Falling Apart (21 page)

‘But'—Rach gripped my sleeve as we walked across the yard—‘they're
zombies
, Jess!' A sheaf of papers slipped from under her arm and she attempted to retrieve them without taking her eyes off the group who stood watching us. The fact that they were all wearing their warehouse coats made them look a bit like an army of the undead, if that army had uniforms with little logos of bicycles on the pockets, and ‘Hurson Brothers' Bikes' embroidered on the back.

‘Yeah, so?' I gave her a small shove and she stumbled a couple more steps.

‘But … they're
dead
! You said it was vampires …' Which went some way to explaining why she was wearing so much make-up. You would have had to poke her face quite hard with a long stick to reach the real Rachel underneath. ‘I'm sure you did.'

‘Rachel, are you or are you not a union rep, newly appointed to do your best for the under-represented section of the community working in exactly this sort of job?' I looked across to where Richard stood waiting. There had either been more trouble lately or he'd had some kind of industrial accident, because one arm hung lower than the other, as though an elbow had detached. ‘Because these guys, dead or not, need your help to get themselves organised.'

Rachel hesitated. ‘Seriously? I mean, you didn't just bring me here to get my brains eaten, or anything?'

‘Er, no.
Dawn of the Dead
wasn't a documentary, you know.'

I was proud of the way she straightened her back and set her jaw, then stepped forward to meet Richard, who was lurching towards us, even though she did hold the paperwork out in front of her, as though a massed zombie attack could be held off with lists of workplace codes and bank authorisation forms. ‘Organisation is my
raisin detrer
, Jessie. I shall do my best.'

‘I know, Rach.' I stood back to watch the unlikely scenario of a warehouse yard full of zombies listening to my mostly-built-of-bosom friend giving her All Brothers Together speech. It was surprisingly effective and I found myself rethinking Rachel, who'd been my best friend through school and my flat-share partner for some time after that. I hadn't realised that she had a core of steel, although, since most of the rest of her was built of Quorn and tofu, I should have known that there must have been something holding her up from within. Her lecture on the Rights of Man was emotionally given, and I could see the zombies collectively drawing themselves up as she talked about equal rights for all (even though her voice did waver a bit when someone's leg fell off, and I was sure she added the bit about ‘championing the rights of all members,
living or deceased
, to exist without fear of discrimination').

When she finished talking and waved a bunch of membership forms, a small and somewhat uneven cheer went up and a queue began to form. I even caught Rachel batting her eyelashes in a slightly uncertain way at Ryan, the good-looking zombie I'd helped by the riverside. Prejudice and Rachel obviously went together about as temporarily as ice cream and flamethrowers, luckily, and just as well, otherwise her future as a union representative would have been very short.

Richard was the first to sign the forms; then he came over to talk to me. ‘I think this is just what we needed, Jess,' he said.

‘Unionisation? It's only a start, Richard, you know that. The union can only protect you in the workplace. I just thought it might help.'

He waved a careful hand to where Rach was writing down the details for a zombie whose ability with a pen had been compromised by having a hand on backwards. ‘It's not just that. It's the fact that we're being taken seriously. The fact that now we've got somewhere to turn for help, despite the fact that we're not … Well, there's a box on the form that says, “Do you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or Differently Vital”.' He nodded. ‘It's a sign,' he said again.

‘Anything that helps, Richard. Anything that helps. And I'll do what I can, you know, to get the Zombie Rights up and running; being part of a union is just the first step to being recognised properly.' I patted his shoulder. It felt a little bit lumpier than it should have, but who was I to judge? ‘You just have to stand together, all right? It's going to take time, but you'll get there.'

We watched the queue get shorter, and those zombies who'd already signed grouped together talking animatedly, well, animatedly for zombies. There was a decidedly militant feel in the air now, a collective straightening of a spine that had previously become bent under the weight of human dismissal. ‘Thank you, Jessica,' Richard said at last.

‘It's Rachel you should thank. She's the one with the forms and the tidy handwriting. And the desire to organise everyone. She'll have you all marching with banners soon for better tea breaks. In height order, probably, knowing Rach. Although I don't think you're going to be getting a pension plan any time soon.'

‘But you thought of it. You brought us together.' Richard gave me what I think was a grin. ‘We owe you one, Jess. Even if this doesn't help us fight the thugs on the street it gives us hope that we can stand together. Thank you.'

I'd better bank that gratitude,
I thought, waiting for Rach to give me a lift back to the office. It might be the only time I ever got any.

Sil stared at the pictures, and then around the room. Jessica's parents' bedroom was like a shrine to normality; there was even a tube of denture-fixative on the bedside table and a bookcase full of farming handbooks and veterinary pamphlets which seemed to indicate that sheep had an alphabetical death wish.

He paused for a moment and used his thumb to ease the knot of worry that he could feel forming between his eyes.
All those words, all I spouted about decency, about killing myself if I proved to be untrustworthy
 …
And I never believed any of it. Never believed that it was truly I who was responsible for all that happened down in London.
He dug both hands into the ruin of his hair and let his head fall forwards.
I thought I had been magicked, glamoured somehow to behave the way I did. Yet it seems I went to London of my own volition.
A snatch of recovered memory, a room, high-ceilinged and dark with books; a girl sitting by him and smiling, laying a soft hand on his sleeve as though to hint at an intimacy recently past.
No mistake. No glamour. Just memories that I have locked away and can no longer retrieve.
Another faint whisper from the back of his mind, words uttered under the influence, memory fetched with the help of Jess's narcotic blood.
You, Jess. I went to London for you.

He raised his head and pushed the thoughts away, went to the small cupboard in the corner of the room and, with a quick whispered plea for forgiveness, opened the first drawer and began scanning through the paperwork it contained.

Somewhere here
 …
somewhere, there must be a clue,
he thought, trawling the farm subsidy payment records, the animal movement book, using vampire speed to read notes and sidebar headings.
Somewhere
 …
These are organised people, people who need to keep their lives recorded. How Jessica could ever have thought she was related to people who maintain an orderly series on sheep diseases I cannot imagine.
He slammed the drawer shut and pulled out the second, but his eye was caught by a small picture half-hidden underneath a carefully-folded copy of
Classic Tractor
. He drew it free, forgetting his search as his breath stopped.
Jess.
A more recent picture than those he'd found in her bedroom. Jess and her sister standing in a garden, possibly the garden to this house. Abigail staring at the camera with a heavy, serious expression, while Jess seemed to have been captured in movement: her limbs were blurred with arrested energy and her lips were parted as though she'd either been photographed mid-sentence or about to eat a sandwich.
Knowing Jessie, it could have been either,
he thought, and found himself stroking a finger over her image before he jerked himself back and began stacking the documents onto the bed.
Somewhere here there is an answer. Or, if not an answer, something that will make the questions a little more focused.

‘Jess?'

I jerked upright and tried to pretend that I'd been looking for something under my desk. ‘Urgh? Oh, morning, Liam.'

‘You were asleep, weren't you?'

‘No, no, I was just …'

‘Licking the desk? You've got dribble round your mouth.' He hung up his jacket and came over to collect the mugs. ‘Okay, so what occasioned today's early-morning start? Has Zan finally thrown you out of the House of Doom for leaving molecules scattered around?'

‘I was googling.'

A sceptical eyebrow raised. ‘Okay, and Zan has outlawed the use of all search engines under his roof? No, it's fine, Jessie, if you'd rather be here than anywhere else … I understand. I mean, I don't, because, let's face it, this place is only one step away from being a teenager's bedroom.' He looked around at the half-open filing cabinets with corners poking out like extras in a stationery-based Beau Geste film, and the dark orbits of long-dead mugs of coffee on the desks. ‘Irresistible. If you're fifteen. You can't even see fifteen in the rear-view mirror, so what makes you want to hang around here in the depths of the night, and don't say work because … seriously?' He looked into the depths of my mug. ‘You didn't even make coffee, and if you've learned to work without the stuff then I think you've moved up the ladder on the twelve-step programme. You probably get a badge.'

‘If I learn to work without coffee, you are out of a job.' I rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes, trying to smear away sleep. ‘No, I woke up early and thought I'd come in. It's better than trying to eat toast with Zan lurking behind the teapot. All that stalking around – seriously, would it kill him to slouch once in a while? He's like Death without the personal touch. So I came here. I
was
going to do something useful but …' I propped my elbows on the desk and rested my chin in my hands. ‘I couldn't think of anything.'

‘Figures.' Pointedly Liam took a letter off my desk, glanced at it, pulled open a filing drawer and slid the paper inside. ‘You put the filing fairies off their nightly chores.'

‘You are one small step away from mincing, Liam. I tell you this for your own good, obviously. Just go and do what you're best at, don't hold back on the biscuits, and then come back in here. I need someone to think at.'

He hesitated and, just for a second, I saw an expression cross his face that I didn't think I'd ever seen there before. It tightened his eyes like fear. ‘Jess …' His voice was similarly unfamiliar. ‘I need to talk to you.'

‘It's not to declare undying love, is it?' His strange manner and odd body language made me flippant. ‘Because I've told you before, I couldn't take the shame of being associated with a man who buys second-hand cybermen suits, I mean, think of the sweat!'

Liam still hadn't moved. ‘I had a phone call. From Head Office.'

‘Seriously? Head Office think you're five! They think you came in on a Bring a Schoolchild To Work day and just never left. Why would they ring you, unless it's to try to source illegal Pokémon cards?' His lack of movement was making me nervous now. Liam knew his main duty was to make me coffee and keep the paperwork from sliding down the stairs and onto the street, and his reluctance to carry this out was worrying.

The slam as Liam hit the desk made me jump. ‘No! Stop it!' He used his fist, punching at the flimsy MDF in a way guaranteed to make the whole office rock. ‘Jessica. This is serious.'

‘It must be,' I said, staring at him. ‘You haven't been this butch since Sarah did the pregnancy test.'

‘Stop it!' To my surprise, and slight horror, Liam moved away from his desk and stood in front of mine, hands bunched almost as though he wanted to hit me as hard as he'd hit the furniture. ‘You're always doing this, treating me as though I'm some kind of idiot foil for your brains … and I'm not, Jess. Seriously, I'm
not
.' His voice rose to something nearer a shout, and he scattered the paperwork off the surface of my desk with the side of his hand so that he could lean over towards me.

‘Liam, I …' This was slightly scary. A bit like being attacked by a tea-cosy.

‘No. Shut up for once and listen to me.' His breathing was quick, his shoulders hunching up as though the words he had to say were heavy and weighing on him. ‘Head Office want me to take over from you. They think you've been compromised by Sil and Zan; that Sil going rogue has affected your ability to do your job, so they've approached me with a view to getting you to step down.'

Half of me wanted to laugh, a little hysterically perhaps, but still … the image of Liam out on the streets with a tranq gun was so incongruous that it made my lips twitch. But the other half of me felt a cold, creeping dread. ‘They're going to
fire
me?'

A brief nod.

‘And you're going to take over?'

‘Thinking about it. I want … I
need
to be getting on.' And now his voice was a little more normal, nearer to the Liam I relied on. ‘Sarah … she's getting sick of me being dragged out of bed or away when I've promised I'll be home; she …' A quick shake of his head, as though to dismiss painful conversations. ‘I could lose them, Jess. Sarah and Charlotte. They'll go if I don't start getting regular hours, some actual money and fewer phone calls in the middle of the night.' His tone was sad. ‘And I'm not prepared to throw it all away. Much as I … you and me, what we've got here, it's great and I …
you're
great. But Sarah is mine and I love her and my daughter, and I will do
anything
I can to keep us together. Do you understand?'

Now it all made sense. Liam's tension, the half-heard muttered conversations during the late phone calls. I'd dragged him into this, a world of uncertainty and low-paid stress, and I hadn't even noticed what was happening to him. Zan's words about my only needing people when I was using them came back to me, with a little twinge of guilt. Now, with what I felt for Sil … I'd do anything,
was
doing anything, to keep him safe, and Liam just wanted the same for himself. How could I deny him that? But if I was no longer employed at Liaison, then how could I use the system, my network, to help Sil? ‘How long have I got? Before they throw me out?' I tried not to look at him, remorse was needling at me, just underneath my heart.

‘I haven't given them an answer yet. Well, unless you count whooping down the phone, but they want that in writing.' Liam sounded a little bit sheepish now. ‘I didn't know what to do. I don't want you kicked out, but I need … I have to think of the future. And a future without my daughter, without Charlotte and Sarah, well, it's not the future I want.'

‘You'd do it? You'd seriously do my job?'

A tentative grin lightened those strained eyes a bit. ‘I don't really want … Well, it is mostly drinking coffee, eating Kit Kats and swearing, and I think I've got a handle on all those.' The smile became sad. ‘I told them I needed a few days to think about it. So I guess you've got that long. They don't want the office unmanned, and I'm pretty sure they're not going to go to some temp agency to try and find someone willing to get eaten by werewolves in the line of duty, so …'

‘So I stay here until you decide to tell them you'll take over.'

Liam leaned in closer. There were small lines of tension creasing the sides of his mouth and his eyes were shadowed. I knew that this whole conversation had cost him dearly, and that he knew our relationship would never be the same again after this. Our easy ‘boss and sidekick' roles were gone, blown out for an uncertain future and my palms were clammy at the emptiness that lay ahead. ‘I can hold off until you sort something for Sil,' he almost whispered. ‘When we know he's safe … then maybe you can negotiate with the council, get posted somewhere else? Maybe go work for Laurie across the river.'

I suddenly felt tired. As though my sleepless night had rebounded and hit me in the back of the head. ‘I don't have much choice, do I?'

He reached out. Took my hand where it lay limply on my desk and gripped it. ‘I don't want to do this to you. Seriously, I don't. Liaison isn't
me
: I'm born to be a second in command, and I'm never happier than when I'm hiding the emergency biscuits from you – gods, woman, you've got a nose like a bloodhound for HobNobs – and I
love
being your backroom guy. But I need … I need
more
. More money, more resources, better tech, shorter hours …'

‘That's less, then.'

‘A proper contract. Health and Safety protocols, an R&D budget, overtime that isn't paid in garden centre vouchers, overtime that's paid at all, actually. All that. A
real
job. And this'—the hand not holding mine waved to take in the concentrated chaos of our office—‘is
not
a real job.'

But it's all I've got,
I wanted to say. But didn't. ‘Okay then,' I said with a careful confidence I didn't feel. ‘We both want to get the Sil business sorted as fast as possible. You so that you can get this place arranged and colour-coded, and me so that I can … well. Whatever.'

‘Jess …'

I shook my head. Business as usual, at least for now. ‘Until then, I am still your boss and I rather think that I need coffee more at this minute than I have ever done before. Unless you're going to come over all Bond Villain on me; although I think I actually still have the power to fire you, which could cause an interesting case of recursion to ripple through Head Office. If I fire my replacement before he even becomes my replacement, well, we all might disappear up some anomaly … any chance of a coffee?'

Liam gave me a mild raised eyebrow. ‘Of course. And then you said you wanted to think at me?'

When he reappeared, two mugs braced out in front of him, like the world's most domestic knuckleduster, I said. ‘I need to go up to the farm. I think I need to talk to Sil again.'

A coaster appeared to cushion my paperwork from the mug. ‘Not such a great idea, Jess. The more often you go up there, the more likely it is that Zan will get suspicious. Actually, no, he's already suspicious, got to be, with a walk like that. But, seriously, can't you just phone?'

‘He doesn't have his mobile and he wouldn't answer the house phone.' I took my first, life-saving, mouthful of coffee. ‘Besides, I might need to …' I wasn't even aware that I'd done it, but my finger must have touched the now-healed bite under my shirt, because Liam slammed his mug down on his desk.

‘No. No. Not again. I've still got the bruises from last time.'

‘Well, obviously, let's get our priorities right here.'

‘You can't keep giving him blood every time he gets a bit forgetful! What's going to happen if he goes senile – you walk around next to him like a human Snack Bucket?'

‘This isn't
a bit forgetful
, Liam, it's something that's been done to him that my blood can partially reverse, even if only temporarily. And we need to know more.'

Liam picked up his mug and stared into it, shaking his head again. ‘Crazy. It's all getting political here; I never signed up for political. I signed up for making the world a better place, equality and fraternity and not staking blokes just because they're wearing eyeliner! Not some deep shit in London with non-existent birth certificates and your boyfriend getting a death sentence. This is way, way beyond my brief.'

‘Well, it won't be worrying you for much longer, will it?' I hadn't meant to sound quite so sarcastic and tried to mitigate my words. ‘Once this place is all yours you can make the job as unpolitical as you like, can't you?'

Dark eyebrows flicked at me over his mug. ‘I might complain about them, but one thing I do know about politics is that they generate a
phenomenal
amount of paperwork. Best bit of the job, paperwork.'

‘And, incidentally, great for starting fires.' My gaze went back to my computer screen and an itchy little ache set up between my heart and my lungs. ‘Something is wrong.'

‘With Sil?'

‘With this whole thing. Sil went to London to look for records relating to my mother, okay, so far, fine. Next thing he knows he's shot; then he wakes up starving and … well, his demon took over.'

‘Yes,' Liam said gently. ‘I know. I was there when he told you.'

‘Right.' Then, aware that hadn't sounded very butch. ‘Right! Get on that machine and find whatever census result it was that Sil got up. We might as well be working from the same parameters. Oh, and keep that security level up high; we don't want Zan hacking in and finding out what we're doing.'

‘Bloody hell, when did you come over all MI5?' Liam said.

‘And I am going up to the farm. It's all right, I'll take a cover story in case Zan is watching. Can I borrow your car?'

‘Don't let him bite. Not without someone else there. I saw him the other day and he wasn't in control, not really. If I hadn't hit him …' Liam clenched his fist reflexively. ‘Well, anything could have happened.'

‘I have to trust him.' Ignoring my body's screams for a good night's sleep in a proper bed, I pulled on my jacket. ‘Because otherwise there's nothing between us.'

‘Well, all right.' His keys, with the flashing TARDIS keyring, flew across the desk. ‘But take care, kemo sabe.'

‘I've always thought of you more as Robin to my Batman. Only without you in tights, obviously, because, ugh.'

‘Just go.'