Furnace 4 - Fugitives (4 page)

Found

There were four of them, SWAT plastered over their body armour, and they had landed in a heartbeat.

‘Lighting up!’

One of the cops pulled a grenade from his belt and lobbed it towards us. It rolled across the floor like a baseball, rebounding off one of the television stands and coming to rest less than a metre from my feet. I closed my eyes, waiting for it to explode, to blow me into smithereens. For a ludicrous second my heart lifted as I realised I didn’t have to run any more, I didn’t have to hide. I could just let life slip away, drop into a comforting nothingness where there were no police, no monsters, no me.

But it didn’t explode. There was a rush of light so bright that it seared through my eyelids and burned into the flesh of my brain. At the same time a sharp crack of noise seemed to reduce my eardrums to pulp. The world disintegrated, spinning furiously as my senses were ravaged. I tried to move but it was like running inside a spinning globe – every step cartwheeling me
into oblivion. Before I knew it I felt myself thump into something, sprawling onto the ground.

All around me, barely audible over the ringing in my ears, were voices. I recognised Zee and Simon’s cries, their desperate shouts. Past them were the barked orders of the descending SWAT team – ‘Show yourselves now! Move to the centre of the floor! Keep your hands visible at all times! We
will
use deadly force!’ – and the sound of guns being cocked. If I didn’t do something fast then in less than a minute we’d be cuffed and carted back behind bars.

And even if we weren’t taken back to the burning ruins of Furnace, we’d still be the warden’s prisoners again. And I’d rather die than have to face his fury.

I forced myself to open my eyes and saw a world smudged with smears of dirty light. I pushed myself off the floor, discovering that I had landed on one of the flat-screens. Incredibly, it was still working, the picture an aerial shot that made me feel as if I was flying over the city. Without thinking, I hefted the heavy TV set in both hands as I stood, swinging it like a massive Frisbee.

I didn’t have time to aim, but luck was on my side. The cops were out of menswear and moving purposefully towards electronics. Each was wearing some sort of protective goggles, the green-tipped lenses making them look like robots. They saw my makeshift missile too late. It sailed through sportswear, hitting one of the cops in the chest and sending him somersaulting back the way he’d come.

In the split second it took for the rest of the team to respond I had grabbed another television, hurling this one in the same direction. The cops scattered, one firing a wild burst from his sub-machine gun which reduced a nearby mannequin to plastic splinters. I threw another one for good measure, the screen shattering into a million pieces as it thumped into a shelf, then turned and fled.

There was no sign of Simon, but Zee was taking shelter behind the remaining televisions. I hefted him up like a parent would a child, gripping him tight under my arm. He clutched me as hard as his skinny arms were able, trying not to scream as we charged towards the window overlooking the main concourse. Behind me I heard the dull pop of silenced guns, like somebody playing with bubble wrap. Something whispered past my ear, so hot that it felt ice cold, and up ahead I saw ragged holes punch themselves into the window.

‘Take him down!’ somebody yelled, and suddenly the air was alive with bullets as the SWAT team unleashed their full force. But I was running too fast for them to get a bead on me, the world a blur as I zig-zagged among the café tables and lunged at the glass. At the last minute I did my best to curl myself into a ball, using a hand to shield my face and my body to protect Zee.

‘Alex, you can’t—!’ was all he had time to say before we hit. The glass detonated outwards as we crashed through it. My stomach lurched as we dropped, surrounded by multicoloured glinting shards that would have been pretty if they hadn’t been so lethal. The window was only a single storey above the
first-floor walkway but I staggered as I landed, Zee slipping from my grip and falling into the pool of glass that had formed around us. I grabbed him by the collar, hoisting him up before he could start complaining and dragging him out into the mall. There was no sign of the inmates we’d seen earlier.

‘What now?’ he yelled, finding his feet and shrugging off my grip. ‘Where’s Simon?’

I glanced back up at the window, now nothing but a vast mouth filled with broken teeth of glass. A figure popped up, silhouetted by the harsh store lights, and I thought at first it might be him. Then the shape rested its gun on the ledge and began to fire. It was joined a second later by another, the floor around us suddenly shredded by bullets. I retreated against the grilles that covered Harvey’s entrance, directly beneath the window, Zee on my tail. The SWAT team didn’t have a direct line on us here but it didn’t stop them trying, a curtain of lead dropping down in front of us like a waterfall.

‘We need to get down there,’ Zee shouted over the thunder. He wasn’t stupid enough to try and point – he’d have lost his finger in seconds – but he nodded over the balcony to the ground floor of the mall below.

‘Yeah,’ I said. One of the bullets ricocheted off a chunk of stone and smashed through the window beside me, leaving a neat hole the size of a large coin. Zee looked as if he was about to speak when something big and heavy landed beside us with a crack. To my surprise it was one of the SWAT team. The man
looked as though he had hit head first and he wasn’t moving.

The sound of gunfire continued but the cops had switched their attention to something inside the building. A machine gun clattered to the floor, still smoking, followed by a pair of goggles.

‘What the hell?’ Zee asked. ‘Come on, let’s go while we can.’

I didn’t argue, leaping out across the walkway. The floor beneath me was broken, bullet casings everywhere, as treacherous as ball bearings. But I kept my balance and ran to the balcony rail.

Behind us the shooting had stopped, and I peeked over my shoulder to see two shadowed figures wrestling in the window. One had a huge arm locked around the other’s throat, his body bent, and framed in the arch it made me think of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Simon gave the cop a shove, the man’s body twisting through the air and landing next to that of its teammate. Then he clambered through the broken glass and jumped to the floor, brushing his hands with satisfaction.

‘Thanks for the help, guys,’ he said. I noticed that there was black blood dripping from a wound in his shoulder and pointed it out to him. He just shrugged. ‘One of the pigs got me but I showed ’em.’

‘What happened?’ Zee asked, reaching out with a curious finger and prodding Simon’s wound. The bigger boy flinched and brushed Zee’s hand away.

‘They were so busy chasing you they never even saw
me coming,’ he explained, looking at the scarred and stretched skin of his mutated arm. ‘They aren’t ready for us, you know. These guys haven’t seen anything like us before. We’re bigger than them and faster, too. I guess sometimes it pays to be a freak.’

He dashed over to where the machine gun lay, lifting it up and fumbling with it until the magazine popped out. He peered at the bullets inside, then slapped it clumsily back in, holding the weapon to his chest.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should get back into the service corridors before they send reinforcements; they won’t be able to find us down there. We can sneak out round the back.’

‘Uh-uh,’ Zee said, shaking his head. ‘There’s a better way.’

He ran along the walkway towards an escalator, bounding down the motionless steps. I couldn’t be bothered with the extra walk and grabbed the balcony rail, vaulting it with as much grace as I could manage, landing on the ground floor. There was a muffled grunt as Simon dropped next to me, his smaller hand massaging the wound in his shoulder. Zee propelled himself off the bottom step and sprinted to the display of cars in the large plaza that formed the centre of the mall. They were arranged around a flower-shaped fountain, the water reflecting the quiet light onto their shiny silver skins and making them look like fish.

‘Nice,’ said Simon, running his hand over the bonnet of the nearest car – a squat, square SUV. ‘Now all we need is a driving instructor.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Zee said. He walked to a display stand on the other side of the fountain, and I followed to see him kicking out at a padlock. He looked up at me imploringly and I grabbed the bolted doors, bending them open as though they were made of tin foil. Behind them was a series of pegs on which hung dozens of keys. Zee selected one and aimed it behind him, pushing the remote-locking button. A small hatchback came alive, beeping softly and flashing its indicators. He stood and began to walk towards it, but I stopped him.

‘That thing won’t get us five feet if they start firing on it,’ I said. I pointed towards a massive 4x4 that sat close by, its ribbed bonnet mounted with bull bars and promising a monstrous engine beneath. ‘We should take the Humvee.’

‘Amen to that,’ added Simon. ‘And I call shotgun.’

‘No way,’ I moaned as Zee flicked through the keys, the air alive with artificial birdsong.

‘Sorry, Alex, the shotgun rule is solid – right, Zee?’

Zee selected a key fob and pressed it, bringing the Humvee to life with an unsubtle grunt of its horn. He looked at me and nodded.

‘Afraid so,’ he said. ‘There are few rules in life that can’t be broken, but shotgun is one of them. You’re in the back.’

I grumbled my way to the car, yanking open the rear door and pulling myself up onto the leather. Zee hopped into the driver’s seat and Simon clambered next to him with a smug grin. I don’t know why we were acting like kids. I mean, the mall was surrounded
by armed police and we were now officially cop killers. But we were still alive, and now we had wheels. In the grand scheme of life, things weren’t nearly as bad as they could have been.

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.