The boar lowers its head, hunching its massive neck and shoulders and swaying uneasily back and forth, making up its mind. But the others have already begun moving away, so the boar thinks better of it and follows them, marking its contempt and defiance by dropping a pile of dung as it goes. Snowman stands still until they’re all out of sight, then proceeds with caution, looking frequently behind him. There are too many pigoon tracks around here. Those beasts are clever enough to fake a retreat, then lurk around the next corner. They’d bowl him over, trample him, then rip him open, munch up the organs first. He knows their tastes. A brainy and omnivorous animal, the pigoon. Some of them may even have human neocortex tissue growing in their crafty, wicked heads.
Yes: there they are, up ahead. They’re coming out from behind a bush, all five of them; no, all seven. They’re staring in his direction. It would be a mistake to turn his back, or to run. He raises the stick, and walks sideways, back in the direction from which he’s come. If necessary he can take refuge inside the checkpoint gatehouse and stay there till they go away. Then he’ll have to find a roundabout route to the bubble-dome, keeping to the side streets, where evasion is possible.
But in the time it takes him to cover the distance, slip-stepping as if in some grotesque dance with the pigoons still staring, dark clouds have come boiling up from the south, blotting out the sun. This isn’t the usual afternoon storm: it’s too early, and the sky has an ominous greenish-yellow tinge. It’s a twister, a big one. The pigoons have vanished now, gone to seek shelter.
He stands outside the checkpoint cubicle watching the storm roll forward. It’s a grand spectacle. He once saw an amateur documentary-maker with a camcorder sucked right up into one of those. He wonders how Crake’s Children are getting along, back at the shore. Too bad for Crake if the living results of all his theories are whirled away into the sky or swept out to sea on a big wave. But that won’t happen: in case of high seas, the breakwaters formed by fallen rubble will protect them. As for the twister, they’ve weathered one of those before. They’ll retreat into the central cavern in the jumble of concrete blocks they call their thunder home and wait it out.
The advance winds hit, stirring up debris on the open field. Lightning zips between the clouds. He can see the thin dark cone, zigzagging downwards; then darkness descends. Luckily the checkpoint is built into the security building beside it, and those things are like bunkers, thick and solid. He ducks inside as the first rain strikes.
There’s a shrieking of wind, a crashing of thunder, a vibrating sound as everything still nailed down hums like a gear in a giant engine. A large object hits the outer wall. He moves inward, through one doorway and then another, scrabbling in his garbage bag for the flashlight. He’s got it out and is fumbling with it when there’s another gigantic crash, and the overhead lights blink on. Some previously fried solar circuit must have been refried.
He almost wishes the lights hadn’t gone on: there’s a couple of biosuits off in the corner, with whatever’s left inside them in a bad state of repair. Filing cabinets pulled open, paper scattered everywhere. Looks as if the guards were overwhelmed. Maybe they were trying to stop people from getting out through the gates; there was an attempt to enforce a quarantine, as he recalls. But the antisocial elements, which would have included just about everyone by then, must have broken in and trashed the secret files. How optimistic of them to have believed that any of the paperwork and storage disks might still have been of use to anyone.
He forces himself to go over to the suits; he prods them with his stick, turns them over. Not as bad as he thought, not too smelly, only a few beetles; anything soft is mostly gone. But he can’t find any weapons. The antisocials must have made off with those, as he would have done. As he did do.
He leaves the inmost room, goes back to the receptionist’s area, the part with the counter and the desk. All at once he’s very tired. He sits down in the ergonomic chair. It’s been a long time since he sat in a chair, and it feels strange. He decides to set out his matches and candle ends, in case the lights go out again; while he’s at it he has a drink of birdbath water and the second package of cashews. From outside comes the howling of the wind, an unearthly noise like a huge animal unchained and raging. Gusts are coming in, past the doors he’s closed, stirring up the dust; everything rattles. His hands are shaking. This is getting to him, more than he’s allowed himself to admit.
What if there are rats in here? There must be rats. What if it starts to flood? They’ll run up his legs! He pulls his legs up onto the chair, folds them over one of the ergonomic arms, tucks the floral sheet around them. No hope of hearing any telltale squeaking, the racket of the storm is too loud.
A great man must rise to meet the challenges in his life, says a voice. Who is it this time? A motivational lecturer from Rejoov TV, some fatuous drone in a suit. A gabbler for hire. This is surely the lesson taught to us by history. The higher the hurdle the greater the jump. Having to face a crisis causes you to grow as a person.
“I haven’t grown as a person, you cretin,” Snowman shouts. “Look at me! I’ve shrunk! My brain is the size of a grape!”
But he doesn’t know which it is, bigger or smaller, because there’s nobody to measure himself by. He’s lost in the fog. No benchmarks.
The lights go out. Now he’s alone in the dark.
“So what?” he tells himself. “You were alone in the light. No big difference.” But there is.
He’s ready though. He gets a grip. He stands the flashlight on end, strikes a match in its feeble beam, manages to light a candle. It wavers in the drafty air but it burns, casting a small glowing circle of soft yellow on the desk, turning the room around him into an ancient cave, dark but protective.
He rummages in his plastic bag, finds the third pack of cashews, rips it open, eats the contents. He takes out the bottle of bourbon, thinks about it, then unscrews the top and drinks. Gluk gluk gluk, goes the cartoon writing in his head. Firewater.
Oh sweetie, a woman’s voice says from the corner of the room. You’re doing really well.
“No I’m not,” he says.
A puff of air—whuff!—hits his ears, blows out the candle. He can’t be bothered relighting it, because the bourbon is taking over. He’d rather stay in the dark. He can sense Oryx drifting towards him on her soft feathery wings. Any moment now she’ll be with him. He sits crouched in the chair with his head down on the desk and his eyes closed, in a state of misery and peace.