He took off his helmet with a grunt of relief. He looked about fifty, with black hair that was losing the battle against the grey and a beard that had surrendered long ago. Small round spectacles slightly magnified pale blue eyes.
“I'm Robert, by the way. Not Rob, Bob, Robbie or Bobby. Robert. I saved your lives, so don’t piss about with my name. You owe me that much.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed at the lenses with a paper tissue.
“Jay.”
“Ellen.” The name was accompanied by a hiss of pain.
Jay turned to see Ellen bent as double as her pregnancy would allow, both hands flat against the sides of her belly.
“Oh, please don't tell me you've gone into labour,” said Robert. “I’ve seen enough blood and snot to last me a fucking lifetime.” He took a deep breath, blew it out as if he was demonstrating the correct breathing method for Ellen’s benefit, then stepped forward and put a blood-spattered hand on Ellen's arm. “Are you okay?” he asked, voice suddenly low and full of concern.
“Just a twinge,” said Ellen. “I don't think it's labour, but I didn't go to any of the classes, just thought I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. Anyway, we haven’t got time for a fucking nativity. Those things’ll figure some way to get in here.”
“You better have a sit down,” said Robert.
Jay grabbed a chair from behind the booking desk and slid it behind Ellen, who sat down in three distinct stages.
“And don’t worry about the mouth-breathers,” said Robert. “Out of sight, out of mind. Give them half an hour and they’ll forget why they’re there.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Ellen. “Anyway, I should be okay in a minute. Probably just the baby trying to kill me from the inside out.” She produced a grin that comprehensively failed to hide something close to horror.
“I don't think you've got anything to worry about,” said Robert.
“What do you mean?” Ellen half-snapped. “What am I worried about?”
Robert looked embarrassed. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“No, really, what makes you think I’ve got nothing to worry about?” said Ellen, aggression giving way to muted optimism.
Robert sighed.
“Your baby,” he said. “I thought you might be worried that it might be one of, you know, them. A mouth-breather. But it won’t be. At least I don’t think so. Not if my theory’s right.”
“And what’s your theory?” asked Jay and realised he was still holding his revolver. He shoved it into his pocket.
“I was an academic proofreader, before the Spasm. I had a degree in History but, you know, good luck finding a job with that. And I fucking hate kids.” He turned to Ellen. “No offense. So, teaching was pretty much out of the question.
“A couple of years ago, a few days after I turned fifty, I had a stroke. A big one. It was like God shitting lightning all over me. After that, no reading or writing. Aphasia.
“Then, bang! God shits lightning on the entire fucking planet! And, at the same time, it’s like all the gridlocked traffic in my brain is suddenly rerouted and everything’s flowing like it used to. I can read, write. No more aphasia and good fucking riddance. But I can’t celebrate with anyone because the whole world’s gone completely insane. Not that I had anyone to celebrate with before the Spasm. Not so much a loner as intensely unlikable.”
Jay found himself taking a breath on Robert’s behalf.
“Anyway,” Robert continued. “What the fuck happened? Assuming it wasn’t God shitting lightning.
“When I was a proofreader, I read all kinds of scientific papers, books, articles, dissertations. Some stuff about linguistics, philology, that kind of thing. And I knew all about NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, the Sagittarius A black hole, the transmission. So I had the tiniest inkling but nothing I could bring into focus. And I just had to know. Something like this, you can’t just shrug and say, ‘Ah well, one of those things.’ So, I came here. To the library. Books, man. Fucking fabulous. You can tap into the knowledge of these incredibly intelligent and brilliant people without having to come into direct contact with the egotistical and socially inept individuals themselves. There were three of us originally. We were in speech therapy on Rodney Street, when the Spasm happened. We picked up two more strays en route. But I was the only one who finished the journey. On any other day, it wouldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes. Took me four hours. Anyway, never really liked the stuttering buggers to be honest. Liked them even less when they could finally fucking annunciate.
“So, I entrenched myself in the library and I start reading.
“Did you know that no-one really understands how or why or when language started? I mean, there are lots of theories, but nothing that can be argued with any certainty. Maybe it started with us imitating animal noises, or maybe it developed from involuntary expressions of surprise or rage. Whatever, nobody really knows. All I know for certain is it went. Language left. I mean, didn’t you feel it? That horrible pulling, like all your thoughts were being dragged out through your fucking follicles?”
“I felt it,” said Ellen.
Jay nodded.
“So, language left. It vacated the premises. Except for those people with twisted grey matter or fucked up neural pathways. It kind of got snagged up in the deformed loops and whorls of all that shit-over-by-God brain tissue. In fact, those people, by whom I mean, of course, us, the neurologically deformed, seemed to benefit from the linguistic equivalent of some sadistic physiotherapist violently cracking and popping something back into alignment, back into usefulness.
“Anyway, I’m not particularly imaginative. I’ve always been a facts and figures sort of person. But the way it tried to drag itself free and left a piece of itself behind, I couldn’t help thinking of language as a lizard fleeing from the grasp of some predator or a trap, sacrificing a limb in order to escape. I couldn’t help thinking of language as a thing, a thing with purpose.
“And if language left, this ‘thing with a purpose’, pissed right off like some self-serving, eat-fuck-survive lizard, then it must have arrived at some point.”
Robert paused. He seemed unable to look at Jay and Ellen, turning his attention to the high ceiling. What he said next came out in a rush, as if he was hoping to blur his words until they were unintelligible.
He said: “I think language is an extraterrestrial entity.”
He looked to Ellen, then Jay. “Cue laughter,” he said. “I’m saying language came from outer space. That it’s a sentient being. Feel free to laugh your arses off.”
When they didn’t as much as smirk, he continued.
“I think it came to earth during mankind’s infancy and it kind of infected us, like a parasite. Or, more accurately, a symbiotic organism. We used it as a tool to advance our progress toward civilisation and it used us to move around, to reproduce itself, to develop and grow. What we think of as language acquisition is just this thing’s means of transmission.
“When NASA projected that broadcast into the wormhole, thinking “I wonder what will happen if...” language, fully developed now and with no further use for its host, hopped aboard and left.
“2001: a Space Odyssey in reverse. Bye-bye black monolith, hello ape man.
“And when language left them, the pre-Spasm literate and articulate, it plunged them into savagery, had a sort of atavistic effect, it drove them insane. I mean, Christ, it would, wouldn’t it? Language is all over the brain, it isn’t all housed in one part. The frontal lobe controls expressive language. Damage to the parietal lobe can result in problems with reading and writing: anomia, agraphia and alexia. If the occipital lobe is damaged, the victim can suffer from word blindness. Temporal lobe trauma can lead to Wernicke's Aphasia, characterised by difficulty understanding spoken words. Language is threaded through the brain. Rip it out and what the fuck’s left?”
“Mouth-breathers,” said Jay.
“Mouth-breathers. That’s right.”
“But w
hy didn’t they just end up like, I don’t know, vegetables?” said Ellen. “I mean, why murderous animals?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there was some other damage, to the amygdala, perhaps, or the prefrontal cortex. But, like with language, aggression is associated with lots of different parts of the brain. Christ, I don’t know. It’s just a theory. We’ll never know. All the great minds are gone now. As we speak, Richard Dawkins is probably eating his own shit.”
He turned to Ellen. “Whatever the finer details, your baby, I think it’ll be normal. I think it will pick up language in exactly the same way we did. There was no language in its brain to be torn out. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.
“But I could be, you know, wrong. It’s only a theory. And now that I’ve said it out loud for the first time, I sound like a complete fucking nutter.”
“I’ve heard worse,” said Ellen.
“But not much worse,” said Jay. And yet there was something in what Robert had said that had set off little sparks in Jay’s mind. He could almost feel connections forming.
“Anyway, we better get looking for that book,” Ellen said to Jay.
“Book? You're kidding? You actually came here on purpose, looking for a book?”
Ellen nodded.
“Christ, I just assumed you got corralled toward the library. What book would be worth that kind of risk?”
Ellen turned to Jay, eyebrows raised. Jay sighed, then nodded.
“A sailing book,” he said.
“You've got a boat.”
“Yes. We have a boat. But no clue how to sail the thing.”
“I thought Pepper torched them all. Must have drifted in from the other side of the water.”
A window to the right of the main entrance shattered behind its iron security bars and, a second later, there were hyenas pressing up against them, their filthy arms stretching in.
“Weird,” said Robert. “Usually, they lose interest and fuck off. Maybe they want to borrow a book, too.”
More connections formed in Jay’s mind. He found himself recalling that as they’d left Saint John’s Garden, emerging onto William Brown Street, there had been hyenas at the top of the road near the Wellington monument and at the bottom of the road, spewing from the Queensway Tunnel. He’d noticed it at the time, of course, but he’d been all fear then. Now, he was calm enough to reflect upon what it meant. And then all the other little inklings, suspicions and what-the-fucks that had been rattling around Jay’s mind since he’d witnessed the Byron-eating incident from beneath a table in Waterstones abruptly adhered to Robert’s outlandish theory.
“They weren’t following us,” he said.
“What?” said Robert.
“The hyenas. Mouth-breathers. They were coming here, to the library. They want the books.”
Robert offered Jay a patronising smile.
“I really don’t think so, Jay,” he said. “Books? Really? What are they going to do with them, exactly?”
“Eat them,” said Jay. “I was holed up in Waterstones. A hyena got in. It started eating the pages from a book. Poetry. Byron. I saw more, later, eating books, magazines, a fucking dictionary. I think, they... Christ, what’s the word? Crave. That’s it. I think they crave language. They can sense it. You must have seen the way they follow your words when you speak, like they can see them coming out of your mouth. It’s like they’re mesmerised. Like in your paintings, Ellen.” Like Hello Kitty, he thought. “It didn’t happen right away. It took a few weeks for them to become... attuned? They weren’t following us at all. They were coming here. All of them. They can sense the books, the words, the language. Christ, we’re in the middle of a fucking beacon. The biggest language beacon in the North West.”
Robert’s patronising smile held but he looked pale, sick, and his voice wavered. “I’m hardly in a position to dispute your theory on the basis that it sounds insane, given my own little treatise. But if they want books, they can have them. Let’s get out of here and leave them to it. They can choke on the fucking things.”
Another window shattered but it was impossible to tell where, the sound echoing off the ornate wooden panelling that had doubtless, pre-Jolt, created an air of cosy, Victorian studiousness.
“Fuck! Let’s get moving,” said Robert. “Sport section’s this way.” He started toward a staircase that zigzagged back on itself, beyond which ranks of bookcases faded into the gloom. “No offence, but I imagine neither of you are that well-acquainted with the Dewey-Decimal System. Did I mention that I’m coming with you on this boat of yours?”
There was a prolonged crash from some indefinable point in the library, the kind of sound a toppling bookcase might make.
“Oh, Jesus, I think they're in,” said Robert. He headed up the stairs. “Come on.”
Ellen took a deep breath and rose slowly.
“You going to be okay?” said Jay.
“I have to be, don't I? Unless you fancy giving me a piggyback.”
“You must be bloody joking,” said Jay, forcing a smile. “My spine would snap like a fucking Twiglet.”
“Cheeky little bastard. I'm not that heavy. Anyway, I'm all baby.”
“If you say so.”
Ellen flicked him the 'v' and set off after Robert.
From somewhere within the library, possibly from the same location as the crashing bookcase, there was the shrill, cracked laughter of hyenas. Jay hurried after Ellen.
Chapter 18
Robert, Ellen then Jay emerged onto a mezzanine with windows overlooking Saint John's Garden. On a counter running beneath the window, there was a scattering of books, papers, empty Evian bottles and crisp packets. It looked like the aftermath of an all-night study session. Jay was pretty sure the library had to have been shut on the Sunday of the Jolt, so he surmised that the materials were Robert's.
There was no time to ask. Robert was already making his way up to the first floor. From down below there were more crashes and a sudden surge of grunts and shrieks.
“They're in,” said Robert. “They’re definitely fucking in. Jesus.”
When he reached the first floor, Jay hoped Robert knew his way round the library. There were at least forty wide bookcases running in parallel ranks down the length of a space that was far too big to be called a room. The walls were lined with books too, from floor to ceiling, and about eight feet up a sort of balcony, accessible by four small spiral staircases, skirted the entire perimeter, containing more bookcases with just enough room between them for two people to stand back to back and scan the spines.
“Over here,” said Robert, moving off to their right and stopping at one of the wall shelves about half way along. A rectangular red plaque above the top shelf said Sport. The plaque was duplicated above the next five shelves.
Jay didn't even want to think about how many books they had to search through.
“You start at this end,” Robert said to Jay and moved down to the fifth shelf. “And I'll start at this one.”
Jay went to the first shelf, tipped his head and began inspecting the titles.
Robert leaned his sword up against the sixth shelf then began sweeping armfuls of books onto the floor.
“If you see a boat, shout out,” he said to Ellen.
Jay immediately adopted Robert's irreverent but undeniably expedient technique. The floor was soon awash with footballers, tennis players, snooker champions and formula one racing drivers. The next cascade produced a couple of books with images of rock climbers on their covers and Jay knew he was in the right vicinity. He began dragging out books in smaller numbers now, threes and fours. More rock climbers. A scuba diver. Then, a boat. Not a yacht; a speed boat. He stopped dragging the books out now, instead flipping the books down into the space left by his earlier excavations and glancing at the cover of the next book revealed.
And suddenly, there it was, on the back cover of the seventh or eighth book Jay slapped down onto its face, the Jerusalem or a sailing boat very much like
it. He lifted it out with both hands, turned it over and started flipping through the pages. It was the same book that had followed Dempsey down to the bottom of the Mersey. A different edition, older, but the same book.
When Robert stopped littering the floor with books, Jay assumed he'd noticed Jay holding the book. But then he saw Robert reach for the sword. Then Ellen pointed her empty revolver somewhere past Jay and began pulling the trigger, her face rigid with panic.
Jay turned. They'd made so much noise knocking the books onto the floor, had been so focussed on the task in hand, they hadn't heard the hyenas approaching. Five of them. Four were at the top of the stairs about twenty feet away, one was advancing quickly, less than ten feet away, and one was reaching toward Jay, close enough that when Jay gasped he inhaled a lungful of its rancid stink.
As Jay staggered back, the hyena, tall and skinny, filth and ruined clothing almost obscuring the fact that it had once been a woman, snatched the book from his hand.
In the time it took the hyena to take the book, the second hyena had closed the gap and Robert lunged at it, sword arcing out ahead of him. The blade tore across the hyena's chest and blood leapt from the wound in fat droplets that rained down on the cream-coloured tiles of the library floor with a wet slapping sound. The hyena's mask of mindless savagery was replaced in an instant by one of almost innocent stupidity and it crumpled as if suddenly boneless.
Something about that look of dumb acceptance, the ease with which the blood had been released, the sound it had made when it had hit the floor, like sweaty applause, threw a switch somewhere deep in Jay's exhausted, desperate and terror-riddled brain. As he launched himself at the book-stealing hyena, a detached, clinical aspect of his consciousness supposed there was a psychological term for what was happening to him.
He planted both hands on the hyena’s shoulders and slammed it to the ground. Its head cracked against the floor with a sound that could have been tile, skull or both breaking. Then he began punching its face over and over. He heard its nose break, felt its lips tear against its teeth and its teeth give way beneath the weight of his fist. He punched until his knuckles, wrists and shoulders ached, until the hyena's face was slick with blood and didn't look much like a face at all anymore. Even then he carried on punching until he was grabbed by the hood of his coat — the way the hyena had grabbed him by the hood in Waterstones — and was dragged to his feet.
Hyenas Page 11
