Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

  “It's dead,” said Robert from behind him. “And we will be too unless we get out of here right fucking now.”

  Jay couldn't take his eyes from the mess on the floor at his feet. His breath tore in and out of his lungs, his heart felt as if it was trying to hammer its way through his sternum and his mind was wrapped in a hot fog of rage. He couldn't think. There were no words. There was just the pain in his hands and arms and a fury that felt like it was in his blood, was his blood, propelled through his body by bomb-blast heartbeats.

  “No words,” he heard himself say. Then, his first thought in what felt like an age: Is this what it's like to be one of them, to be a hyena?

  “And when I say right fucking now, I mean right fucking now, Jay,” said Robert.

  Jay dragged his eyes from the dead hyena, catalogued briefly the five other corpses strewn about the floor and turned to see Robert's irritated face and, beyond that, Ellen's, staring at him with something between horror and if not quite admiration a kind of grudging approval. He shook his head, to dislodge the thought and bent down to pick up the book. The plastic protective cover was slippery with blood.

  “Which way?” said Ellen. “They're everywhere.”

  And Jay noticed for the first time that the library had been comprehensively breached. The sound of hyenas and crashing bookcases came from every direction.

  “Up,” said Robert.

  “Up?” said Jay, the word emerging as a coarse whisper.

  “Yeah, up. The roof. We can cut across to the museum. There's a broken skylight, drops you on the top floor. Where do you think I got this samurai stuff? Debenhams?”

  Jay nodded, shook his head, nodded again. He had no idea what Robert was talking about. He could hear the words, he understood them individually, but they seemed to have been thrown together with little consideration given to coherence.

  “What?” he managed.

  “Jay,” said Ellen, placing a hand on his elbow. “You're going to have to pull yourself together, okay?”

  “Okay. What? Oh, pull myself together, yeah.” But it didn't mean anything to Jay. It was just a congealing of words.

  Robert rolled his eyes. “From Conan the Barbarian to Father Dougal in under a minute. How the fuck did that happen?”

  “Lucozade,” Jay found himself saying. He had no idea why.

  “What?” said Ellen.

  “Lucozade,” Jay said again and he felt his heart rate drop. His breathing slowed.

  “Lucozade?” said Ellen.

  “Dempsey,” said Jay. He could see Dempsey in his mind's eye, handing him the Lucozade and then he could feel himself coming back to himself, reeled in like a kite.

  “Dempsey gave me Lucozade. Made me feel better. Calm.”

  “We don't have any Lucozade, Jay,” said Ellen. “Who's Dempsey?”

  “My dad. Not my dad. Some old guy. Not my dad. Sorry, we don't talk about the past. It's better that way.”

  “We can talk about the past if you like, Jay. Just not now. We have to get going. Maybe we can find you some Lucozade.”

  “It's okay,” said Jay. “I'm okay. I’m okay now.” He shrugged off his pack, shoved the book inside, then shouldered it once more. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  Robert, who had been watching the exchange with a mixture of alarm and puzzlement, looked from Ellen to Jay and back again.

  “We good to go?” he asked.

  Ellen nodded.

  “Good to go,” said Jay.

  Robert clapped his hands together like a teacher signalling a change of topic and headed back toward the stairs that lead down to the mezzanine but, before he reached them, swerved left through an open doorway.

  Ellen, then Jay, followed. Robert had led them onto a landing with a green marble floor. To their left, windows provided a view of bookcases and desks. Ahead, closed doors, staff only. To their right, a zigzagging stairway, from the bottom of which rose a dischorus of shrieks, grunts and giggles.

  That sound finished the job that thoughts of Dempsey and Lucozade had started and Jay experienced a kind of drawing together of all the pieces of his mind that had broken off and drifted away. He sprinted after Ellen and Robert as they all but threw themselves up the stairs. Jay wasn't sure if he could only imagine the collective heat of the hyenas below. He could certainly smell them; the air was oily with their stink.

  Something about the high magnolia walls, the dimness and the way their slapping footfalls echoed sharply took Jay back to school for a few seconds and he couldn't help smiling as he thought, I never imagined I'd ever find myself wishing I was back in that sadistic little shitehole. Time heals all wounds. Time and Armageddon.

  Jay wasn't sure how many flights they had covered when they arrived on the top floor. It was even more school-like up here. There was even something that looked very much like a classroom ahead of them, off the narrow corridor which formed a t-junction with the top of the staircase.

  “This way,” said Robert, breaking left. The corridor ended in shadow less than ten feet later and Robert went through a door on the far left near the corridor's end.

  Before following Robert and Ellen through the door, Jay glanced back.

  The first few hyenas were at the top of the stairs already, fighting with each other to get at their prey.

  Robert dragged Jay the remaining few inches over the threshold and slammed the door shut. Ellen had a chair ready and passed it to Robert who wedged it under the brass door knob.

  Jay looked around. They were in a small room, containing only the chair, a scratched and battered desk and a metal filing cabinet from which the beige paint was peeling. There was a large sash window opposite the door. The pane was wire-glass, murky daylight straining through.

  Robert put his sword aside and gripped the bottom of the sash.

  “I thought they wanted the books,” he said. “Why the fuck are they chasing us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jay. But he thought maybe he did know and in his mind’s eye he saw a hyena sinking its fingers into a shattered skull, rummaging about in search of... something.

  There was a thud from behind them as the first of the hyenas slammed into the door. The chair shifted half an inch, its feet screeching briefly against the tiled floor.

  Robert grunted and the sash juddered upward in a shower of paint flakes.

  “You first,” Robert said to Ellen.

  Another screech from the chair and the door was open wide enough for filthy fingers to worm into view.

  Jay watched as Ellen clambered out into a high-walled well which sprouted various pipes and ducts. There was a cast iron ladder, rust blistered, attached to the far wall.

  Another screech. Hands grasped and clawed at nothing and the small room was assaulted by the sound and stink of the pack. From somewhere beyond the hyenas, somewhere deep down in the library, Jay thought he heard a gunshot, then another.

  Robert followed Ellen, who was already halfway up the ladder.

  Another screech. The chair moved a couple of inches this time then dropped to the floor. The door flew open. Three hyenas were wedged in the frame, grinding against one another to be the first to claim a victim.

  Jay plunged head first out onto the roof.

  As he got to his feet and looked up, he saw Ellen looking down from the top of the well and Robert completing the last few rungs before scrabbling from view.

  Jay stumbled over to the ladder, the way the walls seemed to lean in toward the grey-brown rectangle of sky above, disorientated him and threw him off balance. He leapt onto the highest rung he could reach, dragging himself up, his feet scuffling for purchase. Below him, a hyena grunted laughter and the ladder shook. He didn't look down, didn't dare, didn't have time. His feet found a rung and he scuttled up.

  He was close to the top, Ellen and Robert reaching down to him, when the hand, its heat pouring immediately through the fabric of his trousers, seized his ankle. He tried to shake his leg free but the hyena's grip was fast, its fingers stri
ving to sink into flesh, muscle and down to the bone. He lifted his other foot from the rung, letting his hands and arms take the strain, and stomped down on where he hoped the hyena's head would be. He connected with nothing.

  The hyena dragged at him and he felt his fingers begin to lose their grip on the rung. Ellen and Robert were on their knees now, straining toward him but he was still a good foot or so out of reach. He knew that if the hyena got a hold with its other hand it would all be over. And there was a part of him — tired and aching, but more than that, disgusted with it all and with himself — that wanted it to be over, that wanted to let go, the way he imagined a vertigo suffer experiences that strange compulsion to make real their fear and plunge headlong into space. But he didn't let go, he stomped again. And this time he struck something. The hyena's grasp loosened a little. He stomped again and as his heel ground into what he thought and hoped was the hyena’s scalp, and as the hand relinquished its grip entirely, there was a metallic snap from somewhere above him and his face and hands were showered in rust particles and brick dust.

  At first, he thought it was an optical illusion, a trick of perspective like before, when he'd lurched toward the ladder, but no, the bolts holding the ladder to the wall really had broken or come lose and the ladder really was tipping backwards.

  He could hear more hyenas below him now, could feel their grasping hands snagging at his feet and ankles, and he knew it was only the fact that they were fighting amongst themselves to get to him that was preventing him from being dragged down to his death.

  Chapter 19

  Feeling, in spite of everything, ridiculous, Jay continued to scuttle up the ladder, knowing it was too late and his arcing trajectory would deliver him into the stinking mob below any second now. And then he saw Robert lunge for the ladder and manage, just, to curl the ends of the index and third finger of his right hand over the top rung.

  But he had over-reached. Too much of his body was stretched out across the gap and Jay could see the panic on Robert's face as he waved his free arm back to grab the edge of the roof, flailing at thin air. The ladder continued to tip, dragging Robert with it.

  Collective hysteria erupted from the hyenas below, accompanied by reeking clouds of rot-heated breath.

  Then Ellen grabbed Robert's wrist with both hands. She dug in her heals and leaned back.

  The ladder stopped tipping.

  Ellen leaned back further, her teeth bared, then managed a first then a second step backwards. And Robert's flapping hand found the edge of the roof and latched onto it. His face turned purple with the strain and the ladder began to move back toward the wall. Jay continued to crawl up the ladder. By the time it was against the wall he was at the top and he scrambled off it and onto the roof, half submerging himself in deep snow.

  He got to his knees then to his feet and turned back to see Robert plant a heel in the face of a thick-bearded, dreadlocked hyena. The ladder and the hyena, spitting blood, tipped back then fell from view. There were shrieks of fury from the pack.

  Struggling to catch his breath, Jay looked out across the city. Saint John’s Beacon dominated the view, front and centre, and only Saint George's Hall and the Holiday Inn offered anything like resistance. Beyond this disparate trio was a patchwork of rooftops, then, off to the South West, the gauzy outlines of Moel Famau and the Welsh hills. Looking down at Saint John's Gardens, Jay saw fifty or more hyenas scurrying amongst the statues and memorials, looking, at this distance, like children at play. On the far side of the gardens, near the steps, Brian's body, arms and legs all wrong, lay at the centre of a disc of blood. At this distance, it looked to Jay like a red badge with an esoteric symbol printed on it, a character from an alien alphabet. Crows like scraps of black cloth, ten or so of the things, had formed a rough perimeter around the symbol and were closing in.

  And then he realised that Ellen and Robert were already on the move, across the roof toward another ladder which, along with various aluminium ducts, led up to a higher level. Before Jay could catch up, Ellen was already at the top of the ladder and Robert was close behind.

  Jay was relieved to find this ladder was relatively new, doubtless used regularly for maintenance work. Robert had made it to the top and gestured to Jay to hurry up. Then his face seemed to go limp as he looked past Jay in the direction from which they'd just come. Jay thought he saw Robert mouth 'Jesus'.

  He didn't want to look back, didn't want to see what had caught Robert's eye and drained the colour from his face. He wanted to get up the ladder, to keep moving, to waste no time. But he had to look.

  He turned to see a hyena, a giant of a thing, dragging itself up onto the roof where the rusty old ladder had been. The remains of its clothing (all black, including its shiny bomber jacket) and close-cropped hair — doubtless shaved down to the follicle pre-Jolt — told Jay it had once been a bouncer or private security storm trooper.

  It glared at Jay, grinned — a gold incisor gleamed amidst brown and yellow — and then it charged.

  Jay darted up the ladder, noting that Robert had done the sensible thing and made himself scarce.

  The hyena let loose a roar that narrowed to a hiss.

  From the top of the ladder, Jay saw Ellen lowering herself backwards through a broken skylight next to a submerged pyramid of verdigris-stained roof. Robert, sword in hand, spun on his heels, communicating equal parts impatience and stark terror. As Jay was stepping off the ladder, he felt it thrum through the sole of the foot that remained on the top rung. This time, he didn't look back. He sprinted across the roof toward the skylight, where Robert had just dropped from view.

  Behind him, the hyena roared again.

  Jay threw his backpack through the skylight, dropped to his knees and scuttled backwards after it. As he slithered down, nubs of broken glass lacerating the front of his coat, he locked eyes with the hyena. Steam poured from its gaping mouth, trailing behind it like cobwebs. A vast erect penis lanced out from its open fly, juddering with every step it took. Hands grabbed Jay's legs and waist as he dangled down and he could only hope it was Ellen and Robert.

  “Let go, for fuck's sake,” said Ellen.

  Jay did so and dropped an embarrassing couple of inches.

  “It's coming,” he said, taking in a square-ish corridor, poorly illuminated by the murky glow falling from the skylight and Robert's sweeping torch. To his right, against the wall, was a display case containing a brass sextant and theodolite. Behind him, two doors led to ladies' and gents' toilets. Ahead, was another display case containing antique navigation equipment and then the corridor curved left into an open space.

  “What's coming?” said Ellen.

  “Christ,” said Robert. “It saw you? It saw you come down here?”

  “What saw you?” said Ellen.

  “Hyena,” Jay gasped. “Biggest fucking hyena I ever saw.”

  “It saw you come down here?” Robert repeated.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit,” said Robert, swiping his sword down at nothing.

  Jay could hear its pounding footfalls beyond the ceiling, thought he could even hear it panting.

  “This way,” said Robert. He ran to the end of the short corridor, torchlight whipping out ahead of him. Jay and Ellen followed.

  They were in an open space. Ahead was a set of five stairs leading up between a wheelchair lift and, in a large display case, a Victorian gentleman, one hand on a brass projector, frozen in the middle of an astronomy lecture. A few feet beyond the top of the stairs, past a display of grandfather clocks, double doors opened onto a cafe swimming in turgid daylight.

  Behind them, closed lift doors. To their right, an opening to a room, along the ceiling of which was suspended a space rocket fuselage about twenty feet long. To the right of the entrance was some kind of rocket booster, a metal dome big enough to hide a grown man, sprouting a confusion of pipes and canisters. Everything else was shadows, shapes and darkness.

  Robert went into the dark, running beneath the s
pace rocket to the back of the room, torchlight bouncing.

  “Don’t worry,” he said over his shoulder. “There’s a door. I’ve used it before. The mouth-breather will go the other way. Toward the light.”

  Ellen followed him and, as Jay did likewise, there was a thud that Jay felt as well as heard, as the hyena dropped through the skylight and into the museum.

  At the far end of the room, beneath a wall-mounted television screen, was a large cuboid desk covered with pencils and activity sheets with pictures of astronauts, meteors and re-entry vehicles. Past the desk, set into the far wall and painted black like the wall, was a door.

  Robert ran over to the door and made an elaborate display of running his hands around the edge of the door frame. Jay was wondering what this desperate mime was all about when he saw that there was no handle on the door. At the same time, Robert turned to them, his face somehow both apologetic and terrified.

  “It’s closed,” he said. “Last time I was here, it was open. But now it’s closed and there’s no fucking handle on this side. Shit. Shit, shit, shit!”

  “Behind the desk,” said Ellen, her voice a harsh whisper. “And turn off that fucking torch.”

  Ellen, Jay then Robert dropped behind the desk. Robert switched off the torch.

  The darkness seemed to collapse onto Jay; it had weight and texture.

  The hyena roared and the sound seemed to thicken the darkness, to add to its weight. Then there was a shattering of glass, and Jay was almost certain that the Victorian gentleman's astronomy lecture had been permanently interrupted. There were a few crashes and clatterings, then silence.

  Jay strained to detect any hint of what the hyena was doing and, more to the point, where it was doing it. But all he could hear was the throbbing bass of his own heartbeat. What felt like a full minute passed but Jay suspected it was only half that. He could only surmise that the hyena had moved on, doubtless toward the dishwater light of the cafe, just as Robert had predicted. He couldn't imagine it simply waiting in the dark, waiting for them to give themselves away. They were savage things, the hyenas, they couldn't strategise. It wouldn't be laying in wait, surely, like some animal.