There was a sudden flurry of movement, a clatter of weaponry.
“Don't fucking move!”
Jay froze, wondering how the hell they could have seen him. Then, from somewhere across the room, he heard Ellen say, “All right boys, you can put the toys down now. I'm not armed. The only thing I'm carrying is a highly developed foetus and I promise I won't let it hurt you.”
“Where are the rest of you?”
“Lying on the floor at your feet. One of you halfwits shot him.”
“Who are you calling a halfwit?”
“She's got a point, Pete. You are a few chips short of a butty.”
“Fuck off, Colin.”
“Just saying.”
“Well don't 'just say'. Got feelings, you know.”
“Yeah, I was forgetting. You and your feelings. It always slips my mind when I see you shooting anything with a fucking pulse.”
“Piss off, you sarcastic get. Anyway, are you going to come quietly or what, love?”
“Don't 'love' me, you patronising twat. And no, I'm not coming quietly. I'm not coming at all. I've got other plans. So, piss off and play soldier somewhere else.”
“No can do, love. Orders. Put the cuffs on her, Colin. And if you put up a fuss, love, I'll knock you out and drag you through the fucking streets. And if my arms get tired I'll leave you for the jokers.”
“Speaking of which, Pete, we'd better get a wiggle on. Sounds like the place is filling up with them.”
“Good. We'll burn this one down, too.”
Jay slipped the revolver from his pocket and rose slowly until he could see over the top of the counter, between a wicker basket of ammonite key rings and another of Fair Trade chocolate bars.
The two militiamen were facing away from him. Ellen was facing toward him. She gave no indication that she'd noticed him, though Jay thought it very unlikely that she hadn't. One of the militiamen — Colin, presumably — slung his assault rifle over his shoulder and began walking toward Ellen. The other tried to keep his gun trained on Ellen but his attention kept drifting toward the door leading to the foyer and the growing sound of hyena activity. When Colin was a couple of feet away from Ellen, she reached into her coat pocket. Colin was looking down, struggling to free a pair of handcuffs from his belt and failed to notice the movement. Pete was glancing at the door and also failed to notice. Jay stepped out from behind the counter and began moving, as quickly and as quietly as he could, toward Pete.
Colin freed the cuffs and looked up at Ellen in time to see her pull the pistol from her pocket and point it at his face. He stopped dead and dropped the cuffs. At the sound of the cuffs hitting the floor, Pete looked away from the door.
“Jesus!” He tried to level his rifle at Ellen but Colin was in his line of sight. “Colin! Get out of the fucking way!”
“Don't listen to the halfwit, Colin,” said Ellen.
“She won't shoot,” said Pete. “She hasn't got it in — ”
Jay pressed the barrel of his revolver against the base of Pete's skull. Pete jerked, as if he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod.
“Don't move,” he said.
“That could be a bit of pipe for all I know,” said Pete but there was a distinctly clenched quality to his voice.
“Why don't you turn around and see if my colleague's holding a length of pipe, Colin?” said Ellen.
Colin turned slowly.
“No,” he said. “He isn't holding a length of pipe, Pete.”
“Now that we've cleared that up,” said Ellen, “why don't you boys place your toys on the floor, then kick them away?”
Colin and Pete did as they were told.
Jay, still keeping his empty gun trained on Pete, picked up the assault rifle. Ellen did likewise.
“Okay,” said Ellen. “We're not completely without compassion, so we're going to leave one of these rifles outside on the street where you can see it. We'll take the other one. Give us a two minute head start.”
“Two minutes?” said Pete. “In case you haven't noticed this place is going to be crawling with jokers in about a minute and a half, probably less.”
“I said we're not completely without compassion but that doesn't mean we entirely give a shit, either,” said Ellen. “There's a sword on the floor over there. Robert used to put it to good use before you shot him in the face.”
Ellen and Jay began backing toward the corridor. The sound of hyenas was getting louder all the time. The smell of burning was getting stronger too.
“I’ll kill you for this!” snarled Pete. “I’ll fucking kill you! Shoot you in the fucking face, you pair of gobshites!”
Ellen and Jay ignored his ranting and continued to back down the marble-floored corridor, grey light becoming brighter, but no less grey, as they got nearer to the exit. They passed gleaming marble pillars and a leather sofa; it was less a corridor than a long and absurdly lavish waiting room. Ellen back-heeled the door and they stepped outside.
Jay turned to get his bearings. They were between two sets of stone steps running down about five feet to the street below, left and right. Ahead was a ballustraded balcony. Twin flyovers, Churchill Way, swept down from behind to their right. One snaked in front of them coming to earth a couple of hundred feet ahead of them, at the start of Dale Street, with the entrance to the Queensway Tunnel hidden from view a little to the left of the flyover's terminus. The other curved off to their right, seeking out the bottom of Tithebarn Street.
Jay could smell burning, could see black smuts drifting on the air like polluted snow.
“They set fire to it,” he said.
“Set fire to what?” said Ellen, throwing the assault rifle down into the snow at the foot of the left-hand staircase. It dropped out of sight, leaving a distinct rifle-shaped hole behind. Jay had been hoping Ellen would keep her rifle and his would be the one left in the snow. He didn't like the feel of it, the sense that some internal mechanism was so tightly wound that he might be able to trigger it with a cough or an aggressive thought.
“Sergeant Pepper. The militia. They set fire to the library.”
“Seems like a good plan. Maybe they're not all halfwits. Come on. They'll come out looking for their toy in a minute and we don't want to be in their line of fire when that happens.”
Ellen went down the right-hand staircase then turned right, around the back of the museum. A boxy staircase, the low walls of which were decorated with small white tiles, zigzagged up to a walkway that stretched out over the wide main road and under the Churchill Way flyovers toward John Moores University's science building with its cluster of steel exhaust pipes sprouting from the roof. Halfway along, the walkway branched off to the left, following the underbelly of the Tithebarn-bound flyover before sweeping steeply left toward Dale Street.
As they reached this intersection and turned left, a loft of pigeons taking flight at their approach, Jay said, “I don't think burning the library was a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I don't know. I mean, if that's why they came, for the books, for the words, what are they going to do when it's all turned to ash?” He thought about Alice Band punching a hole through someone's head to get at the language inside. He thought about Hello Kitty’s eyes darting about as she watched the words emerge from his mouth. He thought about Ellen's paintings. He thought about Brian saying that the hyenas could sense survivors in big numbers — 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. “I think they're going to go even more crazy. And I think they're going to come looking for the only place where language is left. Us.”
They followed the walkway down to the pavement. Jay glanced over toward the library. From this angle, it was hidden by the bulk of the museum, but he could tell that the black smoke that was billowing out onto the street and across Saint John's Gardens was coming from the library's windows. The smoke was so thic
k it looked solid, like the tentacles of some vast sea creature. Jay wondered why the smoke was so black. Surely, books wouldn't burn like that? Then he registered the shrieking of hyenas in their hundreds and new why. He turned away.
“I think we're going to be like fucking beacons now,” he said as they turned right onto the bottom of Dale Street, moving uphill, parallel to the last fifty feet or so of the flyover. “It's like the library was a honey pot and me and you are a couple of half-eaten, half-melted ice lollies. Once the honey pot's gone, the wasps are going to come after the ice lollies.”
“I'm not a half-melted ice lolly,” said Ellen. “Not so sure about you, though.” She stopped, turning to face him. “We just need to keep moving, Jay. We're on the home straight now. If burning the library has fucked them up in some way, then maybe it'll buy us some time. While they're still reeling, we can get down to the river. By the time they realise what a feast your sticky, melting hide represents, we'll be on the water and fuck them.”
Jay was about to say he didn't think the hyenas would be reeling for very long at all, but then he saw the weariness on Ellen's face and realised it was only pure will that was driving her forward and if he told her they probably weren't going to make it, then that might be enough to stop her in her tracks and bring her to her knees.
“Yeah,” said Jay. “Fuck them. Let's get moving.”
They headed down Dale Street, Ellen setting the pace a few feet ahead of him. Outside the magistrate's court, they had to circumvent two tangled, snow-encrusted corpses. It was impossible to say whether either of them had been hyenas or the victims of hyenas or just victims of the cold.
They were about sixty feet from where Moorfields branched off to the right and rose up toward Tithebarn Street, when Jay experienced a sense of dread so intense he thought he might throw up. Something was wrong, or was about to go wrong. He had no idea what.
He was about to call out to Ellen when she came to an abrupt halt. He wondered if she had experienced it too, this vague but powerful premonition. But then she turned, one hand pressed to the side of her belly, her face scrunched with pain.
“Just need a minute.” The words were expelled from between clenched teeth. “Don't worry, not about to give birth. At least, I don't think so. Just need a minute.”
“Okay. No problem.” Jay pointed to the doorway of an office furniture shop. “You want to sit down?”
“No. Better standing.”
“Okay.” Jay smiled but the sense of dread, the premonition, was growing, beginning to coalesce. He could almost articulate it.
Looking down at Ellen, seeing the lines of pain grooved into her forehead, Jay said, “The boat's along from the Liver Buildings. Just follow Prince's Parade until you're almost at the Alexandra Tower. There are stone steps leading down. Be careful, they're slippy as fuck. You know, in case I don't make it.”
Ellen managed a smile. “Thanks, Jay. But you'll make it.” She grinned. “Probably.”
He started grinning himself, then stopped. The premonition crystallised.
Moorfields.
Moorfields Station.
The hyenas were flooding into Liverpool via the railway lines, via the tunnels. He and Ellen were running across the surface of a wasps' nest, its intricate network of tunnels thrumming beneath their feet. And now that the library was burning, now that the honey pot was gone, the wasps were going to go crazy and spill from the nest and come looking for something sweet to eat.
“Ellen, we have — ”
But it was too late. The hyenas were already appearing, surging onto Dale Street from around the corner of Moorfields, some still shielding their eyes against a grey-brown light that, compared to the darkness of the tunnels from which they'd recently emerged, must have been like looking directly into the sun.
Chapter 21
Ellen looked over her shoulder.
“Oh, for fuck's sake.” She took a couple of steps forward, stopped, grimacing and gripping her side. “Fuck!”
Some of the hyenas had spied them and were already bounding in their direction. Jay raised the assault rifle. Looked down the length of the barrel and trained the sight on the nearest hyena.
“Don't waste the bullets. We're going to need them.” Ellen headed back the way they had come, at a considerably slower pace. A few feet later, she turned left up a narrow alley between an office building and a Spa. As he made the turn, Jay looked back. The hyenas were already gaining. He returned his attention to Ellen, who was already at the top of a small set of steps, between boarded windows and high graffiti-bedraggled walls. Jay caught up with her easily before she'd reached a road which curved right toward a side street dominated by a Premier Inn. Ahead of them was a four-storey car park — a box of red brick and, on the upper storeys, green-barred glassless windows.
“Ellen, they're — ”
“Catching up. I know. I can't run much further. We're going to have to hide. Or I am. You can keep running if you like.”
“I'll stick with you,” said Jay.
“I'm touched.” She pointed to the car park. “In there.”
They jogged through the wide main entrance, dipping under the red and white barrier. Darkness and more than a hint of piss closed around them. They made their way to the back, the darkness and the stench thickening. There were a few cars parked-up in the bays and one car, a Vauxhall Meriva with In the Night Garden sun blinds on the back windows, was abandoned across two bays, one door gaping open and a man's patent leather shoe on the roof. They reached the far wall and slid behind a white Fiat mini-van with a decal of a cartoon painter and decorator on the side.
Putting down the assault rifle, Jay dropped onto all fours then lay flat on his belly so he could see under the van. He could hear the hyenas, a tangle of snarls slashed at by shrieking laughter, funnelled through the narrow alley and into the car park where it echoed from the bare brick walls. The sound alone felt like the first wave of an attack. And then the hyenas began to appear. Framed by the car park exit, there was something cinematic about the parade of hyenas as they variously stumbled, staggered and bounded past in washed-out widescreen. Fifteen or more went by and Jay was beginning to feel hopeful, until one stopped, extracted itself from the pack and shuffled toward the car park.
It had, before the Jolt, been some kind of labourer. It still wore overalls — once pale blue, now filthy and torn — and heavy work boots. The inner framework of a hard hat was clamped to its head, greasy fronds of dirty-blond hair sprouting through the gaps. Blackened eyes and a beard matted with dried blood spoke of a broken nose. Jay hadn't thought it possible, but it looked somehow wilder than any of the hyenas he had seen before, and he thought of the library in flames and what it had done. For a moment, he wasn't sure what it was that made the hyena seem more savage, what visual tic was sending that particular message, and then he realised there were threads of panic and desperation running through the usual tangle of rage and hysteria that were the hallmarks of the hyena face, and he thought of the library again, soon to be ashes.
He looked up at Ellen. The pain-induced lines were no longer scored into her forehead. She nodded and produced a small, tight smile as if to say, I'm okay.
Jay returned his attention to the hyena he had, without consciously deciding to, named Bob the Builder. It was standing at the threshold of the car park now, where the snow sloped down to the tarmac, whiteness graduating through grimy grey to black. A look of excitement took over its face for a moment, briefly eliminating the rage, hysteria and panic, and Jay suspected — no, not suspected, he knew — it could sense all those currents of language swirling through and between the various components of his brain. He tried not to think, but knew it wasn't possible; he could only think about not thinking, and words, language, were the building blocks that this thought, this thought about not thinking, was made of.
As if to underscore Jay's concern, Bob let out a little giggle of delight that turned into a low, steady moan. It stepped into the car park, its heav
y boots clomping on the tarmac. Behind it, the rest of the hyenas streamed by, apparently oblivious to Bob's piqued interest. Jay wondered if some of them were more sensitive to language than others, craved it more. And then he tried to stop wondering and wondered if it was possible to empty his mind but that just made him think of Zen, the word pulsing through his brain: Zen, Zen, Zen, Zen, Zen Zen ZenZenZen.
Bob took a few more steps, its clomping boots making Jay think, Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum. A few more steps; it was about twenty feet away now. Jay reached for the rifle, knowing he couldn't risk using it — the gunshot would bring more hyenas than there were rounds in the curved magazine — but wanting the comfort of it, all thoughts of its hair-trigger lethality suddenly swept aside.
Grunting, Bob dropped into a crouch, then slowly tipped its head to one side until the position of its eyes matched Jays.
Jay stopped breathing and, without even trying, emptied his mind of words until his skull was just an echo chamber for his ranting heartbeat. His hand tightened round the rifle, but there was still a steady, staggering Cinemascope parade of hyenas passing behind Bob.
Bob stood, as slowly as it had crouched, like an old man rising from an afternoon spent in a low, soft armchair. Then, with an abruptness that caught Jay completely off guard, the hyena was charging toward them. Jay scrabbled to his feet.
“Ellen, fuck, it's...”
Bob slammed into the side of the van with a sound like someone trying to destroy a kettledrum, and the van actually lurched on its suspension, as if it was flying at high speed round a hairpin bend.
Another kettledrum assault and there was Bob, on the roof of the van, glaring down at them, from Jay to Ellen, Ellen to Jay, Jay to Ellen, as if it couldn't make its mind up which one to make its victim.
Ellen darted right, heading to the back of the van. Jay went left, toward the front.
Bob made up its mind. Jay.
It stepped from the roof onto the slope of the windscreen, towering above Jay. Its legs bent as it prepared to leap. Jay ran further off to the left, but, just as in Waterstones, he tensed with a premonition of the hyena landing on his back and driving him down to the oil-stained tarmac, acutely aware that he couldn't outdistance it. And then there was a crack, like a frozen pond giving way and Bob let out a strangled growl. Jay turned and saw that the hyena's right foot had plunged through the windscreen, its leg sunk in up to the knee. He looked back at the exit. Hyenas were still passing by. He scanned for Ellen and saw her disappear up one of two parallel ramps that led to the upper levels.
Hyenas Page 14
