Hyenas (2 page)

“So,” said the old man, and that single syllable was
enough to establish his credentials as a born and bred Dubliner. “You’re not
going to be making any trouble for me, are you now, boy?”

Chapter 2

Jay wasn’t sure if the blood was rushing to or from
his head, only that his legs were weakening and darkness was crowding in from
the edges of his vision like the burning map from the opening credits of some
swashbuckling show he used to watch in the summer holidays as a kid. He sat
down, his buttocks thumping painfully against the top step, and put his head
between his knees. It was all he could do to keep down his breakfast of an
Eccles cake and half a pint of UHT chocolate milk.

The old man laughed but there was no cruelty in it.

“Well, boy,” he said. “I think that about answers my
question. No trouble at all.”

Jay raised his head and watched the old man advancing
through the thankfully receding darkness. He’d lowered the harpoon gun. He
shook Jay’s hand and smiled. It was the first human smile Jay had seen since
the Jolt.

“Dempsey,” said the man. He was tall and broad, at
least half a foot over Jay’s five ten, and built like a rugby player, second
row. His face was etched with cuts and stained with bruises; he looked like a
boxer who’d won his fight, but only on points. “And you’d be?”

“Jason. Jay. Jay Garvey.”

“So, Mr Garvey, you wouldn’t happen to know a thing or
two about sailing would you?” He placed the harpoon gun on the floor next to
him and began rummaging through a green canvas shoulder bag.

“Sailing?” said Jay. “Not a thing. Why?”

Dempsey produced a large bottle of Lucozade and
uncapped it.

“I’ve found a boat. A sailing boat. It’s got a motor
but that’s for shit. Pretty sure it’s the only practical, serviceable boat left
on the Mersey.” He passed the bottle to Jay. “Sip it. The sugar will help.”

Dempsey reached down and yanked the harpoon from the
hyena’s back, wiping the shaft clean on his thigh. Blood bubbled up from the
hyena’s wound, steaming, and the darkness began to crowd in on Jay once more.
He took a sip of Lucozade and was thankful that it was largely flat; his
stomach would have reacted badly to anything fizzy. The darkness began to
retreat.

“The only boat left?” he said.

“Looks that way.” Dempsey sat down next to Jay.
“Sergeant Pepper did for the rest.”

Sergeant Pepper did for the rest?
It sounded to Jay like a random selection of words
strung together in imitation of a sentence. He began to wonder if this
Ahab-figure might be mad. He’d certainly had
his
fair share of
out-there moments since the Jolt.

“Sergeant Pepper?” he said. “As in The Beatles song?”

“Sergeant Pepper, as in the deranged, self-appointed
leader of the militia.”

“Militia?”

Dempsey raised an eyebrow then scrutinised Jay’s face,
as if waiting for him to laugh and give the game away. Then he smiled and shook
his head.

“How long have you been in here? How long have you
been cooped-up in this bookshop?”

“Since the beginning,” said Jay. “I ventured out once,
for supplies. It didn’t work out so well.”

“Since the beginning?”

Dempsey flashed Jay an incredulous grin.

“Yeah. Since the beginning. Since the Jolt.” He took
another sip of Lucozade. It was probably just some soft-drink variation of the
placebo effect, but he was starting to feel better. Or maybe he was drawing
comfort, sustenance even, from the simple fact that he was talking to another
human being for the first time in weeks.

“The Jolt? Is that what you call it? Good a name as
any, I suppose. Fella I took up with not long after this all kicked off, Campbell,
he called it the Stroke. Said it was like the whole world had a stroke.
Everybody at once. The Stroke. I prefer not to call it anything. He’s dead now,
Campbell.”

“What’s this militia? And Sergeant
Pepper
?
Really?”

“I don’t know his real name. Some bloke who got
himself organised from day one. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing if he hadn’t
made it his mission to save every Beatles related landmark in the city. I mean,
don’t get me wrong, I
like
The Beatles but there are more pressing matters than
creating a secure perimeter around Penny Lane, you know? Plus, he’s not much of
a fan of democracy, our Sergeant Pepper. If you’re not with him, you’re against
him, and he’s the one with all the guns, if you get my drift.”

“You said Sergeant Pepper did for the rest. For the
rest of the boats?”

“He burnt them. Scuttled them. He doesn’t want anyone
getting out of Liverpool who can be press-ganged into his Magical fucking
Mystery Tour. Anyone trying to leave the city is a traitor, far as he’s
concerned. Boats were the only safe way out. The roads are completely
impassable, and who wants to be trekking cross country when night falls, with
all those
things
out there?”

“Hyenas.”

“Hyenas? Oh, because of that laugh of theirs?” He
laughed himself. “What is it with people and naming things?” He stood, settled
his bag on his shoulder and picked up his harpoon. “Point me to the sailing
books.”

Jay got up and was pleased to find his legs fully
functioning. He handed the Lucozade back to Dempsey.

“Sailing books?”

“Turns out sailing a boat isn’t as easy as you might
think. Complicated. All those little ropes and whatnot. I’ll be needing a bit
of instruction and seeing as you’ve eschewed your proud maritime heritage, that
means I’ll be turning to a book for help. First time for everything, I suppose.”

“Sports books are on the first floor, at the back,”
said Jay and started down the spiral staircase. “You’ll find sailing stuff
there, I think.”

“Lead the way.”

It was dark toward the back of the shop, with only a
little light from the front windows making it that far in. Jay scanned the
sports books. The faces of Gerrard, Torres, Saha and Dalglish, gazed at him
from a middle shelf and an unimaginably distant past. Someone had tried hard to
create a balance of red and blue but had been unable to hide their preference for
the warmer end of the spectrum.

“There you go,” said Jay, pointing. “Sailing.”

There were only five books.

Dempsey slid the first book from the shelf and turned
to the back cover.

“Autobiography,” he said and let the book fall to the
floor with a dull slap.

The next one. “Humour,” said Dempsey with something
like disgust. “Yachting humour? Christ, the world was fucked up long before the
Stroke or Jolt or whatever you want to call it.” The book landed on top of the
first.

The next. “This is more like it.” Dempsey flipped back
and forth through the book for a few seconds. “But not enough like it.” Another
one for the discard pile.

The fourth book. “Another fucking autobiography. These
sailor-types think they’re just
fascinating
, don’t they?” Book number four joined one to three.

Dempsey hesitated before reaching for the final book,
as if fearful of disappointment and what that would mean for his escape plan,
but the moment he had the book in his hands, his face lit up.

“You beauty!” He kissed the book’s cover, then flicked
through it.

Peering over Dempsey’s shoulder, Jay saw that the book
consisted largely of photographs and labelled illustrations.

“This is what I was after,” said Dempsey, grinning.
“Your basic ‘How to Sail a Boat if you’re a Gobshite Who Knows Sweet Fuck All
about Boats’ manual.” He shoved the book into his bag. “So, Jay, do you suffer
from seasickness, at all?”

“Sorry?”

“Seasickness? Are you prone?”

“You want me to come with you?”

“I’d be lying if I said my offer was entirely
altruistic, Jay. It’s a one-man boat but we’ll make better headway if we take
it in shifts. Besides, what were you planning on doing, staying in your foxhole
and waiting for the cold to kill all those bastard things off? Because that
isn’t going to happen. The cold will only kill off the weak ones, leaving you
with the really strong, vicious fuckers once spring comes. And think of the
disease that’s going to arrive along with the warm weather, all those dead
bodies starting to rot and the rats having a fucking field day. It’s going to
be positively medieval, boy.”

It was Jay’s turn to grin now. Weeks of isolation,
near-death experiences, an appalling diet and having to use a plastic waste
paper bin as a toilet had extinguished what little optimism he’d possessed
prior to the Jolt; it hadn’t even occurred to him that Dempsey would ask him to
come along. He’d thought the old man would just take his book, harpoon and
Lucozade and piss off. It hadn’t even occurred to Jay to invite himself.

“I’ll take that smile as an affirmative, then, shall
I?” He slapped Jay on the arm. “Good lad. Let’s get your stuff and be off. The
sooner we’re out of here, the sooner we’re on the water.”

“I’m up on the third floor,” said Jay and headed off.
“I’ve not got much.”

Dempsey followed.

Jay was stepping over the threshold of his hidey-hole,
scanning the neatly stacked volumes of Blake he knew he couldn’t possibly leave
behind, when, from the top of the stairs, Dempsey pointed out what Jay, in his
eagerness to be gone, had failed to notice.

“Jay?” he said. “Where’s the hyena?”

Chapter 3

“No blood going down the stairs,” said Dempsey,
turning slowly on the spot, harpoon gun sweeping back and forth. “Which means
it’s up here somewhere, with us,”

Jay was still standing at the threshold of his
hidey-hole, looking out now into the shop.

“Christ,” he said. “It never fucking ends, does it?”

“Don’t worry. It can’t have much left in it. You just
concentrate on getting your gear together. I’ll sort this little bastard out.”

Jay backed into the middle of the old staff break
area. Dimly illuminated by a battery-operated lantern, it looked like a cross
between a teenager’s bedroom and a derelict’s retreat. Clothing, food wrappers,
and empty soft-drinks cans were scattered about. A rumpled sleeping bag lay on
top of a makeshift mattress made from the seat cushions taken from the green
leather sofa which was abandoned against the far wall. Next to the sleeping bag
was a small Calor gas stove. In one corner, a red plastic wastepaper bin —
which would have been emptied had it not been for Northrop Frye and subsequent
events — steamed slightly. Tin foil and blankets had been thumb-tacked to the
walls, and the room was noticeably warmer than the shop floor.

Still keeping one eye on Dempsey, Jay grabbed the
khaki 40-litre backpack that had doubled as a pillow and began stuffing it with
his William Blake collection, his Sony Discman, crisps, muffins and a couple of
pouches of Capri Sun.

The insistent reek radiating from the wastepaper bin
reminded Jay of how much he needed to pee. Thankfully, his bowels had rescinded
their demands now that his fear levels had dropped from stark terror to a
steady, rumbling dread.

He clipped the pack shut, wriggled into the straps and
bounced up and down a couple of times, distributing the weight evenly across
his shoulders.

The simple act of thinking about his bladder seemed to
have the effect of admitting more fluid into it. Jay now felt like he had a
bellyful of hot piss. The urge to relieve himself had suddenly become a priority.

He looked back out through the doorway; he couldn’t
see Dempsey but he could hear him muttering to himself. There was no sign of
the hyena. Maybe it had simply crawled into a dark corner somewhere to die.

He really had to go. He could already feel piss like a
warm wire, creeping down his urethra.

The hyena was dead, he was sure of it. It would have
made itself known by now, if it was still alive.

Jay grabbed the wastepaper bin, took it out of sight
of the doorway, giving himself some privacy, and set it down on the floor,
against the wall.

He’d only just managed to free himself from his pants
when the warm wire completed its journey and began spraying wall, then floor,
then shoes, then wall again before finally finding its way into the wastepaper
bin, a frothing collision.

Jay let out a series of diminishing sighs.

There was a crash from the shop floor. Dempsey cried
out. Then, the distinctive, guttural laughter of the hyena.

“Shit!” Gritting his teeth, Jay tried to force his
bladder to empty itself but there seemed to be no end to it. He tried to
staunch the flow but the most he could achieve was occasional stuttering
interruptions.

“Little bastard!” Dempsey bellowed.

There was the sound of a scuffle, then a clattering.

Jay pictured the harpoon gun tumbling down the stairs,
Dempsey unarmed.

“Fuck!” He glared down at his penis. “Come on! Come
on!”

“Bastard!” Dempsey roared. Then, punctuated with
progressively wetter thuds, “Will. You. Just. Die. You. Little.
Fucker!
”

The hyena snarled. Dempsey grunted. A heavy thud.
Shuffling footsteps approached the doorway.

Dempsey, please, let it be Dempsey
.

From further off, nearer the stairs, Dempsey half
shouted, half panted, “It’s headed your way, boy.”

The hyena stumbled over the threshold and into the
centre of the room. It turned to face Jay, its jaw hanging impossibly loose;
its nose looked like something scraped from an abattoir floor. It coughed out
laughter, the sound squeezing the last couple of drops from Jay’s bladder.

Scuffling backwards, Jay zipped up his pants, almost
circumcising himself in his eagerness to retain at least some dignity.

The hyena’s eyes rolled back into its skull and it
fell forward, arms hanging limply at it sides. Its face hit the floor with a
coconut-shy crack. The wallet slid from its back pocket and flopped open. Jay
saw a driver’s licence, a very human face, clean-shaven and smiling,
recognisable despite the absence of thick dirt and dried blood.

Jay skirted round the body, refusing to take his eyes
from the thing, certain it would suddenly spring to its feet. He grabbed the
lantern and all but ran from the room.

Dempsey was sat near the stairs, grinning at his
bloodied fists. “I might have a bus pass,” he said, “but I’m still fucking
handy.” He gave Jay a mock scowl. “And what, might I ask, happened to the
cavalry?”

“I needed a wee,” said Jay and immediately regretted
his use of the infantile ‘wee’, wondering where the hell
that
had
come from. Maybe it was because he’d felt like nothing but a frightened child
since the Jolt.

“Oh, well, that’s all right, then,” said Dempsey,
getting to his feet, still grinning. “When a man needs a wee, he needs a wee.”
He started down the stairs. “Come on, then. Let’s be off. Unless you think you
might be needing a poo-poo.”

Jay pinkened.

“All right, you sarcastic old bugger,” he said. “It’s
been a long day.”

“And it isn’t even nine a.m. yet, boy.”

Jay smiled. It was nice, being ribbed for an
embarrassing slip of the tongue. Like pub banter, merciless but affectionate.
Normal. He followed Dempsey down to the ground floor.

The harpoon gun lay on the bottom step. Dempsey picked
it up and checked it for damage.

“Seems okay,” he said and expelled a sigh of relief,
his breath condensing and rolling out ahead of him.

It was colder down here. The front door was open and
flurries of snow swirled in.

“Once we get outside,” said Dempsey, “we’ll need to
keep moving. Stay close to me. I want you to count your steps. Every fiftieth
step, I want you to turn and look behind you. These things can creep up on you
pretty damn quick. You’re going to be the eyes in the back of my head, Mr
Garvey, okay?”

Jay nodded.

Abruptly, the quality of light in the shop changed.
Jay couldn’t see the doorway past Dempsey’s considerable frame but he knew
someone or something was standing at the threshold. He moved a little to the
left, peered around Dempsey.

Two hyenas.