Running with the Pack

Slowly, as the muggers advanced, he was retreating down a terrace of graves, letting them come after him. Bad tactics, if he was planning to run—nowhere to run. However, because the terrace was so narrow, they could only come at him one at a time, single file. That was better for fighting; it nullified their numerical advantage. And that was what it would come to, he had no doubt. Everything in him was drawn tight and singing; clenched, filled with energy and ready to spring.

Again the lead badass snarled something. Very clearly—very Englishly—Hayden said, “Come on, then, fuckface. Fucking have a go, then.” Had he been paying less attention to the advancing roughneck, and more to the quality of his consonant sounds, he might have noticed some slight occlusion on the Cs and Fs, the sort of thing you associate with the wearers of new dentures, or the chewers of sticky toffee.

Thug Number One said something over his shoulder to the other two, advancing still in Indian file behind him. They nodded, and one of them leapt down between two graves to the next lowest terrace. The other one tried to clamber up to the next highest, but lost his footing and went over with a yell, twisting his ankle in the process. Hayden knew he had to act quickly, or else his one-on-one advantage would be lost.

Instinctively, he went for the high ground. From a standing start he leapt up to the higher terrace; no sooner had his feet found balance on top of the marble tombstone than he was kicking out like Jet Li, not connecting with Thug Number One but forcing him to stumble backwards in surprise. Behind him of course, was his mate, who’d tried but failed to scale the tombstones; he was kneeling down to rub his sprained ankle. The two of them went over together in a heap, and then Hayden was on them.

The impact of his landing drove all the breath out of Thug Number One, the one on top. An agonised squeal from the bottom of the pile suggested it wasn’t doing much for his clumsy mate, Goon Number Two, either, but Hayden didn’t care. First things first. Before he knew it he was close in and pinning the lead mugger down, forcing his arms away from his head to expose his face. In the brilliant moonlight Hayden could see the fear in the face of the kid—more than that, he felt it, tasted it rather—and it was the fear that set off some primordial time bomb buried deep within him. Heedless of the snarl that disfigured his own features, he leaned in and bit, hard and deep and fierce.

Hayden remembered little else about the fight, to be honest; the who-did-what-to-who, the wirework and the stunts. But that feeling, when he first battened on to his opponent? The roaring, the struggling, the piteous screams and whimpers at the end; his strong and bulging jaws clamped down tight against the limited resistance of skin and flesh? The power of it . . . that he remembered well enough. And afterwards?

When the two least maimed of his muggers had scrambled away, snivelling and shrieking, he’d straightened up in amongst the gravestones, and tilted his head back to the fat enormous moon above the harbour. Never in his life had he known such transformative intensity; never before such focus and clarity. Beyond the graveyard, beneath the moon, there lay the radiant sweep of Hong Kong’s harbour. Everything he could see was his, it belonged to him and him alone—and he could see everything. No element of it escaped his hungry gaze; not the meanest, least significant scintilla. All his.

Involuntarily, he tilted back his head and howled, howled to the echo. The nightbirds rose from the branches and broke in a panicking spiral; away down the hill, even the tamest, most domesticated dogs twitched and grumbled in their sleep, hackles rising the length of their tensed spines, muzzles peeling back to reveal mottled gums and sharp teeth.

“But the teeth—!” Dr. Pang was staring at him in amazement.

“Hang on,” said Hayden mildly, and instantly the dentist closed his mouth. “I’m coming to that. Bear with me.” He smiled, to convey reassurance. Dr. Pang did not smile back.

Now, those things that take place in ancient graveyards after dark, under the appreciative sanction of the bleak and vengeful ancestor spirits, may end up looking very different beneath the bland pedestrian glow of electric light. When Hayden made it back to the hotel he was jacked up with energy still—he’d run the couple of miles from the hillside park to the Mid-levels in no time, and was up for another circuit of the harbour at least—but he was also exquisitely aware of the need for caution and discretion. Given the events of the last few hours, he realised that a low profile was essential at this stage of his adventures. In his jacket pocket he’d found his old face-mask, proof against infection, ubiquitous amongst the passers-by during times of epidemic and contagion; before collecting his keycard at the desk he’d slipped it on, the better to conceal the focal point of his mysterious Shifting.

Up in his room Hayden made for the bathroom, where he used up a whole bottle of Listerine rinsing and gargling. There was a sharp brassy taste in his mouth, charged, electric, like biting down on tinfoil. When he woke very early in the predawn of the next day after a short yet intense power nap filled with strenuously incomprehensible dreams, his morning coughs and snuffles drew the clotted tang of blood from the back of his throat. Again, he spat for a long time over the washbasin, looking at himself in the backlit mirror.

He looked good, though. Didn’t he? A gloomy Gus no longer, freed from toothache pain and jet lag; damn it, he was glowing, the way pregnant women are supposed to. Thoughtfully, Hayden squeezed a coiled blue blob of the miracle goo from its tube and applied it liberally to his gums. And another. No point in doing it by halves, was there? The gunk was menthol-cold going on—he could almost imagine his gumflesh shrinking back at its touch, which would at least account for the unusual prominence of his teeth in his grinning lean-mean-mother face. His teeth, oh yeah; warily, Hayden reviewed his exploits of the night before.

What had all that been about, then? The various cultural taboos governing use of the teeth while fighting were sufficiently well-established in Hayden’s blokey superego to make him feel a little ambiguous about the whole affair. The only habitual biter he could remember having come across was back in school, a pale malnourished lad with more-or-less permanent pinkeye and impetigo. Nigel Tavers was his name; he used to smell of piss and stand by the radiators, and when cornered he would first of all whine, then try to kick you in the goolies, then use teeth and nails till he drew blood. Not the most admirable role model. So how, Hayden asked himself, did you square that inbred distaste for a dirty-fighter with those goings-on in the graveyard last night?

And found, without too much need for soul-searching and self-examination, the answer, or at least an answer. It was a knife, Hayden told himself; the bad bastard in the cemetery was waving a knife at him, with every intention of using it. This being the case, he, Hayden, a nice guy who carried no weapon, was obliged to use the implements to hand; or, in this case, to mouth. Nature’s equaliser, in the face of the strong threat. No biggie.

This was true up to a point; at which Hayden stopped short, and threw himself back on the bed for a luxuriously bone-cracking stretch among the sheets. Had he been only slightly more open to self-examination, he might have gone on to consider both the nature of the attack—the damage done, the extent of the retribution—and the way it made him feel at the time. The buzz, the mega bloody buzz: he could still feel its aftermath, like the tail-end of a marathon coke binge. As it was, all he could think about was breakfast.

Naturally, only the full English would do. Hayden called room service to see if it could be fetched up now, immediately, right away; no question of waiting. When it appeared some minutes later—brought up by Jimmy Tsui, of all people—Hayden was waiting at the door like a zoo animal that hadn’t been fed in a fortnight.

“How you feeling?” inquired Jimmy, wheeling the trolley through into the bedroom before Hayden could wrest it from his grip and fall on the contents there and then. “Hope your medicine is—working out?”

“It’s fine,” Hayden assured him through a mouthful of undercooked sausage. “Look—” pulling back his cheek to reveal the problem grinder. “Worked overnight. Amazing.”

Jimmy stared at Hayden’s exposed dentistry; and as he stared, his own mouth fell indecorously open. Backing up rapidly, he waved away the proffered tip, and was out of the door before Hayden could press the folded bills into his hand. His parting shot came back along the corridor: “All part of the service! Enjoy!”

Shrugging it off, Hayden returned to his breakfast. God, it was great to be able to eat like a man again, and not some toothless old dear! He bit down hard on a crispy slice of bacon, and felt with lupine pleasure the action of his teeth reducing it to pulp. Not the slightest twinge from his damaged molar; all that was in the past now. Good riddance. He had a busy day ahead of him.

Meetings, mostly, rescheduled and rejigged, clean through to half six in the evening, at which point Hayden passed on a corporate dinner with clients. He had to run an errand, he explained; which was true, so far as it went. A quick taxi ride over to Mong Kok, chop-chop, and after half an hour’s wandering the strip, the right back alley and the right set of stairs. As it had been the night before last, the door at the end of the corridor was ajar.