Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

  Waiting for us, thought Jay and the words seemed to drop down into his gut, past his burning, aching lungs. He felt sick but he was suddenly certain that his nausea wasn't instigated by a sense of what-might-have-been. It was something else.

  “Waiting for us,” said Jay, and found himself looking at Ellen's rifle.

  “Well, thank fuck they weren't. We better get moving. It won't take them long to find their way out.”

  Ellen started to turn but Jay grabbed her arm.

  “Not the hyenas. Something else. Something else is waiting for us.”

  Ellen pulled her arm away.

  “The others are waiting for us, Jay.”

  “The others,” said Jay, straining to bring his thoughts into focus.

  “Look, if you're going to have a nervous breakdown, can you wait until we're on the boat?”

  “The other two,” said Jay. “Those militiamen, in the museum, Pete and Col, they said something like ‘Let's see if we can find the other two. Pepper said there were three of them. Assuming the jokers haven’t got to them already.’ Something like that. I didn't really process it at the time because I was trying really hard not to shit my pants and start crying. Three of them. You, me and Brian.”

  “Fuck. Sergeant Pepper's got the others. That's why the militia were around the library. They were looking for us. Which means they're probably — ”

  “Waiting for us.”

  Before

  “Four years,” said Jay. “It took her four years to figure out that she did have a problem with my problem, after all.”

  “I'm sorry Jason, I really am,” said Jay's dad.

  “When we first started going out, she said it was a gift. She said, 'You're not burdened by the tyranny of the written word.' It sounds so stupid and pretentious now, but at the time I felt ten feet tall.”

  Jay stuffed a forkful of Lewis's egg custard into his mouth, more to stave off tears that were beginning to feel inevitable than out of any desire to eat. But he found the taste of the dessert — sweet and creamy, a perfect egg custard — wrapped him in childhood and brought him even closer to tears. He swallowed the food quickly, tried not to taste it and put down his fork.

  “She said, 'You don't have to dot the i's or cross the t's. You can make up your own rules.' She even quoted Blake: ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.’ No wonder you liked her.”

  “I wish I could say I didn't like her. I wish I could tell you you've had a lucky escape. Christ, I wish I could offer you a bit more than crap about time healing all wounds and there being plenty more fish in the sea. But I can't. I'm a dad. We're terrible at this kind of thing. I wish your mum was here.” He sighed. “Anyway.”

  “Yeah. Anyway.” Jay managed a brief, bitter laugh. “Funny thing is, just before she pulled the car over to tell me it was over, her stereo chewed up my William Blake tape. Alan Bates was reading The Four Zoas and next minute it started to warp and then went completely mental. And I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen.' And, you know me, I'm not superstitious or anything. But after she told me, I thought, I might not be able to read words but I can read fucking signs.”

  Jay's dad summoned a smile and took a sip of coffee. Jay picked up his fork and poked his egg custard as if he half expected a wasp to come crawling out of it.

  “So, what about the theatre group, son, your job?”

  “I'm jibbing it,” said Jay.

  “What? Look, I can understand why you might want to avoid Lucy for a while but — ”

  “It's not just that. It's been bothering me for a bit now, the way I have to stand in front of all those people and say, 'You don't want to turn out like me.' It's like, 'Behold ladies and gentlemen, the Amazing Educationally Subnormal Man! Marvel at how words a five year-old can readily absorb from the printed page baffle and enrage him!' It's pretty un-fucking-dignified.”

  Jay's dad laughed.

  “It's not really like that, though, is it?” he said.

  “I suppose not. Not always, anyway. But more and more lately, it feels that way.”

  “But what else are you going to do?”

  Jay dropped his fork.

  “Thanks a bunch,” he said.

  “What?”

  “What else am I going to do? You said it as if you couldn't imagine me being able to do anything else. Thanks.”

  “That's not what I meant. You know that. It's just, well, it's tough for everyone at the moment. Jobs are thin on the ground and, like it or not, you've got more hoops to jump through than most. Shit but true, Jason.”

  Jay nodded. “Shit but true. Fair enough.”

  “I know it's hard, but maybe you should stick it out.”

  “I can't. I can't face it.”

  “Give it a couple of weeks, then see how you feel.”

  “I know how I'll feel. I'll feel exactly how I feel now. I’ll feel precisely how I feel all the time. I'll feel like a freak. Because, when all's said and done, I am a freak, Dad. And life’s just a fucking trap for people like me.”

  Chapter 24

  “So, now what?” said Jay.

  “What do you mean?” said Ellen, but there was a look on her face that Jay could only describe as pre-emptively guilty.

  “You know what I mean. Do we just head for the boat?”

  “Jesus.” Ellen tried to inject some venom into the word but with little determination. Her hand went to her belly and she sagged a little. “I don't know.”

  “I mean, what are we going to do? Take on the militia whilst dodging hyenas and come to the fucking rescue?”

  Ellen shrugged and sighed. “I don't know. I really don't.”

  “We've got one gun with a few bullets and they're armed to the teeth,” said Jay. “We have to be...”

  There was someone sitting on the small flight of stone steps leading to the Deutsche Bank entrance to the Liver Building. Even at this distance, Jay recognised him.

  “Dempsey,” he said.

  He ran across the dual carriageway, keeping low and weaving between the cars, until he was face to face with the Dubliner.

  Dempsey was dead, of course. His face was the colour of old putty but he wore an expression of mild amusement, as if he'd been sitting on the steps just watching the world trundle by in its usual silly way when death had touched him lightly on the forehead and sent his spirit off to Wherever. The deep tracks scored into the snow, spotted with blood, leading back toward Princes Parade told a different story.

  “You knew him?” said Ellen, still catching her breath.

  “Yes. Met him this morning. It was his boat. He came looking for a sailing book in Waterstones and stopped me getting taken to pieces by a hyena.” He turned to Ellen. “He's the reason you're not safe and warm, painting your pictures. He's the only reason we might actually get out of this city before everything turns to shit.”

  “Don't know whether to kick him or kiss him.”

  Jay reached forward to close his eyes then decided against it. Let him carry on watching the world go by.

  “How the fuck did he get here?” said Jay.

  “Dragged himself, by the looks of it.”

  “Dragged himself. Jesus. He'd lost so much blood. Then he had a heart attack or some kind of seizure and fell into the Mersey. I thought he was dead. He should have been dead. But then he pulls himself out of the icy water and starts working his way back to the city centre. Christ, he was probably looking for another sailing book.”

  Jay laughed.

  “What?” said Ellen.

  “Dempsey asked me why I was in a bookshop when the Jolt happened, and I was too embarrassed to tell him. Seems stupid now.”

  “What does?”

  “Embarrassment.”

  “So what were you doing? In a bookshop?”

  As Jay spoke, he looked into Dempsey’s death-glazed eyes. “I used to go there all the time. I’ve got a recording of William Blake poems. I’d listen to th
e poems and pretend I was reading them. I’d pretend I was normal.”

  Ellen laughed.

  “What?”

  “Well, that is pretty embarrassing.”

  “That’s what I thought. But now I think it was just one more thing I’ve done to survive.”

  Ellen patted him on the arm, as if he was a rambling elderly relative. “You keep telling yourself that.”

  Jay grinned. “Piss off.”

  He looked up at the Liver Buildings.

  “We go in, get up high and take a look. See what Pepper has in mind. Then we take it from there. If there's nothing we can do, we head for the boat.”

  Ellen nodded. “Sounds like a terrible idea.” She smiled. “But okay. In for a penny, in for a pound. Let’s find a way in.”

  “Well, Deutsche Bank’s closed,” said Jay pointing at the imposing oak door.

  “There must be other entrances,” said Ellen. “You go right, I’ll go left. Don’t go too near to the front of the building. If Pepper spots us, we’re fucked.”

  She didn’t wait for Jay to respond, just scooted off down Water Street, staying tight to the low wrought iron railings that surrounded the building. Jay did likewise, to the right. There were double doors halfway along, closed and as impassable as the Deutsche Bank entrance. He looked around for open or broken windows. Nothing, not even on the higher storeys. He was wondering if he’d be able to break a window without alerting Pepper — just make a small hole, then pull the shards out until there was a hole big enough to squeeze through — when Ellen appeared at the corner and waved for him to follow.

  “I think I’ve found a way in,” she whispered once he’d caught up. “But we’re going to need a bit of brute force. Man’s work.” She grinned. “But you’ll have to do.”

  Ellen led him to an entrance that was opposite the one he’d just come from. Three broad stone steps went up to double sliding doors, all glass but for a thin aluminium frame. The right-hand pane was all but gone, just a few jagged teeth left top and bottom. Jay followed Ellen into a small vestibule. Ahead of them, revolving doors. On the snow-dusted floor an A-board sign covered in muddy footprints read ‘Staff Entrance Only. All Visitors Please Report to Main River Entrance. Thank You.’ Through the revolving doors Jay could see a corridor that appeared to plough right through to the other side of the building. Past the revolving doors and immediately to the left, a narrow flight of steps led up.

  “I tried moving the doors but I can’t get them to shift more than an inch or two,” said Ellen.

  Jay stepped into the wedge-shaped space, put his shoulder up against the glass and put his back into it. It moved the inch or two Ellen had already achieved then stopped dead. He stepped back a couple of paces then fell against it, shoulder first. It shifted another inch but the movement was accompanied by a small shriek of complaining mechanisms.

  He looked back at Ellen and they winced in unison. Ellen shrugged and whispered, “Try again. I’ll keep dixie.” She went to the bottom of the steps and peered around the edge of the wall toward the river. Without looking back, she gave him a thumbs-up.

  Jay couldn’t help smiling. Dixie. He hadn’t heard that one since school. He took a few steps back then threw himself at the door again, aiming for the narrow polished steel frame. He didn’t want to go through the glass, with all the noise that would make. The door moved another couple of inches, but the shrieking was louder this time. He looked back at Ellen; she was still looking toward the river but she was no longer giving the thumbs-up.

  “Bollocks,” said Jay and felt his own attempt to burrow up into his gut.

  The thumb wavered. Then it went up again.

  Jay puffed out a white plume of relief. He walked back to the top of the steps then charged at the door. As he hit it this time, hard enough to hurt, there was a trio of sounds. There was the shriek, a lot louder this time, a metallic snap and a crack. Jay was already familiar with the shriek. He had no idea what the snap was until the door rushed away from him. The complaining mechanism had given up its protesting, had given up entirely. And as he staggered forward, Jay realised what had generated the crack. The pane of glass ahead of him had broken from the bottom left-hand corner to the middle of the top frame. The fissure seemed to be getting wider, then Jay realised the right-hand shard of glass was falling toward him. Without thinking and still stumbling forward, Jay grabbed at the shard, tried to stop it from crashing to the floor. He didn’t feel any pain, but he did feel the glass slice into the palm of his left hand, a brief pressure followed by a sort of spreading of the flesh and then a numbness. He kept hold of the shard and, regaining his balance, lowered it to the floor. The door behind him slapped him on the backside, knocking him forward a couple of paces.

  Jay stepped out of his wedge and found himself on the other side of the vestibule, next to the narrow flight of stairs. He looked back toward Ellen and saw she was already at the revolving doors, pushing her way toward him.

  “Sorry,” he said as she emerged. “Noisy.”

  She smiled. “Not as noisy as it sounded to you. Nobody came running, anyway.” She pointed at his hand. “You’re bleeding.”

  He looked at his palm. There was a deep gash running from just below his little finger to the pad of his thumb. Blood that had been running toward, and dripping from, his finger tips changed direction as he raised his hand, dribbling down his wrist.

  “Christ,” he said. Seeing the injury seemed to switch on the nerves in and around the wound. The pain was dizzying.

  “Fuck me, that’s nasty,” said Ellen.

  “I need to sit down,” said Jay. He pointed to the narrow stairway.

  Once on the stairs and out of sight, he sat down as nausea rippled up from his gut to the back of his throat. Ellen dropped down next to him, shrugged off her backpack and began rummaging around inside it.

  “Think I’ve got a bandage in here, somewhere,” she said.

  Jay risked a glimpse at his hand again. The wound looked like a mouth, thin with pale lips, blood like a reptilian tongue flickering about.

  “Should consider myself lucky, really,” he said. “I’ve got off relatively unscathed so far.”

  Ellen, pulling the cellophane wrapping from a bandage threw him a look of incredulity.

  “What?” said Jay.

  “Have you seen your face, lately? It’s a bit of a mess. You look like you’ve been on the business end of a fucking good kicking.”

  There was a door at the top of the stairs, with a small rectangular window in the centre of the top third. Jay stood, swaying a little, and walked the remaining few steps up to the door. It was dim on the other side of the window, brighter on Jay’s side, so it worked well enough as a mirror. His face was a bit of a mess. There was a dark bruise about the width and length of his thumb across the centre of his forehead; it was raised a little, too, as if there was a thumb lying just below the surface and pushing outwards. He remembered how he’d got that one: when the hyena had leapt on his back and driven his head down into Waterstone’s carpet-tiled floor. There were thin, bloody scratches running down from his hairline to meet the bruise, from when he’d burrowed, head-first, into the icy snowdrift at the back of Waterstones. His right cheekbone was purple and swollen, from the rifle butt driven into it by one of Pepper’s militiamen. And then there were the numerous speckles and splashes of blood, from the hyenas he’d killed.

  He didn’t recognise himself. Who the hell was this battle scarred veteran, this survivor, this killer? It surely wasn’t the same Jason Garvey who’d hidden away for weeks, hoping the shitstorm would pass him by whilst he ate Kit Kats and blueberry muffins and drank UHT chocolate milk, the diet of a child without caring parents. It surely wasn’t the same Jason Garvey who’d crammed himself under a table, watching a hyena attempt to eat the works of Byron, whilst he thought, What the fuck? The world ended five weeks ago. There shouldn’t be any more surprises.

  He was quite pleased to find his reflection reminded him of none othe
r than Dempsey, all cuts and bruises, a boxer who’d won his fight on points but had, nevertheless, won.

  He turned away from himself and looked down the stairs at Ellen as she produced a safety pin from a small first aid kit. Sarcastic, pregnant, unstoppable Ellen. Whether it had ended or not, the world was full of surprises, he realised, and he felt a little surge in his chest, a warm, velvety wave.

  “What are you smiling at, dickhead?” said Ellen.

  “Nothing. Just glad to be alive for a little while longer.”

  “Very profound. You should get some t-shirts printed. Now, come here. Let’s get this bandage on.”

  Jay sat back down next to Ellen. She grabbed his hand like a mum seizing the hand of her child who’s just tried to stroll across a busy road without looking.

  “This is going to hurt, but I don’t want to hear about it,” she said, then squeezed his hand hard, causing the lips of his wound to press together. Blood oozed out, uneven lipstick. “Keep your hand stiff like this while I strap it up tight.”

  The second she was done, she stood and started up the stairs. “Come on.”

  Jay followed, trying to flex his bandaged hand a little and finding it impossible.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened up onto another stairway, this one gloomy and zigzagging up to the top of the building.

  Ellen had to stop, once on the second floor and again on the fourth; each time, just for a minute and then she took a deep breath, puffed it out loudly and set off once more.

  They left the stairway on the fifth floor, stepping out onto a long corridor, close to a set of lifts facing each other across the corridor. The floor alternated between pale, laminate flooring and blue carpet tiles. At either end of the corridor were double doors of frosted glass.

  Jay got his bearings.

  “This way,” he said, heading left. “River end.”

  The doors opened onto a small reception area, with two leather sofas facing a curved desk. A visitors' book was open on the desk; the pages that were on display were only half filled with signatures. A row of chest-high filing cabinets created a low wall between the reception and an expansive open-planned office. A three-cabinet gap formed an entrance in the middle of the wall.