The Memory of Death Read Free Page B

pointing guns at me.
    He drops with a soft grunt, and I barrel through the doorway. Cal’s getting up and I stomp on his back, he goes down again. Hard. I slam the door shut and run.
    ‘Not again,’ Cal moans behind me. ‘Ah, fuck.’
    But I’m already away. And I know where I am. I’m back home all right, in the CBD. I blink away the hard light of a Brisbane summer, and with my eyes clenched to a decent level of squint I keep moving.
    I sprint-hobble down Ann Street, pushing past backpackers and early afternoon commuters, waiting for a bullet to slam into me, but nothing comes.
    It never comes. And while that doesn’t exactly mean that they’re not crooks, it’s a tick in their favour. Not that I’m about to turn around and talk this through.
    I’m already darting off Ann and down Edward Street, heading towards the mall.
    I might be dressed in a torn shirt, stinking of the sea, and sweat, and my own death, but I can still lose myself here. After all, this is my city. And it’s good to be back.
    I hit the mall, slip into the Myer Centre. I don’t have any money, but I am close to work. I can’t stop grinning.
    George Street and Number Four (my workplace, my second home) are less than two hundred metres away. Of course they’ll expect me to go there. And that’s exactly where I’m going, but I’ll take my time. No matter how much I want to see Lissa, I can’t rush it. And I am aching to see her; it pulls at me with a tidal surge. But everything is too easily taken away.
    James said Lissa didn’t want to see me.
    I can’t imagine that’s true, but it’s given me pause. So, maybe I can imagine it after all.

Four
    I rub my head. Two pigeons have had a go at me. Flown right at my head. First there was that seagull, now this. And I used to have such a good relationship with birds – well, crows and ibis mostly. What makes a pigeon aggressive? Magpie, yes, but pigeon? I'm standing next to a rubbish bin that's stinking in the summer heat. At least people (and pigeons) are keeping away.
    I stand in the shadows across the road from Number Four. Brisbane’s office of Mortmax Industries from whence the business of death in Australia is run, and all that. I watch Pomps enter and leave in wonderful suits and dresses. Elegant gothic, the sort of thing you’d wear to a funeral, or to help the dead into the Underworld. You’ll meet us one day, and you’ll appreciate the effort we put into our attire. Well, most of us; my dad had always been a bit of a slob, but he could pull it off.
    I’d started there as a fourth-generation Pomp, guiding souls to the Underworld. I’d worked there as a Regional Manager, essentially Australia’s Death; I’d even become the World’s Death, the Orcus Entire. Now I am none of those things, I am just a man. Which is equal parts what I wanted, and suck.
    Everything that I care about in the world is behind that front door. A quiet dread has risen inside of me, and I can’t seem to make myself cross George Street and step through the thing.
    This isn’t the first time that I’ve hesitated out the front of Number Four. Once, what seems so long ago, I’d peered through the glass, and I’d pomped in quick succession two murdered souls who turned out to be friends. They'd scrambled through me, their souls raw and terrified. That time I'd turned tail and run.
    I take a deep breath and sprint across the road. A car engine clicks into noisy gear somewhere, but I’m already across the two lanes of traffic, slamming my weight hard against the door, and it yields, swinging in, but not without cost; there’s always a blood price.
    The door’s bite is sharp, it always bites the toll that one must pay to enter here. Mind you, it's still cheaper than parking in Brisbane. I look at my palm as the door shuts behind me – nothing, not a mark. Odd.
    I take a couple of steps into the lobby – no one at the front desk (how unprofessional!) – when someone crash tackles me. I go down hard. The