Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Custom, yeah,’ Adnan confirms. ‘Not part of any of the original games. My cousin Tariq made this map at least ten years ago, when he was a student. Folk always end up jumping the shark when it comes to creating their own maps. He claims this one can be successfully completed, but I don’t believe him.’

  ‘I suppose the clue is in the map being titled A Slight Case of Over-Bombing,’ Radar observes.

  ‘Aye. Though you wouldn’t get a student called Tariq typing the words ‘over-bombing’ into a computer these days unless he fancied forty-two days’ detention without trial.’

  ‘Tariq. He’s the one that went on to be a physics hingmy.’

  ‘Particle physicist.’

  ‘That’s it, aye. I take it he employs a wee bit more subtlety these days?’

  ‘I’d like to think so, but it does worry me, playing this, to see how much he seems to enjoy seeing things blow up.’

  ‘Fancy another crack at it?’

  Adnan is about to ask ‘why not?’ when he senses a different kind of danger, but in this instance, he’s just in time. It’s the sudden clarity of Cameron’s music that he latches on to: the interference of Deborah Thomson’s mindless aural chewing-gum has suddenly ceased, and you generally don’t get a wish like that granted without complications. He lifts his eyes from the miniature LCD screens and looks along the aisle. Still in gaming mode, he pictures a reticle and a HUD superimposed upon his vision, the stats readout corresponding to the subject in his imaginary cross-hairs, which change colour from green to red to denote a fix on the target that is stomping through the coach.

  NAME: DAN GUTHRIE. WARRIOR CLASS: DEPUTY HEADMASTER. STATUS: ARSEHOLE. STRENGTH: MORAL FORTITUDE. WEAKNESS: WOUND TOO TIGHT.

  Adnan envisions a danger level to the right of his field of vision: a column of horizontal bars, the stack moving from yellow through orange and into red as it ascends.

  Adnan elbows Radar by way of giving the edgy, but there’s no means of inconspicuously warning anyone else. Worst caught out is Beansy, who is kneeling up on his seat with his back to the aisle, deliberately jutting his arse into the passage and wiggling it exaggeratedly in time to the music. Guthrie is standing right over him, looking like he is sorely regretting the passing of the years and the passing of the human rights legislation that have denied him the right to boot that arse as a moral imperative. Instead he looks at the luggage rack and locates Cam’s iPod speakers, then, after a brief moment of bafflement in attempting to negotiate the interface, simply yanks out the jack.

  It’s impressive how a precipitate absence of sound can be as startling as a sudden loud noise. Bodies stiffen, heads turn, reveries are abruptly truncated. The words ‘who the fuck . . .’ are reflexively spat forth and just as reflexively silenced as the answer to this question becomes apparent. Somewhere in Adnan’s peripheral vision he sees Fizzy hurriedly flicking a small white object past Marky’s head and towards the grille above the window, before folding his arms in a singularly self-defeating gesture of innocence. Fortunately for him, Guthrie is concentrating his blazing eyeballs on Beansy at this point, in a sweeping arc of boiling disapproval that also takes in Deso’s copy of Maxim as well as Adnan and Radar’s gaming hardware.

  ‘The whole bunch of you are a damp disgrace,’ Guthrie shouts. If they were in a hall or a classroom, there would be some serious reverb, but the engine, the road and the tightness of the space mute his bellows a little. Nonetheless, his harangue does silence the place, and makes those other sounds seem that bit more quiet and distant in the pause that follows. ‘Have you forgotten what you’re doing here?’ he demands. ‘Have you no respect? Can you not relegate your own trivial gratifications just for a while, and maybe turn your thoughts to something other than your shallow, shiftless selves?’

  Guthrie is sweeping the beams again, all target eyes averted just before contact can be made. Everybody is doing the chastisement charade: kidding on they are chastened and ashamed in the face of this admonishment. Whatever gets him to drop it and fuck off back down the bus. Prick. Nobody’s forgotten why they’re here, which is why nobody is feeling genuinely ashamed or genuinely chastised. He’s the fud that’s lacking respect, because he’s the one using Dunnsy’s death as an excuse to read the riot act.

  Guthrie takes a step further towards the rear, past Adnan’s row, and a glance back reveals that, in fact, not everybody is doing the dance, nor averting their eyes. Sitting in the centre of the back row, flanked at a respectful distance of one empty seat either side by his two loyal and ever-present wingmen, is Big Kirk. He’s staring directly at Guthrie, not so much with defiance as with a patronising scrutiny bordering on malicious amusement. Guthrie might have missed this, or might at least have had the option to pretend he missed it, were it not for the fact that Kirk has just brought a lit filter-tip cigarette to his lips and is drawing deeply on it as he draws a bead on his foe; or maybe victim would be closer to the truth.

  Kirk, it has to be said, is every bit as much of a prick as Guthrie, and to his fellow pupils - being unrestrained by human rights legislation - a far more dangerous one. Still, when one prick faces off against another, there’s a certain satisfaction to be had in the anticipation that at least one of them will suffer as a result of the encounter, and if you’re really lucky, both. In this instance, though, there is little prospect of mutually assured damage. This is an impossible moment for Guthrie, and Kirk knows it; knew it as he watched him make his angry way along the aisle; knew it as Guthrie performed his histrionics and meted out his tongue-lashing; knew it and relished it as he pulled his fag-bearing left hand from out of sight behind a seat and drew it to his mouth.

  Kirk may be a St Peter’s pupil, but he’s no schoolboy. He was taller than all his peers and half the staff when he was thirteen, an advantage Adnan can never recall him wearing with lightness or grace. In the intervening years, as well as adding another few inches, he has filled out with muscle and even more attitude. He’s not brawny - it’s his mate Dazza who’s got ‘the guns’ - but there’s a taut, sinewy solidity to him that every guy in class has had the misfortune to perceive at some point, whether unavoidably in PE or as a consequence of failing to observe a respectfully wide berth in a corridor. Like just about everybody else, staff and pupils alike, Adnan was hoping he’d leave at the end of last year and maybe get a job clubbing seals or something. Unfortunately he had shown up again in August, having done disappointingly well in his exams and come to two worryingly realistic understandings. The first was that if he had come this far without bothering his arse, then if he put in a bit of effort he could probably get some decent qualifications; and the second was that he could now take not only all of the pupils in a square go, but also all of the teachers too - perhaps even simultaneously.

  Thus, as he draws slowly on that cigarette, it is understood by both parties - as well as all interested onlookers, of which there is now an enthralled host - that Guthrie’s authority, as adult, teacher or even deputy head, only cuts ice if Kirk is playing the game.

  In this one seemingly endless draw, he sucks the fag until it burns right down to the filter. Under the circumstances, his decision to exhale the smoke downwards from his nostrils rather than forwards from his lips seems almost non-confrontational.

  ‘The driver could put all of us off, right here, right now,’ Guthrie says, the measured tone of his voice serving only to convey how much anger he’s trying to keep a lid on. There’s also something deliberately neutral about it, almost an appeal to reason. Whether he meant to or not, he has all but acknowledged the reality of this power balance, and only in doing so will he have any chance of securing Kirk’s cooperation.

  ‘Wouldn’t want that, sir,’ Kirk says. Then he nips the fag against the heel of his boot and offers the dead stub to Guthrie on the palm of his hand.

  Guthrie bats it away angrily. He turns again and takes a couple of paces back down the aisle, then stops and snatches the DS Lite from Adnan’s grip, Radar’s too, before reaching up an
d pocketing Cam’s iPod for good measure.

  Yeah, that sure won you back all the face you just lost, dude. Big up Mr Guthrie, Deputy Dan, the G-Star. You da man.

  Radar remains frozen, his hands still in place from where his DS had been untimely ripped, his face a study of catatonic incredulity.

  ‘Can’t believe that bastard stole our kit, Adnan, man.’

  Adnan’s eyes remain trained on the aisle, his imaginary HUD showing the danger level column recede into the yellow as Guthrie retreats towards the front. Father Blake moves into the cross-hair as he stands up to let Guthrie back into his seat.

  WARRIOR CLASS: SCHOOL CHAPLAIN. STATUS: HALF DECENT. STRENGTH: OPEN-MINDED. WEAKNESS: DOUBT.

  ‘I don’t know what to do without my box,’ Radar moans. ‘I might need to read a fuckin’ book or something. Are we nearly there yet?’

  Adnan pans his imaginary reticle across the aisle to fix on the profiles of the two other teachers accompanying them on the retreat: first Mr Kane (WARRIOR CLASS: PHYSICS TEACHER. STATUS: HALF DECENT. STRENGTH: BRAINY AS FUCK. WEAKNESS: NON-BELIEVER AT A TIM SCHOOL); then Miss Ross (WARRIOR CLASS: ENGLISH TEACHER. STATUS: QUITE TIDY. STRENGTH: ALWAYS CALM. WEAKNESS: FATHER BLAKE).

  ‘It’s all a game, Radar,’ Adnan says, smiling to himself. ‘Boot it up in your head instead.’

  Rocks is staring out of the window, waiting for Dazza to respond. You’d think it was fucking trigonometry or something.

  Rocks didn’t mind that Guthrie had cut off the music somewhere around Inveraray - it was shite anyway - but there was another couple of hours to go and the silence had started to get to him. That was why he decided to suggest a wee game.

  He hadn’t expected Kirk to join in, but he was beginning to wonder whether Dazza was blanking him as well. Wouldn’t blame him, given that any conversation was going to have to take place across the space of three seats: two empty and one full of brooding self-indulgence.

  ‘Okay, Rebecca Catherwood,’ Dazza finally says.

  God in Govan. Took him all that time and that’s the best he comes up with?

  Rocks glances down the bus at Rebecca, looking, as per, like she just stepped off the cover of Red or Marie-Claire (way too classy for the lads’ mags, that lassie), and can’t help but laugh.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Dazza, that’s not the game. Anybody would shag her. The idea is to find out how much of a munter you’d pump just to get your hole.’

  ‘Oh, I get you now,’ Dazza confirms, blood having apparently been extracted from stone. ‘Right.’

  ‘For instance,’ Rocks begins, then looks down the bus for a good example. His eyes alight on wee Michelle, sitting close to the front, mousy and bookish. She wouldn’t get a second look most of the time, but neither is she a pure hound, so for all of that, she’s the perfect candidate. ‘Michelle Sharp. Yes or no.’

  Dazza takes a moment to cast an eye over her, his face screwing up in slight confusion, as though Rocks has either made a mistake or baffled him again.

  ‘There’s no way she’s even had her tits felt, never mind given anybody their hole.’

  ‘This isn’t about plausibility,’ he explains to Dazza. ‘The name of the game isn’t could ye. It’s would ye.’

  Dazza looks at Michelle again for a moment, then grins. ‘Aye.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ Rocks agrees, giggling. ‘Now: your turn.’

  Dazza’s face takes on a look of intense concentration, then a sneaky wee smile appears at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Julie Meiklejohn,’ he says.

  Rocks needs no time to pick her out among the rows. She is chubby and loud, laughing open-mouthed and inelegantly along with that shower of harpies she hangs about with. On the other hand, she’s got big bouncy tits, she looks like she’d be game, and they say fat lassies are grateful.

  Rocks and Dazza look at each other, glints forming in their eyes. They answer simultaneously: ‘Aye.’

  Both of them burst out laughing, knowing it’s true.

  Rocks snatches a glimpse at the Big Man to see whether he’s letting any light through the curtains, but the miserable prick is still just staring ahead, got this blank, unreadable expression on his coupon, just one from his repertoire of scary faces. Well, fuck him. Going about in a mood the whole time isn’t going to bring Dunnsy back.

  ‘I’d shag a bathroom plughole if there was enough hairs around it,’ Rocks declares.

  ‘I’d shag the hole in the Rangers defence,’ Dazza replies.

  ‘I’d shag the hole in the ozone layer.’

  ‘I’d shag a barber’s floor.’

  ‘I’d shag two caterpillars glued round a hole as long as they were hairy wans.’

  ‘I’d shag Beth Ditto . . . on her bad week.’

  ‘Too far.’

  Adnan and Radar are earwigging, on the sniff for some embarrassing admission or merely uncircumspect sexual bravado that they can file away for discussion later. It’s always therapeutic to be able to take the piss out of these people in their absence, especially if you’ve been under their boot-heels, as is an inevitability at some point over the next few days. Throughout this latter part of their discussion, Rocks and Dazza are talking loudly enough to suggest they don’t mind being overheard. It can be a canny call to acknowledge a joke from these guys, especially when it is actually funny, not least because it clarifies that you were ‘laughing with’ rather than ‘laughing at’. Adnan glances back and scores some eye contact from Daniel McIntyre, Dazza to his inner circle. This is a calculated risk. There’s always a chance of eliciting a highly counterproductive ‘What the fuck has it to do with you?’ response, but it’s more likely that he’ll notch a couple of ‘wee Adnan’s all right’ points.

  Indeed, as it transpires, he moves a little more into credit at one branch of the Bank of Bam, and this established, his eyes alight briefly upon the HQ: Kirk Burns.

  WARRIOR CLASS: UNDISPUTED BEST FIGHTER. STATUS: FUCKING MENTAL. STRENGTH: HARD AS FUCK. WEAKNESS: NONE DOCUMENTED.

  Big Kirk seems oblivious to the hilarity, his eyes trained on a fixed spot to the fore like there’s a TV down there. His face is set like stone, a calculating contemplation etched so intently upon it that makes Adnan very relieved not to be its subject, but less comforted as he steals a look down the bus to confirm who is. His reticle gets a lock on Matt Wilson, sitting alone in a double seat one row behind the teachers, who are under the impression that they are protecting him.

  WARRIOR CLASS LONER. STRENGTH INSCRUTABLE. WEAKNESS KNOWN ASSOCIATE OF ROBERT BARKER. STATUS : ENDANGERED.

  ‘Seriously,’ Gillian insists. ‘My big sister Tracy heard she gave Dazza a wank at Jason Mitchell’s party after the Halloween disco.’

  ‘Who, Katherine?’ Deborah asks, with an incredulity borne of this sounding too good to be true, as well as an odd little fear that it might be. Katherine Gelaghtly is in sixth year, but she’s resitting French so she’s in Deborah’s class for that. Her wee sister Bernadette is sitting next to Rosemary a few rows in front, with all that that entails, and Katherine has given off every impression of being just as uninterested in the opposite sex; not to mention just as ill-equipped to do anything about it if she was. Yet here was a credible rumour that she’d gone a lot further than Deborah had ever dared, which was almost as dismaying as the implication that she had been invited to one of Jason’s parties - something Deborah had definitely never managed.

  ‘Yeah, Katherine,’ Gillian confirms with a delighted giggle.

  ‘Heard from who, though?’ Julie asks. ‘If she heard it from a guy, then the truth is probably that she groped it through his jeans at the most.’

  ‘Tracy says she told her to her face.’

  ‘Mistake!’ observes Yvonne.

  ‘Wow,’ says Julie. ‘And you know what that means.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, by the same token, if she admitted to a wank, it might even have been a blow-job.’

  ‘How come nobody’s heard about this from the guy’s side
?’ Yvonne demands, sounding like she is also surprisingly eager to debunk it, and not in defence of Katherine’s virtue either.

  ‘Getting a wank off Katherine Gelaghtly maybe isn’t something you’d want to boast about,’ Julie suggests with a cackle.

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s it,’ Gillian responds. ‘Our Tracy says your man Dazza is actually quite mature when it comes to his dealings with girls. Mature enough to know not to burn his boats by blabbing, anyway. I mean, it’s not the same as if somebody was daft enough to give a wank to a clown like Beansy or Deso. They’d tell everybody.’

  ‘Beansy would take an advert out in the Evening Times,’ says Julie.

  ‘Only if he couldn’t raise the funds to hire one of those airship efforts,’ adds Gillian.

  ‘How far do you think Bernadette’s gone, then?’ Yvonne asks. ‘Maybe the God-squad bit is just a really sneaky camouflage for being a cock maniac.’

  ‘Jesus, so how much of a slut would that make Rosemary?’ asks Gillian.

  They all crease up. Deborah laughs too, but she can see it getting daft now, and she wants to head that off. It’s more of a thrill when it’s a realistic appraisal, especially when it serves as a conduit for rumour, substantiated or not. She stretches in her seat, hands up in the air, and rolls her head around her neck, using it as an excuse to look about and remind herself of the field. She spots her top candidate right away - kicking herself that she needed a reminder, in fact - but completes the stretch for cover.

  ‘What about Marianne?’ she suggests. ‘How far do you think she’s gone?’

  ‘Marianne?’ asks Julie. ‘The English Goth lassie?’

  ‘Yeah, the new girl,’ Deborah confirms, though Julie not being sure who Deborah is talking about doesn’t bode well for the emergence of any goss.

  ‘I bet she’s gone all the way,’ Julie opines, confounding Deborah’s pessimism.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I saw her in the changing rooms at Gleniston baths. Lacy black knickers, quite see-through. Landing strip as well. That’s not stuff you go in for unless you’re expecting somebody else to see.’