Hyenas (9 page)

“Yeah? Don't tempt me, Si” said Dave.

Phil grinned. “Well, they are,” he said. “A bunch of
twats. I mean, they can't help it. Feel a bit sorry for them, myself.”

“But would you let your daughter marry one?” said
Brian's almost brother.

“Now, if I'd said that, Joe,” said Dave, “you'd be
calling me a racist.”

“But you
are
a fucking racist,” said Joe.

Dave grinned. “True. But an honest man.”

“I'll give you that, Dave,” said Joe, shaking his head
but grinning a little.

“Jay's got a boat,” said Brian.

“
Says
he's got a boat,” said Dave.

All eyes were on Jay again.

“Is this true, Jay?” asked Kavi.

“Yeah. A sailing boat.”

“Where?” said Joe.

“Like he's going to tell us.” A woman's voice, from
behind Jay.

He turned. Standing in the doorway was a woman of
about twenty five. Her brown mid-length hair was held up in a bun by two yellow
pencils. She was holding an artist's paintbrush in one hand and an empty tea
cup in the other. She wore low-slung hipster jeans and a fitted blouse, both
black and both splashed with various colours of paint. The last couple of
buttons of the blouse were undone to allow for the fact that she was distinctly
pregnant.

Chapter 13

“Where's the harm in telling us where the boat is?”
said Simon. “It's not as if we're going to kill him and take it off him, is it?”

“Depends how many people it can carry,” said Dave.
“Might
have
to take it off him. Christ, with any luck, we might
have to leave you and Brian behind, Simon.”

“And who's going to sail the thing?” said the woman.
“You, Dave? Did you have many nautical themed away days while you were in
Walton nick?”

Dave barked a laugh. “Harsh as ever, Ellen. Anybody know
how to sail a boat?” A chorus of negatives. To Jay, “So how many people can
this boat of yours handle, then?”

“All of us, probably,” said Jay but he was almost
certain it would struggle to stay afloat with more than five bodies aboard.

“Anyway,” said Brian, “even he doesn't know how to
sail the fucking thing. He was in Waterstones looking for an instruction
manual, weren’t you, Jay?”

Ellen raised an eyebrow at Jay.

Jay nodded.

She rolled her eyes and then smiled.

“Well, I hereby declare you hopeless enough to join
our little club, Jay,” she said. “We deserve each other.”

There was a half-hearted clatter of applause.

Dave smiled, shook his head and let out a long,
sighing, “Christ.”

“Fancy a cup of tea, Jay?” said Ellen.

“I'd love one,” said Jay.

“Well, put your bag down, take your coat off and I'll
show you where the kitchen is. I like mine strong, just a splash of milk and no
sugar.”

“Milky, two sugars,” said Simon.

“One sugar, a touch of milk,” said Dave.

“Coffee,” said Phil. “Black.”

“Tea, milky, no sugar,” said Brian.

“The same way I like my women,” said Joe. “White and
weak.”

“Now if I'd said that,” said Dave, “you’d say — ”

“Yeah, but you
are
,” interrupted Joe.

“I'll make my own,” said Kavi. “You English don't have
a bloody clue how to make a decent cup of tea.”

“Kitchen's this way,” said Ellen once Jay had dropped
his pack and shed his coat.

Jay followed her back into the waiting area and
through a door opposite, into a small kitchen.

“Kettle's there,” said Ellen, pointing to a camping
stove next to a couple of five-litre bottles of water, a few cartons of UHT
milk and a box of Yorkshire Tea. “I'll leave you to it.”

As he watched her walk out of the kitchen and through
a door that, before the Jolt, had probably led to someone's office, Jay
suddenly realised he'd been hoping that she'd stay. Then Kavi appeared, holding
a small wooden box with elephants carved into its surface.

“Cardamom, fennel and ginger,” he said, tapping the
lid of the box. “The secret to a really great cup of tea. You should try it.
You won't look back, I promise you.”

“Okay,” said Jay.

“Pass me your cup. I'll make ours, you can make that
muck the rest of them drink.”

While Jay went about making the drinks, Kavi reminding
him of who was having what and how, Simon appeared, moving into the corner of
the kitchen, facing them, arms folded.

“So, Jay, what do you think happened? You know, The
End. What caused it?”

Jay shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Most of them think it was either some kind of act of
God sort of thing or something to do with that NASA malarkey, sending a signal
into that black hole and whatnot. Dave thinks it was like a virus or something
but that's bollocks because it happened to everyone at once and why would
people who can't read or write be immune? Makes no sense. Act of God? Well, I
don't believe in God for a start.”

“Doesn't mean it wasn't an act of God,” said Kavi.
“God doesn't require your belief in order to act, Simon. And if he decided the
human race had run its course, well, that's that, then.”

“So, Jay,” said Simon, ignoring Kavi. “Your theory,
what is it?”

“I don't have one but it has to mean something,
doesn't it, none of us being able to read or write? I mean the fact that we've
survived should tell us why everyone else died, shouldn't it?”

“Suppose so,” said Simon. “I used to stutter like a
bastard, words stuck somewhere between my brain and my lips and then
fuck
suddenly
it's like someone shook me until all the words came loose. Sometimes I just
can't stop talking. Drives Dave mental.”

“Not just Dave,” said Kavi, a smile in his voice as he
pounded fennel seeds and cardamom pods with a mortar and pestle.

When the coffee and teas were made, Simon and Kavi
helped Jay take it through to the others. The books Brian had pillaged had been
handed round. Dave was reading
The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
and Jay
found this surprising but couldn't say why.

“So,” said Phil, taking a sip of his tea. “About this
boat, then.”

“It's not far from the Pier Head,” said Jay. He took a
sip of his own tea. His eyes widened a little at the barrage of flavours: the
perfume of the cardamom, the sweetness of the fennel and the heat of the
ginger. Then he realised he was still holding Ellen's tea in his other hand.
“I'll just take this through to, er...”

“Ellen,” said Brian.

Jay hadn't forgotten her name but it had just seemed
inappropriate somehow, a little silly even, that he should be seen to have
remembered it.

“Yeah, Ellen,” he said.

As he made his way out of the room, Dave shouted after
him, “Tell her we need to make a decision about this boat of yours and I
wouldn't want to be called sexist on top of everything else for leaving her out
of the discussion.”

“Like you'd fucking dare,” said Joe.

Brian grinned. “We're all a bit scared of Ellen,” he
said to Jay. “She takes no shit.”

Jay walked across the waiting area to the door he'd
seen Ellen walk through after she'd taken him to the kitchen. The door was
closed. He placed his own cup on a small side table next to an armchair and
knocked gently on the door. There was no response so, a few seconds later, he
knocked again, a little harder.

“Yeah.”

“Tea,” said Jay.

“Come in.”

Jay pushed open the door. Ellen was mostly hidden
behind a large canvas that was balanced on a makeshift easel cobbled together
from a random collection of wood. The window behind her offered a view of the
back alley where Jay and Brian had waited for Dave to let them in. There were
canvases all around the room, at least fifteen of them. About half were turned
away, the rest displayed permutations on the same subject: a hyena in a variety
of poses rendered in violent strokes of thick, black oil paint; the images
looked less painted onto the surface of the canvas than as if the canvas had
been clawed and shredded to reveal a rich, almost liquid blackness beneath.
Swarming around the head of a hyena in one painting was a cloud of words that
the hyena appeared to be swiping at, as if trying to dispel or capture the
swirling characters, it was impossible to say which. As Jay peered closer, he
saw that the swarming words were composed from no alphabet he recognised.

“Is that what they see when we talk, do you think?”
said Jay walking over to Ellen and handing her the tea.

Ellen took the tea and said nothing, just continued to
jab at the canvas.

“There was this hyena,” said Jay. “A couple of hours
ago. When I shouted at her, at
it
I mean, to get back, it's eyes were darting all over
the place and I thought it was my breath it was looking at because it was so
cold, you know, but maybe it wasn't, maybe it was the words she, I mean it, was
looking at. Like in your painting. Is that what you think? Have you seen them
do that? Is that why you painted it like that?”

Ellen levelled a stare at Jay, took a sip of tea, then
said, “Fuck's sake, you talk more than Brian and Simon put together. But you
make a fairly decent cup of tea.”

“Thanks. Were you an artist before the Jolt, before
this all kicked off?”

“Was. Still am. This shit changes nothing. And when
someone tells you talk too much, it can be taken pretty much as read that they
want you to be quiet.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't take it personally. I love painting, and people
generally get right on my tits, so when a person interrupts the painting, well,
you know, it’s like a double whammy of annoyingness.”

“Fair enough.” Jay smiled.

Ellen took another sip of tea, jabbed the painting a
few more times, then glanced at Jay.

“You're still here. I mean, you're not talking so
that's a point in your favour, but you're still, you know, here.”

“Erm, Dave, is it? He said we were going to discuss
the boat situation and you'd be pissed off if you weren't invited.”

Ellen sighed and put down her brush.

“Alright. Lead the way, Jason.”

Back in what Jay had already come to think of as the
reading room, a silence had descended, interrupted only by the occasional
susurrus of pages being turned.

Dave glanced up from
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
.

“So, Ellen, about this boat. What should we do?”

“Do?” said Phil. “What can we do? It's a sailing boat
and none of us, including the boat's current owner know how to sail. What's to
discuss? It's a nonstarter.”

“Agreed,” said Simon.

“We could get a book,” said Brian. “That's what Jay
was doing.”

“From where?” said Dave. “Waterstones, Liverpool One,
is just a scorched carcass and the Bold Street branch is full of those
fucking...”

“Hyenas.”

“Zombies.”

“Twats.”

“Whatever you want to call them,” Dave finished.

“There must be other book shops,” said Kavi. “What
about Blackwells, up by the University.”

“Mostly for students,” said Joe. “If it isn't on some
syllabus or other, you won't find it there.”

“And how would you fucking know?” said Dave. “You were
functionally illiterate up until a few weeks ago. Just like the rest of us.”

“Mate of mine was studying architecture at John
Moore's. Functionally illiterate I may have been back in the real world, but I
used to associate with a better class of person than you fucking dunderheads.”

“What about second-hand book shops?” said Brian.
“There's a few of them. Oxfam further up Bold Street.”

“There was only one sailing book in Waterstones,” said
Jay. “I don't fancy our chances in a second-hand book shop.”

“That's that, then,” said Phil.

“That's that,” said Simon.

“There must be somewhere,” said Brian, looking at Jay.
“Didn't you have a Plan B?”

“I don't think he had much of a Plan A,” said Dave.

“What about,” Kavi began. Then, “No, it closed down a
couple of years ago.”

“They all closed down except for Waterstones,” said
Phil. “All the little independents went to the wall.”

“What about W.H.Smiths?” said Brian.

“Great,” said Joe. “If you want a magazine, a pen or a
fucking toner cartridge.”

“They had some books,” said Brian. Then very
doubtfully, “Didn't they?”

“That's that, then,” said Phil with the impatience of
someone who thought the discussion was over a while ago or even before it began.

Jay saw Ellen shake her head in mock despair.

“What?” he said.

“The library?” she said. “William Brown Street. I
imagine there's quite a few books in there. One or two about sailing, even.”

“The library,” said Brian. “Fucking hell, yeah. Why
didn't I think of that?”

“I could answer that, Brian, but I wouldn’t want to
shit all over your feelings,” said Ellen.

Phil huffed and rolled his eyes, suddenly childlike
despite the whiteness of his beard and hair.

“Boat or no boat, book or no book, I don't see why
we'd want to leave here, anyway,” he said. “We just need to wait out the
winter. The cold will kill off the Twats but hopefully not before they've
killed off Pepper and his pals, or at least drastically thinned their numbers.”

“I'm with Phil,” said Simon.

“Come the spring it'll be a new beginning for all of
us,” Phil continued. “Until then, we just need to sit tight. Use your heads,
people, for fuck's sake.”

Jay didn't realise he'd emitted a little snort until
all eyes were on him.

“You don't agree,” said Phil

Jay licked suddenly dry lips.