Tourists, they’re usually the early ones.
Outside, the flow of shoppers along the mall swells. In the copious shade of angsana trees, a gangly man in suit and tie stands beside a trash bin and lights a cigarette. Someone passes him and drops a Big Gulp into the bin; an emaciated golem of a young girl so thin that the soda was probably all she’d had that morning. The man stubs out on the bin and pops another cigarette between his lips.
The waitress returns with the brew. Landon takes the French press from her. She remembered his request; the plunger is up and the water is steaming. He feels the glass. A little hot, but with the air-conditioning it should stabilize. Coffee’s foaming—a good sign. He places his palm on the knob and lets the weight of his hand do the plunging—smooth and slow it goes. The plunger reaches the bottom and a tangy aroma rises.
He looks out of the window and watches another girl dump a Big Gulp in the same bin. Someone must be giving away this stuff. The gangly man draws heavily on his cigarette and turns away from the sun. At the plaza the event now pulsates with the roar of cheering and clapping. The host’s speech, urgent and unintelligible, drowns in the feedback from his microphone.
A third girl approaches the bin, and just like the ones before her, tosses a Big Gulp into the bin. She wears an expression that might have been hewn from stone—one that is cold, stoic; allusive of something dreadful, something unstoppable.
A look of conviction.
And Landon realises with a start that all three girls had that same look.
Reflex drives him under the table, as the window panels implode in a shower of pulverised glass.
The burrs of something broken ground against his back. His wounded sight drew slowly into focus. A man writhed on the ground near him, his face studded with crystalline shards. Blood dripped from the lacerations in slick, dark strands. Amid a host of muffled noises came the screech of tyres, and then he saw a face.
All is dark; grey smoke rises thickly and masks the daylight. A sharp sulphurous stench pervades the air. Waves of muffled cries lap over the ringing in his ears. He is lying on his side, his back arched. He feels his stomach rising to his chest and constricting his airway. His vision goes white, his head throbs in recurring surges of pain. One leg goes on kicking involuntarily as if unmoored. And this time he is acutely aware of it all.
It’ll pass… it always does.
He opens his eyes to a face.
“There, there,” says the bleary face. “Easy on the gritting.”
Landon blinks hard to clear his sight. There is spittle around his mouth and a dull, sour ache radiates through his set jaws. A pair of hands is squeezing him all over: his arms, torso, neck; fingers probing over his collarbone, shoulder, and forearm, where a trail of pink blistery scars run like ridges across the skin.
“Nasty scars you have.” The stranger puts his fingers to Landon’s neck and catches a pulse. “How’d you get them?”
Landon stares into a spacious face with squinty, sad-looking eyes and craggy cheekbones. Its sun-scorched skin furrows in deep gulches above the brows. He can’t decide if the stranger looks like a lion or a mastiff.
A prick on the finger jolts him. “You a doctor?” he says in a drawl.
“Me? No.” The stranger removes a chromium egg-shaped device from Landon’s forefinger. “But I know enough to save lives.”
They hear muffled whimpering nearby. From elsewhere, a child’s cry.
Shards of glass litter the floor like diamonds. Landon sits up, flummoxed, dazed. He surveys the damage and sees the waitress leaning against the base of the counter, cradling her arm and elbow. There is some blood across the side of her neck. The manager is crouching beside her and trying to get a bandage over her arm. Otherwise she appears well.
“She was just beside the window,” says the stranger. “Lucky girl.”
Landon surveys his precious pool of Hawai‘ian Kona across the floor and fights off a bout of nausea from inhaling a cocktail of gunpowder-stench and the aroma of spilled good coffee. His vision spins. “Who are you?”
The stranger offers his hand and a dour smile. “John.”
Landon takes his hand. It is large and abrasive. “Why’d you—”
“I’m here to help.” John rises to his feet and reveals the full measure of his towering physique. “There might be danger. Wait six hours before heading home, and stay in crowded places for as long as you can.”
Landon holds his head. “I don’t understand anything.”
“In time you will,” says the stranger. “You did good taking cover.” The stranger’s face wrinkles sourly into a smile. “Six hours, no less. Stay in crowded places and don’t talk to anyone. Destabilisation has begun.”
Destabilisation? Landon loses him to the crowds before he can wring an explanation out of him. He inches forward and peers over the shattered windows where drafts of warm air and smoke mingle with the air-conditioning. A starburst blotch of soot now occupies the spot where the marquee used to be. The air-blown streamers, the speakers and the gangly man in suit and tie have disappeared. Survivors hobble amid twisted steel and body parts. Parts of the plaza are burning. A woman is crying somewhere.
As Landon ponders the impossibility of his reflexes, a fragment of a memory surfaces and sinks quickly into the depths of his mind before he can seize it. He drops away from the window, shaking, and catches the distant wail of an ambulance.
The press arrives and Landon flees the scene, racked with spasms of fear that numb even his fingertips. He speaks to no one and leaves by another route that takes him behind the plaza. He holds on to his elbows, shouldering through squads of arriving paramedics and rescue personnel. He realises he is shaking all over—tiny little quivers that seem impossible to repress. When he tries to run, the ground feels marshy and soft. He slows to a walk. It’s less conspicuous this way. But he will need a lot of walking to lose the tremors inside him. He wanders the streets and ends up spending the next eight hours burrowing into the most crowded restaurants and cafés he can find.
At nightfall he finds himself sipping his eighth cup of coffee and trying to watch passing shoppers along Victoria Street. But it has turned so dark that from his seat he sees only the stray reflections of the bistro’s interior and its drop-lights against the glass storefront. People outside, however, can see him.
He takes his mug and napkin and relocates to another seat behind a red cushioned partition. The soft clink of cutlery surrounds him. It is in such settings that a hitman usually appears and shoots someone in the head, he thinks, like they do in movies. But an hour passes, and all is well.
At 9.30, the waitress calls for last orders. Landon steps reluctantly into a warm, dank night that smells of exhaust and stale pastries. Faces come at him in waves. He sees their eyes looking back at him. He glances over and across his shoulders; he searches the crowds hoping to find someone who might help him… anyone.
But the city does not recognise him. People he once knew are either dead or dying. And those who find a familiarity in him tend to convince themselves that faces end up looking alike when you’ve seen enough of them.
Landon isn’t special. He is just a very old man running for his life.
For once, he takes comfort in being caught in a taxi queue at the rear of a shopping mall. At least if things happen, someone will be there to see it. It would be worse to return to an empty house alone and get knifed in the bath, or smothered in bed. He gets to a cab after a 30-minute wait and looks around before entering it. Once inside, he looks around some more to make sure no one is following. He watches the driver like a hawk the whole way and stiffens when a dark van or a leather-clad rider stops beside his window at traffic junctions.