Hyenas (22 page)

Pepper tried to counterattack but the blow had done
its work and the man's legs buckled. He dropped to his knees. The hyena leapt
on him, fists falling.

Jay got to his feet, spat out another mouthful of
blood.

Pepper looked at him with eyes that were beginning to
glaze.

Jay started for the reception area and the door to the
stairs.

He stopped — ”Fuck!” — turned around and marched back
toward Pepper, who had curled into a tight ball. The hyena was clawing at him,
trying to find a way in, an animal endeavouring to get at the soft flesh
beneath the tough outer rind of a new and intriguing fruit.

“Oi! Laughing boy!”

The hyena glanced back at him.

His stomach flipped as he realised he had no idea what
he was doing, no idea what he'd do if the hyena came charging at him.

“Yeah, you,” he said, voice warped by the onset of
panic. “Mick Hucknall meets Stig of the Dump. Stig Hucknall. And, I’m really
sorry to be the one who has to point this out to you, but you smell worse than
hot dog shit on a cold day.”

As Jay spoke, the hyena tipped its head at a quizzical
angle and its eyes darted about, seeming to track the words as they left Jay's
mouth. Its behaviour reminded Jay of Hello Kitty and he almost felt sorry for
the thing.

It traced the bluebottle flight path of the last couple
of words, and then turned its attention back to Pepper, raising a fist in
readiness to strike.

Jay took a breath.

“And did those feet in ancient time walk upon
England's mountains green?”

The hyena's fist remained aloft. It turned and looked
at Jay.

“And was the holy lamb of God on England's pleasant
pastures seen?”

The arm dropped, limp. Its eyes were darting about
now, as if it was watching a firework display.

“And did the Countenance Divine shine forth upon our
clouded hills?”

Jay was no grandstanding slam poet. He just let the
words out, slow and steady. Even so, it was clear he was creating nothing less
than a pyrotechnic display; the hyena's head was darting about as it
endeavoured to capture every flash, every detonation. Jay thought, if you like
this, you’d fucking
love
Alan Bates.

“And was Jerusalem builded here among these dark
Satanic Mills?”

The hyena took a couple of loping steps toward Jay.
Something about its face was all wrong and it took Jay a couple of seconds to
realise what it was. The hyena was smiling. Not grinning. Smiling. It was a
proper smile, not a putrid split in a grimy face. It took a couple more steps
forward and stopped.

“Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows
of desire!”

The hyena's head jerked about as it tried to keep up
with what was to the hyena, Jay imagined, an
eruption
of Blake.

Pepper unfurled and got to his feet, swaying like a
drunk. Blood streaked his face.

“Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my
chariot of fire!”

The hyena looked like it was in ecstasy. Saliva
drooled from its smiling mouth.

Pepper grabbed something from a nearby desk tidy, Jay
couldn't make out what.

“I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my
sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant
land.”

Pepper buried whatever it was he'd snatched into the
side of the hyena's neck.

A pair of scissors.

The look of delight left the hyena's face. For a
second, it wore no expression at all, and Jay felt a surge of grief so deep, he
let out a sob.

Then the look of hyena savagery and insanity returned
and it spun round to face Pepper. But Pepper was ready. He stomped down on its
shin. The bone broke with a grinding crunch. The hyena let out a gurgling howl
and dropped onto its side.

Pepper kicked the scissors further into its neck,
until they were buried up to the handle. Blood sprayed from the wound,
alternating between a thick jet, like a writhing wire, and a fine mist. The
hyena convulsed for a full minute then lay still.

Not looking at Pepper, seeming instead to address his
remarks to the dead hyena, Jay said, “I can't do this anymore. I just can't
fucking do it. I know it's not about The Beatles. I know Liverpool's worth
saving. But I can't help you. I'm not like you. You're an ex-con for fuck's
sake. All I've ever really wanted was to find a quiet spot and read a book. How
shitty an ambition is that?” He finally looked at Pepper.

Pepper helped himself to a handful of tissues from a
box on someone's desk and wiped the blood from his face as best he could.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Fair enough. I understand. I
know you probably think I'm some kind of nutter, but I'm not. I'm just someone
who had to... someone who had to...” He sat down on the edge of the desk.
“Christ.” He stared down at his feet. “I'm not a convict. I was
working
in the prison. Well, in the prison grounds. I was a gardener.” He grinned. “A
gardener. That's why I was there. The prisoners, the ones that hadn’t become
those things, hadn’t become jokers, were terrified, disorganised. I got them
out, led the way. We went to the Territorial Army base in Aintree and
tooled-up. Then, I went home. The suburbs were a fucking nightmare, Sunday
morning, jokers everywhere. Except I didn't call them jokers back then, didn't
know what to call them. My wife was gone, but my boy, Edward, my six-year old
boy, was still there. He was sat in the kitchen, sat in his own shit, eating
chocolate buttons and Kinder eggs. He attacked me, fucking flew at me. I’d fend
him off but he’d come at me again, seconds later. He kept coming at me and
coming at me. It went on for hours. Hours. He didn’t seem to get tired and I
was fucking exhausted. I tried talking to him, calming him, soothing him, but
it just made him worse, the words. The words made him worse. Every time he got
close, I’d look into his eyes, trying to see if there was something there,
something that could be brought back, something that could be... I don’t
fucking know... fixed? But there was nothing. There was nothing of Edward left.
Just
nothing
. The last time he came at me, I... I had to... I held
him tight and put my... I put my hand over his mouth and kept it there until...
kept it there until... until he stopped breathing.” He showed Jay the palm of
his hand, it was purple and knotted with scar tissue that looked infected,
looked like it would never heal. “He fought to the end,” he said and smiled, as
if his son's determination and relentlessness was a weird source of pride. “So,
I'm going to fight to the end, too, just like Edward. To the end.”

“I'm sorry,” said Jay. “About your son. I'm sorry.”

There were tears in Pepper's eyes as he said, “I know
it sounds stupid, and I know I can't bring Edward back, but sometimes I think
if I could just put everything else back the way it was... And even if it
doesn't bring him back — and I know it won't; of
course
it won't — at least
I can lie down and die and just be finished. Does that make any sense?”

Jay nodded. “Yes.”

Pepper said nothing for a while. Then, almost a
whisper, “I buried him in the garden. The hole... the hole in the ground was...
so
small
.”

He let out a couple of harsh sobs, then ground his
teeth together and stood up straight.

“Right, how the fuck are we going to get out of here,
lad?”

It was only then that Jay became fully aware of the
sound of hyenas swarming up through the building. There was no gunfire.
Pepper's men had either been defeated or they'd fled.

Pepper pressed a button on his walkie-talkie. “Anyone
receiving me? Anyone?”

A hiss of static.

He turned a small knob, pressed the button again.
“Could do with a little help boys. Anyone in the vicinity of the Liver
Building?”

Not even static this time, just dead air. Pepper
shrugged then clipped the walkie-talkie back to his belt.

“We’re on our own,” he said.

Chapter 26

Jay looked around frantically, hoping a solution might
present itself.

“Calm down,” said Pepper, fully composed now. “We've
got a minute or two before they get up here. We'll figure something out.” He
retrieved his pistol and reloaded it from a carton of shells pulled from his
jacket pocket.

“That's not going to be enough,” said Jay.

“No, it isn't. Better than nothing, though.”

Pepper jogged over to where Jay had played sniper. He
craned his head out of the broken window and looked down.

“We could climb,” he said. “It's icy as fuck but we
could do it. Possibly.”

“Well, I supposed we'd get down there one way or
another,” said Jay. He walked over to Pepper. “And if we fucked up, at least
it'd be quick.”

Jay's backpack was where he'd left it. He picked it up.

“Any better ideas?” said Pepper. “You've survived for
weeks on your own, without firearms and a small army, so you must know a thing
or two about resourceful.”

“I hid,” said Jay. “A little rat in a hole. Nothing to
be proud of.”

“You survived. Not to be sniffed at.”

The hyenas were getting closer. Only a couple of
floors away now.

“Christ,” said Jay. “Sounds like a fucking busload of
the bastards.” He started to shoulder his pack, as if he was getting ready to
get going. But get going where?

“Maybe it's a coach party, come to attend one of your
poetry recitals. Apparently they're very popular amongst the more cultured
elements of Liverpool's joker population.”

Jay stopped. He shrugged off his backpack.

“What?” said Pepper.

“Speakers,” said Jay. “I saw some before. Those little
ones you plug into a computer. I saw some. Where?” He pointed to the desk from
which he'd filched the can of dandelion and burdock. “There. And I need some
tape as well. Find some.”

“Yes, sir,” said Pepper and began scouring desks and
dragging open drawers.

Jay grabbed the speakers, yanking them free of the
computer. He gathered up the cables until the jack was in the palm of his hand.
He examined it. “Perfect.”

He opened his pack and took out the personal CD
player. He unplugged the headphones, plugged in the speakers and pressed play.

The same voice, the same warm, measured Scouse accent,
spoke.

“
I wander
thru’ each charter’d street, near where the charter’d Thames does flow, and mark
in every face I meet marks of weakness, marks of woe.
”

He pressed the skip button a couple of times. Then
turned the volume up as loud as it would go, on the CD player and the speakers.

“
Of the
primeval priest's assum'd power, when eternals spurn'd back his religion, and
gave him a place in the North, obscure, shadowy, void, solitary.
”

Jay pressed stop. He retrieved the rifle from the top
of the filing cabinet, where he’d inadvertently flung it.

The hyenas were on the final flight now. Jay imagined
he could smell their foulness, like the rush of exhausted air that precedes a
train in an underground station.

Pepper returned to the desk at the same time as Jay.
He handed two rolls of tape over, both half used up.

“It was murder finding them. White-collar reprobates
always stealing the fucking stationery. Never saw any of those bastards in
prison.”

Jay laughed and took the rolls of tape. “Should be
enough,” he said.

Jay taped the speakers to either side of the end of
the barrel of the rifle. As he worked, he said, “What about football? You never
mentioned it in your little why-Liverpool-is-so-fucking great speech. You know,
while you were kicking the steaming crap out of me? How come?”

Pepper smiled, but it was a serious smile. “Because
football’s too pure to mix up with all this shit. The Spasm, jokers, the end of
the fucking world. Football’s too pure. It deserves to be left out of it.
Maybe, when things have settled down a bit, me and whoever’s left standing can
have a little kick-about. Might even get a bit of a league going. I can think
of worse foundations for a new civilisation.”

“Fair enough,” said Jay, taping the CD player close to
the trigger. “But you could have used football to bring people together,
instead of The Beatles.”

“Too divisive, red or blue, all that,” said Pepper. He
laughed. “Besides, everyone I met was a fucking Bluenose, like you.”

“How’d you know I’m a Blue?” said Jay.

“You’ve got that look of ground-in disappointment.
Can’t mistake it.”

“Fuck you,” said Jay, grinning.

When both rolls of tape were finished, Jay lifted the
rifle and gave it a shake, to make sure everything was secure.

“You have
got
to be fucking kidding me, lad,” said Pepper, but he
was smiling as he spoke, his voice shaded with both disbelief and admiration.
“Well, it's a plan. And it's a fuck sight more than I've got to offer.”

“It'll work,” said Jay. He smiled weakly. “It’d better
work.”

A chorus of barked laughter, only slightly muffled,
told him the hyenas were here. He looked toward the reception. Through the
frosted glass of the double doors he could see the twitching, ragged silhouette
of several hyenas. The silhouette grew larger, and then filled the glass.

The door shook.

There was a click as Pepper pulled back the hammer on
his pistol.

“Don't use it unless you have to,” said Jay.

“That's going to be a tough one to judge.”

The doors flew open and the hyenas spilled in. The
first couple fell to the floor and were trampled by the seven or eight that
poured in after.

They spotted Jay and Pepper immediately and charged
toward them, a couple of them, the frontrunners, leaping up onto tables.

Before the doors could fully close, they flew open
again, and more hyenas fought their way through.

“Jesus,” said Pepper. He lowered his gun. There was a
quaver of fear in his voice. “If this doesn't work, we're fucked.”

“It'll work,” said Jay. “Trust... Shit.”

One of the two frontrunners had taken the lead. Jay
recognised her. A surge of nausea strained to empty his already empty stomach.

It was Alice Band. Her bare arms were evening-gloved
in red. She'd lost a clump of hair since Jay had last seen her, muscle gleaming
wetly where a chunk of her scalp had been torn away. Her hair band was still in
place, somehow obscene next to that glistening sore.

Jay remembered her punching her way into her victim's
skull, effortlessly it seemed, and he thought: It won’t work on her, the Blake.
It won’t work.

Her face was contorted with rage, a bruised and
scratched and bloodied mask of savage hatred. It couldn't possibly work on her.

Her? Jay reminded himself. It wasn't a 'her' it was an
'it', a vicious, brutal 'it'.

He wanted to turn to Pepper and scream, Shoot it! That
one! The nearest one! Shoot it!

Instead, he pressed the play button.

“
Eternals! I
hear your call gladly. Dictate swift wingèd words, and fear not to unfold your
dark visions of torment
.”

As one, the hyenas paused. Then, almost tripping over
themselves, they stopped.

Except for Alice Band. Alice Band kept coming.

Pepper raised the gun to shoot her.

“No,” said Jay. He wasn't sure what the noise of the
gunshot would do to the hyenas whose faces had already lost their fury,
replaced by a kind of thuggish reverie.

Alice Band's fury had remained in place. She was only
a few yards away now and Jay could see every rage-induced groove in her face,
like cracks in sun-baked mud.

“Christ, Jay.” Pepper's hand was shaking so much, it
looked like he was trying to conduct an orchestra with the barrel of his gun.

“
...
self-clos'd, all-repelling. What demon hath form'd this abominable Void, this
soul-shudd'ring vacuum? Some said it is Urizen. But unknown, abstracted,
brooding, secret, the dark power hid.
”

Some of the hyenas were sitting down, attentive as
school children. A few seemed to have discovered the rhythm and melody of
Blake's words and had begun to dance, a jerky to and fro. The rest stood
motionless, staring, half smiling.

Alice Band continued to bound across the desks.

Any second now, she'd slam into them. The CD player
might get damaged. Jay couldn't risk that.

He turned to Pepper.

“Shoot,” he said.

Pepper lowered the gun.

“Shoot! Jesus!”

Pepper grinned at Jay, then look at Alice Band.

Jay followed his gaze.

She, it, she — Christ, it was hard to know what to
call them anymore — was standing on the desk nearest them, swaying and smiling,
like a drunk at an office party that had got shockingly out of hand.

“
...ninefold
darkness, unseen, unknown; changes appear'd like desolate mountains, rifted
furious by the black winds of perturbation.
”

“Now what?” said Pepper.

“We just walk out of here, I suppose,” said Jay and,
keeping his steps slow and steady, he made his way toward the reception.

Pepper fell in behind Jay, Alice Band behind Pepper,
the remaining hyenas behind Alice Band, until a procession had formed.

There were more hyenas on the stairs, emerging from
the gloom, heading up, snarling, but as soon as they heard Blake’s words read
aloud in that soft Liverpudlian accent, their savagery evaporated. Swaying,
staring, some giggling like children, they stepped aside, waited for the
procession to pass, then attached themselves to its tail.

“
...rolling
of wheels, as of swelling seas, sound in his clouds, in his hills of stor'd
snows, in his mountains of hail and ice; voices of terror are heard, like
thunders of autumn, when the cloud blazes over the harvests.
”

The stench and heat on the stairwell were almost
overwhelming, a foetid sweat lodge. Jay kept his breathing brief and shallow,
suddenly convinced that the hyenas would take offence if he started retching
uncontrollably, and then all bets would be off.

“
Earth was
not, nor globes of attraction; the will of the immortal expanded or contracted
his all-flexible senses; death was not, but eternal life sprung.
”

One of the hyenas, a stocky teenager who appeared to
have modelled himself on James Dean, sidled up to Jay, smiling dreamily. He
placed a hand, hot and crusty, flat against Jay’s face. Jay managed to flinch
only slightly.

“Jesus,” Pepper muttered, his grip on the pistol
tightening.

Contact made, James Dean seemed satisfied and rejoined
the parade.

They had just passed the landing to the first floor
and begun the descent to the ground floor, when Jay noticed the small red light
flashing on the edge of the CD player.

He turned to Pepper, mouthed “Fuck!” and flicked his
eyes at the red light. Then he mouthed the word “Battery.”

Pepper rolled his eyes and almost seemed amused.

“
Here alone
I, in books form'd of metals, have written the secrets of wisdom, the secrets
of dark contemplation, by fightings and conflicts dire with terrible monsters
sin-bred, which the bosoms of all inhabit: seven deadly Sins of the soul
.”

At the bottom of the stairs, they pushed open the door
and stepped out into the foyer. The place was packed with hyenas.

“How much longer before that thing gives up the
ghost?” said Pepper.

“A couple of minutes, maybe. Probably less. Any
thoughts?”

“Okay. Thoughts. Right. As soon as we get outside,
find the deepest bit of snow you can. Plant the rifle in the snow. The jokers
carry on listening to Poetry Please with Roger McGough and we fuck the fuck
off. You to your boat, me back into the city.”

“You could come with us,” said Jay.

“Thanks. But no. No, I couldn't. This is it now for
me, until it's finished, until, one way or another, I'm done.”

“Fair enough.”

“
Rage, fury,
intense indignation, in cataracts of fire, blood, and gall, in whirlwinds of
sulphurous smoke, and enormous forms of energy, in living creations appear'd,
in the flames of eternal fury.
”

They paraded down the steps of the side entrance and
out onto Water Street, Jay, Pepper and the hyenas. Jay wasn’t certain why, but
he continued around the building to where Dempsey sat, somehow as determined
and carefree in death as he was in life. Feeling as if he were planting a flag
in some unexplored territory, Jay gently eased the butt of the rifle into the
deep snow drift at the bottom of the stone steps close to Dempsey’s feet.