Chasers by James Phelan

Author:James Phelan [Phelan, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2012-09-26T14:00:00+00:00

12

The darkness of a winter afternoon surrounded me as I sat in the police car. I took off my wet shoes and socks and sat there with the engine running and the heater on. The windows fogged up and I added the A/C, pumping the heat to full. I kept the lights off and spent fifteen minutes flicking through the radio bands. For the first time I heard something being transmitted—one of the AM stations was playing faint, crackling music, the unmistakable voice of Billie Holiday. It took a few minutes before I realized it was pre-recorded; the song was on a continuous loop. I imagined some place in the mountains where an automated radio station was doing its thing.

I couldn’t make up my mind whether to drive or not. The snow had picked up again, making it hard to see. If I put on the headlights and the beams started bouncing off the other cars all the way home, I’d be a magnet for bad guys. But if I stayed out here in the car all night, all alone . . . I decided to wait and see if the snow eased enough for me to navigate my way safely back to 30 Rock.

Someone had been through this area since I’d left it earlier—there was a big dumpster on its side in the middle of the road, not far from the police car. When it came time to leave I’d have to use the car to push it out of the way. It looked heavy—I’d have to accelerate and hit it really hard. I sized the dumpster up in the rear-view mirror and started to hate it for being in my way. I looked forward to smashing it.

I ate an apple and three packets of nuts—cashews, my favorite. I wondered which of my friends had packed them in there for me. I looked around the police car. I knew every inch of my surroundings despite it being almost totally dark.

By the time night fell, I might as well have been in a submarine stuck on the ocean floor for all I could see outside. I shone the wind-up flashlight at the fuel gauge and saw there was about two-thirds of a tank left. The heater had warmed me up and my clothes were now dry so I switched off the engine for a bit. I would stay put until the snow stopped falling. I nestled under the warmth of my dry clothes and tried to sleep. At home, before all of this, I used to think about the fact that I could never remember my dreams and wonder if life itself was just a dream. If that was true, why had it turned into a nightmare?

The car rocked and I woke.

I wiped saliva from the corner of my mouth and wondered for a moment where I was. For a second I thought I was a young kid again, asleep in the backseat of the car. I looked around, expecting to see my dad, but my eyes settled on the shiny Glock instead.

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