Managing Death by Trent Jamieson Read Free Book Online Page A

Deepest Dark, if it wasn’t so dark, I guess she’d be wearing black sunglasses. She glances at the tracksuit pants and tatty old jumper I’m wearing beneath my dad’s old duffel coat, and sniffs.
    ‘So, Suzanne, just what is it that you can do for me?’
    She smiles condescendingly. ‘I chose this place because it is important to you.’
    Above us the sky is luminous with souls, glowing faintly red, heading out through the ether to whereversouls go once life and the Underworld is done with them. It should be peaceful except there’s a great spiralling void, like a photo negative of a galaxy, eating up one corner of the sky, and it’s getting bigger. The Stirrer god.
    In the distance, maybe a kilometre away, is Devour, the Stirrer city. Its high walls glow a colour very similar to my watch. I rode a bike through there a few months ago, fleeing for my life and for the life of the woman I love.
    That Stirrer god, though, is hard to ignore. It’s a sinister dark stain on the pants front of Hell and it’s getting bigger. Sometimes it’s a great eye, as I remember it, sometimes a million eyes, staring down. Leering at the Underworld.
    I’ve felt the weight of the god’s vast and angry gaze upon me, and I’ve stared back at it. So I’ve a personal stake in all of this, but then when that god arrives, life itself, from bacteria up, will be under threat. It’s amazing, though, just how much people are pretending that it isn’t going to happen. RMs, my colleagues. People who should know better.
    ‘You chose this place because you knew it gives you an advantage over me,’ I say.
    ‘What a cynic.’
    ‘I prefer to call it realism.’ I point towards the dark god in the sky. ‘Maybe it’s just too big. Maybe it’s something that we can’t do anything about at all. But we have to try.’
    ‘What do you know about that thing up there?’ she asks.
    ‘That the Stirrers worship it and that it’s drawing closer. What else is there?’
    Suzanne waves her hand dismissively, as though the Stirrer god was nothing more than a buzzing insect. ‘Look, I want to offer you a deal. Think about all the resources you would have at your disposal. My offices, my staff – they’re much bigger than yours. And that difference in staffing is even larger now after your little problem.’
    The ‘little’ problem she’s referring to, the one that led to my promotion, wiped out Mortmax’s Australian offices and, almost, due to a minor Regional Apocalypse, Australia’s living population. Workplace politics can be genocidal in my line of business. And when things get that way they have a tendency to spill out into the world. The Spanish Flu, the Black Death – they were both preceded by ‘problems’ in my industry.
    ‘You let that happen, too.’ I glare at her. None of the RMs stepped in to help. In the end it had been left up to me. ‘All of you are guilty of that.’
    Suzanne’s eyes narrow just enough that I know I’ve got to her. ‘You know the rules,’ she says, ‘our hands were tied. Morrigan manipulated us.’
    Morrigan manipulated me more than anyone. But I’m not going to let Suzanne get away with her comment. ‘Excuses aren’t going to save the world. Morriganwas small time compared to
that
.’ I point at the Stirrer god amassing on the horizon.
    Suzanne raises her hands placatingly. ‘I have my best people working on it,’ she says. I open my mouth to speak but she jumps in first. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. You need me.’
    ‘Like a coronary.’ My turn for a condescending grin.
    Suzanne grimaces, though I can see that I’ve amused her, which makes me a little grumpier. ‘Try not to be so aggressive. Yes, this is scary for you, Steven, I understand that. You’re a newly negotiated RM, in the process of building up your Pomps. It’s going to be years before you’re at full strength. You’re vulnerable. You can barely shift without throwing up.’
    Fair assessment so far. But I can’t let