Hyenas (14 page)

Jay stumbled over to the ladder, the way the walls
seemed to lean in toward the grey-brown rectangle of sky above, disorientated
him and threw him off balance. He leapt onto the highest rung he could reach,
dragging himself up, his feet scuffling for purchase. Below him, a hyena
grunted laughter and the ladder shook. He didn't look down, didn't dare, didn't
have time. His feet found a rung and he scuttled up.

He was close to the top, Ellen and Robert reaching
down to him, when the hand, its heat pouring immediately through the fabric of
his trousers, seized his ankle. He tried to shake his leg free but the hyena's
grip was fast, its fingers striving to sink into flesh, muscle and down to the
bone. He lifted his other foot from the rung, letting his hands and arms take
the strain, and stomped down on where he hoped the hyena's head would be. He
connected with nothing.

The hyena dragged at him and he felt his fingers begin
to lose their grip on the rung. Ellen and Robert were on their knees now,
straining toward him but he was still a good foot or so out of reach. He knew
that if the hyena got a hold with its other hand it would all be over. And there
was a part of him — tired and aching, but more than that, disgusted with it all
and with himself — that wanted it to be over, that wanted to let go, the way he
imagined a vertigo suffer experiences that strange compulsion to make real
their fear and plunge headlong into space. But he didn't let go, he stomped
again. And this time he struck something. The hyena's grasp loosened a little.
He stomped again and as his heel ground into what he thought and hoped was the
hyena’s scalp, and as the hand relinquished its grip entirely, there was a
metallic snap from somewhere above him and his face and hands were showered in
rust particles and brick dust.

At first, he thought it was an optical illusion, a
trick of perspective like before, when he'd lurched toward the ladder, but no,
the bolts holding the ladder to the wall really had broken or come lose and the
ladder really was tipping backwards.

He could hear more hyenas below him now, could feel
their grasping hands snagging at his feet and ankles, and he knew it was only
the fact that they were fighting amongst themselves to get to him that was
preventing him from being dragged down to his death.

Chapter 19

Feeling, in spite of everything, ridiculous, Jay
continued to scuttle up the ladder, knowing it was too late and his arcing
trajectory would deliver him into the stinking mob below any second now. And
then he saw Robert lunge for the ladder and manage, just, to curl the ends of
the index and third finger of his right hand over the top rung.

But he had over-reached. Too much of his body was
stretched out across the gap and Jay could see the panic on Robert's face as he
waved his free arm back to grab the edge of the roof, flailing at thin air. The
ladder continued to tip, dragging Robert with it.

Collective hysteria erupted from the hyenas below,
accompanied by reeking clouds of rot-heated breath.

Then Ellen grabbed Robert's wrist with both hands. She
dug in her heals and leaned back.

The ladder stopped tipping.

Ellen leaned back further, her teeth bared, then
managed a first then a second step backwards. And Robert's flapping hand found
the edge of the roof and latched onto it. His face turned purple with the
strain and the ladder began to move back toward the wall. Jay continued to
crawl up the ladder. By the time it was against the wall he was at the top and
he scrambled off it and onto the roof, half submerging himself in deep snow.

He got to his knees then to his feet and turned back
to see Robert plant a heel in the face of a thick-bearded, dreadlocked hyena.
The ladder and the hyena, spitting blood, tipped back then fell from view.
There were shrieks of fury from the pack.

Struggling to catch his breath, Jay looked out across
the city. Saint John’s Beacon dominated the view, front and centre, and only
Saint George's Hall and the Holiday Inn offered anything like resistance.
Beyond this disparate trio was a patchwork of rooftops, then, off to the South
West, the gauzy outlines of Moel Famau and the Welsh hills. Looking down at
Saint John's Gardens, Jay saw fifty or more hyenas scurrying amongst the
statues and memorials, looking, at this distance, like children at play. On the
far side of the gardens, near the steps, Brian's body, arms and legs all wrong,
lay at the centre of a disc of blood. At this distance, it looked to Jay like a
red badge with an esoteric symbol printed on it, a character from an alien
alphabet. Crows like scraps of black cloth, ten or so of the things, had formed
a rough perimeter around the symbol and were closing in.

And then he realised that Ellen and Robert were
already on the move, across the roof toward another ladder which, along with
various aluminium ducts, led up to a higher level. Before Jay could catch up,
Ellen was already at the top of the ladder and Robert was close behind.

Jay was relieved to find this ladder was relatively
new, doubtless used regularly for maintenance work. Robert had made it to the
top and gestured to Jay to hurry up. Then his face seemed to go limp as he
looked past Jay in the direction from which they'd just come. Jay thought he
saw Robert mouth 'Jesus'.

He didn't want to look back, didn't want to see what
had caught Robert's eye and drained the colour from his face. He wanted to get
up the ladder, to keep moving, to waste no time. But he had to look.

He turned to see a hyena, a giant of a thing, dragging
itself up onto the roof where the rusty old ladder had been. The remains of its
clothing (all black, including its shiny bomber jacket) and close-cropped hair
— doubtless shaved down to the follicle pre-Jolt — told Jay it had once been a
bouncer or private security storm trooper.

It glared at Jay, grinned — a gold incisor gleamed
amidst brown and yellow — and then it charged.

Jay darted up the ladder, noting that Robert had done
the sensible thing and made himself scarce.

The hyena let loose a roar that narrowed to a hiss.

From the top of the ladder, Jay saw Ellen lowering
herself backwards through a broken skylight next to a submerged pyramid of
verdigris-stained roof. Robert, sword in hand, spun on his heels, communicating
equal parts impatience and stark terror. As Jay was stepping off the ladder, he
felt it thrum through the sole of the foot that remained on the top rung. This
time, he didn't look back. He sprinted across the roof toward the skylight,
where Robert had just dropped from view.

Behind him, the hyena roared again.

Jay threw his backpack through the skylight, dropped
to his knees and scuttled backwards after it. As he slithered down, nubs of
broken glass lacerating the front of his coat, he locked eyes with the hyena.
Steam poured from its gaping mouth, trailing behind it like cobwebs. A vast
erect penis lanced out from its open fly, juddering with every step it took.
Hands grabbed Jay's legs and waist as he dangled down and he could only hope it
was Ellen and Robert.

“Let go, for fuck's sake,” said Ellen.

Jay did so and dropped an embarrassing couple of
inches.

“It's coming,” he said, taking in a square-ish
corridor, poorly illuminated by the murky glow falling from the skylight and
Robert's sweeping torch. To his right, against the wall, was a display case
containing a brass sextant and theodolite. Behind him, two doors led to ladies'
and gents' toilets. Ahead, was another display case containing antique
navigation equipment and then the corridor curved left into an open space.

“What's coming?” said Ellen.

“Christ,” said Robert. “It saw you? It saw you come
down here?”

“What saw you?” said Ellen.

“Hyena,” Jay gasped. “Biggest fucking hyena I ever
saw.”

“It saw you come down here?” Robert repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” said Robert, swiping his sword down at nothing.

Jay could hear its pounding footfalls beyond the
ceiling, thought he could even hear it panting.

“This way,” said Robert. He ran to the end of the
short corridor, torchlight whipping out ahead of him. Jay and Ellen followed.

They were in an open space. Ahead was a set of five
stairs leading up between a wheelchair lift and, in a large display case, a
Victorian gentleman, one hand on a brass projector, frozen in the middle of an
astronomy lecture. A few feet beyond the top of the stairs, past a display of
grandfather clocks, double doors opened onto a cafe swimming in turgid
daylight.

Behind them, closed lift doors. To their right, an
opening to a room, along the ceiling of which was suspended a space rocket
fuselage about twenty feet long. To the right of the entrance was some kind of
rocket booster, a metal dome big enough to hide a grown man, sprouting a
confusion of pipes and canisters. Everything else was shadows, shapes and
darkness.

Robert went into the dark, running beneath the space
rocket to the back of the room, torchlight bouncing.

“Don’t worry,” he said over his shoulder. “There’s a
door. I’ve used it before. The mouth-breather will go the other way. Toward the
light.”

Ellen followed him and, as Jay did likewise, there was
a thud that Jay felt as well as heard, as the hyena dropped through the
skylight and into the museum.

At the far end of the room, beneath a wall-mounted
television screen, was a large cuboid desk covered with pencils and activity
sheets with pictures of astronauts, meteors and re-entry vehicles. Past the
desk, set into the far wall and painted black like the wall, was a door.

Robert ran over to the door and made an elaborate
display of running his hands around the edge of the door frame. Jay was
wondering what this desperate mime was all about when he saw that there was no
handle on the door. At the same time, Robert turned to them, his face somehow
both apologetic and terrified.

“It’s closed,” he said. “Last time I was here, it was
open. But now it’s closed and there’s no fucking handle on this side. Shit.
Shit, shit, shit!”

“Behind the desk,” said Ellen, her voice a harsh
whisper. “And turn off that fucking torch.”

Ellen, Jay then Robert dropped behind the desk. Robert
switched off the torch.

The darkness seemed to collapse onto Jay; it had
weight and texture.

The hyena roared and the sound seemed to thicken the
darkness, to add to its weight. Then there was a shattering of glass, and Jay
was almost certain that the Victorian gentleman's astronomy lecture had been
permanently interrupted. There were a few crashes and clatterings, then silence.

Jay strained to detect any hint of what the hyena was
doing and, more to the point, where it was doing it. But all he could hear was
the throbbing bass of his own heartbeat. What felt like a full minute passed
but Jay suspected it was only half that. He could only surmise that the hyena
had moved on, doubtless toward the dishwater light of the cafe, just as Robert
had predicted. He couldn't imagine it simply waiting in the dark, waiting for
them to give themselves away. They were savage things, the hyenas, they
couldn't strategise. It wouldn't be laying in wait, surely, like some animal.

Robert must have been thinking along the same lines
because Jay heard him shift position, as if he was getting ready to stand.

And then Jay thought,
Like some animal
and
realised that was precisely what the hyenas were, animals, and laying in wait
was precisely what just such an animal would do. And then the stink of it
unfurled through the darkness. But it was too late, because Robert was already
rising.

Despite the fact that they had been in darkness for
less than a minute, when Robert thumbed the torch into life, the sudden flare
of light was momentarily blinding.

The hyena, as it leapt first onto the desk then down
onto Robert was little more than a blur, a dark smudge staining the afterglow.
The torch leapt from Robert's hand, spinning through the air, throwing its disk
of light from wall to ceiling to floor to wall to ceiling, before hitting the
floor with a crack that submerged them in darkness once again.

Robert let out a hollow gasp as the hyena drove him
into the floor. His arms and legs lashed out. A grasping hand seized Jay's
ankle then let go and slapped about his foot like a wrestler signalling
submission. Like someone feeling blindly for dropped spectacles. And Jay
realised that Robert was trying to find the sword. He began feeling for it
himself, sweeping his palms across the coarse carpet tiles.

There was a grunt from the hyena, then a gristly thud.
Robert let out a groan. Another grunt, another gristly thud. This time, Robert
responded with something closer to a whimper.

Jay extended his search, sending his hands out in all
directions, turning on his knees. His fingertips struck something hard. He
snatched at it. But it wasn't the sword, it was the torch. He turned it in his
hands until he'd worked out where the button was. He jabbed the button with his
thumb. Nothing. It was dead.

Another grunt from the hyena. Another gristly thud.

Jay thought he heard Robert whisper, “Jesus.”

He began his search for the sword again and this time
his hand fell upon it almost immediately. He ran his fingers down the blade
until he felt the cord-wrapped handle. He stood and lifted the sword above his
head.

“Ellen, get as far away as you can,” he said.

He heard movement and didn't know if it was Ellen
moving away, Robert thrashing to free himself or the hyena turning toward him.

He brought the sword down where he thought the hyena
was and could only hope he didn't hit Robert.

There was a kind of wet crunch, like a spade sinking
into damp, gritty earth, and a violent tremor whipped down the blade and
wrenched the sword from Jay's hand. His eyes had begun to adjust to the dark.
What little light had struggled through from the cafe and the broken skylight
created shapes in front of him, abstract outlines that he couldn't identify.
One such shape dominated. It reared up and at the same time there was a
shriek-roar from the hyena.

He had wounded it. He tried to grab the sword's handle
but only snatched at thin air.

“Run, Ellen! Robert? Can you run?”

The outline of what he assumed was the hyena seemed to
swell and Jay realised it was lurching toward him. A slab of a hand struck his
left shoulder. All feeling left the arm as he staggered sideways from the force
of the blow, only just managing to stay on his feet.

The hyena shriek-roared again and Jay could make it
out a little more clearly now, its arms lashing out as it turned on the spot.
He looked toward the exit, a rectangle of dingy grey, and thought he saw
someone — Ellen? Robert? — stagger right and out of view. Jay made for the
exit. Behind him, the hyena had ceased shrieking and roaring and was grunting
to a slow steady rhythm.

Jay was almost at the exit when his feet struck
something and he almost fell to the floor. The something said, “Jesus, which
way's up?” It was Robert, his voice thick and slurred.

The hyena stopped its rhythmic grunting and charged
toward the voice. Glass shattered as it collided with a display case.