I get dressed and take a drive.
It's easy to sense, more than ever. The Stirrer's presence is a magnet, and I follow the line of least resistance toward it. It's as though the car has a mind of its own. I barely have to turn the wheel.
Lissa's silent the whole way, and I don't know if she's angry with me or worried, maybe a bit of both.
We end up at the local hospital, almost in the center of Stanthorpe.
The staff there let me through when I raise one hand to reveal the scars criss-crossing it. They look harried and frightened. I guess that there have been a lot of things going bump, and then murderous, in the night lately.
One of the senior doctors meets me near the reception desk.
"I'm here to deal with your problem," I say.
"Thank Christ. We've never had to wait this long."
I can tell. Everyone here is strung out and weak. The Stirrer is drawing their essence away. There's a vase of dead flowers by the reception desk. The doctor looks at that.
"Not again," he says, tipping the dead things into a bin. "Keeps happening."
And there's no stopping this, until I do something about it. Soon, the sicker, older patients will pass on, and more Stirrers will appear, and more life will be drawn out of the world. It's reaching tipping point and I'm gripped with a sudden urgency to get this thing done.
"Where is it?" I ask. I hardly need to, I can feel it.
"The Safe Room," he says.
Out here in the regional areas it can take a day or so before someone is available to pomp a Stirrer. They don't make a big fuss about it, but most regional hospitals have ways of dealing with their Stirrers.
We walk through the hospital, descending a level by way of a narrow stairwell. With every step, the sense of wrongness increases. The air closes in, grows heavy with foulness.
Another senior doctor's waiting by a door. He mops at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.
"We've had to lock the lower room," he says, relieved as all hell to see me. "This one is a bit more active than usual."
I nod, hoping that I look more confident than I feel.
"This is too dangerous," Lissa says again, though her eyes say otherwise. I'm doing the right thing, the only thing.
The door is marked in all four corners with the brace symbol. My Pomp eyes can see them glowing. They're lucky, Sam made these markings.
"Sam's alive," I say to Lissa.
The doctor looks at me questioningly. He can't see Lissa, of course. "Sam's one of my workmates. She's in trouble."
This guy doesn't know the least of it. "Yeah, we all are."
My fingers brush one of the brace symbols. I swear and yank my hand away from it. "Hot," I say, blisters forming on my fingertips.
The Stirrer has pushed its will against this door for quite some time. The sort of will that can generate friction is unnerving. Actually it's downright terrifying. A muscle in my left thigh starts to quiver, fast enough to hurt. Suck it up, I think. You're here to do a job.
I turn to the doctor. "The moment I'm through, lock the door and refresh those symbols. The brace is weakening." I toss him a little tin of brace paint. "Don't open this door until I ask you."
He nods. I look over at Lissa. "Don't go in there," she says.
"I have to." She looks away, but just as quickly turns back to me. "Don't let it hurt you."
The doctor glances at me.
"Sorry," I say. "Nervous tic."
"Just watch who you're calling a nervous tic," Lissa says.
I open the door, and it closes behind me. Maybe I should just turn around, head back out and think this through. I can't see the Stirrer, but I can feel it. I realize that with all that talk of trouble and doom, I'd forgotten to ask who was in here, or how big they might be.
Then it grabs my legs with its hands. Huge hands. They squeeze down hard.
Big mistake. My touch stuns it, but not enough. I slice open my palm and stall it, but it's painful, rough as all hell. This Stirrer's grown fat on the energy it's drawn from the hospital. I can feel its pure, wild hatred as it scrabbles through me like shards of glass, or knives slicing, cutting inside me. Almost the moment it's gone there's another Stirrer within the body. I stall that too, an easier stall since the soul's not been as long in the body, hasn't put down roots. I reach for my knife. I need more blood to do this properly. The next Stirrer to inhabit the body crash tackles me, knocking the breath from my lungs. The knife flies from my hands and skitters along the floor.
I scramble toward it, knocking over a tray of instruments. Sharp things tumble on me, stuff sharper than my knife. I feel around, both hands scratching over the tiles. Who the hell puts blades in a "safe room"?
The Stirrer is up. It's clumsy but quick, stomping toward me. One of its boots crashes down on my hand and words slur in its unfamiliar mouth: "Not this time." Then I see the flash of a blade, a cruel, hideous looking mortuary instrument.
I howl as the Stirrer's boot grinds down on my knuckles. It's a purer pain than that of a stall. I clench my teeth. All I can smell is blood, and death. Things have never been so clear. It lifts its boot up to put in another grinding stomp and I drive my shoulder into its leg, hard. Something snaps-I pray that it isn't my collarbone-and there's another swift stall. Then I'm cutting my hand on the nearest knife I can find… hell, there's a dozen cutting edges scattered across the floor. I slam my bloody palm against the Stirrer's face, just as its eyes open.
"Not this time," I say, my voice barely a whisper.
Pure hate regards me, then all life, and un-life, slips from its features and it's just a dead body.
I limp out of the room.
"Steven, Steven," Lissa says. "What did they do to you?"
I look at her. I realize just how frightened I was that she wouldn't be here when I came through the door, but here she is. Relief flows through me. I find myself shaking.
"I'm OK," I say. "I'm OK."
The doctor frowns at me.
"Sorry," I say, "just mumbling to myself again."
He drags a chair toward me. "Sit," he demands.
I look at the door out of here, then the chair. Gravity decides for me. Before I know it I have a blanket over my shoulders and a cup of tea in my good hand.
"You're not going anywhere until I look at that hand."
"And when will that be? I have to keep moving."
"When you finish that tea."
As determined as I am to get out of here, it takes me a while to drink the tea. It's sweet and too milky, everything I hate about tea, and it's the most delicious cup I've ever had.
"Nothing broken," the doctor says. "You were lucky. Now let's look at that palm."
He winces. Even Lissa winces. "Any deeper and you'd have needed stitches."
"Yeah, I was in a bit of a rush. I'm not usually so amateurish."
He looks at the scars that criss-cross my palm, and shakes his head. It's all part of the job these days, it seems, deeper and deeper cuts, more blood.
I get slowly to my feet. I'm still a bit shaky. "I have to go," I say, and nod back at the open doorway to the morgue. "Burn the body. As quickly as you can, and any other body that comes down here. These are strange times."
"It's going to get worse?" he asks.
"I think so."
"Jesus, it's real end-of-days stuff."
"Regionally, yes," I say, and when he looks at me questioningly, I shrug. I don't have time to explain Pomp jargon. "I have to go. Someone will be coming for me, it may be too late already."
"Thank you," the doctor says.
I wish I could do more. But I'm only one person, and I've got my own problems. I get into the Corolla and head out of town.
"They know where to look now," Lissa says.
"I don't know how long we can stay out bush."
"A few more days," Lissa says. "We'll come back when he least expects it."
And then what? A few more days for things to get worse, for more horrible dreams? "I think he's going to expect it whenever I go back to Brisbane."
"Maybe. Maybe not." I drive up north, inland across the dry plains. The land is flat and vast, but it doesn't feel anywhere near big enough to hide me.
We find a caravan park in a small country town, as far from anywhere as I've ever been. I pay cash for a couple of nights. The owner doesn't look at me, just my money.
It's hot and dry during the day, and cold at night, with a sky clear enough to see the wash of stars that make up the Milky Way. You can lose yourself in that sky. Morrigan certainly couldn't get me there.
If I sense a Stirrer-and I do, even if it's hundreds of kilometers away-I go to it. And every night I use a different sim card and try and call one of the other regions. No one answers. The Regional Managers know what's going on, Lissa's absolutely certain of it, and they're not going to help.
They don't want this spreading across the sea. They don't want this in their backyard.