Furnace 4 - Fugitives (5 page)

‘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 shell. 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.

We rounded a bend into the ticket office foyer. Every other time I’d been here the place had been heaving, people everywhere bustling and shoving and swearing at each other. Now it stood empty, the quiet unnerving, weighted, as though we’d caught it doing something it shouldn’t have been. Ticket machines blinked at us, startled, and overhead one of the fluorescents shimmered on and off.

Devoid of life, the station felt artificial, as if it was nothing but stage props, and another insane thought crossed my mind. What if this
was
a stage? What if this was just one of the warden’s jokes, his sadistic tests? Letting us think we’d got out, letting us think we’d made it, only to reveal that this world was his creation, that it was a giant theatre of cruelty buried deep in Furnace. Any minute now he would jump out of the shadows with his blacksuits and his dogs, howling with laughter as he tossed us back to the wheezers. Had we really just been outside? Had that really been the sun? Right now my mind was too ravaged to be able to give a straight answer.

‘Anyone got enough to buy a travel card?’ Zee said, his whisper almost deafening in the silence. It shivered around the hall, bouncing off the tiled walls and the concrete floor before ebbing away, leaving goosebumps on my arms. He was patting the empty pockets of his jeans. ‘I’m a bit short right now.’

We walked across the middle of the room towards the gates, Zee stopping by a vending machine. He kicked out at it repeatedly, and on his fifth attempt the glass smashed. Reaching inside, he pulled out a handful of Kit-Kats and a bottle of Coke. Then he grabbed a carbonated mineral water and handed it to me. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I was until I unscrewed the cap and let the cool water flow into my mouth. It fizzed down my throat, seeming to strip some of the tiredness, some of the fear, along with it. I threw the empty bottle aside and grabbed another one, downing four in a row then unleashing the longest, loudest belch I had ever done in my life – so impressive that Simon almost jumped right out of his skin.

‘Easy there, tiger,’ he said. ‘You’ll burp yourself inside out.’

I laughed. The water was good, had spun my energy levels back up, but it hadn’t done anything about the gaping hole in my stomach, that unbearable, impossible hunger that made me feel like a hollow man. I remembered what Simon had told me, back in the prison, about my appetites. I was hungry because my body was running out of nectar. If it didn’t find a way to function without the warden’s poison then I was doomed either to die, or to become a bloodthirsty beast killing anything that got in my way.

It wasn’t exactly the future I’d been hoping for.

‘You all right?’ Simon said.

‘Yeah, fine.’ I nodded.

Zee had walked ahead to a route map. He ran his
hand over the mess of tangled, coloured lines, stopping at one marked
WHITESMITH LANE
– the same name detailed in mosaics all over the station. We were near the bottom edge of the map, five more southbound stops to the end of the line.

‘If we head in that direction we could make it all the way to Hollenbeck,’ Zee said, running his finger along the blue string until it popped off the edge of the board. I doubted if our escape would be as easy as that, but it was nice to imagine. He used the same finger to scratch his nose before plopping it back where it had started. ‘Trouble is, that’s what they’ll be expecting. They’ll know anybody down here will be making a break for the edge of the city, so I’m guessing those stations will be rammed.’

To the side of the map was an electronic board listing the status of each line. To my surprise every single route but this one was running, albeit with a warning:
SEVERE DELAYS.

‘So what do we do?’ asked Simon. ‘Head for the city?’

‘Yeah,’ Zee replied, nodding. ‘I’m guessing – and this really is just a guess, guys – that they won’t be expecting us to head north. It’s too risky, there are too many people. We’re escaped cons, we need shadows and darkness, at least that’s what they’ll be thinking. If we head into town then there will be cops everywhere, but there will also be crowds, thousands of people.’

‘We can lose ourselves,’ I said.

‘We can lose ourselves,’ Zee confirmed. ‘Nowhere better to do that than the city.’ He turned his attention
back to the map. ‘So, we head north on the tracks, two stops, that’s a couple of miles I should think. We hit Twofields and get on Line 11; should take us all the way through the city and out the other side.’

‘That’s a whole lotta stations to get through,’ said Simon. ‘What if they search the trains.’

‘As soon as we see police we change trains,’ Zee said. ‘If they’re all running then we’ll be able to hop between them. So long as we keep moving we’ll get out of the city eventually. If we leave at one of the stops up there,’ he nodded at the top of the map, ‘we’re home and dry. Won’t be many police on the northern ring, they won’t be expecting anyone to make it that far.’

‘And if there are …’ Simon slapped his huge fist against his smaller one, then winced, clutching his shoulder.

‘You’ll moan and groan at them and they’ll feel so sorry for us they’ll let us go?’ I finished. He grunted something indecipherable at me, pulling his hand away to investigate the smear of black blood on his palm. My expression grew serious. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘I’ll live,’ he answered with a weak smile. ‘I’ll treat myself to a plaster when we’re out of the city. Now come on.’

He jogged to the nearest gate and bounded over it, Zee and I close behind. We traipsed along another passageway then reached the escalators. I started to run down one but Simon clambered onto the middle section that separated the moving stairs and cautiously began to skid down it, looking like a surfer in the middle of a
wave. He giggled as he slid, losing his balance somewhere near the bottom and skittering onto the tiles below.

‘I’ve always wanted to do that!’ he shouted up at us once he’d found his feet. I skipped off the bottom of the escalator and made my way towards one of two arched openings in the walls. The sign beside it read 
NORTHBOUND
and showed a map of the stops. We strolled through to find ourselves on an empty platform. It was freezing down here, a cold wind ripping through one side of the tunnel and out the other, and it felt good. This was nothing like the hot stench of Furnace’s breath. This was a fresh current that would carry us to freedom.

The electronic board above us read
NO TRAINS
, but we didn’t need one. Zee checked both ways before lowering himself over the edge of the platform into the pit.

‘Don’t go anywhere near that rail,’ he said, pointing at the third rail of four. It was different from the rest, higher and with yellow supports. Simon and I sat on the platform and jumped down together, doing our best to ignore the smell of oil and urine that clawed at our throats. ‘If you touch it, just once, then you’ll be blown right out of those shiny new shoes. I watched a programme about it, about all the people that had been killed down here. Nasty stuff.’

I could feel the buzz in the air, the low whine in my ears, and the slightly metallic taste you get when you’re near something with a huge electrical charge. The last
time I’d sensed it was on my first day in Furnace, standing in the wire compound they called the Barbecue. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

‘And whatever you do,’ Zee said as he started making his way up the track, keeping one hand against the wall to steady himself. ‘And I’m talking to you, Alex, since you’ve just drank about a gallon of water, don’t take a piss. There was one guy in that programme who tried that and, well, I don’t need to tell you that wouldn’t be a pleasant way to die.’ He made a gruesome exploding sound and I was glad that I couldn’t see where his hands were.

We picked up the pace, entering the tunnel to the right-hand side of the station. It was dark in here, but my improved vision did what it was supposed to, picking apart the shadows to see the line stretching out to vanishing point. Mine weren’t the only silver eyes in the tunnel – tiny, glinting spots glared at us from beneath the tracks, desperate squeaks like fingernails on a blackboard.

Rats
, I thought to myself, the word chilling me to the bone. I didn’t mind these furry ones – the worst that could happen down here was getting rodent crap on our shoes – but the sight of those demonic eyes up ahead made me think of the tunnels beneath Furnace, the warden’s horrific creations with the same name, the ones that had gone wrong, the creatures that had once been kids but which were now mindless freaks
with ragged claws and razored teeth, which wanted to feast on blood …

‘Maybe you should take the lead, Alex,’ said Zee, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Can’t see squat in here.’

‘Sure,’ I said, squeezing past Simon then Zee, my heart pounding as I tripped over a foot and nearly sprawled into the death rail. I swore, the noise bouncing off the walls, like the tunnel was mocking me. Then I set off again, walking as fast as I dared, the end of the tunnel always the same distance ahead.

Eventually the light from the platform grew dim, then faded altogether. We were all used to darkness, keeping our breathing hushed and our mouths closed so we could let our ears guide us. There were noises down here, not just the click of clawed feet on concrete but the rise and fall of the wind as it gusted past us, and distant squeals that sounded like monsters but which I knew were the trains. Every time I heard those brakes I just about died, imagining lights blazing up in front of us as twenty tonnes of solid steel bulldozed this way. If that happened, if this line started working again, then we were history.

And after having seen the sun again, the worst thing I could think of was being a ghost trapped in these tunnels, so close to daylight and yet back underground. I gritted my teeth together so hard it hurt, increasing my pace. We had to have walked half a mile, at least. The next station couldn’t be far.

It was. I counted my heartbeats, three for every second, reaching a thousand, then two, and nearly five before I caught a glimmer of something at the end of the
tunnel. We all stumbled towards it, blinking as the light became stronger. We peeked up over the platform –
COLLIER’S POINT
stencilled on the walls – and at first I thought it was deserted. Then I noticed the bodies, maybe five or six of them. Two were wearing body armour, two were in prison uniforms, and the last had been stripped down to his underwear, revealing the bullet holes in his pale flesh.

There were noises, too. The patter of distant footsteps echoing out from the archway to our side, and a hiss of dry laughter, too close for comfort.

We continued along the lines, crouching below the level of the platform in case there was anybody else nearby. But as we drew level with the corpses I risked another look to see that the blood pooled beneath them was sticky and almost dry. Whatever had happened here had happened a while back.