Hyenas (23 page)

The snow was falling heavily now, a swarm of white.
Jay could only just make out hyenas emerging from the Queensway tunnel across
the road. As with the hyenas inside the Liver Building, they charged forward,
intent upon harm, but their viciousness faded as soon as they fell under the
spell of Blake.

“Okay,” said Pepper. “We need to back away now.
Slowly.”

“But not too fucking slowly.”

“Yeah, not too fucking slowly.”

As if they were retreating from a watchful tiger, they
reversed away from the rifle-mounted CD player, which looked oddly totemic to
Jay now that he was no longer holding it, now that it was a thing on its own,
the hyenas staring on with something not unlike reverence.

The low-battery light flickered red.

“
In fierce
anguish and quenchless flames to the deserts and rocks he ran raging, to hide;
but he could not.
”

Jay and Pepper backed through swaying, transfixed
hyenas, down the side of the Liver Building, toward the Mersey.

The red light flickered.

“
...in
howlings and pangs and fierce madness, long periods in burning fires labouring;
till hoary, and age-broke, and agèd, in despair and the shadows of.
”

The red light winked out.

The silence following the CD player’s death was
somehow intrusive, worming its way into Jay’s ears.

Pepper saluted then sprinted off upriver, toward the
Cunard Building and the lifeless black wedges of the Mann Island Apartments. A
second later, Jay headed pell-mell in the opposite direction, toward Princes'
Parade.

Behind him, there was silence from the hyenas and for
a moment, even though he knew it was ridiculous, he thought the hyenas had
died, that the sudden cessation of poetry, of Blake, had proved too much of a
shock and their hearts had stopped.

Silence.

Silence.

Then, an explosion of rage. Jay wasn't entirely
certain he only imagined the outer rim of its shockwave pushing against his
back, pressing him forward with such urgency that it was an effort to stop
himself from lurching ahead of his own feet and falling over.

Before

“Make us a cuppa, eh, son?” his dad asked as Jay
closed the front door behind him. “I’m gasping, but you know how it is.”

Jay took off his jacket and draped it over the bottom
of the banister.

“Okay, Dad. You want anything else? Toast? Biscuits?”

“No thanks. How’d it go at the job centre?”

“Shit. I’ve got a new Employment Guidance Officer, or
whatever the fuck they’re calling them now, and she can’t quite grasp the fact
that every job requires at least some degree of literacy. Even when I told her
about that cleaning job I lost because I couldn’t fill in the audit sheet, she
was like, ‘Well, there must be something,’ all exasperated as if I was just
being awkward.”

“Well, you probably
were
being a little bit
awkward, knowing you,” his dad replied as Jay stepped into the living room,
grinning.

“Maybe a little bit. Can’t help it. They wind me up.
I’ve had nearly five years of this shite.”

His dad looked terrible. Thin, grey and practically
hairless. There was a faint stink in the air that Jay could only think of as
sickness.

“Did you do the other thing?”

Jay sighed. “Yes. I’ve done the other thing.”

The Other Thing was arranging for someone at Social
Services to come around and assess Jay’s ‘special needs’ because his dad — who
never tired of reminding him — was not only not going to be around forever he
wasn’t going to be around for long.

“They’re coming next Tuesday,” said Jay. “Half eleven.
Have you taken your pills?”

“Will do once you get a wiggle on and brew up.”

As he made the tea, Jay noticed, as if for the first
time, the alien squiggles on the side of his dad’s mug that said, World’s
Greatest Dad. At least that was what his mum had told him it said when they’d
bought it in Woolworths all those years ago. It could have said, European Body
Popping Champion 1986, for all Jay knew.

When he brought the tea in, his dad was up from his
armchair, checked green pyjamas hanging limp on his sticklike frame, shuffling
over to the computer desk by the bay window.

“Where do you want the tea: computer or armchair?”

“Armchair. Just getting this.” He pressed a button on
the PC, a tray slid out and his dad removed a CD before pressing the button
again and sending the tray back once more. He took a marker and wrote something
on the disk then returned to his armchair. “Here,” he said, holding the CD out
for Jay. “I made it for you.”

Jay took the disk and sat down on the settee, moving
blankets aside that were still a little warm from his dad’s afternoon nap.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s Blake. Well, it’s me reading Blake. I recorded
it on the computer then burnt it to disk. Took me a few weeks. I get tired.” He
smiled. “I’m no Alan Bates but, you know, it’s better than a kick in the teeth.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing, really. Dads, eh? We’re a pretty
useless bunch. Mums do all the real work. Dads are only there to save your life
if you do something
really
stupid.”

Jay looked at the disk, at his dad’s writing. He
recognised it even though he had no idea what it said and, for a moment, he
felt a hot fist deep in his chest, tears threatening, and it meant everything
to him that his malfunctioning, fucked-up brain had allowed him that one small
mercy, the ability to recognise his own father’s handwriting.

And then he thought how like his dad’s voice the
handwriting was. It undulated gently. There were no angles, no sharp peaks or
jagged troughs. There was a warmth to it. It looked like a series of
interconnected smiles, all expressing varying degrees of amusement.

The hot fist in his chest opened up and he started
crying.

“It’s alright, son. It’s alright, lad.”

An arm around his shoulders, thin, almost muscleless,
but strong all the same.

Chapter 27

Princes' Parade seemed suddenly endless, the Alexandra
Tower concealed, despite its boastful height, by the whipping, twitching fabric
of the snow.

Behind him, the snarling and snickering of the hyenas
seemed to coordinate with the frenetic, jerky movement of the falling snow, a
conspiracy of sound and motion.

He filled his lungs with icy cold air and tried to
transmute it into energy by force of will. Then he mentally pushed that real or
imagined energy down into his legs.

It actually seemed to work. He could feel himself
picking up speed. The hyenas' din was falling away. But with the roar of blood
in his ears, he couldn't be sure.

Flakes of snow, fat and wet, stuck to his eyelashes,
further blurring and confusing his vision. If it wasn't for the river to his
left, its rolling surface greasy with snow, he could easily have strayed off course.
Even without looking, he could sense the Mersey, a different quality of air,
more lively somehow, against the left-hand side of his face. He felt energised
for the first time since... The truth was he couldn't remember the last time he
felt this strong, this focused, this able. He threw each foot down and pushed
it back as if he wasn't so much driving himself forward as turning the Earth, a
mammoth treadmill, bringing his destination toward him, one step at a time.
There was a pain in his side and the insides of his lungs felt scoured by the
icy air, but he could take it. It was no big deal.

The Alexandra Tower appeared, the snow seeming to
part, the big reveal at the end of a magic trick. He veered toward the river,
toward the railing, beyond which the boat and Ellen and everybody else would be
waiting.

And then he saw Simon, lying in the snow, face-up,
bloodied open mouth catching snowflakes, eyes rolled back to reveal whites like
ice. His pale dreadlocks were splayed out across the snow in a neat, symmetrical
pattern that looked almost deliberate, arranged.

What happened next seemed to take place in entirely
the wrong order.

Jay fell, sprawling in the snow, and for a fraction of
a second he thought he'd tripped on something, the outstretched arm of one of
Liverpool's dead, perhaps. Then he felt a pain he could only describe as an icy
burning halfway up the side of his right thigh, followed by a bone-deep
numbness from his hip to the tips of his toes. And then he heard the gunshot.

He rolled onto his back and looked down at his leg.
Tendrils of blood, like the roots of some crimson plant, stretched out from a
single, small point on his thigh into the snow.

The hyenas — at least fifteen of them — stopped and
turned toward the source of the gunfire, a militiaman, little more than a
silhouette in the swirling snow.

“Told you'd I'd take you down, you little cunt, didn't
I? Fucking told you!”

Pete.

The hyenas bore down on him and Pete fired
enthusiastically into the pack.

Jay tried to get to his feet, but his lifeless leg was
impossibly heavy and the most he could manage was to sit up. He looked to his
right. The guard rail wasn't as close as he'd hoped but he had no other
options; he flopped onto his belly and, clawing through the soft top layer of
snow and driving his fingertips into the frozen crust beneath, dragged himself
toward the river, pushing with his uninjured leg, dragging its useless
associate behind.

There was a gunshot accompanied by a high-pitched
ping; an unspectacular spark appeared briefly on the top rung of the guard
rail. Jay kept moving. The numbness in his leg was beginning to lift. He wished
it hadn't.

There were more gunshots, followed immediately by the
sound — somehow hard and wet — of bullets thud-ripping into hyena flesh.

“Fucking jokers!” Pete all-but shrieked. “Get out of
the fucking way!”

Three, four, five more gunshots. Then one, two, three
clicks.

“Bollocks!”

The hyenas erupted into snarling laughter.

Pete whimpered. Then he started to scream. Started but
didn't finish, the emerging sound muffled as the hyenas fell upon him. Jay
might have felt sorry for him, if it wasn’t for the sight of Simon, like a trophy
on display.

Jay grabbed the lowest rung of the guard rail, the
first of four, with his right hand and dragged himself closer. He threw his
left hand up onto the second rail and pulled himself closer still.

There was a series of thuds as the hyenas slammed
their fists into Pete, the sound becoming progressively more liquid, a kind of
slow motion version of the thud-tearing of the bullets.

Jay grabbed the third rail and pulled himself up onto
one knee. He didn't dare bend his wounded leg; he just let it jut out. Even so,
as he seized the top rail and pulled himself up onto his feet, the pain was
extraordinary, as if some gruesome Tom Horner had rammed a thumb deep into the
muscle of his thigh and was wriggling it around in search of a plum.

The liquid thudding behind him, like children stomping
in muddy puddles, was now accompanied by the snapping of bones. Jay was certain
that, any second now, the hyenas would break open Pete’s skull, if they hadn't
already, find disappointment and turn their attention to him.

Crying out in pain, he threw his injured leg over the
top rail, straddling it like a child attempting to mount a bicycle that was too
big for him. He let the leg drop to the ground but didn't put his weight on it,
instead letting his wrists and torso take the strain as he pulled his good leg
over and planted his foot on the ground.

He looked over at the pack. Pete was in ruins now,
motionless. Rearing over him, face awash with blood to which fat snowflakes
adhered briefly before melting, was Alice Band. She met Jay's eye and grinned.

Jay looked down into the Mersey and saw the great worn
steps onto which Dempsey had fallen before plunging into the waters,
temporarily as it had turned out.

Jay saw the steps, but no boat.

“And there it was, gone,” he muttered.

Alice Band roared with laughter.

Chapter 28

He couldn't blame them, Ellen, Dave, Kavi and Joe.
They didn't need Jay anymore, didn't know him, owed him nothing. The city was
crawling with hyenas now. They'd done the right thing, the sensible thing,
casting off from dry land, away from all the horror, doubtless with Pete
raining gunfire upon them. He couldn't blame them. He really couldn’t.

“Miserable fucking bastards,” he said.

Alice Band coughed phlegmy laughter. Closer.

Jay turned. She was only a few yards away, almost
strolling toward him, the ragged remains of her flower-print dress flapping
about legs blue with cold where they weren't brown, grey or black with dirt. He
could smell her, too: overripe filth and something not unlike the odour that
had cloaked his dad toward the end.

“I can't believe they've fucking ditched me,” he said.
“I mean, I don’t blame them, not really, but... Miserable fucking bastards. You
can't rely on anyone these days, can you?”

Alice Band watched the words as they emerged from
Jay's mouth. The movement of her eyes and head suggested she was tracking
something with an easy, undulating motion. Jay thought: Is that the
Liverpudlian accent? Is that what it looks like to the hyenas? Fluid, informal,
almost dreamy? Is that how we spoke, this entire city? Were our voices that beautiful?

“So, what now?” said Jay. “Maybe we could just talk
for a while. I could bore you to death, then maybe you'll get fed up and, you
know, fuck off. How does that sound? Fair enough?”

Alice Band, almost within arm’s reach now, continued
to follow the lazy trajectories of his words, smiling a little. For a second,
Jay thought perhaps she would be content just to hear him talk, but then her
legs bent, tensed and she leapt up onto the top rail, balancing with simian
ease.

“Fuck,” said Jay. He stepped back and immediately
began to lose his footing, his heels hanging over the edge of the promenade
wall.

Alice Band dropped onto him, wrapping her arms around
his neck and her legs around his waist. Her forehead cracked against his.

Maybe it was down to the wooziness caused by loss of
blood, the blow to the head or just plain exhaustion, but as they arced down
toward the water it felt less like an assault and more like an embrace.

For a moment after they hit the water, it seemed as if
the oily surface would hold them, that they'd just lie there on that thick
undulating skin, like the heavy flakes of snow that refused to melt or sink.

Then an aperture opened in the river's skin and the
Mersey sucked them under.

The cold was so immediate, so intense, Jay felt his skull
would implode, as if it was being crushed between grinding tectonic plates. His
eyes were clamped shut, his jaw locked, every muscle rigid. Alice Band’s
fingers dug into his back, her forehead pressed hard against the side of his
neck. For a moment he could feel himself sinking, could feel the water rushing
upward away from him, then all sense of direction abandoned him and he had no
idea which way was up.

The pain inflicted by the freezing Mersey was
unbearable. He was certain it would kill him long before his lungs filled with
icy water and he drowned. Then Alice Band’s grip suddenly relaxed and she
dropped or rose away from him, and he knew he was doomed. If she couldn’t
survive, how could he?

It was over. Finished.

He felt himself relax then, as if injected with some
powerful sedative. The cold was there, the pain was there, but that was all on
the surface; deep down he was calmer than he’d ever been. He felt almost happy,
the weight of striving lifted from him. He felt warm and buoyant with failure.

Despite a mouth clenched tight against the Mersey, he
smiled.

A line from Blake leapt into his forebrain.

Can I not flow down into the sea and slumber in
oblivion?

It was something his dad had always said when woken
from a deep sleep to get up for work or, in his last days, to take his
medication.

Can I not flow down into the sea and slumber in
oblivion?

He could see his dad now, mumbling those words before
ducking back under the duvet. And then, an explosion of memories, roaring
through his mind just as the icy waters roared around his head, tearing at his
face and scalp.

His dad dripping iodine onto a graze on Jay’s knee and
wincing more than his son, as if he was willing the pain away from Jay and onto
himself.

His dad marking schoolbooks, scowling, then looking at
Jay and saying, “You’re ten times brighter than most of these indolent little
bastards, Jason. Ten times brighter. And better looking.”

His dad teaching him chess and insisting upon calling
the pawns ‘prawns’ no matter how often Jay rolled his eyes.

His dad laughing uncontrollably, actual tears rolling
down his cheeks, as he watched Laurel and Hardy attempt to push a piano up a
huge flight of stairs.

His dad sewing buttons onto one of Jay’s school shirts
then getting angry just for a second before belly laughing when he realised
he’d sewn through the back of the shirt.

His dad pitching a tent in torrential rain near
Delamere Forest while Jay watched, sheltered under a picnic table. Every now
and then, he’d turn to Jay and give him a thumbs-up, as if to say, I’ve got it,
I’ve got it, before witnessing the whole thing collapse again.

His dad walking out of a smoky kitchen, wafting his
arms around to disperse the haze, saying, “Christ, I could set fire to soup,
me,” then clapping his hands together and asking, “What do you fancy from the
chippy, then, son?”

His dad picking him up and nuzzling his stubbly chin
into Jay’s neck and saying, “Happy birthday, little man,” and not letting go
for a long time.

His dad, only a few weeks ago, saying, “It’s nothing,
really. Dads, eh? We’re a pretty useless bunch. Mums do all the real work. Dads
are only there to save your life if you do something
really
stupid.”

Jay started kicking his legs and thrashing his arms,
trying to propel himself in whatever direction he happened to be pointed. He
still had no idea which way was up, which way was down, but suddenly he just
couldn’t allow himself to slip silently away, couldn’t allow his dad to fail.

The pain, which had retreated when Jay had accepted
defeat, returned ten-fold. The freezing water crushed his bones. His lungs were
on fire. He’d never known pain like it, never known terror like it, a
biological horror, not existential dread, but an almost feral reaction to the
prospect of being swiftly snuffed out. He couldn’t help thinking of the horse,
snorting great plumes of steam as it ran and ran and ran, preferring to burst
its own heart than accept its fate.

He opened his eyes, desperate to get his bearings, to
identify some kind of light, no matter how weak, and begin swimming toward it.
But there was no light, just a grainy, textured darkness swirling all around
him.

So, he just kept kicking and thrashing and hoping he
was moving in the right direction.

The burning in his lungs was too much. He exhaled,
feeling bubbles hard as stones erupt around his face. If he’d expected relief
to follow, he was disappointed. The vacuum that replaced the burning was even
worse. The urge to open his mouth and draw in something, anything, was rapidly
becoming impossible to resist. A lungful of Mersey River water was better than
the agonising void that threatened to shred him from the inside out. He was
about to inhale when he realised he’d felt those stone-hard exhaled bubbles run
from his mouth, past his nose and into his hairline. He knew which way was up.
He was swimming in the right direction.

He clamped his jaw even tighter, as if he was holding
onto a rope by his teeth, dangling over a vast chasm, and kicked and scrabbled
at the vicious water with what he knew to be the last of his strength. The pain
in his skull was like an icicle rammed into the centre of his brain, an icicle
that was expanding by the second. His body was almost entirely numb now and he
realised he couldn’t be at all certain that he was kicking and scrabbling
anymore, that all this frenetic activity might very well be taking place in his
delirious, near-frozen brain.

But he kept kicking, kept thrashing.

His lips parted. He couldn’t stop them. They had a
will of their own. Metallic-tasting water, so cold it shouldn’t have been
liquid at all, seeped between his teeth and onto his tongue. He tried to tense
his throat, to seal it against the incursion, but it was no good, the water
oozed in. Suddenly he was coughing and with each spasm he drew in another
mouthful of Mersey. He thought maybe he was crying now, but he really couldn’t
be sure.

And then his head split through the thick skin of the
river’s surface and he could hear and see. The light was feeble but blinding
all the same. He retched up foul-tasting water and drew in chill air that was
swarming with snow. A second or two of retching and gasping and then the river
tried to drag him under again. What felt like coils of current wound round his
legs and tugged him downward. Jay kicked against them, tried to pull his legs
free. He had some measure of success, disentangling himself a little, but he
could feel his energy dissipating and knew it was only a matter of seconds
before he went under again; and once down, he knew he’d never get up and out,
and he would slumber in oblivion.

As he struggled, he turned on the spot and looked
around for any sign of the promenade. There was nothing, not even buildings,
just water as far as he could see; rubbery, oversized waves, flexing. He had no
idea where he was. He felt as if he was racing along, out toward the Irish Sea,
but it was impossible to be sure with the writhing fabric of snow all around
him.

“Ellen!” He coughed the name as much as shouted it.
“Ellen!”

The current’s tentacles snatched at his legs again,
latched on and tugged him down. His head dropped below the waterline. He kicked
as if he was kicking at some creature, something he could persuade to let him
go if he hurt it badly enough. It worked and he was able to push his face up
into the wintery air and draw breath, but only for a second as the trough he
found himself in warped upward and submerged him once more.

He kicked again at the current creature and again
succeeded in pushing his face up through the water’s skin. He sucked in a
little air and used it to cry, “Ellen!”

The shark, pale and vast, struck his shoulder with its
snout and spun him like a buoy. Jay couldn’t help laughing. A shark? A fucking
shark! Christ, he thought, the universe really wants me dead and it’s not
taking any fucking chances, is it?

But then he saw that the shark had
Jerusalem
tattooed on its side.

“Ellen!” he tried to shout but the name emerged as
little more than a croak.

But from high above him he heard Ellen say, “All
right, stop harping on. Heard you the first time.”

Hands gripped his shoulders and arms and he was
dragged out of the water.