Jam Read online

  “Yeah.” He glanced at me. “What? Oh, right. Wait there.” He disappeared back inside.

  The stairwell door on the third-floor walkway opposite our balcony opened, and the girl trotted out. She was wearing a Starbucks uniform, and had dirty blond hair tied back in a ponytail. “Hey!” she called, waving. “Where’d all the jam come from, then?”

  “Er, you know about as much as we do right now,” I called back, scratching the back of my head. “It’s been there since we woke up and it ate our flatmate.”

  “Yeah, you said that. Does it really?” She wrapped her arms around her waist and eyed me, shifting her weight back and forth. “I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m . . . gullible, or anything. No offense, but you could be anyone.”

  I looked at the jam again. I could swear that bits of it were trying to climb the walls. “We didn’t put it there,” I said.

  “No, I wouldn’t have thought you did, I just thought you might have been being, you know, opportunistic.”

  “What?”

  Tim stumbled back out his balcony doors, closely followed by a trail of bed sheets, then a corner of a mattress making a halfhearted attempt to come with them. He was clutching the carry case for my laptop under one arm, which he began knotting to the first sheet.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “Weight,” he said, simply, busily knotting the sheets together. He noticed the Starbucks girl on the other balcony, and waved momentarily. “Hi.”

  “I was just saying to your friend,” she said. “I’m not saying you don’t seem trustworthy or anything but I’m just going to head down and check for myself . . .”

  “DON’T!” said Tim and I together.

  “Give us one second,” he said. He’d knotted the sheets together into a long rope, and was letting the laptop bag dangle off the end, testing the weight.

  “Er, Tim, is my laptop in there?” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t be much of a weight, otherwise, would it.”

  “I’d really rather you—”

  “I am not going to waste any time hunting around for heavy objects you can bear to part with. Your laptop will be fine. It’s a padded bag.”

  “All right, just . . . be careful.”

  He paid it over the rail and swung it back and forth, building up momentum. “We’ll get across to the rest of the complex and figure it out from there,” he muttered. The makeshift grappling hook was spinning around and around, gathering speed. “Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single . . . STEP.”

  He let go, and the laptop bag sailed through the air towards the opposite balcony. It bounced off the railing, then the three of us watched it fall into the courtyard and plop into the jam.

  Tim was wrenched off his feet as something pulled hard on the bed sheet rope, and his head collided sharply with our balustrade. He released his grip and the jam sucked the knotted bed sheets in like a strand of spaghetti.

  The silence rolled in again. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed.

  “Jesus, did you see that?” said the girl.

  “Huh,” said Tim, shakily standing up and clutching his temple. “Right, then. We’ll add that to the list. People, rubber, and cotton.”

  “I guess you were right,” said the girl. “I’ve got some sheets at my place. You wait there.”

  “Tim,” I said, after she’d disappeared back downstairs. “I’m a bit upset about the laptop thing.”

  “Well, it . . . wouldn’t have done you much good if civilization has fallen, would it.”

  “Tim, your head’s bleeding.”

  He touched the red line that was drooling down his forehead and inspected his fingers with dazed wonder. “So it is. Just bashed it a bit. It’s all good.” He rubbed the rest of it off and absent-mindedly wiped his hand on his cheek.

  “Hey,” said the girl in the Starbucks uniform, as she reappeared across the courtyard shouldering a thick coil of white cable. “I found this extension cord. The jam stuff probably won’t like it so much.”

  She spun the plug end around her head a few times and let it go. I was able to lean forward and grab the wire just before it dropped out of reach.

  “I’ll go first,” said Tim, taking up the cable in both hands. He tried to put his foot on the rail, but missed.

  “Er, maybe I should, actually,” I said, tactfully removing the wire from his unresisting hands and giving him the plug. “You just stay here, relax, hold onto this as hard as you can, and, er . . .” I attempted to recall some of the first aid they taught me in the Cub Scouts. “Just try not to go to sleep.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, nodding rapidly. A few small drops of blood spattered onto my chest. “I’m okay, I’m okay. You go first. Go.”

  “Ready,” said the girl. She’d tied her end of the cable onto the handrail and was clutching the socket end with one foot braced on the knot. Tim entwined the cable in his hands and leaned back as hard as he could.

  I hopped up onto the rail, let my legs dangle over the jam, and several rounds of second thoughts hammered across the back of my mind. The fall would have been only arguably survivable even if the floor weren’t covered in flesh-eating, strawberry-scented death. There must have been twenty feet of depressingly thin air between our balcony and the walkway opposite. I was quietly impressed by the length of the extension cord.

  I swiveled around, putting my back to the jam. That helped. Then I hugged the cable to my chest, crossed my thighs and ankles around it, took a deep breath, then another one, leaned back, and inched backwards with my buttocks until I slipped off the edge.

  My heart rattled a steel mug against the bars of my rib cage for a split second as the cable sagged, then it and Tim’s upper-body strength took my weight. I was dangling from the line like a sloth, staring up into the beautiful clear blue sky. The sun was directly overhead, and I screwed my eyes shut. That helped with the glare, but now my imagination was attaching all sorts of horrible images to every wet sticky noise the jam made as it idly flexed below me.

  Once I was assured that the cable could hold me, my only concern was getting across before my muscles completely gave out. I should probably have taken up Frank’s offer to sign up with his gym before he’d gotten himself killed. Pain was already worming its way through my chest and groin, but the adrenaline was dampening it nicely.

  “Don’t look down!” suggested the girl. “Nearly halfway now.”

  I was actually starting to impress myself when I felt something jogging the wire, and my entire body tensed up into something like a giant conker on a piece of string. I looked up, and saw Tim on our balcony. He was standing with hands on hips, and he wasn’t holding his end of the cord.

  “Where’s the plug?!” I squeaked.

  “It’s all right,” he said. The trickle of blood from his forehead had almost reached his mouth. “I put it back in at the wall.” Then he fainted.

  The sudden realization of upcoming death burst in my ears with the faint crunching sound of my weight pulling an extension cord out of a wall socket. Then I was clinging to a line that was shifting extremely rapidly from horizontal to vertical. My back slammed painfully against the side of the second-floor walkway, and my hands slipped from the cord.

  My thighs reflexively tightened around the socket as my arms dangled down towards the jam. I tried to bend my torso, to get my hands back on the cord, but pain stabbed hotly in my back muscles. Just one visit to the gym, I thought. Just one, and maybe I could have done a single sit-up.

  “Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god,” I heard Girl chanting.

  “Can. You. Pull. Me. Up,” I said. I’d had to force every word out through a layer of terror that wrapped me like duct tape.

  “Oh my god. Hang on.” I felt myself being lifted about a centimeter, then descending back again with a gasp of effort from above. “Oh my god. No. Can you reach the thing? On the thing?”

  I looked around. The handrail for the first-floor walkway was six f
eet away. I stretched my hands towards it and only served to dishearten myself further. I squeezed out the words, “Too. Far.”

  “Okay. I’m going to try swinging you. Try and grab it when the—” she suddenly let out a little shriek. “Oh my god!”

  “What?!”

  “Nothing, it’s nothing! Don’t look down! I’m going to swing you now.”

  So obviously I looked down (or from my perspective, up) and saw a column of jam rising from below to greet me like a questing finger aiming to pick the nose of God.

  That was the moment I cracked. All the tension and horror that had been building inside me like foam in a shaken-up Pepsi can finally burst out and I started screaming. I was swinging stupidly back and forth, wailing like a foghorn, spraying spit and tears as I went.

  All my energy that wasn’t being blasted from my mouth was focused on keeping my thighs clamped tightly around the extension cord as I gained momentum. I swung towards the railing and thrust out a hand. Still a good two feet of clearance. The subtle slithering noise of the stretching jam was getting louder and louder. I swung again. Still short by a foot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the jam phallus wagging back and forth to follow my movement like a curious cat.

  I swung back and forward again. I felt a couple of my hairs brush the jam, then get yanked out by the root. My scream shot up another octave, and I thrust my arms forward with all the strength I had left.

  My hands clamped around the railing. The finger of jam curved over too far and collapsed back into the quivering mass, defeated.

  “Is everything all right?” came the girl’s voice.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA,” I replied.

  “Stop screaming!”

  “SORRY! I mean, sorry!” I clung in silence for a few seconds, panting and feeling the blood thumping around my head.

  “I’ll come down and help you,” she said, panting. “Hang on.”

  “Could you be quick please? I think I’d like to pass out for a bit.”

  DAY 1.3

  —

  “Tim!” I called, once I’d been helped back onto something approaching solid ground, and after I’d climbed back up to the third floor, clutching the handrail probably more tightly than necessary. “Tiiim!!”

  I was starting to worry when his hand finally appeared above the balcony rail and dragged the rest of him into view. His other hand was clutching his bleeding head. The red smear running down his cheek was the only color in his face.

  “Tim,” I said. “Before you do anything else, find some cloth and wrap it around your head. Tightly.”

  “And drink some orange juice,” said the girl in the Starbucks uniform, who had introduced herself as Angela.

  Tim emerged from the flat a few minutes later shakily clutching a juice carton and with an entire toilet roll secured to his forehead with a dressing gown cord. “I’m all right,” he insisted, taking a generous pull. “I’m fine now.”

  “I’m going to throw the extension cord over again,” said Angela. “Tie it to something really sturdy over there. Do you think you can do that for us?”

  The toilet roll quivered as Tim nodded rapidly. “Jeff,” he said. “You’re near Don’s place. Go scout it out. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Don?”

  “You know. Don Sunderland. Number 38. The place with the rooftop balcony. We can see the whole city from there. Remember? We came to his housewarming?”

  I glanced down the walkway at the various apartment doors. I took a few steps towards 38, then stopped and turned back. “Tim, are you sure you’re all right now?”

  “Yes, Jeff, I’m fine.”

  “Only my name isn’t Jeff; it’s Travis—”

  “Travis! Yes! I know! I’ll be fine!”

  I left them to it. I made my way down the hall and around the corner to the door for number 38. I walked slowly to hide the fact that my knees were still trembling, partly from the adrenaline comedown and partly from the recurring shooting pains in my groin. Each time my thighs brushed together I could almost feel the cable still carving a white-hot line across my inner thighs.

  I was in the expensive part of the complex, the upper stories with the views of the city, for executives who liked the idea of having an inner-city address but wanted to spend as little time as possible on street level. They were good for entertaining, judging by the loud music that would often drift across the courtyard at three a.m.

  I tried the door to 38, but the handle didn’t move. Locked.

  Don Sunderland would have gone to work, of course. If the jam really had spread across the whole city, he would almost certainly have been eaten. Eaten, like Frank had been. Frank, who was dead. And now Don, who was also dead. Frank and Don. Don and Frank. Dead and dead.

  I was testing my emotional state like I’d probe a loose tooth with my tongue, but it wasn’t coming out the same way it had done while swinging for dear life. Now everything felt like it was happening on the other side of a thick pane of glass. I wondered if this was one of those coping mechanisms they talked about on TV.

  I rattled the handle again but it wasn’t going to see things my way. I thought about going back to tell Tim, but I already knew what he’d do, and I didn’t want to seem helpless. Experimentally, I took a step back, then threw myself shoulder first at the lock.

  The impact shuddered its way through the door and up my arm and rattled around in my pain receptors for a few seconds. The lock hadn’t moved. I heaved a sigh. The residents here were clearly paying for good home security.

  The hallway here was narrow and didn’t offer much of a running start. I had a better idea: I sat down, planted my feet on the door, and braced my back up against the opposite wall. I filled my lungs, clenched my fists, and pushed.

  Some of the tendons in my legs were threatening to burst clean out of my body and wriggle off down the hall like angry snakes when I heard the crack of wood and paint and a section of door the size of a tea tray gaped open with a sprinkling of shards. I was quite impressed by the lock, which still hadn’t moved, but now I could get my hand through the ragged gap I’d created and unlock it the civilized way.

  I stood up and opened the door, remaining in the threshold for a moment to admire my handiwork. I was actually quite impressed with myself. Look at me, I thought. I’m adapting. The first vestiges of civilized society have been smashed aside in the postcrisis world and I’m not even regretting it much.

  I stepped into Don Sunderland’s living room. The blinds were all closed and the lights were off, but I caught a glimpse of a fastidiously neat lounge/coffee table/television setup before something heavy and wooden smacked across the back of my head and I couldn’t see anything for stars.

  On the way to the floor I caught a glimpse of a furious Don Sunderland standing behind me in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, clutching a freshly deployed baseball bat.

  “Jesus Christ!” he hissed breathlessly, visibly trembling. “Who the hell burgles people at one in the afternoon?!”

  I rolled over like a wounded bear, clutching the back of my head. “Duuuoooonnn,” I moaned.

  “Get up, you piece of scum,” he growled. “I want to hit you a few more times.”

  “Don, it’s me!” I scuttled away from him, displaying my hands and trying to look harmless. He looked doubtful. “Travis! From number 30!”

  “Travis who?”

  “W-we came to your housewarming! Tim, Travis, and Frank! You asked us to leave!”

  He stood in silence for a few moments, breathing heavily, the end of the baseball bat bobbing up and down. “Why the hell did you break my door down?”

  I was half-lying, half-sitting on the floor, backed up against Don’s fridge. “I didn’t know you were in!”

  “Oh, well! I guess that makes it perfectly acceptable! Sorry to be inconvenient!”

  “Haven’t you looked outside?!”

  “What?!”

  “The city’s covered in jam!”

  There was another thoughtful pause. T
hen he made a frustrated noise and lowered the bat. “Ugh. Okay. Travis, was it? Concentrate on my voice, Travis. I want you to tell me how much you took.”

  “I’m not . . . Don, I’m not . . .”

  He’d picked up his phone from the kitchen counter and was frowning at the screen. “Christ, there’s never a signal when you need one, is there. Stay with me, Travis. Try to stay awake.”

  I got up and ran. I pushed him aside, knocking him onto his sofa, and made for the stairs to the upper level. I heard him swear behind me, but kept moving. Faced with a number of closed doors, I picked one at random and found myself in an extremely clean bathroom that smelled strongly of lemon. I doubled back and made for a different door, but Don’s baseball bat appeared between my legs and tripped me up.

  My body slammed against another door and it gave way. A light, strawberry-scented midday breeze fluttered against my face as I crawled madly out onto Don’s roof terrace. He stepped slowly and deliberately out after me, clutching his baseball bat in two white-knuckled hands.

  “For christ’s sake!” he yelled. “I do not need this bullshit! I’ve been working all night, I’ve only had three hours’ sleep, I’m having to deal with crazy drug fiends who don’t know how doorknobs work, and—”

  “LOOK!” I wailed, attempting to point at everything around us.

  “—and the city’s covered in jam.” He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the bat as the meaning of his own words ran a few laps around his head. “Well, you still broke my door, you little shit.”

  —

  The view from Don’s rooftop terrace had until recently been worth a ridiculous amount of extra rent, but every wasted cent of that was showing in the lines of his face as he stood grimly at the edge, shoulders arched like the entrance to a monster’s cave.

  The jam stretched all the way to the horizon. Even the distant hills glinted redly in the sun. Most of the suburbs had disappeared, with only the occasional shopping mall and office building rising from the goo. Most of the city center was intact. You could almost convince yourself that everything was normal if it weren’t for the lakes of glimmering red interrupting the rows of buildings here and there, marking where the parks had been.