Hyenas (5 page)

Chapter 6

At the top of Lord Street, Dempsey and Jay crossed
over and followed the concave crescent of shops — Prêt A Manger, Blankstone
Opticians and O
₂
, with its proud display of halted technology — round
onto Castle Street. They jogged past Mangetout, Blue Arrow Recruitment and
Andrew Collinge, then, at the junction with Cook Street and Brunswick Street,
they cut across the road, weaving in between snow-fattened abandoned vehicles.

As they passed the NatWest, Jay saw a severed hand
sitting like a fat, pale crab on the keypad of one of two cash machines. There
was something almost deliberate about the placement of the hand, and Jay had to
repeat the word ‘swoon’ to himself, silently, until a sudden pulse of dizziness
had passed.

At the corner of Water Street, Dempsey signalled for
Jay to stop. Jay looked around, spinning on his heels, as he scanned for
hyenas, certain Dempsey must have seen something, heard something. But Dempsey
swept snow from an aluminium chair outside Starbucks and sat down.

“Just need to get my breath,” he said. His face was
almost colourless despite his exertions.

“There was a Boots back there,” said Jay. “They’ll
have bandages, antiseptic, pain killers.”

“I’ll be okay,” said Dempsey. “There’s stuff on the
boat. Getting there’s the priority. Once we’re in open water, where those
bastard things can’t get at us, we’ll worry about my little flesh wound.”

Jay pulled up a chair, dusted it off and sat down, but
continued scanning for hyenas.

“So,” said Dempsey, gazing up at the domed roof of the
town hall. “Where were you when it happened, this Jolt of yours?”

“Where you found me,” said Jay.

“What, in Waterstones? In a bookshop? What were you
doing, looking at the pictures?”

Jay flushed. “No. What? I was... What do you mean?

“Well, you weren’t
reading
, that much I know.”

“I was... you know... I was...”

Dempsey caught the look of humiliation and confusion
on Jay’s face. He leaned forward and placed a hand on Jay’s arm, squeezed it
gently.

“It’s okay, boy, there’s no shame in it.”

“No shame in what?” said Jay, his voice lifeless and
defeated.

“None of us could read, Jay. None of us survivors. We
all had severe speech or literacy problems of one sort or another. Like me with
my dyslexia or Campbell with his aphasia; that sort of thing. Stuttering,
illiterate, inarticulate little fuck-ups, every one of us, until... bang!”

“Bang,” said Jay. A fat snowflake landed on his
eyelash and when it refused to be blinked away, he wiped it off with the back
of his hand. “It was like something was trying to get out of my head, some
massive thought making a break for it, but it couldn’t escape. It was snagged
on something. And then there was like... like a
tearing
.” He winced at the
memory of not just the pain but the sheer disorientating
distress
of it. “For a second, though, before I blacked out, before I fucking
swooned
,
I felt...
wonderful
, like a strong, cold wind had blown through my brain
and cleared out all the clutter and confusion, untangled all the knots that had
been there since the day I was born. When I came to, I had Blake’s
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
in my hand. I’d had it in my hand the whole time, had
never let go of it. I looked at it and... I looked at it and...” he realised he
was on the verge of tears. “I looked at it and I could
read
it.
I could actually fucking read it. I could actually fucking
read
.” He
laughed, the loose, light laugh of someone briefly tickled. “And I wanted to
tell
everyone
. But there was no everyone anymore, just hyenas.”
Another fat snowflake came to rest on his eyelash but he left it to melt in its
own time. “What the fuck happened, Dempsey?”

Dempsey shrugged. “Campbell said it had something to
do with NASA sending a signal into a black hole or something. Said it was on
the news just before everything went pear-shaped. Me? I’ll settle for the wrath
of God or some such.” He got to his feet. A little colour had returned to his
cheeks. “Let’s get moving. We’re nearly home free, boy.”

Jay was relieved that Dempsey hadn’t pursued the
question of exactly what an illiterate fuck-up had been doing in a bookshop,
clutching a copy of
The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell
, no less. As he
stood, he saw blood on Dempsey’s recently vacated chair and red polka dots on
the snow beneath. But Dempsey had already rounded the corner onto Water Street
and Jay could only follow.

Before

The egg custard was delicious, sweet with just the
right amount of egginess. Jay was only five and he didn't know much but he knew
the difference between a good egg custard and a bad one. The good ones were
sweet, a little eggy but not too much, and cold and creamy; they wobbled a bit
when you tapped them with your spoon but, again, not too much. The bad ones
were too eggy and were kind of slimy. Bad egg custards tasted like a
half-cooked quiche that someone had tried to disguise with a spoonful of sugar.

But this egg custard, the egg custard they served in
Lewis's department store, was perfect.

Daddy wasn't eating his egg custard. He was just
staring into his cup of coffee, drawing hard on a cigarette. He looked a little
bit angry, like when he was marking schoolbooks, and Jason wondered if he was
angry with him, because of what the doctor had said.

As if he'd read Jason's thoughts, Daddy looked up at
him, smiled and said, “Don't worry about it, son. Don't worry about what the
doctor said. We'll figure something out. We'll beat this thing. Okay?”

Jason nodded. He wasn't sure what This Thing was but
he was fairly certain it had something to do with all the confusing stuff
Doctor Leadbetter had said about how the way Jason’s brain was put together
meant he probably wouldn't be able to read or write. Ever.

Jason didn't really mind. None of his friends could
read, yet. Well, some of them, but only a bit. And why would he want to read,
anyway, when there was so much great telly, like
Count Duckula
,
ChuckleVision
and
Rainbow
? Besides, if he did want a story book, Daddy could
read it to him, like he did now. It just meant Daddy would have to do
all
the
reading from now on. Which was fine because Daddy loved to read. All those
poems, “Tyger, tyger burning bright...”

He looked at Daddy. Daddy was staring into his coffee
again. He’d even stopped smoking. He didn't look angry now. He had that look on
his face — mostly blank but a little sad — that had appeared all the time after
Mummy died.

“Daddy?”

Daddy looked up.

“Yes, son?”

“Can I have your egg custard?”

“Help yourself, kiddo.”

Daddy smiled.

Chapter 7

Water Street was a canyon of pale, mostly neoclassical
buildings. The top of the Liver Building, with its verdigris birds, peered over
Oriel Chambers and the white glazed brick of the Tower Buildings. Abandoned
vehicles were scattered about with such randomness, it looked to Jay as if they
had been dropped from the sky.

They had just passed the triple arched entrance to
India Buildings, Jay catching a glimpse of the huge vaulted arcade beyond the
glass doors, when a horse bolted from Drury Lane to their left, cutting down
and across Water Street to Tower Gardens and then was gone. The detonations of
snow created by the horse’s pounding hooves, swirled about like miniature
tornadoes. Jay couldn’t help smiling. There was something about this huge,
mahogany creature — a little undernourished and showing a few cuts and scrapes
but otherwise in full command of itself — that charged him with an overwhelming
sense of optimism.

“What the fuck was it running
from
?”
said Dempsey.

He grabbed Jay by the arm and dragged him up the steps
of India Buildings and out of sight behind the last arch.

A second later, hyenas, as many as ten of the things,
appeared in mad, cackling pursuit.

They waited for a full minute after the hyenas’
clamour had faded before continuing down Water Street. They passed a burnt-out
transit van, a few feet from the blackened shell of which was a charcoal
corpse, on its knees, head thrown back, open mouth filled with snow. Even now,
presumably weeks later, the smell — bitter, sweet and rotten — was nauseating.

Water Street opened up onto the wide dual carriageway
of The Strand, dominated by the Liver Building despite the best efforts of the
neighbouring Cunard Building, the Liver Building’s small albino sibling.

“We’re exposed here, Jay,” said Dempsey. “Keep to the
vehicles and stay as low as you can.” He led by example, darting in a
half-crouch toward an eighteen wheeler that had overturned in front of the
Tower Building, and Jay followed.

They skirted around the lorry, then in between a black
cab and a National Express coach and onto the central reservation. There were
very few vehicles on the far side of the carriageway and they had to sprint.
They stayed low, but Jay knew that if any hyenas in the vicinity happened to be
looking in their general direction, they’d be spotted. They cut through a small
car park to the right of the Liver Building, followed the curve of St Nicholas
Place round the back of the large vacant site behind the Crowne Plaza Hotel and
onto Princes Parade.

They were right by the Mersey now, the temperature
dropping noticeably, and Jay could smell the distinctive and, to him, pleasant
tang of its waters, reminding him of ferry trips to see his Aunty Alison in
Birkenhead, memories of Battenberg cake and Ben Shaw’s Dandelion and Burdock.

They passed the long covered jetty of the City of
Liverpool Cruise Terminal, leading down to a narrow concrete docking area which
ran parallel to Princes Parade for a few hundred feet.

Jay realised he was having to slow his pace a little
to stop himself from overtaking Dempsey.

“Do you want to rest for a couple of minutes?” he
said. “Just until you get your breath?” He pointed to a bench, made cartoonish
by snow.

“No, no. We’re nearly there. A couple more minutes.
The boat’s moored up near that tower, there.” He jabbed a finger at the
Alexandra Tower, three hundred feet of greenish-bluish grey and glass,
cylindrical with its top lopped off at 45 degrees.

Despite his words, Dempsey stopped at the white
balloon of a bench and sat down anyway, not bothering to dust away the snow.

“Just for thirty seconds, then,” he said. “Get my wind
back.”

Jay remained standing, turning on the spot, looking
out for hyenas. He had to squint as he turned toward the choppy waters of the
Mersey: the wind seemed to be scraping ice crystals from the river’s surface
and flinging them in his face.

“Christ, it’s cold,” said Dempsey, shivering
violently. His face had lost its colour again. “I was thinking we’d go south,
where it’s warmer. We’ll sail through the Menai Strait to Bardsey Island, then
on to Ramsey Island, then Lundy and then the Isles of Scilly. Take it in little
jaunts until we know what we’re doing. Who knows, maybe we’ll just keep going:
Spain, Portugal, through the Strait of Gibraltar and on into the Mediterranean.
What do you think, boy?”

“Sounds great. Pity I didn’t pack any sun block; I
burn like a ginger. You ready?”

Dempsey nodded, stood with a pained grunt. Wincing, he
placed a hand flat on his sternum, moving it in a slow circle as if trying to
alleviate indigestion.

“Let’s be going, then,” he said in a bright,
enthusiastic tone, as if he was about to set off at a brisk pace. But all he
could do was walk, slow and steady.

Jay stayed a step or so behind, as if some unwritten,
unspoken code was telling him it would be wrong to overtake. He wished he
could
overtake; then he wouldn’t have to see the frequent drops of blood falling from
the sodden hem of Dempsey’s coat and patterning the snow.

It took them almost five minutes to reach the
Alexandra Tower, with its small car park crammed with Mercedes, BMWs and Audis.

“There she is,” said Dempsey, each word punctuated by
a harsh gasp. He pointed over the iron guard rail he was leaning against for
support.

Jay peered over. About eight feet below, between a set
of oversized, worn, stone steps and a decrepit wooden pier, was a sailing boat,
moored to a rust-encrusted ring embedded in the promenade wall.

It was smaller than Jay had expected, about twenty five
feet from stern to prow, mostly white shell with
occasional bursts of highly varnished pine and polished brass. The mast,
wrapped in its snow-caked sail, lay folded flat across the length of the boat.
There was an outboard motor, scorched and sooty; there were metal rings and
pulleys, a spaghetti of guide ropes. He understood why Dempsey had visited
Waterstones in search of
How to Sail a
Boat if You’re a Gobshite Who Knows Sweet Fuck All about Boats
. The name of the vessel, according to the flowery
script painted on its side, was
Jerusalem
.

“And did those feet in ancient time...” said Jay and
he wondered if it meant something, if it was a good omen.

Dempsey climbed over the rail, ignoring twin signs,
one of which said ‘Danger Deep Water’, the other ‘Warning Strong Currents’.
During his first outing post-Jolt, Jay had been overwhelmed by the
proliferation of signs and words. Everywhere he’d looked there had been a
warning, an instruction or, on advertising billboards and bus shelters,
ludicrous boasts. It was as if there was a mesh of language overlaying
everything, most of it prosaic and useless. He wondered how the literate masses
had been able to stand it, this daily barrage of patronising bullshit.

The moment Dempsey was on the other side, he let out a
choking growl and his face, so pale only moments ago took on the vicious purple
of a fresh bruise. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and a bloody foam
oozed from between pursed lips. Both hands went to his chest and he began to
fall, to
swoon
backwards.

“Dempsey!”

Jay lurched forward and managed to grab one of
Dempsey’s wrists in both hands. Dempsey was heavy, and Jay threw all his weight
back away from the waters, hoping to drag Dempsey toward the rail. But Jay’s
palms were slick with sweat and numb with cold. It took three long seconds for
Dempsey to slither from his grasp and then he and the older man were tumbling
in opposite directions and Jay was on his back looking up at sandstone clouds
and there was a crunch and Jay knew that Dempsey had struck the step and then a
thick, oily approximation of a splash as the Mersey took him.

Jay jerked to his feet and lunged at the rail, as if
Dempsey was still there, as if he could still save him. He leaned over the
rail, looking like someone in the throes of severe seasickness. The snow on the
stone steps was spattered with blood and, halfway down, it had been swept away
completely, exposing thick brown and green weeds, glistening algae and weird
growths that Jay assumed were barnacles but looked to him like grotesque, bony
tumours. A faint ripple was swallowed up by heavy grey waves before it had
travelled more than a few metres.

“Dempsey!”

Jay clambered over the rail then dropped onto the
steps.

“Dempsey!” He shouted down at the water, trying to
project his voice through the undulating surface and into the depths where, in
his mind’s eye, he could see Dempsey, mouth agape, still clutching his chest,
dropping like a stone.

He moved down to the second step, and then his feet
flew out from under him. He managed to keep his head forward so his backpack
absorbed the brunt of the impact, and then he was sliding down the steps on a
conveyor belt of snow, ice and algae. He scrabbled at the promenade wall, his
fingers skimming across the slimy surface. He struck the water feet first, the
cold like an electric shock bolting up his legs and halfway up his spine. And
then, just as he was in up to his knees, his fingers sunk into a barnacled
fissure in the promenade wall. He felt the nails of his first and middle
fingers torn from their beds and his arm snap-locked rigid, agony exploding in
his elbow and arm socket. And then he was still.

Desperately trying to draw back the breath that had
been knocked from him, Jay sat up. He dragged his legs from the water,
surprised by the sudden weight of his own limbs. He held his trembling hands in
front of him, as if seeing the physical manifestation of his shock might enable
him to bring it under control, but the sight of his own blood pouring from his
ruined nail beds didn’t help at all.

It was a full minute before he was able to stand.
Swaying a little, matching the motion of the waters that had taken Dempsey, he
stepped onto the rocking deck of the
Jerusalem
. He stood there for a while, looking back at the
steps, the waves, the promenade, the Alexandra Tower, until he was certain that
Dempsey wouldn’t suddenly surface, full of piss and vinegar and tales of his
adventures on the murky bed of the Mersey.

And then Jay realised his brief companion wasn’t the
only thing he’d lost; he’d lost the sailing book, too.