Robert must have been thinking along the same lines because Jay heard him shift position, as if he was getting ready to stand.
And then Jay thought, Like some animal and realised that was precisely what the hyenas were, animals, and laying in wait was precisely what just such an animal would do. And then the stink of it unfurled through the darkness. But it was too late, because Robert was already rising.
Despite the fact that they had been in darkness for less than a minute, when Robert thumbed the torch into life, the sudden flare of light was momentarily blinding.
The hyena, as it leapt first onto the desk then down onto Robert was little more than a blur, a dark smudge staining the afterglow. The torch leapt from Robert's hand, spinning through the air, throwing its disk of light from wall to ceiling to floor to wall to ceiling, before hitting the floor with a crack that submerged them in darkness once again.
Robert let out a hollow gasp as the hyena drove him into the floor. His arms and legs lashed out. A grasping hand seized Jay's ankle then let go and slapped about his foot like a wrestler signalling submission. Like someone feeling blindly for dropped spectacles. And Jay realised that Robert was trying to find the sword. He began feeling for it himself, sweeping his palms across the coarse carpet tiles.
There was a grunt from the hyena, then a gristly thud. Robert let out a groan. Another grunt, another gristly thud. This time, Robert responded with something closer to a whimper.
Jay extended his search, sending his hands out in all directions, turning on his knees. His fingertips struck something hard. He snatched at it. But it wasn't the sword, it was the torch. He turned it in his hands until he'd worked out where the button was. He jabbed the button with his thumb. Nothing. It was dead.
Another grunt from the hyena. Another gristly thud.
Jay thought he heard Robert whisper, “Jesus.”
He began his search for the sword again and this time his hand fell upon it almost immediately. He ran his fingers down the blade until he felt the cord-wrapped handle. He stood and lifted the sword above his head.
“Ellen, get as far away as you can,” he said.
He heard movement and didn't know if it was Ellen moving away, Robert thrashing to free himself or the hyena turning toward him.
He brought the sword down where he thought the hyena was and could only hope he didn't hit Robert.
There was a kind of wet crunch, like a spade sinking into damp, gritty earth, and a violent tremor whipped down the blade and wrenched the sword from Jay's hand. His eyes had begun to adjust to the dark. What little light had struggled through from the cafe and the broken skylight created shapes in front of him, abstract outlines that he couldn't identify. One such shape dominated. It reared up and at the same time there was a shriek-roar from the hyena.
He had wounded it. He tried to grab the sword's handle but only snatched at thin air.
“Run, Ellen! Robert? Can you run?”
The outline of what he assumed was the hyena seemed to swell and Jay realised it was lurching toward him. A slab of a hand struck his left shoulder. All feeling left the arm as he staggered sideways from the force of the blow, only just managing to stay on his feet.
The hyena shriek-roared again and Jay could make it out a little more clearly now, its arms lashing out as it turned on the spot. He looked toward the exit, a rectangle of dingy grey, and thought he saw someone — Ellen? Robert? — stagger right and out of view. Jay made for the exit. Behind him, the hyena had ceased shrieking and roaring and was grunting to a slow steady rhythm.
Jay was almost at the exit when his feet struck something and he almost fell to the floor. The something said, “Jesus, which way's up?” It was Robert, his voice thick and slurred.
The hyena stopped its rhythmic grunting and charged toward the voice. Glass shattered as it collided with a display case.
In the dim grey light, Jay could make out Robert, crawling on all fours. He reached down, grabbed his arms and tried to lift him. But he was too heavy.
“Robert, you've got to stand. I can't carry you.”
The hyena roared, then another display case met its end. Jay could see it now, getting closer, lurching and staggering. And he was certain, with the exit behind them, that it could see them.
“Now, Robert!” With a hiss off effort, he dragged Robert up onto his feet. But, almost immediately, he began to fold again and Jay could feel himself being dragged down.
The hyena lumbered closer. Jay knew he was going to have to leave Robert, knew he couldn't possibly carry him, that it was Brian all over again. And then there was a movement next to Robert and Ellen was grabbing Robert's other arm and helping Jay guide him toward the exit. But even with Ellen's support, Robert was too heavy and Jay knew they'd be lucky if they got more than twenty feet before the hyena caught up.
As if sensing Jay's doubt, the hyena barked laughter.
Broken glass cracked and crunched beneath their feet as they worked their way around the Victorian lecturer, headless now, and the remains of his projector and orory.
“Just get him to the stairs,” said Jay.
“What? That thing's still coming.”
“Get him to the stairs. Try and bring him round. I'm going to...”
What was he going to do? Part of him knew, the instinctive part, but it was keeping its plan from the rest of him, from the logical part that would shrink at the thought of it, that would just want to flee.
Jay and Ellen lowered Robert onto the stairs, then Jay began walking back toward the astronomy exhibit and the hyena. As he walked, he reached into his pocket, took out the bulletless revolver and turned it in his hand until he was holding it by the barrel. The hyena had almost made it into the grey smudge of light. Jay could see the samurai sword embedded in its right side. He could see its rage-contorted face.
Even though he knew he was acting under his own volition, even though he knew this was the plan, this was what he intended to do, every step he took toward the hyena was a surprise.
He raised the pistol above his head and, when he was less than an arm's length away from the hyena, he brought the butt down on its head. The sound of scalp splitting and of wood on bone seemed to send a signal to his hitherto uninformed logical self and the urge to run was almost overwhelming.
The hyena reached out for him but, at the same time, its legs buckled and it dropped to its knees. Jay brought the gun down one more time. Something hot peppered his face. The hyena fell flat. He stood there for a couple of seconds not thinking about anything, not feeling anything, then, pushing the now sticky gun back into his coat pocket, he returned to Ellen and Robert.
They were at the top of the stairs now, surrounded by antique clocks — brass, silver and gold managing to gleam despite the dingy light — and Robert was standing, swaying a little but resolutely on his own two feet.
“Christ, he's a mess,” said Ellen.
But Jay didn't really need to be told. He could see the veil of red that seemed to cling to Robert's face from the bridge of his nose down, with what looked like glistening beads cascading from it.
Robert said something that might have been, “Let's just get the fuck out of here,” but the words were soupy and half-formed.
As they moved through to the cafe, a window to their left offering the same view as the rooftop, Jay said, “Where did you get the sword? We need more.”
Robert spat out a thick wad of phlegmy blood and Jay tried not to linger on the fact that he thought he'd seen a tooth amidst the tangle of glossy threads.
Robert turned to him and Jay saw properly for the first time what the hyena had done to his face. His nose was split open, his lower lip was torn and hanging from a near-toothless mouth. His left eye was already swelling shut beneath a lacerated brow.
Jay tried not to react. Robert seemed dazed, half-asleep, and Jay didn't think the full enormity of what had happened to him had hit home yet. And it would be better for all of them if it didn't hit home for a while yet.
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“Downstairs,” Robert managed, spitting blood again. “Third floor. World cultures.”
“Hang on,” said Ellen. She jogged further into the cafe, toward an L-shaped service counter. She went behind the counter, opened a lightless fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. Then she grabbed a handful of serviettes from next to the cash register and came back, opening the bottle.
“Close your eyes, Bob,” she said.
“Robert,” he managed but did as he was told.
Ellen poured water over his brow, nose and mouth. The floor at his feet was immediately awash with a solution that was two parts blood to one part water. She handed him the serviettes and he held them to his mouth and nose.
“Do you want to rest for a bit?” said Jay.
Robert shook his head and walked to the exit. There was something in his determined but slightly listing gait that made Jay think of a drunk trying, and failing, to prove he was anything but.
Before they set off after him, Ellen turned to Jay and whispered, “I hope they got that first aid stuff. He's a fucking mess. He's going to need stitching up and who the hell's going to do that? And before you ask, no, I can't fucking sew.”
They emerged at the top of a small flight of stairs, at the bottom of which was a small glass-doored lift; to the right of that, stairs zigzagging downwards. Robert was already halfway down the first flight by the time Ellen and Jay caught up, his route marked by what looked like a scattering of bright red coins. Another staircase mirrored their own ahead of them. To the left of the stairs, through a fine wire mesh they could look down five stories into what, judging by the pale yellow sandstone walls and sash windows had once been a courtyard before an arching glass roof had turned the outside in. Two walkways crossed over the courtyard, one on the fourth floor, the other on the third. A Sputnik hung from wires above the fourth floor walkway and, between the ground floor and the third-floor walkway a skeletal pteranodon hung, its bones the colour of tobacco-stained teeth. A totem pole of blackened wood, standing against the left-hand wall between twin exits, reached almost to the fourth floor. Jay hadn't been to the museum since he was a child, and it had changed completely.
They passed the fourth floor, its walls covered floor to ceiling in dusky-orange images of fossils and strange rock formations. Robert was waiting for them on the third floor. The wall here displayed red duotone images of a South American tribesman and, in sweeping, almost calligraphic brushstrokes, a top-knotted Japanese nobleman.
Robert took them left across the landing, past three small glass display cases containing Greek and Roman statuettes, and through glass double doors. The wall immediately ahead of them was filled with a photographic image created from five vertical panels showing a throng of crimson-robed Buddhist monks meditating. The small space opened up to the left. What little light had followed them through the glass doors began to fail a few feet in.
Jay shrugged off his backpack and rummaged through it, pushing aside various Blakes and the Northrop Frye that had ultimately brought him here, until he found the battery-powered lantern. He flicked it on and passed it to Ellen. As soon as he'd re-shouldered his pack, they went left, into the gloom.
They passed displays of Chinese vases and a spread-eagled Tibetan robe, its yellow silk catching the torchlight and gleaming like gold. The layout steered them left, past oriental ceramics and elaborate lacquered furniture. Ahead and to their left, the display cases were shattered, shards of glass littering the floor, creating an impression of a frozen pond that some unfortunate had plunged through. The display — samurai armour, swords and bows and arrows — had been ransacked with little concern for the artefacts' preservation, only self-preservation. Jay, Ellen and, still unsteady on his feet, Robert reached past threatening shards like some crude and final attempt at a theft deterrent and each took a sword from a rack from which one weapon, presumably still buried in the hyena upstairs, was already missing.
Armed, they began to head back the way they had come but the sound of shattering glass from that direction stopped them dead. They about-faced, ran past the plundered samurai display and a collection of netsuke. The exhibition space narrowed to a corridor. Exhibits scrolled by. Bronze Tibetan tigers the size of terriers guarded the entrance to a room off to the right containing paintings on silk of the Buddha; to their left more Tibetan silks, swords and a red-faced mask with hemispherical eyes decorated with mesmeric concentric circles. The corridor opened up into a square-ish room dominated by an intricately carved ivory chair; around the sides of the room, carvings from some kind of volcanic rock of Indian deities, and shadow puppets frozen in melodramatic poses. The room opened up ahead and swept off to the left in a broad curve. Behind them, the museum's acoustics making it impossible to tell how far, there was another shattering of glass. They passed totem poles, decorative woven rugs, furs and skins, a canoe and an improbably vast and elaborate Native American head dress. As the curve persisted, taking them into a room filled with African masks — a gargoyle-like bat-winged head, a two-faced head with a clownish conical hat, something half jackal, half crocodile and an abundance of demonic horned things with needle teeth — Jay began to suspect they were turning in a steady circle. Another crash behind them told him they had no choice but to push on. They dodged round a central display cabinet containing four carved elephant tusks, curving up toward one another, tips almost meeting; then another cabinet of downward-pointing spears hanging from threads like a prop from an illusionist's repertoire. And then they passed through double doors and were out on the landing by the stairs spotted with Robert's blood. The sound of hyena's flooded down. It sounded like the upper floors were filled with them and the detour to fetch the swords seemed like an exercise in futility.
There was something else, too. Burning. Jay was certain he could smell burning.
Robert almost fell down the stairs in his eagerness to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the descending pack but managed, just, to seize the banister and steady himself. The wad of serviettes, still pressed to his face, were entirely red now.
Jay and Ellen exchanged a look of concern, not realising that Robert was looking over his shoulder at them.
“I'll make it,” he slurred. “I'll fucking make it. I'm fine.”
They passed the second floor, bright green walls printed with images of insects and a sign saying 'Special Exhibition Coming Soon!” And even though he hadn't visited the museum since he was a child, the thought that there would be no more exhibitions, special or otherwise, here or anywhere else, the thought that nothing would be Coming Soon ever again, filled him with a sadness so sudden and intense that his heart ached like the strained and tired muscle it was.
A stench of rotten fish and stagnant water hit them as they passed the aquarium on the first floor. Jay tried not to imagine the tanks, cloudy and filled with belly-up fish swollen and bursting with decomposition. He held his breath until he made it to the foyer, the outside-in courtyard, with its turquoise- and gold-mosaiced Lambanana beneath the swooping skeletal pteranodon.
To their left, beyond sliding glass doors, the main exit was closed and shuttered. The shutters were made of a kind of steel mesh and Jay could discern movement beyond. Ahead, to the right of a huge wall-mounted spider crab, the windows of closed double doors provided a view of a gift shop and cafe.
Robert shoulder-barged open the doors and stepped into the gloom of the gift shop cafe. Ellen then Jay followed, Ellen carrying the lantern. The room was split in two. On the right, tables and chairs and a counter, behind which was a glass-fronted fridge and a cappuccino machine. On the left were shelves containing stuffed dinosaurs, figurines of Tutankhamen and Anubis, model space shuttles and various rubber insects. In the far left corner, was a curved counter with a cash register.
Robert marched directly over to a set of doors opposite, identical to the ones they had just come through and leading to a corridor which was only half-illuminated by grey light seeping through the windows of another
set of doors at its far end. As he pushed open the doors with a jab of his foot, there was a flash, not like a camera flash, more like a brief distress flare. Then, at the same time, Robert seemed to toss back his head, hand and serviettes dropping from his face, and there was a crack that Jay immediately identified as a gunshot, and Robert was arching backwards, a thick rope of blood whiplashing out from his forehead in the opposite direction. The sword dropped from Robert's hand and clattered to the floor a moment before Robert's body joined it with a sound like a violent rugby tackle.
Chapter 20
Jay dropped down onto all fours and, still gripping his sword, scuttled to the left, past shelves of toys and replica antiquities, over to and then behind the counter. He hoped Ellen had followed him but as he lay there trying to control his breathing, he realised she hadn't. He had no idea where she was.
Then, voices from the corridor.
“Shit, I don't think that was a joker.”
“Course it was. Didn't you see the state of it?”
Footsteps crossed the room.
“Fuck. It was just some bloke.”
“Fuck. How was I supposed to know? It's dark, he was moving fast, blood all over his face. Fuck.”
“Boss isn't going to be happy. We're supposed to be recruiting, not reducing the human population any more than it already has been.”
“Fuck off. Tell me something I don't know. Shit.”
“Come on. Let's see if we can find the other two. Pepper said there were three of them. Assuming the jokers haven’t done for them already.”
“Fucking hell. Don’t let him hear you calling him that. Pepper. He’ll have your — ”
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