He pulled the trigger. The stock punched him in the shoulder, sending something like an electric shock through his arm and down into his fingertips. At the same time, the lead hyena dropped to the snow, blood as dark as oil erupting from the back of its head. The shot echoed across the city. But so what if it brought more hyenas? He was fucked anyway.
And then Jay's brain finally processed something he'd seen a couple of seconds ago, something he'd seen but had failed to properly notice.
There had been footsteps in the snow, leading up to the driver's door of the Transit, and the snow on the door itself had been patchy, as if disturbed.
Ellen. She was in the van. He glanced over. There was no sign of a broken window. Which meant the door had already been open. Which meant maybe there were keys. He was turning toward the van when he thought, What if I'm wrong? I'd just be leading the hyenas to Ellen and then we'd both be fucked.
“Ellen! If the van has keys shout out, because I can drive. Not very well admittedly, but well enough. If it doesn't, just keep quiet.”
Nothing.
Jay fired another shot into the pack, not targeting anything in particular. Two hyenas fell in a tangle. He wasn't sure which one he'd actually hit. He wondered how many bullets there were in the rifle's stubby magazine. Twenty? Already too few. They were nearly upon him now, less than fifteen feet away. He pulled the trigger again, surprised at how calm he was feeling, how much he was enjoying the cool breeze against his sweat-sodden forehead.
And then Ellen shouted, “There are keys! Move your arse!”
He turned to see her leaning from the open driver's door. Jay could smell the hyenas behind him as he made for the van, could feel the wall of heat advancing ahead of them. It was as if someone had opened the door to a sauna, a sauna full of corpses.
As he grabbed the inner door handle and planted one foot on the bottom of the door frame, he felt a weight on his backpack. He pivoted round, rifle held at waist level and fired. A hyena with Marty Feldman eyes dropped to its knees then flopped onto its back, convulsing. Jay reversed into the van, firing off a shot at a hyena that was naked but for a pair of red Playboy boxer shorts. He slammed the door shut, then writhed out of his pack and put it and the rifle on the middle seat.
Strapping herself in, Ellen said, “You can drive?” She pointed at what was left of the Meriva. “The evidence to support that claim isn’t exactly compelling.”
“Wasn't my fault,” said Jay. “There was a hyena squatting on the bonnet.” He grinned. “I'll try to look after this one.”
Hyenas began hammering against the side of the van. Filthy palms and faces pressed up against his window then, a moment later, Ellen's window.
The key, complete with Homer Simpson key-ring, was already in the ignition. Jay gave it a turn. There was a gritty scraping sound, gradually becoming more aggressive, but the engine refused to come to life.
“Fuck,” said Ellen. “I definitely should have kept my mouth shut.”
“Thanks. Nice to know my life means so much to you.”
“Sorry, but if it's a choice between you and Lilly...”
“Lilly?”
“Just came to me.”
Jay turned the key again and this time the gritty scrape expanded into an industrious chugging.
“What if it's a boy?”
“It's a girl. It's a Lilly. She’s a Lilly.”
“Lilly it is, then,” said Jay and put the Transit into reverse. Despite the fact that hyenas were now trying to clamber up onto the van's stubby bonnet, Jay eased the accelerator down. The last thing he needed was for the wheels to start spinning in the snow. “It's a good name.”
The Transit trundled back in a broad arc. Once it was parallel with its starting point and facing the ramp, Jay put it into first. He stepped on the accelerator with a little more force than before. The two hyenas that had managed to hold on to the front of the van lost their grip and slid down and out of view, as if they'd been sucked under the wheels. The van hardly registered their presence.
The top of the ramp was packed tight with hyenas, a wall of filth and wild-eyed, grinning faces.
Jay pushed the accelerator down hard.
“Hold onto your seat, Ellen,” he said.
“Christ.”
A moment before they hit the pack, Jay was almost certain that the wall of hyenas was so dense he wouldn't be able to penetrate it and the Transit would just bounce off. But then most of the hyenas disappeared beneath the wheels or spun off to the left and right, slamming into the walls and each other. One was lifted up into the air and hit the windscreen head first, leaving a bloodied frosted patch about the size of a dinner plate dead centre, before sliding off the bonnet and under the wheels.
Jay had to brake hard as he entered the bend. There was a screech of rubber and a juddering crunch as the wing scraped the wall, crumbling concrete and throwing up sparks.
“Fuck. Where did you learn to drive?”
“I didn't. Not properly.”
“Great.”
As they emerged onto the third floor, Jay locked the wheel, u-turned the van and with a minimum of damage to the paintwork took it down the next ramp. More hyenas crowded their path. Jay drove through them. Another hyena head-butted the windscreen and a second bloody cataract appeared. The next ramp was free of hyenas and Jay noticed the long bloodstains and scraps of hair and clothing decorating the concrete walls. Without thinking, he put his foot down a little harder. The van picked up speed and Jay could feel control of the vehicle slipping away from him as he entered the final ramp and the Transit bounced from left wall to right, the acoustics of the van's interior creating a series of deafening crashes.
There was a rush of cold air from behind him. Jay glanced over his shoulder and saw that the back doors were flapping open and closed. He caught a brief glimpse of five or six hyenas in frantic pursuit, the frontrunner bounding on all fours. Jay knew he couldn't afford to take his foot from the accelerator. If even one of the hyenas got inside the van...
They came off the ramp to the ground floor so fast, the van dipped forward, dragging its nose across the tarmac for a couple of seconds, before lurching up again. At the same time, Jay had to swerve hard right to avoid a concrete pillar. The Transit lost traction for a moment, gliding left, almost colliding with a parked Golf, then Jay regained control and sped toward the entrance, which was now filled with hyenas.
“Once we're outside, we won't be able to get far, with the snow and abandoned cars,” he said. “As soon as we stop, we'll have to get out and run.”
“Running's fine,” said Ellen. “Compared to this, running is great.”
A few feet before the exit, Jay hit the brakes. He knew he had to slow down before the tarmac was replaced by snow. They were still doing close to twenty when they hit the hyenas, crushing and scattering them. The impact shaved a few miles per hour off but they were still going too fast as they left the car park. Jay pumped the brakes and yanked the wheel left, but it was no good. He felt the tyres lose their grip. The Transit slid across the snow, spinning one hundred and eighty degrees counter clockwise as it did so. The tyre walls struck the opposite curb and the passenger-side wheels left the ground for a second before dropping back down again, almost throwing Jay and Ellen from their seats. Jay's foot jerked from the accelerator but he kept the clutch down and the engine didn't cut out.
The back doors were wide open now, filling the interior with the sound of hyenas. Jay shifted into first gear then, as soon as the van started to move forward, quickly took it through second and up to third. The engine laboured a little but there were no wheel-spins and he didn't get stuck in the snow. As the hyena clamour increased, the urge to drive faster was almost overwhelming but he held back. As he turned left into the narrow side street, drifting a few feet but not enough to take out the front window of the Premier Inn, hyenas began drumming against the side of the van.
Once he was on the straight, he put his foot down. Seconds later, a string of ab
andoned black cabs forced him to drive on the pavement.
Jay didn't even know the hyena had got in until he heard Ellen say “Fuck!” unfasten her seat belt and grab the rifle. Inside the Transit, the shot was so loud Jay felt needles of pain so deep in his ears he felt like he'd swallowed broken glass.
He slowed the van down as he reached the junction with Tithebarn Street then turned left in a sweeping arc much broader than he'd intended. Ellen, still facing into the rear of the van looped one arm through the rifle's strap and grabbed the back of the seat with both hands.
“Warn me next time, Lewis fucking Hamilton!”
The back end of the van whipped left and right but Jay managed to point it down Tithebarn Street toward Chapel Street, toward the Mersey. There were cars strewn across the wide road between the twin high arches of the Exchange Station Building and the top of Moorfields. Too many cars. He brought the van to a fishtailing stop a few feet before a too-narrow gap between abandoned cars made identical by the thick snow.
“Thank fuck for that,” said Ellen, keeping the rifle as she jumped out of the van. Jay grabbed his pack, hitching it back onto his shoulders before joining Ellen.
He looked back the way they had come. Slalom tracks in the snow led back to Vernon Street sixty feet away. Already, pursuing hyenas were beginning to appear. Jay turned to see Ellen already crossing Moorfields, passing the Lion then the Railway pubs. He sprinted to catch up.
He was only a few feet behind her, crossing Exchange Street East which ran back down to Dale Street, the Exchange Building looming ten storeys above them, when he saw a hyena emerge from Old Hall Street off to their right. And then he remembered, too late of course, that there were two entry points to Moorfields Station, one at the bottom of Moorfields itself, the other on Old Hall Street.
He opened his mouth to warn Ellen but she was already turning down Exchange Street East, the rifle slipping down her arm on its strap and into her waiting hands. The sheer soldierliness of Ellen's performance reawakened in Jay his feelings of woeful inadequacy in the face of the challenges of life in the post-Jolt world. Despite these feelings, he found himself grinning and, for a moment, didn't know why. Then he realised it was because he knew that Ellen, this stroppy, pregnant woman, was going to survive. Whatever happened next, she was going to live and, inexplicably, he felt a certain amount of personal pride in that.
His grin faltered then vanished as the hyena, now at the head of a ten-strong pack, spotted them. It showed them a mouthful of oversized yellow teeth then pulled away from the dark, corrugated sandstone of Tithebarn House and cut across Tithebarn Street toward them. As Jay followed Ellen, he looked back over his shoulder. The car-park hyenas were gaining, only fifty feet or so behind them now.
“We need to go to ground, Ellen.”
“No chance,” she shouted back at him. “Last time we went to ground we ended up in that fucking van.” About a third of the way down Exchange Street East, Ellen broke right, taking them into Exchange Flags, the plaza between the back of the Exchange Building and the back of the Town Hall. The Exchange Building seemed intent upon engulfing them, looming above them and wrapping itself about them. Jay would have been intimidated if it wasn’t for the fact that the building, in all its Georgian-style excess, resembled a vast, grey wedding cake. At the centre of the plaza, the Nelson Monument was a confusion of flags, cannons and skeletons; around its base, shackled French prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars wept into their hands. Above the prisoners’ heads, the words: ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY. Jay had always wondered what it had said. With Ellen leading the way by a couple of feet, they crossed the plaza, keeping low, using the monument for cover, and sprinted around the back of the Martin's Bank Building.
Jay looked over his shoulder. The hyenas were closing the gap. There was no way he and Ellen were going to be able to outrun them — no way — and it was very possible they had left it too late to find a bolthole. He wanted to call out to Ellen, apprise her of the situation, but what was the point? What would that achieve? And anyway, the hyenas would reach him first. He’d keep them busy long enough for Ellen to get away. Maybe it was exhaustion making a fool of him, but he found he quite liked the idea.
The sound of the hyenas’ footsteps seemed to be getting louder, deeper, as Jay and Ellen approached Rumford Street. The yellowish tinted windows of an egg-carton of a building presented their jaundiced reflections, the hyenas a smeared mass in the background. Then Jay realised the sound — a rhythmic bass rumble — was coming from somewhere up ahead, off to the left, from Water Street. Jay also realised he recognised the sound, had heard it before, recently.
As Ellen stepped out onto Rumford Street, the horse appeared from the side of the Martin’s Bank Building. Even though it was the same horse that Jay had first seen with Dempsey only that morning, the same horse that had saved him from being press-ganged into the militia, it had lost its nobility. It looked, somehow, insane. Its eyes were rolling as if loose in their sockets, thick ropes of foaming saliva had formed a sagging web from its mouth to its chest and such improbable quantities of steam rose from its gouged and bloodied hide that it looked as if it was on the verge of combusting. But it was still huge, fierce and powerful, and it was thundering toward Ellen.
Jay tried to shout her name, but his mouth was too dry and his lungs were suddenly incapable of drawing the necessary breath. The horse snorted dense blasts of vapour and Ellen turned, almost sprawling.
“Ellen!” Jay managed, now that it was too late.
Then the horse lurched right, away from Ellen, toward Exchange Flags. It lost its footing for a second, stumbled toward Jay, threatening to slam him into the wall of the Exchange Building, then regained its balance, if not its grace, and galloped toward the advancing hyenas.
He heard Ellen laugh the high uneven laugh of someone who has come closer to harm than they care to think about. She said something about Emily Davison.
Maybe the horse was too tired to change its trajectory. Maybe it had seen the hyenas too late. Maybe it wanted to hurt them. Whatever the case, it ploughed right into the advancing pack.
Four hyenas fell beneath the blur of its hooves. Two were knocked several feet sideways — one left, one right — landing in the snow, motionless; dead or dazed. Another hyena leapt, wrapping its arms around the horse’s neck, attempting to crawl round onto its back. Coming to a standstill, the horse reared up and shook the hyena loose. Its forelegs pistoned out driving two more hyenas down into the now-bloody snow.
The horse seemed unstoppable to Jay. The hyenas — twenty or so of the things now — circled it, but kept a safe distance.
“Jay, let’s go,” said Ellen. “That horse is fucked and we’ll be next. Come on.”
“What?” Fucked? Jay couldn’t see it. The horse looked strong to him. Crazy, yes, but strong, a force not to be trifled with. As if to prove the point, its forelegs pistoned out again. A hyena Jay was certain he recognised — pre- or post-Jolt, he couldn’t be sure — lost a hoof-shaped chunk of face, its shrill laughter replaced by a dwindling whimper.
This horse was not fucked. The hyenas were fucked. All of them.
Then, suddenly — suddenly to Jay, anyway — the horse’s rear legs gave, just gave, and it collapsed, almost vanishing into a cloud of snow-dust and steam.
“FucksakeJay!” Ellen growled through clenched teeth. “Run! Now!”
The hyenas swarmed over the horse, dodging its thrashing legs. Jay just stared. The horse made a sound very much like a scream and Jay ran.
He turned right, back toward Chapel Street, then, following Ellen, he cut left across a near-empty car park that was little more than a waste ground, the low, broken walls of which gave clues to the building that had once been there. The far left corner of the car park was occupied by a red-brick pub, the Pig and Whistle, which still had scars from where it had once been connected to the long-since demolished building.
Halfway across the car park, Jay looked back the way they had co
me. He couldn't see any hyenas. They were too busy with the horse. He could hear them laughing. He could hear the horse, too. He resisted the urge to clamp his hands to his ears.
Gasping for breath, they kept moving. Out onto Chapel Street, which sloped down toward Saint Nicholas Place, between the modern, prow-like structure of the Atlantic Tower Hotel and the pale sentinel, with its lantern spire, that was the Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas. Beyond the elaborate spire, the verdigris-encrusted Liver Birds were visible on their domed perches.
Jay turned and looked back up Chapel Street, toward the intersection of Old Hall Street and Tithebarn Street. There were no hyenas. None visible, at least. He could hear them, though, the city centre’s architecture bouncing their cackles and screeches from wall to wall, creating the impression that the things were everywhere.
As they reached the bottom of Chapel Street, the Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas above them now, Jay suddenly became convinced they were being followed, stalked. He froze and looked right, over his shoulder. But there was no silent, creeping hyena. Instead, the dock exit of the Queensway Tunnel.
Jay had forgotten all about it. The tunnel emerged from the side of the Atlantic Tower like the opening to a huge burrow. He fully expected to see wild-eyed and filthy faces floating out of the darkness. But there were no hyenas, just a once-white, now-scorched Volvo.
He could hear them, though, the hyenas, down there in the dark, making their way toward the light.
“Christ, they could have been waiting for us,” said Ellen, fighting for breath. She was looking into the mouth of the tunnel, too. “Just waiting for us, and then how fucked would we have been?”
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