Hyenas (16 page)

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 — ”

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 thick 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.