Something shuffled up to the metal door, sniffing and snuffling like a bloodhound.
Jay's hands recommenced their shaking. He tried clenching his teeth again but with only marginal success this time. The next key struck the lock's housing, knocking the bunch from Jay's hand. He tried to keep hold of them but only succeeding in batting them against the shutter. In the enclosed space of the recess, it sounded like the warped chime of a tuneless bell.
The bloodhound stopped its snuffling.
Jay froze and sensed Dempsey do the same.
The clang as the hyena slammed into the door was almost deafening.
“You may as well put that lamp on, boy, they know we're here. And if they realise all they need to do is pull the handle to open the door, we're fucked because there's nothing to hold onto on this side.”
Jay thumbed the switch on the lantern and even though he’d been in darkness for less than a minute, the light that filled the recess jabbed at his eyes. Squinting, he swiped up the keys and started again, trying one key after another with a smooth efficiency that either belied or gave full credence to the fact that he was now as certain as he’d ever been about anything that he was going to die.
The hyenas appeared to be taking it in turns to throw themselves against the door; every other second, there was a clang that hammered at Jay’s eardrums.
The eighth or ninth key — Jay wasn’t really counting anymore — slipped into the barrel with such ease that Jay knew before he turned it that it was the one.
There was a satisfying snip as the barrel popped out of its sleeve. Jay hooked his fingers under the gap that had suddenly appeared between the bottom of the roller shutter and the footplate and lifted. The shutter rattled upward five or six inches then jammed; cool air and strangely muted daylight rushed in through the gap.
The hyenas were throwing themselves against the door with such force now that it was bouncing open a finger-width before the next hyena’s assault slammed it shut again.
Jay tried to lift the shutter again but it wouldn’t budge.
Dempsey joined him.
“On ‘one’,” he said. “One!”
They both lifted. The shutter moved another inch.
Behind them, the door bounced open, slammed shut again, bounced open, slammed shut again, and for each second it was ajar, the snarling and laughter of the hyenas flooded in and surrounded them.
“Again, on ‘one’. One!”
Another inch.
“Go on, boy, you should be able to get under there.”
Jay shrugged off his backpack, set it down next to him and dropped down hard onto his back. For a couple of seconds he saw the door snapping open and shut, and the savage faces of hyenas in strobe-light snapshots, then he wriggled head first under the shutter.
An instant later, his scalp struck a hard crust of frozen snowdrift and he understood why the light creeping in under the shutter was so muffled. He pressed his heels against the concrete and pushed, but the crust wouldn’t give. He pushed harder. The vertebrae in his neck ground together and his chin was driven down against his collarbone, but the crust wouldn’t give.
“Come on, boy! Get moving!”
“I’m trying!”
The slamming of the door was like a manic drumbeat now, punctuated by the snarling laughter of the hyenas.
Jay bent his legs, put his feet flat against the concrete and pushed once more, grunting with the strain, suddenly certain he was going to start crying and experiencing a ludicrous flush of pre-embarrassment at the prospect.
His neck felt like it was going to snap. The cold sent rods of pain burrowing into his skull.
There was a creak, a crack and the crust began to give way. He inched into the drift, shards of ice scratching his scalp, then forehead, then ears. Unable to focus on the ceiling of the tunnel he was slowly creating, it was as if he was immersed in a world of cool blue whiteness. He had to squint to fend off the snow crystals that were falling into his eyes.
He bent his legs again, dug his heels in and pushed himself further into the drift, moving a good foot or so this time. It felt like someone was driving a needle down through his skull and into his spinal column. His hands cleared the shutter and he tried to bring them up to his head to help with the tunnelling but they were pinned to his sides. He bent his legs again but this time his thighs struck the bottom of the shutter. He angled his head upwards and tried to get in a sitting position with a view to pushing himself up out of the hardened snow.
The drift collapsed.
Cool blue whiteness became pitch blackness. The weight of the snow slammed Jay back to the ground and emptied his lungs. He gasped for air but only succeeded in taking in a mouthful of splintery snow. The cold was like a vice gripping his temples, crushing his skull. He instinctively raised his arms to shield himself from the sudden assault and discovered that, in collapsing, the drift had loosened. He thrust his arms upwards until his hands broke the surface and then scratched and scrabbled at the snow above his face until he could see the tops of the buildings bowing toward one another across the narrow width of Wood Street and, beyond that, a strip of heavy grey-brown cloud. He writhed and heaved himself up and out of the drift.
Alternately spitting snow and gasping in air, Jay stood swaying, almost embarrassed, despite the fear and panic, to see that the snow drift only came up to an inch or so above his knees and was no more than four feet wide. He kicked at the remnant of the tunnel he had created, clearing the area around the doorway. He could see Dempsey’s boot-clad feet, his fingertips as he tried to lift the shutter higher and the strap of his own backpack. He crouched down grabbing the pack and dragging it out, and then he noticed that the bottom corner of the shutter had popped out of the runner on one side, jamming it in place.
He looked up and down the street, scanning doorways, snow encrusted dumpsters and abandoned cars, and he knew if he saw any hyenas, even a single hyena, loping towards him, he would turn and run, and even though it would sicken him, haunt him forever, he would abandon Dempsey to his fate. Because he was all fear now, all fear and nothing but, his heartbeat the epicentre of his own personal earthquake. But there were no hyenas, just desolation and a constantly shifting polka dot fabric of falling snowflakes.
He kicked the corner of the shutter. It shifted a little but not enough to realign it with the runner. The slamming of the door continued unabated, accompanied by the slathering growls and laughter of the hyenas and Dempsey barking, “Move for fuck’s sake, you stubborn bastard! Fucking move!”
Jay kicked the corner of the shutter again. Then again, and again, and suddenly it jumped back into place. Dempsey lifted the shutter a couple of feet with a cry of, “You beauty!” He dropped to his knees and crawled out, just as the slamming of the door ceased and a filthy arm swiped out after him, clawing with black fingernails. More grimy arms followed, then the top of a head, hair matted with blood and God alone knew what else. Dempsey stood, placed a foot on the lip of the shutter and stomped it back down. Hyenas shrieked. Blood, unexpectedly bright and clean, spattered the snow.
Dempsey turned to face him, grinning. The grin only lasted a second or two, replaced by a look that was equal parts embarrassment and panic.
“I hope you’re good with your fists, boy,” he said. “I’ve left the harpoon gun behind and I’m not that keen on going back for it.”
Chapter 5
“What? Oh, Christ.” Jay buried his face in his frozen hands.
Dempsey slapped Jay’s arm and belly-laughed.
Jay glanced up, suddenly aware of how much he looked the drama queen in humiliating contrast to Dempsey’s no-nonsense man of action.
“Never mind, lad. Could be worse, eh?” He gestured back to the shutter which was shaking and buckling under a sustained hyena assault. “Let’s get moving.” He jogged to the middle of the road, where the snow was only a foot or so deep. Weaving in between abandoned cars, he headed down Wood Street toward Hanover Street.
Jay follo
wed. He passed an Italian restaurant, Villa Romana, on his left; the double doors beneath the round arch were ajar and the stench of rotten food leaked out into the cold air: ripe garlic, something like sulphur and other odours he just didn’t want to think about. As they neared the bottom of the street, there was nothing but pubs and bars on either side of them. The smell of musty ale wafting out through broken windows was almost pleasant.
At the right-hand corner of the street, Dempsey came to a standstill, held a hand up, palm out, and Jay stopped. A second later, Dempsey moved off again and Jay followed. They ran diagonally across Hanover Street. A multiple fender bender meant they had to scuttle over the bonnets of abandoned cars. Jay was glad of the snow covering the windshields and windows of the cars. He didn’t doubt for a second that there were bodies inside some of them. An Arriva double-decker bus, capped with snow, its turquoise paintwork slapped with bloody handprints, had mounted the pavement and almost ploughed into the Lloyds TSB. There was about a foot between bus and bank. Wading through a knee-high snowdrift, Dempsey and Jay slid through the gap sideways and followed the perimeter of the building round onto Church Street. Jay cast a glance back up Bold Street. There were nine or ten hyenas milling around the front of Waterstones, their attention utterly held by the bookshop and whatever it was they thought was in there, whatever it was they were looking for.
Jay turned his attention back to Church Street. There were few vehicles on this wide pedestrianised thoroughfare — the odd van, a police car that appeared to have taken shelter under the glass-arched entrance to Clayton Square. But there were bodies. Most of them were under the snow, limbs protruding here and there, and Jay thanked God for that, but the shop-window dead remained very much on display. In Oasis, a woman, her face a thick mask of dried blood bracketed by lank blonde hair, sat in the middle of a nest of clothes with what looked like a metal chair leg jutting from the top of her head. In Hallmark, a shaven-headed young man in a short-sleeved shirt that might have been white once but was now predominantly red, knelt with his head bowed against the glass in what could have been an attitude of prayer, if only he’d had hands to clasp together. There were more, and worse, but Jay refused to allow his gaze to linger, tried to throw it all out of focus.
He forgot all about Dempsey’s instruction to check behind him every fifty paces or so and simply stumbled in the older man’s wake, just trying to keep up.
They moved down the left of the street, keeping as close to the buildings as the drifts and debris would allow. At Primark, they had to arc round a tangle of mannequins and corpses that the snow had only succeeded in half concealing. The mannequins retained a rigid elegance and a healthy lustre which the dead — twisted, grey and doughy — couldn’t hope to rival. Jay kept his eyes fixed on Dempsey’s back and tried to ignore the feeling that the dead were fixing him with stares of their own.
They passed the high-walled, canyon-like Keys Court arcade, with its boutique stores, connecting Church Street to Liverpool One. As they approached the wide intersection with Whitechapel, the smell of rotten meat — despite the freezing cold — coming from McDonalds and Burger King thickened the air. They were about to cut across onto Lord Street when Dempsey stopped abruptly and, sweeping Jay along with him, backed into the doorway of Vero Moda and dropped down into a crouch. Jay did likewise, although he couldn’t see anything. Then, from further along Whitechapel, out of sight, toward the Met Quarter, he heard sobbing, then the unmistakeable cackle of hyenas, a lot of them.
Dempsey reached into his bag, pulled out a bowie knife and unsheathed it. Jay noticed dried blood speckling the otherwise gleaming blade.
“There’s probably nothing we can do,” said Dempsey, his voice flat. “Not without the harpoon gun, and probably even with it. Might be a good idea to avert your eyes, boy.” He sighed, slumped a little.
Jay experienced a tremor in his gut, an inkling of what Dempsey was talking about and what was going to happen next.
Seconds later, an overweight, balding man in a duffle coat ran into view. His face was purple with exertion and his breath trailed behind him like the ghost of a scarf. Even at a distance of some sixty feet, Jay could see the tears glistening on his cheeks.
The man staggered, stumbled then fell face-first into the snow. He jerked back to his feet an instant later, as if someone had yanked on an invisible rope, then started running again. It was obvious to Jay that he was almost out of steam, struggling to lift his legs, his arms limp, head swaying from side to side, mouth hanging open.
“We should help him,” Jay whispered.
But then the hyenas appeared; six of them. The frontrunner, bounding along on all fours, had long hair — once blonde, now yellow as plaque — held back with a luminous pink Alice band. It leapt, the remnants of its flower-print dress flapping like an unravelling bandage. It landed on the running man, its feet striking hard against the small of his back.
In the split second before he went down, a blur of flailing limbs and a flash of snow, the man locked eyes with Jay.
“Help me!” he cried, spitting out bloodied snow and trying to rise to his feet despite the weight of Alice Band on his back. “Jesus, you have to help me!”
The hyena brought both fists down on the back of the man’s head, driving him back down into the snow.
“Jesus!” His arms flailed. “Christ!”
Again, both fists, and this time there was a loud, wet crunch, a brief spurt of blood and the man went limp.
A second later, the other hyenas caught up, but Alice Band was already moving on, along Whitechapel. The rest of the pack, seeing that the killing was over, followed.
Except one. It was tall and gangly, with a face that was mostly nose counterbalanced by a stiff-looking pony tail. It looked down at the leaking mess that Alice Band had left behind. In one spindly hand it held a paperback Collins English Dictionary with most of the pages missing. It knelt next to the corpse and began poking a long index finger into the hole Alice Band had smashed into the man’s skull.
Jay wanted to look away but couldn’t. He felt as if something was about to be revealed, just as he had when the Waterstones hyena had begun eating pages from Byron. It was another what-the-fuck? moment.
The hyena pushed its finger in up to the last knuckle, all the while peering into the hole, as if looking for something hidden inside. It had the expression of a child — a crazed, urchin child — trying to get a coin out of a drain. It wriggled its finger and the dead man’s left arm twitched and flopped about for a few seconds, like a landed fish.
When the hyena began breaking off pieces of cranium and throwing them aside, Jay had to look away. His legs became boneless. He abandoned his crouch and sat back. The snow crunched beneath him. Convinced it must have heard, Jay turned his attention back to the hyena, but it was still engrossed by the contents of the dead man’s skull. It had made a hole large enough to accommodate an entire hand now and was rummaging about, sifting through grey matter. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, it pulled out a steaming chunk of brain and popped it into its mouth.
Jay’s vision fogged at the edges and he slumped to his left, his head striking the glass of the Vero Moda door with a dull but resonant chime.
He heard Dempsey growl, “Shite!” But the older man’s voice sounded like it was coming from inside a tin can and down a length of string. Further off, hyena laughter. He knew the brain eater was coming but he could feel himself slipping deeper into darkness.
“Oh, for the love of God, don’t fucking swoon on me, boy!”
It was the word ‘swoon’, with its humiliating aftertaste, that brought him round, consciousness returning on a wave of embarrassment. The fog receded and he saw Dempsey standing his ground, one foot pointing forward, the other back and at a right angle to the first. He held the knife at his side, the arm swaying a little, back and forth, in readiness. The hyena was loping toward them, kicking up snow, its pony tail lashing about behind it. It was spitting out gobbets of brain; apparently, it had
n’t found what it was looking for. Perhaps it thought it might have better luck rooting through the contents of Jay’s and Dempsey’s skulls.
Jay tried to stand — though just what he intended to do, he had no idea — but his legs failed him and he flumped back down into the snow. The hyena was closing the distance. Jay noticed it was missing its right ear, and then it leapt. Dempsey brought the knife up in a smooth, taut arc. The blade sunk into the hyena’s sternum and it gargled blood, its eyes rolling back into its skull. Momentum carried it into Dempsey and both he and the hyena went into then through the glass of the Vero Moda door.
Dempsey, his back arched over the aluminium door frame, tried to shove the writhing hyena off him but only succeeded in driving the knife further into its chest. Jay managed to stand, grabbed the hyena’s shoulders and tried, unsuccessfully, to free Dempsey.
“Christ, for a lanky streak of piss, he’s a heavy fucker!” said Dempsey. He relinquished the knife, planted both hands on its shoulders and pushed. Still twitching, but only a little now, the hyena lifted and Jay grabbed the back of its collar and dragged it to one side, allowing Dempsey to clamber out from under its all-but-dead weight.
Dempsey was wincing as he stood, one hand planted on his lower back.
“Are you all right?” asked Jay. “Did you pull something?”
“Pull something? You cheeky bastard.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean... you know.”
“That I’m an old cunt? I’m sure you didn’t.” Dempsey took his hand from his back and showed the palm to Jay. It was slick with blood. “I just went through a plate glass window. This isn’t the films, boy. No sugar glass here.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Please tell me you’re not going to swoon again. I might be needing you.”
“No. Well... no, I don’t think so. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing just yet. I think there’s a first aid kit on the boat. Now let’s get moving and do try to stay conscious.”
Hyenas Page 3