Free The Memory of Death by Trent Jamieson Page A

dead backwards. Try and get another swing in and hands close around my throat. I'm yanked away by … me. The ragey, shadowy me. The dead fella at my calf gets a good chunk of meat, and that doesn’t feel good at all.
    ‘Don’t trust any of them,’ Rage Steve says, to himself, to me, I'm not sure, I don’t think he is either. ‘Least of all this fucker.’ And he pushes me from the guy chewing on my calf, and I can breathe again. Seeing spots. My leg is bleeding from the bite wound.
    ‘You’re making me angry.’
    ‘Why?’ I say.
    ‘That's my favourite T-shirt, and you’re about to get your blood all over it.’
    No it’s not, maybe it is. I don’t know.
    There is death all around us, angry death, and Rage Steve only has eyes for me. Why do I always get the crazies as a dance partner?
    ‘Time to die, Clash,’ my shadow says.
    The other two are down, smothered in biting dead. It’s just me and him.
    ‘I can take you,’ I say, getting my fists up, keeping my face protected. He punches me in the gut.
    Maybe not.
    I gasp like that fish in the video to Faith No More’s ‘Epic’, trying to breathe, just flopping and flapping uselessly. Rage Steve kicks me in the throat.
    ‘One of us got the rage,’ he says. ‘And rage trumps everything.’ He swings out a boot again, only someone is holding him by it. Someone very tall.
    ‘Enough,’ Charon says. ‘Enough.’
    He lifts Rage Steve by the foot and whistles.
    Somewhere not that distant, a Hound howls. And the dead still, their eyes dim. Charon gestures right and left, and the dead walk to the edge of the branch and tumble away. A lemming-like fall of death.
    The other Steves crawl towards me. The closer they get, the more pain I feel.
    ‘Good,’ Charon says. ‘Now I have your attention. Listen up.’
    ‘Let me go,’ Rage Steve growls.
    ‘Then listen, and I will. You’re all Steven de Selby, but only bits of him, fragments. You need to come together.’
    ‘And how do we do that?’
    Charon whistles shrill and loud. The Hound bounds onto the branch, its gaze flicking from each of us and back again, as though it isn’t sure where to start, its big jaws slavering. Honestly, I don’t want to be bitten again, ever.
    ‘With the glue,’ Charon says.

Twelve
    Charon lets me drop. I hit the branch of the One Tree, grunt and lie there a moment. It feels almost good not to be in constant motion. Charon wiggles a finger at me. I feel the anger building again.
    ‘Calm down,’ he hisses at me. ‘Calm down.’
    The Hound growls.
    ‘I will run and I will hide,’ I say.
    ‘The Hound cannot be hidden from,’ Charon says. ‘The Hound is you. It will bind you together. I made it to find you and to bind you, but you had to run away from it, didn’t you? I thought you liked dogs.’
    ‘Why did I attack Lissa?’ I know why; I think I know why. I can feel all that hatred in me. All that rage. Didn’t I save the world? Didn’t I give up everything, and who came for me?
    No one.
    ‘You were unstable. The rawest emotions came from the sea first. There was, putting it mildly, a lot of bitterness there. But twice now you’ve saved your brothers; even angry, you’re not that bad.’
    ‘I’m not doing it,’ I say.
    *
    ‘I’m not doing it,’ Rage Steve says, and I recognise the sullen tones. They’re as childish and selfish as I ever get, and that is something of a relief. Still, he turns and walks away.
    ‘It’s not just your choice,’ I – we – say.
    ‘Fuck you all,’ Rage Steve says.
    I do, we do, the only thing we can. We tackle him. Heads clang together, there’re grunts of pain and I think Okkervil is winded, but we hold him and we don’t let go. The Hound doesn’t hesitate – this time it comes in for the kill, and I only hope that Charon wasn’t lying.
    Its eyes flash. Its jaws snap, blood flows. It is the cold change coming, welcome then regretted. We struggle, all three of us for a moment, and then the pain subsides – only to be