Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

  Jay got up and was pleased to find his legs fully functioning. He handed the Lucozade back to Dempsey.

  “Sailing books?”

  “Turns out sailing a boat isn’t as easy as you might think. Complicated. All those little ropes and whatnot. I’ll be needing a bit of instruction and seeing as you’ve eschewed your proud maritime heritage, that means I’ll be turning to a book for help. First time for everything, I suppose.”

  “Sports books are on the first floor, at the back,” said Jay and started down the spiral staircase. “You’ll find sailing stuff there, I think.”

  “Lead the way.”

  It was dark toward the back of the shop, with only a little light from the front windows making it that far in. Jay scanned the sports books. The faces of Gerrard, Torres, Saha and Dalglish, gazed at him from a middle shelf and an unimaginably distant past. Someone had tried hard to create a balance of red and blue but had been unable to hide their preference for the warmer end of the spectrum.

  “There you go,” said Jay, pointing. “Sailing.”

  There were only five books.

  Dempsey slid the first book from the shelf and turned to the back cover.

  “Autobiography,” he said and let the book fall to the floor with a dull slap.

  The next one. “Humour,” said Dempsey with something like disgust. “Yachting humour? Christ, the world was fucked up long before the Stroke or Jolt or whatever you want to call it.” The book landed on top of the first.

  The next. “This is more like it.” Dempsey flipped back and forth through the book for a few seconds. “But not enough like it.” Another one for the discard pile.

  The fourth book. “Another fucking autobiography. These sailor-types think they’re just fascinating, don’t they?” Book number four joined one to three.

  Dempsey hesitated before reaching for the final book, as if fearful of disappointment and what that would mean for his escape plan, but the moment he had the book in his hands, his face lit up.

  “You beauty!” He kissed the book’s cover, then flicked through it.

  Peering over Dempsey’s shoulder, Jay saw that the book consisted largely of photographs and labelled illustrations.

  “This is what I was after,” said Dempsey, grinning. “Your basic ‘How to Sail a Boat if you’re a Gobshite Who Knows Sweet Fuck All about Boats’ manual.” He shoved the book into his bag. “So, Jay, do you suffer from seasickness, at all?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Seasickness? Are you prone?”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “I’d be lying if I said my offer was entirely altruistic, Jay. It’s a one-man boat but we’ll make better headway if we take it in shifts. Besides, what were you planning on doing, staying in your foxhole and waiting for the cold to kill all those bastard things off? Because that isn’t going to happen. The cold will only kill off the weak ones, leaving you with the really strong, vicious fuckers once spring comes. And think of the disease that’s going to arrive along with the warm weather, all those dead bodies starting to rot and the rats having a fucking field day. It’s going to be positively medieval, boy.”

  It was Jay’s turn to grin now. Weeks of isolation, near-death experiences, an appalling diet and having to use a plastic waste paper bin as a toilet had extinguished what little optimism he’d possessed prior to the Jolt; it hadn’t even occurred to him that Dempsey would ask him to come along. He’d thought the old man would just take his book, harpoon and Lucozade and piss off. It hadn’t even occurred to Jay to invite himself.

  “I’ll take that smile as an affirmative, then, shall I?” He slapped Jay on the arm. “Good lad. Let’s get your stuff and be off. The sooner we’re out of here, the sooner we’re on the water.”

  “I’m up on the third floor,” said Jay and headed off. “I’ve not got much.”

  Dempsey followed.

  Jay was stepping over the threshold of his hidey-hole, scanning the neatly stacked volumes of Blake he knew he couldn’t possibly leave behind, when, from the top of the stairs, Dempsey pointed out what Jay, in his eagerness to be gone, had failed to notice.

  “Jay?” he said. “Where’s the hyena?”

  Chapter 3

  “No blood going down the stairs,” said Dempsey, turning slowly on the spot, harpoon gun sweeping back and forth. “Which means it’s up here somewhere, with us,”

  Jay was still standing at the threshold of his hidey-hole, looking out now into the shop.

  “Christ,” he said. “It never fucking ends, does it?”

  “Don’t worry. It can’t have much left in it. You just concentrate on getting your gear together. I’ll sort this little bastard out.”

  Jay backed into the middle of the old staff break area. Dimly illuminated by a battery-operated lantern, it looked like a cross between a teenager’s bedroom and a derelict’s retreat. Clothing, food wrappers, and empty soft-drinks cans were scattered about. A rumpled sleeping bag lay on top of a makeshift mattress made from the seat cushions taken from the green leather sofa which was abandoned against the far wall. Next to the sleeping bag was a small Calor gas stove. In one corner, a red plastic wastepaper bin — which would have been emptied had it not been for Northrop Frye and subsequent events — steamed slightly. Tin foil and blankets had been thumb-tacked to the walls, and the room was noticeably warmer than the shop floor.

  Still keeping one eye on Dempsey, Jay grabbed the khaki 40-litre backpack that had doubled as a pillow and began stuffing it with his William Blake collection, his Sony Discman, crisps, muffins and a couple of pouches of Capri Sun.

  The insistent reek radiating from the wastepaper bin reminded Jay of how much he needed to pee. Thankfully, his bowels had rescinded their demands now that his fear levels had dropped from stark terror to a steady, rumbling dread.

  He clipped the pack shut, wriggled into the straps and bounced up and down a couple of times, distributing the weight evenly across his shoulders.

  The simple act of thinking about his bladder seemed to have the effect of admitting more fluid into it. Jay now felt like he had a bellyful of hot piss. The urge to relieve himself had suddenly become a priority.

  He looked back out through the doorway; he couldn’t see Dempsey but he could hear him muttering to himself. There was no sign of the hyena. Maybe it had simply crawled into a dark corner somewhere to die.

  He really had to go. He could already feel piss like a warm wire, creeping down his urethra.

  The hyena was dead, he was sure of it. It would have made itself known by now, if it was still alive.

  Jay grabbed the wastepaper bin, took it out of sight of the doorway, giving himself some privacy, and set it down on the floor, against the wall.

  He’d only just managed to free himself from his pants when the warm wire completed its journey and began spraying wall, then floor, then shoes, then wall again before finally finding its way into the wastepaper bin, a frothing collision.

  Jay let out a series of diminishing sighs.

  There was a crash from the shop floor. Dempsey cried out. Then, the distinctive, guttural laughter of the hyena.

  “Shit!” Gritting his teeth, Jay tried to force his bladder to empty itself but there seemed to be no end to it. He tried to staunch the flow but the most he could achieve was occasional stuttering interruptions.

  “Little bastard!” Dempsey bellowed.

  There was the sound of a scuffle, then a clattering.

  Jay pictured the harpoon gun tumbling down the stairs, Dempsey unarmed.

  “Fuck!” He glared down at his penis. “Come on! Come on!”

  “Bastard!” Dempsey roared. Then, punctuated with progressively wetter thuds, “Will. You. Just. Die. You. Little. Fucker!”

  The hyena snarled. Dempsey grunted. A heavy thud. Shuffling footsteps approached the doorway.

  Dempsey, please, let it be Dempsey.

  From further off, nearer the stairs, Dempsey half shouted, half panted, “It’s headed your
way, boy.”

  The hyena stumbled over the threshold and into the centre of the room. It turned to face Jay, its jaw hanging impossibly loose; its nose looked like something scraped from an abattoir floor. It coughed out laughter, the sound squeezing the last couple of drops from Jay’s bladder.

  Scuffling backwards, Jay zipped up his pants, almost circumcising himself in his eagerness to retain at least some dignity.

  The hyena’s eyes rolled back into its skull and it fell forward, arms hanging limply at it sides. Its face hit the floor with a coconut-shy crack. The wallet slid from its back pocket and flopped open. Jay saw a driver’s licence, a very human face, clean-shaven and smiling, recognisable despite the absence of thick dirt and dried blood.

  Jay skirted round the body, refusing to take his eyes from the thing, certain it would suddenly spring to its feet. He grabbed the lantern and all but ran from the room.

  Dempsey was sat near the stairs, grinning at his bloodied fists. “I might have a bus pass,” he said, “but I’m still fucking handy.” He gave Jay a mock scowl. “And what, might I ask, happened to the cavalry?”

  “I needed a wee,” said Jay and immediately regretted his use of the infantile ‘wee’, wondering where the hell that had come from. Maybe it was because he’d felt like nothing but a frightened child since the Jolt.

  “Oh, well, that’s all right, then,” said Dempsey, getting to his feet, still grinning. “When a man needs a wee, he needs a wee.” He started down the stairs. “Come on, then. Let’s be off. Unless you think you might be needing a poo-poo.”

  Jay pinkened.

  “All right, you sarcastic old bugger,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

  “And it isn’t even nine a.m. yet, boy.”

  Jay smiled. It was nice, being ribbed for an embarrassing slip of the tongue. Like pub banter, merciless but affectionate. Normal. He followed Dempsey down to the ground floor.

  The harpoon gun lay on the bottom step. Dempsey picked it up and checked it for damage.

  “Seems okay,” he said and expelled a sigh of relief, his breath condensing and rolling out ahead of him.

  It was colder down here. The front door was open and flurries of snow swirled in.

  “Once we get outside,” said Dempsey, “we’ll need to keep moving. Stay close to me. I want you to count your steps. Every fiftieth step, I want you to turn and look behind you. These things can creep up on you pretty damn quick. You’re going to be the eyes in the back of my head, Mr Garvey, okay?”

  Jay nodded.

  Abruptly, the quality of light in the shop changed. Jay couldn’t see the doorway past Dempsey’s considerable frame but he knew someone or something was standing at the threshold. He moved a little to the left, peered around Dempsey.

  Two hyenas.

  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.