and at the same time as I called you.' He pats his arm, there's a bloody wound there. Shrapnel scars his cheek. 'Steven, you need to get moving. Get away from the Hill and keep away from Number Four.'
'I need to get moving? What about you? I can get you out.'
Morrigan scowls at me, the facial equivalent of the stone you'd throw at Lassie to get her to run away.
'There's a Schism-maybe one of the other regions, wanting to muscle into our space. I don't know, but they're good.' He fires a pistol over his desk. Someone fires back; woodchips explode from the table he's hiding behind. 'I can't get to Mr. D. He's closed himself off. Don't trust anyone, Steven. Leave your phone on. I'll call you if I can.'
Still, I hesitate.
'Steven, you will go now! GO!'
I break contact with the tombstone and reality whoomphs around me. I shake my stinging fingers, my heart pounding in my chest, blood streaming from my nose. Everything's moving too quickly. I drop to my haunches, gulp in air, try and slow my breathing down.
'Steven? Steven?' Lissa's voice pulls me out of it. I blink and look up at her.
'We have to get out of here,' I say. 'Number Four's gone, or soon will be. Morrigan's wounded. He told me to run, that he'd try to get in touch with me. I can't see him making it. Lissa, there was blood everywhere.' I peer around the tombstone, careful not to touch it again. There's nothing, just Lissa and her ghost light. 'Morrigan thinks it might be one of the other regions trying to take over.'
Lissa glares at the tombstone, as though this was its idea. 'That's unheard of. Why would anyone want to shut a region down, Steven? Because that's essentially what a take-over would do. Regional Managers can be ruthless, but that would be stupid, it's too much extra work for no gain. And what about the Stirrers?'
'Maybe something's changed. Maybe the Stirrers are just taking advantage of the whole thing.'
'No, things don't change that much. You don't understand the system at all if you think otherwise. There's no advantage to a Regional Manager if they take another region. And then there's the increased Stirrer activity. That's been happening for weeks. They're in on it, somehow. Mr. D would know.'
I shake my head. 'Morrigan's been trying hard to contact him. No luck. Maybe he's in the dark as much as we are.'
'Now you're scaring me,' Lissa says.
'I'm scaring both of us. We have to get out of here.'
Lissa nods.
'And quietly,' I say.
'I'm dead.' Lissa gives me a dark look. 'I can't make any noise.'
'I was just trying to remind myself.'
We're as silent as a pair of ghosts as we come down the hill. Easy enough, I suppose, when half of the couple is a ghost. And we're moving pretty quickly, which is why I almost stumble upon them, and why they don't see me.
And this is the first time my fear turns to something else. No fucking way!
My parents are weaving around the tombstones ahead.
Not my parents, just their flesh. They're not moving like Mom and Dad, and that's the oddest part of seeing them. Mom and Dad, my mom and dad, but they're all wrong. The creatures that inhabit them haven't got the hang of the real estate yet. Dad holds a rifle, Mom is speaking into a phone.
'Stirrers,' Lissa says and I roll my eyes at her. Of course they're Stirrers-zombies, I suppose, in the common vernacular. The second part of our jobs as Pomps, the things we're supposed to stop stirring. These aren't your 'Grr, brains' zombies. Nah, that shit doesn't happen. These are more perambulatory vessels. My parents aren't infected or blood crazy; Stirrers inhabit them.
It's the only way that Stirrers can exist in our world. They were long ago banished from the land of the living, but they want back in any way they can. I've heard that if they tip the balance-inhabit enough bodies, get more than a toehold-they might just be able to return in their real form, whatever that is. If that ever happens, we're all screwed.
These aren't my parents. They're just the place of death. My parents have gone over into the Underworld.
I'm taking it pretty well. My blood is only partially boiling, I'm only clenching my fists until they hurt, not until they draw blood. I groan as another soul passes through me, another Pomp. Real pain. Someone is hurling souls at me.
Normally we're directed to a specific location to physically sight and sometimes touch a spirit. But now, maybe because there are so few Pomps left, or because most of the dead today have been Pomps, they're actually hitting me wherever I am. These are really violent deaths, and they're coming hard and fast.
Those spider webs are starting to grow more hooks. It's like having a cold, and a constant need to blow your nose-at the start the tissues are soft, but by the end they're more like razors wrapped in sandpaper-except that the razor burn runs through my whole body.
On top of that I can now sense the Stirrers. And if I can feel them…
'Shit,' Lissa says.
I do a double-take. I look at Lissa-and then to Lissa. 'That's-'
'Somebody has to pay for this.' She covers her face with her hands, but the rage and the hurt radiates from her.
Stirrer Lissa strides down the hill, away from the tall white spire of the Mayne crypt, talking on a phone. And she's walking toward me.
'The Hill is compromised,' I say at last.
'No shit, Sherlock,' Lissa says, and I'm already backing away. There's a distant clattering sound, like someone hurling ball bearings at a concrete wall.
Great, we're being shot at. It's my dad with that rifle. He fires again. I wait for the bullet to hit me, but it doesn't come. His aim is out, still not used to the body, I suppose. A tombstone a few meters away cracks, exhaling shards of dirty stone.
'Run,' Lissa yells, and once again, I'm sprinting.
8
Two blocks away from the cemetery, after a dash through suburbia-streets filled with jacarandas dripping with blooms, and with enough cars parked on the road that we have some cover-we come across a bus shelter.
Miracle of miracles! There's a bus pulling in, on its way toward the city, but I don't care where it's going, I just need to be heading somewhere that isn't here. I'm on it. It's the first time in my life that a bus is exactly where and when I want it. With what little sense of mind I have left, I realize I still have my pass and I flash it at the driver. He looks at it disinterestedly, and then I'm walking to the back of the bus, past passengers all of whom assiduously avoid eye contact. Ah, the commuter eye-shuffle. I must look a little crazy. I certainly feel it.
I'm breathing heavily. Sweat slicks my back, and is soaking through my jacket. It's only the middle of spring but the air's still and hot. For the first time in about an hour I'm aware of my body, and it's telling me I'm tired, and hung-over. The adrenaline's not potent enough to keep that from me forever. Sadly, I feel like I could do with a beer.
Lissa looks as fresh as the first time I saw her, if you discount the bluish pallor. You're never fitter than when you're dead.
Finally we've time to talk with no rifles firing.
'So why are you back there? And how?' I ask beneath my breath, but it still comes out too loud. People turn and watch.
'That's not me!' Lissa is furious, and I can understand. I wouldn't want someone wandering around in my body, either. But I'm also wondering why she's so worried. Worry's a living reaction; it's not like she needs that body. She is acting most unlike a dead person, but then she has from the start. 'That's not me,' she says again.
