Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

He couldn’t think. The pains, utterly different from one another, in his fingers, elbow and shoulder joint were a constant distraction, and dread had settled in his belly like the beginnings of food poisoning. And what thoughts he could summon were swirling round his head like snowflakes, colliding with one another, no help at all.

  He shook himself free of his backpack, brought it round in front of him and set it between his feet. He flipped open the lid and took out his Discman. He put in the earphones and pressed ‘play’.

  A man’s voice, Liverpudlian, soft and deep:

  “What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all that a man hath: his house, his wife, his children. Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy and in the withered field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain...”

  Jay listened for a few more minutes and felt his head begin to clear. And then he remembered there was another Waterstones, in Liverpool One, just a three minute walk from where he’d been cooped up for five weeks. He wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him sooner, but he knew the answer before the question was fully formed. He hadn’t liked the new Waterstones. With its escalators and over-sized coffee shop and too many computer terminals, it hadn’t felt right, hadn’t felt like a bookshop at all. He’d been there once only and, unimpressed, had pledged his allegiance to the older Waterstones on Bold Street.

  He stopped the Discman and took out the earphones.

  He didn’t want to go back, back to where the hyenas were skulking, but he knew he had no choice, and knowing he had no choice, he decided he wouldn’t think about choices anymore, or consequences. He would just get on with it, because he imagined that was how Dempsey had survived. How Dempsey had survived before he’d had the misfortune of encountering Jay, anyway.

  He searched the cupboards above the bunks until he found a first aid kit. He bandaged his bleeding fingers, cleaned his cuts and scrapes with cotton wool and witch hazel, then popped four ibuprofen. There were clothes in the cupboards, too: socks, boxer shorts, t-shirts, black canvas trousers and a thick, woollen, navy-blue jumper. He changed quickly, eager to be free of his icy, saturated pants. The borrowed clothes fit well enough, considering, and had been washed in some kind of floral conditioner, the soothing smell of which almost brought him to tears.

  He rifled through a drawer near the stove and found two knives. One, a small paring knife, he put in a side pocket of his pack. The other, a good seven inches of stainless steel blade and a heavy-duty rubber handle, he placed on one of the bunks.

  He re-shouldered the pack, picked up the knife, trying to ignore the trembling of his hand, trying to attribute it to the cold, and left.

  It wasn’t until he was halfway back along Princes Parade, following his and Dempsey’s backwards footprints, that he realised it had finally stopped snowing, and he wondered if things were looking up, perhaps.

  He recalled Dempsey’s instructions in Waterstones and counted his steps, stopping at every fiftieth step to turn on the spot, scanning for hyenas.

  He skirted round the Liver Building, crossed The Strand, weaving in between abandoned vehicles, and headed up Water Street. Every now and then, Jay spotted evidence that Dempsey had passed by: splashes of red; and each time, he wondered if he’d made the right decision, leaving the boat.

  As he passed the NatWest on Castle Street, he noticed that the hand that had sat, crablike, on the keypad of one of the cash machines was gone. A hot pulse of nausea surged up from his gut and he realised that the thought of someone or something taking the hand was more disturbing by far than the severed hand itself. He scanned about for hyenas, without stopping or slowing, turning as he moved, suddenly convinced that whatever had claimed the hand was still around, quite possibly watching him right now from a doorway or from behind a snow-covered car. He was wondering if the hand had been taken by one of the seagulls, wheeling overhead, come out of hiding now that the snow had stopped falling, when he tripped over his own feet and fell. The knife jumped from his hand and skittered ten feet across the crust of frozen snow, spinning.

  Jay got up, dusted himself down and walked over to the knife. It was still spinning and he remembered an empty cider bottle doing the same thing toward the end of a party at Natalie Keegan’s house when he was fifteen years old. He waited for the knife to stop spinning. At the party, the bottle had pointed at Jenny Lasseter and she’d kissed him hard, pushing her hot tongue deep into his mouth and running her fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair. She’d tasted of cherry bakewell. Excitement had risen in him so suddenly, he’d felt sick and dizzy, as if he was on a speeding, out-of-control rollercoaster. Here, now, the knife pointed across the road, at a newsagent. Behind the plate glass, between advertisements for Lotto and the Liverpool Echo, a hyena dropped the shredded remains of a magazine, spat a wad of pulp from its mouth and threw itself against the window. A dull chime rang out.

  Jay scooped up the knife and ran.

  Another dull chime. Then another. He was halfway down Castle Street, passing the old Cooperative Bank building, with alternating floors of red and yellow sandstone and its verdigrised onion dome, when he heard the newsagent’s window shatter.

  He couldn’t help but look back. The hyena, clad all in black — black jeans, heavy black boots, black t-shirt — its face and hands bright with blood, was picking itself up off the pavement, mad eyes fixed on Jay. It cut diagonally across the street toward him, vaulting from the bonnet of a windowless, snow-filled Fiesta.

  Jay crossed in the opposite direction, angling away from the hyena, toward Cook Street. He risked a backward glance. The hyena tried to change direction, but too abruptly, and it lost its footing. It fell back, its head hitting the ground with a crunch that might have been lethal had it not been for the relative softness of the snow. It lurched back to its feet almost immediately but appeared disorientated from the impact, scouring the vicinity for its quarry.

  Jay, spurred on by this crumb of good fortune, picked up the pace and turned on to Cook Street. Halfway down, he threw a glance over his shoulder. The hyena was still coming. As Cook Street became Victoria Street at the junction with North John Street, Jay took a right then cut across toward Mathew Street, aiming to break the hyena’s line of sight, just for a second or two, and give it the slip. A quick backward glance told him he had failed and, at that moment, a stitch like a brutal stab wound tore through his left side and he let out something very much like a whimper.

  He considered going down Mathew Street, cutting through Cavern Walks, but what if that was a dead end? What if there were more hyenas in there, skulking amongst the Vivienne Westwoods, Roberto Calvallis and Diors? Then he remembered the next street along, Harrington Street, had a little side street breaking off it, about halfway down.

  He passed the Hard Day’s Night Hotel, with its gleaming granite pillars and huge Beatles faces in the windows, then turned onto Harrington Street. It wasn’t much more than a glorified back alley, a place for deliveries and rubbish collections that sliced British Home Stores in two. Above the street, at first floor level, a glass walkway reconnected the two halves of the department store. Jay could see the side street on the right, about a hundred and fifty feet away.

  The pain in his side was approaching unbearable, as if something hot and jagged was sinking deep into his muscle, rotating slowly as it went. He didn’t look back now, despite the almost overwhelming urge to do so. He could hear the hyena, its crunching footfalls and rasping breath. He willed his legs to move faster. His thigh and calf muscles burned and a rusty blade seemed to saw into his shinbones, but he felt himself speed up.

  He turned onto the side street so fast that he slammed into a shuttered door then pinballed diagonally into the opposite wall. But he didn’t stop moving. Above him, pigeons clattered skyward. He knew the hyena would have seen him change direction but he was praying that he would make it to the opening onto Lord Street, a hundred or so feet awa
y, before it re-established its line of sight. Then — please, God — he could wrong-foot it and duck into a shop, stay quiet, stay still, be safe. And if he didn’t manage to outsmart the hyena, he knew, knife or no knife, he’d have no energy left for the fight; he’d just fall to his knees, close his eyes and wait for the inevitable.

  As he flew out onto Lord Street, he looked back. No hyena. He attempted a sharp right but the manoeuvre was too ambitious by far and suddenly he was rolling across the snow, feeling like a cowboy who has just leapt from a moving train in some old western. On the third or fourth roll, he sprung up, amazed to find himself still gripping the knife, momentarily considering the possibility that he might have stabbed himself but probably wouldn’t know about it until his adrenalin levels had dropped back to something like normal. He turned to face the side street and, as he heard the hyena slam into the metal shutter at the other end, he thanked God that momentum had carried him over to the right and hadn’t left him in full view of his pursuer.

  He only had a few seconds to find a hiding place. Right in front of him was an open door and a narrow staircase leading up to a gloomy landing. A neatly scripted menu on a blackboard accompanied by cartoonish illustrations of sandwiches, bowls of soup and slices of quiche, told him that the stairs led up to a cafe. He darted in, turned to close the door, then saw the frozen drift of snow, about a foot deep, occupying the threshold and realised he wouldn’t have time. He bolted up the stairs. The pain in his side was suddenly too much and as soon as he reached the landing he fell onto all fours, crawled out of sight and, shrugging off his pack, rolled onto his back, trying to gasp for breath as quietly as possible.

  A few seconds later, he heard the hyena burst from the side street, snarling and panting. For what felt like a full minute but was probably just a few seconds, he heard it turning on the spot, then, unable to locate its prey, it let out a strangled shriek of frustration and set off down Lord Street toward Whitechapel.

  Jay waited until he couldn’t hear its panting or snarling or crunching footfalls or anything that might be construed, even loosely, as panting, snarling or crunching footfalls, before getting to his feet. Even then, he peered around the newel post and down the stairs, a substantial part of him convinced he’d see the hyena framed by the doorway, laughing silently, its shoulders bouncing up and down. But there was no hyena.

  He gave it another minute.

  He was about to set off, when it occurred to him that he was planning to embark on a sea voyage that might, given his novice status, take a lot longer than it ought to and he wasn’t sure how much, if any, food was squirreled away on the Jerusalem. He was almost certain that Dempsey would have taken care of that side of things, but still, here he was standing in a cafe. He could stock up on a few supplies and pretend it had nothing to do with the fact that he was more than a little reluctant to venture outside again.

  He looked around. The landing where he stood formed a red-carpeted T with the stairs. There was a doorway at each end. The door to his right was open, revealing a dining lounge in some disarray. Cutlery, crockery (most of it broken) and trampled food covered the floor. Some of the tables and chairs were overturned. A pair of bare legs, horribly bruised, extended out from beneath one of the fallen tables; nearby, a pair of shredded and bloodied jeans seemed eager to create a narrative that Jay refused to think about.

  The door to his left, a plywood panelled affair, painted white, was closed. Shouldering his backpack, Jay walked to the door. He put an ear to it and held his breath, but all he could hear was his own speeding heartbeat. He grasped the brass-effect doorknob, at the same time tightening his grip on the rubberised handle of the knife, and pushed the door open a couple of inches with his foot. He braced himself to run at the slightest sound, at even a hint of growl or a giggle, but he heard nothing. He pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped back, the knife held out in front of him in what he hoped was a threatening manner. Again, nothing.

  In front of him was a serving counter, with a till, menus, napkins and a small wicker basket that contained a few pounds worth of tips. To his right was the dining area, windows overlooking Lord Street and the Barclays Bank opposite. To his left was a narrow corridor ending in a brick wall painted white. There were two doors set in the right-hand wall. A brass sign jutting out from the furthest door told him it was a toilet. The nearest door, Jay assumed, had to be the kitchen.

  He repeated the same tentative two-part process with the kitchen door: tap it open a couple of inches, wait, then kick it wide and step back, knife at the ready. There were no hyenas but, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by pans, utensils, swags of kitchen towel and improbable quantities of various dried pastas, was a man lying flat on his back, milky eyes glaring up at the grease-spotted ceiling. His lower jaw had been ripped off and was sitting on his chest in precisely the spot where a paperback book might rest during a break in a beach read. In one hand was gripped a dry-blood-streaked kitchen knife.

  Jay retched, once, twice, three times and turned away, pulling his scarf up over his mouth and nose. There was no real smell of decay — it was far too cold for that — but there was an insistent sour tang that wormed its way down the back of his throat.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. Another dry retch. “Just get some food and fuck off.”

  He scuttled around the body to a counter on the far side of the kitchen, with cupboards above and below. He stood his backpack on the counter and went through the cupboards as quickly as possible, just letting anything he didn’t want fall to the floor and feeling, despite everything, like a lawbreaker about to be caught in the act. He grabbed crisps, a bag of sultanas, a packet of Rich Tea biscuits, bread sticks, a couple of tins of peaches and a jar of Marmite, stuffing them all into his backpack. Once it was full, he shouldered the pack and turned to the door.

  The hyena, face and hands still bloody from its encounter with the plate glass window, was crouched at the threshold grinning, and Jay realised he’d left the knife on the counter behind him.

  Chapter 9

  Still grinning, the hyena hopped forward, for all the world acting like a child pretending to be a frog. It didn’t take its eyes off Jay for a second. It didn’t even blink.

  Jay shuffled backwards, toward the counter and the knife. The hyena hopped forward until it was an inch away from the jawless corpse. It looked at the dead man, looked at Jay then barked laughter.

  “Look,” said Jay, holding his hands up, palms out, like someone confronted by a mugger, someone confronted by a more rational stripe of violence. “Look, just, I don’t know, just, you know, don’t.”

  As he spoke, the hyena’s eyes darted about, seeming to follow something that was moving around Jay’s head, a fly perhaps, though Jay could hear no such thing. Or maybe it was simply fascinated by Jay’s breath as it condensed in the cold air around him, a brief, crumbling white lace. Abruptly, it lost interest in water vapour or the flight of the silent whatever-it-was and leapt.

  It struck Jay headfirst in the stomach. Winded, Jay staggered back until he felt the counter against his spine. He reached behind him, patting the worktop, in search of the knife but finding only crumbs and grease. The hyena, back on all fours now, displayed scaly teeth, and launched itself at Jay once more. Jay tried to sidestep the attack but his feet slid in a puddle of what looked like Branston Pickle and he hardly moved at all. The hyena’s shoulder slammed into Jay’s chest and his back arched until his head struck the cupboards above. The hyena hopped back a step then clawed at him with bloodied hands. Jay raised his arms to fend off the assault and heard his coat tear as long nails raked into the fabric. He kicked out at the hyena but twice it leapt back, avoiding the blow, then lunged forward again and renewed its attack. On the third attempt, the heel of his boot connected with the hyena’s knee and it let out a yelp of pain and scuttled back a few feet, out of reach.

  Before it could recover, Jay bolted for the door, knowing he wouldn’t make it and even if he did, then what? It w
ould get him in the corridor or on the stairs or out on Lord Street.

  Jay didn’t even make it to the door. He tripped on the jawless corpse’s outstretched arm, falling to his knees next to the sour-smelling body.

  The hyena laughed.

  Jay snatched at the knife in the dead man’s hand and clawed it free. He heard the hyena grunt as it leapt, could sense it in the air above him. He flipped onto his back, his pack propping him up, like an extra pillow for an infirm loved one. He thrust the knife out above him in both hands.

  The blade slipped into the hyena’s chest with such ease it was as if there was already a perfectly sized slot there just waiting to house it. A mist of blood speckled Jay’s face and then the hyena’s dead weight hit him. His arms buckled and the stinking thing was on top of him, gushing hot blood over his hands and down his wrists. Jay tried to push it off him, but it was too heavy and he had to content himself with heaving it a little to one side and scuttling out from underneath it. He kept scuttling until his back struck the cupboards he’d ransacked less than a minute ago.

  He looked down at his hands. They were gloved in blood and shaking so badly they were almost a blur. A vivid red blur. His heart was beating so fast he experienced it as a tight rippling throughout his entire body.

  The hyena was lying on its side. Now that it was dead, it didn’t look like a hyena anymore. It looked like what it was: a dead person. And Jay realised for the first time that, prior to the Jolt, this particular hyena had been a girl, no older than nineteen or twenty. She was short and slight with close-cropped black hair. She wore a black t-shirt with the words ‘It only hurts because it’s true’ printed in a bold, white san serif just above the almost imperceptible curve of her breasts. Everything about her was small and delicate, except her jaw which was strong and jutted out in a way that, in life, would have made her seem perpetually confrontational even when she as just minding her own business. Jay felt certain that her smile would have been pretty spectacular, a light-up-the-room affair that would have made people realise they had her all wrong. He imagined she liked to cause trouble, to stir things up, all in the name of fun. Probably, she was a colossal pain in the arse, incapable of learning the difference between enough and too much. She was fierce and honest and infuriatingly likeable. And she was just a little girl. And he had killed her. He had pushed a knife into her chest and through her heart.