“Well you were lucky, man. This weed thing is carnivorous.”
“Fuck you, Fury.”
“Seriously. Guys, isn’t the weed carnivorous?”
Everyone around the table nodded, suddenly serious.
“See, Spider, no shit. I heard this old lady came home to find her poodle tangled up in the grip of this fucking vine. It was sucking the dog dry. She called the pest guys and they burned it. Took the root out and everything but it just keeps growing back. It’s everywhere. “
“Guess I better get some weed killer.”
“You can try, but they say it doesn’t do any good.”
Johnson shrugged. He was too high to care about rogue plants. Fury and the rest of them, Ragman, Pincer and Dorff were either shitting him or too high to make any sense at all.
He sympathised. Now was not the time for intellectual or taxing conversation.
“Hey, guys.” He said. “Let’s do a Mist rota.”
They all nodded.
“Who wants to come back first?”
Fury raised a hand.
“I will.”
So Johnson and Fury fought their way through the dancers, drinkers and hustlers into the cramped back corridor which led to the stinking restrooms. At the end of the corridor there was a small knot of regulars taking various kinds of drugs before rejoining the endless communal bender that was McLaughlin’s. Spider rolled a Mist cone and handed it to Fury to light. Fury inspected his handiwork.
“Good job, Spider.”
Johnson had been practising at home.
Fury took a couple of tokes and closed his eyes. Johnson did the same and leaned back against the badly painted wall of the corridor. The pulse of the music still found its way down this artery—sclerosed though it was with human detritus—but it was muffled. Every few moments the door would open into the bar and someone would arrive or leave for the toilets or the drugs. The music would gain in strength and then soften again as the door closed. Johnson drifted on the smoke. His body vibrated with music and vapour until he felt insubstantial and had to open his eyes to make sure he hadn’t physically come apart. Any more Mist and he would be losing control.
“I’ll send the next one out.” He said.
Fury didn’t reply but Johnson saw his slight nod of the head. He wondered very briefly and with divine clarity, what the problem was with reality that so many people felt they had to alter their perception of it in order to be happy. The lucidity of the thought left just as quickly when no answer came.
On the other side of the door, the throng of ecstatic revellers rippled as if it was a single organism. Pushing through it, the sense of isolation settled onto him once more. He did not know the mind of the organism; he was too trapped in his own.
He changed direction and made for the bar where they placed a pint and a shot for him. He finished each in a single movement before squeezing back to the table.
“Next.”
Dorff struggled to his feet to continue the rota.
Chapter 21
Johnson woke two days later to the sound of his door buzzer. Whoever was outside the apartment sounded very keen to get in. As he rolled out of bed, still wearing the same clothes he’d had on in McLaughlin’s, he noticed the walls of his bedroom had been shattered as if by an earthquake. Cracks spread out from the corners in every direction.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the hallucination from his vision, knowing it was some kind of perceptual mistake. Looking again he saw vines spreading across his bedroom walls like a system of veins. The shoots seemed to have given up on reaching towards the centre of the room and instead were gripping the walls like ivy; he could see where rows of cilia along the body of each tributary had bitten into the fibreboard walls. Fury and the guys in the bar must have been telling the truth, at least partially.
The buzzer sounded again and again as Johnson struggled to orientate himself.
“Okay, okay.”
By the front door he checked the monitor. Outside were Fury and a woman he didn’t recognise. He could see Fury putting the whole weight of his body behind each press of the buzzer. He didn’t look happy.
“Fury. What can I do for you?”
Fury stopped assaulting the buzzer and looked up at one of the four monitors.
“Where you been, Spider?”
“Asleep. What do you want?”
There was a pause while Fury considered the question. In the couple of seconds it took for him to think of something, Johnson noticed the proliferation of vines around the doorway and on his ceiling. Some of the vines were trailing downward a little. Reaching out.
“I want to know why two Sooth dealers have disappeared since you came around. I want to know who the fuck you really are, Spider.”
“What dealers? What are talking about?”
“Let us in, Spider. We just want to talk.”
Johnson knew there was going to be a problem now. If he didn’t let them in it was going to be a much worse problem. He felt a vine brush his arm and he slapped it away.
“Sure thing. Look out for the vines, though. I seem to have a weed problem.”
He buzzed them into the security chamber and the view changed. The scanners showed they were heavily armed. If they came in with so much firepower and there was a difference of opinion, he’d be severely outgunned.
“Would you mind depositing your weapons in the safe, guys? I don’t like armed discussions.”
He watched as they removed all their projectile firing weapons.
“Blades too, guys.”
“Listen, Spider, how do we know you don’t have a fucking arsenal pointed at us the moment we walk through your door?”
“What does it matter? We’re just talking, right?”
“Right.”
“Who’s that you got with you, by the way?”
Fury’s accomplice looked at the monitor.
“Name’s Elina. I’m Fury’s backup.”
Johnson looked at her for a long time, feeling in that moment that he had known her for a very long time. Images of a city in a valley came to him, snapshots of a family and a feeling off loss, a sense of being adrift beyond the comfort of any shore. None of it made any sense but the woman fascinated him.
Johnson wiped his eyes once again and shook his head. He had to straighten out quick. He hoped he had the presence of mind to fend off their questions and alleviate any suspicion but he knew that once a finger had been pointed it would be impossible to make any more progress. When they were gone he would call JHD to request evac and transfer.
“You gonna make us stand out here all fucking night, Spider?”
“Night? What time is it?”
“Just open the door, will you?”
He buzzed them the rest of the way in and stood back. Fury came in first followed by the woman. He didn’t wait for the offer of a drink or a seat. Instead he held out his hand and when they clasped in a shake he punched Johnson across the chin with his left fist, pulled him in close with his clasping right hand and brought his knee into Johnson’s solar plexus. Johnson was hurt but he been expecting the pain.
