Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

  They turned right, away from the lifeless television, and a steep quarter-circle of steps took them up to Great Charlotte Street and a convoy of abandoned buses, windows shattered and blood-smeared. Jay glanced right. A couple of hundred feet away, where Charlotte Street branched off from Ranelagh Street, two, three, four, five hyenas flew round the corner and into one another as if pursued or in pursuit of something that had slipped from view and gone to ground. Jay didn't think the hyenas possessed the necessary intelligence to attempt to trap them; nonetheless, he felt as if he was being surrounded.

  Jay didn't have to say anything: Ellen and Brian were already running in the opposite direction, up Elliot Street, past Saint John's Precinct with its Argos and All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet tucked beneath the Holiday Inn, toward Lime Street. Opposite them, across what used to be a busy intersection and a potential death trap to the distracted, the Victorian colonnaded arch of Lime Street Station was preternaturally still now that it had been stripped of its perpetual skirt of luggage-dragging commuters. There appeared to be some activity within, visible through the glazed gable end, but Jay was certain that was just an effect of the intricate mesh of sickle girders that supported the structure's sweeping roof.

  They followed Elliot Street round to their left and the neoclassical mass of Saint George's Hall heaved into view, beyond the wide, downward-sloping bus lanes of Saint George's Place.

  Jay could hear the sound of hyenas from behind him somewhere, muffled by distance and confused as a consequence of being bounced from building to building, until he really couldn't tell how far away they were; he couldn't even be entirely certain they were coming from behind him, for that matter. He threw a glance over his shoulder but there was no sign of any hyenas. As he returned his attention to Saint George's Place, which they were crossing now, approaching the steel tubular barrier that ran down the centre of the road, his attention was snared by the illusion of more movement from Lime Street Station, a moiré of criss-crossing girders. The illusion was more vivid this time, as if the station was seething with activity.

  And then the illusion spilled out of the station onto the broad, low steps that swept up to meet the glass gable. Fifty, sixty, seventy hyenas, swarming from the station with a sudden roar of noise, tendrils of steam rising from their scalps to create a tattered haze above them.

  Ellen and Brian turned; their faces seemed to be attempting in vain to express what Jay was feeling. His legs felt weak, almost numb. He felt as if he was on the verge of waking, of struggling up from the depths of a nightmare into a tangle of damp bed sheets and a long sigh of relief. But, no, he wasn't dreaming. They were coming. He could almost smell their collective stench, the sweat and shit and blood of them. And something inside him wanted to say 'enough', wanted to lie down in the snow, curl up in a little ball and just wait for it all to be over, but still he kept running.

  Ellen vaulted the barrier with surprising ease. Brian followed, a little less gracefully. Ellen was already springing over the low railings that were designed to keep pedestrians from wandering from the pavement into oncoming buses as Jay all but fell over the central barrier, only just managing to stay on his feet and keep moving forward. His balance was completely off by the time he reached the railings and he had to flop over, landing on his back then lurching up again.

  They were moving down Saint George's Place now, along the high-walled plinth-like structure the hall appeared to sit upon. There were two doors. The furthest, which if Jay remembered correctly led under the hall itself, was closed. The nearest, leading down to the Northern and Wirral lines and back to Lime Street Station, was open and broadcasting the snarling laughter of hyenas.

  As they neared the corner of the hall and the steps on their right leading up into Saint John's Garden, Jay chanced a look back. The hyenas had already halved the distance between themselves and their intended prey.

  Ellen had cleared the steps and Jay was about to set foot on the first of them when Brian, halfway up, slipped. His legs whipped out from beneath him and he fell backward, arms flailing, gun flying from his hand. The back of his head hit the stone steps with a noise that was almost identical to the one Jay had heard when Alice Band had punched a hole in her victim's skull. Upon impact, the Peruvian bobble hat jumped from Brian's head and flopped down to the pavement; Brian slithered down after it, a brief moan escaping his mouth, his eyes showing only whites past fluttering eyelids.

  Jay knelt down next to him, shoving his gun into his pocket but not zipping it this time. The cold bit at his knees, icy teeth drilling into the bone. He reached behind Brian's neck to lift his head and felt hot blood wrap around his hand, a liquid glove. Brian's eyes had stopped flickering now. His face looked waxy, suddenly unreal.

  Chapter 16

  Jay looped his arms under Brian's armpits. He pivoted Brian round and began dragging him up the steps.

  “Ellen!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Lanky streak of piss weighs a ton!”

  He heard Ellen’s crunching footfalls as she came up behind him.

  “Jesus,” she said. “What happened?”

  “Fell. He just fell.”

  Ellen reached round him on his left and tried to help but only succeeded in getting her feet tangled with Jay's. Jay fell, just managing to get himself clear of Brian.

  He got back on his feet and was reaching down for Brian when the first hyena, a lean youth pre-Jolt, appeared at the bottom of the steps, drooling bloody saliva almost as long as the wire from the iPod earphones still pressed into its filthy ears. Jay thought it couldn't possibly have moved so fast as to catch up with them already, then realised it hadn't been part of the Lime Street pack, it must have come from under Saint George's Hall, and how many more were behind it?

  He grabbed the shoulders of Brian's coat and began dragging him backwards through the snow. The hyena bounded up the steps and launched itself at him, its feet landing squarely on Brian's chest. Jay lost his grip and lurched backwards, landing on his backside. The hyena reared up.

  Behind Jay, a gunshot. He recognised the sound now, would never mistake it for an exploding firework again; it was a sound Jay couldn’t help but think of as somehow absorbent, as if it drew in all other sound around it. The hyena flopped to the left, eyes wide and unblinking. Jay couldn't even see where it had been shot. He turned and saw Ellen, revolver in hand, behind a haze of blue gun smoke. Her face was pale and slack, like someone who's realised too late that they're going to throw up and there isn’t a suitable receptacle to hand. He wondered if it was the first time she'd fired a gun, maybe even the first time she'd killed. Jay turned back to Brian, stooping to grab his shoulders again, and realised Ellen's expression had nothing to do with guns and killing and everything to do with the horde of hyenas coming up the steps.

  Ellen fired again, then again. Two hyenas fell, taking five or six more down with them in a tangle of limbs.

  “Run!” she shouted. “Just run. Brian's dead. Look.” She pointed to the widening red stain spreading out through the snow around Brian's head, a dark halo. “He’s fucking dead!” She looked like she was about to start crying, then her face hardened and she fired again. A hyena that had clambered over its fallen pack mates suddenly fell backwards, gargling blood, hands grasping its throat as if it was trying to choke the life from itself. “Now!” She turned and ran, toward the library, its columns and dome visible now across the breadth of the gardens, and next to it the museum, looking like its own perfectly preserved exhibit.

  Jay took one last look at Brian — he looked like a very poor waxwork — tried to convince himself he wasn't relieved, and followed Ellen, between the back of Saint George's Hall on their right and the low ballustraded wall on their left guarding an eight-foot drop before flowerbeds and lawns swept down to the road and the entrance to the Queensway tunnel. Behind him, the hyenas' din seemed to be swelling by the second. He fumbled the gun from his coat pocket and, ignoring the stitch that was beginning to gnaw at his side and the hairline cr
acks of pain that were racing up his shins, forced himself to move faster and catch up with Ellen. He wondered how she was doing it, moving so fast whilst pregnant, then realised he'd answered his own question.

  As they bolted from the gardens, Jay glanced left, down William Brown Street. He had a clear view of the tunnel now and thought he saw movement in the darkness of its downturned mouth, movement that made him think of fish darting about the bottom of a murky pond, half-shapes, shadows in shadow.

  “Oh shit,” he heard Ellen all but whisper.

  He turned his attention away from the tunnel and saw Ellen pointing at the library. The large folding wooden doors were closed.

  “Fuck the library,” said Ellen. She started to turn down William Brown Street, then stopped dead. “Shitshitshit!”

  The half-shapes and shadows had resolved themselves into a chaotic regiment of hyenas.

  Jay and Ellen turned back, to head up toward Lime Street. But there were hyenas that way, too, coming from around the side of Saint George's Hall and from London Road, beyond the dead fountain and the statue of Wellington, almost indiscernible on top of his comically high column, as if the intention had not been to celebrate him but to place him in lofty quarantine.

  “Dead,” said Jay. It was all he could say, all he could think. “Dead. Dead.”

  Ellen had the gun held out in front of her and was backing toward the library; there was really nowhere else to go. The hyenas were bursting from Saint John's Garden now, slamming into one another in their eagerness to get at their prey. Jay didn't even want to think about how many there were. More than the eight bullets they had between them.

  Ellen fired. The lead hyena lost a piece of its temple and dropped to the snow. Four more hyenas tripped on the body, sprawling forward, and still more tripped on them.

  Jay and Ellen were backing up the steps now, toward the closed doors. Ellen fired again. A hyena that had been climbing over the low stone wall, sagged, as if abruptly drained of all energy, then flopped to the ground face first.

  “Start shooting, for fuck's sake!” she shouted.

  Jay trained his gun on the nearest hyena, almost at the wall, one of four frontrunners. He pulled the trigger. It surprised him, how little effort was required. He'd expected there to be some resistance but there was none. The report didn't seem as loud with the gun held out ahead of him and, instead of the vicious recoil he'd been anticipating, the barrel just lifted an inch or so, as if a brief but firm wind had got under it. A small black hole that put Jay in mind of the opening of a pencil sharpener appeared beneath the hyena's left eye and something like dark powder puffed out from behind its head. It slowed, took another two steps, limp and uncertain, as if they were its first, then dropped onto all fours before falling flat, its arms trapped beneath its body, its legs still pedalling weakly, kicking up decreasing quantities of snow.

  Two of the other frontrunners tripped over the dying hyena and pitched forward into the snow. The fourth, bearded and scrawny, glibly sidestepped its fallen pack mates and closed in on Jay.

  He fired, aiming at its head. He wasn't sure if he'd missed or had hit the thing somewhere it didn't count but it kept coming, less than ten feet away now. He fired again, lowering his aim to its chest this time. He couldn't see where he'd hit it but it stopped advancing, performed a brief, jerky dance and fell.

  The rest of the pack had caught up now.

  Ellen fired her last bullet. Somewhere near the centre of the mass of steaming bodies, a hyena dropped from sight and several more went down with it.

  A hyena that looked like it had been a professional rugby player pre-Jolt bounded over the low wall. Jay shot at it whilst it was in mid-air. A blackish spray told him he'd hit the top of its lowered head. It continued to travel through the air, landing at the foot of the steps and immediately staining the snow a vivid red.

  Three hyenas jumped up onto the wall, one after the other. They panted through grins that looked painfully wide.

  Jay thought he shot the tallest of the three in the chest, and it fell back off the wall, landing on the advancing horde and taking down as many as eight of its pack mates.

  He carried on pulling the trigger three, four, five times, hoping that the useless click would miraculously transform into a deafening crack but knowing it wouldn't, knowing that it was over and he was dead, Ellen was dead and the Jerusalem was going nowhere, and suddenly wishing he'd told the others, told Dave and Kavi and Simon and Phil and Joe where the boat was moored and hoping they'd find it anyway.

  Before

  “It's Alan Bates,” said Jason's dad.

  They were sat on a bench in Sefton Park. The water sparkled, as if bioluminescent fish were playing close to the surface. Swans, geese, ducks, moorhens and coots were fighting over the chunks of bread father and son had half-heartedly cast onto the water.

  “Who?” said Jason, although the name was familiar. He turned the cassette over in his hands and mustered the most dismissive expression his fourteen year-old face could accommodate.

  The painting on the card insert was Blake’s God Judging Adam. God on his throne of fire pointing an accusing finger at a submissive Adam, whose straggly hair and beard draped from his stooping head. Jason had seen it before in one of his dad's books. He used to look at his dad's books all the time, thinking, hoping, that somehow the tangle of tiny shapes on the page would suddenly lose their similarity to dense, twisted hawthorn and resolve themselves into words. They never did, though, and he always just ended up looking at the pictures.

  “It's William Blake,” said his dad. “Alan Bates reads the poems. He's an actor. Great voice. Whistle Down the Wind? No?”

  Jason shrugged, although he'd seen the film only six or seven months ago. He’d enjoyed it and the girl in it (he couldn’t remember her name) had reminded him of a girl he liked in school, and when the man had said “Why are you helping me?” and she’d said, “Because we love you,” he’d had to fight back tears and was relieved his dad had been busy marking school books in the kitchen.

  “Never mind,” said his dad, in his best 'kids, these days' voice. “Anyway, I thought you might like to listen to them. Remember when I used to read them to you when you were a kid? You used to love the Songs of Innocence. But then you got a bit old for, you know, bedtime stories. So, I thought you deserved to hear them read by a professional instead of a bad cover version by a dreary, old Scouser like me.”

  Jason shrugged, but when his dad flinched a little, he said, “Okay, I'll give it a go.”

  “Great. You won't regret it. How's things at school?”

  It was Jason's turn to flinch. His dad was about to tell him to forget he'd asked when Jason said, “The same. Surrounded by freaks and zombies.”

  His dad was about to give him The Importance of Kindness lecture when he saw a look on his son's face that indicated a hardened weariness that, for a moment, made him feel like he was the child and Jason the battle-scarred veteran of life. He didn't like that feeling, didn't really know what to make of it.

  “I don't know what to say to you, son. I don't know what to do. Just keep going and something will turn up, something will happen. I wish I could offer you more than that, I really do. Christ, I'm your dad, I'm supposed to heft you up onto my shoulders and carry you to safety. But this Thing... it's everywhere. Nowhere’s safe.”

  Jason could see that his dad was close to tears and he wished there was something he could say, something he could do, but there was nothing.

  “Something'll turn up,” he said.

  “Yeah. Something.”

  “When you least expect it and you’ve given up hope.”

  Chapter 17

  Jay’s heart was beating so hard he almost didn't hear the clunk behind him. He turned to the source of the sound, keeping the empty pistol pointed at the advancing hyenas, still pulling the trigger, and he saw that the door had slid open a couple of feet and Darth Vader was stepping out onto the snow. Except it wasn't Darth Vader, it was a samurai
. Or someone wearing a samurai helmet and, from the waist up, armour. Below the waist were grubby jeans and Converse boots. The half-samurai was holding a Japanese sword in two hands above his head. He rushed past Ellen and Jay (and Jay was somehow relieved to see that Ellen was clicking her empty revolver at the hyenas, too), shouting, “Get in for fuck's sake!”

  Ellen didn't need to be told twice; she plunged through the gap. Jay followed, still clicking the gun even though it was no longer pointed at the hyenas. As soon as he was through the door, he turned in time to see the half-samurai backing toward him, sword sweeping out ahead of him in blurred arcs, accompanied by a high, thin swoosh that pricked painfully at Jay’s ear drums. There were four hyenas at the half-samurai’s feet, all pumping improbable quantities of blood from gaping wounds. The rest of the hyenas, whilst still advancing, were doing so with noticeable hesitancy. And Jay thought, they don't understand the gun, it's too complex, too far removed from the injuries it inflicts, but the sword is simple, they know what it is, what it can do, cause and effect. One hyena in school ma'am-ish attire and still sporting, against all the odds, a reasonably neat bun, lunged toward the samurai. The sword blurred and the hyena's left arm was hanging on by threads; of flesh or fabric, it was impossible to tell which. It let out a shriek that still had something of laughter about it and folded down into an expanding pool of its own blood. And then Jay had to step back as the samurai reversed through the gap, let his sword clatter to the floor, slid the heavy door shut and rammed brass bolts down into the stone floor and into the brass-plated beam above. The door began to rattle immediately as several hyenas, certain once more, now that the sword was out of sight and doubtless out of mind, slammed against it.

  “What the fuck was I thinking, saving you?” said the samurai. “I could have been killed.”