right.'
He hangs up. Lissa and I are both looking at him suspiciously.
'Don,' he says. 'I spoke to him, too. He took some convincing, but he's swinging around to Princess Alexandra Hospital. Sam's on her way to Ipswich. I'm going to use the Hill and get to the North-Cairns and Rockhampton. If we want Queensland to keep going we need to do this.'
'What about the rest of the country?' I ask.
'I'm trying to arrange some support from other RMs, Suzanne Whitman in the U.S. for one, but there's a hell of a lot of trouble getting calls out. It's not easy, but I don't think anyone wants a Regional Apocalypse. That doesn't matter-I want you to do Wesley Hospital.'
A prickle runs up my spine. The place had tasted terrible yesterday. It's not going to be any better now.
'You'll be a target,' Lissa says to me.
'Weren't you listening, Miss Jones? We're already targets.' Then Morrigan grabs my arm. 'Be careful.'
'I always am,' I say, and almost believe it.
We part company, I don't know how he's going to make it down to the Hill. It's probably better that I don't. I look at my watch: five minutes until the next bus.
'I still don't trust him,' Lissa says.
'That's your call.'
'I want you alive. I want to see you through this. It's all I've got left.'
'You don't know the man.'
'Neither do you.'
That hurts a little. I think of all the parties, the time he got me out of jail for some stupid misdemeanor involving beer and a fountain in South Bank. 'Yes, I do.'
I'm walking toward the bus stop when another voice stops me.
'Mr. de Selby, I need you to come with me.'
'Shit,' Lissa says.
Shit indeed.
'There doesn't need to be any trouble,' the police officer says.
17
He's a young guy, no older than me, and tall, though hunched down, maybe self-conscious like me about his height, or maybe because he has a bad back. But I don't care either way because he is an officer of the law, and here I am on Mount Coot-tha, my house a smoking pile of wood, having stolen a car (well, borrowed a car, and only for a little while) and my own car having exploded. Oh, and I'm not happy to see him, that is a gun in my pocket. Shit, I'd forgotten about that. I consider my options.
'Just why do you need me to come with you?' Maybe I can talk my way out of this.
'I think you know why.'
Honesty seems the best policy. At least the one most likely to end without bloodshed.
'I have a gun in my pocket,' I blurt out. His face immediately tenses. 'I'm going to lie down on the ground. You can take it from me, I'm not going to put up a fight.'
'Just pass it to me,' the officer says. 'Handle first. Slowly.'
I do what he says, I'm in enough trouble already. It's all I can do to stop my hand from shaking.
'Do you want to handcuff me or something?'
'Do I need to?' He's got a no-bullshit sort of expression. I shake my head.
Well, this is about the worst thing that could have happened. At least I don't have to wait for a bus. Every cloud, right?
I'm bundled into the back of the police sedan. It smells like pine disinfectant. The seat is immaculately clean, though someone has still managed to scrawl phalluses deeply into the headrest.
The car starts up.
'Hell of a day, eh,' he says, passing me back the gun. I hold it uncertainly. This is not how I expected it to go down. 'I put the safety on your pistol, Mr. de Selby, I'm amazed you didn't blow off your foot. Do you even know how to shoot that thing?'
'I-'
He doesn't seem to care that much, just keeps rolling on. 'Don sent me. I'm Alex.'
'Don sent you? Thank Christ! You know Don? You know about Pomps?'
'Half the force does, mate.' He glances back at me through the wire. 'So who's the bastard trying to kill my old man?' I didn't know that Don had a son. Another Black Sheep.
Lissa laughs. 'Oh, he's Don's boy! Heard he was cute. Now the rumors have been confirmed.' I look at her in disbelief and she winks at me lasciviously.
'You're not out of the woods though,' Alex says. Glancing at him through the rear-view mirror, I can see a lot of Don in him. The lantern jaw, the brilliant blue eyes. He's the sort of person who should be going through all this, and probably would have gotten to the bottom of it by now. Me? All I have is a passing acquaintance with mortality and a crush on a dead girl. 'Stealing that car wasn't the brightest thing you could have done.'
'Someone was trying to kill me.'
'Yeah, like I said, not the brightest thing, but ballsy, all right. Find out who's behind this and we can make it go away. Right now, though, you're on your own, and pretty much regarded as Brisbane's, if not Australia's, biggest sociopath.'
'I stole the car, yes,' I say, 'but that's it. I didn't have anything to do with the rest.'
'I know that, Dad's told me. It's going to take time for people to cotton onto what's happening. And none of it's been helped by most of the bodies disappearing. Regardless, there's nothing we can do about this. This is your domain, and totally beyond our jurisdiction.'
'But people have died. They're after your dad, too.'
'Yeah, I know, which is why I'm going to help you-though this is entirely unofficial.'
'I don't have much time,' I say.
'I know,' he says. 'So where can I take you?'
I tell him, and five minutes later we're there. I get out and thank him.
Alex grins. 'Don't worry about it. Just remember to keep the safety on that pistol-until you need to use it.'
I watch the car pull away. 'First break of the day,' I say. 'And it only took until 2 pm.'
'Yeah,' Lissa says, as we walk through the hospital grounds, heading straight for the morgue. It almost feels like coming home. 'But what are we heading into?'
We both have a fair idea. The Wesley's feeling even worse than it did yesterday. Bile's rising in my stomach. My body's already reacting to this place and the creatures it contains.
And it gets worse as we get closer. A park borders Wesley Hospital on one side, the train station on another. Coronation Drive is nearby, I can see the tall jacarandas that line the river. The Wesley is a private hospital but a big one, with new works always being constructed. Cranes and scaffolding generally cover at least one side of the building.
It should feel like a place of healing, not this sick-inducing death trap.
'Thank God,' says an orderly, a fellow I recognize. His eyes are wide and wild. I can smell his fear. 'Where have you lot been?'
'Busy, John. Busy.' I don't have time to go into the details.
'At least we have these,' John says. He lifts his sleeve, there's the bracing symbol tattooed on his arm. It's a good idea. Most orderlies working the morgues and mortuaries have them. You only need to see one Stirrer, and feel its impact on you, to change your mind.
'How many?' I ask.
'Seven.'
I swallow uncomfortably. I've never seen that many Stirrers together in my life. This is bad, really, really bad.
