Free The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy by Trent Jamieson

parents are weaving around the tombstones ahead.
    Not my parents, just their flesh. They’re not moving like Mom and Dad, and that’s the oddest part of seeing them. Mom and Dad,
my
mom and dad, but they’re all wrong. The creatures that inhabit them haven’t got the hang of the real estate yet. Dad holds a rifle, Mom is speaking into a phone.
    “Stirrers,” Lissa says and I roll my eyes at her. Of course they’re Stirrers—zombies, I suppose, in the common vernacular. The second part of our jobs as Pomps, the things we’re supposed to stop stirring. These aren’t your “Grr, brains” zombies. Nah, that shit doesn’t happen. These are more perambulatory vessels. My parents aren’t infected or blood crazy; Stirrers inhabit them.
    It’s the only way that Stirrers can exist in our world. They were long ago banished from the land of the living, but they want back in any way they can. I’ve heard that if they tip the balance—inhabit enough bodies, get more than a toehold—they might just be able to return in their real form, whatever that is. If that ever happens, we’re all screwed.
    These aren’t my parents. They’re just the place of death. My parents have gone over into the Underworld.
    I’m taking it pretty well. My blood is only partially boiling, I’m only clenching my fists until they hurt, not until they draw blood. Igroan as another soul passes through me, another Pomp. Real pain. Someone is hurling souls at me.
    Normally we’re directed to a specific location to physically sight and sometimes touch a spirit. But now, maybe because there are so few Pomps left, or because most of the dead today have been Pomps, they’re actually hitting me wherever I am. These are really violent deaths, and they’re coming hard and fast.
    Those spider webs are starting to grow more hooks. It’s like having a cold, and a constant need to blow your nose—at the start the tissues are soft, but by the end they’re more like razors wrapped in sandpaper—except that the razor burn runs through my whole body.
    On top of that I can now sense the Stirrers. And if I can feel them…
    “Shit,” Lissa says.
    I do a double-take. I look at Lissa—and then to Lissa. “That’s—”
    “Somebody has to pay for this.” She covers her face with her hands, but the rage and the hurt radiates from her.
    Stirrer Lissa strides down the hill, away from the tall white spire of the Mayne crypt, talking on a phone. And she’s walking toward me.
    “The Hill is compromised,” I say at last.
    “No shit, Sherlock,” Lissa says, and I’m already backing away. There’s a distant clattering sound, like someone hurling ball bearings at a concrete wall.
    Great, we’re being shot at. It’s my dad with that rifle. He fires again. I wait for the bullet to hit me, but it doesn’t come. His aim is out, still not used to the body, I suppose. A tombstone a few meters away cracks, exhaling shards of dirty stone.
    “Run,” Lissa yells, and once again, I’m sprinting.

8
    T wo blocks away from the cemetery, after a dash through suburbia—streets filled with jacarandas dripping with blooms, and with enough cars parked on the road that we have some cover—we come across a bus shelter.
    Miracle of miracles! There’s a bus pulling in, on its way toward the city, but I don’t care where it’s going, I just need to be heading somewhere that isn’t here. I’m on it. It’s the first time in my life that a bus is exactly where and when I want it. With what little sense of mind I have left, I realize I still have my pass and I flash it at the driver. He looks at it disinterestedly, and then I’m walking to the back of the bus, past passengers all of whom assiduously avoid eye contact. Ah, the commuter eye-shuffle. I must look a little crazy. I certainly feel it.
    I’m breathing heavily. Sweat slicks my back, and is soaking through my jacket. It’s only the middle of spring but the air’s still and hot. For the first time in about an