Jam
Page 36
“Spiders aren’t choosy either. I won’t think twice about sucking down your blood like a cherry smoothie the moment your backhand gets too weak.”
I raised the gun, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the throbbing pain in my hand.
“Vwooooo.”
I opened my eyes. “Did you just say vwooooo?” Mary didn’t have a comment.
I heard the sound again. It was coming from outside. Deep, groany, and faintly metallic. It was either some kind of horny walrus inside a tin bath, or . . .
I ran to the flap. A gunboat, painted in militaristic gray with an American flag decal on the side, bobbed in the nearby waves. A burly sailor stood on the side, one leg propped confidently up on the edge. He was holding out a hand to me and saying something I couldn’t hear.
“One second!” I shouted, holding up a finger, before popping back inside. Mary was still on her back, faintly twitching. Miserably, I gathered her up in my arms, clasping her scratchy warmth to my chest.
“Come on, buddy,” said the American sailor as I appeared again. The boat was now pressed right up against the side of my raft. The sailor withdrew his hand at the last second when he saw what I was carrying, and I would’ve fallen into the sea if he hadn’t recovered and grabbed my wrist with the lightning-fast reflexes of military discipline. He pulled me over and I stepped onto the reassuringly solid floor of the boat.
“We done here?” asked the sailor, directing his question over his shoulder.
“Yes, this is the one,” said Don. “Take us back to the mother ship. Or whatever you people call it.”
“Don?!” I exclaimed.
He scowled at me. “Don’t say a bloody word. Don’t start going off on banal thank-yous. This is just straight backsies for pulling me out of that explosion. Don’t read too much into it. And stop breastfeeding your damn spider on deck.”
“Thank you, Don.” He bridled huffily. “Is this the navy?”
He drummed his chin theatrically, surveying the sailors all around us. “I think so, Travis, yes.”
“Weren’t they trying to silence us earlier?”
“Let’s just say they’re having to cut a few losses,” he said. He smugly reached into his pocket and showed me a small, black USB stick I’d last seen protruding from the computer on the Obi-Wan.
A FEW WEEKS LATER
—
I woke up one morning to find that my entire body had been covered in a three-inch layer of old newspapers.
I sat up, rubbing my back. I knew I shouldn’t have tried sleeping on the bench by the little news agent at LAX. I’d thought about curling up in a booth at the fast-food place, since I’d seen a lot of people leave half-finished milkshakes around, but the news agent had seemed more convenient for bedding.
I dragged myself to the departures board and looked it over. I’d slept for longer than I thought; boarding commenced any minute now. Idly I glanced at the arrivals list; another plane from Australia was landing soon. More survivors were popping out of the woodwork every day—
“Where the hell have you been?” barked a voice from behind.
I turned on my heel. He was clean shaven with neatly combed hair, and was wearing a hoodie and sweatpants probably taken from the pile of charitable donations, so it took a moment to recognize him. “Hello, Don.”
He glared firstly at the state of disarray my hair was in and secondly at the newspaper sticking to the sole of my bare foot. “Why aren’t you staying at the hotel? It’s on the government’s dime.”
“I was afraid I might oversleep and miss—”
“Yeah, whatever,” he interrupted. “I’ve been looking for you. We’re leaving for DC tomorrow.”
I cocked my head sleepily. “We?”
“Yes, Travis, for the hearing.” He produced a pair of boarding passes from the pocket of his hoodie and waved them under my nose. “Remember? Half the American navy are lining up to dob in their superiors?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Very few of the ships in the blockade had been happy about the orders they’d been given. A few strategically placed satellite phone calls had blossomed into several hundred as large numbers of officers demanded to know what the government was playing at. Don had done an exclusive phone interview for every media outlet on earth by the time our ship had docked at Long Beach.
“After that, we’re going to Bellevue,” he said. “That’s in the other Washington.”
“We again?”
“It was Brian at Loincloth Bellevue who suggested my transfer to Loincloth Australia in the first place.” He grinned maliciously. “And now there is absolutely nothing I could ask for that the company won’t provide. So . . . corner office, I’m thinking. And a desk I don’t have to share.”
“But why we?”
He looked down his nose benevolently. “I’ve gotten you a job. Quality assurance. Entry level, of course, but from tiny acorns do mighty—” He looked me up and down for a moment. “Well, do trees of some kind grow, anyway.”
“Don, I can’t . . .”
“And before you say anything, I’m just trying to do something useful with you. So don’t thank me. You know I can’t stand all that pathetic, moisty-eyed—”
“Don, I’m going back to Brisbane.”
His mouth stayed open, but no sound came out. I could almost see his tonsils frozen in the act of snark. I dug out my own wrinkled boarding pass and showed him.
An announcement was made over the tannoy, and another batch of bedraggled Australian refugees started trickling into the lounge. Some were greeted by friends or relatives; others were directed to the processing center by some hassled-looking security guards with two-way radios. I scanned each face as it passed, waiting for Don to find his words.
“Why the hell are you going back to Brisbane?!” he said, aghast. “There’s nothing there! Even the jam’s been washed away.”
“Ah, well, actually, a lot of survivors are staying. Look.” From my other pocket I produced another wrinkled piece of paper: a newspaper clipping. “It says the economy’s booming. They’ve had so many tourists booking holidays they’re having to turn people away. There’re whole survivor communities coming together to run some of the hotels.”
“Apocalypse tourism,” read Don aloud. “Christ, I should’ve guessed. A bunch of rubberneckers wanting to wander around a deserted city and pretend they’re in Mad Max.”
“They’re saying it’s like Pripyat without the radiation poisoning. And look, there are studios queueing up to use Brisbane as a shoot location,” I said, pointing to the relevant paragraph. “The writers can’t put out zombie scripts fast enough.”
“Bloody vultures,” sneered Don. He finally looked away from the article and caught me staring at the new arrivals. His eyebrow raised. “And that’s why you’re going back, is it? To open your very own souvenir shop?”
I coughed. “Partly.”
“And surely the other part is nothing to do with certain below-average specimens of femininity? Christ, Travis, don’t tell me you’re still picturing your fairy-tale wedding.”
I dropped my gaze. “It’s not because I . . . I just need to know.” I looked at the floor. “After Tim. And Angela. And Frank. And X and Y, I guess. I just need to know that at least one other . . .”
My voice trailed away. Don folded his arms and sighed through his teeth, irritated by his own emotions. “You really are hopeless, aren’t you.”
“Not anymore.”
Another tannoy announcement cut through my reverie, nasally informing me that my plane had commenced boarding. I glanced left and right, then back to Don. “Actually! Yes! Since you’re here. Could you come this way for a second?”
He followed me uncertainly as I jogged back to my sleeping spot and picked up a military storage crate I’d borrowed from the boat. I pressed it into his unresisting arms. “Do you mind?”
Don was shaking his head back and forth, still trying to figure out what floor my mental elevator had stopped at. “The hell’s this?”
“She likes cat food. I was worried about getting her on the plane, but this is probably a better idea.”
He peered through one of the holes in the lid and reared back at the sight of hairy legs. “Jesus Christ! Travis, do you have any idea how much you’re inconveniencing me? We’ve got a hearing! And I promised you to QA! And I hate buying pet food—the shops always stink!”
I awkwardly put my cheek to the crate and gave it one last squeeze. “Goodbye, Mary. Look after Don.” I started to leave, but stopped myself before I’d gone six feet. “Don?”
“What?!”
“Thank you very, very much.”
I turned and jogged away, his angry swearing lost among the clamor behind me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
—
Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is the sole creator of Zero Punctuation™, a popular weekly game review on the Webby award-winning Escapist online magazine, for which he also earned the Sun Microsystems 2008 IT Journalism award for Best Gaming Journalist. He has also worked as a game designer and dialogue writer for various studios. His first novel, Mogworld, was released in 2010. He was born and raised in the UK and now lives in Brisbane, Australia.
Table of Contents
DAY 1.1
DAY 1.2
DAY 1.3
DAY 2.1
DAY 2.2
DAY 3.1
DAY 3.2
DAY 3.3
DAY 3.4
DAY 3.5
DAY 4.1
DAY 4.2
DAY 4.3
DAY 4.4
DAY 4.5
DAY 5.1
DAY 5.2
DAY 5.3
DAY 5.4
DAY 6.1
DAY 6.2
DAY 6.3
DAY 7.1
DAY 7.2
DAY 8.1
DAY 8.2
DAY 8.3
DAY 8.4
DAY 9.1
DAY 9.2
A FEW WEEKS LATER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR