Hyenas (19 page)

The sound of the hyenas’ footsteps seemed to be
getting louder, deeper, as Jay and Ellen approached Rumford Street. The
yellowish tinted windows of an egg-carton of a building presented their
jaundiced reflections, the hyenas a smeared mass in the background. Then Jay
realised the sound — a rhythmic bass rumble — was coming from somewhere up
ahead, off to the left, from Water Street. Jay also realised he recognised the
sound, had heard it before, recently.

As Ellen stepped out onto Rumford Street, the horse
appeared from the side of the Martin’s Bank Building. Even though it was the
same horse that Jay had first seen with Dempsey only that morning, the same
horse that had saved him from being press-ganged into the militia, it had lost
its nobility. It looked, somehow,
insane
. Its eyes were rolling as if loose in their sockets,
thick ropes of foaming saliva had formed a sagging web from its mouth to its
chest and such improbable quantities of steam rose from its gouged and bloodied
hide that it looked as if it was on the verge of combusting. But it was still
huge, fierce and powerful, and it was thundering toward Ellen.

Jay tried to shout her name, but his mouth was too dry
and his lungs were suddenly incapable of drawing the necessary breath. The
horse snorted dense blasts of vapour and Ellen turned, almost sprawling.

“Ellen!” Jay managed, now that it was too late.

Then the horse lurched right, away from Ellen, toward
Exchange Flags. It lost its footing for a second, stumbled toward Jay,
threatening to slam him into the wall of the Exchange Building, then regained
its balance, if not its grace, and galloped toward the advancing hyenas.

He heard Ellen laugh the high uneven laugh of someone
who has come closer to harm than they care to think about. She said something
about Emily Davison.

Maybe the horse was too tired to change its
trajectory. Maybe it had seen the hyenas too late. Maybe it
wanted
to
hurt them. Whatever the case, it ploughed right into the advancing pack.

Four hyenas fell beneath the blur of its hooves. Two
were knocked several feet sideways — one left, one right — landing in the snow,
motionless; dead or dazed. Another hyena leapt, wrapping its arms around the
horse’s neck, attempting to crawl round onto its back. Coming to a standstill,
the horse reared up and shook the hyena loose. Its forelegs pistoned out
driving two more hyenas down into the now-bloody snow.

The horse seemed unstoppable to Jay. The hyenas —
twenty or so of the things now — circled it, but kept a safe distance.

“Jay, let’s go,” said Ellen. “That horse is fucked and
we’ll be next. Come
on
.”

“What?” Fucked? Jay couldn’t see it. The horse looked
strong to him. Crazy, yes, but strong, a force
not
to be trifled with. As
if to prove the point, its forelegs pistoned out again. A hyena Jay was certain
he recognised — pre- or post-Jolt, he couldn’t be sure — lost a hoof-shaped
chunk of face, its shrill laughter replaced by a dwindling whimper.

This horse was
not
fucked. The hyenas were fucked. All of them.

Then, suddenly — suddenly to Jay, anyway — the horse’s
rear legs gave, just
gave
, and it collapsed, almost vanishing into a cloud of
snow-dust and steam.

“FucksakeJay!” Ellen growled through clenched teeth.
“Run! Now!”

The hyenas swarmed over the horse, dodging its
thrashing legs. Jay just stared. The horse made a sound very much like a scream
and Jay ran.

He turned right, back toward Chapel Street, then,
following Ellen, he cut left across a near-empty car park that was little more
than a waste ground, the low, broken walls of which gave clues to the building
that had once been there. The far left corner of the car park was occupied by a
red-brick pub, the Pig and Whistle, which still had scars from where it had
once been connected to the long-since demolished building.

Halfway across the car park, Jay looked back the way
they had come. He couldn't see any hyenas. They were too busy with the horse.
He could hear them laughing. He could hear the horse, too. He resisted the urge
to clamp his hands to his ears.

Gasping for breath, they kept moving. Out onto Chapel
Street, which sloped down toward Saint Nicholas Place, between the modern,
prow-like structure of the Atlantic Tower Hotel and the pale sentinel, with its
lantern spire, that was the Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas. Beyond the
elaborate spire, the verdigris-encrusted Liver Birds were visible on their domed
perches.

Jay turned and looked back up Chapel Street, toward
the intersection of Old Hall Street and Tithebarn Street. There were no hyenas.
None visible, at least. He could hear them, though, the city centre’s
architecture bouncing their cackles and screeches from wall to wall, creating
the impression that the things were
everywhere
.

As they reached the bottom of Chapel Street, the
Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas above them now, Jay suddenly became
convinced they were being followed, stalked. He froze and looked right, over
his shoulder. But there was no silent, creeping hyena. Instead, the dock exit
of the Queensway Tunnel.

Jay had forgotten all about it. The tunnel emerged
from the side of the Atlantic Tower like the opening to a huge burrow. He fully
expected to see wild-eyed and filthy faces floating out of the darkness. But
there were no hyenas, just a once-white, now-scorched Volvo.

He could hear them, though, the hyenas, down there in
the dark, making their way toward the light.

“Christ, they could have been waiting for us,” said
Ellen, fighting for breath. She was looking into the mouth of the tunnel, too.
“Just waiting for us, and then how fucked would we have been?”

Waiting for us, thought Jay and the words seemed to
drop down into his gut, past his burning, aching lungs. He felt sick but he was
suddenly certain that his nausea wasn't instigated by a sense of
what-might-have-been. It was something else.

“Waiting for us,” said Jay, and found himself looking
at Ellen's rifle.

“Well, thank fuck they weren't. We better get moving.
It won't take them long to find their way out.”

Ellen started to turn but Jay grabbed her arm.

“Not the hyenas. Something else. Something else is
waiting for us.”

Ellen pulled her arm away.

“The others are waiting for us, Jay.”

“The others,” said Jay, straining to bring his
thoughts into focus.

“Look, if you're going to have a nervous breakdown,
can you wait until we're on the boat?”

“The other two,” said Jay. “Those militiamen, in the
museum, Pete and Col, they said something like ‘Let's see if we can find the
other two. Pepper said there were three of them. Assuming the jokers haven’t
got to them already.’ Something like that. I didn't really process it at the
time because I was trying really hard not to shit my pants and start crying.
Three of them. You, me and Brian.”

“Fuck. Sergeant Pepper's got the others. That's why
the militia were around the library. They were looking for us. Which means
they're probably — ”

“Waiting for us.”

Before

“Four years,” said Jay. “It took her four years to
figure out that she
did
have a problem with my problem, after all.”

“I'm sorry Jason, I really am,” said Jay's dad.

“When we first started going out, she said it was a
gift. She said, 'You're not burdened by the tyranny of the written word.' It
sounds so stupid and pretentious now, but at the time I felt ten feet tall.”

Jay stuffed a forkful of Lewis's egg custard into his
mouth, more to stave off tears that were beginning to feel inevitable than out
of any desire to eat. But he found the taste of the dessert — sweet and creamy,
a perfect egg custard — wrapped him in childhood and brought him even closer to
tears. He swallowed the food quickly, tried not to taste it and put down his
fork.

“She said, 'You don't have to dot the i's or cross the
t's. You can make up your own rules.' She even quoted Blake: ‘I must create a
system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my
business is to create.’ No wonder you liked her.”

“I wish I could say I didn't like her. I wish I could
tell you you've had a lucky escape. Christ, I wish I could offer you a bit more
than crap about time healing all wounds and there being plenty more fish in the
sea. But I can't. I'm a dad. We're terrible at this kind of thing. I wish your
mum was here.” He sighed. “Anyway.”

“Yeah. Anyway.” Jay managed a brief, bitter laugh.
“Funny thing is, just before she pulled the car over to tell me it was over,
her stereo chewed up my William Blake tape. Alan Bates was reading
The Four Zoas
and next minute it started to warp and then went completely mental.
And I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen.' And, you know me, I'm not
superstitious or anything. But after she told me, I thought, I might not be
able to read words but I can read fucking signs.”

Jay's dad summoned a smile and took a sip of coffee.
Jay picked up his fork and poked his egg custard as if he half expected a wasp
to come crawling out of it.

“So, what about the theatre group, son, your job?”

“I'm jibbing it,” said Jay.

“What? Look, I can understand why you might want to
avoid Lucy for a while but — ”

“It's not just that. It's been bothering me for a bit
now, the way I have to stand in front of all those people and say, 'You don't
want to turn out like me.' It's like, 'Behold ladies and gentlemen, the Amazing
Educationally Subnormal Man! Marvel at how words a five year-old can readily
absorb from the printed page baffle and enrage him!' It's pretty
un-fucking-dignified.”

Jay's dad laughed.

“It's not really like that, though, is it?” he said.

“I suppose not. Not always, anyway. But more and more
lately, it feels that way.”

“But what else are you going to do?”

Jay dropped his fork.

“Thanks a bunch,” he said.

“What?”

“What else am I going to do? You said it as if you
couldn't imagine me being able to do anything else. Thanks.”

“That's not what I meant. You know that. It's just,
well, it's tough for everyone at the moment. Jobs are thin on the ground and,
like it or not, you've got more hoops to jump through than most. Shit but true,
Jason.”

Jay nodded. “Shit but true. Fair enough.”

“I know it's hard, but maybe you should stick it out.”

“I can't. I can't face it.”

“Give it a couple of weeks, then see how you feel.”

“I know how I'll feel. I'll feel exactly how I feel
now. I’ll feel precisely how I feel all the time. I'll feel like a freak.
Because, when all's said and done, I am a freak, Dad. And life’s just a fucking
trap for people like me.”

Chapter 24

“So, now what?” said Jay.

“What do you mean?” said Ellen, but there was a look
on her face that Jay could only describe as pre-emptively guilty.

“You know what I mean. Do we just head for the boat?”

“Jesus.” Ellen tried to inject some venom into the
word but with little determination. Her hand went to her belly and she sagged a
little. “I don't know.”

“I mean, what are we going to do? Take on the militia
whilst dodging hyenas and come to the fucking rescue?”

Ellen shrugged and sighed. “I don't know. I really
don't.”

“We've got one gun with a few bullets and they're
armed to the teeth,” said Jay. “We have to be...”

There was someone sitting on the small flight of stone
steps leading to the Deutsche Bank entrance to the Liver Building. Even at this
distance, Jay recognised him.

“Dempsey,” he said.

He ran across the dual carriageway, keeping low and
weaving between the cars, until he was face to face with the Dubliner.

Dempsey was dead, of course. His face was the colour
of old putty but he wore an expression of mild amusement, as if he'd been
sitting on the steps just watching the world trundle by in its usual silly way
when death had touched him lightly on the forehead and sent his spirit off to
Wherever. The deep tracks scored into the snow, spotted with blood, leading
back toward Princes Parade told a different story.

“You knew him?” said Ellen, still catching her breath.

“Yes. Met him this morning. It was his boat. He came
looking for a sailing book in Waterstones and stopped me getting taken to
pieces by a hyena.” He turned to Ellen. “He's the reason you're not safe and
warm, painting your pictures. He's the only reason we might actually get out of
this city before everything turns to shit.”

“Don't know whether to kick him or kiss him.”

Jay reached forward to close his eyes then decided
against it. Let him carry on watching the world go by.

“How the fuck did he get here?” said Jay.

“Dragged himself, by the looks of it.”

“Dragged himself. Jesus. He'd lost so much blood. Then
he had a heart attack or some kind of seizure and fell into the Mersey. I
thought he was dead. He should have been dead. But then he pulls himself out of
the icy water and starts working his way back to the city centre. Christ, he
was probably looking for another sailing book.”

Jay laughed.

“What?” said Ellen.

“Dempsey asked me why I was in a bookshop when the
Jolt happened, and I was too embarrassed to tell him. Seems stupid now.”

“What does?”

“Embarrassment.”

“So what were you doing? In a bookshop?”

As Jay spoke, he looked into Dempsey’s death-glazed
eyes. “I used to go there all the time. I’ve got a recording of William Blake
poems. I’d listen to the poems and pretend I was reading them. I’d pretend I
was normal.”

Ellen laughed.

“What?”

“Well, that is pretty embarrassing.”

“That’s what I thought. But now I think it was just
one more thing I’ve done to survive.”

Ellen patted him on the arm, as if he was a rambling
elderly relative. “You keep telling yourself that.”

Jay grinned. “Piss off.”

He looked up at the Liver Buildings.

“We go in, get up high and take a look. See what
Pepper has in mind. Then we take it from there. If there's nothing we can do,
we head for the boat.”

Ellen nodded. “Sounds like a terrible idea.” She
smiled. “But okay. In for a penny, in for a pound. Let’s find a way in.”

“Well, Deutsche Bank’s closed,” said Jay pointing at
the imposing oak door.

“There must be other entrances,” said Ellen. “You go
right, I’ll go left. Don’t go too near to the front of the building. If Pepper
spots us, we’re fucked.”

She didn’t wait for Jay to respond, just scooted off
down Water Street, staying tight to the low wrought iron railings that
surrounded the building. Jay did likewise, to the right. There were double
doors halfway along, closed and as impassable as the Deutsche Bank entrance. He
looked around for open or broken windows. Nothing, not even on the higher
storeys. He was wondering if he’d be able to break a window without alerting
Pepper — just make a small hole, then pull the shards out until there was a
hole big enough to squeeze through — when Ellen appeared at the corner and
waved for him to follow.

“I think I’ve found a way in,” she whispered once he’d
caught up. “But we’re going to need a bit of brute force. Man’s work.” She
grinned. “But you’ll have to do.”

Ellen led him to an entrance that was opposite the one
he’d just come from. Three broad stone steps went up to double sliding doors,
all glass but for a thin aluminium frame. The right-hand pane was all but gone,
just a few jagged teeth left top and bottom. Jay followed Ellen into a small
vestibule. Ahead of them, revolving doors. On the snow-dusted floor an A-board
sign covered in muddy footprints read ‘Staff Entrance Only. All Visitors Please
Report to Main River Entrance. Thank You.’ Through the revolving doors Jay
could see a corridor that appeared to plough right through to the other side of
the building. Past the revolving doors and immediately to the left, a narrow
flight of steps led up.

“I tried moving the doors but I can’t get them to
shift more than an inch or two,” said Ellen.

Jay stepped into the wedge-shaped space, put his
shoulder up against the glass and put his back into it. It moved the inch or
two Ellen had already achieved then stopped dead. He stepped back a couple of paces
then fell against it, shoulder first. It shifted another inch but the movement
was accompanied by a small shriek of complaining mechanisms.

He looked back at Ellen and they winced in unison.
Ellen shrugged and whispered, “Try again. I’ll keep dixie.” She went to the
bottom of the steps and peered around the edge of the wall toward the river.
Without looking back, she gave him a thumbs-up.

Jay couldn’t help smiling. Dixie. He hadn’t heard that
one since school. He took a few steps back then threw himself at the door
again, aiming for the narrow polished steel frame. He didn’t want to go through
the glass, with all the noise that would make. The door moved another couple of
inches, but the shrieking was louder this time. He looked back at Ellen; she was
still looking toward the river but she was no longer giving the thumbs-up.

“Bollocks,” said Jay and felt his own attempt to
burrow up into his gut.

The thumb wavered. Then it went up again.

Jay puffed out a white plume of relief. He walked back
to the top of the steps then charged at the door. As he hit it this time, hard
enough to hurt, there was a trio of sounds. There was the shriek, a lot louder
this time, a metallic snap and a crack. Jay was already familiar with the
shriek. He had no idea what the snap was until the door rushed away from him.
The complaining mechanism had given up its protesting, had given up entirely.
And as he staggered forward, Jay realised what had generated the crack. The
pane of glass ahead of him had broken from the bottom left-hand corner to the
middle of the top frame. The fissure seemed to be getting wider, then Jay
realised the right-hand shard of glass was falling toward him. Without thinking
and still stumbling forward, Jay grabbed at the shard, tried to stop it from
crashing to the floor. He didn’t feel any pain, but he did feel the glass slice
into the palm of his left hand, a brief pressure followed by a sort of
spreading
of the flesh and then a numbness. He kept hold of the shard and, regaining his
balance, lowered it to the floor. The door behind him slapped him on the
backside, knocking him forward a couple of paces.

Jay stepped out of his wedge and found himself on the
other side of the vestibule, next to the narrow flight of stairs. He looked
back toward Ellen and saw she was already at the revolving doors, pushing her
way toward him.

“Sorry,” he said as she emerged. “Noisy.”

She smiled. “Not as noisy as it sounded to you. Nobody
came running, anyway.” She pointed at his hand. “You’re bleeding.”

He looked at his palm. There was a deep gash running
from just below his little finger to the pad of his thumb. Blood that had been
running toward, and dripping from, his finger tips changed direction as he
raised his hand, dribbling down his wrist.

“Christ,” he said. Seeing the injury seemed to switch
on the nerves in and around the wound. The pain was dizzying.

“Fuck me, that’s nasty,” said Ellen.

“I need to sit down,” said Jay. He pointed to the
narrow stairway.

Once on the stairs and out of sight, he sat down as
nausea rippled up from his gut to the back of his throat. Ellen dropped down
next to him, shrugged off her backpack and began rummaging around inside it.

“Think I’ve got a bandage in here, somewhere,” she
said.

Jay risked a glimpse at his hand again. The wound
looked like a mouth, thin with pale lips, blood like a reptilian tongue
flickering about.

“Should consider myself lucky, really,” he said. “I’ve
got off relatively unscathed so far.”

Ellen, pulling the cellophane wrapping from a bandage
threw him a look of incredulity.

“What?” said Jay.

“Have you seen your face, lately? It’s a bit of a
mess. You look like you’ve been on the business end of a fucking good kicking.”

There was a door at the top of the stairs, with a
small rectangular window in the centre of the top third. Jay stood, swaying a
little, and walked the remaining few steps up to the door. It was dim on the
other side of the window, brighter on Jay’s side, so it worked well enough as a
mirror. His face
was
a bit of a mess. There was a dark bruise about the
width and length of his thumb across the centre of his forehead; it was raised
a little, too, as if there
was
a thumb lying just below the surface and pushing
outwards. He remembered how he’d got that one: when the hyena had leapt on his
back and driven his head down into Waterstone’s carpet-tiled floor. There were
thin, bloody scratches running down from his hairline to meet the bruise, from
when he’d burrowed, head-first, into the icy snowdrift at the back of
Waterstones. His right cheekbone was purple and swollen, from the rifle butt
driven into it by one of Pepper’s militiamen. And then there were the numerous
speckles and splashes of blood, from the hyenas he’d killed.

He didn’t recognise himself. Who the hell was this
battle scarred veteran, this survivor, this killer? It surely wasn’t the same
Jason Garvey who’d hidden away for weeks, hoping the shitstorm would pass him
by whilst he ate Kit Kats and blueberry muffins and drank UHT chocolate milk,
the diet of a child without caring parents. It surely wasn’t the same Jason
Garvey who’d crammed himself under a table, watching a hyena attempt to eat the
works of Byron, whilst he thought,
What
the fuck? The world ended five weeks ago. There shouldn’t
be
any more
surprises.

He was quite pleased to find his reflection reminded
him of none other than Dempsey, all cuts and bruises, a boxer who’d won his
fight on points but had, nevertheless, won.

He turned away from himself and looked down the stairs
at Ellen as she produced a safety pin from a small first aid kit. Sarcastic,
pregnant, unstoppable Ellen. Whether it had ended or not, the world was full of
surprises, he realised, and he felt a little surge in his chest, a warm,
velvety wave.

“What are you smiling at, dickhead?” said Ellen.

“Nothing. Just glad to be alive for a little while
longer.”

“Very profound. You should get some t-shirts printed.
Now, come here. Let’s get this bandage on.”

Jay sat back down next to Ellen. She grabbed his hand
like a mum seizing the hand of her child who’s just tried to stroll across a
busy road without looking.

“This is going to hurt, but I don’t want to hear about
it,” she said, then squeezed his hand hard, causing the lips of his wound to
press together. Blood oozed out, uneven lipstick. “Keep your hand stiff like
this while I strap it up tight.”

The second she was done, she stood and started up the
stairs. “Come on.”

Jay followed, trying to flex his bandaged hand a
little and finding it impossible.

The door at the top of the stairs opened up onto
another stairway, this one gloomy and zigzagging up to the top of the building.

Ellen had to stop, once on the second floor and again
on the fourth; each time, just for a minute and then she took a deep breath,
puffed it out loudly and set off once more.

They left the stairway on the fifth floor, stepping
out onto a long corridor, close to a set of lifts facing each other across the
corridor. The floor alternated between pale, laminate flooring and blue carpet
tiles. At either end of the corridor were double doors of frosted glass.