The Darkest Day

FIFTY-THREE

The blue-and-white cruiser skidded to a lateral stop in front of the taxi before Raven had a chance to pull away, blocking the road with no space to accelerate around it.

Two cops exited, fast and smooth, rushing towards them with guns drawn and cocked, leaving the driver and passenger doors open in their hurry. They shouted at Victor and Raven in two voices of overlapping contradictory commands to freeze and put their hands in the air and get out of the vehicle and stay where they fucking were and not to do anything at all.

Victor waited, acting scared, with Raven performing a similar routine of passivity, as the cop from the far side of the cruiser circled around the bonnet to join his partner.

As one, they came forward.

Raven ducked low and put the transmission into reverse and stamped the accelerator.

The front wheels spun and shrieked. A plume of tyre smoke and rainwater mist clouded in front of the taxi, spraying and blinding the two nearby cops for an instant, so when they fired their handguns the bullets went high. One cracked a hole through the raised sign on the roof, scattering fragments of glass and plastic over the bonnet.

When the taxi had reached fifteen miles per hour Raven pulled the handbrake and swung the wheel, spinning tyres flaring up rainwater, before changing up to drive and accelerating. By the time the taxi finished its tyre-screeching one-eighty, she was speeding away. Glass and plastic fragments from the bonnet scattered on the asphalt behind them.

The two cops dashed back to their cruiser.

The road surface was slick with rainwater. The cab’s tyres threw up huge sprays of it while the wipers worked hard to keep the windscreen clear. They sped past the team in pursuit on foot. The four men from the two Audis stood impotent on the pavement, shouting at each other and into their wrist microphones. But with cops nearby no one drew a weapon to shoot.

Ahead, another cruiser was rushing towards them, racing fast and weaving between the cars in the opposite lane.

Raven took a hard right, the oncoming cruiser following seconds later. An orange Mazda coupe appeared at the intersection ahead. She veered around it, deft and assured, but the cop car clipped the Mazda on the rear end, shearing off its chrome bumper and sending it cartwheeling along the street.

A white four-door sedan swerved to avoid the bumper, and in doing so collided into the back of the Mazda. Brake-light glass exploded into a cloud of glittering red. Tyre smoke swirled. The boot shot open, dented and distorted. A detached alloy hub cab spun end over end.

The driver of an oncoming delivery van managed to swerve around the crash as the coupe was sent into a spin.

Raven accelerated down a side street, a second NYPD blue-and-white now in pursuit. Another nearby patrol car called in to assist. The two cops who had taken shots at them would have little chance of catching up now, but others like this one could be on the way. She veered to the left, slipping into a bisecting road, speeding past townhouses and tenements and trees that lined the road.

Up ahead, vehicles were slowing and pulling over in reaction to the nearing cop car and the flashing lights and blaring sirens. Brown leaves scattered and swirled as they shot by in the taxi.

The driver of the nearest cruiser was caught off guard and went shooting past the turning. The second car, further behind and with more time for the driver to react, braked as it neared and slid into the corner, wheels spinning and tyres smoking, but losing ground on them.

Screeching rubber alerted Raven an instant before a panel van collided into the passenger side of the taxi as she sped across a four-way intersection.

The van caught the cab on the rear fender, crumpling the metal siding and sending the vehicle into a spin. A passenger window exploded and the rear windscreen popped out and flipped end over end until it hit the asphalt and disintegrated.

Victor tensed against the force trying to throw him around as Raven controlled the wheel and accelerated out of the spin, leaving the van driver staring aghast at her from out of a lowered window.

The spin had given the cops time to catch up and Raven manoeuvred at speed round the slow-moving traffic. Horns sounded and drivers yelled at her. The impact with the van had canted a rear wheel and Victor felt the immediate loss of power and control. The damage caused the rear tyres to lose traction on the slick road and she had to fight the wheel and ease off the accelerator to prevent the swerves becoming a spin.

Raven braked and changed down to slip through denser traffic, tyres protesting against the erratic back and forth movements. She sent the car into the opposite lane, making the oncoming vehicles swerve and brake to avoid her as they raced towards them.

The two cruisers followed, close behind. Headlights and brake lights reflected off the water misting behind the taxi. Raven swerved to avoid a truck. In the rear-view, their pursuers did likewise, one cruiser going to the right of the truck as Raven had, the second going around the left.

But the cops going left didn’t have the room they thought and the cruiser’s nose, crushed between the truck and a parked car, came to a sudden, juddering halt.

One cruiser remaining.

Raven took a hard left, clipping a parked sedan as she did, shearing off a wing mirror as the taxi rebounded away, tyres smoking, into the oncoming lane. A Lincoln Town Car braked in time to miss the speeding taxi, but an SUV coming up behind crashed into the back of the Lincoln, crumpling the car’s rear end and knocking it forward so it clipped the taxi on the passenger side. Victor jolted in his seat. The front bumper was ripped away. Headlight glass and fragments of metal and plastic sparkled as they passed in spinning patterns through the headlights.

The taxi spun away while the Lincoln careered up the kerb and into a trash can, sending it skyward. Pedestrians ran out of the way as the can came crashing back to earth.

Raven wrestled with the controls and against the force of the spin. Rubber squealed against wet asphalt, painting wild black patterns before she had regained control enough to stop the vehicle colliding with a parked removal van.

The police cruiser was right on them now, no more than half a car length behind. Sirens wailed. Victor glanced back to see the cop in the passenger seat shouting into a radio.

A motorcyclist, weaving fast around the traffic, saw the taxi too late and turned too hard to avoid it. The bike tipped on to its side and grinded along the road, the rider sliding and rolling behind it amid a trail of sparks.

Alarms and horns were sounding all around them as Raven accelerated away, avoiding the rider who lay alive but groaning near the crashed Town Car. A confetti of glass covered the road surface, glinting and sparkling in the wash of headlights.

The cop driving the chasing cruiser didn’t see the rider until he was almost hitting him. Smoke billowed from screeching tyres, but braking wasn’t going to be enough to avoid running the man over. The driver wrenched the wheel and the cruiser missed the rider by inches, jumping the kerb and ploughing into a fire hydrant, knocking it over, sending a jet of pressurised water skyward.

Within seconds the cruiser was a dot in the taxi’s rear-view.

A truck passed over the intersection ahead, blocking the way. Raven slammed the brakes and slid the taxi into the mouth of an alleyway, losing the remaining wing mirror as she did.

In the narrow confines of the alleyway, the cab’s exhaust roared loud and fierce. Metal screeched against brickwork. Sparks brightened the darkness.

They emerged out of the other side, skidding into the line of traffic.

Two oncoming cars swerved and braked as the taxi appeared ahead of them, shunting into each other with a scrape and crunch of denting metal. Crossing pedestrians fled from the careering vehicle, some throwing themselves to the pavement to avoid being hit.

Slow-moving traffic hampered their route. To get caught up in gridlock meant certain death or capture, but there was nowhere to turn. Besides, the taxi was a wreck. It couldn’t take much more punishment.

Raven said, ‘We need to switch.’

‘Do it.’

She switched lanes and slowed until they were three metres behind a silver Chrysler, tough and powerful, as if she had chosen to push on through the jam, and put the cab into neutral.

It collided with the Chrysler’s rear bumper hard enough to cause a dent, but not moving fast enough to do any serious damage to either vehicle.

Victor heard the Chrysler’s driver scream in rage and he jumped out of his vehicle. Victor and Raven climbed out too.

The driver was big with weight training and steroids, his good suit tight and straining to contain the swollen musculature.

‘What the holy fuck?’

He reached out to shove Raven, who was closer. She grabbed the hand and twisted it into a goose-neck wristlock.

The Chrysler driver yelled through gritted teeth as she put him to the ground.

‘Stay down,’ she said, then to Victor: ‘Would you like to drive?’

The man did as he was told, cradling his damaged wrist, as Victor jumped behind the wheel of the Chrysler and Raven climbed into the passenger seat. Putting the transmission in reverse, Victor pushed back the taxi in neutral gear until there was room to manoeuvre out of the line of traffic. He cut between the gridlocked cars in the other lane.

Ahead of him were two black Audi sedans.