Hyenas (17 page)

“Ellen, we have — ”

But it was too late. The hyenas were already
appearing, surging onto Dale Street from around the corner of Moorfields, some
still shielding their eyes against a grey-brown light that, compared to the
darkness of the tunnels from which they'd recently emerged, must have been like
looking directly into the sun.

Chapter 21

Ellen looked over her shoulder.

“Oh, for fuck's sake.” She took a couple of steps
forward, stopped, grimacing and gripping her side. “Fuck!”

Some of the hyenas had spied them and were already
bounding in their direction. Jay raised the assault rifle. Looked down the
length of the barrel and trained the sight on the nearest hyena.

“Don't waste the bullets. We're going to need them.”
Ellen headed back the way they had come, at a considerably slower pace. A few
feet later, she turned left up a narrow alley between an office building and a
Spa. As he made the turn, Jay looked back. The hyenas were already gaining. He
returned his attention to Ellen, who was already at the top of a small set of
steps, between boarded windows and high graffiti-bedraggled walls. Jay caught
up with her easily before she'd reached a road which curved right toward a side
street dominated by a Premier Inn. Ahead of them was a four-storey car park — a
box of red brick and, on the upper storeys, green-barred glassless windows.

“Ellen, they're — ”

“Catching up. I know. I can't run much further. We're
going to have to hide. Or I am. You can keep running if you like.”

“I'll stick with you,” said Jay.

“I'm touched.” She pointed to the car park. “In there.”

They jogged through the wide main entrance, dipping
under the red and white barrier. Darkness and more than a hint of piss closed
around them. They made their way to the back, the darkness and the stench
thickening. There were a few cars parked-up in the bays and one car, a Vauxhall
Meriva with
In the Night Garden
sun blinds on the back windows, was abandoned across
two bays, one door gaping open and a man's patent leather shoe on the roof.
They reached the far wall and slid behind a white Fiat mini-van with a decal of
a cartoon painter and decorator on the side.

Putting down the assault rifle, Jay dropped onto all
fours then lay flat on his belly so he could see under the van. He could hear
the hyenas, a tangle of snarls slashed at by shrieking laughter, funnelled
through the narrow alley and into the car park where it echoed from the bare
brick walls. The sound alone felt like the first wave of an attack. And then
the hyenas began to appear. Framed by the car park exit, there was something
cinematic about the parade of hyenas as they variously stumbled, staggered and
bounded past in washed-out widescreen. Fifteen or more went by and Jay was
beginning to feel hopeful, until one stopped, extracted itself from the pack
and shuffled toward the car park.

It had, before the Jolt, been some kind of labourer.
It still wore overalls — once pale blue, now filthy and torn — and heavy work
boots. The inner framework of a hard hat was clamped to its head, greasy fronds
of dirty-blond hair sprouting through the gaps. Blackened eyes and a beard
matted with dried blood spoke of a broken nose. Jay hadn't thought it possible,
but it looked somehow wilder than any of the hyenas he had seen before, and he
thought of the library in flames and what it had done. For a moment, he wasn't
sure what it was that made the hyena seem more savage, what visual tic was
sending that particular message, and then he realised there were threads of
panic and desperation running through the usual tangle of rage and hysteria
that were the hallmarks of the hyena face, and he thought of the library again,
soon to be ashes.

He looked up at Ellen. The pain-induced lines were no
longer scored into her forehead. She nodded and produced a small, tight smile
as if to say, I'm okay.

Jay returned his attention to the hyena he had,
without consciously deciding to, named Bob the Builder. It was standing at the
threshold of the car park now, where the snow sloped down to the tarmac,
whiteness graduating through grimy grey to black. A look of excitement took
over its face for a moment, briefly eliminating the rage, hysteria and panic,
and Jay suspected — no, not suspected, he knew — it could sense all those
currents of language swirling through and between the various components of his
brain. He tried not to think, but knew it wasn't possible; he could only think
about not thinking, and words, language, were the building blocks that this
thought, this thought about not thinking, was made of.

As if to underscore Jay's concern, Bob let out a
little giggle of delight that turned into a low, steady moan. It stepped into
the car park, its heavy boots clomping on the tarmac. Behind it, the rest of
the hyenas streamed by, apparently oblivious to Bob's piqued interest. Jay
wondered if some of them were more sensitive to language than others, craved it
more. And then he tried to stop wondering and wondered if it was possible to
empty his mind but that just made him think of Zen, the word pulsing through
his brain: Zen, Zen, Zen, Zen, Zen Zen ZenZenZen.

Bob took a few more steps, its clomping boots making
Jay think, Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum. A few more steps; it was about twenty feet away
now. Jay reached for the rifle, knowing he couldn't risk using it — the gunshot
would bring more hyenas than there were rounds in the curved magazine — but
wanting the comfort of it, all thoughts of its hair-trigger lethality suddenly
swept aside.

Grunting, Bob dropped into a crouch, then slowly
tipped its head to one side until the position of its eyes matched Jays.

Jay stopped breathing and, without even trying,
emptied his mind of words until his skull was just an echo chamber for his
ranting heartbeat. His hand tightened round the rifle, but there was still a
steady, staggering Cinemascope parade of hyenas passing behind Bob.

Bob stood, as slowly as it had crouched, like an old
man rising from an afternoon spent in a low, soft armchair. Then, with an
abruptness that caught Jay completely off guard, the hyena was charging toward
them. Jay scrabbled to his feet.

“Ellen, fuck, it's...”

Bob slammed into the side of the van with a sound like
someone trying to destroy a kettledrum, and the van actually lurched on its
suspension, as if it was flying at high speed round a hairpin bend.

Another kettledrum assault and there was Bob, on the
roof of the van, glaring down at them, from Jay to Ellen, Ellen to Jay, Jay to
Ellen, as if it couldn't make its mind up which one to make its victim.

Ellen darted right, heading to the back of the van.
Jay went left, toward the front.

Bob made up its mind. Jay.

It stepped from the roof onto the slope of the
windscreen, towering above Jay. Its legs bent as it prepared to leap. Jay ran
further off to the left, but, just as in Waterstones, he tensed with a
premonition of the hyena landing on his back and driving him down to the
oil-stained tarmac, acutely aware that he couldn't outdistance it. And then
there was a crack, like a frozen pond giving way and Bob let out a strangled
growl. Jay turned and saw that the hyena's right foot had plunged through the
windscreen, its leg sunk in up to the knee. He looked back at the exit. Hyenas
were still passing by. He scanned for Ellen and saw her disappear up one of two
parallel ramps that led to the upper levels.

Jay had taken only a couple of steps in Ellen's
direction when Bob let out a long shriek. Jay wanted to keep moving but he
couldn't help turning. Bob had dragged its legs free of the windscreen and in
so doing had lost shoe, sock and most of the skin from its foot. Blood spilled onto
the bonnet, running down to the floor. Still shrieking, Bob leapt from the van,
lurched toward Jay, then dropped to its knees. It tried to get back to its feet
but only managed to rise halfway before falling again. It looked back at its
wounded leg, drawing Jay's eye to what looked like a stub of gristly cable
protruding just above the heel. It had severed its Achilles tendon, Jay
realised. Unable to walk, its shrieking dropping to a low, steady moan, it
began crawling toward him.

Jay was about to give thanks to Whoever for this
nugget of good fortune when he noticed the collective silhouette of the hyenas
filling the main exit and growing as they moved toward him. He couldn't follow
Ellen; even if he could make it to the ramp before they caught up with him,
they'd follow him up the stairs and, once they were on the roof, where would
they go? They'd be trapped. He looked around for another exit but there was
nothing, not even a window. He raised the rifle, ready to begin firing, knowing
he'd run out of ammunition long before all the hyenas had fallen, and even if
he did have enough bullets, how long before more hyenas came, attracted by the
sound of gunfire?

Then he registered the Meriva for the second time, a
shoe on its roof and one door open.

The mini people-carrier was equidistant between Jay
and the hyenas. But they were advancing and he had yet to take a step toward
the vehicle. If there were keys, he could get the Meriva moving, plough through
the hyenas. If not, it wouldn't take long for them to break the windows;
Christ, Bob had done it without even trying. But what other choices were there?

Without even realising he'd consciously made the
decision, he sprinted toward the Meriva. As one, the hyenas surged in his
direction, there cacophony filling the car park, sounding like a riot.

Halfway to the Meriva, his heel skidded on a patch of
diesel. He managed to stay on his feet but the assault rifle flew from his
hand. It hit the ground ahead of him, bouncing on its stock. He continued
toward the car, stooping for the rifle at the same time. He grabbed it by the
strap, but in so doing overbalanced and spilled to the floor, rolling the last
few feet toward the Meriva. He succeeded, just, in keeping hold of the gun. The
hyenas shrieked with something like joy as they saw their prey go down. It was
all over in their eyes.

Jay reached up and grabbed the inner handle of the
open door and dragged himself up and into the vehicle. There was a thud as a
hyena slammed into the other side of the car. Then another. Another. And
another, this one from the roof. Jay dragged the door closed as a
dirt-encrusted hand swiped down from above. Filthy fingers were momentarily
caught then dragged away with a shriek.

The vehicle began to rock and, in a second, a collage
of hyena hands and faces had filled every available inch of window.

Jay was in the passenger seat. He squirmed out of his
backpack and over to the driver's side, slapped a hand against the ignition,
thinking, please, please, please let there be keys.

He felt nothing but the cold, metal slot.

Chapter 22

“Fuck!”

Jay slammed the heels of his hands against the
steering wheel. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Ahead of him, kneeling on the bonnet, a hyena that had
cultivated an elaborate Mohawk pre-Jolt, wilted now, appeared to be mimicking
him, slamming its own hands into the windscreen. It grinned as it beat its
palms against the glass, revealing toothless, bleeding gums.

Jay sat back in his seat and wiped the sweat from his
face. He looked down at the gun, his heartbeat thrumming down into his stomach,
churning its contents, and thought... He wasn't sure what he was thinking. Try
and shoot his way out, even though he knew that was hopeless? Or put the barrel
of the gun under his chin and pull the trigger, quick and painless?

For a few seconds, the Meriva rocking and booming, he
considered the latter option. It would be over in an instant. He wouldn't even
feel it. The last sensation he would have would be the trigger passing the
point of no return, then a slow-motion awareness of the rifle's mechanism
taking over, unstoppable, as he seceded power to the gun. It sounded so easy.
The easy way out. The coward’s way out. But he knew it was neither of these
things. It would require an act of near-superhuman will and he knew he just
didn't have it in him.

So. Option one. Start shooting. Keep shooting until
the rifle runs dry. He tried to raise the gun, to point it at Mohawk, who was
still grinning, still pounding against the windscreen, but he was too close to
the steering wheel. He reached under the seat, groped around until he found the
metal bar, lifted it up then pushed the chair back.

There was a handbag in the foot well, black with
mother-of-pearl sequins.

Jay propped the gun up next to his backpack and
snatched the bag.

Amidst all the howling and banging, Jay thought he
heard the click-creak of glass beginning to give. Mohawk was licking the
windscreen, slathering it with blood-threaded saliva.

Jay began scooping out the bag's contents and dropping
them on his lap. A mobile phone, a packet of tissues, a purse, lipstick,
compact, a packet of Airwaves and — last, of course last — a bunch of keys.
There were eight or nine keys on the
Mama
Mia
key ring but Jay knew immediately
that not one of them would start the car. They were house keys; Jay could tell
at a glance. Still, he worked his way through the bunch because there was
nothing else to do.

Another click-creak of glass under strain, and still
the car rocked from side to side like an amusement park ride. Jay threw the bag
back into the foot well and was about to sweep the bag's contents from his lap
when he realised he'd seen something on the floor an instant before the bag had
landed.

He kicked the bag aside.

A key. A car key.

As he reached down for it, there was another
click-creak but this time the creak was more protracted. He glanced up as his
fingertips found the key, flipping it into his palm, and saw that the
windscreen was beginning to sag as the seals started to give way. As if sensing
this slight shift, Mohawk stopped his licking and hammered against the glass
with renewed enthusiasm.

Jay tried to slot the key into the ignition but
succeeded only in jabbing the steering column. He tipped his head to get a
better look, then grabbed the tip of the key with the fingertips of his other
hand and guided it toward the slot, like a drunk suddenly unequal to the task
of getting back into his own house. The drawn-out creak of the sagging
windscreen was abruptly smothered by a significant increase in the volume of the
hyena's din, and Jay saw that the seal had given up completely on the passenger
side of the windscreen and a finger-width gap had appeared.

The key slid into the ignition. He tried to turn it,
but it wouldn't move. For a moment, he thought, It's the wrong fucking key! He
couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it. Then he realised he hadn't
inserted it far enough. He pushed it in the remaining few millimetres. This
time it turned.

The car growled at the hyenas and, as one, they
retreated a couple of feet, Mohawk slithering from the bonnet. At the same
moment, Al Green recommenced singing
L.O.V.E.
from halfway through the first verse:
that's what the world is made of, so give me more
L-O-V-E, love
. Jay punched down the
handbrake, stamped on the clutch, dragged the gearstick into reverse and
stepped hard on the accelerator. He took the Meriva in an arcing trajectory to
the back of the car park, until he was pointing at the ramp he'd seen Ellen go
up.

The hyenas, their initial surprise evaporating, raced
toward the car. Jay put it into first, but mistimed the clutch; the engine
grumbled, chugged, then cut out. Al told Jay that
L.O.V.E is strange to me
and then fell silent. As Jay turned the key back then
forward and the engine fired up again, the first of the hyenas slammed into the
front passenger-side door and the window shattered, showering Jay's backpack
with fragments of glass. Al started singing again as the hyena thrust its arm
into the car, immediately filling the interior with its stink. Jay stamped on
the accelerator and the Meriva sped, tires screeching, toward the ramp. The
hyena was dragged along for a couple of seconds before it dropped to the
tarmac, to be trampled by the rest of the pack.

Jay realised too late that he was driving too fast to
negotiate the tight, upward-sweeping 'u' of the ramp's trajectory. The front
passenger-side wing was wrenched off and the car juddered so hard Jay almost
lost his grip on the steering wheel, but he managed to keep it moving. A glance
in the rear-view mirror showed nothing but hyenas.

Numerous signs recommended a maximum speed of five
miles per hour, but Jay was doing closer to thirty when he came off the ramp
and had to slam on the brakes to stop himself from ploughing into a concrete
pillar that already bore the cracks, chips and scrapes of carelessness.

As Al told him to
stop
and look at the big wheel roll
, Jay
looked around for any sign of Ellen. Nothing. She must have kept moving up. He
tried to bring the car back round on itself to take it up the next ramp but
went wide and had to reverse and adjust his approach, during which time the
hyenas had reached the top of the ramp he'd just exited and were spilling
across to the next, blocking his way.

He put the car into first, gritted his teeth and drove
into the pack. Of the four hyenas in the Meriva's immediate path, two were
knocked aside, both pirouetting, and one went under the wheels. The fourth was
scooped up and hit the centre of the windscreen face first, creating a bloody
cataract, before rolling off and joining its pack-mate beneath the wheels. To
the left, the hyenas caught between the car and the wall of the narrow ramp
were dragged against the concrete. One reached in, succeeded in snatching at Jay's
shoulder before being rotated back along the car, shrieking. Jay had left more
space on the right, and here a growing rank of hyenas kept pace with the car.
The lead hyena, sporting a ragged, once lipstick-pink tracksuit, tore off the
wing mirror and began using it to hammer against the driver's window. There was
a series of thuds and scuffles above him as hyenas clambered onto the roof. Jay
plunged down the accelerator as he came out of the turn.

A pillar that appeared, scrape for scrape, to be a replica
of the one on the first floor reared up. Jay hit the brakes and yanked the
steering wheel hard right. He succeeded in saving the wing from further ruin,
but the car slid into the pillar side-on, the front passenger door taking the
brunt of it. Jay felt the impact in his bones, in his teeth, and this time his
hands lost their grip on the wheel and his feet were bounced from the pedals.
The engine died, cutting short Al Green’s backing band just as they were really
beginning to enjoy themselves.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the top of
the ramp filling with hyenas. He turned the key back then forward. The engine
grumbled to life, stuttered and died.

“Fuck!”

He gave the key another turn. The engine grumbled
again. Then stuttered and died again.

The hyenas were at the door now. A hand so filthy it
looked scorched punched through the glass and into Jay's cheekbone. The car
filled with a smell like ripe cheese and sewage. Almost blinded by the blow and
the stench, Jay turned the key backwards, then forwards. The hyena that had
punched him drew back its fist to repeat the offence. The engine grumbled
again. Before it could cut out, Jay stomped on the accelerator and Al’s backing
band surged back to life. As the Meriva lurched away from the concrete pillar,
the crushed front passenger door popped open, whatever mechanism had been
keeping it locked and shut, wrecked.

In his eagerness to get away from the hyenas, he'd
overshot the entrance to the ramp by a good twenty feet. He put the car into
reverse and ploughed into the advancing pack until the nose of the car was in
the right position to turn onto the ramp.

A hyena in a denim jacket and with a face so swollen
and seeping with infection that Jay couldn't place its pre-Jolt age, gender or
ethnicity, threw itself onto the bonnet of the car, sliding up and onto the
windscreen. The glass began to warp inward under its weight.

Jay took the car up the ramp, knowing that the steep
incline would increase the hyena's weight against the windscreen but, with the flapping
passenger door and his own window broken, he knew he couldn't hang around. He
stayed as far right as he could as he followed the ramp's curve, trying to
prevent further damage to the offside wing but only succeeding in destroying
the other wing in a shower of sparks.

The hyena tried to rear back, presumably to begin
beating the windscreen, but the momentum of the car pulled it down again. The
seal on the passenger side gave up entirely and half the windscreen fell in,
draping over the dashboard.

The Meriva emerged on the third floor and Jay
surprised himself by taking the car up onto the final ramp with barely a
scrape. He would have felt quite pleased with himself if it wasn’t for the fact
the windscreen was peeling inwards at an alarming rate. But there was nothing
he could do about that, except hope.

Once he was out of the bend, Jay floored the
accelerator and the Meriva flew out onto the roof. The hyena scuttled across
the bonnet so it was directly in front of Jay, blocking his view. It tried to rear
back again but Jay kept his foot down, pinning it in place. Then he stamped on
the brake pedal.

But the car didn't stop. It carried on racing forward,
fishtailing. He'd forgotten about the snow. Jay leaned left, to see past the
hyena. He was almost at the edge of the roof, a low wall the only thing between
the Meriva and a four storey plunge. All over the roof, gulls and pigeons took
flight. Jay jerked the wheel left then right but the Meriva's trajectory was
set, the most he could do was exaggerate the fishtailing. He braced himself for
impact, pushing himself back into the chair and scrunching his eyes shut. Al
was singing something about love being as bright as the morning sun and then
the noise as the car hit the wall was deafening. Despite his best efforts to
remain rigid, Jay was thrown forward, his forehead hitting the steering wheel.
The blow forced open his eyes and, thinking
so
much for the fucking airbag
, he saw
the hyena and windscreen fly beyond the crumpled bonnet of the car. Then he was
thrown back into his seat so hard the air was forced from his lungs. The hyena
and the windscreen dropped from view. Jay was fully expecting to follow them
down to the street below, tensing his entire body in readiness, when he
realised the car had stopped.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. The pack had
arrived at the top of the ramp. Ears ringing and trying to ignore the various
injuries that were starting fires throughout his body, Jay put the Meriva into
reverse and trod down on the accelerator. Nothing happened. And then Jay
realised, no Al Green, no L.O.V.E love. The engine had cut out. Jay worked the
key back and forth. Nothing. Not even a cough. He tried again. Nothing. The
hyenas had halved the distance, trudging through the thick snow, stalking toward
the Meriva as if it was a wounded animal, exhausted and unable to escape.