Hyenas (3 page)

Chapter 4

Jay couldn’t speak.

The hyenas looked liked they’d crawled through a
sewer. It was impossible to discern gender or age. They would have been
indistinguishable from one another, in their filthy rags, painted-on grime and
grease-shocked hair, if it wasn’t for the fact that one of them, the one
nearest, stepping over the threshold now, was missing an eye, the socket
roaring with infection, seeping something that looked like engine oil.

Jay wasn’t sure which Dempsey registered first, the
look of queasy horror on his face or the putrid stink of the hyenas, but he
turned on his heels and fired.

The harpoon passed clean through the one-eyed hyena’s
throat and neck and sank deep into the second hyena’s shoulder. One Eye grasped
its throat, blood bubbling out from between its scrabbling fingers. It
staggered backwards into Two Eyes and the pair of them tumbled to the ground,
thrashing against one another.

“There must be a fucking sale on,” said Dempsey and
pointed to the large window to the right of the door. Out on Bold Street,
beyond a display of crime novels stacked to resemble something like the
Manhattan skyline, five more hyenas tramped through the snow toward
Waterstones. “Tell me there’s a back door.”

“This way.” Jay ran toward the rear of the shop, past
Fiction by Author, Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Crime, Alternative
Lifestyles and Classics, to a door with a narrow window of wired glass and a
keypad sprouting something like a small metallic mushroom.

Behind him, he heard Dempsey reload the harpoon gun
and, from further back, grunts, snarls, snorts of laughter and the sound of
shelves being ransacked.

It suddenly occurred to Jay that lack of power might
have caused the door to lock, like when the alarms all over Liverpool had
automatically triggered when the electricity supply had failed not long after
the Jolt, wailing into the night until their batteries ran dry and a weird,
almost textured silence descended on the city.

He pinched the mushroom handle between thumb and
forefinger and tried to twist it but his hands were too sweaty and he only
succeeded in skimming around the crenulated perimeter of the mushroom.

“Come on, boy!” growled Dempsey.

Jay wiped his hand on his pants and tried again. Still
too damp and his fingers slid off the mushroom once more.

“About now would be great, Jay!”

There was a clack and hiss and a hyena yelped.

Jay wiped his fingertips hard then gripped the metal
mushroom so tightly that pain flared in his knuckles. He twisted. There was a
click and the door swung inwards. He rushed into what looked like a storeroom,
books stacked on pallets, and Dempsey stumbled in behind him.

“A little help!”

Dempsey had dropped his harpoon gun and was leaning
back against the door, heels pressed hard against the carpet tiles. A grimy
rag-clad arm was swiping at him, preventing the door from closing.

The carpet tiles began to lift and Dempsey moved
forward an inch.

Jay shoulder-barged the door, throwing all his weight
into it. There was a distinct snap as the hyena’s arm broke. Howling, the thing
withdrew its ruined limb and the door slammed back into place.

A second later, the door juddered as the hyenas shoved
at it, but the latch held. Jay could just about make them out through the wire
glass, furious, thrashing shadow things.

Dempsey picked up the harpoon gun and, reloading it,
moved toward the back of the storeroom. Jay followed, the lantern held out in
front of him. They stopped at a metal door, coated in thick, blistered, black
paint. Panic punched Jay in the chest. If the steel slab was locked...

The hyenas were slamming into the door now, screeching
with laughter.

“Maybe God’s on our side, after all,” said Dempsey
pointing to a bunch of fifteen or so keys dangling from the lock.

Dempsey went to work on the bolts, top and bottom,
turned the key, opened the door and let out an angry “Fuck!”

A two-foot recess, then a roller shutter,
bullet-locked to a steel footplate.

He thrust the keys into Jay’s hand.

“Find it,” he said, turning to level the harpoon gun
at the inner door.

Jay held the lantern to the bunch of keys. His hands
were shaking so much he looked like he was trying to keep a baby entertained.
The keys all looked pretty much the same, and there were no labels or tags. He
dropped to his knees and set the lantern down next to the bullet lock. He tried
to insert the first key but managed to miss the barrel entirely. He tried again
but once more his trembling hands failed him.

“Christ!” He clenched his teeth so hard the hinge of
his jaw ached and his ears felt like they were about to pop but it seemed to go
some way to steadying his hands.

He tried to insert the key again and this time it
slotted in with no difficulty. He allowed himself a smile. But when he
attempted to turn the key, it only shifted a couple of millimetres and no more.

“Shit.” He dragged the key out, selected another,
shoved it in, but this one wouldn’t even fit halfway down the barrel.

The third, fourth and fifth keys proved as deceptive
as the first, slotting in with no difficulty then refusing to turn. The lock
snubbed all but the tip of the sixth key.

From across the room, the thin, brittle sound of
splitting wood.

“Apologies for stating the blindingly obvious,” said
Dempsey, “but we’re in big trouble if those things get in here with us before
you’ve got that fucking door open.”

As Jay tried to select a seventh key — thinking,
nearly halfway, now
— he fumbled the bunch and it fell, jangling, to the
floor. He grabbed them, held them in front of his face and squinted at them,
hoping that somehow the keys he’d already put to the test would miraculously
reveal themselves.

A shriek of splintering wood.

“Get as far back as you can,” said Dempsey. “And turn
that lantern off.”

Jay did as he was told. Dempsey followed him into the
recess and closed the metal door behind him. The darkness that filled the
shallow alcove was substantial; Jay could almost feel it brushing against his
eyeballs.

“You’re going have to go by touch, boy. And for God’s
sake, don’t make a sound.”

From the far side of the storeroom, there was a crash
as the inner door gave way. Then grunting and scurrying and crazed laughter.

Jay swept his hands back and forth across the floor
until a knuckle struck the bullet lock, taking off a chunk of skin. He bit down
on his bottom lip and, keeping his now freely bleeding hand on the lock, he
guided the first key into the barrel. The keys jingled a little but Jay doubted
the hyenas could hear much of anything over their own marauding hubbub — books
were being thrown around, shelves knocked over and all the while that harsh
phlegm-threaded laughter.

The key slid all the way down the barrel but only
moved a degree or two when Jay tried to turn it. Perspiration dribbled from his
hairline, through his eyebrows, onto his lashes and into his eyes, stinging.
Despite his predicament, Jay was suddenly acutely aware of his own acrid body
odour, the result of weeks with nothing but a damp flannel and baby wipes to
combat the forces of sweat and grime. He couldn’t help noticing that Dempsey
hadn't fared much better, although cigarette smoke and whiskey helped smother
the worse aspect of the older man’s defeat.

Something shuffled up to the metal door, sniffing and
snuffling like a bloodhound.

Jay's hands recommenced their shaking. He tried
clenching his teeth again but with only marginal success this time. The next
key struck the lock's housing, knocking the bunch from Jay's hand. He tried to
keep hold of them but only succeeding in batting them against the shutter. In
the enclosed space of the recess, it sounded like the warped chime of a
tuneless bell.

The bloodhound stopped its snuffling.

Jay froze and sensed Dempsey do the same.

The clang as the hyena slammed into the door was
almost deafening.

“You may as well put that lamp on, boy, they know
we're here. And if they realise all they need to do is pull the handle to open
the door, we're fucked because there's nothing to hold onto on this side.”

Jay thumbed the switch on the lantern and even though
he’d been in darkness for less than a minute, the light that filled the recess
jabbed at his eyes. Squinting, he swiped up the keys and started again, trying
one key after another with a smooth efficiency that either belied or gave full
credence to the fact that he was now as certain as he’d ever been about
anything that he was going to die.

The hyenas appeared to be taking it in turns to throw
themselves against the door; every other second, there was a clang that
hammered at Jay’s eardrums.

The eighth or ninth key — Jay wasn’t really counting
anymore — slipped into the barrel with such ease that Jay knew before he turned
it that it was the one.

There was a satisfying
snip
as the barrel popped
out of its sleeve. Jay hooked his fingers under the gap that had suddenly
appeared between the bottom of the roller shutter and the footplate and lifted.
The shutter rattled upward five or six inches then jammed; cool air and
strangely muted daylight rushed in through the gap.

The hyenas were throwing themselves against the door
with such force now that it was bouncing open a finger-width before the next
hyena’s assault slammed it shut again.

Jay tried to lift the shutter again but it wouldn’t
budge.

Dempsey joined him.

“On ‘one’,” he said. “One!”

They both lifted. The shutter moved another inch.

Behind them, the door bounced open, slammed shut
again, bounced open, slammed shut again, and for each second it was ajar, the
snarling and laughter of the hyenas flooded in and surrounded them.

“Again, on ‘one’. One!”

Another inch.

“Go on, boy, you should be able to get under there.”

Jay shrugged off his backpack, set it down next to him
and dropped down hard onto his back. For a couple of seconds he saw the door
snapping open and shut, and the savage faces of hyenas in strobe-light
snapshots, then he wriggled head first under the shutter.

An instant later, his scalp struck a hard crust of
frozen snowdrift and he understood why the light creeping in under the shutter
was so muffled. He pressed his heels against the concrete and pushed, but the
crust wouldn’t give. He pushed harder. The vertebrae in his neck ground
together and his chin was driven down against his collarbone, but the crust
wouldn’t give.

“Come on, boy! Get moving!”

“I’m trying!”

The slamming of the door was like a manic drumbeat
now, punctuated by the snarling laughter of the hyenas.

Jay bent his legs, put his feet flat against the
concrete and pushed once more, grunting with the strain, suddenly certain he
was going to start crying and experiencing a ludicrous flush of
pre-embarrassment at the prospect.

His neck felt like it was going to snap. The cold sent
rods of pain burrowing into his skull.

There was a creak, a crack and the crust began to give
way. He inched into the drift, shards of ice scratching his scalp, then
forehead, then ears. Unable to focus on the ceiling of the tunnel he was slowly
creating, it was as if he was immersed in a world of cool blue whiteness. He
had to squint to fend off the snow crystals that were falling into his eyes.

He bent his legs again, dug his heels in and pushed
himself further into the drift, moving a good foot or so this time. It felt
like someone was driving a needle down through his skull and into his spinal
column. His hands cleared the shutter and he tried to bring them up to his head
to help with the tunnelling but they were pinned to his sides. He bent his legs
again but this time his thighs struck the bottom of the shutter. He angled his
head upwards and tried to get in a sitting position with a view to pushing
himself up out of the hardened snow.

The drift collapsed.

Cool blue whiteness became pitch blackness. The weight
of the snow slammed Jay back to the ground and emptied his lungs. He gasped for
air but only succeeded in taking in a mouthful of splintery snow. The cold was
like a vice gripping his temples, crushing his skull. He instinctively raised
his arms to shield himself from the sudden assault and discovered that, in
collapsing, the drift had loosened. He thrust his arms upwards until his hands
broke the surface and then scratched and scrabbled at the snow above his face
until he could see the tops of the buildings bowing toward one another across
the narrow width of Wood Street and, beyond that, a strip of heavy grey-brown
cloud. He writhed and heaved himself up and out of the drift.