Falling Apart Read online

  Half of me listened to my mother detailing how she had taken the post through to Dad, gone into the kitchen and heard a crash, gone running and found my father on the floor in the living room clutching his chest. How, as soon as she’d come into the room he’d started thrashing his limbs about. The other half of me could only see Sil, stretched out on the couch in the same room, eyes flickering from silver to metal grey. I bit my tongue.

  ‘Look, I’ll come back later,’ I said. It was beginning to sound like an episode of Casualty in here, and while I could be fairly sure that a handsome doctor wasn’t going to come in and be involved in our family affairs, I really didn’t want to take any chances. ‘When Dad’s awake.’

  After elbowing my way through the rather jaded hacks still camping out on the office step, groaning at my customary ‘No comment,’ I went to take out my anxieties on Liam.

  Who had no nose.

  I did a double-take that nearly knocked me out of the door before I realised that it wasn’t Liam, it was Richard sitting in Liam’s chair. And he seemed to be lacking in the finger department too. ‘Hello, Richard.’

  ‘I was just about to text. Richard wants to talk to you.’ Liam popped up from behind my desk and drew to me to one side. ‘He seems upset,’ he murmured. ‘From what I can tell, anyway. There are things missing, you know. Bits. Parts.’

  ‘And I am most expressly not going to ask any questions about that,’ I muttered back, and then perched on the edge of Liam’s desk and took a closer look at the zombie. As well as lacking nose and fingers, he’d got a gaping gash down the side of his neck, and the overalls he wore for his warehouse job were ripped down one seam. His head was slumped forwards and his cartoon-chick hair was completely awry. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Those two blokes that you had a word with last night. They came back.’ Richard held up his right hand to show that his two middle fingers were missing, and the tip of his thumb had gone too. ‘It was … I couldn’t fight them, Jess, they had fire and knives and—’ He stopped talking suddenly.

  I jumped up and laid a hand on Richard’s arm. It felt like a roll of carpet, but was shaking slightly. ‘Liam, pop across the road for a tube of superglue, will you?’

  ‘I think there’s some ordinary in the kitchen.’

  ‘We can push the boat out for Richard, I think. Besides, he can’t drive a forklift with his fingers missing, so it’s an allowable expense, unlike your bloody trousers.’ When Liam, muttering, had run off down the stairs, I turned to the zombie. ‘What’s happened?’

  He looked directly at me, his lower eyelids stretching upwards, which was the nearest a zombie could get to crying. ‘They threatened to harm my wife.’

  Shit. I moved closer to him. He smelled of the PVA wash that all the zombies used, with a faint, desperate overlay of Lynx covering the surprisingly sweet scent of corpse. But he wasn’t a corpse – just because he couldn’t feel anything didn’t mean he wasn’t a person. He was just dead, that was all. ‘What happened? Richard?’

  ‘They … they waited until morning, until I got back from the warehouse and they jumped me. Had a knife to Suze’s throat while I … I tried, I honestly tried to fight but …’ He held up the mangled hand. ‘Said it was “to teach me a lesson”, so I’d know my place, something like that.’ His spiky hair flopped, as though it too had lost heart. ‘When they left we … I … I took her to a friend’s, and came here. They said they’d be back, you see.’ He stopped talking, as if his throat had run out of words, and raised his head so that his deep eyes met mine. ‘They said they’d be back.’ His voice lowered to a miserable whisper. ‘I didn’t know where to go. These … blokes are human, it’s me being – well, what I am – that’s got them so angry. If I start reporting things and making it all official and getting the vamps involved …’ His eyes flickered as confusion reigned behind them. ‘I’m afraid of where it will end. I just want it sorted … I didn’t know where to go,’ he repeated, elongating the last word as his emotion strangled the sentence.

  I took another breath. ‘Okay, you did the right thing. We can sort this out without getting Otherworld Central involved. Course we can.’ I patted the log-like arm again. ‘I just need to think. Your wife, is she somewhere she feels safe? With people who will look after her?’

  ‘Her friend is taking her to the Centre.’ The place where zombies went to get professional patching-up and any other death-care needs.

  ‘Well, that’s good, she’ll be protected there. But they won’t intervene; they won’t do anything practical, you know that?’

  ‘That’s why I came to you, Jess. I want Suze safe.’

  I felt slightly sick now. I’d dismissed those men as just chancers, random attackers picking on a zombie out alone and unprotected, but, combined with the man I’d seen following the zombie through town, and the group watching Ryan, it looked as though they were part of some concerted hate group against the zombies. Had I complicated things by intervening?

  ‘We need to get you fixed.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve got some mastic at home. It’s the fingers that are the real problem, can’t do those single-handed and without them I won’t be able to load the forklift and I can’t afford …’ The reality of the situation seemed to crash around him. ‘I can’t afford to lose my job.’ He reached into a pocket and pulled the recalcitrant digits out, laying them down on the table, where they rolled like tipped wax crayons.

  ‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ I patted his arm again. ‘If I hadn’t got involved the other night …’

  ‘No. That’s not it.’ The zombie gave me a small, and slightly scary, grin. Zombies are largely harmless, motivated pretty much by the need to keep everything – literally – together, but even so there’s something unnerving about the undead baring their teeth at you. ‘It’s been worse lately anyway. They’re going around, picking on any of us they think they can damage – if it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else. I just wish …’—his head dropped forwards again—‘this life. My life, such as it is … all of us, we’re just trying to make the best of it. To be useful, to earn ourselves a place … It’s so easy for you humans, you think …’ His eyes flickered again as his long-defunct tear ducts tried to respond to his emotion. ‘I only wish they could walk a mile in my shoes. See what I see. Know what my life is like.’

  I pulled a face. On my computer the Tracker program was running and everything looked normal; not for the first time I cursed its stupid bias, I could have done with tracking a few humans right now. I wondered if Sil was already in the system, flicking through the files, using our software to search.

  I need him. At first I thought I was only feeling like this because I wanted him here, helping, his knowledge of the anti-zombie fraternity, his insight. And then it struck me. I want him here just to have him here. Even if he knew nothing, even if he could offer no more help than holding Richard’s arm steady so we could stick his fingers back on straight. I’d want him because he’s Sil. The realisation that I’d become so completely unobjective made me wobble for a moment. When had this happened? I’d been so sure that if Sil turned out to be unreliable, unpredictably given to moments of blood-savagery, I would turn him in for the final justice to be dealt … and now it was slowly dawning on me, the feeling rising like the return of a bad kebab at three in the morning – I couldn’t.

  Up until now I’d half thought that our relationship was something that burned so brightly that it would die in a flame of its own making, splutter and peter out into hello’s on street corners and the occasional ‘do you remember’. But now … Now Sil was somewhere in my heart, as he was in my head. We just needed to work out how to move to the next level, the trusting and accepting level. Oh, and the not being shot by Hunters for breaking the Treaty bit, as well.

  Oh bugger.

  My temporary vulnerability vanished when Liam arrived back, carrying two new tub
es of glue. Someone had to be in charge here, and I’d rather it wasn’t a man who thought Doctor Who should be declared a religion. ‘Right, that’s the last time I can show my face in that newsagents: they either think I’m an inveterate glue-sniffer or I build really big plastic models.’ He tipped the superglue onto the table. ‘And I don’t know which is worse.’

  ‘This coming from a man with a TARDIS in his living room. Which, I have to mention, you built yourself.’

  ‘We’re going to use it as Charlotte’s play-pen when she’s older.’ Liam busied himself with neatly snipping the lids off the glue rolls and throwing the plastic discards into the bin.

  ‘You’re unnatural, you know that?’ I watched him pick up Richard’s first finger and examine the gristly surface for stickability.

  ‘But unnatural in a good, and overall efficient, way.’ He married up the two ends and pushed the joint together.

  ‘I was an extra in Doctor Who once,’ Richard said. He seemed to be feeling better now that something was being done. ‘Me and my mates. We had to get blown up. Got a bit boring after the third take, and, you know, they promised us they’d put everything back the way they found it, but I’ve still got a kneecap somewhere in Cardiff.’

  Liam and I exchanged a look and a grin. ‘Right. That seems to be attached.’ He stood back to examine his hand-made hands.

  ‘Head back to work, but be careful,’ I said to the zombie. ‘Make sure you always go around together: these bully boys won’t tackle you in groups.’

  Richard sighed. It made a kind of church organ sound. ‘It’s not right, Jess,’ he said, standing up. ‘They’re making us into second-class citizens. But who is it that they call for if some nuclear power station needs clearing out, or someone wants some old explosives got rid of? You humans, you need us for the dangerous stuff but you don’t want us to have any rights or anything. Oh, present company excepted, obviously.’

  ‘I know.’ I showed him to the office door. ‘Something has to be done. I’ll have a think, okay?’

  The zombie shuffled out and down the stairs in a backwash of PVA. He was right, that was the problem. Zombies did the unpleasant, deadly jobs that no human would, or could, do – being already dead was a huge advantage in lots of professions. But they weren’t paid or treated like humans, just expected to get on with it and be grateful that the humans had found them a niche. It made me grind my teeth with the unfairness of it all.

  Liam had gone back to his desk, but when I came back in he got up, without a word, and headed to the kitchen. I heard the kettle and furtive rustling as he fetched the biscuits he fondly imagined to be cunningly concealed behind the emergency bucket.

  I pulled up the Tracker program and sat watching it for a few moments. Sil, like Zan, was allowed to move without permits, so didn’t register, but that didn’t stop me from zooming out on Google Maps and staring at the farmhouse. The picture had been taken about three years ago, Dad’s old Land Rover was parked on the driveway and the big tree still grew alongside the top barn. God, I wish I could go back to that time. Everything was simple then.

  ‘Talk to me, Jess.’ Liam nudged a mug towards my hand, making me jump. I’d been so deeply sunk that I’d not heard him come back, and I hurried to minimise the incriminating picture.

  ‘About what?’ I drank a mouthful of scalding coffee to give my face time to assume an innocent expression.

  Liam raised one eyebrow and knocked his hair away from his face with the back of a wrist. ‘He’s in our system. And there’s only one way that could happen … Well, no, there’s two ways, but one of those involves Daniel Craig, two albatrosses and an enormous quantity of rubber bands, so I’m betting on you being involved.’

  I stared at him. ‘How did you know?’

  He rolled his eyes dramatically. ‘Jessica Grant, I’ve been here five, nearly six years now – and I want some kind of celebration when I reach the anniversary, not an In Deepest Sympathy card like last year.’

  ‘I thought it was funny.’

  ‘Hmm. Anyway. When I came you were trying to get by with a defunct Casio calculator and a word-processing machine that York council must have found on a skip somewhere. I built this system! I know this computer like I know my own daughter, better probably, given the length of time I spend in this office, and you expect me not to notice that someone is remotely trawling through our files and then hiding his trace by using a load of ISPs from all over the country?’

  ‘You and Zan, do you two get together and compare the size of your motherboards or something?’

  ‘Technology, Jess. Just because you think it’s all done with magic and kittens doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t get it.’ He came and sat down in front of me, perching on the edge of my desk with his legs crossed. ‘So come on. Tell Uncle Liam what laws you’ve broken this time.’

  I leaned right back in my chair, threw my head back and let out a huge breath. ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘That depends. Is crying involved?’

  I thought of Sil’s face, those huge grey eyes full of anguish and hopelessness. ‘I can’t promise it’s not.’

  ‘In that case I’ve got all day.’ Liam leaned forward, catching the arm of my chair and swivelling it so that he could see my face. His voice was lower, serious, and his eyes were full of concern. ‘If you’ve let him into our system, you are going to need me to cover his tracks, otherwise Head Office are going to be in here in— Well, knowing them, about ten years’ time. But they are going to want answers, whenever they get round to finding out that they need them. Tell me; then you’ve at least got one person to watch your back.’

  I told him. About Sil contacting me, about my hiding him, about … oh, about all of it. It was such a relief to unload, to let out the misery of my dad’s illness, Sil, Zan, all of it. I splurged it all in possibly the world’s longest unbroken sentence, with gulps of coffee to help me over some of the more unpalatable statements, and an occasional tissue-usage. ‘It just feels as if it’s all coming at me at once, Liam. All directions, just shit flying towards me, and here’s me armed with nothing but the latest council print-out and some very unflattering newspaper articles.’ I finally forced myself to meet his eye. I’d been so afraid that I’d see censure there for my actions, I was steeled to start justifying myself again, but the only expression in those chestnut eyes was thoughtful consideration. ‘What?’

  ‘Thinking.’

  And, incredibly, I felt the air start to move in my lungs again. As though I’d started holding my breath on the day the news about Sil had broken and only just let it out. Knowing that Liam was firmly on my side, that he might actually be able to help me through this mess, made the day seem just a tiny bit brighter. ‘Well okay, but don’t let it become a habit.’

  ‘I’m not paid enough to have habits. Even biting my nails got too expensive,’ Liam said, without losing that concentrated expression. Then, still staring into space and frowning slightly, he leaned further forward and touched my arm. ‘We can sort this, Jess,’ he said, and his eyes finally came back from staring at some computerised version of the future. ‘We can. I’m not sure how much we can sort, but I can at least make sure Head Office don’t know that your boyfriend is playing fast and loose with our darkest secrets.’ He pushed away from the desk and sat in his own chair, cracking his knuckles over the keyboard. ‘Some of us have far too much to hide to let Head Office have the run of the system.’

  ‘Liam, you are a star,’ I said quietly.

  ‘And please remember that next time the pay comes up for review.’ He started typing, staccato bursts as though answering on-screen prompts. ‘I’m also putting a false track through into the Otherworld system, it won’t hold Zan forever but it might just make him think he’s been hacked by some random crawler for long enough to give us a break.’

  ‘You think so? He’s pretty clever. Plus, he rea
lly doesn’t have a life.’

  ‘You are underestimating my complete lack of hobbies, social activities and interests outside the home.’ Liam thought a moment; then started typing again. ‘I grew up with computers; Zan had to pick them up from scratch. Let’s just hope that those critical years that I spent clicking on the image of a teddy-bear’s stomach to get giggle noises paid off.’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’

  ‘And I know that every fibre of your nearly-human body is screaming at you to get out onto the streets and hunt down those lowlifes that attacked Richard, but, for the love of everything Whovian, please be sensible.’

  ‘Wow, and they cloned my mother while I wasn’t looking! I should tell you now that I’m not tidying my bedroom, however cross you get.’

  Liam glanced around the chaos on my side of the office: strewn papers, sandwich packets and biscuit wrappers mingled with forms and printouts. ‘I sort of guessed that,’ he said in a pained tone.

  ‘I need to be out there, Liam. I need to be showing them that we’re not taking this lying down, and we’re not afraid of bullies. If I’m out on the street, even if it’s just walking around, it will send the right message. And, besides, I’ve kind of promised Rachel that I’d pop in and I’ve been putting it off for weeks.’

  Liam gave me a straight look. His untidy bush of hair crept back over his eyebrows again and he shoved it away. ‘Just walking around, Jess,’ he said, sternly. ‘No shooting anyone. Even if you see those blokes, even if they’re burning down the minster and casting aspersions on your entire family, you just call the human police, right?’

  ‘Wise words, Yoda.’ I stood up. ‘You’re right, of course you are. How did you get to know so much about these things?’

  ‘From breaking the law on an almost daily basis,’ Liam said, vaguely, stirring his mouse to life. ‘Now, go. And please be careful.’