Hyenas (21 page)

“Lucky,” he said. “Fucking lucky, Jay.”

He put on his pack and ran over to the west side of
the building and looked out of a window for any sign of Ellen and the others on
Bath Street but they'd done the sensible thing and gone to ground rather than
try to make it to the boat in a single leg. He wondered if they'd dipped into
the Crown Plaza Hotel. That made sense: plenty of hiding places and they could
probably exit on the far side of the building, closer to the boat and out of
the militia's line of sight. They might even be able to stock up on the supplies
they’d left at the bench. There was no sign of Pepper or his men, which meant
they were too close to the building to be seen or had already gained access.

Jay was wondering how the hell he was going to get out
unseen (shooting his way out was a non-starter), when he noticed the hyenas
spilling out of the docks exit of the Queensway Tunnel. They continued across
the road, twenty or more of them, heading directly for the Liver Building.
There were gun shots from somewhere near the base of the building and two,
three, four of the hyenas fell, but the pack was undeterred. More shots. More
hyenas fell. But still they came, as even more of them emerged from the
blackness of the tunnel.

Jay headed back through the reception and out into the
corridor. He made his way to the stairs he and Ellen had climbed. The sound of
shouts and boots below stopped him dead. He wasn't going to get out that way
without a fight, a fight he couldn't conceivably win. He ran to the far end of
the corridor. Another door opened up onto an identical stairway. Jay took two
steps down, then stopped. Shouts and boots here, too.

“Shit. Organised little bastards.”

He went back down the corridor and into the office,
making for the centre and turning on the spot until he saw a fire door on the
east side of the building. There were more gunshots — from inside or out, it
was impossible to tell. He hoped to God the militia and hyenas would keep each
other busy long enough for him to just slip out like he was escaping a dull
party.

He was almost at the fire exit when a bulky silhouette
filled the translucent square of wire-glass in the door. The handle began to
turn.

Jay dropped to the ground and scuttled under the
nearest desk, turning into a sitting position and pulling his legs in as far as
he could, knees right under his chin. He heard the door open, followed by two
heavy footsteps.

“Garvey,” said Pepper.

Chapter 25

Jay held his breath, told himself his heartbeat
couldn't be heard outside of his own head.

Pepper marched across the office, his booted feet
passing right by Jay. There was a crunch of glass and Jay realised Pepper was
checking over by the broken window, looking for Jay's wounded or lifeless body.

“No blood, Garvey. You're in here somewhere, hiding.
Aren't you tired of hiding, Garvey?”

Two gunshots filled the office, accompanied by the
sound of breaking glass and splintering wood.

“Come on, Garvey. You've survived this long. We could
use someone like you. Forget about the boat. We'll find it, burn it. You're
going nowhere.”

Footsteps getting closer. No more than a few yards
away now.

“Garvey?”

Silence.

A crackle of static.

“Any sign of him on the stairs, Lloyd?”

Laced with interference, the reply came back, “No sir.
Lot of fucking jokers, though. Fuck! Fucking... shit... past us, sir. Fuck.”

Jay could hear gunfire in muddled stereo, over
Pepper's walkie-talkie and from the building's lower storeys. Then the
transmission died.

“Lloyd? Lloyd? Bollocks. Come on, Garvey, everything's
going to shite, so let's get this over with, eh?”

Jay ignored the request. Then he noticed a tuft of
white fluff on the floor next to the tip of his left foot. It was a scrap of
stuffing from his coat, the stuffing that had been dragged out by the hyena in
Waterstones. He smiled. He'd been hiding under a table then, too. The smile
vanished. It wasn't funny. It wasn't fucking funny. After everything that had
happened today, here he was skulking under a desk, just as scared and useless
as he'd been at the start of the day. And this wasn't even a hyena; it was just
a bloke, some chancer, who'd probably been one of Liverpool's unwanted and
unusable before the Jolt had turned everything inside out.

The heavy footsteps came closer.

“Garvey? I'll be honest with you. I don't want to put
a bullet in your head — I could have shot you before, on Lord Street, but I
didn't — but if you don't come out on the count of five, I swear to God, I'll
shoot you in the gut and watch you die.”

The footsteps came closer.

Then Pepper's booted feet stepped into view.

“Come on out, Garvey.”

For a second, Jay thought that Pepper was addressing
him directly, that he knew where he was hiding, but then he started turning on
the spot and said, “Garvey? For Christ's sake, lad.”

Jay heard the sound of a door being flung open on the
far side of the office.

Pepper's feet turned toward the reception.

A hyena cackled.

“Fuck!”

A gunshot.

The hyena shrieked laughter.

Pepper started moving away from Jay, toward the
reception and the hyena.

Another gunshot.

Jay crawled out from under the desk and stood.

Pepper, his back to Jay, was standing a few yards
away, pistol held in two hands. The hyena, a shaggy ape of a thing who would
have been intimidating prior to the Jolt, was running across the banks of
desks, scattering pens and paper and personal effects, stooped, intuitively
presenting as small a target as possible. It was about ten yards away and
closing fast.

Pepper pulled the trigger. A chunk of something flew
from the hyena’s right arm and deep red spilled over filthy flesh. But the
hyena kept coming.

Jay pointed his rifle at the back of Pepper's head.

Pepper fired again.

The hyena placed the palm of its hand flat against its
chest and kept coming. Only five yards away now.

Pepper fired again. The hyena's head flipped back, as
if it was trying to flick the greasy ropes of its hair from its face. It
dropped from view between two desks.

“Jesus,” said Pepper.

The hyena lurched to its feet. Its face was gleaming
with blood. No wound was visible. Jay assumed the bullet had struck its scalp.
The hand pressed to its chest was similarly red and glistening now. It grinned
with bloody teeth and stumbled forward.

Pepper pulled the trigger again but the revolver just
clicked.

“Bugger.”

Still grinning, the hyena let out a wet, wheezing
sound and crashed to the floor.

Pepper's shoulders dropped and he sighed loudly.

Jay pushed the barrel of the rifle into the base of
Pepper's skull.

“Move and I'll fucking kill you, Pepper.”

Pepper tensed and Jay thought he was going to spin
round, try and knock the gun from his hands. Instead, he let the pistol fall to
the ground and put his hands on top of his head.

“Why don't you, Garvey? Kill me? Just do it. There's
no Geneva Convention anymore, lad. Point of fact, there are no conventions, at
all.”

“I don't want to kill you. But I will. Not out of
anger or malice but because I'm so fucking tired that anything more than
pulling this little trigger here is just too much like hard work. Does that
make any sense?”

Pepper laughed. “Perfect sense. I admire your honesty.
Why not help me out? We could win back this city. This is your city, too,
Garvey. You're born and bred, I can tell. Your accent, it's rich, it's got the
life in it.”

“Don't get me wrong, Pepper, I like The Beatles, I
really do, but I'm not going to die because the man who wrote Strawberry Fields
happened to be born here. Besides, he fucked off as soon as he could afford the
fucking air fare.”

“It's not about — ”

The hyena let out a final rattling breath, a terrible
slaughterhouse sound.

It was all the distraction Pepper required.

He turned, a blur.

Jay pulled the trigger.

But Pepper was already knocking the barrel up with the
back of his hand. The bullet shattered a polystyrene ceiling tile above
Pepper's head.

Pepper snatched at the gun but Jay leapt back and
levelled the barrel at Pepper's gut.

“Don't,” said Jay.

“Fuck you,” said Pepper.

He lurched left, then right. Jay tried to keep the gun
on him.

Pepper lunged, dipping low, trying to stoop under the
firing line.

Jay pulled the trigger.

The rifle produced a click.

“All out,” said Pepper. He reared up to his full
height, a good few inches over Jay, and punched him in the right temple.

Blinded by the blow, Jay staggered back, but as he did
so, more by instinct than design, surprising himself, he lashed out with the
rifle.

He felt it connect, a juddering crunch.

The anticipated retaliatory strike didn't come and, a
second or so later, Jay's vision returned, foggy but functional.

Pepper was on his knees, left hand clamped to right
cheek. Blood seeped from between his fingers.

“Had worse,” said Pepper. He let his hand fall,
revealing a deep gash beneath his eye, then launched himself at Jay.

Jay swung the rifle like a baseball bat, Pepper's head
the ball, but missed.

Pepper threw his shoulder into Jay's gut. All but a
few useless dregs of air left Jay's lungs and Jay left the ground. He smashed
down on the desk behind him, the back of his head cracking the dead screen of a
computer monitor before sending the whole thing, monitor, CPU, keyboard and
mouse onto the floor.

He'd still managed to keep hold of the gun and, as
Pepper came at him again, he shoved it hard into Pepper's hip. The resulting
crack brought a grimace to Pepper's face and stopped him in his tracks.

“Motherfucker!”

He lunged again, but Jay was already rolling off the
desk and down onto the floor. He got to his feet as Pepper slammed both fists
down on the desk where Jay had been sprawled only a moment before. Jay,
dragging thin streams of air into his lungs, brought the butt of the rifle down
toward Pepper's shoulder. But Pepper twisted away from the blow then backhanded
Jay across the face. Jay staggered back. He could taste blood. He could feel
blood, too, running from his scalp and down the back of his neck from where
he'd hit the monitor.

Jay swept out with the rifle. Pepper dodged the blow.
With one hand bandaged and the other greased with sweat, Jay lost his grip on
the gun. It sailed across the office, landing on top of a bank of filing
cabinets, sending several neatly stacked towers of CDs flying in a glittering
cascade.

Pepper moved in close and delivered two blows to Jay's
ribcage, left then right. What little air Jay had managed to pull into his
lungs abruptly departed.

Jay tried to shuffle back, out of range, but he
immediately reversed into a desk. He tried to sidestep but Pepper inflicted two
more body blows and Jay felt and heard bone crack.

Ignoring the pain, he threw a wild haymaker in the
general direction of Pepper's head. Pepper dipped enough to avoid taking it in
the face but Jay struck a glancing blow to the top of his head. It was enough
to delay Pepper's next assault. Jay threw another punch but Pepper ducked it
and threw one of his own. It caught Jay on the cheek, rocking him back on his
heels. A second punch landed on his other cheek and Jay was hard pressed to
remain standing. His head was starting to spin.

He reached behind him, grabbed whatever he could find
and swung it at Pepper.

Pepper leapt back, a pencil protruding from the side
of his forearm. His teeth were clamped together, his eyes hyena-wild with pain
and disbelief.

“Jesus!” he hissed.

Jay backed away. Gasping for breath, he spat blood
onto the tiles.

With an animal grunt, Pepper yanked the pencil from
his arm and threw it on the floor.

Jay couldn't help but grin.

“You must really love The fucking Beatles, Pepper.” He
pointed to the crimson pencil. “What's that worth to you, Pepper? A couple of
bars of Yellow Submarine?”

“Fuck you. You don't actually think this is all about
The Beatles, do you?” He rushed toward Jay. “You fucking brain donor.”

Jay sidestepped but Pepper adjusted his trajectory and
caught Jay with a dipped shoulder.

Jay spun on the spot one hundred and eighty degrees
then hit the floor face first.

Pepper kicked him in the back, once, twice, three
times.

“What about the world’s first school for the blind?
The world’s first school for the deaf? The first public wash-houses in the UK?
The first social housing? The first free school meals? The first nurses paid to
look after the poor?”

Jay tried to crawl away, but Pepper stomped on the
backs of his thighs, pinning him.

“What about the first anti-tuberculosis campaign? The
first city to employ a municipal bacteriologist? What about the fact that the
RSPCA, NSPCC, the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and legal aid all started in some
shape or form in Liverpool? We were the first city to really start looking
after its vulnerable. Christ, compassion was practically
invented
in Liverpool.”

Jay dragged his legs free, rolled onto his back and
scuttled away from Pepper.

Pepper followed.

“And then there’s the first lifeboat station in the
world. The first purpose-built public library. The first public art gallery.
The first x-ray medical diagnosis. The first school of tropical medicine. The
first mosque. The first municipal Jewish cemetery. Britain’s first Chinese
newspaper.”

Pepper shoved a heel into Jay's gut.

“Christ, The Beatles are fucking great, don't get me wrong.
I mean,
A Day in the Life
? Beautiful. But it's just five and a half minutes.
Five and a half fucking
minutes
.”

He stomped again, but Jay rolled aside and Pepper only
succeeded in grinding his heel into the floor.

He came at Jay again.

“This is a city, Garvey. A whole fucking city.
Eight-hundred years old, on paper, older in reality. The Beatles? Jimmy
Tarbuck? Do you think that's all this city is?” He stomped again, but Jay
rolled aside and the boot heel ground into carpet tile once more. But he could
feel what little energy he had left leeching away from him and he knew it was
only a matter of time. “Do you think that's all Liverpool's made of? Pop music
and celebrities who piss off once they’ve got a bit of dosh?” Another heel
stomp, this one catching the sleeve of his coat.

Pepper sensed the hyena a second after Jay saw it
lurching up behind him. It was probably male, ginger hair like rusty bed
springs, one ear reduced to an angry stump. Pepper turned as a fist caked in
dried blood and clustered with tarnished jewellery slammed into the side of his
head.