all your Otherworld observations to yourself.’ The kettle pinged and I poured water onto another teabag. I didn’t really want any more tea – I was on the verge of tannin poisoning – but it was useful to have something to do.

  ‘I don’t wish to argue with you.’

  ‘But you are going to, aren’t you? I know that tone of voice, my mother used to use it all the time when I was growing up.’

  ‘But what were you growing into?’ Zan dropped the words so heavily that the surface of my tea rippled under them. ‘Your behaviour is not that of a human, Jessica, surely you can see that? You keep yourself aloof from contact, you refuse to allow memories in that may distress you – I am using your current state as an exception that proves the rule, incidentally, before you try to cite it in evidence.’

  My tea slopped as I spun around to face him. He looked perfectly at ease, hair so precisely parted that it looked as though he’d done it with a set-square, skin smooth as a pebble and his classical profile was so impassive it could have been carved. Yet his words had been incendiary, and he knew it. ‘What do you think Liam and Rachel are, imaginary friends?’

  A gracious inclination of his head dragged his hair down to his collar. ‘You have an Otherworld attitude to friendship; you encourage those who can be of assistance, and any others you dismiss.’ He leaned forward a little, and his demon was rising behind his eyes. ‘Can you truly say that you are there for them in their times of trouble? Or do you forget them when they are no longer in your line of sight?’

  ‘I …’ I put the mug down on the table. ‘That’s bollocks, Zan, and you know it!’ But deep inside me a little prickle of doubt was needling my gut. Did I? ‘Besides, being stuck here with you hovering around like the Dark Angel is not exactly conducive to having dinner parties, and my job … I can’t go out on the piss in case I’m needed.’

  ‘Needed by whom? By your council, of which you purport to be entirely dismissive? By your filing and your paperwork, which you maintain comprises your job?’ Zan’s voice was stronger now; he was assuming the personality of the York City Vamp, the one he rarely needed to slip into. Was he trying to impress me? And if so, why? I knew Zan too well; he was like an ironing board – there, but I wasn’t entirely sure what his purpose was. And now … he was doing the whole alpha thing again, powerful and commanding. And really, really annoying.

  ‘Well, I suppose by your reasoning I don’t come under either heading. Half-human, half-demon, you can’t just claim me for your side when it suits you, Zan. I’m choosing for myself, and I choose to be human and to regard myself as bound by human laws and the human council. If that means I’m condemned to a lifetime of getting excited about new stationery products and the shoe sales, then so be it.’ I whirled around and prepared for a showy exit.

  ‘Your mother agrees with me.’

  And I stopped, dead, with my hand on the door. Every millilitre of my blood had solidified; my heart had slowed under the weight of it. ‘What?’

  Zan stood up – I heard the chair squeal across the tiled floor but stayed where I was, unable to coax my muscles into action. ‘Your mother. We spoke at the hospital. She agrees that you are becoming more Otherworlder with each passing year.’ I only knew he was moving because his voice was coming closer, otherwise he made no sound. ‘We conversed at some length, in fact.’ And now he was right behind my shoulder, a cold presence. Standing so close, in fact, that when I spun round I nearly headbutted him.

  ‘Did you glamour her?’ Her vagueness, not knowing what they’d talked about … The bastard had got inside her head … poked about in her psyche to find out about me; it was the only explanation. ‘Because, if you did, I have to warn you that I shall go straight round to your office with one of Liam’s “special” programs, and every time you switch on your computer you will be faced with more weird-shit porn coming at you than even the average teenage boy could handle. Right?’

  A pause, as though he was thinking this through. ‘So,’ he said slowly, ‘why should you expect me to confess that I had glamoured your mother?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Basic human decency and the desire for truth? Oh, wait a minute …’

  ‘I did not. We merely conversed, and I … put some options before her. Options that do not concern you at present.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t they?’ I turned slowly and must have had my ‘vampire hunter’ face on, because Zan raised his head and took a steady step back.

  ‘Because they are between your mother and me. Or are you assuming that any decision made without your permission is to be disallowed? That is a very Otherworld mindset, Jessica.’

  Well, at least I’d stopped crying and wondering about Sil. My teeth were so tightly gritted that expressing anything other than a snarl was not an option right now. ‘You …’—I groped for words—‘you … vampire!’

  But every word he said was heading, with the screaming noise of a pin-point accurate bullet, straight into my heart. He’s right. Oh God, he’s ri
ght … I’m one of Them.

  A tilted eyebrow. ‘You say “vampire” as though it is a bad thing.’ Zan smiled, or rather he twitched his lips in an expression that never even made it as far as his cheeks. ‘You may want to think about that.’

  It was leave the room or burst into tears again. I chose the ‘leaving’ option.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I looked in through the door. Mum was sprawled untidily on the pull-out chair, covered with a fleecy blanket and emitting occasional lady-like snores. She’d unpinned her hair from its usual careful coiffure, and it coiled in a greying, careless mass around her head and neck, as though an unhealthy wind had passed through the room. Dad lay surrounded by machines that beeped and ticked, and his eyes were open.

  ‘It’s late, love.’

  ‘I know.’ Careful not to wake my mother, I crept around to the other side of his bed and perched on the plastic chair, my eyes tracing the rise and fall of his heartbeat, measured in green waves on a small screen. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘You should try having these things fitted.’ He raised an arm to indicate the various drip attachments and wires that issued forth. ‘If I turn over, it sounds like an Xbox game.’ The lifted hand found mine. ‘What’s the matter, Jessie?’

  ‘Nothing, I …’

  ‘Come on now.’ My father patted my hand. ‘You didn’t come all the way over here just to steal my grapes.’

  What could I say? That I’d come to the hospital in the middle of the night to reassure myself of my humanity? That I needed to know that, out in the real world, people were going about their usual business without vampires and zombies and demons being part of it? ‘Mum’s been talking to Zan. Or, more likely, he’s been lecturing her and she’s been too polite to knee him in the— Well, to tell him to go away.’