Jam Read online

  As it turned out, he didn’t get the chance to pick. “You must be Crazy Bob!” Angela yelled.

  Tim’s shoulders sagged in exasperation. “Fine. We’ll go with that.”

  “No, I mean, ‘You must be crazy, Bob’!” she continued excitedly. “Crazy Bob’s Mobile Phone Asylum! That’s where that character’s from! I just realized!”

  “Oh my god! You’re right!” I said, before recalling the song out loud. “Your prices are lazy / Everything’s gone hazy . . .”

  Angela joined me for the final line. “You must be crazy, Bob!” Then we fell about laughing.

  Tim wasn’t joining in. He appeared to be covering his face with both his hands, fingers clawed like two haunted trees reaching up to the moon.

  “Wbluh?” emitted Crazy Bob, sputtering himself awake. “Who’s that? Speak up!”

  Tim’s arms instantly slapped to his sides. “Er, Tim,” he said, quickly. “My name’s Tim.”

  “Eh?” barked Crazy Bob in the complete opposite of an indoor voice.

  “Tim! I just want to talk to you about the administration of this settlement.”

  The unchanging wacky expression on the two-dimensional face of Crazy Bob swayed left and right. “What are you talking about, you silly fool? Have you brought my tea?”

  Tim’s brow furrowed. “No.” That didn’t seem like an adequate response. “There isn’t going to be any tea.”

  “What?!” bellowed Crazy Bob. “Who are you? Get out of here or I’m going to call the police!”

  “There . . . there isn’t going to be any police either,” stammered Tim. “They’re all gone. Civilization’s collapsed.”

  “Well then, call the police! Can’t you do a single thing without having to be told?”

  “Look, sorry to bother you. I was just looking for the roof access,” said Tim, returning, flustered, to the point.

  “I’m an old man!” replied Crazy Bob.

  There was a long pause, then Tim suddenly strode forward and leaned urgently on the stage. “Could you tell me,” he said, slowly and clearly like a tourist trying to communicate with a brown person, “where you are?”

  “Don’t think you can patronize me,” said Crazy Bob. “I’m at work.” He lifted up a push broom that had been at his feet, holding it like an offering. It was at more or less this point that I noticed that none of his concubines had moved an inch, and were in fact department-store mannequins.

  “There are a load of people downstairs,” said Tim with admirable patience, “who worship you as some kind of godly leader. Last night someone got killed because they ate your yogurt. Were you aware of this?”

  Crazy Bob’s eyeholes flashed as Tim raised one of the few topics that could penetrate his consciousness. “Where’s my yogurt? Have you got my yogurt?”

  “No, I’m saying someone stole your yogurt and your high priest murdered him.”

  “Someone wants to steal my yogurt? I’d like to see them try!” He wobbled his broom. “I’m not so old that I can’t show some young idiots what for! Where you going?”

  “Sorry,” said Tim as we backed away. “Thought you were someone else.”

  “I’m an old man!” he yelled after us.

  Once we’d backed all the way out of the theater into the connecting hall, Tim spun around, clutched his hair in his hands, and began pacing like an expectant father in a hospital corridor. After he’d completed his third lap and was setting out on his fourth, Angela coughed tactfully.

  “Crazy Bob’s attitude rang particularly familiar for me,” she said to her camera. “My grandfather was the same. I went to visit him once and he thought I was Howard Holt.”

  “It’s a bit sad, really,” I commented.

  Tim stopped short but didn’t turn. “Sad? It’s sick. It’s like a European monarchy where they skipped all the good kings and went straight to when they’re all mad, inbred bastards. Why the hell would anyone run a settlement this way?”

  “I think it’s an ironic thing,” said Angela.

  Tim’s attention was drawn to an emergency-exit door that had been painted to look like part of the wall, with the unlocking bar on the front cleverly made to look like part of the advertising display for that one upcoming movie about the anthropomorphic supermarket trolleys. He placed his hands on it, then stopped himself. “Are any of those guards watching?”

  Angela leant around the corner. “No, they’re all keeping an eye on Don,” she revealed. “He’s standing by the top of the stairs trying to whistle.”

  Immediately Tim pushed the door open with a wincingly loud clunk and hustled us into the concrete stairwell beyond. There weren’t any flaming torches set up, but the advantage of narrow staircases is that they’re quite predictably laid out. We felt our way up to the highest level and dazzled ourselves with the bright noonday sun after the roof access door fell open to Tim’s pushing.

  “Hang on,” said Angela, bracing the heavy door open with a convenient nearby brick. “I’ve seen this movie.”

  “Why’s this door unlocked?” I wondered, prodding the bar with one finger.

  “Ah, this I did find out,” said Angela, kicking the brick firmly into place. “Crazy Bob was the janitor here. And the plastic men borrowed his keys and went through the whole place unlocking all the doors. That’s as far as I could tell through all the irony.”

  Tim was walking the wide, circular roof, completing a circuit around the huge skylight that was currently illuminating the main interior. Occasionally he kicked at the stubbornly solid gravelly floor, and grimaced each time at either the unsuitable farming conditions or a repeatedly stubbed toe.

  “So what’s the verdict?” asked Angela once he’d completed his first lap.

  “Well, we’ll definitely need soil,” he said, rubbing his foot on the back of his other trouser leg. “I think I saw some unbroken plastic sacks in the home and garden department. Hopefully that’ll be enough. And it is summer, so we can probably rely on some rain.”

  “Er, Tim, maybe Don is right,” I said as gently as possible, prompting Tim’s eyes to immediately start from his sockets in preparation for an argument. “Maybe we should just get out while we can and move straight on to Hibatsu. These people are all . . . well, they’re all mad.”

  Tim sighed and glanced back at the building under discussion, which loomed invitingly by the river barely a few hundred yards away. We were now close enough to read the banner that was still fluttering outside the upper windows: Hibatsu Shelter Welcomes Airborne Rescuers! “I understand your position,” he said, his voice sounding a little dubious as he reread Hibatsu’s optimistic message. “I just think there’s already a settlement here and a good source for supplies. I’m not sure I want to take a risk on another roll of the dice. Hibatsu could be even worse.”

  He turned to face us and opened his mouth to make another point, but then his eyes boggled and he spun on his heel. He bolted for the edge of the roof, planted his hands on the edge, and leaned forward so urgently I thought for a moment he’d suddenly been seized by the suicidal impulse. “Look!” he shouted. Angela and I trotted over.

  “Whoa, look at the jam,” said Angela.

  The jam was behaving very oddly around the Hibatsu building. While everywhere else in the city it maintained a permanent depth of three feet, rising and falling accordingly with the contours of the ground underneath, for some reason it had commenced the process of sheathing Hibatsu like a gigantic fruit-flavored condom as high as Hibatsu’s third floor. It reached its maximum height against the building’s outer wall and gradually tapered down to the standard depth. I was reminded of the way the jam had tried to ensnare me as I’d moved through it with apple in hand.

  “Well, that’s it,” said Tim, turning and rubbing his hands. “Definitely not going to take that risk. We’re stuck with the Briar Center. That’s fine. Most of the work’s been done for us; all we need is a change of government.”

  I coughed. “Tim, don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . do you no
t think you might be taking things a little too far?”

  His mouth hung open as he waited for the punch line. “What?”

  “Okay, you’re taking that the wrong way. I just think, you know . . .” My hands made nervous groping notions as I sought the words. “It is good that you’re worrying about it now, but . . . of all the things that are worth worrying about—the lots of things, don’t get me wrong—are you sure that you’ve got them all . . . properly arranged on the priorities list?”

  “Priorities?!” spat Tim. “Fine! You do whatever you want. Go downstairs and mess around eating Mars bars and executing people. And six months from now when all the food’s run out, come right on up and ask to have some of my incredibly small amount of crops because I had to grow them all by myself! Will you stop filming this?!”

  “Sorry,” said Angela, zooming out. “For a second there you looked exactly like Lord Awesomo.”

  Tim wasn’t sure how to take that, so he just turned around and stormed back to the stairwell door. I think he was planning to slam it behind him, but the brick holding it open caught him short and he thought better of it, instead stomping down the stairs as loudly as he could.

  I watched him go. When I turned around, Angela was sitting on a vent with her phone out. She’d been making a habit of checking for signals whenever she remembered, and as always, there was nothing. She stared sorrowfully at the lack of bars. “Do you think . . . Tim’s all right?” I asked, to distract her.

  She didn’t look at me straightaway. “I dunno. You know him best, don’t you?”

  “I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s never been so . . . driven.”

  “I guess that can be a good or a bad thing.” The camcorder came out again. “Travis, if this were a film, who do you think would be the main character?”

  I flinched as the lens rounded on me again, my eyebrows crashing together like a motorway pile-up. “What?”

  “Because, in film terms, it’d be either Tim or Don. It depends. If this is an actual apocalypse, then Tim’d be the visionary hero and we should all be behind him.” She was thinking aloud now, taking establishing shots of the skyline. “But if we’re just waiting for rescue, then Don’s the only sane man. Well. Right, at least.”

  “Why couldn’t I be the main character?” I said. I’d tried to sound stern but it had come out belonging more to whine territory.

  Angela didn’t even look at me. “No offense, Travis, but you’re not exactly dynamic.”

  “Oh. Charming.”

  After a few more attempts to work myself into genuine anger, I gave up and left her to her work. I paced sulkily around the roof, kicking up gravel every few steps. I certainly hoped this wasn’t the apocalypse Tim thought it was, because I was not the kind of person who had any business surviving. I didn’t have any of the skills necessary for postapocalyptic society. Or preapocalyptic society, come to think of it. In Angela’s version of things I’d be the guy who goes off to investigate the strange noise in the first act and whose head is getting paraded around on a spike by the second.

  I was still holding Mary’s box by the handle, and she was pawing at the transparent walls reassuringly. I sat down with my back to a vent and laid her on my lap, rocking her playfully with my knees. “You think I’m the main character, don’t you, Mary?”

  “What did you say?”

  I froze for a moment, astonished at Mary’s sudden ability to speak, before it registered that the voice had come from somewhere behind me.

  “That’s what I thought you said,” it continued. It was a woman’s voice, with an American accent. It had to be X.

  I glanced over at Angela, but she was on the opposite side of the roof, leaning over the wall with one foot in the air to film something captivating down in the jam-filled street. I didn’t feel the need to draw her attention to this just yet, anyway.

  Carefully setting Mary aside, I rolled onto my stomach and laid my cheek upon the ground. There was a gap of about two inches between the gravel and the underside of the vent, and I could see another section of roof beyond, and two people’s feet.

  The one closest to me was wearing sensible women’s flats wrapped in transparent plastic bags, while the other had army boots with a few inches of ThunderCats-patterned trouser leg visible above.

  “I can’t believe you’d overstep my authority like that,” said X, her shoes turning away from Y’s.

  “You were out of communication, sir,” said Y quietly. I imagined his face angled towards the floor like that of a scolded schoolboy.

  “Of course I was out of communication—I was being kidnapped! I’ve been worried as hell about where you’ve been and now I find that you’re making deals behind my back?”

  “Your rescue and extraction has always been my highest priority,” said Y. From anyone else it might have sounded romantic, or at least warm, but the way he spoke about X put me in mind of a courier discussing a package. “Once I established you weren’t in immediate danger, I sought to prioritize a long-term extraction solution.”

  “Immediate danger?!” repeated X’s shoes, stamping unhappily. “They are executing people down there! For yogurt crimes!”

  “I was observing that ceremony,” assured Y. “I would have intervened if you had been under direct threat. It seemed to me you were being accepted into the organization.”

  “This is not an organization I relish being accepted into. I hesitate even to use the word organization.” The shoes stomped back and forth uncertainly a few times. “Look. I’m sorry. I know you’ve got everything under control. I just want to get us out of this god damn insanity once and for all.” Y kept silent, letting her vent. “I look at what these people have become, and I can’t help but feel . . . responsible.”

  My eyebrows shot up. That one word had revived my dwindling interest in the conversation. There was a lot about X and Y I found suspicious—the code-name thing just for starters—but I’d never taken Angela’s claims seriously. Now there definitely seemed to be more to the story.

  “You are not responsible, sir,” said Y, muddying the issue somewhat. “If anyone should feel responsible, it’s me.”

  Her feet moved closer to his. “Don’t ever think that. All right? We’re in this together. To the end.”

  “As you wish, sir,” said Y disingenuously.

  X sighed through her teeth. “So, these people you made a deal with. Can we trust them?”

  “Of the settlements I have seen, they are the most dependable,” said Y. “Above all, they are secure. And they have guaranteed me that they have a means of communicating with the outside world. I don’t believe they have any reason to lie. They consider my work to be a favor rather than an absolute necessity.”

  “And once you’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain?”

  “They will accept us immediately.”

  “What about the others?” said X.

  “I didn’t mention them.”

  X’s feet paced a little more. “At any rate, they’re not our problem.”

  “They did pull us out of the wreck, sir,” said Y.

  “That’s an emotional response,” said X, her tone implying that it was therefore something entirely beyond her understanding.

  “As you say, sir.” Y’s tone had only the merest hint of discomfort. “And the Sunderland issue?”

  “I see no reason to draw Mr. Sunderland’s attention to that issue at present. He is an . . . unpredictable factor.”

  I’d been mentally attaching all kinds of pale, black-suited figures to the name of Mr. Sunderland before remembering that Sunderland was Don’s last name. My ears were pricking up so hard now they threatened to peel right off the sides of my head. Why was Don so important that there’d be an issue named after him?

  “I could easily recover the unit without his knowledge,” continued Y.

  “I know that. So could I,” said X. “My thinking is it might be for the best that the unit not be in our possession if rescue arrives. It creates c
onsiderably more deniability. No, my orders stand. Leave it with him, but don’t let him—”

  “Hey!”

  That was Angela. I glanced over to the left, and saw her plastic-covered shoes trotting into view from around the other side of the roof. By the time I looked back, Y’s boots had disappeared without a sound.

  “Who were you talking to?” demanded Angela, her shoes toe to toe with X’s. I heard her camera zooming. “Are you conspiring again?”

  X glanced behind her, apparently as surprised as I was by Y’s quick exit, but recovering quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, in that sincere tone people only use when they’re being completely insincere. “I just came up to get some air.”

  “Some air-to-air missiles, maybe,” said Angela. “Where’s Travis? Have you silenced him?”

  I felt some kind of rescue was in order, although I wondered which of the two I was rescuing. I carefully crawled away under the cover of the vent, then stood up, turned around, and walked flamboyantly back to my spot, humming loudly. “Oh, hello,” I said, waving over the vent. “I was just doing something else over there.”

  “Well, if that’s all, I’ll see you guys later,” said X sweetly, speed walking towards the exit before either of us could argue about the that’s all thing.

  “You can’t hide it forever!” yelled Angela after her.

  X didn’t turn back, but merely waved coquettishly as if Angela had been blowing kisses. Then she passed through the stairwell door and vanished from sight.

  “I wouldn’t think it’d be possible for absolutely everything a person does to seem suspicious, but she manages it,” said Angela in exasperated wonder. “What was she doing up here?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to reveal Y’s presence and give a full account of the conversation I’d overheard, but cooler heads prevailed. I wasn’t sure where Y was but he’d already established himself to be, like me, unafraid to listen in on other people’s conversations—and more to the point, beat them to a pulp. Besides, I didn’t think Angela’s probable reaction—to run immediately to X and screech accusations like an aggressive swan protecting her eggs—would improve matters.