loves it. Too bad he's doing such a miserable job.
I glance at my watch. It's going to be close. Not showing up for a meeting is the fastest route to unemployment. Punctuality, under all manner of stress and duress, is an absolute necessity in the pomping trade. A hangover doesn't even begin to cut it as an excuse.
I'm pretty sure I can make it, even riding what seems to be the slowest train in existence, but whether or not I can avoid spewing over Derek's desk is another matter. But it would be a pathetic vomit at best: the last thing I ate was that Chiko Roll.
Anyway, getting into work is going to furnish me with some answers. There's just been too much weirdness in the last couple of days. Too many things are unsettling me. If I wasn't so miserable, they'd be unsettling me even more.
I get off at Roma Street Station, ride the escalator up and out onto George Street, taking small sips of unsatisfying water as I go.
I don't notice anything is wrong until I touch the front door to Number Four.
I push, and the door doesn't give. So I push harder.
Nothing but my knuckles cracking. The door doesn't even draw its usual drop of blood. That's the way it is with Pomps. You need blood to close certain doors, and blood to open them. But not today.
Number Four is locked up tight and toothless.
My first thought is that this is Derek, that he's getting his revenge. Except the two wide glass windows either side of the door are dark. Not only that, but the brace symbol above the door has been removed. That symbol, an upside down triangle split through the middle with a not quite straight vertical line, keeps away Stirrers. It has to be refreshed every month or so, redrawn with ink mixed with a living Pomp's blood. Now it's gone, and that's crazy.
The door should have opened. The lights should be on inside. But they're not. I peer through the window to the left of the door, or try to. It's totally dark beyond. My reflection stares back at me.
I touch the door again. There should be a buzz, a sort of hum running through me on contact, but there's nothing, no sense at all that this is a point of interface between the living world and the dead one. It's just a door. A locked metal door. I glance around, there's no one I know standing around ready to tell me this is all some sort of joke.
The door leads into the vestibule of the building. There's a desk at the front. Some chairs, a couple of prints, including Mr. D's favorite painting, Brueghel's 'Triumph of Death.' Beyond the desk is a hallway leading to old- fashioned elevator doors, lots of brass, glass and art nouveau designs. The elevator has twelve floors marked, but our building only has eight storeys here. The other four are in the Underworld. That linkage between the living world and the dead should have me buzzing. Hell, standing this close to Number Four should have anyone buzzing.
It's the reason we don't get a lot of hawkers.
I reach toward the door again, then hesitate. Because in that moment it… changes. The door suddenly possesses a sly but hungry patience: as though it's waiting for me to touch it this time. Just put your hand up against me, eh.
Instead, I press my face against the window to the right. Again, nothing but darkness. The hair rises on the back of my neck. Then something slams against the glass.
I get a brief sensation of eyes regarding me, and of blood. A soul screams through me. It passes, as though thrown, so fast that I don't even get a sense of who it is I've just pomped. I stumble back from the window. They may have moved fast, but they'd been holding on. Their passage a friction burn, I'm seared a little on the inside.
I don't tend to get the violent deaths but I've pomped enough to recognize one. Someone has just died, savagely and suddenly. Someone I know. Maybe Tanya behind the desk, or Clive from records. Brett was always down there, too-had a thing for Tanya. 'Jesus.'
And then there's another one. The second death is so quick on the back of the first that I moan with the fiery biting pain of it, then retch a little. Another violent exit, another desperate but futile clawing at survival.
'Get out of here, Steven.' The voice is familiar.
My mouth moves, but nothing comes for a moment. I turn toward Lissa, fight my almost instinctive desire to pomp her. At least that would be normal. But the urge passes in a wave of relief. Here she is, at last. How can she do this to me, this rising excitement, even now? But she does.
'What?'
'You have to get to Central Station,' she says, sliding around me, slipping out of hand's reach, then darting in to whisper. 'You need to get as far away from here as possible.'
I blink at her, expect her to disappear, but this time she doesn't. In fact she seems much more together than I have ever seen her-a layer of confusion has been sloughed away and replaced with a desperate clarity.
'Hurry. We don't have much time. Someone is killing Pomps.' She smiles at that, then frowns, as though the first expression was inappropriate. 'You're the first one I've managed to save. And I'm getting tired of repeating myself.'
The door picks that moment to open. Just a crack. A cold wind blows through it, and it's not the usual breath of air conditioning. From within comes the distant rasping of the One Tree, the Moreton Bay fig that overhangs the Underworld. That sound, a great sighing of vast wooden limbs, dominates the office. Hearing it echo out here in the street is disturbing. Christ, it terrifies me. It's as though Hell has sidled up next to the living world and has pulled out a bloody knife. I hesitate a moment. I know I should be running but those two pomps in quick succession have scattered my thoughts. And this is meant to be a place of refuge. There's a gravity to that doorway, borne of habit and expectation.
Lissa swings in front of me. 'Don't,' she says. 'You go through that door and you're dead.'
And I know she's right. It's like a switch finally turns off in my brain.
I sprint from the doorway, glancing back only when I'm at the lights (fighting the urge to just run out into the traffic, but there's too much of it and it's moving too swiftly) to see if anyone, or any thing, has come through the door after me. I get the prickling feeling that someone's watching me.
I blink, and the door's shut again, and that sensation of scrutiny is gone. I take a deep breath.
'Roma Street Station's better,' I say, trying to keep focused, even as my head throbs. This really is a bitch of a hangover.
'What?'
'Central's too obvious. If I was looking for someone trying to get out of the city I'd go to Central.'
Lissa appears to consider this. 'You're probably right.'
I know I'm right. Well, I hope I am. I need to have some semblance of control, or I am going to lose it right here in the middle of the city. We're on George Street, heading to Roma Street and the train station, stumbling through late-morning crowds: all the business and government types up this end of the city, heading out for their coffees, oblivious to what's going on. People are being killed. My people. It can't be happening. Part of me refuses to believe it, even now, but those violent, painful pomps tell me otherwise.
I could feel resentful, but that's going to serve no useful purpose. The further I get away from Number Four though, the better.
To the left are the council chambers, reaching up into the sky, looking like a Lego tower of Babel constructed by a not particularly talented giant infant who none the less had big ideas. Just to my right is Queen Street Mall where, only yesterday, I was running for my life. Who'd have thought it would become something of a habit? Behind me, the state government building looms shabbily, a testament to, or rather an indictment of, eighties' architecture.
Tim works in that building.
'Where are you going?'
I turn around heading toward Tim's building, hardly realizing I'm doing it.
Lissa's in my face, hands waving, sliding backward to keep out of my reach. 'Are you stupid? This is the wrong way.'
I stop and stare at Lissa. How do I even know I can trust her? But there's something there, surely. Something in her gaze that tells me I can.
'No, it isn't.'
'I don't want you to die.'
