Jam Read online

  Angela was sitting close, trying to hug her knees and film at the same time. I leaned over and whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “I think we’re being watched.”

  “Yeah, I know. He’s over there.” She pointed.

  I didn’t have the benefit of a camera with a night-vision setting, so I didn’t notice Y until we were right next to him. He appeared to be stranded on the rain shelter outside the clothing-alterations place. He must have been trying to get our attention, because he had taken off his camo shirt and was twirling it over his head like a stripper who didn’t know he was supposed to let go.

  Don slowed the boat as best he could and Y did an impressive standing leap onto the deck, landing in an alert crouch with one knee and one hand on the floor.

  “And where the hell have you been?” said Don, hands on hips like a schoolteacher.

  “They took m . . . They took X,” said Y urgently, standing to his full height. His imposing size was even more apparent now his muscles were exposed.

  “The bin-liner men?”

  “That way.” He pointed at the upcoming turn that led into the Queen Street Mall. It seemed to be the same way the trails were leading us, but it was becoming harder and harder to see the furrows the plastic-covered thieves were leaving behind as evening rolled on and the light faded.

  “They took Tim, too,” I said. “And our food.”

  “Coincidentally,” said Angela, with deliberate emphasis. She made an attempt to give Y a sidelong look which was aborted rather drastically when he turned out to not be there anymore. “Where’s he gone?”

  Don and I were still engaged in keeping the boat moving, but we glanced around helpfully. “I dunno,” I said. “Did he go below decks? I didn’t notice him move at all.”

  “He must’ve,” said Don dismissively. “It’s not like he can put on some giant wellies and go on ahead. Don’t bother him. If you offend him, he might leave again.”

  Angela backed down sulkily, and we sailed on in silence. All the street lights were off, and in the twilight all the ugly, jagged modern-art installations became like the grasping branches of a haunted forest. I glanced at Mary when I heard her skitter agitatedly in her box. I wasn’t an expert in arachnid care, but she definitely seemed a little thinner than I remembered.

  “Hey,” I said. “What do spiders eat?”

  “Depends on the breed,” replied Don without interest.

  “Okay. So what do Goliath birdeaters eat?”

  He turned his head very, very slowly to look me in the eye before responding. “At an educated guess, I’d say, Christmas pudding and milkshakes.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “No,” he said, sarcastically.

  Finding a bird for Mary to eat would be problematic. There were some chicken Cup-a-Soups among the vending machine spoils, but we didn’t have a kettle. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a living bird or heard one calling; those that hadn’t been eaten by the jam had probably fled the city. I glanced up at the rooftops just in case, but all I saw was the silhouette of a vaguely humanoid shape that backed away when it noticed me watching it.

  I was about to speak up when something struck the hull heavily and the boat gave a dangerous lurch. Angela grabbed the mast to stay on her feet. “Sorry, that was me,” I said sheepishly, yanking on the rudder. “Didn’t see the fountain. Because of the dark.”

  Visibility was continually worsening and it wasn’t going to get any better any time soon. Angela frowned into her viewfinder. “Maybe it’s time we stopped for the night.”

  “Yeah, genius,” said Don, pointing forward. “Or maybe we could just go investigate that light up ahead.”

  I peered around the sail to see. As we approached the crossroads of the mall where Queen Street met Albert Street, I could see a flickering orange light on the corner.

  A metal rake was sticking out of the jam with what I think were discount children’s pajamas wrapped around the end and set alight. And it wasn’t the only one. As we drew nearer and could see down the length of Albert Street, I saw another three makeshift torches outside the south entrance to the Briar Center, the largest shopping center in the CBD. There was another entrance some distance further up Queen Street, and sure enough I could squint my eyes and spot a couple of flaming specks in front of that, too.

  “I think the bin men must’ve gone to the Briar Center,” I said, as quietly as possible.

  “All right,” whispered Don. “We’d better try for a stealthy approach.”

  As the Everlong was passing the center of the crossroads, there was a loud metallic clang, and the boat lurched violently to a halt. We had gotten caught on the artistically designed archway in the center of the mall. The very tip of the mast had lodged itself between two metal plates that had been finely cut into the geometric shapes thought to best express the creative soul of the city.

  Don and I both grabbed different parts of the boat and pulled as hard as we could, but that just resulted in more squeaks and groans as our efforts shook the entire structure. “For crying out loud!” shouted Don. “This is why I petitioned against building this thing!”

  “They heard us!” said Angela. She was lying on her stomach, peering into the darkness with her camera on night-vision mode.

  There were sloshing noises coming from the jam on two sides, the kind that people in plastic bin liners might have made while wading towards us. I felt something cold and metal, and I realized I’d unconsciously backed myself up against the central mast. Don appeared to have had the same idea.

  “Outsiders,” came a hissed voice from the north that made the fear crawl up and down my limbs.

  “Outssssiders,” returned a female voice to the west.

  The plastic people were close enough that I could see the orange firelight reflecting off their bags. There were two of them, one coming up Albert and one from up Queen, slowly gliding towards us with their arms outstretched. Angela gave a yelp and joined us at the mast.

  “We are the plastic men,” intoned the male one in a menacing monotone.

  “We’re totally gonna get you guys,” added the female one.

  “Yeah,” confirmed the first. “You’d better be totally bricking it.”

  Bricking it would certainly be a good phrase to describe my intention when the one from Albert Street reached the boat and placed its amorphous hands on the side in preparation to climb inside.

  And then Y was there. One second the plastic man was boarding us; the next Y was grabbing him around the head and hauling him out of the jam with a wet slurp. A flick of the wrist later and the plastic-covered man slammed face first into the deck, knocking him senseless.

  It must have been too dark or the plastic too opaque for our other attacker to see what was happening, because she was still coming slowly towards the front of the boat making ghostly wooo noises. Y hauled her inside by the arm the moment she touched the handrail at the prow, and rendered her unconscious with some kind of exotic open-hand blow to the neck.

  Only then did Y turn to us, expressionless but for the merest hint of a scowl. All three of us were frozen, leaning tightly into the mast as if roped there.

  “Is there a back way into the shopping mall?” he asked. It was the longest sentence I’d yet heard him say, and his voice had taken on a bit of an action movie hero growl. He was clearly in his element.

  Don and Angela appeared to be temporarily mute so I took the initiative, speaking carefully in case a hasty word might offend him. “If you go to the end of Queen Street,” I said, “there’s a little escalator goes into the department store.”

  He glanced up the street, then back. “Wait here.”

  “Right you are,” I squeaked. “Sir.”

  He jumped sideways, springboarded off the Everlong’s handrail, and grabbed one of the legs of the archway. He shimmied rapidly up and out of the range of the meager torch light, although we heard his boots thundering across the sheet metal overhead.

  Afte
r silence fell and we could be certain he’d moved on, Don slowly outstretched a finger and turned Angela’s camera to look him in the eye. “Of course, you realize what we’re not going to do.”

  “And what’s that?” she asked in a monotone.

  “We’re not going to do what he said and wait here.”

  “Er, why aren’t we doing that?” I asked politely. “I ask because I was the one who told Y we’d wait and I really don’t want him to think I lied to him . . .”

  “Y isn’t going to get my build back,” said Don.

  “I agree,” said Angela. “Not about the build—Don’s totally insane—but I want to see what’s going on inside that shopping center.” She tapped her camera. “For posterity.”

  “You don’t have a plastic covering,” I tried.

  “Then lend me yours if you’re so bent on staying here.”

  “I’m not staying here alone!” I said.

  “Well, I guess that’s decided to everyone’s satisfaction,” said Don, clapping his hands as Angela bent to start pulling the plastic bags off of one of our two unconscious guests. “Let’s go hang out at the mall.”

  DAY 3.5

  —

  The three of us waded single file through the Albert Street jam, towards the shopping center’s main entrance. I was balancing Mary’s box on my head and Angela was now geared up in the green and blue ensemble the female boarder had been wearing. We had tied both boarders to the prow rail on the Everlong, and while it probably wasn’t the soundest idea in the world to physically attach untrustworthy strangers to our only means of transportation, no better alternative had come to mind.

  As we drew closer to the flaming torches at the Briar Center’s entrance, we saw two plastic men standing to rigid attention. Don, who was taking the lead, immediately stopped and turned on his heel. “This is never going to work.”

  “Well, not if you jinx it like that,” said Angela, filming the entrance. “If we believe it’ll work, it’s more likely to work. It’s a psychology thing.”

  “You know who told themselves that?” said Don. “The Children’s Crusade.”

  “Why don’t you think it’ll work?” I asked.

  “Because every one of these bastards I’ve seen has been wearing normal garbage bags.” He glanced down at the canary-yellow biological waste bags we were wearing. “We’re going to stick out like . . . like Travis at a Mensa meeting.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant but it sounded like an insult. “Hey!”

  The Albert Street entrance to the shopping center was on the corner of Elizabeth Street, providing access to the ground floor and an escalator up to the food court on the second. It was a stone’s throw from the local community college, so most of the time when I’d passed by there’d been a lot of kids sitting around, chatting or buying food, wearing trendy T-shirts bearing utterly mystifying but apparently hilarious slogans, or black leather trench coats and knee-high studded fetish boots in bold defiance of the climate.

  The kids weren’t there now. The main way through to the ground floor was blocked off by huge metal shutters. Copious torch light was spilling down from the second floor, but the escalator wasn’t working. Jam ran all the way up the unmoving steps in a glistening slope. The central business district was built on fairly hilly terrain, so the bottom three levels of the mall all had direct access to a street, and consequently jam.

  The two guards were either side of the escalator, both wearing entirely black bags tied up with black tape, so it was good to see fashion traditions remain. They both held cheap plastic broom handles with the heads removed and kitchen knives taped onto the end. As we drew towards the light, one of them brandished his weapon and held up his free hand. “Halt! Who goest there?”

  “Friend!” returned Angela, only thrown for a second.

  “Oh, don’t encourage him,” said the other, shorter guard. “He’s been doing the medieval-guard thing all day.”

  “Dude, I’m making, like, an ironic statement,” said the first guard, covering his mouth as if to whisper but speaking at a normal level. “I’m saying that we’ve basically gone back to medieval times ’cos there’s no electricity but we haven’t really?”

  “Yeah, man, that’s ironic as hell,” conceded the second guard. Whenever they said any form of the word ironic they put a peculiar emphasis on it, rounding out each vowel and rolling their heads sarcastically, as if they were trying to say the word in as ironic a way as possible.

  “Can we come in, then?” said Don.

  “Yeah, man,” said the first guard, as if it were a stupid question. “Few new recruits showed up today; we’ll be doing the ceremony soon.”

  We passed between them and started squelching our way up the narrow escalator. Halfway up, the shorter guard suddenly turned and called after us. “Hey, are you guys new?”

  All three of us stiffened. In the soundtrack of our lives, a jarring chord played. I looked to Don and Angela, but they weren’t turning around. I was the nearest to the guards. It was up to me to say something that would deflect suspicion.

  I looked over my shoulder. “Yes.”

  “Thought so. I like the yellow. Looks hideous.” He made a curious gesture with his plastic-covered hand which I think might have been an okay sign. “Very ironic.”

  —

  The Briar Center was built around a central food court packed with whatever fast-food franchises could afford some of the most lucrative spots in the city. Five levels of shops looked voyeuristically down upon the main dining area, with the cinema at the very top, a paradoxically overpriced place that had presumably long ago written sticky floors into its mission statement.

  Speaking of which, the jam was everywhere. The jam flooding the three levels with street access hadn’t deterred the residents at all: the Briar Center had been the social hub for the city’s least employable, so its colonization after the rush-hour genocide had been virtually inevitable. Just from a single glance I saw easily twenty or thirty individuals going about their business in the jam, all swaddled in plastic bags. There were many variations of color and transparency but none quite as hideous as our choice of yellow. Plastic men waded confidently through the jam. Plastic women stepped as nimbly as the thick substance would allow. Some were dragging small plastic children, only their heads emerging from the surface like uneven mushrooms.

  “This is all a bit Innsmouth for my liking,” commented Don, as we endeavored to look like natives. “And look, I said this would happen. Not a square inch of yellow to be seen.”

  “I’m not in yellow,” said Angela, panning left and right, missing nothing. “Anyone asks, I’ll say you’re my prisoners.”

  “We don’t even know what they do with the prisoners!” said Don. “They might take us straight off to be cannibalized!”

  “Look, do you want to rescue Tim or what?”

  “Is that a trick question? I’m going after my build. Then I’m going straight to Hibatsu. You can meet me there if you’re not too busy being a casserole or anything.”

  A translucent glass dome high up in the ceiling provided illumination during the day, but now that it was night naked flames were taking that particular workload. Every spare plant pot and litter bin contained a makeshift torch like the ones outside. The ventilation had never been good in here even when the electricity worked; now the air was hot and thick with foul-smelling smoke.

  “Do you see that?” I said, as we moved into the larger open area of the food court.

  “Of course I see that,” snapped Don. “We’re facing the same direction and I’m in front of you.”

  What we saw was a cluster of flaming torches arranged in a circle in the most open section of the dining area, where most of the plastic people were apparently gathering. At the far side of the circle was the coffee stand, which had been converted into some kind of stage, with a collage of plastic shower curtains forming its backdrop.

  Tim was sitting on the stage with his arms around his knees, alongside a fe
w other worried-looking, ragged survivors, presumably picked up today. X was there, too, glancing around with the kind of thoughtful scowl that implied that a lot of faces were being committed to memory.

  As we drew closer to try to get their attention, one of the plastic men stomped out onto center stage, blocking our view of Tim. He was tall and skinny, and the clear plastic bag on his head revealed a pale face and greasy black bangs. “Hey!” he called to us. “Where’d you guys come from?”

  “They’re my prisoners!” said Angela quickly, caught off guard.

  “Oh, are they? Could you have brought them up a bit later, do you think?” He had a nasal, high-pitched voice. “Only I don’t think we’re quite as inconvenienced as we could be just yet.”

  “What?” said Angela.

  “Oh, just pass them up here. Coming prebagged now, are they?”

  Under the eyes of a mall full of plastic men there was nothing we could do but obey. Don and I clambered up onto the makeshift stage as the pale young man watched with arms folded. Tim reacted to our appearance with a silent start, then noticed Angela. He seemed to be about to make some kind of greeting when X, still glancing in all directions, slapped a hand over his mouth.

  “What the hell’s that?” demanded the pale man, pointing.

  “That’s my spider,” I said, hurriedly taking up Mary’s box and clutching her to my chest.

  He threw up his hands. “Whatever! Just sit with the others and wait for the cue,” he ordered, acting more like a theatrical director arranging extras than a sinister cult leader preparing sacrificial victims. I scuttled to Tim’s side and Don sat Indian style beside me, resting his cheek on his fist. The director eyeballed us as we settled down. “Any more surprises you’d like to spring on me in the seconds before we go on, hmm? Any heads of state coming to visit?”

  “N-no, that’s all,” I stammered.