Letting himself out the back, Somers checked the other units in the strip mall: two had no markings whatsoever, and when Somers peered in through the windows, he saw only an empty storefront. The unit on the north end, though, was the clearly defunct TRUDY KING WAHREDUA’S TOP REAL ESTATE AGENT – OUR HOUSE IS YOUR HOME. Judging by the layer of dust Somers could see through the glass, nobody was going to come anytime soon to clear out the remaining furniture or office supplies. Still, it didn’t seem like his best bet. He worked his way in the opposite direction and checked the remaining units. One was KLIMBING KOALAS, which was the largest unit and had only a single remaining floor mat, evidence that some sort of climbing—duh—or tumbling or gymnastics had taken place inside at one point. The next was a shuttered military surplus store: SHERMAN’S MARCH – MARCH YOUR WAY TO GREAT DEALS.

Military surplus sounded very, very useful to a man in Somers’s position, but the store looked like it had been completely emptied out. He found a brick, smashed the window in the back door, and let himself into the unit. Without a phone or a flashlight, he didn’t have any way of improving his search of the stockroom, but he did the best he could. He stumbled around, checking mostly by touch, and found a whole lot of nothing. A couple of spiderwebs, sure. And something that scraped on the wall, a nasty sound that made him stumble back, heart pounding in his chest, until he realized it was a poster, and the sound had been the paper against the cement. He finally gave up.

He worked his magical brick key on TRUDY KING next, and this time, he had a little more luck. The staff bathroom still had soap and paper towels, and he gave himself a spit polish. He left his face alone—he had a nice smear of dirt from one temple to his jaw, and he thought it might help with his new image—but even so, he still felt a million times better after washing up, rinsing out his mouth, and gulping water from the tap. In one of the desks in the front room, he found scissors, which he stuck in his pocket, a couple of Bics that hadn’t dried up, and a roll of duct tape; he slid this onto his arm like a bracelet. He was considering how well he’d do on a show like Naked and Afraid. He could practically hear Hazard’s snort.

Just for the sake of thoroughness, Somers let himself into KLIMBING KOALAS and hit the jackpot. Someone had ordered clothing branded for KLIMBING KOALAS, obviously seeing another opportunity to monetize childhood (God, Somers thought, Hazard had really gotten into his head), and Somers found some of the clothes that hadn’t been sold in a cardboard box in what he assumed had been the manager’s office. The pickings were slim, but five minutes later, he was dressed in an XXL tee that had been designed to look like a panda’s face and in women’s track pants. He assumed they were women’s track pants because of the cut and the purple stitching on the KLIMBING KOALAS logo, but they made his ass look great and—unlike the men’s, which were also only available in XXL—they fit him at the waist and didn’t just slide to the ground. He even found a KLIMBING KOALAS cap, although it was so big that it sat on his head like a fishbowl. He transferred the essentials—wallet, keys, Glock, as well as his new gear—to his new clothing and shoved his old clothing into a dumpster at the back of the strip mall’s lot.