By the time they dipped under the half open roller shutter and out into the alley, there was no sign of the others.
“Best route?” said Jay.
“Hanover Street,” said Ellen, pointing up the alley.
“What?” said Brian.”That'll take us past the bottom of Bold Street. You know, Bold Street? Waterstones? More zombies than you can shake a bloody stick at?”
“It's quicker than going back down School Lane and round. We haven't got time to piss about. Christ, we don't even know how long it's going to take us to get into the library. As for finding the book? Well, none of us has got much experience of the Dewey fucking Decimal System, have we? One hour, Brian. I want to be on that boat in one hour. We just need to keep low, use the cars and buses for cover.”
Ellen set off before Brian could formulate a counter argument. Jay followed.
“Fucking great,” said Brian. “Nice to see British democracy is still a joke, post-apocalypse.” He threw his arms in the air, spun around a couple of times as if seeking agreement from an imaginary audience, then trotted after them.
They emerged onto Hanover Street and moved in close to the wall of abandoned vehicles. Single file and stooped, they advanced with some difficulty through the knee-high snow that had drifted up against the cars and buses. As they reached the junction of Bold Street and Church Street, where Hanover Street became Ranelagh Street, Ellen raised a hand, indicating they should stop. She pointed to a gap between the people carrier they were crouched against and the next vehicle in the dead procession, a battered Cavalier that looked as if it had been ready for the scrap yard long before the Jolt. The gap was about seven or eight feet across, and Jay could hear the snarling laughter of the hyenas in Waterstones.
“We go back,” said Brian. “School Lane. Late's better than dead. They're not going to go without us.”
“And what if Pepper finds the boat? Torches it?” said Ellen.
“The chances of that,” Brian began.
But Ellen was already peering round the edge of the people carrier. A second later she was up and running across the gap, then dipping down behind the Cavalier.
Jay shuffled forward and took a peek at Bold Street. There were six hyenas outside Waterstones, less than fifty feet away, fighting over the books and mangled half-books that were strewn across the snow. He could make out the indistinct shapes of more hyenas through the shop window.
He made a break for the Cavalier. He was halfway across the gap when one of the hyenas turned toward him as it tracked the trajectory of a flying paperback. Jay froze. The book hit the ground with a puff of snow. The hyena darted toward the book, scuttling across the snow like a dog closing in on a tossed stick. A couple of feet before it reached the book, it stopped. It reared back up on to two feet, revealing the shredded, filth-caked remnants of a police uniform. It grinned. Grinned at Jay.
“Bollocks,” he managed to whisper.
The hyena barked a laugh and tensed for the chase.
Jay managed to summon the word 'run' from his panic-fogged mind but his mouth and throat were too dry to put it out into the world.
And then Constable Hyena was slammed down into the snow with such force he all but vanished in a cloud of white. Alice Band let out a triumphant snarl and grabbed the book. She began tearing pages from it immediately, stuffing them into her mouth, at the same time returning to the rest of the hyenas, her back now to Jay.
Jay turned to Brian, who was looking at him with something very much like stark terror, certain they'd been spotted and Ellen's decision was going to end in death for all of them.
Jay signalled for Brian to follow him.
“Quick,” he said when Brian appeared unable to move. “Now or never, Brian. Come on, lad.”
When Brian still remained frozen in place, Jay lunged at him grabbed his wrist and dragged him to his feet.
“Now!” he growled.
Brian stumbled after him and they both fell to the ground beside Ellen.
“What happened?” she said.
“One of them saw me,” said Jay. He risked a glance round the edge of the Cavalier's rust scarred boot. Constable Hyena was lying motionless in the settling snow and Alice Band was beating another prone hyena about the head with such brutality blood was flying from her fists. “It's okay now, though.”
Ellen set off up Ranelagh Street, staying in a half-crouch behind the trail of vehicles until she was out of the hyenas' line of sight.
They were next to a shattered shop window, spectacles and sunglasses scattered across the snow, with the entrance to the Clayton Square shopping centre approaching on their left when, from somewhere to their right, the sound of hyenas — snarling and cackling — came at them with the suddenness of a radio surging to life following a power cut.
Despite the fact that the sound was almost certainly coming from ahead of them, Jay looked back the way they had come, convinced he was about to see Alice Band and her pack bearing down on them, spitting out pulped paper. But all he saw was Brian's terrified face.
Ellen rose up a little and looked over the bonnet of the Ford Fusion they were hiding behind. She dropped back again a second later and Jay saw fear on her face for the first time. She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, indicating that Jay should take a look. After a few seconds' hesitation, Jay did so.
Across the road, filling the downward-sloping entrance to Central Station, were about twenty hyenas, more than Jay had ever seen in one place before. They appeared to be unable to decide what to do next. Some were turning on the spot and sniffing at the air, as if trying to catch a scent of prey.
“Fuckshit,” he blurted.
“What?” Brian demanded. “Christ, will one of you say something.”
“Hyenas, zombies,” said Jay. “Twenty. Maybe more.”
“Well, we can't carry on this way, can we?” said Brian. “We have to go back.”
Jay turned to Ellen who nodded.
“Back onto Church Street,” she said. “Then through Clayton Square.”
“Clayton Square?” said Brian. “Indoors? I fucking hate indoors. After what happened last time. Don't fucking do this to me, Ellen.”
“What happened last time?” said Jay, remembering his own encounter with Hello Kitty, that horrible sense of no escape, of being penned-in by fear and death, and what he had to do to get away.
“Don't like to talk about it,” said Brian.
“Except when he does,” said Ellen. “Which is all the fucking time. Sometimes I have to give him a toffee to make him stop.” And then she was up and off. She paused for only a second at the gap, glancing toward Waterstones, then moving on. She stayed low and close to the cars until the buildings began to curve away, then she moved closer to the shop fronts, following their arc — a chip shop, an opticians, a betting shop, a travel agent — round onto Church Street.
Jay and Brian struggled to keep up, pausing for longer at the gap, despite the fact that the hyenas were all fully occupied shredding and eating books and attacking one another. But even without the longer pause, they’d have had trouble keeping up. Jay wondered if what separated Ellen from Brian and himself was the fact that she didn’t just have herself to think about; Ellen was determined to survive whereas they just didn't want to die.
Ellen was waiting for them under the glass archway of the Church Street entrance to Clayton Square, before the shattered plate glass doors which had once slid dutifully back and forth, consuming eager shoppers. Jay tried to ignore the carnage that had caught his eye as he'd made his way down the other side of the thoroughfare with Dempsey earlier. He was determined not to register such things, particularly in close-up.
“Come on, before we're seen,” said Ellen.
Jay followed her over broken glass and then they were in Clayton Square.
“I fucking hate indoors,” said Brian.
“You said,” Ellen reminded him.
There was an immediate hike in temperature as they stepped out of the reach of the we
ak but bitter wind that Jay hadn't really noticed whilst he was outside; sweat erupted all over his face, scalp and across the back of his neck. There was a muffled brown quality to the light that strained through the snow-patched glass of the arched roof. The smell hit him next. The sour stench of the dead that had yet to start obviously rotting but had begun a process of inward, secretive corruption. The originators of this somehow meaty sourness were everywhere. On the steel stairs that disappeared through a door-sized rectangular hole in the ceiling, an old man was sprawled with arms and legs impossibly positioned, speaking of pulverised bones. A man wearing what looked like a traffic warden's uniform was sat slumped back against a photo booth, the blue curtain from which was clutched in his bloody fist; a jagged piece of glass the size of tea tray jutted from his gut. Amidst toppled buckets and crushed flowers was the body of what Jay was reasonably certain had been a woman; the head was so comprehensively smashed it was impossible to be certain. There were more, at least another eight, but Jay tried his best to avoid looking at them, and when they forced themselves into his line of sight, he tried to trick his eyes into throwing them out of focus. But even then, his attention snagged on the most horrific details. A gristly hole where a nose should have been; an empty eye socket; a sheet of flesh ripped from an arm, complete with flaps of finger and painted nails; a ragged-edged face, like a mask, slapped onto a window between disinterested mannequins.
Jay wanted to take a deep breath to quell his surging nausea but didn't dare; a mouthful of that abattoir sourness would have emptied his belly in a second. He was relieved when Ellen said, “No time for window shopping” and set off, dodging the dead as if she was negotiating stepping stones. At the junction where twin escalators rose up between concessions that had once sold mobile phone accessories and offered watch repairs, they turned left, following a shop front filled with kitchen gadgets and household appliances. A transit van had crashed through the Parker Street entrance and filled most of the corridor, side on. The windscreen of the van was mostly frosted from the impact and those areas that weren't frosted were coated on the inside with something treacly and reddish. There was a limp arm dangling from the roof of the van and Jay assumed it must be attached to a body, otherwise the weight of the hand would have dragged it slithering down to the ground. It was missing most of its third finger but a blood-dulled wedding ring clung to the tatty stump. Jay tried to blur the image by throwing it out of focus and in so doing created the impression that the hand had twitched, an optical illusion his rattling heartbeat could have done without.
He could taste the almost fresh air coming in from the ruined entrance, could feel the breeze easing the relative but now practically unbearable warmth inside the shopping centre. Out in the middle of Parker Street, twenty or more crows, like a heavy black blanket bothered by a strong wind, undulated about something raw and scarecrowish.
Ellen was passing the transit van when the arm snaked up and out of sight. Jay couldn't speak as the hyena, small, stocky and with a long comb-over now dangling over its right ear and almost down to its shoulder, reared up.
Chapter 15
“Jesus!” Brian shouted but Jay could hardly hear over the blood that seemed to be crashing against his eardrums. The blanket of crows flew apart, black rags clattering skyward, exposing something that didn't really look like a scarecrow at all.
The hyena dropped down toward Ellen before she'd even had time to wonder what Brian was squawking about and what had frightened the birds. It misjudged her speed and instead of landing on her, pinning her down, it glanced off her back and sent her sprawling across the polished floor amidst shards of glass and scattered greetings cards from a toppled concession. As Ellen hit the ground, her pistol jumped from her hand and spun out onto Parker Street, skidding across the snow.
Jay tried to get at his own gun but discovered he'd zipped up his coat pocket. He could feel the weight and shape of the thing through the slippery fabric of his coat, abstract and useless.
The hyena looked at Ellen, then Brian, then Jay, its eyes wide with a kind of delight, a child in a sweet shop. For a couple of seconds, it seemed as if it just couldn't make up its mind, then Ellen pushed herself up onto her knees and the hyena lunged at her.
Jay fumbled with the pocket's zip, managed to get it halfway down before it jammed.
The hyena landed on Ellen. She had seen it coming, though, and had managed to roll onto her back, bringing her legs up. When it struck her, she kicked it away, sending it flying back against the transit van.
Jay shoved his fingers as best he could into his pocket and, though he knew it was a waste of time, knew he was a thoroughgoing dickhead, tried to pull the gun through the too small hole.
Ellen got to her feet and started toward Parker Street and her gun. The crows were still in disarray but refused to stray more than a few yards from their meal. The hyena grunted as it lurched after Ellen, its greasy comb-over trailing behind it.
Jay dragged at the gun, the pocket beginning to tear but refusing to relinquish the weapon.
“Fuck!” he growled. “You absolute fucking gobshite, Jay! What in the name of all that's fuck is fucking wrong with you?”
The hyena stopped dead and turned toward Jay, its eyes even wider than before, as if it had just spied the sugariest confectionary in the whole shop, a little boy's dream and a dentist's nightmare.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” said Jay.
The hyena's eyes darted about as Jay spoke, as if it was attempting to follow the erratic paths of several bluebottles, reminding Jay of Hello Kitty.
“What?” he shouted. “What the fuck are you looking at, Bobby fucking Charlton?”
The hyena grinned, dipped its head a little, and sped toward him.
A firework exploded somewhere behind Jay or something very much like a firework. At the same time, a penny-sized hole appeared in the side of the van. Jay looked back to see Brian, smoking gun in hand.
“Get the fuck down, Jay!” he shouted, although his voice was muffled behind a high-pitched whine which had taken up residence at the centre of Jay's head. “You know I can't see for shit!”
Jay dropped to the ground. The hyena was still coming, undeterred by the gun shot. A string of drool almost as long as its rancid comb-over trailed from its mouth and over its shoulder.
Another firework exploded.
Another penny-sized hole appeared in the side of the van a couple of inches to the left of the first hole.
“Jesus, Brian, the van's already dead!”
The hyena pressed on, only a few feet from Jay now. He scuttled back on his buttocks, broken glass slashing at the back of his pants.
Another firework.
A penny-sized hole appeared above the hyena's left eye.
But it kept coming. The bullet appeared to have done nothing. Maybe there was so little going on inside its skull it could take a bullet to the brain and still function.
Another firework exploded. The van manifested a third hole.
“Fuck's sake, Brian!”
Then the hyena's legs folded so suddenly it seemed as if some secret internal switch had been thrown. It hit the ground face first, arms limp at its side and slid the remaining few inches until its hairless scalp was pressed up against the soles of Jay's shoes.
All this in the few seconds it took Ellen to retrieve her gun from the snow and turn, ready to fire.
Jay got to his feet. His legs felt slightly anaesthetised.
Brian was grinning and nodding his head, as if in enthusiastic agreement with some amusing remark. He still had the gun trained on the dead hyena, his arm shaking so much it looked as if he was trying to flick something disgusting from the barrel of the gun.
“Bloody hell,” he said, voice tremulous. “I thought it was too stupid to die for a second there.”
Jay was about to concur when he was distracted by a small lifeless chime and saw that the wedding ring had fallen from the angry stump of the hyena's third finger. He watched a
s it rolled in a loose circle then fell on its side an inch from the hand it had slipped from, as if it had been trying to find its way back home. Without knowing why, Jay found himself reaching for it, found himself wanting to put it in his pocket, keep it as a symbol or reminder of something he couldn't even begin to define. Then he realised Brian was speaking to him.
“What?”
“I said keep it in your hand, Zippy,” said Brian with the exasperation of someone who's had to repeat themselves several times.
“Keep what in my hand?” said Jay, thinking that Brian might be referring to the wedding ring.
“Your gun. You had it zipped up in your pocket, for fuck's sake. Some fucking gunslinger you'd make.”
“Brian, Jay, we need to get moving,” said Ellen. “They'll be coming.”
A second later, there was a high, warped thud from the Ranelagh Street entrance. Jay recognised the sound from his first encounter with Hello Kitty on Castle Street: the sound of a hyena throwing itself at a plate glass window, although the short interval between each distorted thud was too brief to be the work of just one hyena.
“Now,” said Ellen.
Brian set off at a brisk walk. Jay unzipped his jacket pocket — with no difficulty now, of course — and took out his gun. It still felt like it was constructed from some impossibly dense alien material, cold, hard but with a muted kind of life humming at its centre. The next warped thud was accompanied by a sharp crack of breaking glass. Jay took one last glance at the ring, decided against taking it, still uncertain as to why he would want to do so in the first place, and followed Brian and Ellen out onto Parker Street.
The crows had taken up residence on the BBC Big Screen that, pre-Jolt, had broadcast football matches and the local news down onto throngs of shoppers, like the instrument of some science fiction tyrant. Now the deadness of its screen reminded Jay of the thick, liquid blackness that had seemed to lurk beneath Ellen's canvases. Ahead of them, the Radio City Tower sprouted upwards, looking to Jay like a pale, apocalyptic fungus, dwarfing the surrounding structures.
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