Jam Read online

  I glanced at Don, who was taking the opportunity to strip off his tattered bin liners. “Do you think this is all right?” I said. “Leaving Tim and Angela, I mean.”

  “No. It’s not right at all. We’re going to hell. Who cares?” He yanked a strip of duct tape off his wrist and flinched at the surprise hair-removal treatment.

  “We’ll come back for them, right? Once we’ve made sure Hibatsu is safe?”

  He paused for a moment. “Yes, that was also a good bit of rationalization. It must be very comforting to be on your intellectual level.”

  —

  We reached the end of Queen Street without incident and emerged into the central city plaza bordered by Hibatsu to the north, the casino to the southeast, and the river to the southwest. It had once been the site of an attractive little inner-city park where people had come to eat their lunches and walk their dogs, but after Hibatsu had moved in they decided they preferred a paved plaza, featureless but for a handful of modern art installations. People still brought their dogs, but the turds became considerably less accidental.

  Now, the plaza was a flat plain of waist-high jam with the occasional modern art island extruding geometrically from the surface. The Everlong drifted towards the center of the square.

  “What’s going on there?” said Don, staring at the Hibatsu building with his hands on the rail. The jam was still risen oddly around the building, as I’d seen from the roof of the mall.

  “Yeah, I saw that earlier,” I said. “Don’t know why it’s doing that.”

  “Oh well, who cares?” said Don. “Might be an arse to sail up the slope, mind. Guess we cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Okay.” I looked around. “How are we going to come to it?”

  He opened his mouth, thought for a moment, then closed it again. The wind had completely died down and we were officially becalmed. The Everlong had stopped right in the middle of the plaza, fifty yards from Hibatsu and more than a boat hook’s length from the nearest artwork.

  I took up one of the boat hooks anyway. “Maybe if we push off from the ground . . .” I said, aiming the end towards the jam.

  “Don’t!” barked Don. “It’s made of—”

  The jam snatched the pole out of my hands and consumed it before he could even say “wood.”

  “Marvelous,” he said, instead.

  “Sorry,” I said, opting not to look him in the eye. “I think I’ve been used to stuff being wrapped in plastic lately.”

  “And did you remember to bring any of our plastic bag stock with us?” he asked, without much hope.

  “I didn’t expect us to have to run around in broken glass,” I said with, I like to think, some justification.

  “You . . .” His clawed hands wobbled back and forth rapidly as he sought to conclude his sentence; then he gave up. “I don’t even have the energy to be angry anymore. Maybe I need some sleep. Maybe we should just go to bed and wait for the wind to pick up.”

  “They’re watching us,” I reported.

  He saw them, then. There were figures at the windows of the Hibatsu building on virtually every floor. They were silhouetted against dismal light, so it was impossible to determine any further detail. None of them were making any effort to attract our attention or rush to our aid. They had the bearing of car accident rubberneckers.

  “Hey! Help!” called Don, waving both his arms. No one moved, although one or two of them waved back uncertainly, in accordance with standard etiquette for when people on a boat wave at you. “What, are we the cabaret, now? What are they staring at?”

  “Maybe there isn’t anything they can do for us,” I theorized. “The front doors are under jam.”

  “Well, the least they could do is crack a window and tell us to piss off.”

  It occurred to me then that perhaps they weren’t coming out because there was something they were afraid of, besides the usual fear of the jam, which for me had now settled into a mild, background kind of terror that I didn’t really notice until I thought about it. As if on cue, the boat shook jarringly as if something had struck it from below.

  “Kraken!” I shrieked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Don, clinging to the mast. “We just touched bottom.”

  “Bottom!” I added. I glanced around, and saw the jam peeling away from the third-floor windows of Hibatsu with a prolonged wet slurp. “The jam’s receding!”

  Don and I both remembered simultaneously what this meant. “Tidal wave!”

  “It’s coming from the south!” I announced, looking towards the casino and down William Street.

  “No, it’s not. It’s coming from the north!” said Don, looking back up Queen Street.

  “It’s coming from two directions!” I wailed, hopping from foot to foot as the rumbling grew louder. “What does that mean?”

  “It means, take cover twice as fast,” suggested Don as he threw open the deck hatch.

  I didn’t need telling twice, and practically threw myself into the hatch, rolling down the steps to come to rest in the debris of the ruined kitchen. Don followed and slammed the door shut behind him, immediately plunging us into darkness. He braced himself between a wall and the nearest convenient solid object, which turned out to be me.

  The wave hit, and the boat took to the air, pushing us to the floor. After a few seconds of fast movement, I thought it might be safe to shift position, which is why I was hurled across the cabin when the mast hit something solid and the entire boat ricocheted in a new direction.

  By the time I’d pulled myself out of a pile of broken drawers and shaken the wooze from my head, the boat had pretty much stopped moving. All I could feel was a gentle rising sensation as the jam returned to its usual level.

  My eyes had become accustomed to the dark just in time for it to stop mattering. Don climbed swiftly back up to the hatch and shoved it open, allowing the moonlight to spill down the stairs. I saw him step back up on deck, then I heard him make a curious throat noise and sprint all the way to the far end of the boat.

  Curious, I poked my head into the open air and saw him leaning back against the railing at the prow. “What’s the matter?”

  “Geh durber vur traverse!” he gabbled. He swallowed hard and tried again. “Get over here, Travis!”

  Baffled, I leaned over to the rail at the rear of the boat and looked down. And down. I felt my stomach swan dive straight down into my feet.

  The Everlong was right on the bank of the river. Inches away, the jam became a slope worthy of an advanced ski resort. The river was completely packed with jam, although it was impossible to tell if it had absorbed the water or if it was merely floating on top of it.

  If the Everlong slid off the edge, the strongest wind in the world wouldn’t be able to blow us back up, and there weren’t many abandoned shopping malls on the river to raid for food. And that was assuming we didn’t capsize, which would at least be a much less ambiguous fate. The Everlong began to tip towards the abyss.

  Seconds later I had joined Don at the front of the boat, madly leaning back over the rail as if trying to puke out the backs of our heads.

  “What the hell are we going to do?!” Panic had reduced Don’s voice to little more than an uptight whisper.

  I looked back and forth. “Die?”

  He considered this, then twisted his head around to yell in the general direction of the Hibatsu building. “HEY! HELP!”

  Hibatsu was now considerably closer than it had been before the wave. The whole riverfront thing was part of the reason office space there cost so bloody much. The building had probably been the thing we’d bounced off earlier. Specifically that bit of it on the corner with the visibly broken window.

  We could get a closer look at the watchers in the windows, now, who were still making no effort to assist. We still had nothing to go on but their silhouettes, but from them I could see that most of them seemed to be bare chested and wearing skirts.

  “PLEASE!” entreated Don as the boat s
lid back another inch. “WE’VE GOT MONEY!”

  “No we don’t,” I whispered.

  “YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL!” he continued, unabashed. “WE’VE GOT FOOD! AND BLANKETS! AND PLASTIC BAGS!”

  Finally I saw some activity among the Hibatsu occupants around the broken window; then a grappling hook sailed towards us and clattered onto the deck. I say “grappling hook,” but more specifically it was the bottom part of an office chair with the wheels removed and a length of blue network cable tied securely around the shaft. Don didn’t waste any time in grabbing the “hook” and securing it tightly around the rail. A few more makeshift hooks arrived, one narrowly missing my head.

  “Do we have any of those things?” I said quietly, helping Don secure the ropes.

  “I’m pretty sure we’ve got some blankets left,” he said, doing that rationalizing thing again. “Anyway, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Seems like there’s quite a lot of bridges on this path we’re taking.”

  “Just shut up and leave the talking to me.”

  My heart almost stopped when I felt the boat tilt backwards sharply, but this time it was from the people on the other ends of the ropes hauling us up the slope of jam towards Hibatsu’s third-floor windows. We were being pulled with surprising strength, and Don and I had to hold onto the mast to avoid being pulled off our feet.

  “You still got that bag of snacks you took from the vending machine at my work?” hissed Don out the corner of his mouth as he waved and smiled at our rescuers.

  “Down below,” I said, hoping it hadn’t been scavenged and that its contents hadn’t turned into anything hideous.

  “Go get it. And whatever blankets you can find.”

  I found the bag where I’d left it in the “master bedroom,” cupcakes still spilling from the mouth, just as Angela had left it. The cotton blankets remained, too. With those, the snacks, and the plastic bin liner the snacks were in, technically Don hadn’t lied at all. I pulled the sheets off the mattress and made back for the exit.

  The boat bumped sharply again and I almost fell straight back down the stairs. Our rescuers had pulled us all the way up to the building. I emerged into the open, dragging our offerings behind me. I boggled at the sight of the people leaning out the broken window to help.

  They had the unhealthy builds and pale skin of people with close relationships with desks: office workers who had arrived at work well before rush hour. Their complexions were easy to assess, because they were all stripped to the waist. None of them wore shoes or trousers, and they wore their shirts dangling upside down like skirts from the waistbands of their underwear. Some of them had drawn tribal designs on their skin with colored markers and printer toner, but they were rubbing off from their copious sweating.

  “Er,” said Don, as taken aback by their appearance as I. “Hello—”

  I’d never know what kind of diplomatic words he had prepared, because then the helpful members of the Hibatsu tribe grabbed him around the arms and yanked him bodily into the building. He was dragged roughly out of sight by some displeased-looking natives, and then the stocky balding man at the window grabbed my arm with a firm, businesslike motion. I barely had time to grab Mary’s box from the deck before I was forcibly rescued.

  The moment I crossed the glass-fringed threshold into the gloomily lit interior, I was hit with a wave of heat like I’d stepped out of an air-conditioned airport onto the streets of Morocco in high summer. It was quickly followed by a second wave of body odor that forced its way down my nose and mouth like grasping tentacles.

  The hands that held my limbs were so sweaty I could probably have slipped right out of their grasp if I’d made any kind of sudden movement, but before I could put this theory into practice I glimpsed a hand holding the butt of a staple gun coming down upon the top of my head. Fireworks burst numbly inside my head and my vision spun around the room like a dervish.

  The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor watching an office worker carry Mary’s box away from me, her forelegs stretching out towards me in distress. I tried to reach out for her, but a moist hand grabbed my wrist. I heard the harsh screech of sticky tape being pulled away from the roll, and felt my hands and feet being bound to a long piece of metal which had once been part of a computer desk.

  I heard someone count to three, then two workers shouldered the metal bar. I tried to get a good look at my surroundings as I dangled upside down from my bonds, but the poor light and my constant swaying made it difficult. I saw many cubicles, and occasionally suspicious eyes glaring at me from between the short partition walls. A radius of silence extended around me, and all I could hear was the muttering of people picking up their conversations once they were sure I’d moved on.

  After hearing a door open and close I felt myself jiggling madly up and down as my two carriers climbed a couple of flights of stairs, then a few more doors opened and closed and I wobbled to a halt. My pole was lowered gently to the floor and I was left lying on my side with my hands and feet still bound to it. I twitched my fingers and toes in anticipation of release, but my two captors had walked away, chatting amicably amongst themselves, and closed the door behind them.

  My limbs were held in place by the tape, but from twisting my neck madly around I could determine that I was on the floor of some kind of conference room. I could just about see the large meeting table and uncomfortable chairs from the meager light filtering through the blinds surrounding the room. Everyone’s lives were continuing unconcerned right outside the door, and the bustle and hubbub made my little private silence all the more lonely.

  After about an hour, which felt considerably longer, I was starting to wonder if maybe they’d forgotten about me. The fast and professional method by which I’d been hogtied and brought here had more than a hint of routine about it. Maybe they’d brought in several prisoners today and I’d been lost in the shuffle. On the other hand, if I drew attention to myself, more people might come in and hit me with staplers some more.

  After another hour I was getting pins and needles in a lot of inconvenient places, so I finally made a weak little attention-grabbing cough towards the nearby closed door. Nothing happened. I did it again, gaining confidence. I risked a “Hey!” Again, no one, including stapler-brandishing thugs. I found this encouraging.

  I was halfway through the first word of “EXCUSE MEEE” when the door finally opened a crack and a baleful eye silenced me. “Excuse me,” it said. “Could you keep it down, please. Some of us are trying to work.”

  “Sorry,” I said automatically. “Um!” I added, as the owner of the eye made to close the door again. “I wonder if you could, er, tell me what’s supposed to be happening?”

  The eye did a complete circle, scanning the room. “Have you booked this meeting room?”

  “No? Some . . . guys just sort of . . . left me here?”

  “Oh, I see. I’ll just go and see if I can find out who’s looking after you.”

  The door clicked smartly shut, and I was alone again. Ten minutes passed. The whole left side of my body was going numb. I was just about to seriously consider making another coughing sound when my discoverer returned.

  “Sorry, did you say who it was who brought you in here?”

  “No, they were just some guys.”

  “Do you know if they were from this department?”

  “I don’t know what this department is. And no. They just pulled me in out of the jam.”

  “Oh, Acquisitions,” sighed the eye, as if this explained everything. “They’re always doing this. We tell them, it’s fine if you want to use our meeting rooms, but you MUST either fill out the booking form OR leave your name and contact details in the space by the door IF your intended use of the room is for less than two hours. I suppose Kathy might know who brought you in. Do you want me to go and ask Kathy?”

  The name Y had mentioned registered in my memory. “Yes! Yes, go and ask Kathy. And, um! Er, could you untie me, please?”


  “Oh, sorry. You have a visitor access form?”

  “No. Can I have one?”

  “Yes, of course. We can get one printed out right in our department. I just need to see your NDA.”

  “Can I have one of those, too?” I asked, my voice becoming increasingly weak.

  “Well, that isn’t our department. I’ll ask Kathy. She might know if you’re supposed to have an NDA.”

  “Er, one more thing,” I said, as they moved to leave again. “Is it past midnight yet?”

  “Yes, it’s . . . er . . . coming up to six.”

  DAY 5.1

  —

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  DAY 5.2

  —

  After several attempts I successfully managed to roll onto my other side, which eased my growing numbness a bit, and I was able to snatch a few minutes of sleep before I was woken by voices outside. Then the door flew open and two indistinct figures—probably the same ones as earlier, but I wasn’t certain—wordlessly shouldered my bar.

  “You really should have left your details,” complained the voice of the last person I’d spoken to, coming from somewhere out of my field of vision.

  “We did,” said the carrier to my front. “We left them with Kathy.”

  “Kathy didn’t say anything to me. And anyway, you’re supposed to leave them in the space by the door.”

  “Kathy said she’d do it.” I had a horrible feeling that Kathy was going to turn out to be some kind of invisible tribal deity.

  Now that the sun had risen, I could look around and get a slightly better impression of my surroundings. There was washed-out blue-gray carpeting above my head and white ceiling tiles forming a regular grid below my trussed hands and feet. Most of the floor space was taken up with cubicles, and each one had been repurposed into a small living space. Each desk had been partially dismantled and a makeshift mattress, made from clothing and tote bags apparently stuffed with shredded paper and clipped-out Dilbert comics, placed underneath.