Korea. I smoke another Carlton and say nothing: too many captains pilot the ship up the mountain. The taxi family is down to three. Objects swirl by that have no business being water-borne. Somebody has a radio, but can tune it to nothing beyond torrential static. The flood creeps up the window – now it is up to the halfway mark. Submerged mailboxes, motorbikes, traffic signals. A crocodile cruises up to the window and snout-butts the glass. Nobody screams. I wish somebody would. Something is twitching in the corner of its mouth – a hand. Its eye surveys us all, and settles on me. I know that eye. It gleams, and the animal sidles away with a twitch of its tail. ‘Tokyo, Tokyo,’ cackles Lao Tzu. ‘If it ain’t fire, it’s earthquake. If it ain’t earthquake, it’s bombs. If it ain’t bombs, it’s floods.’ Dowager crows from her perch, ‘The time has come to evacuate. Ladies and babies first.’ ‘Evacuate to where?’ asks a man in a dirty mac. ‘One step outside, the current’ll sweep you clean past Guam!’ Donkey calls from the safest place of all, the coffee-filter shelf. ‘Stay inside and we’ll drown!’ The pregnant woman touches her bump, and whispers, ‘Oh no, not now, not now.’ A priest remembers his drinking problem and swigs from his hip flask. Lao Tzu hums a sea shanty. The wailing baby will not shut up. I see an umbrella shoot down the fiercest artery of the flood, a red, blue and yellow umbrella, followed by my waitress, rising, falling, flailing and gasping. I don’t think. I jump up on the window counter and unfasten the top window, which is still above the water level. ‘Don’t do it,’ chorus the refugees, ‘it’s certain death!’ I frisbee my baseball cap to Lao Tzu. ‘I’ll be back for this.’ I kick off my trainers, lever myself through the window, and – the torrent is a mythical force walloping, submerging and buoying me at a cruel velocity. Lit by lightning, I recognize Tokyo Tower, in floodwater up to its middle. Lesser buildings sink as I am swept by. The death toll must be in the millions. Only PanOpticon appears safe, rising into the heart of the tornado. The sea slants and peaks, the wind howls, an orchestra of the insane. Sometimes the waitress and the umbrella are near, sometimes far away. Just when I don’t think I can stay afloat any longer, I see the waitress paddling towards me on her umbrella coracle. ‘Some rescuer you turned out to be,’ she says, gripping my hand. She smiles, glances behind me, and unspeakable horror is reflected in her face. I turn around and see the gullet of the crocodile closing in. I whip my hand out of hers and shove the umbrella away as hard as I can, turn around, and face my death. ‘No!’ screams my waitress appropriately. I am strong and silent. The crocodile rears and dives, its fat body feeding into the water until its tail vanishes. Was it only trying to scare me?
‘Quick,’ calls my waitress, but barbed teeth mesh my right foot and yank me under. I pound the crocodile but I might as well be attacking a cedar. Down, down, down, I kick and struggle, but only succeed in thickening the clouds of blood spewing from my punctured calf. We reach the floor of the Pacific. It is heavily urbanized – then I realize the crocodile has chosen to drown me outside Jupiter Café, proving that amphibians have a sense of irony. The customers and refugees look on in helpless terror. The storm must have passed, because everywhere is swimming-pool blue and tap-dancing light and I swear I can hear ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. The crocodile watches me with Akiko Kato eyes, suggesting I see the funny side of having my bloated corpse stowed in a lair and being snacked on over the upcoming weeks. I lighten as I weaken. I watch Lao Tzu help himself to my final Carlton and doff my cap. Then he mimes stabbing himself in the eye and points to the crocodile. A thought unsilts itself. Yesterday my landlord gave me my keys – the one for the shopfront shutter is three inches long and might serve as a mini-dagger. Twisting into striking range is no easy feat, but the crocodile is taking a nap, so he doesn’t notice me fit the key between its eyelids and ram the sharp point home. Squeeze,