“Cardamom, fennel and ginger,” he said, tapping the lid of the box. “The secret to a really great cup of tea. You should try it. You won't look back, I promise you.”
“Okay,” said Jay.
“Pass me your cup. I'll make ours, you can make that muck the rest of them drink.”
While Jay went about making the drinks, Kavi reminding him of who was having what and how, Simon appeared, moving into the corner of the kitchen, facing them, arms folded.
“So, Jay, what do you think happened? You know, The End. What caused it?”
Jay shrugged. “I don't know.”
“Most of them think it was either some kind of act of God sort of thing or something to do with that NASA malarkey, sending a signal into that black hole and whatnot. Dave thinks it was like a virus or something but that's bollocks because it happened to everyone at once and why would people who can't read or write be immune? Makes no sense. Act of God? Well, I don't believe in God for a start.”
“Doesn't mean it wasn't an act of God,” said Kavi. “God doesn't require your belief in order to act, Simon. And if he decided the human race had run its course, well, that's that, then.”
“So, Jay,” said Simon, ignoring Kavi. “Your theory, what is it?”
“I don't have one but it has to mean something, doesn't it, none of us being able to read or write? I mean the fact that we've survived should tell us why everyone else died, shouldn't it?”
“Suppose so,” said Simon. “I used to stutter like a bastard, words stuck somewhere between my brain and my lips and then fuck suddenly it's like someone shook me until all the words came loose. Sometimes I just can't stop talking. Drives Dave mental.”
“Not just Dave,” said Kavi, a smile in his voice as he pounded fennel seeds and cardamom pods with a mortar and pestle.
When the coffee and teas were made, Simon and Kavi helped Jay take it through to the others. The books Brian had pillaged had been handed round. Dave was reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Jay found this surprising but couldn't say why.
“So,” said Phil, taking a sip of his tea. “About this boat, then.”
“It's not far from the Pier Head,” said Jay. He took a sip of his own tea. His eyes widened a little at the barrage of flavours: the perfume of the cardamom, the sweetness of the fennel and the heat of the ginger. Then he realised he was still holding Ellen's tea in his other hand. “I'll just take this through to, er...”
“Ellen,” said Brian.
Jay hadn't forgotten her name but it had just seemed inappropriate somehow, a little silly even, that he should be seen to have remembered it.
“Yeah, Ellen,” he said.
As he made his way out of the room, Dave shouted after him, “Tell her we need to make a decision about this boat of yours and I wouldn't want to be called sexist on top of everything else for leaving her out of the discussion.”
“Like you'd fucking dare,” said Joe.
Brian grinned. “We're all a bit scared of Ellen,” he said to Jay. “She takes no shit.”
Jay walked across the waiting area to the door he'd seen Ellen walk through after she'd taken him to the kitchen. The door was closed. He placed his own cup on a small side table next to an armchair and knocked gently on the door. There was no response so, a few seconds later, he knocked again, a little harder.
“Yeah.”
“Tea,” said Jay.
“Come in.”
Jay pushed open the door. Ellen was mostly hidden behind a large canvas that was balanced on a makeshift easel cobbled together from a random collection of wood. The window behind her offered a view of the back alley where Jay and Brian had waited for Dave to let them in. There were canvases all around the room, at least fifteen of them. About half were turned away, the rest displayed permutations on the same subject: a hyena in a variety of poses rendered in violent strokes of thick, black oil paint; the images looked less painted onto the surface of the canvas than as if the canvas had been clawed and shredded to reveal a rich, almost liquid blackness beneath. Swarming around the head of a hyena in one painting was a cloud of words that the hyena appeared to be swiping at, as if trying to dispel or capture the swirling characters, it was impossible to say which. As Jay peered closer, he saw that the swarming words were composed from no alphabet he recognised.
“Is that what they see when we talk, do you think?” said Jay walking over to Ellen and handing her the tea.
Ellen took the tea and said nothing, just continued to jab at the canvas.
“There was this hyena,” said Jay. “A couple of hours ago. When I shouted at her, at it I mean, to get back, it's eyes were darting all over the place and I thought it was my breath it was looking at because it was so cold, you know, but maybe it wasn't, maybe it was the words she, I mean it, was looking at. Like in your painting. Is that what you think? Have you seen them do that? Is that why you painted it like that?”
Ellen levelled a stare at Jay, took a sip of tea, then said, “Fuck's sake, you talk more than Brian and Simon put together. But you make a fairly decent cup of tea.”
“Thanks. Were you an artist before the Jolt, before this all kicked off?”
“Was. Still am. This shit changes nothing. And when someone tells you talk too much, it can be taken pretty much as read that they want you to be quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“Don't take it personally. I love painting, and people generally get right on my tits, so when a person interrupts the painting, well, you know, it’s like a double whammy of annoyingness.”
“Fair enough.” Jay smiled.
Ellen took another sip of tea, jabbed the painting a few more times, then glanced at Jay.
“You're still here. I mean, you're not talking so that's a point in your favour, but you're still, you know, here.”
“Erm, Dave, is it? He said we were going to discuss the boat situation and you'd be pissed off if you weren't invited.”
Ellen sighed and put down her brush.
“Alright. Lead the way, Jason.”
Back in what Jay had already come to think of as the reading room, a silence had descended, interrupted only by the occasional susurrus of pages being turned.
Dave glanced up from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
“So, Ellen, about this boat. What should we do?”
“Do?” said Phil. “What can we do? It's a sailing boat and none of us, including the boat's current owner know how to sail. What's to discuss? It's a nonstarter.”
“Agreed,” said Simon.
“We could get a book,” said Brian. “That's what Jay was doing.”
“From where?” said Dave. “Waterstones, Liverpool One, is just a scorched carcass and the Bold Street branch is full of those fucking...”
“Hyenas.”
“Zombies.”
“Twats.”
“Whatever you want to call them,” Dave finished.
“There must be other book shops,” said Kavi. “What about Blackwells, up by the University.”
“Mostly for students,” said Joe. “If it isn't on some syllabus or other, you won't find it there.”
“And how would you fucking know?” said Dave. “You were functionally illiterate up until a few weeks ago. Just like the rest of us.”
“Mate of mine was studying architecture at John Moore's. Functionally illiterate I may have been back in the real world, but I used to associate with a better class of person than you fucking dunderheads.”
“What about second-hand book shops?” said Brian. “There's a few of them. Oxfam further up Bold Street.”
“There was only one sailing book in Waterstones,” said Jay. “I don't fancy our chances in a second-hand book shop.”
“That's that, then,” said Phil.
“That's that,” said Simon.
“There must be somewhere,” said Brian, looking at Jay. “Didn't you have a Plan B?”
“I don't think he had much of a Plan A,” said Dave.
“What
about,” Kavi began. Then, “No, it closed down a couple of years ago.”
“They all closed down except for Waterstones,” said Phil. “All the little independents went to the wall.”
“What about W.H.Smiths?” said Brian.
“Great,” said Joe. “If you want a magazine, a pen or a fucking toner cartridge.”
“They had some books,” said Brian. Then very doubtfully, “Didn't they?”
“That's that, then,” said Phil with the impatience of someone who thought the discussion was over a while ago or even before it began.
Jay saw Ellen shake her head in mock despair.
“What?” he said.
“The library?” she said. “William Brown Street. I imagine there's quite a few books in there. One or two about sailing, even.”
“The library,” said Brian. “Fucking hell, yeah. Why didn't I think of that?”
“I could answer that, Brian, but I wouldn’t want to shit all over your feelings,” said Ellen.
Phil huffed and rolled his eyes, suddenly childlike despite the whiteness of his beard and hair.
“Boat or no boat, book or no book, I don't see why we'd want to leave here, anyway,” he said. “We just need to wait out the winter. The cold will kill off the Twats but hopefully not before they've killed off Pepper and his pals, or at least drastically thinned their numbers.”
“I'm with Phil,” said Simon.
“Come the spring it'll be a new beginning for all of us,” Phil continued. “Until then, we just need to sit tight. Use your heads, people, for fuck's sake.”
Jay didn't realise he'd emitted a little snort until all eyes were on him.
“You don't agree,” said Phil
Jay licked suddenly dry lips.
“Well,” he said, his voice a little high and uneven. He coughed to steady his nerves.
“Do you want to wash that blood off your face before you carry on?” said Phil.
Jay wasn't sure whether Phil was being sarcastic or patronising, or which of the two was worse. But the thought of the blood on his face and how it had got there, of Hello Kitty, seemed to fill him with something like resolve. He wondered at first if it was the fact that he had killed, been blooded, that was making him feel as if he didn't have to take being talked down to, that he had proved himself. But then he realised it was precisely the opposite: he didn't want to have to kill again and whilst he was in Liverpool with its hyenas and militia he would very likely have no choice in the matter if he wanted to survive.
“I'll wash it off in a minute,” he said. “When I’ve said what I need to say.” He paused as he tried to recall Dempsey’s words. “If you think you can stay in your foxhole and wait for the cold to kill off all the hyenas or jokers or zombies or whatever you want to call them, you can think again because it 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; the rats’ll having a fucking field day. It’s going to be like something out of the middle ages. We have to get out of the city. Find somewhere less populated, somewhere open. Somewhere we can fish and grow food. There really isn’t any alternative. Well, not one that isn’t suicide of one form or another.”
“Where did you have in mind?” said Ellen.
“I was thinking we could go south, where it’s warmer. Through the Menai Strait to Bardsey Island, then on to Ramsey Island, then Lundy and then the Scilly Isles. Take it in little steps until we’ve got the hang of it. We could even keep going: Spain, Portugal, through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Med. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds but it felt like longer to Jay. He was almost certain he was about to be assailed by waves of laughter and accusations of very obviously having appropriated someone else’s ideas and rhetoric.
“Well, I'm with you,” said Ellen. “I've always said, the first chance I get, I'm gone. Can't have my baby here. And in a couple of months I won’t be able to fucking move, so it’s now or never.”
“I'm with you,” said Brian, to Jay or Ellen, it wasn’t clear.
“And me.” Joe.
“Alright,” said Dave with a reluctance that Jay thought was largely for show. “Count me in. I can't leave you in the hands of this bunch of inepts, can I, Ellen?”
“True,” said Ellen, and Jay really couldn't tell if she was joking or not.
Simon rolled his eyes, “You've got to be having a laugh,” he said. “Just because he says it'll be worse after the thaw doesn't mean it will be. What makes him such a fucking expert. I say we sit tight. Right, Phil?”
Phil had been looking up at the ceiling throughout Jay's speech and since. He let loose a long sigh.
“No, Simon,” he said, turning his attention to Jay. “He's right. I mean, the cold hasn't killed them off yet, has it? And survival of the fittest? Well, there’s no arguing with that, is there? I might not believe every word this lad says but there's no arguing with basic Darwinism.”
“Well, I'm not staying here on my own, am I?” muttered Simon. “But don't blame me if we all get drowned.”
“After we've drowned, Simon,” said Dave, “we promise to keep our opinions to ourselves.” He stood up. “Right. Me, Simon and Kavi will take a trip to Tesco, stock up on dried foodstuffs and bottled water. Phil and Joe, you're doing Boots, Castle Street. Baby stuff. Formula, nappies, bottles, clothes. Fill a couple of bin bags. Plus medicines, anything you can grab, especially pain killers and antibiotics. Ellen, Jay and Brian can do the library, get that book. Don't mean to patronise you on the basis of you being pregnant, Ellen, but the library's the soft option and, well, you know, you are pregnant, aren’t you? Jay, you have to go to the library. You're the only one who knows what the boat looks like.”
“Fine by me,” said Ellen. “I'm not looking to prove anything.”
“Why am I going to the library?” said Brian.
“You'll be keeping an eye on our newest member, making sure he doesn't pull a fast one. Besides, you can't shoot for shit and you fight like a fucking girl. Just watch out for paper cuts, eh?”
“Cheeky bastard,” said Brian. “I can handle myself.”
There was an outbreak of undisguised mirth.
“We leave here in thirty,” Dave continued, “and meet up at the boat one hour later. That should be more than enough time to get our respective shit together.” He turned to Jay. “So, where's this boat of yours, then?”
“We'll meet by the Liver Building,” said Jay. “I'll take you from there.”
“Fuck sake,” said Simon. “He still doesn't trust us.”
“He's got his head screwed on, that's all,” said Dave. “I wouldn't fucking tell us, either. I mean, look at us, a right bunch of shady bastards. Alright, Jay, Liver Building it is.” He clapped his hands. “Get your tea down your necks folks. Pee if you have to. We need to dress for the weather, arm up and fuck off. Thirty minutes. Let's go!”
Jay drained the remainder of his tea and took his cup to the kitchen. He didn't even realise Brian had followed him until he turned around to leave the kitchen.
“To be honest, I was a bit relieved to get library duty,” he said.
“Me too,” said Jay but something very much like dread felt like a cold dead weight in his gut and he had no idea why.
Chapter 14
Jay just nodded when Dave handed him the pistol. He didn't want to admit to anyone that he didn't like the feel of it in his hand, the weight and mass of the thing. It was only a small gun, identical to the one Brian had tried to shoot him with about an hour ago, and perhaps that was why it didn't feel right: it was too small to feel so heavy, so dense.
Dave handed them out, one each, from a wooden crate as they stood around a boardroom table, coats on, packs on and otherwise ready to go.
“You've got five bullets each. That's all we ha
d left. I've divvied them up evenly, except for Ellen, you've got six.”
“Sexist little get,” said Ellen, as she shoved Childbirth Without Fear and Ina May’s Guide to Natural Childbirth into her backpack.
Dave smiled and carried on. “Don't pull the trigger unless you know it's going to count. Five bullets will be gone in no time. Don't go for the head, go for the chest. It's easier to hit and it'll stop whatever you’re shooting at in its tracks. Probably.”
“Where did they come from?” said Jay.
“The guns?” said Dave. “Pepper. I grabbed a load before I got the fuck out of there.”
“You were in the militia?”
“Yeah. Anyway, shut the fuck up. The past is just that—past — and of no fucking use to anyone.” He tucked his gun in the waistband of his pants and zipped up his coat. “Simon, Kavi, let's go. I'll see the rest of you in one hour. Best of luck. And if anyone doesn't make it, don't worry about it. They were probably too stupid to live.”
Dave, Simon and Kavi left. Everyone else busied themselves donning gloves, hats and scarves. Jay tried to mimic Dave and put his gun down the waistband of his pants but found it was more difficult than it looked. Instead, he put it in his coat pocket, wondering if Dave's stint in Walton prison had been for armed robbery; he certainly seemed at ease with firearms.
Ellen and Brian seemed content to keep their guns in their hands.
Phil and Joe were next to leave.
“No matter how tempting it may be,” Joe said to Ellen as he passed through the door, “try not to shoot Brian.”
Ellen laughed and Brian rolled his eyes and flicked two fingers at him.
“Why don’t we all just stick together?” asked Jay, once Phil and Joe had left. “You know, safety in numbers?”
“You’d think,” said Ellen. “But it doesn’t work out that way.”
“Yeah,” said Brian, trying and failing to spin his revolver like a gunslinger. “Big numbers attract attention, from zombies and the militia both, but mostly the zombies. Don’t know why, but it’s like they can sense larger groups. They just home in, like flies to shit.”
“Come on,” said Ellen. “Let's get this over with.”
Hyenas Page 8
