Nails Without Pictures Read online

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  Thank you for reading my short story. If you enjoyed it, you might enjoy my novel, Hyenas. Kirkus Reviews describe it as “genuinely frightening... exhilarating... a stirring addition to the zombie canon.”

  Here’s an extract:

  Jay couldn’t speak.

  The hyenas looked liked they’d crawled through a sewer. It was impossible to discern gender or age. They would have been indistinguishable from one another, in their filthy rags, painted-on grime and grease-shocked hair, if it wasn’t for the fact that one of them, the one nearest, stepping over the threshold now, was missing an eye, the socket roaring with infection, seeping something that looked like engine oil.

  Jay wasn’t sure which Dempsey registered first, the look of queasy horror on his face or the putrid stink of the hyenas, but he turned on his heels and fired.

  The harpoon passed clean through the one-eyed hyena’s throat and neck and sank deep into the second hyena’s shoulder. One Eye grasped its throat, blood bubbling out from between its scrabbling fingers. It staggered backwards into Two Eyes and the pair of them tumbled to the ground, thrashing against one another.

  “There must be a fucking sale on,” said Dempsey and pointed to the large window to the right of the door. Out on Bold Street, beyond a display of crime novels stacked to resemble something like the Manhattan skyline, five more hyenas tramped through the snow toward Waterstones. “Tell me there’s a back door.”

  “This way.” Jay ran toward the rear of the shop, past Fiction by Author, Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Crime, Alternative Lifestyles and Classics, to a door with a narrow window of wired glass and a keypad sprouting something like a small metallic mushroom.

  Behind him, he heard Dempsey reload the harpoon gun and, from further back, grunts, snarls, snorts of laughter and the sound of shelves being ransacked.

  It suddenly occurred to Jay that lack of power might have caused the door to lock, like when the alarms all over Liverpool had automatically triggered when the electricity supply had failed not long after the Jolt, wailing into the night until their batteries ran dry and a weird, almost textured silence descended on the city.

  He pinched the mushroom handle between thumb and forefinger and tried to twist it but his hands were too sweaty and he only succeeded in skimming around the crenulated perimeter of the mushroom.

  “Come on, boy!” growled Dempsey.

  Jay wiped his hand on his pants and tried again. Still too damp and his fingers slid off the mushroom once more.

  “About now would be great, Jay!”

  There was a clack and hiss and a hyena yelped.

  Jay wiped his fingertips hard then gripped the metal mushroom so tightly that pain flared in his knuckles. He twisted. There was a click and the door swung inwards. He rushed into what looked like a storeroom, books stacked on pallets, and Dempsey stumbled in behind him.

  “A little help!”

  Dempsey had dropped his harpoon gun and was leaning back against the door, heels pressed hard against the carpet tiles. A grimy rag-clad arm was swiping at him, preventing the door from closing.

  The carpet tiles began to lift and Dempsey moved forward an inch.

  Jay shoulder-barged the door, throwing all his weight into it. There was a distinct snap as the hyena’s arm broke. Howling, the thing withdrew its ruined limb and the door slammed back into place.

  A second later, the door juddered as the hyenas shoved at it, but the latch held. Jay could just about make them out through the wire glass, furious, thrashing shadow things.

  Dempsey picked up the harpoon gun and, reloading it, moved toward the back of the storeroom. Jay followed, the lantern held out in front of him. They stopped at a metal door, coated in thick, blistered, black paint. Panic punched Jay in the chest. If the steel slab was locked...

  The hyenas were slamming into the door now, screeching with laughter.

  “Maybe God’s on our side, after all,” said Dempsey pointing to a bunch of fifteen or so keys dangling from the lock.

  Dempsey went to work on the bolts, top and bottom, turned the key, opened the door and let out an angry “Fuck!”

  A two-foot recess, then a roller shutter, bullet-locked to a steel footplate.

  He thrust the keys into Jay’s hand.

  “Find it,” he said, turning to level the harpoon gun at the inner door.