Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

  Grimacing, his face pale and beaded with sweat, Dempsey bent down and drew the bowie knife from the hyena’s chest. Not bothering to wipe the dripping blade, he set off across Whitechapel and up Lord Street.

  As he followed, Jay couldn’t help noticing that Dempsey wasn’t moving at quite the pace he had when they’d first escaped Waterstones. And he couldn’t help noticing the large slash in the back of the older man’s black Crombie. The fabric surrounding the ragged hole glistened.

  Chapter 6

  At the top of Lord Street, Dempsey and Jay crossed over and followed the concave crescent of shops — Prêt A Manger, Blankstone Opticians and O2, with its proud display of halted technology — round onto Castle Street. They jogged past Mangetout, Blue Arrow Recruitment and Andrew Collinge, then, at the junction with Cook Street and Brunswick Street, they cut across the road, weaving in between snow-fattened abandoned vehicles.

  As they passed the NatWest, Jay saw a severed hand sitting like a fat, pale crab on the keypad of one of two cash machines. There was something almost deliberate about the placement of the hand, and Jay had to repeat the word ‘swoon’ to himself, silently, until a sudden pulse of dizziness had passed.

  At the corner of Water Street, Dempsey signalled for Jay to stop. Jay looked around, spinning on his heels, as he scanned for hyenas, certain Dempsey must have seen something, heard something. But Dempsey swept snow from an aluminium chair outside Starbucks and sat down.

  “Just need to get my breath,” he said. His face was almost colourless despite his exertions.

  “There was a Boots back there,” said Jay. “They’ll have bandages, antiseptic, pain killers.”

  “I’ll be okay,” said Dempsey. “There’s stuff on the boat. Getting there’s the priority. Once we’re in open water, where those bastard things can’t get at us, we’ll worry about my little flesh wound.”

  Jay pulled up a chair, dusted it off and sat down, but continued scanning for hyenas.

  “So,” said Dempsey, gazing up at the domed roof of the town hall. “Where were you when it happened, this Jolt of yours?”

  “Where you found me,” said Jay.

  “What, in Waterstones? In a bookshop? What were you doing, looking at the pictures?”

  Jay flushed. “No. What? I was... What do you mean?

  “Well, you weren’t reading, that much I know.”

  “I was... you know... I was...”

  Dempsey caught the look of humiliation and confusion on Jay’s face. He leaned forward and placed a hand on Jay’s arm, squeezed it gently.

  “It’s okay, boy, there’s no shame in it.”

  “No shame in what?” said Jay, his voice lifeless and defeated.

  “None of us could read, Jay. None of us survivors. We all had severe speech or literacy problems of one sort or another. Like me with my dyslexia or Campbell with his aphasia; that sort of thing. Stuttering, illiterate, inarticulate little fuck-ups, every one of us, until... bang!”

  “Bang,” said Jay. A fat snowflake landed on his eyelash and when it refused to be blinked away, he wiped it off with the back of his hand. “It was like something was trying to get out of my head, some massive thought making a break for it, but it couldn’t escape. It was snagged on something. And then there was like... like a tearing.” He winced at the memory of not just the pain but the sheer disorientating distress of it. “For a second, though, before I blacked out, before I fucking swooned, I felt... wonderful, like a strong, cold wind had blown through my brain and cleared out all the clutter and confusion, untangled all the knots that had been there since the day I was born. When I came to, I had Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in my hand. I’d had it in my hand the whole time, had never let go of it. I looked at it and... I looked at it and...” he realised he was on the verge of tears. “I looked at it and I could read it. I could actually fucking read it. I could actually fucking read.” He laughed, the loose, light laugh of someone briefly tickled. “And I wanted to tell everyone. But there was no everyone anymore, just hyenas.” Another fat snowflake came to rest on his eyelash but he left it to melt in its own time. “What the fuck happened, Dempsey?”

  Dempsey shrugged. “Campbell said it had something to do with NASA sending a signal into a black hole or something. Said it was on the news just before everything went pear-shaped. Me? I’ll settle for the wrath of God or some such.” He got to his feet. A little colour had returned to his cheeks. “Let’s get moving. We’re nearly home free, boy.”

  Jay was relieved that Dempsey hadn’t pursued the question of exactly what an illiterate fuck-up had been doing in a bookshop, clutching a copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, no less. As he stood, he saw blood on Dempsey’s recently vacated chair and red polka dots on the snow beneath. But Dempsey had already rounded the corner onto Water Street and Jay could only follow.

  Before

  The egg custard was delicious, sweet with just the right amount of egginess. Jay was only five and he didn't know much but he knew the difference between a good egg custard and a bad one. The good ones were sweet, a little eggy but not too much, and cold and creamy; they wobbled a bit when you tapped them with your spoon but, again, not too much. The bad ones were too eggy and were kind of slimy. Bad egg custards tasted like a half-cooked quiche that someone had tried to disguise with a spoonful of sugar.

  But this egg custard, the egg custard they served in Lewis's department store, was perfect.

  Daddy wasn't eating his egg custard. He was just staring into his cup of coffee, drawing hard on a cigarette. He looked a little bit angry, like when he was marking schoolbooks, and Jason wondered if he was angry with him, because of what the doctor had said.

  As if he'd read Jason's thoughts, Daddy looked up at him, smiled and said, “Don't worry about it, son. Don't worry about what the doctor said. We'll figure something out. We'll beat this thing. Okay?”

  Jason nodded. He wasn't sure what This Thing was but he was fairly certain it had something to do with all the confusing stuff Doctor Leadbetter had said about how the way Jason’s brain was put together meant he probably wouldn't be able to read or write. Ever.

  Jason didn't really mind. None of his friends could read, yet. Well, some of them, but only a bit. And why would he want to read, anyway, when there was so much great telly, like Count Duckula, ChuckleVision and Rainbow? Besides, if he did want a story book, Daddy could read it to him, like he did now. It just meant Daddy would have to do all the reading from now on. Which was fine because Daddy loved to read. All those poems, “Tyger, tyger burning bright...”

  He looked at Daddy. Daddy was staring into his coffee again. He’d even stopped smoking. He didn't look angry now. He had that look on his face — mostly blank but a little sad — that had appeared all the time after Mummy died.

  “Daddy?”

  Daddy looked up.

  “Yes, son?”

  “Can I have your egg custard?”

  “Help yourself, kiddo.”

  Daddy smiled.

  Chapter 7

  Water Street was a canyon of pale, mostly neoclassical buildings. The top of the Liver Building, with its verdigris birds, peered over Oriel Chambers and the white glazed brick of the Tower Buildings. Abandoned vehicles were scattered about with such randomness, it looked to Jay as if they had been dropped from the sky.

  They had just passed the triple arched entrance to India Buildings, Jay catching a glimpse of the huge vaulted arcade beyond the glass doors, when a horse bolted from Drury Lane to their left, cutting down and across Water Street to Tower Gardens and then was gone. The detonations of snow created by the horse’s pounding hooves, swirled about like miniature tornadoes. Jay couldn’t help smiling. There was something about this huge, mahogany creature — a little undernourished and showing a few cuts and scrapes but otherwise in full command of itself — that charged him with an overwhelming sense of optimism.

  “What the fuck was it running from?” said Dempsey.

  He grabbed Ja
y by the arm and dragged him up the steps of India Buildings and out of sight behind the last arch.

  A second later, hyenas, as many as ten of the things, appeared in mad, cackling pursuit.

  They waited for a full minute after the hyenas’ clamour had faded before continuing down Water Street. They passed a burnt-out transit van, a few feet from the blackened shell of which was a charcoal corpse, on its knees, head thrown back, open mouth filled with snow. Even now, presumably weeks later, the smell — bitter, sweet and rotten — was nauseating.

  Water Street opened up onto the wide dual carriageway of The Strand, dominated by the Liver Building despite the best efforts of the neighbouring Cunard Building, the Liver Building’s small albino sibling.

  “We’re exposed here, Jay,” said Dempsey. “Keep to the vehicles and stay as low as you can.” He led by example, darting in a half-crouch toward an eighteen wheeler that had overturned in front of the Tower Building, and Jay followed.

  They skirted around the lorry, then in between a black cab and a National Express coach and onto the central reservation. There were very few vehicles on the far side of the carriageway and they had to sprint. They stayed low, but Jay knew that if any hyenas in the vicinity happened to be looking in their general direction, they’d be spotted. They cut through a small car park to the right of the Liver Building, followed the curve of St Nicholas Place round the back of the large vacant site behind the Crowne Plaza Hotel and onto Princes Parade.

  They were right by the Mersey now, the temperature dropping noticeably, and Jay could smell the distinctive and, to him, pleasant tang of its waters, reminding him of ferry trips to see his Aunty Alison in Birkenhead, memories of Battenberg cake and Ben Shaw’s Dandelion and Burdock.

  They passed the long covered jetty of the City of Liverpool Cruise Terminal, leading down to a narrow concrete docking area which ran parallel to Princes Parade for a few hundred feet.

  Jay realised he was having to slow his pace a little to stop himself from overtaking Dempsey.

  “Do you want to rest for a couple of minutes?” he said. “Just until you get your breath?” He pointed to a bench, made cartoonish by snow.

  “No, no. We’re nearly there. A couple more minutes. The boat’s moored up near that tower, there.” He jabbed a finger at the Alexandra Tower, three hundred feet of greenish-bluish grey and glass, cylindrical with its top lopped off at 45 degrees.

  Despite his words, Dempsey stopped at the white balloon of a bench and sat down anyway, not bothering to dust away the snow.

  “Just for thirty seconds, then,” he said. “Get my wind back.”

  Jay remained standing, turning on the spot, looking out for hyenas. He had to squint as he turned toward the choppy waters of the Mersey: the wind seemed to be scraping ice crystals from the river’s surface and flinging them in his face.

  “Christ, it’s cold,” said Dempsey, shivering violently. His face had lost its colour again. “I was thinking we’d go south, where it’s warmer. We’ll sail through the Menai Strait to Bardsey Island, then on to Ramsey Island, then Lundy and then the Isles of Scilly. Take it in little jaunts until we know what we’re doing. Who knows, maybe we’ll just keep going: Spain, Portugal, through the Strait of Gibraltar and on into the Mediterranean. What do you think, boy?”

  “Sounds great. Pity I didn’t pack any sun block; I burn like a ginger. You ready?”

  Dempsey nodded, stood with a pained grunt. Wincing, he placed a hand flat on his sternum, moving it in a slow circle as if trying to alleviate indigestion.

  “Let’s be going, then,” he said in a bright, enthusiastic tone, as if he was about to set off at a brisk pace. But all he could do was walk, slow and steady.

  Jay stayed a step or so behind, as if some unwritten, unspoken code was telling him it would be wrong to overtake. He wished he could overtake; then he wouldn’t have to see the frequent drops of blood falling from the sodden hem of Dempsey’s coat and patterning the snow.

  It took them almost five minutes to reach the Alexandra Tower, with its small car park crammed with Mercedes, BMWs and Audis.

  “There she is,” said Dempsey, each word punctuated by a harsh gasp. He pointed over the iron guard rail he was leaning against for support.

  Jay peered over. About eight feet below, between a set of oversized, worn, stone steps and a decrepit wooden pier, was a sailing boat, moored to a rust-encrusted ring embedded in the promenade wall.

  It was smaller than Jay had expected, about twenty five feet from stern to prow, mostly white shell with occasional bursts of highly varnished pine and polished brass. The mast, wrapped in its snow-caked sail, lay folded flat across the length of the boat. There was an outboard motor, scorched and sooty; there were metal rings and pulleys, a spaghetti of guide ropes. He understood why Dempsey had visited Waterstones in search of How to Sail a Boat if You’re a Gobshite Who Knows Sweet Fuck All about Boats. The name of the vessel, according to the flowery script painted on its side, was Jerusalem.

  “And did those feet in ancient time...” said Jay and he wondered if it meant something, if it was a good omen.

  Dempsey climbed over the rail, ignoring twin signs, one of which said ‘Danger Deep Water’, the other ‘Warning Strong Currents’. During his first outing post-Jolt, Jay had been overwhelmed by the proliferation of signs and words. Everywhere he’d looked there had been a warning, an instruction or, on advertising billboards and bus shelters, ludicrous boasts. It was as if there was a mesh of language overlaying everything, most of it prosaic and useless. He wondered how the literate masses had been able to stand it, this daily barrage of patronising bullshit.

  The moment Dempsey was on the other side, he let out a choking growl and his face, so pale only moments ago took on the vicious purple of a fresh bruise. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and a bloody foam oozed from between pursed lips. Both hands went to his chest and he began to fall, to swoon backwards.

  “Dempsey!”

  Jay lurched forward and managed to grab one of Dempsey’s wrists in both hands. Dempsey was heavy, and Jay threw all his weight back away from the waters, hoping to drag Dempsey toward the rail. But Jay’s palms were slick with sweat and numb with cold. It took three long seconds for Dempsey to slither from his grasp and then he and the older man were tumbling in opposite directions and Jay was on his back looking up at sandstone clouds and there was a crunch and Jay knew that Dempsey had struck the step and then a thick, oily approximation of a splash as the Mersey took him.

  Jay jerked to his feet and lunged at the rail, as if Dempsey was still there, as if he could still save him. He leaned over the rail, looking like someone in the throes of severe seasickness. The snow on the stone steps was spattered with blood and, halfway down, it had been swept away completely, exposing thick brown and green weeds, glistening algae and weird growths that Jay assumed were barnacles but looked to him like grotesque, bony tumours. A faint ripple was swallowed up by heavy grey waves before it had travelled more than a few metres.

  “Dempsey!”

  Jay clambered over the rail then dropped onto the steps.

  “Dempsey!” He shouted down at the water, trying to project his voice through the undulating surface and into the depths where, in his mind’s eye, he could see Dempsey, mouth agape, still clutching his chest, dropping like a stone.

  He moved down to the second step, and then his feet flew out from under him. He managed to keep his head forward so his backpack absorbed the brunt of the impact, and then he was sliding down the steps on a conveyor belt of snow, ice and algae. He scrabbled at the promenade wall, his fingers skimming across the slimy surface. He struck the water feet first, the cold like an electric shock bolting up his legs and halfway up his spine. And then, just as he was in up to his knees, his fingers sunk into a barnacled fissure in the promenade wall. He felt the nails of his first and middle fingers torn from their beds and his arm snap-locked rigid, agony exploding in his elbow and arm socket. And then he was still.


  Desperately trying to draw back the breath that had been knocked from him, Jay sat up. He dragged his legs from the water, surprised by the sudden weight of his own limbs. He held his trembling hands in front of him, as if seeing the physical manifestation of his shock might enable him to bring it under control, but the sight of his own blood pouring from his ruined nail beds didn’t help at all.

  It was a full minute before he was able to stand. Swaying a little, matching the motion of the waters that had taken Dempsey, he stepped onto the rocking deck of the Jerusalem. He stood there for a while, looking back at the steps, the waves, the promenade, the Alexandra Tower, until he was certain that Dempsey wouldn’t suddenly surface, full of piss and vinegar and tales of his adventures on the murky bed of the Mersey.

  And then Jay realised his brief companion wasn’t the only thing he’d lost; he’d lost the sailing book, too.

  Chapter 8

  His legs weighed down by the heavy, sodden fabric, Jay trudged across the small deck and ducked into the boat’s cabin. It was cramped and gloomy but it was dry and surprisingly warm. There were two small bunks and, further back, a sink, a stove and some cupboards. Jay sat on one of the bunks, elbows on knees, head in hands, and wondered just what he was going to do next.

  The idea that occupied much of the foreground of his thought was this: cut the boat loose, let it drift, see where he ended up, because anything would be better than this, better than Liverpool with its hyenas and militia. But what if he didn’t arrive anywhere? What if he floated out into the Atlantic and died a slow, painful death from dehydration?

  But what was the alternative? To return to Waterstones? What chance was there of finding another book that would enable him to sail the Jerusalem? And what about the hyenas? The place had been crawling with them when he and Dempsey had fled. What would it be like now? A nest?