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  “Okay, okay,” said Tim, silencing me with a reassuring pat on the head. “Who else knows all of this?”

  “Just me and Don. And I think Angela. And I expect X and Y know it, too.”

  “Right. Well, don’t tell anyone else, okay?” He sighed. “So Hibatsu might be bringing the pressure down on us, eh? Typical corporate thinking, isn’t it. Grab all they can and screw the small business. I really am going to have to think about this.”

  Princess Ravenhair walked past us, and we watched her sit on Lord Awesomo’s bed. She started dabbing tenderly at his forehead with what I think might have been a Brillo pad. He seemed to be too unconscious to complain.

  “This might be a silly question,” said Tim, “but is there a bit of a history between those two?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “They used to post on some forum together.”

  “Forum.” He snapped his fingers. “You know, ever since we got here I’ve been trying to put my finger on what this whole society reminds me of. It’s an Internet forum. Everyone’s got stupid names, makes ironic jokes, and has this weird sort of cult mentality going on. Should have picked up on that sooner.”

  “Er, what do they want?” I asked.

  A growing crescent of plastic people was forming around Lord Awesomo’s sleeping area. Those who had removed their plastics or were wearing transparent head bags wore concerned and frightened faces, looking to Lord Awesomo for leadership in a time of crisis. But all he could offer was moans and saliva bubbles, so they looked to Princess Ravenhair instead.

  Turning away from her care for Lord Awesomo, the princess started when she noticed the crowd. She looked to me and Tim questioningly. We responded by making prompting gestures with our hands and eyebrows.

  “L-loyal subjects,” she announced, getting to her feet. Words failed her after that, and it took another four or five eyebrow waggles to get her back on track. “I wish I had . . . more positive news to give you.” The few unfallen faces in the crowd fell. “Lord Awesomo’s still alive but I don’t know if he’ll pull through. And we may be facing the fact that we can’t move freely around the jam anymore. Whatever it was that was killing us whenever we left definitely seems to have moved inside the mall. And we don’t even know what it is.”

  “I know!” came a voice from the crowd. Two large, gormless-looking plastic men in the front row moved aside and a girl pushed her way forward. A very familiar girl with an opaque head bag and a slight build.

  “What?” said the princess.

  “I know what’s been killing us,” said the girl nervously. “I saw it when me and Strike Force Maximum Alpha went outside.”

  “Saw what?”

  “There’s a man on the roof,” she said breathlessly. “A big man. He’s got a bow and he fires arrows at anyone who tries to leave. Then their bags get holed so the jam eats them.”

  Princess Ravenhair looked back at the shaft still jutting from Lord Awesomo’s shoulder, which bobbed uncomfortably with his breathing. “Oh my god . . . Just one man?”

  “No, no, I think he’s got accomplices,” continued the girl. “There were these two other guys when I went outside. On a boat. Dressed just like us, in plastic bags. The guys, not the boat.” From somewhere to my right I heard Don, who had been staring at the ceiling and only half paying attention, choke phlegmily. “It looked like they knew the guy on the roof. They called something to him and he didn’t shoot at them.”

  “Where did these two guys go?” demanded Ravenhair.

  “I . . . don’t know. I got away from them. They’re in the mall, I think. Right now. I didn’t get a good look at their faces. It all happened so fast.”

  “What color were their bags?” asked a random onlooker.

  “Er . . . well, I don’t really notice that kind of thing,” admitted the girl sheepishly. Don, who was already trying to subtly push his way out through the back of the crowd on some pretense of being desperate for the toilet, audibly relaxed.

  In stark juxtaposition, the princess clutched at her hair, too confused to process it all. “What the hell is going on? Is there some kind of . . . conspiracy against me?”

  “Well . . .” began Angela, hearing one of her buzzwords.

  “Yes!” cried Tim, taking a step forward. “There is a conspiracy against you. Against all of us. We can’t know why or for what purpose, but now we know one thing—it’s just a man. Or men. And men can be defeated. Especially when there are so many of us.” The crowd seemed doubtful, but they weren’t booing him off just yet. “Friends, my opponent in the polls may be indisposed, but I’m not about to declare victory. I swear that I will end the assassin’s reign of terror by this time tomorrow, and then I will accept the role of your leader with all due modesty. Under the guiding hand of Crazy Bob.”

  “Thank you,” sniffed Princess Ravenhair.

  There was a smattering of slightly disbelieving applause, and a more or less satisfied audience dribbled away, murmuring worriedly to each other about what they were going to eat tonight. Princess Ravenhair kissed Tim chastely on the cheek, offered me a shy smile, then returned to dabbing up Lord Awesomo’s brow sweat.

  I grabbed Tim’s elbow. “What are you doing?”

  “I made my decision,” he said.

  “You’re not seriously going to take on Y?”

  “Why not? We know him. We saved his life. He’ll listen to us. The least we can do is buy some time.”

  “But what about Hibatsu?”

  “I’m going to offer them a truce. No reason there can’t be two settlements, right? More than enough supplies lying around for both to become self-sufficient.” He was talking fast now, and practically bouncing on his toes in glee. “It makes sense. What are you looking so worried about?”

  I cringed. “Tim, I just . . . do you think you’re getting a bit too . . . Well, do you think you might be . . . going native?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’ve been doing the Crazy Bob worship thing a lot.”

  “Come on, Travis, no true leader genuinely believes the religious part of the ruling system. It’s just for keeping the common man in line. It’s a feudal thing. You distract the vassals with promises of divine justice so they don’t complain about the fiefs having all the groats.”

  “Okay, I get it,” I lied.

  “Well, speaking of Crazy Bob, it’d probably be a good idea to find out exactly what Y did with him. You wait here. I’ll be back with supplies.”

  With that assurance delivered, he headed off deeper into the department store. I moved to X and Angela, looking for a conversation that didn’t make me want to bang my head against the nearest fridge. X was hugging herself and staring at the floor with more concern than I’d ever seen her display, while Angela was leaning forward with a tender, understanding look on her face.

  “I just . . . don’t know what he’s thinking,” X was saying.

  “Mmm,” said Angela earnestly.

  “He’s seen what happens to people in crisis situations. He swore to me that he wouldn’t go the same way.”

  “What a bastard.”

  “All I ever wanted of him was to complete his mission. I didn’t expect it to reach this level.”

  “Sure,” said Angela. She shuffled a little closer. “So what was that mission, exactly?”

  “It—” X finally looked at her. “Are you interrogating me?”

  Angela leaned back quickly. “Of course not!”

  “Then stop filming!”

  “It’s for therapy!” said Angela desperately, adjusting the focus. “You can look over it later and see how far you’ve come!”

  It was to no avail. X looked offended, then stood up huffily and pridefully gathered her plastic bags around her, before trudging away alone through the store. Angela leaned back, disappointed, and noticed me for the first time. “I think I’m closing in on the truth,” she confided. “The friendly-friendly act is really doing the trick.”

  “You could just be friendly for re
als,” I said.

  “Maybe when she stops being a big fat fake.”

  At that point Tim returned, clutching a long, hefty parcel wrapped in a few newly unwrapped bed sheets, which he dumped on the coffee table with a metallic, jangling thump, allowing the cover to fall aside. Don, Angela, and I leaned in, curious. Don almost immediately leaned back.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You can leave me the hell out of this one. I’m strictly Switzerland.”

  “I thought you were just going to talk to him,” I said.

  “Yes, well, we have to get close to him first,” said Tim, picking up a circular piece of wood that I think must have been the top of a coffee table before being repurposed as a shield.

  I picked up a pool cue with a kitchen knife duct taped to each end. “This doesn’t look like something designed for getting close to anyone.”

  “Where’d you get all this stuff so fast?” asked Angela.

  “There’s this kid, one of my followers,” explained Tim, jerking a thumb behind him. “Was a massive gun nut pre-jam. He’s been building weaponry just in case something like this came up. Check this out.”

  He took up a two-handed device whose purpose was eluding me. It seemed to incorporate two litter-picking devices, a barbecue lighter, and three cans of hairspray. He pointed it at the ceiling and pulled on the two triggers, whereupon there was a snap, and a massive burst of sweet-smelling flame roared briefly into life like Satan’s first morning fart. After it had faded away, I noticed that everyone within a twenty-yard radius had dropped into a crouch.

  “Okay, I didn’t expect it to be that powerful,” said Tim, tapping his chin and inspecting the black stain on the ceiling.

  “Even better,” sniped Don from around knee level. “Nothing says ‘I come in peace’ like a good incendiary device.”

  “It’ll give him pause for thought and that’s all we need,” said Tim, not rising to it. “I think I’d better carry this. Travis?”

  I picked out a baseball bat that I didn’t see myself using, as well as a cricketer’s helmet and two tea trays tied together with string that I supposed were intended to be used as breast and back plates. Angela went for the pool-cue spear and the coffee-table buckler.

  “Don?” prompted Tim.

  “Forget it,” said Don, folding his arms. “I’m not playing this stupid game. I’ve had to put up with a lot of bullshit since the jam came down but I am not doing this.”

  DAY 5.4

  —

  “I am only doing this,” said Don, wearing a colander on his head and clutching a toy foam-pellet gun modified to fire ammunition soaked in pepper spray, “to make sure you tossheads don’t bugger the whole thing up like you always do.”

  “Whatever,” said Tim.

  “I’m serious. X and Y are still our best bet of getting bumped up the rescue list. I just feel better knowing Y isn’t going to be roasted to death by unsupervised shitheads.”

  After a brief nap and a hearty dinner of cold sausage rolls and chocolate, we were ready to set out on the expedition. We’d originally decided to wait until nightfall in order to have the best possible chance of catching Y by surprise, but by the time we left, a small crowd had formed at the department-store entrance, so, so much for that.

  A few of the people in the crowd were holding small banners with inexpert renditions of Tim’s head drawn on them, but there was no cheering or applause, and Tim gave no rousing speeches. They were like a solemn peasant crowd, watching their folk hero walking up the steps to a grinning man in a black hood pointing meaningfully at a heavily chipped wooden block.

  All the store shutters had been closed except one. “We’re going to lock the gate behind you,” explained an anonymous plastic man with one hand on the mechanism. “In case they try to come and get us in here.”

  “Fine,” said Tim, nervousness showing only in the way his fingers fondled the shaft of his flamethrower. “When I want to be let back in, I’ll give three short knocks followed by two long ones.”

  The gatekeeper nodded slowly. “Or you could just go, ‘Hey, it’s me, Tim.’ ”

  “Right. Yes.”

  The four of us filed out. Tim first, then me, then Angela, then a grumbling Don in the rear. The gatekeeper and an assistant grimly pulled the last shutter down to the floor. The boom as it landed into place reverberated away into the silent abyss of the Briar Center like a funereal bell.

  After that, there was not a single sound in the mall. All the surviving plastic people were holed up in the department store. The torches were dark, and the only illumination was a fuzzy moonlight coming down from the ceiling dome, which did nothing but highlight the huge number of dark shadows Y could have been hiding in.

  Tim took an unlit torch from an undernourished plant and held it to the end of his flamethrower. A massive gout of flame briefly flooded the near vicinity with orange light before settling into a smaller blaze of wadded-up children’s pajamas on the end of a stick.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” cried Don, crouching and pulling his colander down.

  “It’s nearly pitch dark,” said Tim.

  “You just gave our position away! Remember? There’s a sniper around here somewhere you want to invite to a tea party?”

  “Oh shit, right.” He dunked the burning end back into the soil of the plant. The dried-out brown plant that still occupied the soil immediately burst into flame, and I had to help Tim push it to the floor and stomp it out.

  “Well, we’re off to a flying start,” said Don, slowly and loudly hand clapping in a way that didn’t improve the stealth situation at all.

  “You know, Don, you’re not helping,” said Angela, focusing on him angrily. “What now, Tim?”

  “We have to go up to the cinema level,” said Tim, brushing off Don’s comments like biscuit crumbs on a dressing-gown lapel. “The people will want to know if Crazy Bob is all right. Follow me.”

  He strode off towards the stationary escalators. Almost immediately there was a solid THUD. “GAH,” came his voice.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “I banged my knees on a bench,” he replied. “Hang on.” THUD. “GAH.”

  “Hang on, my camera’s got night vision,” announced Angela, stepping forward. “Is that you, Tim?”

  “No, that’s me,” I said. “Tim’s further on.”

  I felt her move past me, then there was another savage THUD. “GAH,” she said. “Man, those things really sneak up on you, don’t they?”

  “Oh, just light a bloody torch,” said Don. “Hardly seems to matter anymore. Maybe we could paint some glow-in-the-dark targets on our faces and hope Y remembers what pity feels like.”

  The flamethrower coughed violently again and Tim’s scowling orange face appeared in the blackness like a lost soul. He took up the flaming torch and proceeded with care. Angela and I followed behind, Angela still trying to find the night-vision button on her camcorder, while Don brought up the rear, doing his best to stay on the outer rim of the circle of firelight.

  We reached the base of the staircase that led up to the cinema lobby. Y’s last known position, his sniping spot during the election debate, was just a few feet from the top of the stairs. Presumably he’d moved since then, but he had never been predictable, even at the best of times.

  “Okay,” whispered Tim. He hunkered down halfway up the stairs and we arranged ourselves in a line behind him, like World War I infantrymen preparing to go over the top. “Don, you’ve got the mace-pellet gun. You go in first.”

  “Uh, that’s a big screw you, good buddy,” replied Don, hunched froglike directly below me.

  “You’re the one who wanted to take him alive. You’ve got the best nonlethal weapon. All you need to do is get him in the face a few times with mace pellets and Travis can move in and subdue him with the baseball bat.”

  “Travis can what in the who?” I interjected.

  “This thing won’t even work,” said Don, holding up his multicolored plastic weapo
n. I was amazed how far toy-gun technology had come; the thing had a stock and a drum magazine. “You’re supposed to spray mace in people’s eyes. You can’t just smear it on them. It’s not like VapoRub.”

  “Look, the least you can do is try it out,” said Tim, hurt. “Jamie spent days emptying handbag-sized mace canisters into that thing.”

  “I can do that just as well from behind something dense,” Don said. I wondered how to take that. “You’re on point; you go first.”

  “Okay, I will,” said Tim. “And after we’ve nonlethally subdued him by spraying fire in his face, you can be the one to pat him out. One, two, three.”

  I couldn’t remember if he was expecting me to immediately follow him, so I stayed put and let him run up the stairs and into the lobby alone, waving his flamethrower and screaming. After it died down, I peered my head over the top step to see how much was left.

  He was leaning on the snack counter, examining something behind it. Either that or he was steadying himself after having received several barbed shafts to the sternum. Angela did a quick scan with the night vision, then we crept over to Tim, attempting to keep what armor we had between us and the likeliest sniping positions.

  “We found Crazy Bob!” cried Angela, naming the individual lying bound and gagged behind the counter. He was still wearing the cardboard mask, with the gag tied around it. I had to wonder what kind of sanity level Y was operating on. She leaned over and fumbled for a pulse. “And he’s not dead!”

  “At least we know Y doesn’t kill people he doesn’t believe to be a threat,” said Tim.

  “What was that?” came Don’s voice from back at the stairs. “Did I just hear a reason to stop carrying these stupid weapons arou—”

  Falling silent midsentence was so yawningly out of character I immediately knew something was wrong. “Don?” I said.

  His voice came a few seconds later, strained and a full octave higher. “Something just ricocheted off my colander. I think I’m going to hide behind this column for a bit.”