Chasers Read online

  ALONE Series by James Phelan

  Chasers

  Survivor

  Quarantine

  CHASERS

  JAMES PHELAN

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  then . . .

  now . . .

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  Teaser chapter

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  A Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR

  JAMES PHELAN ON WRITING ALONE

  Copyright Page

  For my parents

  From childhood’s hour I have not been

  As others were; I have not seen

  As others saw; I could not bring

  My passions from a common spring.

  From the same source I have not taken

  My sorrow; I could not awaken

  My heart to joy at the same tone;

  And all I loved, I loved alone.

  —from “Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe

  then . . .

  I missed home, that Australian heat, the laid-back people, the peace and quiet. Here, it was colder than I’d thought possible and everyone was in a hurry. Back home, I knew my mates would be hanging out at backyard barbies and playing cricket in the street, laughing and joking and vying to get each other out.

  Maybe with time I’d get used to this place—who knows? All I know is that Manhattan is vast, too big for me to ever really feel comfortable in. It’s as if the city has an entire country stuffed into it and is slowly being swallowed up, like that snake that eats itself. Ouroboros? I think that’s what it’s called. If I had to sum this place up for someone I’d say: New York City, home to millions of people, endless city blocks, snow dumpin’ clouds, crowds that never stay still, consuming itself. Too busy, too lonely, too much for me.

  “What’s the matter, Jesse? Never been on a subway before?” Dave asked. He was a big guy for sixteen, or at least big compared to the rest of us. His name might have been David but next to me he was more like Goliath. Dave and I had got on okay at the start of the camp, but right now I wished he’d put his foot in his mouth and start chomping, like Ouroboros.

  “No, why do you say that?” I shifted my focus away from the guys in the middle of the subway car, who may or may not have been wearing gang colors and may or may not have been packing heat. I tried to look more confident, and smiled at the thought of Dave eating one of his stupid running shoes.

  “You look a little nervous,” Dave said. “Don’t they have subways where you’re from?”

  “Yeah, but we don’t call it that,” I replied. “It’s small—just a few stops in the city.”

  “Everything must be small where you’re from, huh?” Dave said, grinning. His perfect teeth were blindingly white against his dark skin.

  “Where’s that again?” Anna asked. She turned to look at me, flicking her shiny black hair over her shoulder. Anna’s English but her parents are from India, and for a moment I was lost in her long eyelashes and bright red mouth.

  “Melbourne . . .” I said. Dave’s comment had just hit me—he thought I was small. I was kinda tall for my age back home, but yeah, I’m slight. It’s just that I haven’t quite filled out yet. I was torn between launching a comeback and trying to look unfazed in front of Anna. We’re all sixteen, but she seems older, more sure of herself. I stood up a little straighter and tried to push my chest out.

  “So, what is it then, Jesse? Never been on the subway without your mom?” Dave pushed. I wondered what his problem was. We’d been getting along so well until today. Maybe we were just getting cabin fever, which always seemed to happen on camps—sooner or later you’d get sick of your friends.

  “Leave it,” Mini said in her quiet voice.

  He looked from me to her, annoyed.

  “I don’t have a mum,” I said. The three of them stood in silence then. Looked at each other and then at the wet floor. That was always a conversation stopper. And it was mostly true. Okay, I did have a mum out there somewhere. And a step-mum back in Melbourne. But Barbara was a dragon and for all I knew my real mother might be dead.

  “I’ve got two,” Anna said, like it was as natural as saying I’ve got a mum.

  “Huh?” Mini asked.

  “Carol and Megan.”

  “How does that work?” I asked, then realized as soon as the words were out of my mouth. “Oh, right, I get it. That’s cool, I guess.”

  “Trust me, you’re not missing out on much.”

  “Not at all,” Mini added.

  There was a bit of an awkward beat and I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I tried to think of a joke to lighten the mood, but I didn’t know any where having a mum was the punch line.

  “Check out the others,” Dave said. He was at least a head taller than us and had a clear view. The rest of our group were packed like sardines in the next subway car, a sea of light-blue parkas. As I looked, I tried not to make eye contact with the guys who may have been gang members. They were already on the subway when we’d gotten on at Grand Central, near our hotel and the UN, but I doubted they were headed to the 9/11 Memorial like us.

  “They definitely don’t look like the brightest sixteen year-olds from around the world,” Anna said dryly. She was right. Like the four of us, they looked like total geeks, wearing blue plastic parkas with white UN lettering on the back, and UN Youth Ambassadors on the front left pocket. They stood out about as much as the gang members closer to us, as if we all wore colors as labels of who we were.

  “Guess they won’t get lost in a crowd,” I said. Mini laughed. She had this quiet, deep laugh that seemed odd coming from such a small package—the kind of laugh that was contagious. “They’re really getting into the spirit of togetherness.”

  Beside the gang members there were only half a dozen other people in our carriage, the last of the train. It was just before midday and in between rush hours, so there were more tourists on the subway than commuters.

  “Bet it really stinks in their car,” Anna said, her eyes fixed on the glass doors ahead. Mr. Lawson, one of our UN minders, clocked us and started to head for the interconnecting doors. “Like my brothers’ rooms with all their dirty wet socks after football.”

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna commute to work via helicopter when I’m older,” Dave said.

  “What, are you gonna be a traffic reporter?” I said. The girls laughed.

  “Nah, I wanna work for the UN,” he said, “like my grandpa.”

  “They had the UN back then?”

  “Only I want to be out in the field,” he said, ignoring my remark. “The front lines, relief work, disaster zones. Really get things done. What about you guys?”

  “Teacher,” Anna said straightaway. “In India. Start up a school for kids in poverty. There’s millions and millions of them and they have nothing, nothing at all.”

  I’m sixteen; I had no idea what I wanted to be, and I certainly didn’t have a prepackaged beauty-pageant answer ready. Dave and Anna looked at me but I just shrugged. They turned to Min Pei.

  “I don’t know either,” Mini said. “Maybe a doc
tor or a vet. Or an artist. Or maybe I’ll marry money and do nothing. That would be cool.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s how it works, Min,” I said. I could see Mr. Lawson was almost at the interconnecting doors, but to get to us he’d have to push through the gang members and half a dozen tourists; we were right at the back of the carriage. Beyond the door at our end was the darkness of the tracks as we rattled south towards Lower Manhattan. Mini looked through the window in silence. I saw her face reflected in the glass and realized she wasn’t watching the tunnel disappear behind us—she was watching me. We locked eyes for a second and I felt myself going red.

  “Think they live by the Golden Rule?” Mini asked, nodding towards the gang members.

  “Sorry, Min?” Anna said.

  “You know, that graffiti we saw when we did the city tour?” Mini said. “You think those guys live by that?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dave said. “Treat others how you want to be treated. Yep, I’m real sure that’s their creed.”

  “Did we see that on some graffiti, or a mural at the UN?” Anna asked. We all thought about it and shrugged—even Dave, who had a memory like a bank vault. “Let’s just not bother them and they won’t bother us,” I said. I noticed one of the guys had a massive gold crucifix hanging around his neck. Maybe they did have rules—maybe they were some kind of cool hip-hop priests? I doubted it, but I hoped they weren’t as much of a threat as we were making them out to be.

  “So, I got a joke,” Dave said. “What do you get when you get a teenager from Australia, England, China and the US, and put them in a subway?”

  Anna rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not Chinese, I’m Taiwanese,” Mini said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “What’s the difference between you and a Canadian?”

  “Ouch, all right,” Dave said. “Taiwanese, then. Okay, what do you get?”

  “A boring trip?”

  “Sore feet?”

  “A growing contempt for American humor?”

  Dave didn’t seem put off.

  “No,” he said. “You get—”

  There was a loud noise and our train shook so violently that we had to reach out to grab the handrails. Before I could say anything it happened again, the subway car tilting wildly sideways, creating sparks in the darkness outside. Mini fell next to me and I crouched down to help her up. We heard screams and shouts from the other end of the car as people spilled from their seats.

  Mini and I stood up slowly. I must have hit my head on something when the train jolted because when I touched my eyebrow my hand came away covered in blood.

  “Oh my god, are you okay?” Mini asked.

  Anna pulled tissues from her backpack and told me to keep pressure on the cut. In the flickering lights of the carriage the gang guys didn’t look so scary anymore. In fact, they were wide-eyed as they helped a tourist to his feet and stared back at us—no, behind us.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I turned around and looked out the back window.

  A massive fireball was chasing the train—it was only twenty yards behind us and closing fast. I yelled at the others to get down and reached out to Anna. By the time the four of us were on the floor, the subway car was rocked again, this time going off its rails and tipping on its side. There was a tearing screech of steel on steel and squealing and screaming and a whoosh of fire, and everything went from hot to black in a second.

  now . . .

  1

  All I saw was darkness. I wondered if my eyes were open. It might have been some awful dream but I knew it wasn’t. I felt pain, I felt pressure. I felt alone. I couldn’t hear, but I knew there were sounds out here, around me. I was not alone.

  A hand brushed my face, the fingers soft but probing in the dark. Purposeful, searching. It took me a second to realize it was my own hand, and it came away from my face wet and sticky. I felt a hot sharp pain above my left eye. I blinked but everything was pitch black.

  Light erupted in a shower of sparks at the same moment the rest of my senses returned. There was an acrid, copper taste in my mouth and I could smell smoke. I tried to get up but something heavy was pressing against my back. I tunneled backwards on my stomach, groped around in the dark—

  A light shone in my eyes but I was even blinder than before. I saw stars and it hurt my head, like the light was hitting the inside of my skull and bouncing around in there. As my vision cleared I saw a tangle of—

  Jesse!

  I heard one of the girls call my name. I was helped up from the ground and in that motion I was suddenly awake, like the blood was pumping again and I had snapped out of whatever trance I’d been under.

  Anna was there, her flashlight pointed at me, the light making me dizzy—and I saw Mini by her side. Dave was propped against the roof of the subway car, which I now realized was on its side. It was dark in the train, like we were in a cave or the belly of a monster. By the weak flashlight I could see my friends looked pale and frightened but otherwise seemed okay. There was another shower of sparks that ended with a small explosion and I saw what was left of the car ahead.

  The others? I said.

  Dave shook his head.

  I swallowed some vomit. Started to shake.

  How did this . . . ?

  Some kind of accident, Dave said in a low voice.

  We must have hit something and derailed. I can’t see far into the car in front of us—can’t see much of anything.

  There was fire though, Anna added. Fire, coming up behind us, remember? And then pounding noises, like banging . . . It wasn’t an accident, more like some kind of explosion.

  I could still hear the banging, like far-off pounding on a door. I remembered the fireball coming at us but it didn’t make sense. What could catch on fire in a concrete tunnel? The fireball had chased us, licked at the end of the carriage just seconds before everything went black and the world had turned on its side.

  I bet it was terrorists, Mini said. My friends told me this might happen in New York. There must have been a bomb on the train or at one of the subway stations—it was terrorists, I know it was.

  It wasn’t terrorists . . . Dave’s voice trailed off, like he was trying to convince himself as much as us.

  We’ve had that kind of thing in London, Anna said. We have to get out of here—

  It’s not terrorists, Dave said in a loud voice, trying to end the discussion.

  If it was terrorists, there might be more attacks, Anna said. We have to go and warn everyone!

  I heard our breathing, hard and fast and irregular. I took the flashlight from Anna and held it out in front of me. As the light arced around the subway car I saw tangled legs, then a couple of familiar faces—the gang members, their expressions frozen in vacant, disturbing ways.

  We have to get out of here! Anna’s voice was edgy, like she was trying not to cry.

  Shouldn’t we try to get to the others—

  And what? Anna said. Sit with them while they die? Wait here for the next train to come along and smash us to bits?

  I heard her take a deep breath before she spoke again: Look, there might be another fireball and we need to find help. Proper, emergency services kind of help. We have to leave.

  No one moved or said anything. We were waiting—probably for someone to come and find us. But I knew that help could be a long time coming, especially if we were counting on there being other survivors on the train. Anna was right.

  I shone the flashlight towards the end of the car, just a few paces from us. The door had been blown off its hinges and the tunnel beyond disappeared into darkness. But not compete darkness—there was a faint light further down the tunnel, a dim shaft of illumination.

  Is everyone all right? I asked. I mean, can you all move okay? Do you think we could make it to that light?

  The others followed my gaze towards the distant point in the tunnel. We watched the light for a few seconds and I wondered if it was an approaching train. I
t didn’t change though, didn’t move.

  Looks like a spotlight, Dave said, like emergency lighting or something.

  Maybe it’s daylight, I said. It could be an access hatch to the street above or coming from a subway station.

  I steadied myself with one hand on an upturned seat, then turned and shone the flashlight back up the car. The beam was pitiful—the flashlight was a small wind-up one we’d each been given in our UN pack on induction day.

  My phone has no reception, Mini said behind me, her voice close.

  It won’t down here—

  Shh! I cut Dave off and we were all silent. There was a noise. I moved forward a couple of steps, the flashlight beam creeping over the twisted bodies of the gang members. There was no sign of Mr. Lawson. Beyond the bodies, the subway car was pinched shut, like the roof of the tunnel had come down on top of it. I felt sick. This wasn’t a collision, no way.

  One of the gang members moved. A twitch of a leg. A hand raised towards the light. A faint groan.

  Oh my god, Mini said. I felt her bump in close behind me.

  I traced the beam up the man’s outstretched arm and saw a face covered with blood, eyes looking back at me, caught in the weak light. He blinked once, then slowly closed his eyes.

  Stay, I told Mini. I moved up the carriage, supporting myself against the roof of the train and stepping over the bodies of the other gang members. As I bent down to feel the man’s pulse, the flashlight beam swung across his body and I saw where his legs used to be and more blood, so much blood. By his side was a pistol—a shiny, steel automatic, mean-looking. My fingers left the cold skin of his neck and I moved back to the others as quickly as I could.

  We need to head towards that light out there, I said.

  Is he—

  Yes, let’s move.

  Okay, Mini said. Dave planted himself by the door-opening at the end of the car and helped the girls out. He practically lifted them to the ground outside. I wondered if he had some kind of super strength that came immediately after accidents, like when parents are able to lift cars off their kids. I went last and almost fell after tripping on a railway sleeper. The flashlight beam shook in my hands.