pistol. 'Be careful with that, it's loaded.'
I look at it like it's a scorpion. Sam rattles off some details about the weapon, which bounce just as rapidly off my skull. All I know is that it's a gun. You point it and squeeze the trigger.
'… You got that?' Sam asks.
'Yeah, um, yeah. Of course.'
'We have to go.' Don shakes my hand roughly and I wince. There might still be a piece of glass in there. Then he pats me on the shoulder. 'You'll be fine.'
'Good luck,' I say, and wave at Sam. The faux smile she gives me is matched for false cheerfulness by the one I'm wearing. We're chimps surrounded by lions, grinning madly and pretending that the big cats are not circling ever closer, and that it's not all going to end in slashing claws and marrow sucked from broken bones.
'We'll be all right,' Sam says. 'You take care, and keep that Lissa with you.' She glances over at Lissa. 'And, you, look after this guy. He's one of the good ones.'
'I will,' we both say.
Don's already back in the van. I step out and slide the door shut.
Sam's off, crunching the gears and over-revving the engine, leaving me coughing on the edge of the road in a pall of black smoke.
15
Think she needs to get that gearbox seen to,' Lissa says. When I don't reply she looks at me more closely. 'Are you OK?'
'I think so.' Twin bars of tension run up my neck. I roll my head to the right and the crack's loud enough to make me jolt. I'm edgy all right. If this keeps up I'll be jumping at my own shadow, which might be sensible.
'Just you and me again, kiddo,' Lissa says.
'There's worse company.' My voice cracks a little. 'Much worse. You've-I don't know what I'd-'
'Don't,' she says, taking a step away from me, and I know what she means. There's no future for us. There can't be. That's not how this works. No matter what else has happened, she's dead, and I'm alive. The divide is definite.
But it's bullshit isn't it, because she's still with me. I'm not keeping her here. In fact my presence should be doing the reverse. She's a dead girl, and she shouldn't be here, but she is. That has to count for something.
'I hope they make it,' I say, all the while wishing that Lissa had made it too. Though if she had, I'd probably be dead.
It's hardly a comforting thought, but there aren't any of those that I can find anyway.
We get a little further away from the road, closer to the rail overpass at Milton. A black car hurtles past, one of those aggressively grille-fronted Chevrolets that must burn through about five liters a kilometer. Its engines howl like some sort of banshee. I cringe, and drop to the ground. The bad feeling-mojo, whatever-coming from the car is palpable and all I can hope is that, at the speed they're going, they don't feel me. And they mustn't, or at least they don't stop. Maybe I'm not seen as a threat.
'Stirrers,' I say, 'a lot of them.' I don't mention that one of them looked very much like Lissa.
Another car follows in its wake, likewise crowded, and this one driven by the reanimated corpse of Tim's father, my Uncle Blake. He's in his golf clothes, and would look ridiculous if his face wasn't so cruel, his eyes set on the road ahead. Once they've passed, I get to my feet and watch them rush up and down the undulations that make up this part of Milton Road.
In just a few moments they've run two sets of lights, nearly taking out a taxi in the process, and are already passing the twenty-four-hour McDonald's and service station, shooting up the hill past the Fourex brewery, leaving mayhem in their wake. Cars are piled up at both intersections, their horns blaring, shattered windscreens glittering.
'Their driving's almost as bad as Sam's,' I say. Lissa drifts between the road and me. She looks tired and tenuous, her skin lit with the mortuary-blue pallor of the dead, and I wonder how much longer I'll have her with me. Not too much, I reckon. I ram that thought down, push it as deep as I can.
'Sam was flying, wasn't she?' Lissa says.
'Don't you mean, 'Miss Edwards'?'
Lissa's eyes flare, but she doesn't take the bait. 'She and Don should be at least a couple of suburbs away by now.'
I hope Lissa's right, but it's out of my control. 'We need to keep moving,' I say. Then, in the cold and the hard inner-city light, I'm suddenly dizzy. I stagger with the weight of everything; all those pomps. The ground spins most unhelpfully.
'You right?' Lissa's hand stretches out toward me but she doesn't touch, of course.
I take a deep breath, find some sort of center, and steady myself. Shit, I need food, anything. A Mars Bar is not enough to keep you moving for twelve hours, and I'd been running, hung-over, and on empty all day. Could I have picked a worse night to get so damn drunk?
'Yeah.' I've started shivering, I am most definitely not all right. 'I need to sleep.' Exhaustion kneecaps me with an unfamiliar brutality. I almost convince myself that I could stumble down to the service station, or the McDonald's-both are open-but it's too soon on the tail of the passing Stirrers. Besides, those few hundred meters seem much, much further now. I need some rest, and a bit more time.
I look at my watch. It's 2:30. Dawn is a long way off. I walk under the train overpass, find a spot hidden and away from the road and try to ignore the smells of the various things that have lived and died, and leaked down here. Then I curl up under my coat, with my head on my bag, which makes a less than serviceable pillow.
'If I don't wake up,' I say, smiling weakly, 'well, see you in Hell.'
'If you don't wake up, I don't know how I'm going to get there,' Lissa says.
'You're resourceful, you'll find a way.'
I slip-no, crash-arms flailing, into the terrible dark that I have no doubt will fill my dreams for the rest of whatever short fraction of life I have left. There's only sleep and running for me now. I'm too tired for self-pity, though, so that's one blessing at least. I wake to the sibilant bass rhythms of passing traffic, with the bad taste of rough sleep in my mouth, and a host of bleak memories in my head. This is the first day that my parents weren't alive to see the dawn. I stamp down on that wounding thought as quick as I can.
My watch says nine, and the light streaking into my sleeping pit agrees with it. On the other hand, my body feels like it's still 2:30 am and I've been on a bender. I stretch. Bones crack in my neck and there's drool caked on my coat collar. How delightful.
'That was hardly restful,' Lissa says.
'For you or for me?'
'I wouldn't call this resting in peace, would you?'
She points at the space around me, and there is blood everywhere. Portents. Stirrers. I'm not surprised but it's unsettling to see all that gore drawn here from the Underworld. It's a warning and a prophecy. Well, I've seen blood before, even if it's usually in the bathroom, or my own, curling down my fist, potent and ready to stall a Stirrer.
'I slept. That's one thing, no matter how poorly. How's my hair?'
'You really want to know?'
'You're chirpy.'
'What can I say? I am-I was-a morning person.'
'Well, you'll be pleased to know I was once a person who hated morning people.'
'What changed your mind?' Her face draws in close to mine, well, as close as she can comfortably get without me pomping her. I'm treated to the scrutiny of her wonderful eyes. My cheeks burn.
My stomach growls. There's nothing like a stomach gurgle to change the subject-and this one is thunderous, a sonic boom of hunger. I rub my stomach. 'I really need to eat.'
Lissa gestures at all the blood. 'Even with all this?'
I nod. 'I can't help it. I have to eat.'
