The Darkest Day

THIRTY-NINE

Victor turned through a plaza near to the shopping mall, knowing only the motorcycle could follow him, not the nearing cruisers. The place was almost deserted and his running footsteps echoed, loud and fast.

On the street on the far side of the plaza, he saw a massive crowd, dense and sprawling, outside the entrance to a subway station. Commuters and tourists were angry and confused, eager to get home or to work or to the next sight on their itinerary. Station staff were trying their best to explain the situation, but the crowd was too big and too noisy for the staffs’ voices to carry far. People jostled and shoved to get closer.

He hurried into the crowd. A few seconds later, the police motorcyclist exited the plaza and skidded on to the street behind. The rider looked around, but could not see him. There were too many people, too many faces. Victor looked away.

The pedestrians were not paying attention to him. They were too preoccupied with the blackout and their overloaded cell phone providers to care about some guy hurrying through them. They were getting used to the sound of sirens by now. It took a lot for city dwellers to pay attention to such things.

Victor had his chin down as he pushed on. He heard cop cars nearby but didn’t turn to look and risk his face being seen. He sidestepped through the crowd, putting more and more obstacles between him and the motorcycle cop, further reducing the chances of being spotted. He decelerated to a brisk walk to better blend in. Now, his best chance was to hide from his pursuers, not run from them.

He glimpsed more police officers up ahead on the periphery of the crowd. The motorcycle cop behind him might have called for backup or the ones ahead had been out searching for him regardless or just helping with the blackout. The two ahead hadn’t seen him yet. They were straining their necks trying to pick him out of the crowd. Neither was tall.

He walked towards them, reminding himself to act casual, to behave like those around him. While he did that, the cops had their work cut out trying to identify him. He was no more than an anonymous face within an ever-shifting mass of hundreds of faces. A sudden change of direction would make him stand out. He kept walking towards them, the risk of being noticed increasing with every step, but they didn’t see him because they were looking for someone fleeing the cops, not approaching them.

They looked away and moved to search another section of the crowd. It was too big to cover from one place.

Victor stepped out of the crowd where the cops had been standing. They didn’t notice.

He walked away at the same pace as a young woman in a pink beanie hat and transparent umbrella who had had enough of trying to get on to the subway. She chewed gum while Victor walked a little behind her and to the side, not close enough to make her concerned about his proximity, but if the cops turned this way, they would see a couple walking together, not a lone man on the run.

He passed tenements with painted cast-iron façades. The thrum of rotor blades above alerted him to an incoming helicopter. It could be an NYPD chopper or one owned by a television network. He didn’t look up to check because no one else did. New Yorkers were used to their buzzing presence in the sky above their city. If it was operated by the NYPD then it would have infra-red capabilities and he would glow white on a screen above, but so would everyone else on the street. While he acted like them the infrared camera was useless.

Victor turned on to a street locked with stationary traffic. The sound of intermittent horns disguised the mechanical whine of the helicopter. One driver, immobile behind his wheel, was making the most of the bad situation by thumping out a beat with his horn while he rapped freestyle about the blackout and being stuck in traffic. He wasn’t bad.

‘Hey, man, you got the time?’ asked a passer-by in a baggy T-shirt and baseball cap. ‘My phone is out of juice.’

Victor shrugged and shook his head.

‘I’m just asking for the damn time, asshole.’

He increased his pace because he saw no cops to pay attention to it and heard no helicopter above to see him, hurrying past plate-glass storefronts glistening with raindrops, the wares on display unlit and lost in shadow.

He saw a roadblock up ahead at the end of the block. The traffic sat unmoving before it. The roadblocks were meant to trap him, but they helped him. The already stilted flow of traffic in the area was now at a standstill. The cops could not use the road at all now. They had taken away their best advantage.

Victor passed an electrical store with a display of blank TV screens. His reflection jumped from black screen to black screen.

He rounded a corner, slowing his pace to blend with the pedestrians because a watchful cop across the road had half-climbed a street lamp to get a better view.

The cop jumped down from the street lamp, shouting into his radio for backup as he ran in pursuit.

Victor sprinted.

A chain coffee shop with its own generator had a sign glowing further along the street. Victor rushed towards it. The queue of people eager for a hot drink or snack snaked outside on to the street. He moved past the waiting men and women, smiling and patient despite the circumstances, and squeezed past a man in the doorway as he assured him he wasn’t trying to jump the queue.

Inside, the harried staff were working hard to deal with the amount of customers eager for something hot to fight the chill. Every seat was taken. Some people were even perched on the tables. The air was warm and humid. Despite the situation, most patrons were in good spirits.

There was a queue for the restroom, but he ignored it, and the protests, to push ahead and kick open the door.

A short Russian in sportswear was urinating and almost fell over with shock. He was too surprised and scared to speak. Victor didn’t enter. There was no point. No windows.

When he turned, a dozen or more faces were staring at him, almost as shocked as the poor Russian and just as silent. He ignored them and headed to a doorway marked Staff Only that was locked with a punch-button system. Such a system was hard to get past, but the doorframe was no stronger than the one to the restroom had been.

It flew open, rebounding off the interior wall on the other side and back into Victor’s raised arm as he hurried through the doorway.

One of the members of staff — maybe the manager — was shouting at him, but no one was brave or stupid enough to chase after someone as crazy or desperate or dangerous.

At the end of a short corridor with beige walls, stairs led up. Not ideal, but there was nowhere else to go. There were no doors leading off to the rest of the ground floor.

The stairs creaked and groaned as he leapt up them three at a time. They took him to the floor above the coffee shop. Doors led off here to storerooms or offices or a kitchen or staff bathroom. He didn’t try any of them. He wanted a way out, not a way to trap himself.

He heard a voice below shouting, ‘Which way did he go? Which way?’

Victor looked around, finding a window and heaving it open.

He dropped down into the alleyway behind, exploding open a bag of refuse and slipping on food waste as he rushed away.

The alleyway opened out on to a wide street almost devoid of traffic.

He saw the entrance to a park up ahead, but ignored its lure. Cop cars couldn’t follow, but they could box him inside. He needed to maximise his ability to manoeuvre to his advantage if he was going to stay ahead them.

A staccato yelp of tyres alerted him to braking vehicles. As headlights washed over him, he squinted and turned away. He powered on, rushing past a parked delivery van, knowing it would block his pursuers’ line of sight for a second or two, providing him with a window to slip down another alleyway.

It stank of rotting food and worse. Halfway along it, a slim young man in a cook’s apron and with long black hair bunched up in a nylon net leaned against a wall by an open doorway, smoking a cigarette. Victor slowed to the quick walk of a man in a hurry, not hunted. The guy in the hairnet stared at Victor until he had gone out of sight.

At the end of the alleyway, he paused to look both ways along the adjoining street. He saw no police presence, but sirens were growing louder from the east, so he went west. He walked at the same speed as the other people on foot so as not to draw undue attention to himself. He mimicked their body language.

It did no good.

He heard the approaching cruiser’s wheels shriek on the wet asphalt surface as the brakes went on, sudden and hard.

The cop car angled after him. He snaked as he ran, trying to throw it the wrong way, but the driver knew what he was doing. The cruiser stayed with him, but the tyres lost traction on the slick road surface and skidded and the car mounted a kerb, swerving back on to the road before it collided with stunned pedestrians.

Victor risked a glance over his shoulder, seeing the cop car was pulling up behind him, the passenger staring his way while he shouted updates into his radio.

Victor was sprinting before the two officers were out of their car and chasing.