Zee pressed the ignition button and the car roared to life. The beast was automatic, and he wiggled the stick until it slotted into Drive. Then he gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white, sitting up straight in order to see over the enormous dashboard. It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
‘You sure you can drive this?’ I asked as he gunned the engine, the car lurching forward. Instinctively I pulled on my seat belt.
‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘Trust me. It’s why I was in Furnace, remember?’
‘Yeah, but you said they framed you for killing that old bird,’ Simon said.
‘They did,’ Zee replied as the car slowly began to move, stopping and starting as he got the hang of the accelerator. ‘I never killed nobody. But I’d been done a couple of times for twocking. That’s how they got the case to stick.’ He looked at my puzzled expression in the rear-view mirror. ‘Twocking, TWOC, taking without consent. I’d boosted a few cars. Nothing serious, just here and there. We’d take them for a spin round the park near my house, after dark.’
‘And here’s me thinking you were one of the good guys,’ I said, the idea of Zee committing any sort of crime throwing me. He just grinned.
‘Like Simon said, none of us were angels.’
He slammed his foot on the gas, the tyres skidding on the smooth floor, then finding grip as we accelerated towards the mall doors, and towards the army of police that waited outside.
The Chase
Zee’s foot never let up on the accelerator, and by the time we’d reached the end of the plaza the dial was reading over sixty. I felt myself pressed back into the pungent leather like I was on a roller coaster, my stomach doing loop the loops and making me wish I’d had time to use the facilities in Harvey’s. The shops flashed past so quickly I couldn’t make out their names, the window displays blurring into one long line of smudged mannequins and coloured banners. This wasn’t the biggest mall in the world, and I knew that at this speed we were going to run out of road, fast.
‘You know where you’re going?’ I asked, but my words were lost beneath the growl of the engine and Simon’s enthusiastic whoops. He hadn’t even bothered to put on his seat belt, and was leaning forward banging the dashboard to urge Zee on. The machine gun was still clamped tightly in his hand and I hoped he wouldn’t accidentally pull the trigger in his excitement.
I peered between them to see the wide walkway that rose towards the mall’s main entrance. The glass doors were shuttered, the metal slats glowing red and blue from God knows how many cop cars parked outside. But Zee showed no sign of noticing the flashing warning. His face in the mirror was a mask of determination, and as we hit the rise I felt the car speed up.
‘Zee! Slow down!’ I screamed as the gates loomed in the windscreen, snapping down on us like a bear trap. ‘Holy shi—’
We hit them doing seventy-seven miles per hour and the result was catastrophic. The shutters weren’t designed for anything more than deterring burglars, and the sheer velocity of the Humvee drove it through them like a fist through wet paper. The entire frame was ripped from the brickwork, riding on the bonnet as we punched through the glass doors out onto the street. Both of the front air bags deployed, filling the interior with white powder. Simon bounced off his, blood spiralling from his nose, but Zee’s belt kept him from harm. He patted the bag down, never taking his foot off the accelerator even though he couldn’t see a thing through the windscreen.
‘Left!’ I shouted, remembering the layout of the street. ‘Turn left.’
Zee spun the wheel, hard enough to make the car tilt to one side. For a moment I thought it was going over, then he twitched his hands and it slammed back down. The shutters were still plastered across the bonnet and they were sparking furiously as the police outside began to fire. I ducked down, more prayers streaming from my lips as the side windows shattered and cold air flooded in.
We hit something and I was thrown against the seat in front. More gunfire, shouts, the sound of sirens booting up. Then Zee was accelerating again, a dull rumble from beneath me letting me know a tyre had blown. Bullets smashed the rear window, making noises like angry wasps as they thudded into the upholstery and through the roof. The car swung alarmingly then settled, pulling away so fast I thought I’d left my guts back there by the mall. Only when the gunfire had faded did I dare sit up.
‘Everyone okay?’ I asked. The boys in front were both moving, Zee with his head out of the window trying to see past the shutters and Simon kicking at the windscreen trying to dislodge them. With a dull groan the bullet-ridden glass finally gave way, Simon’s trainer-clad foot shattering it into large chunks before knocking loose the grille. It resisted for a moment, then the wind caught it and it clattered over the roof of the car, landing in the road behind us. Zee pulled his head back in, his hair wild and his cheeks blazing from the wind, then turned and grinned at us both.
‘That …’ was all he seemed able to manage. He swivelled back to the road, reaching a junction and heading left.
‘Was insane,’ I finished for him. I risked a look behind to see the glow of red and blue getting closer. ‘We’ve got company. Why the hell are they sending the whole damn police force after us?’
‘Because we were the only inmates stupid enough to advertise our hiding place to the world,’ Simon said.
Zee looked up at the rear-view mirror but it had been reduced to shreds by a bullet. He looked over his shoulder but Simon pushed his head away.
‘You just keep those eyeballs on the road, Dastardly,’ he said, peering past me out of the back window. ‘Me and Muttley’ll watch the rear.’
He clambered between the front seats until he was next to me, kneeling on the leather and resting the machine gun on the ledge. Behind us a cop car was catching up fast, siren blazing and two grimacing faces just visible behind the glare. The Humvee lurched again and our pursuers disappeared as we swung round a corner. We turned again, so hard that I almost flattened Simon. He brushed me away, never taking his eyes off the road.
‘Go navigate,’ he barked.
I did as I was told, unclipping my belt and squeezing between the seats until I was sitting next to Zee. It was so windy up front that I had to squeeze my eyes shut to stop them from watering. I peered through the blur to see an empty street just like the one we’d left.
‘Know where we’re going?’ I asked.
‘Nope,’ Zee replied through clenched teeth. ‘Just got to lose them. Hang on.’
He steered the massive car down an alley without slowing, sparks flying from the doors as they scraped the brickwork. Ahead was a chain-link fence but the car smashed through it as if it wasn’t there, bumping out onto a wider road beyond. Zee slammed on the brakes and wrenched the wheel to avoid a parked milk float but he was too slow, clipping the back and spinning the float in a double helix of semi-skimmed. It skidded across the road on its side, hitting a lamp post with a crunch.
‘Whoops,’ said Zee, accelerating down the wrong side of the road. There was more traffic here, mainly delivery vans that honked their horns and pulled wildly onto the pavement to avoid being hit. One bin lorry didn’t want to move and Zee swore at it, cutting over the flowered divide onto the other side of the street. ‘Any sign of the …’
He didn’t need to finish as a cop car bulleted out of a side street in front of us, sending wheelie bins flying as it screeched into the road. Its windows were rolled down and through one poked a shotgun, the barrel flaming as it fired. The three of us ducked in unison, the shot tinkling almost musically as it struck the car.
‘Get rid of them!’ Zee yelled, but Simon was already firing through the back window. There was a second police car on our tail, and a third sliding out behind it. They were backing off to avoid the unfriendly fire, but they weren’t going to let us go.
‘Bandits at twelve o’clock,’ said Zee, and I heard another shotgun blast ahead. Zee drove the Hummer into the cop car, sending it spiralling across the divide. The engine
groaned, coughing alarmingly before settling down. I’d played enough video games to know that cars could only take so much punishment before they caught fire and blew up.
‘Punch it!’ I yelled. ‘Get us somewhere safe. We need to lose them and ditch this thing.’
‘What do you think I’m trying to do, genius?’ he retorted, steering round a family estate hard enough to rock it on its wheels before taking us up to eighty. ‘Can’t escape the eye in the sky, though.’
I stared through the broken windshield to see a chopper above us, hovering so close that I could make out the police logo on its side. I almost laughed, remembering the times I’d seen car chases like this on the television, the idiots who thought they could hide from a helicopter equipped with infrared cameras. I was probably on television right now, plastered over the news. Not that anyone would recognise me with my new face and my silver eyes.
‘Anyone got any bright ideas?’ Zee asked.
We thundered over an intersection, and down the road to our left I caught a glimpse of the river. Even with the sun fully over the horizon it sat on the city like a dark scar, thrown into permanent shadow by the high-rise office blocks on either side. It vanished behind a building after a split second but left its trace on my vision.
‘We could swim for it,’ I said. ‘Or find a boat. How far is it to the coast? We could make it.’
Zee shook his head, slamming through a red light and causing a chorus of car tyres to rise up behind us. The two cop cars still gripped us like shadows, and I hadn’t heard Simon fire another shot. Chances were he was out of ammo, and sooner or later the police would realise it.
‘We’d freeze out there,’ he said. ‘This time of day the water’s not much above zero. Jesus!’
Three more squad cars roared out from behind a tower block and squealed to a halt dead ahead, the cops scrambling out and firing at us from behind the opened doors. Something burned through my neck and I cried out as I ducked down, feeling the car tip as Zee swung a left. Plastic exploded, sparks bursting from the dashboard. I realised I could see the street through several holes in the car’s side, a dozen furious faces flashing by as we left the cops behind.
I closed my eyes, trying to think back to the times I’d come here with my parents – another world, another life. We’d never driven, the traffic across the bridge had always been bad, especially at the weekends. A couple of times we’d travelled by bus, but the way I’d always loved best had been …
‘The underground,’ I blurted out. ‘There’s a Metro station near here, I’m sure of it.’
Zee was shaking his head again, desperately looking for a way to go, the car slower as he steered it down a narrow street. The river was closer now, the city visible on the other side, its vast skyscrapers glinting in the newborn sun. He whipped the car to the right, bumping up onto the pavement and driving through a courtyard. Behind us the cop cars were just turning the corner, painting the world around them red and blue.
‘There won’t be any trains running with all us cons on the loose,’ Zee said, steering the 4x4 gently down a set of steps then flooring it along a pedestrian walkway. As soon as the cops were out of sight he swung left, barely squeezing the vehicle down another alley. We were closed in here, the buildings rising on either side of us shielding us from the helicopter. It was quiet too, deceptively so. I wanted Zee to switch off the engine. Maybe the cops would miss us, drive right past. But he kept the speed up, heading for the light at the end of the alley.
‘We can hide down there,’ I went on. ‘In the tunnels. If the trains aren’t running we might be able to walk it.’
‘Alex is right,’ Simon said. He’d thrown the gun onto the chair beside him and had a hand pressed up against the wound in his shoulder. ‘We gotta get off the streets.’
Zee looked as if he was about to argue, but he obviously didn’t have any better ideas. ‘Okay, it’s better than nothing. You know where the nearest stop is?’
‘Down by the river there’s one,’ I said. ‘Find the bridge and you’ll see it.’
Zee nodded then floored it, the car tearing out of the alleyway onto the wide avenue that ran parallel to the water. There were vehicles here but they looked deserted, doors left open and engines still running. A truck had been driven into the side of a small office building, a fire raging inside and spreading fast. I turned my attention to the street, seeing the bridge up ahead. There were at least a dozen crossing the river at various points in the city, but I recognised this one by the untidy white and red paint that decorated the arches. This far out from the centre of the city, everything was shabby.
A wailing rose up as the squad cars bombed out behind us, but their sirens were drowned by a sudden roar that flooded the 4x4. The vehicle rocked, buffeted by wind, and through the broken windshield I saw a helicopter pull itself up from behind the stalls and small shops that lined the water’s edge. It wasn’t the police chopper, it was a bright orange coastguard bird. The main door was open, and through it I could see a .50 calibre cannon that was probably used to scupper smuggling boats. It was aimed right at us.
‘Oh no,’ I groaned, feeling my blood turn to ice. With a bark the gun fired, a breath of flame bursting from the muzzle. Zee swerved but he was too slow, the shells carving their way through the front of the car and sending the engine hood flying overhead. Smoke began to spew from the mangled guts inside. ‘Go faster!’
‘It’s on the floor!’ he yelled back. ‘Damn engine is screwed.’
The car was slowing, coughing and spluttering like an old man. Zee pumped the pedal but it wasn’t doing anything except making us lurch. I watched the speedometer sink from sixty to fifty-five to fifty, all the time the cop cars behind us getting closer.
‘Isn’t that it?’ Simon yelled, his mouth so close to my ear that it made me jump. He was leaning between us, his huge hand pointing at a signpost visible maybe a hundred metres away. I squinted into the dawn to make out a set of stairs leading below ground. My eyes strayed back to the dial. Forty now and slowing fast, but we might just make it.
‘Stop your vehicle immediately or we will fire again,’ came an amplified voice from the helicopter. I ignored it. With the car in the state it was I doubted the brakes would work even if Zee tried to use them. He was steering in the direction of the subway entrance, nudging forward in his seat as if attempting to push the car himself. We were doing thirty, the flat tyres trying their best to slow us down, but the station entrance was in spitting distance. Zee swung out over the centre line so that he could steer us in straight, and that’s when the engine gave one last mechanical cry and conked out completely.
‘Get ready to run for it,’ he said, one hand on the door handle. The car hit the kerb, and I thought for a second that its momentum would carry us over, but then it rocked back to a halt. I got ready to open my door, but Simon cried out and I looked back to see the squad cars tearing towards us. Two stopped, but one kept on coming, accelerating all the way. Behind the windscreen I could make out a face bent and twisted by fury. It hit us hard from behind, bouncing the Hummer up over the pavement.
I was thrown into the dashboard, the deflated air bag hanging uselessly by my feet. But Zee was quick, pulling on the wheel and steering us through the posts of the station entrance and down the steps. Everything tilted forward, Simon’s body pinning me against the glove box. Behind us I heard the bark of the coastguard cannon again. This time we all reacted instantly, terror ejecting us from those seats through the windshield and over the steaming bonnet as a hail of bullets shredded the wreck of the car.
We started running, making it maybe twenty paces before the Hummer exploded. The heat was channelled down the walkway, a hand of flame that slapped us hard, sending us sprawling onto the tiles, but it petered out after a second or two. And it wasn’t as if we’d never been in an explosion before. My eyebrows still hadn’t grown back after the last one.
I didn’t get up straight away, just rolled onto my back and peered at the burning s
hell. It filled the subway stairs perfectly, a gate that would keep the police out for as long as it took them to bring in a fire engine. I let my head drop to the cool floor, staring at a poster for Coke for what seemed like forever. Eventually I felt Zee’s hand tugging at my hoodie and saw that both he and Simon were on their feet. I let them help me up; then, with the raging heat of the burning car still clawing our backs, we set off into the station.
Underground
It was hard to believe it, but here we were again: underground.
We walked along the passageway that led into the Metro station, the floor gradually descending, leading down towards the guts of the earth. It was deserted, our only company the gentle echo of our feet and the frozen stares from the faded posters that lined the walls. I knew we were free – for now, anyway – but with each step we took away from the gates, away from the surface, I found myself thinking we were being led towards Furnace.
It was like being underwater, deep inside a black pool, and trying to reach the surface. Every time we thought we could see daylight we ended up being pulled back under, unable to take a breath. I looked down the tunnel, into the shadows that clustered there, and the coiling of my guts screamed at me to turn around, to stay in the light.
Of course, the logical part of my mind knew that the trainlines wouldn’t pass anywhere near the bowels of Furnace. The prison was too deep, still a mile or so beneath us. But I could feel its touch on my skin, filthy fingers pawing at me, pulling at me. And as we trod our weary way deeper into the darkness it felt as though we were throwing ourselves back through the gates of hell.