Tomorrow’s World (14 page)

I relaxed a bit when there were no alarm bells or lights, and put more thought into what I was doing. By the time I got to his door panels I'd graduated to writing some words that made it plain exactly what his once shiny SUV was doing to the planet.

I stood back to admire my handiwork, then took off into the

night, running and laughing like a carefree schoolboy. I hit half a dozen ‘targets of opportunity' on the way, leaving each of them unfit to drive.

Somehow I know I'll sleep like a baby tonight, and when I wake up in the morning I'm going to feel like a new man.

I was ready for sleep myself, but couldn't put the diary down. I turned to the next page.

APRIL 19

I was right on both counts.

The stress of the last few days and the excitement of last night left me totally drained, and I was sound asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Before I slept, though, I heard something that set me thinking, that made me wonder if there isn't a God after all, and if there's maybe a reason for the stuff that's happened to me. I'd switched on the radio after switching off the light, and the BBC World Service news came on. I like it because they don't operate on the same sliding scale of values that some other stations do: you know, one Brit or Yank equals half a dozen continental Europeans equals several hundred Rwandans or Filipinos. Anyway, before I fell asleep I heard this thing about how climate change has affected some of the poorest countries in the world; about how the people who've contributed least to global warming are suffering the most. The ones who've so little to begin with are losing everything they have, including the chance to make a new start. I drifted off to sleep realizing this is about more than me. I realized it's not myself I should be killing, it's the people who've caused all this, who've poisoned me and the planet. Well, I shouldn't be killing them, or then I'd be as bad as they are, but I should be doing things that'll make them think, or at least make it difficult for them to keep on living their selfish lives and screwing up the planet and other people in the process. I should be doing things like spraying paint on their cars so they can't drive them any more.

Suddenly I have a reason to live as long as I can, something to do that's worth doing. It's not difficult to believe that getting splashed by the puddle and punched in the face was fate, that there's some sort of grand design at work after all, and I have a part to play in it. Even if I can only take a handful of cars off the road for a week or so at a time, it all helps. It's indescribably fantastic to have something to think about that takes my mind off thinking about my own problems; to feel like I can do something that matters to the world with what's left of my life.

Anyway, I truly feel like a man on a mission. I've made up a list of every shop that might sell spray paint, and I'm going to buy a can or two in each one
—
I don't want to buy too many in any single shop in case I attract the wrong sort of attention. Don't get me wrong, I
want
to attract attention, but to The Cause I've set out to further, not to myself.

Then, once darkness falls, I'll get to work again.

I blinked away my sleep and flicked over to the next page, wrinkling my nostrils at the musty smell which was carried on the draught from the mildewed paper.

APRIL 20

A good night's work
—
14 confirmed kills and one partial (I saw headlights approaching in the distance and had to scarper before I'd fully ‘decommissioned' car #15).

APRIL 21

There was good news and bad this morning. I was in a shop and the owner had the radio tuned to the local station. The news was on, and at the end of it there was a story about how the police are hunting ‘the Green Man'. It seems as though I've been elevated to superhero status. I mean, the Green Man sounds like something out of a comic book or graphic novel, doesn't it. It's spooky to be hunted, but at the same time it's pretty damn cool to be a wanted man, not to mention a superhero. It's right what they say
—
truth really is stranger than fiction. If anyone had told me this was how my life was going to turn out, I'd never have believed them in a million years.

Anyway, what I heard on the radio got me thinking. It really concentrates your mind when you know the police are hunting you. So what I got to thinking was that I should either lay low or move somewhere else. And laying low really isn't an option, because I need the Green Man just as much as Planet Earth does. So it looks like I'll have to move on. It's probably for the best because it solves the problem regarding Sara
—
I have to forget about her and she has to forget about me because she has no future with me and I have no future, period. Funny, with all that's been happening I'd forgotten about that. I'll write her a note. I'm not sure exactly what I'll say, whether to tell her I'm the Green Man. Probably it's better that I don't. Maybe she'd be proud of me, but then again maybe she wouldn't understand. All I know about the note is that it's going to be a lot different from the self-pitying one I would have written a couple of days ago.

APRIL 22

I was trying to work out where I should move to, and suddenly it hit me: why limit myself to one place? Why not go on a tour, take my message across the whole damn country? I'll be sort of like David Janssen in that old black and white television show. The Fugitive, I think it was called. The one where he's wanted for a crime he's not really guilty of, and has to move from town to town to keep one step ahead of the law. He never stays in any one place for long enough to put down roots or get close enough to anybody for them to guess his true identity. I used to love that show. Now it looks like I'm going to have a chance to write, direct, and star in a whole series of my own. I have enough savings to last about a year, and, well, I won't need any more than that. Everything has worked out as though it's meant. I feel that more strongly with every passing day. Each time I decommission a car I feel like another hand is moving mine, that a greater force is at work through me. Call it God if you will, but I prefer to call it Gaia.

APRIL 24

Boy, did I get the surprise of my life this morning. I caught the sleeper train down to London and, when I got off, the first thing I saw was a headline on one of the kiosk billboards announcing that I (the Green Man) was there. I froze, like fugitives do in old movies when they see a wanted poster with their likeness on it. I couldn't figure out how they'd known I was coming. I mean, the paper had to have been printed before I'd even got on the train. Then I read the first paragraph of the story and realized what had happened: someone else must have heard about what I'd been doing and had taken on my mantle. At first I was angry that they were ripping me off. Then, when I put my personal feelings aside, I saw it was wonderful: I had my first disciple. Without intending it, I'd become a messiah, and my message was spreading.

APRIL 24

It looks like I've got more than one disciple. A lot more. Today's paper said a couple of hundred cars were ‘decommissioned' (they said vandalized
—
how dare they) last night. I only took out 21, so I'm figuring there were about another nine or ten guys at work. Maybe twelve, like the twelve apostles.

APRIL 25

Holy schmoly!!! I made the TV news today. Or, should I say, we made the news. And the best thing was, they had a poxy vox or whatever it's called
—
you know, where they interview ordinary people and ask for their opinions
—
and the people who spoke out against me, or rather spoke out against us, sounded so selfish when they were doing it. Even some drivers conceded we had a point, and most of the people who didn't have cars talked about us like we were heroes doing a job that had to be done.

APRIL 26

Boy, the power of TV! A whole lot of people must have been inspired by what they saw last night, because there were Green Men at work in towns and cities all over the country in the hours after the news feature was aired. As a result we made the news again, and this time we were moved from being the funny story at the end of the show to being the second story. We would have been first if it hadn't been for a superstorm hitting New Orleans and finishing off the work that Katrina started a decade ago. They actually linked the storm to global warming caused by, among other things, car exhausts, and used that to segue into the story about the Green Men.

APRIL 27

I suppose it was inevitable. Any worthwhile cause will have its martyrs. One of my followers got caught ‘green-handed' by the owner of an SUV last night and was beaten to a pulp and left to die in the street. I feel terrible, but in a way I also feel it's happened for a reason, like the things that happened to me. They interviewed the guy who found the body of our first KIA (killed in action) and he said, ‘What that guy did to this Green Man, others like him are doing to the planet.' I couldn't have put it better myself.

APRIL 28

My disciple didn't die in vain. Far from it. Something amazing happened once word of the death
—
the murder
—
got out. Someone, somewhere, had the idea of reclaiming the streets, of using bicycles to form a rolling blockade. Word must have spread on the Internet, and this morning there were cyclists wearing green armbands and riding shoulder to shoulder on the streets of almost every city, causing traffic chaos. We had another KIA
—
a motorist apparently lost his patience and deliberately ran over one of the cyclists. The surrounding cyclists who saw what happened got off their bikes and dragged the motorist out of his car, and other people in cars got out to help the motorist. By the time the police arrived another five people were dead and dozens were seriously injured. Again, I do feel bad because I know none of this would be happening if I hadn't started spraying cars. But, then again, if cars hadn't poisoned me and the planet I wouldn't be out with my spray can. I just did what had to be done. I didn't realize what I was starting, though. Those scenes on the news today were like something from a movie about a world spinning out of control. But then I shouldn't be surprised, because that's exactly what is happening to the world.

If anyone's in doubt about that, they only have to look at the weather forecast for later in the week. ‘The mother of all storms' is how the forecaster put it, and one expert they interviewed said it was the sort of storm you used to only get in the tropics, and even then only once every couple of decades. Now they're happening several times a year in the tropics, making whole cities uninhabitable, and it looks like they're starting to happen here. I suppose it isn't surprising given the fact we're getting the other kinds of weather they used to only get in the tropics
—
the heat and cloudbursts.

APRIL 29

There was a different kind of chaos on the streets today
—
people heading for high ground. All of London is at flood risk from tidal surges and the rain that's coming with the wind. They're expecting major structural damage and power cuts, and advising everybody to leave.

I think I'll catch a train back north. I've not been feeling so good lately, coughing up horrible black stuff, waking up with my boxers and T-shirt soaked in sweat that I'm sure is due to more than the sweltering nights. I just want to go back home.

I turned over the next page but there was no more writing on it. I tried to imagine the chaos and panic that must have filled the next days of the Green Man's life. I wondered how much longer he'd lived, and how he'd died. I couldn't decide if he'd been unbearably self-righteous or heroically altruistic, a visionary or plain nuts.

I just hoped he'd made it home.

T
HERE WAS A MUSTY SMELL IN MY NOSTRILS WHEN
I woke up the next morning. I'd fallen asleep with the diary in my hands, and it was lying on the bed beside me. The events it described came flooding back so vividly it was as though I'd lived through them. No doubt I'd dreamed about Green Men and traffic jams, street fights and hurricanes.

I got up and put the diary in my bookcase. It was a tight fit. Not wanting to damage the timeworn jotter I didn't force it all the way in. If I had, the chances are I'd never have solved the mystery of that other bookcase, the one in Doug MacDougall's room. It was the shadow that did it, the one cast by the jotter sticking out a centimeter or two. I'd seen a shadow like that before, stared at it for hours the previous night without recognizing its significance. I hurried over to my computer and flashed up the photo of Doug's bookcase on my wallscreen. Sure enough, there it was: a vertical dark band in the middle of the top shelf. I looked at the spine of the book immediately to its right, the one casting a shadow. It had obviously been difficult to put back in, suggesting it was the last one to be taken out.

It was called
Lichens and Mosses of the World.

It was difficult to imagine a less promising title for a book that held the key to a mystery, but at the same time I felt sure this was the last thing Doug MacDougall had read. I was equally certain that somewhere between its covers was the passage that changed his outlook on life—and that there was a good chance it explained his death. It might have been a coincidence that Doug died before he could tell his daughter about his ‘amazing discovery,' but I'm not a big believer in coincidence. I've lost count of how many cases I've cracked by making a connection between things that appear to be linked only by chance.