Read Online Metro by Stephen Romano - Free Book Online Page B

starts composing a long open letter to the mayor’s office about such dangers, which she plans to post at Wildcat River, STAT —and then she’s trying to untangle herself from Andy, caught up in his reeking clothes and beating heart and cursing voice as they are bounced around in the back seat of the police car, sealed off from Mark behind bulletproof glass, the Black Box on the floor at their feet. Sirens blare and the radio squawks. It’s all complete chaos. Mark hits the cherries, lighting up the world in a red-and-blue disco inferno, screeching down South Lamar, just missing a woman in a restored 1979 Ford Pinto and three college kids in a frat-slob megatruck. The lights of the main city street almost blind him, long traces of the storefronts and restaurants on either side making a hyperspace blur—Maria’s Taco Xpress streaking into a Walgreens streaking into an intersection with red lights, and everybody gets out of his way because he’s the Law, by God, and he’s coming right at them with full cherries spinning, shrill noise flooding the world, and Andy is frozen in a near-fetal knot against the seat, Jollie starting to get her shit together in just one instant before she realizes again —
    â€” that they’re in traffic now and going really, really fast.
    Three other cop cars come blasting in the other direction.
    They don’t slow down or figure out that they may have just passed the bad guys—but in a matter of just minutes,somebody will figure it out, and they’ll be all over the problem like super-ripe stink on a big-ass ape. State-owned vehicles are worker bees in a giant screaming hive, all tagged back to HQ on a very high-tech series of computerized switchboards—Jollie knows all about it. She screams the words “ Slow the fuck down! ”And then she screams it again because Mark clearly isn’t listening.
    She’s right about that.
    He’s closing out everything but his own train of thought.
    First order of business is escape and survival, and there’s a big red target painted on them right now. Have to change cars. Have to get hidden.
    The world is ending as the seconds tick off the clock.
    He swerves fast off Lamar and into a dark series of side streets, finally killing the sirens and the cherries. He tells Jollie and Andy to calm down and they just get louder back there. Mark floors the accelerator, ignoring the bad noise. It all happens so fast for them. It’s all just an incredible series of blurs, coming on and on.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    A nd then the car stops.
    They are deep inside a nice-looking neighborhood when that happens, about six blocks between Lamar and South Congress, near the Saint Edward’s University campus.
    Sirens in the distance, where the Kingdom is still being invaded.
    Jollie has stopped being hysterical. The ecstasy in her system is almost gone, and she rides the last strange waves, wondering if Peanut Williams and his crew aren’t also running for their lives in Philly. She burns through what she knows, what she’s seen and heard—the gunshots, the cop cars, the dead bodies back there in the room (if they really were dead bodies)—and puts together scenario after scenario, connecting the dots:
    Mark is a multiple-personality psychopath with some weird death wish, he has been all along, and he’s been operating for years just under my radar—like some self-styled Dexter wannabe masquerading as a small-time dealer with big dreams.
    No. Too grim. Too Hollywood.
    Mark is an undercover cop with friends in low places, and it all went bad somehow, all in just ten minutes, all while I was asleep, and it only happened because I’m on drugs and ha ve been on drugs for years, and it’s all been so fun.
    No. Too obvious. And drugs are fun.
    Mark has gone and pissed off the wrong people and we’re all doomed because of it, landed in some insane half-assed getaway from evil