Hyenas (12 page)

Before

“It's Alan Bates,” said Jason's dad.

They were sat on a bench in Sefton Park. The water
sparkled, as if bioluminescent fish were playing close to the surface. Swans,
geese, ducks, moorhens and coots were fighting over the chunks of bread father
and son had half-heartedly cast onto the water.

“Who?” said Jason, although the name was familiar. He
turned the cassette over in his hands and mustered the most dismissive
expression his fourteen year-old face could accommodate.

The painting on the card insert was Blake’s
God Judging Adam
. God on his throne of fire pointing an accusing finger at a submissive
Adam, whose straggly hair and beard draped from his stooping head. Jason had
seen it before in one of his dad's books. He used to look at his dad's books
all the time, thinking, hoping, that somehow the tangle of tiny shapes on the
page would suddenly lose their similarity to dense, twisted hawthorn and
resolve themselves into words. They never did, though, and he always just ended
up looking at the pictures.

“It's William Blake,” said his dad. “Alan Bates reads
the poems. He's an actor. Great voice.
Whistle
Down the Wind?
No?”

Jason shrugged, although he'd seen the film only six
or seven months ago. He’d enjoyed it and the girl in it (he couldn’t remember
her name) had reminded him of a girl he liked in school, and when the man had
said “Why are you helping me?” and she’d said, “Because we love you,” he’d had
to fight back tears and was relieved his dad had been busy marking school books
in the kitchen.

“Never mind,” said his dad, in his best 'kids, these
days' voice. “Anyway, I thought you might like to listen to them. Remember when
I used to read them to you when you were a kid? You used to love the
Songs of Innocence
. But then you got a bit old for, you know, bedtime
stories. So, I thought you deserved to hear them read by a professional instead
of a bad cover version by a dreary, old Scouser like me.”

Jason shrugged, but when his dad flinched a little, he
said, “Okay, I'll give it a go.”

“Great. You won't regret it. How's things at school?”

It was Jason's turn to flinch. His dad was about to
tell him to forget he'd asked when Jason said, “The same. Surrounded by freaks
and zombies.”

His dad was about to give him The Importance of
Kindness lecture when he saw a look on his son's face that indicated a hardened
weariness that, for a moment, made him feel like
he
was the child and Jason
the battle-scarred veteran of life. He didn't like that feeling, didn't really
know what to make of it.

“I don't know what to say to you, son. I don't know
what to do. Just keep going and something will turn up, something will happen.
I wish I could offer you more than that, I really do. Christ, I'm your dad, I'm
supposed to heft you up onto my shoulders and carry you to safety. But this
Thing... it's everywhere. Nowhere’s safe.”

Jason could see that his dad was close to tears and he
wished there was something he could say, something he could do, but there was
nothing.

“Something'll turn up,” he said.

“Yeah. Something.”

“When you least expect it and you’ve given up hope.”

Chapter 17

Jay’s heart was beating so hard he almost didn't hear
the clunk behind him. He turned to the source of the sound, keeping the empty
pistol pointed at the advancing hyenas, still pulling the trigger, and he saw
that the door had slid open a couple of feet and Darth Vader was stepping out
onto the snow. Except it wasn't Darth Vader, it was a samurai. Or someone
wearing a samurai helmet and, from the waist up, armour. Below the waist were
grubby jeans and Converse boots. The half-samurai was holding a Japanese sword
in two hands above his head. He rushed past Ellen and Jay (and Jay was somehow
relieved to see that Ellen was clicking her empty revolver at the hyenas, too),
shouting, “Get in for fuck's sake!”

Ellen didn't need to be told twice; she plunged
through the gap. Jay followed, still clicking the gun even though it was no
longer pointed at the hyenas. As soon as he was through the door, he turned in
time to see the half-samurai backing toward him, sword sweeping out ahead of
him in blurred arcs, accompanied by a high, thin swoosh that pricked painfully
at Jay’s ear drums. There were four hyenas at the half-samurai’s feet, all
pumping improbable quantities of blood from gaping wounds. The rest of the
hyenas, whilst still advancing, were doing so with noticeable hesitancy. And
Jay thought, they don't understand the gun, it's too complex, too far removed
from the injuries it inflicts, but the sword is simple, they know what it is,
what it can do, cause and effect. One hyena in school ma'am-ish attire and
still sporting, against all the odds, a reasonably neat bun, lunged toward the
samurai. The sword blurred and the hyena's left arm was hanging on by threads;
of flesh or fabric, it was impossible to tell which. It let out a shriek that
still had something of laughter about it and folded down into an expanding pool
of its own blood. And then Jay had to step back as the samurai reversed through
the gap, let his sword clatter to the floor, slid the heavy door shut and
rammed brass bolts down into the stone floor and into the brass-plated beam
above. The door began to rattle immediately as several hyenas, certain once
more, now that the sword was out of sight and doubtless out of mind, slammed
against it.

“What the fuck was I thinking, saving you?” said the
samurai. “I could have been killed.”

He took off his helmet with a grunt of relief. He
looked about fifty, with black hair that was losing the battle against the grey
and a beard that had surrendered long ago. Small round spectacles slightly
magnified pale blue eyes.

“I'm Robert, by the way. Not Rob, Bob, Robbie or
Bobby. Robert. I saved your lives, so don’t piss about with my name. You owe me
that much.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed at the lenses with a paper
tissue.

“Jay.”

“Ellen.” The name was accompanied by a hiss of pain.

Jay turned to see Ellen bent as double as her
pregnancy would allow, both hands flat against the sides of her belly.

“Oh, please don't tell me you've gone into labour,”
said Robert. “I’ve seen enough blood and snot to last me a fucking lifetime.”
He took a deep breath, blew it out as if he was demonstrating the correct
breathing method for Ellen’s benefit, then stepped forward and put a
blood-spattered hand on Ellen's arm. “Are you okay?” he asked, voice suddenly
low and full of concern.

“Just a twinge,” said Ellen. “I don't
think
it's labour, but I didn't go to any of the classes, just thought I'd cross that
bridge when I came to it. Anyway, we haven’t got time for a fucking nativity.
Those things’ll figure some way to get in here.”

“You better have a sit down,” said Robert.

Jay grabbed a chair from behind the booking desk and
slid it behind Ellen, who sat down in three distinct stages.

“And don’t worry about the mouth-breathers,” said
Robert. “Out of sight, out of mind. Give them half an hour and they’ll forget
why they’re there.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Ellen. “Anyway, I should be okay
in a minute. Probably just the baby trying to kill me from the inside out.” She
produced a grin that comprehensively failed to hide something close to horror.

“I don't think you've got anything to worry about,”
said Robert.

“What do you mean?” Ellen half-snapped. “What am I
worried about?”

Robert looked embarrassed. “Sorry. None of my
business.”

“No, really, what makes you think I’ve got nothing to
worry about?” said Ellen, aggression giving way to muted optimism.

Robert sighed.

“Your baby,” he said. “I thought you might be worried
that it might be one of, you know, them. A mouth-breather. But it won’t be. At
least I don’t think so. Not if my theory’s right.”

“And what’s your theory?” asked Jay and realised he
was still holding his revolver. He shoved it into his pocket.

“I was an academic proofreader, before the Spasm. I
had a degree in History but, you know, good luck finding a job with that. And I
fucking hate kids.” He turned to Ellen. “No offense. So, teaching was pretty
much out of the question.

“A couple of years ago, a few days after I turned
fifty, I had a stroke. A big one. It was like God shitting lightning all over
me. After that, no reading or writing. Aphasia.

“Then, bang! God shits lightning on the entire fucking
planet! And, at the same time, it’s like all the gridlocked traffic in my brain
is suddenly rerouted and everything’s flowing like it used to. I can read,
write. No more aphasia and good fucking riddance. But I can’t celebrate with
anyone because the whole world’s gone completely insane. Not that I had anyone
to celebrate with
before
the Spasm. Not so much a loner as intensely
unlikable.”

Jay found himself taking a breath on Robert’s behalf.

“Anyway,” Robert continued. “What the fuck happened?
Assuming it
wasn’t
God shitting lightning.

“When I was a proofreader, I read all kinds of
scientific papers, books, articles, dissertations. Some stuff about
linguistics, philology, that kind of thing. And I knew all about NASA's
Chandra
X-ray
observatory, the
Sagittarius A
black hole, the transmission. So I had the tiniest
inkling but nothing I could bring into focus. And I just
had
to
know. Something like this, you can’t just shrug and say, ‘Ah well, one of those
things.’ So, I came here. To the library. Books, man. Fucking fabulous. You can
tap into the knowledge of these incredibly intelligent and brilliant people
without having to come into direct contact with the egotistical and socially
inept individuals themselves. There were three of us originally. We were in
speech therapy on Rodney Street, when the Spasm happened. We picked up two more
strays en route. But I was the only one who finished the journey. On any other
day, it wouldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes. Took me four hours.
Anyway, never really liked the stuttering buggers to be honest. Liked them even
less when they could finally fucking annunciate.

“So, I entrenched myself in the library and I start
reading.

“Did you know that no-one really understands how or
why or when language started? I mean, there are lots of theories, but nothing
that can be argued with any certainty. Maybe it started with us imitating
animal noises, or maybe it developed from involuntary expressions of surprise
or rage. Whatever, nobody really knows. All I know for certain is it
went
.
Language left. I mean, didn’t you feel it? That horrible pulling, like all your
thoughts were being dragged out through your fucking follicles?”

“I felt it,” said Ellen.

Jay nodded.

“So, language left. It vacated the premises. Except
for those people with twisted grey matter or fucked up neural pathways. It kind
of got snagged up in the deformed loops and whorls of all that shit-over-by-God
brain tissue. In fact,
those
people, by whom I mean, of course,
us
, the
neurologically deformed, seemed to benefit from the linguistic equivalent of
some sadistic physiotherapist violently cracking and popping something back
into alignment, back into usefulness.

“Anyway, I’m not particularly imaginative. I’ve always
been a facts and figures sort of person. But the way it tried to drag itself
free and left a piece of itself behind, I couldn’t help thinking of language as
a lizard fleeing from the grasp of some predator or a trap, sacrificing a limb
in order to escape. I couldn’t help thinking of language as a
thing
, a
thing with purpose.

“And if language
left
, this ‘thing with a purpose’, pissed right off like
some self-serving, eat-fuck-survive lizard, then it must have
arrived
at some point.”

Robert paused. He seemed unable to look at Jay and
Ellen, turning his attention to the high ceiling. What he said next came out in
a rush, as if he was hoping to blur his words until they were unintelligible.

He said: “I think language is an extraterrestrial
entity.”

He looked to Ellen, then Jay. “Cue laughter,” he said.
“I’m saying language came from outer space. That it’s a sentient being. Feel
free to laugh your arses off.”

When they didn’t as much as smirk, he continued.

“I think it came to earth during mankind’s infancy and
it kind of
infected
us, like a parasite. Or, more accurately, a symbiotic
organism. We used it as a tool to advance our progress toward civilisation and
it used us to move around, to reproduce itself, to develop and grow. What we
think of as language acquisition is just this thing’s means of transmission.

“When NASA projected that broadcast into the wormhole,
thinking “I wonder what will happen if...” language, fully developed now and
with no further use for its host, hopped aboard and left.

“
2001: a
Space Odyssey
in reverse. Bye-bye
black monolith, hello ape man.

“And when language left
them
, the pre-Spasm
literate and articulate, it plunged them into savagery, had a sort of atavistic
effect, it drove them insane. I mean, Christ, it would, wouldn’t it? Language
is all over the brain, it isn’t all housed in one part. The frontal lobe
controls expressive language. Damage to the parietal lobe can result in
problems with reading and writing: anomia, agraphia and alexia. If the
occipital lobe is damaged, the victim can suffer from word blindness. Temporal
lobe trauma can lead to Wernicke's Aphasia, characterised by difficulty
understanding spoken words. Language is
threaded
through
the brain. Rip it out and
what the fuck’s left?”

“Mouth-breathers,” said Jay.

“Mouth-breathers. That’s right.”

“But why didn’t they just end up like, I don’t know,
vegetables
?”
said Ellen. “I mean, why
murderous
animals?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was some other damage, to
the amygdala, perhaps, or the prefrontal cortex. But, like with language,
aggression is associated with lots of different parts of the brain. Christ, I
don’t know. It’s just a theory. We’ll never know. All the great minds are gone
now. As we speak, Richard Dawkins is probably eating his own shit.”

He turned to Ellen. “Whatever the finer details, your
baby, I think it’ll be normal. I think it will pick up language in exactly the
same way we did. There was no language in its brain to be torn out. I don’t
think you’ve got anything to worry about.

“But I could be, you know, wrong. It’s only a theory.
And now that I’ve said it out loud for the first time, I sound like a complete
fucking nutter.”

“I’ve heard worse,” said Ellen.

“But not much worse,” said Jay. And yet there was
something in what Robert had said that had set off little sparks in Jay’s mind.
He could almost feel connections forming.

“Anyway, we better get looking for that book,” Ellen
said to Jay.

“Book? You're kidding? You actually came here on
purpose, looking for a
book?
”

Ellen nodded.

“Christ, I just assumed you got
corralled
toward the library. What book would be worth that kind of risk?”

Ellen turned to Jay, eyebrows raised. Jay sighed, then
nodded.

“A sailing book,” he said.

“You've got a boat.”

“Yes. We have a boat. But no clue how to sail the
thing.”

“I thought Pepper torched them all. Must have drifted
in from the other side of the water.”

A window to the right of the main entrance shattered
behind its iron security bars and, a second later, there were hyenas pressing
up against them, their filthy arms stretching in.