9
The Combo was complete, Jim had gotten his groove back, all were Certified, and the bus had a full tank of gas. They were finally ready.
“I don’t think we get to dive into Cryptofauna quite yet,” Jim announced at the front of the bus. “I’ve got a few ideas on things to influence, but we have a problem. Boyd. He’s not behaving in normal Operator fashion. I think he’s gonna try and . . . well I’m not sure exactly but it’s almost certainly apocalyptic.”
“Kick his ass, Jim” Whip tough guy yelled from the back seat.
“Might have to, Whip. Just one problem. I have no idea where he is.”
This was a Jade Glade-sized problem, so that’s where the Combo went.
After everyone had time to marvel at the beauty of the Glade (Barney in particular wouldn’t shut up about how incredible the shades of green were), the Combo sat in a circle and briefly used a talking stick that Buck tried to clobber Whip with after he’d flung deer poo at her.
Jim’s Asset dust meant they had food to survive, but taste wasn’t the powder’s strongest feature, registering somewhere between stale cornmeal and raw butane. This, even more than whatever impending horrors Boyd had in store for the world, motivated the group to come up with something quickly.
Zen Jim called for focus and rustled up what he could clue-wise. “The Supercomplex has been scorched off the face of the Earth, so that’s out. Nero’s long gone. Um . . . he has a billy club.”
“These are clues?” Whip lobbed unhelpfully from the thicket he was relaxing in.
“Hey, you don’t have the talking stick,” Buck said.
“Hey, neither do you,” the gibbon mimicked back, though he was technically correct.
“Forget the stick,” Jim intervened. “We’re gonna work with what we have. Boyd likes denim. Boyd has red hair. Boyd likes James Bond villains. Boyd kidnapped a bunch of agricultural professors down in Texas. He may have also captured Bo Peep, and, Oz thought he might have also kidnapped that guy, Carmine what’s-his-name.”
“Carmine what’s-his-name?” Whip had a rare nerve struck. “Carmine Cibulkova.”
“Who is he?”
Whip got a dreamy look on his face like he’d just reached the center of a Doctor Quack’s Cauliflower Brandy Lozenge. “Carmine’s a Norwegian millionaire and probably the coolest dude to ever live.” Whip went on to tell Carmine’s life story, from the Ingbretson Farm Massacre to U.H. Four. “I also let him borrow the obelisk after I sent the Brazilians home.”
“You what?”
“Yeah. Greatest moment of my life, I got a telegram from Oslo, telegrams are classy, Carmine does things classy. He asked if I knew where to find an obelisk. Non-Cryptofauna folk aren’t supposed to know about the obelisks, much less use them, but we’re talking Carmine Cibul-freaking-kova here. So I told him, not only did I know where one was, I could send it to him. So I did.”
“To Oslo?”
Whip shook his head. “Christchurch. The freight was a real bitch but we’re talking Carmine—“
“Cibulkova,” Zoë said. “We get it.”
“Hey! He’s a god damned global treasure! What he’s doing in Greenland I have no idea.”
“Christchurch is in New Zealand,” everyone who’d studied at the Abbey said at once.
Whip grumbled something about not realizing Rand McFuckingNally was visiting the Jade Glade.
“Okay, so that’s what we’ll do,” Jim announced. “Go to New Zealand. Find Boyd. Stop Boyd. Go from there.”
To get there, Jim worked his first bit of Cryptofauna magic. They drove the bus to a nearby Air Force Base, the 911th Airlift Wing, where Jim used some clandestine Operator instinct to evaluate the base’s occupants and locate a Technical Sergeant who fit the surprisingly common Venn diagram of ‘is crazy horny’ and ‘has enough clout to order a flight across the globe.’ Panzer made sure to be casually drinking at the Sergeant’s favorite local bar that night (the hitman didn’t have to be asked twice) and casually saddled up alongside the Sergeant, espousing the many attractions of New Zealand, not the least of which being legal prostitution. Another round was casually ordered for the Sergeant. Then another. And soon, he realized, all on his own, that cities had sister cities, and why couldn’t Air Force Bases have sister Air Force Bases? And why couldn’t the 911th Airlift Wing have a sister base in New Zealand? And why couldn’t he fly out that very night to make the proposal? At this point, Panzer very, very casually mentioned that he and a few friends would love a lift to New Zealand if he was headed that direction anyway, and an hour later the Combo was en route to Auckland in an absurdly spacious C-130 Hercules.
Feeling the military vibe, Jim ordered everyone to enjoy some R&R on the flight over, given the strenuous job that likely awaited them. Buck and Barney played catch with Mars using the talking stick, Panzer talked shop with a munitions officer, and Zoë sharpened her pick axe, using it for a much-needed mustache trim. Whip took a nap, proving jinn did in fact sleep.
Jim’s castaway-tough body sat in Jade Glade meditation as he tried to use his Abbey-enlarged brain to solve the Boyd puzzle.
Boyd had kidnapped a slew of agriculture professors.
Carmine had ordered the obelisk sent to New Zealand even though he was unquestionably Norway-based.
Bo Peep was still kidnapped, even though no more proxies had come.
Boyd idolized James Bond villains.
And what about the little green bug Boyd had tried to brush off in the Poker Room?
Jim thought for the length of the flight, staying in his meditative state even when the still-drunk Sergeant offered him a pin of pilot’s wings and a chance to visit the cockpit.
Then it came to him. A bizarre explanation, just nonsensical enough to fit the irrational but ambitious Boyd.
The idea-struck janitor jumped to his feet just as their sneakily acquired ride touched down at Auckland Airport, and he was tossed onto his face.
“I think I know what he’s doing!” he announced through a bloody nose.
The seatbelt-wearing Combo waited.
“What?” Panzer asked.
“We need to find the obelisk, I’ll tell you on the way.”
They disembarked, left the horny Technical Sergeant to quickly sober up on the tarmac, and crammed into a taxi.
“Post office,” Jim said.
“Please,” Barney added.
The Auckland Postmaster turned out to be a real stickler for the rules, refusing to divulge any information on who picked up the huge box from Boston. The Combo congregated outside the post office and everyone volunteered to help. Zoë suggested she could either seduce or beat the guy up. Barney reminded them how far one could get with just please and thank you. Buck said she could turn on the waterworks, supplemented with some puppy dog eyes from Mars. Panzer said he had no problem dragging the guy into the alley and sticking a gun in his mouth. Jim wondered if his Asset could manage a decent Sodium Pentothal. Whip suggested that with a few Alka-Seltzers, he could play the part of a rabid koala, no joke in these parts. They spun a bottle to pick a method, and a few minutes later the uvula at the back of the Postmaster’s throat met the tip of Panzer’s revolver. The public servant sang like a kiwi, letting spill that the obelisk had been picked up by Oliver Brown, the sheep farmer with the big pickup. The Postmaster further volunteered an additional free bit of information that Oliver had been back every day since, picking up massive crates covered in ‘live animals’ stamps. Oliver wouldn’t explain what was happening, only that a guy was using him for his “big ol’ truck.” All looked perplexed by this development except Jim, who had yet to divulge his theory.
Jim apologized to the Postmaster for the shoddy treatment. Whip, who’d turned into a koala despite not being bottle-picked, added to Jim’s apology that if the Postmaster told anyone he was “dead fuckin’ meat.” Jim apologized again and the Combo was off to a liquor store, from which Jim soon emerged with a grocery bag, saying nothing. The Combo clown-car’d back into a taxi and headed for Oliver Brown’s sheep farm, located on the precariously windy cliffs of the coastline.
The Combo spied on the property from a nearby hillside, watching a few denim clad workers shut the barn doors as the weather worsened.
“Interesting, very interesting . . .” Jim mused to himself.
“Will you tell us your damn theory already?” Buck kicked Jim in the shins.
Jim balked for a second, not wanting his friends to lose respect for him. His theory was a crazy one, cobbled together from Abbey wisdom, Hail Mary guesstimating, and a special intuition he felt for his Rival. But if he could trust anyone, it was his Combination. Jim inhaled deeply and shouted his lengthy premise over the Category 5 winds.
“Okay. Here’s what I think. Boyd has Carmine Cibulkova hostage in his underwater house, U.H. Four. He’s mail ordered millions of aphids, little green bugs that devastate crops and reproduce asexually. His idea for bringing about the apocalypse is weaponized pestilence. So he’s gonna release the flood of aphids from two different spots. One is U.H. Four because it has a strong James-Bond-villain vibe, and the other is here, which is roughly an antipode, the opposite spot on the globe, to Norway. He kidnapped Bo Peep to somehow use her proxy ability to make the aphids do the job right. If I’m not mistaken, the obelisk is in that barn down there and the abaci coordinates are set for U.H. Four, meaning Boyd had all the bugs shipped here, but he obelisks half of ‘em there, starting the whole thing from U.H. Four because it’s his evil lair. Then he makes his way here to mobilize this bunch, sits back, and watches the world go away.”
The group was split over whether the hypothesized plan was the dumbest smart idea or the smartest dumb idea they’d ever heard. The “logic” was one hundred percent Boyd either way.
“One way to find out,” Panzer nodded at the barn below.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Whip said. “Cough. The Supercomplex. Cough. Oz dead.”
Instead of ignoring the jinn, or getting snarky, Jim addressed the issue. “You’re right, Whip. I was wrong about going back to Texas. But we’re older and wiser, we’re Certified, and if we want a world to live in, we don’t have much of a choice. We have to go in full-bore, loaded for bear, gloves off, ready to fight. The human spirit is—”
The Combo booed in unison as Jim’s speech revved up.
“Okay, okay. This is it then. Whip, how about some Bears?”
With the brown grocery bag of ingredients, Whip the koala fixed six Marshmallow Bears (one virgin for Buck, at Zoë’s insistence). Whip speed-smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and Jim dumped the ash across the top of all six drinks. They passed the glasses around, Whip making sure Zoë got the virgin one. A sheep bounced end over end nearby as the wind blew harder and harder.
“Uh, I feel like something important should be said here,” Jim shouted, their glasses raised. “I get that I’m not the best public speaker. Zoë, how about something French?”
“Que veux tu que je dise.”
“Beautiful. Okay. Cheers.”
In the face of oblivion, the Combo plus Whip clinked their glasses and went bottoms up.
* * *
With Whip the koala attached to one leg, Jim led his Combo down the grassy hill that ended at Oliver Brown’s barn. Nothing was said but a great deal was thought.
When you get there, turn around and make sure a billy club isn’t rushing toward your head. You have the Asset, you have Mars, you have the blue bandana. You’re basically 007 for Christ’s sake! You have your Combo. You might even have Whip . . .
Hehe, look at that sheep fly off the cliff! Loser. I hope Carmine likes koalas. Maybe I should be something regal, like a tiger or ocelot. Don’t want to scare him though . . . Ha! As if I could scare him. He’d probably giggle. What an absolute inspiration . . .
Kill Bo Peep. Drive the spike right into her skull. Merde! Mustache itches. Wish the Air Force stocked aftershave on their planes . . .
Get your back to a wall, identify first targets. Fire. Reload. Identify second targets. Fire. Reload. Could sure go for another of those Marshmallow Bears. Identify third group . . .
Jeez, I wonder if maybe Boyd’s just misunderstood. I should really try and talk to him if I can. Burnt sienna. If my umbrella opens up in this wind, I’m a goner. Flamingo Pink. This will be scary but don’t get scared, they need you. Cadmium yellow . . .
Smells like grass, smells like dirt . . . what’s that smell? Sheep shit! Protect Jim, protect Barney, protect Zoë, protect Panzer, protect Buck. Hell, protect Whip. More sheep shit! . . .
This is so great! This is so, so great! An underwater house? Holy crap! We’re gonna kick this dude’s ass. Don’t blow it with these guys, they took you in, they’re nice. Don’t get kicked out before a guy that has a freaking umbrella for a leg—oh shit, it opened!
Jim and Panzer held onto Barney’s shoulders as his wind-caught umbrella started to drag him toward the sheep-killing cliffs.
“Zoë, get the door!” Jim called.
Zoë ran the rest of the way and shoved the barn door open. Barney’s umbrella leg caught a fresh gust in the opposite direction and threw Jim, Barney, and Panzer into the two denim-dressed men inside.
Panzer had them at gunpoint in an instant.
“Don’t shoot,” they begged in heavy New Zealand accents. “He made us work for him. He made us wear these clothes!”
“We’re not gonna hurt you,” Jim said, though Panzer didn’t lower his gun. “We’re just passing through.”
The laborers backed off.
Buck pushed the door shut with her legs, and the deafening roar of wind was halved.
They gathered around the obelisk. The danger of what they were about to do hit Jim more fully. He considered another speech of warning, but Whip saw the speech look in his eyes and intervened. The koala grabbed hands all around and jammed them onto the smooth obsidian surface. “You’re welcome, everybody.” His words echoed as they fell away from each other, into the void of the obelisk, and then back into reality.
Buck landed on Zoë landed on Jim landed on Whip landed on Barney landed on Mars landed on Panzer. All but Whip threw up from the obelisk’s inversion.
There were no portholes to see fish swimming by, but the air was noticeably pressurized. They were in U.H. Four.
“Look alive,” Panzer grunted, shoving Mars’s fuzzy butt out of his face as the rest of the group recovered from barfing. They’d landed right on top of a giant red X, heavily scraped by all the insect crates that must have passed through.
“C’mon,” Jim whispered.
One half of the warehouse looked like the loading dock of a five-star hotel, but instead of a truck ramp, there was a moon pool, home to Carmine’s Nazi U-boat (swastikas sloppily painted over with PSA’s about the importance of regular vitamin C intake). The pool edge was packed with supplies and gifts special ordered for a bachelor party Carmine had intended on hosting for a member of the Japanese Imperial Family: refrigerators loaded with octopi and squid, Tiffany lamps, Fabergé eggs, a glass ball and chain sculpture, and a pack of nudie playing cards. The stuff had been unloaded before the Boyd takeover, and since the rude interloper had no use for the finery, at the pool edge it stayed. Luckily, this provided some quality cover for Jim and company.
At the other end of the warehouse, denim wearing henchmen hauled the last of the bug crates to a massive pool made up of yellow tarps and steel trusses. Buck climbed one of the squid fridges to get a look inside the pool that made the one at the Supercomplex look positively weenie.
“Green bugs,” she said in an awed whisper. “Like millions of ‘em!”
Job done, the workers began to congregate at the far end of the moon pool, speaking at one another as they did so.
“You guys know what’s happening next?”
“Did anyone get paid this month?”
“Has anyone seen my asthma inhaler?”
They were Carmine’s multi-national maintenance crew, meaning each question came in a different language, and each went without an answer (the last guy was really starting to wheeze).
Jim felt a slight shaking beside him. Barney’s breathing was as labored as the asthma guy’s. They were under quite a bit of water, and water tended to be blue. Jim put a hand on the painter’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Barney flicked on his green Aviators, exhaled bravely, and nodded.
Jim carefully joined Buck atop the fridge.
“Look at all those god damn bugs,” she said.
Inside the pool was a moving green mass, articulating in so many directions at once it made the eyes hurt. Directly above ran a single catwalk featuring a manual bullhorn, the kind a domineering director might rely on in the golden age of cinema. At the far end of the elaborate structure, three huge yellow tubes snaked up to the ceiling.
“The boy’s been busy,” Whip observed from his perch on Jim’s back, his koala claws digging painfully into Jim’s skin.
“Ow, easy Whip. Can you change into something a little scarier?”
“Getting this involved means I can probably only change once. I was saving it to show off for Carmine, but you say the word and I’ll change.”
“No.” Jim reconsidered. “Stay like that. We may need something specific.”
“I shan’t change till ordered,” the koala saluted.
A Nigerian foreman on the pool’s catwalk tried his best to signal to a Korean manager with a clipboard that the job was done. The bastardized sign language somehow worked: the Korean manager nodded and walked out of the warehouse.
Jim quickly climbed off the fridge. “Something’s happening and it’s probably bad. I’m gonna follow the guy with the clipboard, they always seem to know things.”
The Combo grumbled various objections at staying put but remained pragmatic: a gang of intruders would find it difficult to explore an underwater habitat and still remain undiscovered. One man had a better chance.
“Whip, can you give me a distraction?” Jim asked.
“I’ll do a dance.”
“I think a koala in the Norwegian Sea will be enough—”
But Whip was already dancing his way across the floor, drawing the attention of the loitering workers.
Jim shrugged and ran after the Korean man. In a stroke of good fortune, he slipped in behind a Pakistani worker roughly the same size as himself walking alone down the same corridor. Beating an underling up for his uniform was unoriginal but essential: the orchestrators of the apocalypse all wore denim, making outsiders immediately identifiable.
Jim snuck up behind the same-sized man and cupped some powder in his hand, confident it would serve as chloroform. Unfortunately, the Pakistani sneezed just as Jim brought the powder to his face, sending it away in a harmless swirl.
They both looked at each other for a moment as the failed knockout dust settled to the ground. The man opened his mouth to yell, but Jim was quicker and cracked him in the jaw with a perfect right jab.
Jim dragged the unconscious guard, again unoriginally, into a broom closet and emerged in the denim uniform. This camouflage, coupled with the anonymity between the large group of international workers, allowed Jim to walk around in relative obscurity. He set off after the Korean and nearly walked straight into a Scotsman. “Oi, watch it! Yeh might’a knocked me flat oot.” Scottish eyes narrowed. “Where yeh goin’ anyway?”
Jim flexed his improv muscle, making up a fake language on the spot, which is not easy to do. A few potential-bombs like Windex, Drano, and Pine-Sol popped up in the janitor’s gibberish, but the Scotsman didn’t seem to notice. He threw his hands up in exasperation and stormed away, mumbling something about “fookin’ Russians.”
The Korean was long gone.
Luckily, Mars hadn’t stayed put.
Jim’s Companion sniffed the air and immediately trotted down the winding hallways of wood paneling and shag carpet, arriving finally at a machine room packed with esoteric instrument panels and gauges.
“Good boy.” Jim crouched with Mars behind a heating duct and watched the Korean man work.
In a rare occurrence at U.H. Four, another worker of the same nationality occupied the same room. A Korean woman stood at the controls of something labeled Master Air Supply. The man said something to the woman. Jim had taken a few abstract Korean lessons in the Abbey, but his vocab was still largely hit or miss. Right now it was miss.
The woman nervously looked to the controls, back to the man, back to the controls, back to the man. He started to shout at her, pushing buttons and adjusting needles inside the gages.
Jim couldn’t make out exactly what was happening, but one panel made some sense to even the most lay of man. The Korean man over-cranked the air gage so that supply far exceeded demand and flipped a black switch. The words Purge Excess lit up in orange. A chunky thunder erupted just above their heads as something industrial kicked on.
“Beogeu ollaga,” the man shouted at the woman, pointing at the ceiling. “Beogeu ollaga.”
Jim’s study of non-conversational Korean finally had its chance to shine, as he translated the yelling as ‘bugs go up.’ Then the Korean Man either told the woman ‘throw my jaundiced snail a birthday party’ or ‘get to the submarine.’ The woman hustled toward the submarine warehouse, providing the answer. The Korean man continued out another door, headed further into U.H. Four.
Through a heavily bolted porthole in the machine room, Jim could see the exhaust system of the warehouse spitting out a pillar of bubbles so thick they were nearly solid at the source, before spreading into lazy schools of Atlantic Cod swimming in the dark water. He turned back to Mars. “I need you to round all these workers up, nip as many butts as you have to and get them to the submarine. Okay?”
Mars playfully bit Jim’s butt.
“Ouch!” Jim smiled a ‘why I oughta’ smile as his Companion took off, then he followed the Korean man’s path of egress. Avoiding the odd engineer or maid, he finally arrived at a lush master bedroom.
“…and the cargo is ready,” the Korean man said to someone inside.
“Kay, see ya,” Boyd’s voice yawned as he woke from a nap.
Jim peeked around a corner and saw Boyd in the flesh for the first time since they’d met at the Supercomplex. He was sprawled out on a huge bed, denim underwear visible under his jeans as he pulled on a jean jacket. Spread out on the bed next to him were books and charts Nero had written about Bo Peep over the years. Boyd was like a grade-schooler who tried to stay up late and study, but had gotten all tuckered out instead. It might have been cute if literally every part of the situation was the opposite of what it actually was.
“Alley-oop,” Boyd yelled as he rolled backward off the bed and onto his feet. “Thanks for everything, Carmie,” he laughed, slapping someone’s head.
Peering around the corner, Jim could just make out a handsome blonde man crumpled on the floor. Neither the human nor the Cryptofauna communities would be happy when they learned about the death of Carmine Cibulkova.
Boyd sauntered into the master bathroom and Jim’s spying eyes followed. Above a substantial Jacuzzi tub dangled a network of restraints big enough for elephant S&M, but the thing hanging above the tub was no elephant. Strapped securely into the restraints was by far the most repulsive living thing Jim had ever laid eyes on (which was really saying something considering St. Mili’s saw its fair share of butt ugly residents).
“Bo Peep,” Jim whispered.
The real Bo Peep. She was thick as a water slide, long as a fire hose, fuzzy as a pipe cleaner, and did not seem happy.
Boyd slapped the monster’s bloody back, sending her into further hysterics. “Widespread destruction, rampant starvation, total annihilation,” Boyd tossed out casually, as if he were adding fries to a fast food order. “Whadda ya think, Bo?”
What Boyd didn’t understand was that for Bo Peep, murder and destruction was a marathon, not a sprint. The ancient jinn had spent centuries torturing, killing, and eating as many people as she could pass between her black tusks. Boyd wanted to do it all at once, but where was the fun in that? If everyone was dead, who’d be left to kill?
Bo Peep bucked hard, shattering a frosted glass light fixture on the ceiling. Boyd showed no reaction to the milky shards that dropped inches from his face. Bucketfuls of blood and bile splashed onto the tile floor from the struggling millipede’s porous back.
Holding back the urge to vomit from the sloshing sound that echoed from the bathroom, Jim took stock of his good fortune. Bo Peep was unquestionably Boyd’s prisoner. His two enemies hated one another. Maybe he could just sit back and dispatch whichever one came out on top. Not the most noble plan of attack, but undeniably strategic.
Boyd stepped into the bathtub under Bo Peep’s abdomen, and Jim noticed something relatively strange about his Rival’s right hand. The fingers and thumb had been filed down to the bone, leaving five razor sharp claws. The skin began again at the top of each finger joint, dirty black with infection. Even against the backdrop of revulsion that was Bo Peep, Boyd’s mangled hand was deeply unsettling.
“Hey. Hey. Relax. If you’re still, I’ll be careful. I can be a surgeon with these things when I wanna be,” Boyd cooed. Bo Peep stopped thrashing. Boyd traced a claw along her hairy neck and stood face to face with the bulging, opal eyes. “The good news is you don’t have to screw up anymore. I don’t need your proxies, I need your throat.” A wicked sneer spread across the redhead’s face before he stabbed his clawed hand into Bo Peep’s neck. A torrent of rust-colored blood spilled from the laceration that was not as surgical as promised, a garbled roar bubbling out of the tightly bound creature as she flailed against the chains.
This kind of action upon a restrained creature, foe or not, didn’t take with Jim. He ran forward as Boyd pulled a hollow y-shaped tube from Bo Peep’s throat. Jim’s boots betrayed his approach as bedroom carpet turned to bathroom tile. Boyd spun around and took a punch straight to the breastbone, spilling him back into the filling tub. But Boyd’s claw hand had also found its mark. Jim staggered backward and fell into a bidet, shattering the fine porcelain butt cleaner as he clutched at his raked face. Boyd’s fingertips must have been doused in some kind of irritant because the torn flesh on either side of Jim’s gashes burned with searing ferocity.
“Look who it is!” Boyd said in genuine excitement. He spread his arms and relaxed into the bath of blood under a motionless Bo Peep. “It’s bleach,” he said, identifying the irritant. “Shit mopper like you probably knew that. Finally you throw a damn punch. I was starting to think you were a pacifist!”
Jim washed his face in the tiny spring of water that geysered from the pulverized bidet. “Let’s talk.”
Surprisingly, Boyd nodded. “Let’s.”
* * *
U.H. Four’s industrial-size kitchen (which could handle a six-course sixty person dinner party at a moment’s notice) was a bit overkill for a midnight snack, and Carmine Cibulkova loved midnight snacks. So the late Norwegian had installed a much smaller, private kitchenette that was cozy, tastefully lit, and had the faint smell of laundry detergent. The olive green refrigerator was stocked with junk food and soft drinks, because nutrition held no power at twelve in the morning. No one, in all of recorded history, had ever gotten out of bed for arugula.
Jim wasn’t able to appreciate the pleasant ambiance, keeping a close eye on Boyd as his Rival sat down with two bottles of Norway’s favorite orange soda, Solo. Using his bloody claws, Boyd peeled the caps off both bottles and slid one over to Jim. “No avocados in there,” he said. “Why don’t we start a tradition of our own for the few minutes you have left.”
“Boyd why—“
Boyd held up a pointy finger. “How is it I have better manners? We drink first.” He clinked his bottle into Jim’s and drank. Jim didn’t drink. “I won’t go in for chit cha