Hyenas (8 page)

Chapter 11

Jay kicked his way through blackened books and
couldn't help laughing.

“This is a fucking joke,” he muttered. “A shit joke
with a piss-poor excuse for a fucking punch line.”

He looked around. Not all the books were destroyed. He
could see a shelf labelled Local Authors that was mostly untouched. Niall
Griffiths, Roger McGough, Nicholas Monsarrat, Brian Patten, Beryl Bainbridge,
Ramsey Campbell, Adrian Henri. He suddenly felt unworthy. He was alive and they
were gone, one way or another. It seemed wrong. It seemed like a colossal
oversight. Maybe some cosmic intelligence would realise its gaffe and he and
the hyenas would abruptly swap places, Jay the snuffling animal and the literate
back in the driving seat once more.

He made his way over to a set of escalators on the far
side of the shop. They seemed sturdy enough, despite being warped and soot
encrusted; the rubber handrail had melted entirely.

Upstairs, things were worse. Very little made of paper
had survived and most of the shelves had collapsed into jagged arrangements of
metal and charcoal. The ceiling had been torched away in several places,
revealing steel rafters and a confusion of ducts and drooping cabling. The floors
groaned and squeaked under his weight. There were any number of blackened,
grinning skeletons, contorted into all manner of impossible poses by the
intensity of the heat.

He looked about half-heartedly for sailing books,
knowing there was no chance. Some fiction had escaped harm and a shelf-load of
graphic novels, but everything else was ash.

He was about to head downstairs and outside and back
to the boat to take his chances with the open seas, hoping some genetic
maritime instinct might kick in if backed into a corner, when he heard movement
from the ground floor.

He froze for a second or two then began looking for
somewhere to hide.

He heard a dull, gritty shriek and knew that whatever
was downstairs had stepped onto the escalator.

He ducked behind the remnants of a counter, a
blistered cash register the only clue to its original purpose. The till's
drawer was open, displaying blackened coins and ash. It wasn't until he
crouched down that he realised he was sharing his hiding place with a corpse
that was skeletal from the waist down but had retained flesh and even some
clothing on its upper body. A metal hair slide in a Celtic cross design was
fused to the corpse's scalp. The smell of burnt hair and skin which was evident
throughout the shop was overwhelming here: bitter yet too sweet. It reminded
him of a thick, black medicine he'd had to endure as a child, but he couldn't
remember what ailment the medicine had been intended to treat. The floor
beneath the corpse looked like it had been scorched to a black parchment on the
verge of collapsing and dropping its burden of flesh and bone down to the
ground floor.

The dull, gritty shrieks continued, getting louder,
then stopped. Whatever it was had reached the top of the escalator. Jay
realised he was a little close to the edge of the counter and shuffled further
out of sight. The back of his hand touched the corpse's face and something
stuck to him, something tacky and still warm. He couldn't help but investigate
and saw threads of semi-liquid flesh stretching between his hand and the dead
woman's cheek. He snatched his hand away and clamped his other hand over his
mouth, just managing to suppress a moan. His stomach seemed to shrink. Bile
burned the back of his throat and his mouth filled with a salty fluid that told
him he was going to vomit. He parted his fingers so he could take a deep
breath. He dry heaved but, thankfully, managed to do so silently.

From somewhere out on the shop floor, there was a
clatter and Jay realised that whilst he'd been distracted, the hyena — surely
it was a hyena — had moved from the top of the escalator but Jay had no idea to
where. He just knew it was up here with him, somewhere.

Slowly, painfully aware of every rustle he was making,
he shrugged off his backpack and set it down between himself and the melted
corpse. He unclipped a side pouch, reached in and brought out the small paring
knife he'd taken from the galley of the
Jerusalem
.

Another clatter. This one louder, but Jay couldn't
tell if that was because it was closer or because it had been more violently
executed.

He remembered the hyena stuffing its mouth with Byron,
the hyena with its largely pageless dictionary that had killed Dempsey and
Hello Kitty spitting out wads of pulped magazine before pitching herself at a
plate glass window in her eagerness to do him harm. He wondered if she'd
intended to punch a hole in his skull and rummage through his grey matter
looking for, well, what? He was certain it all meant something. Everything
meant something once the world had come to an end. There was so little left
that whatever remained inherited all meaning.

Then, from further off than the last clatter, the
hyena said, “Bingo. Tom Sawyer.”

Jay peered over the counter. On the far side of the
shop floor in what, judging by the remnants of undersized tables and chairs,
had been the children's section, was a tall man, at least six foot four, thin
despite his winter padding, wearing a Peruvian-style bobble hat. He was
dropping whatever minimally damaged books he could find into a large backpack.
There was no sign of a weapon and none of the military and riot-gear motley of
Pepper's militia.

Jay thought about the
Jerusalem
, the prospect of
taking it out onto the Mersey and then the Irish Sea alone. And once he found a
safe place, some little island, then what?

He stood and then cleared his throat to speak.

In a single fluid motion, the book hunter drew a small
revolver from his pack, spun to face Jay and fired.

Chapter 12

The first bullet hit the blistered cash register,
sending up a shower of carbon flakes.

“Jesus!” Before Jay could raise his hands to signal
his surrender, the book hunter squeezed the trigger again.

The second bullet whined past Jay's left ear, hitting
the wall behind him with a sound that was equal parts crack and thud. He didn't
even realise he'd scrunched his eyes shut, every muscle in his body painfully
tense, until the book hunter said, “Christ, I could have shot you, you fucking
bell-end!”

Jay opened his eyes. The book hunter had lowered his
weapon, but not completely.

“I thought you were a fucking zombie,” said the book
hunter. “You're lucky I've got the eyesight of a mole with cataracts or you'd
have a bullet in you right now. I mean, it's only a .22, so at this distance,
it's only slightly more dangerous than a hole punch, but still, you know, it'd
fucking hurt, like being stabbed really hard with a blunt pencil. I'm Brian
Hughes. Brian. Who the fuck are you? And could you put the knife down, please?
It's making me want to shoot at you again.”

Jay lowered his hands and put the paring knife on the
counter in front of him. Carbon flakes were swirling around him, like black
snow.

“I'm Jason Garvey. Jay.”

“Jay,” said Brian, seeming to weigh the situation on
the basis of that one syllable. “What are you doing here, Jay? You're obviously
not one of Pepper's.” He lowered the gun a little more.

“I'm looking for a book.”

“Well, good luck with that. As you've no doubt
noticed, this place has been visited by a little flame-related mishap. And the
other Waterstones is overrun with fucking zombies. Anyway, all the best, mate.
I'd better be getting back to the others. They start bickering when they run
out of reading material. It was my turn to do the honours this time.” He
shouldered his backpack but kept the gun in his hand.

“Others?” said Jay.

Brian flushed a little, realising he'd said too much.

“Look,” said Brian, “I know it's not easy on your own,
and I'm sorry, I really am, but we're not taking on any new personnel at the
moment. Sorry, but you're on your own. You'd do the same if you were me. Maybe
you'd be better off with Pepper.”

“I've already declined his offer,” said Jay.

“Don't blame you. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like
The Beatles; I just don't fancy getting beaten to death by zombies during the
Battle of Strawberry Fields, you know?”

Jay nodded.

“I'm off, then,” said Brian, shuffling his feet and
exuding awkwardness, like a guest trying to leave the world's dullest party
without hurting anyone's feelings. He coughed twice, sighed, and then set off
toward the escalators. “Don't follow me, Jay. I'll shoot you in the leg if you
do. And a blunt pencil wound is still going to be something of an impediment
when you're being chased by a pack of those bastard things. Sorry, but life's a
bit shit all round at the moment.”

As Brian started down the escalator, Jay shouted after
him, “I was looking for a book about sailing.”

“Keep looking,” said Brian, the top of his Peruvian
bobble hat disappearing from view. “But don't hold your breath.”

“An instruction manual, sort of thing.”

The escalator continued to squeak and groan. Then
silence.

Jay waited.

A gritty shriek and the Peruvian bobble hat rose into
view, followed by the rest of Brian.

“You've got a boat?”

“I've got a boat.”

Brian stuffed the gun into his coat pocket.

“What kind of boat? Where?”

“A sailing boat,” said Jay, coming out from behind the
counter, scooping up the knife. “And I don't think it would be very wise for me
to tell you where it's docked, do you?”

“No, I suppose not. But how do I know you're not
lying?”

Jay shrugged. “You don't.”

“If you are, Jay, it's blunt pencil time. Seriously.”

“Fair enough.”

Brian’s face underwent a series of contortions and he
bobbed from foot to foot. Then he said, “Christ, Dave’s going to skin me alive.
Come on. Follow me.”

They left the bitter stink of Waterstones behind,
heading down the enclosed boutiqued canyon of Peter’s Lane, then turned left
onto School Lane, where the snow quickly reasserted itself, seeming to rise up
around their calves. They passed Bluecoat Chambers. A large banner over the
wrought iron gates advertised an exhibition by Peter Chang, with oversized
images of Chang’s jewellery; they looked like weird bioluminescent marine life
or models designed to explain some elusive principal of quantum physics. They
passed the Quaker Meeting House on their right, a building as modern as its
name implied it couldn’t possibly be. At the Old Post Office pub, with its
inexplicable hedgerow, snow-capped now, running between the ground and first
floors, they turned left down an alley crowded with dumpsters. One of the
dumpsters had tipped over, spilling boxes of paperwork, toner cartridges and
two human arms that were so physically different from one another they couldn’t
possibly have belonged to the same victim. A fat crow pecked at the limbs,
hopping from one to the other, as if it couldn’t decide which tasted better. It
held its ground as Jay and Brian passed. The alley turned abruptly right,
running parallel with School Lane, heading toward Hanover Street. When Brian
stopped at a recessed loading bay with a steel roller shutter, not far from the
end of the alley, Jay couldn’t help laughing.

“What?” said Brian.

“Nothing. It was just that I was hiding out about a
minute from here, in Waterstones. On Bold Street. We were neighbours.”

“Waterstones? Really?”

“Yeah. On the top floor. I set up camp in the old
staff room.”

“We nipped in and out of there all the time, nicking
books. Well, not ‘nicking’, exactly. I mean, they don’t really belong to anyone
anymore, do they? Anyway, we had to give up on the Bold Street branch after the
zombies moved in.”

“Me, too.”

Brian shrugged off his pack, rummaged about inside it,
then produced a pink baby monitor. He gave Jay a sheepish grin and switched it
on. It crackled to life, an arc of red LEDs lighting up.

“Anybody there?”

A pause, then, a man's voice, “I'll be down in a
second.”

“I've got company. Don't worry. He's cool.”

“Oh, Christ, Brian, you know the rules on waifs and
strays.”

“It's okay. He's cool.”

“And did you invite him to tag along on the basis of
this 'coolness'? What precisely constitutes cool in Brianland? I mean, what,
does he have great hair or something?”

“He's wearing a hat.”

“Is it as cool as your hat?”

“Not really. Sort of plain.”

“I was taking the piss, Brian.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, let us in, Dave. It's fucking
freezing. I'm going to lose a nut if I stay out here much longer.”

“You’re going to lose both fucking nuts when I get
down there, Brian.”

“He says he's got a boat, Dave. A sailing boat. Pepper
must have missed it or something.”

The sound of breathing. A sigh so loud it produced a
crunch of distortion.

“Hang on.”

Brian turned to Jay, putting the baby monitor back in
his pack.

“See? What did I say? When they run out of reading
material they get all arsey. Me, too, though, if I'm being honest.”

Without making eye contact, instead looking up and down
the side street, Jay said, “So, what were you like before the... before
whatever it was that happened, you know, happened?”

“We don't talk about that. First rule of Book Club:
the past never happened. Better that way. Less painful.”

“Book Club?”

Brian grinned. “That's what we call our little group.
By the way, I'd put that away if I were you.” He nodded to Jay's hand.

Jay hadn't realised he was still clutching the paring
knife. He put it into his jacket pocket.

There was a sharp click from the other side of the
steel roller, then a rattling of chains. The roller began to rise. When it was
halfway up, the voice that had addressed them from the baby monitor said, “Come
on, stoop, you bastards.”

Brian did as instructed. Jay followed.

Dave — presumably — regarded Jay with undisguised
suspicion and naked aggression. He wasn’t much over five and a half feet tall,
but he was considerably broader than Jay in the shoulders. Pushing 50, he had
the kind of face, lined and ruddy, that Jay couldn’t imagine expressing anything
other than distrust and hostility.

Brian dragged the Peruvian bobble hat from his head,
revealing a thick scar running from his crown to just above his left ear. Jay
felt certain Brian had been in some kind of accident, a car crash maybe, which
had doubtless left him with the inability to read or write or both. That was
why he was a survivor and not a hyena.

Dave caught him looking at Brian’s scar and said, “We
don’t talk about the past, so don’t ask. And we aren’t interested in yours, so
don’t tell. Are we clear on that?”

Jay nodded.

Without another word, Dave headed up a short staircase
which opened up onto a small and weirdly angled reception area, as if a
corridor had been ineptly reengineered for the purpose. There were a couple of
leather armchairs and a small round table covered in magazines about cars,
property and computers. About twenty feet to the left, a pair of tall glass
doors presented a view of Hanover Street with its snow covered abandoned cars.
Between the Hanover Street entrance and the staircase from which they’d just
emerged was a lift, the doors open a couple of inches. Dave headed right, down
a narrow corridor and through a door marked Stairs to All Floors. Brian and Jay
followed. On the fourth floor, they went through a fire door kept ajar by a
bucket of sand and emerged into a small waiting room, all dark wood, leather
armchairs and prints on the wall by Lucien Freud and George Stubbs. On the far
side of the room was an open door, from beyond which Jay could hear men's
voices raised in argument.

As Dave passed through the door, he said, presumably
to the room's occupants, “Brian's decided to bring a stray home with him. But
don't worry, Brian says he's ‘cool’. So that's alright, then, isn't it?”

Brian then Jay entered the room to a chorus of groans
and a solo, “Oh, for fuck's sake, Brian, lad, what are you doing to us?”

It was warm in the room, courtesy of two Calor gas
heaters back-to-back at the centre of a rough circle composed of seven
armchairs. All but three of the seats were occupied, and everybody — except
Brian but including Dave — was looking at Jay as if he was the harbinger of a particularly
irritating variety of doom. There was an Indian man, early fifties, in a
charcoal three-piece suit and a gleaming white turban, chewing on an unlit
pipe; a teenage boy, white but with straw-coloured dreadlocks that almost
reached his waist; a man almost as tall as Brian but broad, mid-thirties, with
short hair and a neatly trimmed beard, both prematurely frosted; and, aside
from deep black skin and an exuberant afro, a man who could have been Brian's
equally gangly brother. They each had a book, in their hand, on their lap or
forming an upside down 'v' on the arm of the chair. Jay could only make out the
details of the book in the hand of the room's nearest occupant, the teenage boy
—
Ask the Parrot
by Richard Stark.

The Indian man was the first to abandon his expression
of guarded resentment, taking the smokeless pipe from his mouth, producing a
modest smile and saying, “I'm Kavi Singh. And you are?”

“Jason Garvey,” he said. “Jay.” He was embarrassed to
hear a tremor in his voice and realised he felt so intimidated by this room
full of relatively ordinary people, that he was nervous to the point of nausea.
But, at the same time, he was almost relieved to discover there were other
sorts of fear, gentler than the outright panic and ground-in dread he'd been
living with for the last five weeks. He couldn't help smiling.

“What's so funny?” said Dave, as if he suspected he
was the object of some private joke.

“Just nervous,” said Jay.

“Where'd the blood come from?” said the teenage boy,
closing his Richard Stark and pointing at Jay's face.

It took Jay a couple of seconds to realise he was
still speckled with the evidence of his encounter with Hello Kitty.

“Hyena,” he said.

“Hyena?” said Brian's almost brother.

“That's what I call them.”

“Zombies,” said the teenage boy. “They're zombies.”

“Christ, Simon,” said Dave, “We've no idea what the
fuck they are.”

“Better than what Phil calls them,” said Simon,
pointing at the man with the prematurely white beard. “Fucking ‘Twats’. I mean,
you're a twat, Dave, doesn't mean you're going to beat me to death and try to
eat my brain.”