"Not to worry. The word is vakubati. Vakubati. Does that ring a bell?"

He slammed on the brakes and began screaming. Plum-faced, he lunged out of the driver's seat and pointed at me, screaming, "Vakubati! Get out of car, vakubati!"

"f.u.c.k you, Tonto. I have a hotel to get to."

I scootched over, put the still-running car in gear and peeled off, chickens and all. How dare he try to leave me marooned on some needle-thin chicken path when I, Raymond Gunt, had a job to get to. My mission-well, escaping LACEY, for one. And then my actual job as a cameraman: to doc.u.ment twenty-four soul-dead Americans f.u.c.king each other's brains out before they descended into cannibalism, all for some tiny sliver of c.r.a.p money they'd only p.i.s.s away within a few weeks of winning. The saving grace was that this absurd contest would be happening on an island semi-distant from LACEY with absolutely no police, no military and no legal oversight. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime gifts bestowed upon us by the G.o.ds to whom I recently wrote a thank-you letter.

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is one of the best-known synthetic insecticides. It was used with great success in the second half of World War II to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops in tropical zones. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller was awarded the n.o.bel Prize in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." Its production and use skyrocketed in the fifties and sixties. However, it was banned in the U.S. in 1972 because once it is in an ecosystem, anything larger than a mosquito is totally f.u.c.ked. If one thing can be said to rape an ecosystem, DDT would be it, and yet for decades people were crazy for the stuff. We are a wacky species, we humans.

The Pacific Proving Grounds is the name of a number of sites in the Pacific Ocean used by the United States to conduct nuclear testing between 1946 and 1962. In July 1947, after the first atomic weapons testing at the Bikini Atoll-yes, that's where the word "bikini" comes from-the U.S. entered into an agreement with the United Nations to govern the "Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands as a strategic trusteeship territory."

Right.

Let's remember that the United Nations at one point existed largely to serve the needs of the U.S. and the West, whereas now it's a free-for-all of pork and smokescreens. That's several metaphors in one sentence. Fun fact: The United Nations building in New York City is the only place in all of North America where smoking is still permitted indoors.

Anyway, the Trust Territory is composed of two thousand islands spread over 3 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean.

One hundred and five above-ground nuclear tests were conducted there, many of which were of extremely high yield. The largest was the 15-megaton Castle Bravo shot of 1954.

33.

Turns out the Hotel Deet was a mere half-mile off. A sign pointing away from the chicken path read, THE DEET WELCOMES YOU.

f.u.c.king brilliant.

I turned off and drove along a thin strip of coral dust up to a two-storey cinder-block building that looked like a Soviet gulag from the 1960s, except this one was covered in dead air conditioners and drying laundry, with yet another crazed and snorting tethered pig in the front yard.

As I got out of the car, I heard a familiar voice. "Ray! There you are! How did your epic f.u.c.kfest with LACEY go?"

Christ, did everyone and his dog know about LACEY? I turned around and saw Neal, nut brown, in another of Arnaud du Puis's Paul Smith linen suits. His pant legs were rolled up, he was carrying a pair of five-hundred-quid loafers and he looked, for all the world, like a blue chip film star who didn't do drugs and who had invested wisely in real estate, and who now was taking a bit of time out to do a series of prestige ad campaigns for American Express cards, Tissot-Omega watches and a fundraiser for some ghastly disease mercifully confined to Africa.

"So, why aren't you on the yacht?"

"I was, Ray, but then I got sleepy and a Zodiac kindly ferried me back. Forget about me, though. Tell me more about LACEY! Everyone's dying to know how it went. It was Fi's idea to give you two a s.e.x holiday."

Aneurysm II: Return of the First Aneurysm.

"Neal, to be honest, I don't remember anything about the past eight hours. Last thing I remember is reading Spam labels with you in the supermarket. Has anyone blown up New York or London yet?"

"I don't think so. But Atlanta is being evacuated. A lot of the satellites have gone down, and most of the major optical cables have been chopped."

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l."

Southern Cross Cables to NZ, Hawaii, Fiji and U.S. Mainland Australia-j.a.pan Cable Indonesian Sea-Me-We 3 and Jasaurus links Papua New Guinea APNG-2 link PPC-1 and Sanchar Nigam links into Guam Hawaiian Telstra links Gondwana link from New Caledonia to Australia Intelsat Inmarsat SingTel Optus Earth stations Zodiac Marine & Pool is a French company known for their widely used small inflatable boats. The word "ZODIAC" is a registered trademark for rigid-hulled inflatable boats.

We found a patch of shade. "Is this our hotel, then?"

"Best the island has to offer. Not really any worse than a few of the cardboard boxes I've lived in."

"Neal, how can anybody possibly have standards lower than yours?"

"Don't be so quick to judge, Ray. I happen to know that Monocle magazine rated the food in the Deet's restaurant as among the world's best Polynesian cuisine."

"Since when the f.u.c.k do you read Monocle, Neal? When you were in Brussels attending a Eurocurrency crisis meeting?"

"Monocle is a taste-making forum for global elites. No harm in a common man like me dreaming of one day living inside a stainless steel meat locker furnished with cla.s.sic Eames chairs. And instead of being fussy and negative, Ray, why don't we go inside and give the food a try?"

We started towards the gulag tower. A thick brown hand inserted a piece of cardboard into a window on the lowest level, reading: RESTAURANT BE OPEN.

"Din-din is served!" Neil announced.

As we headed towards the door, I threw a stick at yet another menacing, feral, tethered pig that, no doubt, considering my sunburned skin, saw me as a walking block of Spam. Something about the Pacific always turns one's thinking to cannibalism in the end.

"Neal," I said as I opened the door, "people here have been calling me vakubati and then promptly flipping out and screaming and fleeing my presence. Any idea what that's all about?"

Neal said, "Raymond, you're the vakubati."

"Please explain."

"Vakubati is the Kiribati word for f.u.c.kbuddy."

"Since when do you know the Kiribati language?"

"Everyone in South Tarawa knows about the vakubati, locals and visitors alike. News spread like wildfire."

"How the f.u.c.k did I become the f.u.c.kbuddy-slash-vakubati, or whatever the h.e.l.l it is?"

"When we were tripping out in the Spam store, Sarah told everyone in the store that you and I were f.u.c.kbuddies-cheeky sense of humour that bird's got."

"Go on."

"So the thing is, Neal, the Kiribati blame the world's potential nuclear war on you."

"So then, what-I'm the boogeyman to these people? Why not you, too?"

"Well, Ray, look at the facts: you're bright red, you're a bit on the thin side, you haven't had a shave in a while and, at the moment, you're wearing no shirt and a Gumby hat. It doesn't take too many brains to connect those dots, it doesn't."

"They think I started the nuclear f.u.c.king war."

"It's human nature to blame someone."

By now we were entering the Deet's dining area: folding aluminum tables and white plastic stacking chairs supplied courtesy of the trash vortex. As there was no staff in view, we sat down and looked at our menus, printed out in Comic Sans font and, to judge by the stains and wrinkles and scuffing, laminated some time back in the Thatcher years.

Tuna Schnitzel

Tuna steak kissed by breadcrumbs,

served with Australian-made potato chips

and cuc.u.mber slice.

Tuna Salad

Raw tuna fish with onions in a spicy sauce,

served with crusty bread.

Tuna Tartar

Raw tuna fish minced

with hot spices,

spread onto an inviting garlic bread.

As seen in Monocle magazine.

"Globalization is glamorous and good."

34.

When no one showed up to take our order, we poked around. The kitchen consisted of a dozen plastic buckets, a small gas stove and shelves holding boxed and tinned items: c.o.c.ktail sausages, Weetabix, irradiated milk from New Zealand.

"Pa.s.s me that opener, Neal. Fancy a few c.o.c.ktail sausages?"

"Indeed."

We began emptying tins. "Best we wash it down with this canned milk."

"I don't know about milk that's been irradiated, Ray. Doesn't seem right."

"But selling milk in a tin does seem right?"

"Good point."