Hyenas (15 page)

In the dim grey light, Jay could make out Robert,
crawling on all fours. He reached down, grabbed his arms and tried to lift him.
But he was too heavy.

“Robert, you've got to stand. I can't carry you.”

The hyena roared, then another display case met its
end. Jay could see it now, getting closer, lurching and staggering. And he was
certain, with the exit behind them, that it could see them.

“Now, Robert!” With a hiss off effort, he dragged
Robert up onto his feet. But, almost immediately, he began to fold again and
Jay could feel himself being dragged down.

The hyena lumbered closer. Jay knew he was going to
have to leave Robert, knew he couldn't possibly carry him, that it was Brian
all over again. And then there was a movement next to Robert and Ellen was
grabbing Robert's other arm and helping Jay guide him toward the exit. But even
with Ellen's support, Robert was too heavy and Jay knew they'd be lucky if they
got more than twenty feet before the hyena caught up.

As if sensing Jay's doubt, the hyena barked laughter.

Broken glass cracked and crunched beneath their feet
as they worked their way around the Victorian lecturer, headless now, and the
remains of his projector and orory.

“Just get him to the stairs,” said Jay.

“What? That thing's still coming.”

“Get him to the stairs. Try and bring him round. I'm
going to...”

What was he going to do? Part of him knew, the
instinctive part, but it was keeping its plan from the rest of him, from the
logical part that would shrink at the thought of it, that would just want to
flee.

Jay and Ellen lowered Robert onto the stairs, then Jay
began walking back toward the astronomy exhibit and the hyena. As he walked, he
reached into his pocket, took out the bulletless revolver and turned it in his
hand until he was holding it by the barrel. The hyena had almost made it into
the grey smudge of light. Jay could see the samurai sword embedded in its right
side. He could see its rage-contorted face.

Even though he knew he was acting under his own
volition, even though he knew this was the plan, this was what he intended to
do, every step he took toward the hyena was a surprise.

He raised the pistol above his head and, when he was
less than an arm's length away from the hyena, he brought the butt down on its
head. The sound of scalp splitting and of wood on bone seemed to send a signal
to his hitherto uninformed logical self and the urge to run was almost
overwhelming.

The hyena reached out for him but, at the same time,
its legs buckled and it dropped to its knees. Jay brought the gun down one more
time. Something hot peppered his face. The hyena fell flat. He stood there for
a couple of seconds not thinking about anything, not feeling anything, then, pushing
the now sticky gun back into his coat pocket, he returned to Ellen and Robert.

They were at the top of the stairs now, surrounded by
antique clocks — brass, silver and gold managing to gleam despite the dingy
light — and Robert was standing, swaying a little but resolutely on his own two
feet.

“Christ, he's a mess,” said Ellen.

But Jay didn't really need to be told. He could see
the veil of red that seemed to cling to Robert's face from the bridge of his
nose down, with what looked like glistening beads cascading from it.

Robert said something that might have been, “Let's
just get the fuck out of here,” but the words were soupy and half-formed.

As they moved through to the cafe, a window to their
left offering the same view as the rooftop, Jay said, “Where did you get the
sword? We need more.”

Robert spat out a thick wad of phlegmy blood and Jay
tried not to linger on the fact that he thought he'd seen a tooth amidst the
tangle of glossy threads.

Robert turned to him and Jay saw properly for the
first time what the hyena had done to his face. His nose was split open, his
lower lip was torn and hanging from a near-toothless mouth. His left eye was
already swelling shut beneath a lacerated brow.

Jay tried not to react. Robert seemed dazed,
half-asleep, and Jay didn't think the full enormity of what had happened to him
had hit home yet. And it would be better for all of them if it didn't hit home
for a while yet.

“Downstairs,” Robert managed, spitting blood again.
“Third floor. World cultures.”

“Hang on,” said Ellen. She jogged further into the
cafe, toward an L-shaped service counter. She went behind the counter, opened a
lightless fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. Then she grabbed a handful
of serviettes from next to the cash register and came back, opening the bottle.

“Close your eyes, Bob,” she said.

“Robert,” he managed but did as he was told.

Ellen poured water over his brow, nose and mouth. The
floor at his feet was immediately awash with a solution that was two parts
blood to one part water. She handed him the serviettes and he held them to his
mouth and nose.

“Do you want to rest for a bit?” said Jay.

Robert shook his head and walked to the exit. There
was something in his determined but slightly listing gait that made Jay think
of a drunk trying, and failing, to prove he was anything but.

Before they set off after him, Ellen turned to Jay and
whispered, “I hope they got that first aid stuff. He's a fucking mess. He's
going to need stitching up and who the hell's going to do that? And before you
ask, no, I can't fucking sew.”

They emerged at the top of a small flight of stairs,
at the bottom of which was a small glass-doored lift; to the right of that,
stairs zigzagging downwards. Robert was already halfway down the first flight
by the time Ellen and Jay caught up, his route marked by what looked like a
scattering of bright red coins. Another staircase mirrored their own ahead of
them. To the left of the stairs, through a fine wire mesh they could look down
five stories into what, judging by the pale yellow sandstone walls and sash
windows had once been a courtyard before an arching glass roof had turned the
outside in. Two walkways crossed over the courtyard, one on the fourth floor,
the other on the third. A Sputnik hung from wires above the fourth floor
walkway and, between the ground floor and the third-floor walkway a skeletal
pteranodon hung, its bones the colour of tobacco-stained teeth. A totem pole of
blackened wood, standing against the left-hand wall between twin exits, reached
almost to the fourth floor. Jay hadn't been to the museum since he was a child,
and it had changed completely.

They passed the fourth floor, its walls covered floor
to ceiling in dusky-orange images of fossils and strange rock formations.
Robert was waiting for them on the third floor. The wall here displayed red
duotone images of a South American tribesman and, in sweeping, almost
calligraphic brushstrokes, a top-knotted Japanese nobleman.

Robert took them left across the landing, past three
small glass display cases containing Greek and Roman statuettes, and through
glass double doors. The wall immediately ahead of them was filled with a
photographic image created from five vertical panels showing a throng of
crimson-robed Buddhist monks meditating. The small space opened up to the left.
What little light had followed them through the glass doors began to fail a few
feet in.

Jay shrugged off his backpack and rummaged through it,
pushing aside various Blakes and the Northrop Frye that had ultimately brought
him here, until he found the battery-powered lantern. He flicked it on and
passed it to Ellen. As soon as he'd re-shouldered his pack, they went left,
into the gloom.

They passed displays of Chinese vases and a
spread-eagled Tibetan robe, its yellow silk catching the torchlight and
gleaming like gold. The layout steered them left, past oriental ceramics and
elaborate lacquered furniture. Ahead and to their left, the display cases were
shattered, shards of glass littering the floor, creating an impression of a
frozen pond that some unfortunate had plunged through. The display — samurai
armour, swords and bows and arrows — had been ransacked with little concern for
the artefacts' preservation, only self-preservation. Jay, Ellen and, still
unsteady on his feet, Robert reached past threatening shards like some crude
and final attempt at a theft deterrent and each took a sword from a rack from
which one weapon, presumably still buried in the hyena upstairs, was already
missing.

Armed, they began to head back the way they had come
but the sound of shattering glass from that direction stopped them dead. They
about-faced, ran past the plundered samurai display and a collection of
netsuke. The exhibition space narrowed to a corridor. Exhibits scrolled by.
Bronze Tibetan tigers the size of terriers guarded the entrance to a room off
to the right containing paintings on silk of the Buddha; to their left more
Tibetan silks, swords and a red-faced mask with hemispherical eyes decorated
with mesmeric concentric circles. The corridor opened up into a square-ish room
dominated by an intricately carved ivory chair; around the sides of the room,
carvings from some kind of volcanic rock of Indian deities, and shadow puppets
frozen in melodramatic poses. The room opened up ahead and swept off to the
left in a broad curve. Behind them, the museum's acoustics making it impossible
to tell how far, there was another shattering of glass. They passed totem
poles, decorative woven rugs, furs and skins, a canoe and an improbably vast
and elaborate Native American head dress. As the curve persisted, taking them
into a room filled with African masks — a gargoyle-like bat-winged head, a
two-faced head with a clownish conical hat, something half jackal, half
crocodile and an abundance of demonic horned things with needle teeth — Jay
began to suspect they were turning in a steady circle. Another crash behind
them told him they had no choice but to push on. They dodged round a central
display cabinet containing four carved elephant tusks, curving up toward one
another, tips almost meeting; then another cabinet of downward-pointing spears
hanging from threads like a prop from an illusionist's repertoire. And then
they passed through double doors and were out on the landing by the stairs
spotted with Robert's blood. The sound of hyena's flooded down. It sounded like
the upper floors were filled with them and the detour to fetch the swords
seemed like an exercise in futility.

There was something else, too. Burning. Jay was
certain he could smell burning.

Robert almost fell down the stairs in his eagerness to
put as great a distance as possible between himself and the descending pack but
managed, just, to seize the banister and steady himself. The wad of serviettes,
still pressed to his face, were entirely red now.

Jay and Ellen exchanged a look of concern, not
realising that Robert was looking over his shoulder at them.

“I'll make it,” he slurred. “I'll fucking make it. I'm
fine.”

They passed the second floor, bright green walls
printed with images of insects and a sign saying 'Special Exhibition Coming
Soon!” And even though he hadn't visited the museum since he was a child, the
thought that there would be no more exhibitions, special or otherwise, here or
anywhere else, the thought that nothing would be Coming Soon ever again, filled
him with a sadness so sudden and intense that his heart ached like the strained
and tired muscle it was.

A stench of rotten fish and stagnant water hit them as
they passed the aquarium on the first floor. Jay tried not to imagine the
tanks, cloudy and filled with belly-up fish swollen and bursting with
decomposition. He held his breath until he made it to the foyer, the outside-in
courtyard, with its turquoise- and gold-mosaiced Lambanana beneath the swooping
skeletal pteranodon.

To their left, beyond sliding glass doors, the main
exit was closed and shuttered. The shutters were made of a kind of steel mesh
and Jay could discern movement beyond. Ahead, to the right of a huge
wall-mounted spider crab, the windows of closed double doors provided a view of
a gift shop and cafe.

Robert shoulder-barged open the doors and stepped into
the gloom of the gift shop cafe. Ellen then Jay followed, Ellen carrying the lantern.
The room was split in two. On the right, tables and chairs and a counter,
behind which was a glass-fronted fridge and a cappuccino machine. On the left
were shelves containing stuffed dinosaurs, figurines of Tutankhamen and Anubis,
model space shuttles and various rubber insects. In the far left corner, was a
curved counter with a cash register.

Robert marched directly over to a set of doors
opposite, identical to the ones they had just come through and leading to a
corridor which was only half-illuminated by grey light seeping through the
windows of another set of doors at its far end. As he pushed open the doors
with a jab of his foot, there was a flash, not like a camera flash, more like a
brief distress flare. Then, at the same time, Robert seemed to toss back his
head, hand and serviettes dropping from his face, and there was a crack that
Jay immediately identified as a gunshot, and Robert was arching backwards, a
thick rope of blood whiplashing out from his forehead in the opposite
direction. The sword dropped from Robert's hand and clattered to the floor a
moment before Robert's body joined it with a sound like a violent rugby tackle.