backfoot.'
'I'm not so sure. Tremaine said we should contact Mr. D.'
'Let me tell you about Eric Tremaine. He's a bit of a tosser but, of course, you know all about that.' She chortles. 'I don't know if you can totally trust anything he has to say. Me, on the other hand…'
Tremaine must have really had it in for me. Sure, I'd let down the tires on his car at a convention last year, but it had just been a bit of fun. Maybe that was one of the reasons; other people had found it a lot of fun too. After all, it was how Tremaine had gotten the nickname, Flatty. 'One of my reasons for breaking up with him was that he was too negative.'
'It's hard to be upbeat when you've just been killed,' I offer. I can't believe I'm coming to the guy's defense.
Lissa glares at me. 'You're telling me that?'
Yeah, that's me, Mr. Sensitive. 'I'm sorry,' I say.
'I still agree with Don,' Lissa says. 'You need to get out of here. Out of Brisbane altogether. And out of mobile range. This is Queensland, there's got to be lots of places like that. Morrigan knows he can't let the Stirrers grow in serious numbers. He wants to be the new RM, and if he's going to become part of the Orcus, he needs to keep the Stirrers in check. Leave it up to him. I think you have to take yourself out of the picture for a while.'
'I know a few places that-'
'No, they have to be places you don't know, towns that Morrigan isn't going to look.'
She's right. And Queensland is perfect for that. I could jab my finger at a map of the state with my eyes closed and find a hundred of them. Once you get out of the south-east corner or away from the coast, most of the country is hot and dry and empty.
People get lost there all the time. Often they're never seen again. I find some cover after sunset, and try and rest while Lissa keeps guard. I wake from bad dreams to the dark.
'I have to call Tim,' I say.
We stop at a payphone in a park near the Regatta Hotel. I grab the handset and pause, disturbed by what I'm feeling in the air.
They're out there in the dark. Stirrers, stumbling through the night. At first they'll gather in the deserted places, the quiet places, and when there are enough of them together they won't bother hiding.
If Morrigan doesn't get on top of this soon, there will be a lot of suicides over the next few weeks, a lot of unexplained behavior. Bodies will disappear from morgues, people will see their deceased loved ones walking in the street, or wake with them in their bed. And there will be no joy in the occasion, because they are not loved ones, just something that possesses their memories: an imperfect and deadly mimic.
Stirrers are voids. They will turn a house cold, and they will swallow laughter. They are the worst aspects of time only sped up and grown cruelly cunning. Bad luck follows them.
They'll keep their distance from me, if they can. If they have a chance they'll try and kill me, from as great a distance as possible, with a gun or in a hit and run. They can sense me, but I can sense them as well. And I'm more practiced at it, and I've only just had to face off seven of the bastards in the Wesley. You could say my palate was refined.
Which was why I could tell that the man pushing the swing in the park was a Stirrer, even from a few hundred meters off.
I slide my knife across my palm, wincing a little. And then I come up on him casually, trying not to look like he's where I'm heading. It works for a while.
He finally feels my approach and turns, but now I've got up quite a head of steam. The Stirrer runs from the swing set toward me, but he doesn't quite inhabit the body properly. After all, people spend the first couple of decades of their life coming to terms with their bodies. It's one of the most obvious ways of telling them apart.
Their flesh will be bruised, the nails and hands will often be dirty. The longer they stay in the body the less clumsy they become, but there are limits. They will never attain the kind of grace that even a relatively clumsy person has-this isn't their universe.
The Stirrer slips, then gets to his feet. I grab his back, and he wrenches away, so I tackle him, a perfect round-the-legs tackle. My hand brushes cold flesh.
The Stirrer rushes through me, and it is like swallowing glass. I push myself away from the motionless body, my chest heaving.
'Rough stall?' Lissa looks at me with concern.
I nod, some stalls aren't too horrible and some are like a punch to the stomach. This was the latter. Jesus. Normally I would have called for a pick-up, someone to take the body and dispose of it, but that's not an option, now.
The Stirrer opens its eyes, sits up: sees me. Its panicked expression is almost comical. It lets out a groan and struggles to its feet, legs shaking. The blood on my hand must have dried too much to have a permanent effect.
I reopen the wound, fresh blood flows.
The Stirrer stands there, unsteadily. Its eyes dart left and right of me, looking for some sort of escape route.
'Fuck off back to the Underworld,' I growl, and slap my hand against its face. The body drops. This stall doesn't hurt as much. The Stirrer hadn't inhabited the body long enough to get a good hold on it, but there's more pain to it than there ought to be.
'That's not good,' Lissa says. And it isn't. That was way too fast.
The Stirrer's eyes flicker. And I do it again, this time sitting on its chest while I get out my knife.
I slice open one of my fingers, making a fresh wound, and touch the Stirrer's cheek. There's a definite finality to that stall, like a door slamming shut. The body stills for good. Nothing will get through now, as long as I stay alive.
I get to my feet. We have to keep moving.
'The world's gone to hell,' I say as I dash across the park, Lissa by my side.
'Not yet,' she says.
And I know she's right. Things can get a whole lot worse, and they probably will.
'I have to see, Mr. D,' I say. 'There's no way I can leave Brisbane with this going on. It's obviously getting out of Morrigan's control.'
'And I'm telling you that's not going to help anymore-at least, not now, maybe later. You just need to stay alive for a little longer, get out of Brisbane. Come back later.'
'But if that's what Morrigan wants-'
'I think he wants you in Brisbane. But regardless, I want you alive. Neither of us know enough about Schisms to hang around, except I can guarantee this much: all the other regions will have closed down communication. They don't want word of this spreading. Something like this could see a whole heap of madness. No, you need to keep moving, and Brisbane's not big enough for that to work.'
I head back to the payphone on the edge of the park and dial a number I know off by heart.
'I thought it would be you,' Tim says. His voice is strained, the kind of strained that the last few days will engender. I look at my watch: it's three-thirty in the morning.
'Not getting many calls?'
'Too many, but I just thought it would be you. I'm glad to hear your voice.'
I'm glad to hear his as well. 'We need to meet,' I say.
'The Place?'
'Yeah, that'll do. I have to get out of Brisbane.' It's not far away, I can easily walk it.
'I'm going to have to organize a few things,' Tim says. 'You going to be safe until mid morning?'
'Yeah. I think I can manage that.' I'm not sure if I can, but Tim knows what he's doing.
'You OK?'
'No. You?'
'Not at all.'
Honesty is such a wonderful thing.
