Without warning

The foyer would normally have been crowded at this time, with guests checking out and conference-goers arriving for seminars and meetings, but apart from the Germans and half-a-dozen cabin crew from some Asian airline, the lobby was mostly deserted. A couple of wet tourists wandered in from the beach with towels thrown over their shoulders, and the glassy, frozen grins of people desperately trying to avoid looking at the yawning abyss that had lately opened up in front of them. It was a look that Jed Culver was becoming used to. His eyes scanned the floor and he spied his driver standing just outside, sneaking in a last-minute cigarette. He’d given the cancer sticks up himself twenty years ago, after successfully representing British and American Tobacco in a suit against one of their many former customers. Or victims, as even the executives called them in private.

Bobby Kua, his driver, was a native Hawaiian, a surfer. Jed shook his head ruefully as he watched the boy suck extra hard on the Marlboro, to drag in every last precious carcinogenic lungful, as soon as he saw the lawyer approaching.

‘I’m telling you, Bobby, you’d be a much better surfer if you gave those things away.’

‘No way, boss,’ Kua said with a smile. ‘I’m already a weapon. Couldn’t get any better.’

He drew one last, long puff before stubbing out the butt and flicking it into a nearby bin. Jed wondered how long it would be before the young man was pinching off his half-smoked butts to finish them later. He made a mental note to buy up a few cartons. Within a week or two, some people would sell their souls for nicotine, he was sure.

‘So where to, boss?’

‘Pearl today,’ replied Culver. ‘We’ll be there most of the day, then out to the Capitol at about three-thirty for a meeting. You could probably get away for an hour or so if you needed to. But I’m on a promise to get back here for drinks. Say, seven.’

‘Got it,’ said Bobby, leading him over to the nondescript white Chevy Aveo from the government fleet. Gas rationing meant that only the smallest, most fuel-efficient cars could be signed out of the pool for official business, while civilian motorists were restricted to just a few gallons a week, which could only be purchased on alternate days. Rationing had quickly become an unpleasant reality that everyone had to deal with. Armed troopers posted at supermarkets and gas stations made sure of that. Appeals to fairness and civic mindedness shortly after the start of the Disappearance had achieved nothing but the rapid emptying of grocery-store shelves and at least a dozen incidents of serious violence, including one macadamia-caramel-popcorn-related multiple homicide at a supermarket on Kalakaua Avenue.

Culver was grateful that he had no responsibility for the rationing system. It had quickly come to challenge the Disappearance as the open wound on talk radio. The first time an American was told by a heavily armed man in combat gear that they couldn’t buy all of the Twinkies they wanted, it tended to come as a deep, existential shock every bit as unnerving as the still unexplained cataclysm back on the mainland. Jed himself had quickly emptied the small bar fridge of liquor back at the hotel and filled it up with emergency food supplies, as soon as he’d noticed the breakfast buffet in the restaurant was looking a bit spare. Frankly, he’d have been much happier if he could have relocated Marilyn and the kids to Pearl Harbor, just in case things got totally out of hand. But they all insisted on staying at the Embassy Suites, and he was reasonably confident of making himself important enough to grab up a safe berth in the event of any European-style uprising.

To that end, he strapped himself into the back seat of the car, with room to spread out his documents, and got to work while Bobby drove him through Honolulu. More shops were closed every day now. In fact, apart from bars and heavily guarded food outlets, there was very little open at all and very few people on the streets. Marilyn was probably going to be disappointed in her search for a new cocktail dress.

Soldiers and cops comprised most of the foot traffic in contrast to the first few days after 14 March, when huge unruly crowds had gathered and surged back and forth, almost like people running without real purpose on the deck of a sinking ship. Together the rationing and curfew systems tended to keep people at home most of the time.