Jam Read online

  “The city lies stricken by a carnivorous substance of unknown origin,” said Angela, next to me. She was scanning the view with a handheld camcorder. “Who could have caused this? And why?”

  The street below us was swamped with cars. They were arranged in neat queues, with no weird angles or crashes that might suggest a panic. Some of them had open doors, but that had only given the jam a quicker route to the vehicles’ inhabitants.

  “Where the hell did it come from?!” asked Don, mainly to himself. “I came in off night shift at six this morning. Everything was fine.”

  “Look!” said Tim suddenly. He had now redressed his head wound with a mere three or four layers of toilet paper tied around his head with an extension cord. “It ate all the wooden buildings but not the others. What does that tell you?”

  He was answered by three silent looks. Two confused, one openly hostile.

  “Wood, rubber, cotton, people?” He waved his hands emphatically. “It eats organic matter! That’s how it works! I knew it! It must have gorged itself on the surrounding countryside and that’s how there’s so much of it now!”

  Don was looking at him with a mixture of sneering contempt and sneering incredulity. “You’re excited, aren’t you? You are genuinely happy about this.”

  Tim looked him square in the eye and wrestled the idiot grin off his face. “Of course I’m not.”

  “You are! This is a complete disaster, you fool! People have died!”

  “Frank died,” I added.

  “Exactly! Maybe you didn’t have enough of a life for it to matter, but this has destroyed everything I’ve been working towards for years!” His face suddenly fell and he glanced out towards the city. “Oh, shit, the build! We only just started the alpha!”

  “Sounds like you still need to accept that civilization is over,” said Tim, with shaky confidence.

  Don took a step closer to him and extended a single index finger right in front of his nose. “One! Morning! I personally am not prepared to abandon the concept of society after one! Morning! You . . .” He noticed Angela standing nearby. “Will you please stop filming?!”

  “I’m documenting,” she explained.

  “Stop it!”

  She frowned, offended. “Look, every time anything historical happens, all anyone complains about afterwards is how it wasn’t documented from the start. Trust me; I’m a journalist.”

  “You don’t need to document me shouting!” shouted Don.

  “Yeah, Angela,” I said, mollifyingly. “There’s probably going to be lots of opportunities to do that.”

  “All right!” yelled Don. “Everyone get the hell off my terrace!”

  “But—” began Tim.

  “Off!” He was suddenly holding his baseball bat again, and started shoving the three of us towards the door. “Show’s over! Idiot tolerance time is now over and idiots must now leave! Get the hell off my property! I want to be alone!”

  He slammed the door. The three of us, packed into Don’s narrow upstairs hallway, exchanged hurt glances.

  Angela’s news-reader voice broke the silence. “As you can see, tempers are already flaring in the remaining outposts of humanity. Can civilized society possibly hold together as tensions rise?”

  From behind the door, a muffled voice screamed, “I AM NOT! TENSE!”

  DAY 2.1

  —

  By the next morning, Don had firmly blocked his ruined front door with his fridge. I’d spent the night on the living room couch of his next-door neighbor, and had heard Don pacing up and down his stairs and opening and closing his kitchen cupboards. He probably had a lot to think about.

  We’d realized after being hustled out by Don that his balcony presented the only escape route from the complex. There were other apartments with roof terraces, but we didn’t know precisely which ones, and the roof access in the main stairwell was locked with a heavy steel door that no amount of leg pushing would shift. We’d spent the rest of the first day methodically breaking into Don’s neighbors’ apartments, but we’d found no other roof access doors, just a lot of canned and dried food that we’d moved into Don’s next-door neighbor’s place, or as Tim insisted on calling it, “Settlement Alpha.”

  We started our operations on the morning of the second day with number 36. Tim took up the barbell he’d found two doors down and rapped the end of it on the front door.

  He sighed when there came no reply. “Well, I guess that’s confirmed. Don was the only survivor in this part of the complex.” He swung the barbell and his sentence was punctuated by the crunch of wood and metal screaming for mercy.

  “You’d think there’d be more,” I said, dutifully pushing our makeshift cart, a laundry basket strapped to an office chair, into the kitchen.

  Tim made straight for the pantry. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, idly inspecting the ingredients list on a box of Choco Choco Choc Blocks. “Don said he came in off night shift at six and the jam wasn’t there yet, right?”

  “I think that’s what he said.”

  “Yeah. And we all got up at around eleven, right?”

  I opened the fridge door. The lukewarm contents looked salvageable until the smell reached my nostrils and my arm reflexively slammed the door shut. “Around then, yeah.”

  “So, from this we deduce that the jam hit the city at some point between six and eleven in the morning. What does that tell you?”

  I fielded a bag of dry pasta. “Er . . .”

  He let my er drag on for a few seconds before putting me out of my misery. “Rush hour. I don’t think we’re going to find many more survivors here. Inner city location, near the bus stop . . . Our complex was mainly for business types with city jobs. They would have all been on their way to work. Me and you, and Angela, and Don, we were anomalies. Go and see if you can find any batteries.”

  “Right.” I passed through into the living room.

  “Makes sense when you think about it,” he said, weighing up some cans. “Anomalies in the gene pool are how evolution works. Whenever there’s a big shake-up, the anomalies are the only things left.”

  “Tim . . .”

  “Like the world was a great big Etch A Sketch . . .”

  “TIM COME LOOK AT THIS.”

  He threw his tins aside and jogged to my side. “What?”

  I was too petrified to respond, but I was able to bring up an arm and point to the corner of the room.

  “A fish tank?” he said. “No, there’s . . .” He was probably going to say there’s no water, but at that point he noticed the same thing I had, and froze.

  There, huddled in a thick layer of dirt at the bottom of a large glass tank, partially concealed between some miniature plant life and a piece of hollowed-out log, was the biggest spider either of us had ever seen in our lives. Its legs were as thick as my fingers and the orange-brown body was the size of two generously proportioned scones.

  After a tense silence, I heard Tim exhale as he relaxed. “Is that all? It’s just a spider.”

  “You can’t say that’s just a spider,” I said, keeping my teeth clenched.

  “Anyway, more to the point, it’s dead,” said Tim, walking with slightly wobbly confidence towards the tank.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Of course. There’s no one around to feed it, is there?”

  “Do you know how long it takes for . . .”

  “Look, if it was alive, it would have moved by now.” He leant close to the glass and tapped it with a knuckle. The tarantula jumped back, splaying its legs and raising its arse in irritation.

  One second later, Tim and I were both trying to squeeze ourselves into the far corner of the room. “Okay,” said Tim, his voice now one octave higher. “It’s not dead.” He took a few deep breaths and stepped towards the tank again. “Great. That’s good. This is a really, really good development.”

  “Yeah, obviously,” I said, eyes fixed on the twitching legs.

  “We’ve fou
nd another surviving life form,” he said. “We have to take it with us. These delicate, early days might define the entire future of the new society. Humanity has to live in harmony with the animals. We should take it with us.”

  I was still staring fixedly at the thing. “What for?”

  “Come on, man, it’s a Noah’s ark scenario. Every species is precious now. Even the . . . even this one. We might be able to farm them.”

  “Er . . . again, what for?” I said. “Wool? Milk?”

  He scowled at me, hands on hips. “We are tasked with the salvation of the human race. It’s going to be very tough and we are going to have to adapt very fast. That starts with not being scared of something that isn’t even particularly big if you compare it to, like, a car. So bring it with us.”

  “Screw you, man. You bring it with us.”

  “When are you going to start contributing, Travis? I know you’ve spent the last twenty years being carried by the rest of society, but you are now an entire quarter of the human race and you can’t really coast along anymore. It’s going to take more than pushing the office chair around.”

  “Guys?” came Angela’s voice. Her camera appeared around the side of the ruined door, closely followed by her face. “Tim and Travis have been scavenging the rest of the apartments for supplies, and I’ve come down to tell them about Don.”

  “What about Don?” said Tim.

  “He wants to talk to us. He left a note on his door.” She produced a piece of printer paper with black tape on the corners, which she held carefully in front of the camera lens. “Says just to show up at any time before twelve or after one so we don’t interrupt his lunch.”

  “Right, well, let’s head up now,” said Tim.

  “I thought you wanted to bring this thing with us?” I said.

  “We can’t lump the whole tank around; we’ll think of something later.” He was already out the door.

  I stood where I was and eyed the spider. The words you can’t really coast along anymore were still burning in my ears. I took one last look around at the kitchen cupboards that were hanging open and the word opportunity flashed up in my mind like a traffic light. “Hang on,” I said. “I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

  —

  Don’s door was wide open when I arrived at his place. There was no one in the kitchen, but the cupboards were all hanging open and there were a couple of empty ramen noodle wrappers lying around. I headed upstairs to find my three fellow survivors on the roof terrace. Don was standing at the far end. He had arranged three chairs as audience seating.

  “Hello, Travis,” said Don, in an awkward attempt at a welcoming tone. He seemed rather paler than he’d been four days ago. His hair was uncombed and he was wearing a faded dressing gown. “Please take a seat.”

  I did so, between Angela and Tim. Don coughed and produced some indexing cards from his pocket.

  “Hello,” he read. He moved to the next card. “I have had some time to think about the situation. And I’ve come to the conclusion.” He swallowed with revulsion before continuing. “That we should probably stick together if this really has become some bullshit survival scenario. Do you agree?” We nodded mutely. “Right. Then we need to talk about what . . .” his sentence faltered. His head suddenly flicked back to face me. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a tupperware box,” I said, jiggling it with my foot.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Breakfast cereal,” I said innocently.

  Don’s eyes narrowed. “What else is in it?”

  It was a large, fairly transparent box, so I felt the answer was rather self-evident, but I took the lid off anyway. Don started. Tim made some kind of involuntary strangled noise, and was on the other side of the balcony with his back pressed against the wall before his chair could even finish clattering to the ground.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said immediately. “Just . . . caught me off guard.”

  “Hey, that’s a Goliath birdeater, isn’t it?” said Angela, dutifully filming as it twitched uncomfortably in the daylight. “They’re supposed to be the biggest spiders in the world. Ridiculously violent, too.”

  Don stood with mouth agape, forearms rotating uncertainly as he contemplated how best to begin his next sentence. “What is wrong with your head?”

  “It was Tim’s idea,” I said. “He said we need to adapt and learn to stop being scared.”

  “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?” said Tim, looking a bit white. “Well done, Travis. I see you punched holes in the lid, too. What great initiative. How did you get it in there?”

  “Wasn’t easy. I had to use a broom and a dead gecko.”

  “Hey!” cried Don, slapping his hand on the perimeter wall for attention. “Ow! Hey! Decorum! Professionalism! We need to talk about the plan! Travis, throw that horrible thing in the jam before it sucks someone’s blood out.”

  “No!” said Tim.

  “It’s not dangerous,” added Angela. “I saw it on David Attenborough. The bite’s no worse than a wasp sting.”

  “People still avoid wasps,” pointed out Don levelly. “They do not put wasps on little leads and take them to the wasp show.”

  “I’ll be responsible for her,” I insisted. “This is how I’m contributing.”

  Don turned around for a moment and threw up his hands, as if appealing for support from the deathly silent city behind him. “Fine. Have the stupid thing. Look after it and if you’re very good then next year we’ll get you an anaconda or something. Just put the lid back on before it urticates all over someone.”

  “Yes, we have to keep it safe, at any rate,” said Tim firmly, returning to his seat with shoulders squared and a curiously deeper voice. “Every living thing is precious in the new world.”

  Don, who had been inspecting his cue cards, now threw them to the floor and put a hand to his temple. “Will you at least concede one thing? This is not an apocalypse. This is one city. Not even a particularly nice one. We are not rebuilding civilization. We are waiting for rescue.”

  “Rescue?” It was Tim’s turn for sarcasm.

  “Yes, rescue. There are a lot of other nations in the world that offer disaster relief. That’s just how politics works; governments fall over themselves to build up goodwill at times like these. Especially when white people are involved. Remember when that volcanic eruption hit New Zealand? They got so many aid packages they had to start feeding them to the sheep. We’ll just wait, get picked up by aircraft, and resume our lives somewhere else. I will find another job with another game studio and hopefully never clap eyes on any of you ever again.”

  “How about you concede that you might be in denial?” said Tim.

  “Don’t you pop psychology me, you little bastard.”

  “Well, look at it! It eats organic matter and turns it into more of itself. There’s no way to stop it from spreading all the way around the world.”

  “It’s called a gray goo scenario,” added Angela.

  I glanced down into the street again. “Red goo.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Don, folding his arms. “So what’s it going to do when it reaches the ocean, smart guy? Breaststroke?”

  “Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” said Angela, swinging her camera left and right to capture Don and Tim’s matching contempt. “Wasn’t there a plan we needed to talk about? Getting out of the complex?”

  “Yes. No!” said Tim. “We search the rest of the complex. We set up a base of operations. We pool our resources. And when we’re ready, we mount an expedition to . . .” He swept his arm across the skyline, then suddenly stiffened. Surprise and concern twisted their way around his face before settling around his open mouth. His hand, still gesturing indistinctly, snapped into a definitive point. “What’s that?”

  I attempted to determine which particular aspect of the sprawling, jam-drowned city he was referring to. “Where?”

  “There! The Hibatsu building!”

  Rumor had it that the Hibatsu Co
rporation had set up their headquarters in the center of our central business district because this had been the nearest convenient country that didn’t mandate product recalls until people other than the working class started dying. The law was changed after about three years of patient bureaucracy, but the Hibatsu building remained, the tallest building in the city, eighty stories of rented office space raising a permanent middle finger to socialism.

  I shielded my eyes against the sun and tried to see what Tim was pointing at. There was something on the side of the building, fluttering in the wind just below the top floor. Something white and rectangular.

  “It’s a message,” said Don. “There must be survivors there.”

  “Those ba—YOU BASTARDS!” called Tim, cupping his hands around his mouth. “I BAGSIED THAT BUILDING! THAT’S SETTLEMENT BETA!”

  “Can’t make out the words,” said Angela, her camera making zooming noises. “That other building’s in the way. We could see it if we were a few roofs over.”

  “They’re going to mess the whole place up! Grow the wrong food! Match the wrong breeding partners!” said Tim, pacing urgently. “That settles it. We’ve got to get over there.”

  “Excuse me, children, but could you at least listen to my suggestion, now you’ve heard the village idiot’s?” said Don.

  “Okay,” I said. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Right!” he slapped his hands upon his hips, filled his lungs, hesitated, then emptied them again. “Right. Yes. My plan. I think the first thing we should do is . . . go to the Hibatsu building, and—”

  “THAT WAS MY—” went Tim, spinning around.

  “MY PLAN IS SENSIBLE,” continued Don loudly. “It’s the most obvious point in the city. Where do you think a rescue chopper’s going to go to first, the survivors in the massive building that’s conveniently closest to the sky or my pathetic signal down here?”

  “You made a signal?” said Angela.

  Don pointed dismissively at the floor. For the first time I noticed that he had emptied the earth out of some flower pots and spread it out into huge letters that ran across the tiles.