Fight or Flight (2 page)

This station was larger and way more modern than the one back home. Just above the ticket counter hung a large digital board, flashing with locations and times. They cycled through so quickly she had to stand there for several rotations before she caught sight of her destination. The train that would take her the rest of the way would be arriving on platform F in just about three hours.

Her stomach growled as she roamed the concourse
reminding her she hadn’t eaten anything all day. She knew it was something she’d have to get used to, but for now, today had been hard enough already. A small deli stand had a selection of day old items for fifty cents. She picked out a half turkey sandwich and handed over some of her carefully procured change.

She’d read somewhere that it was possible to live on only a dollar a day. She had no idea how that was possible—especially since lunch alone had just cost her half that—but she was going to have to figure it out. If she could swing it, then she’d be set for about a month with what she had left.

Tearing the bread apart into tiny pieces to make it last longer, she took her time, savoring each bite.

Inevitably, she finished the slightly slimy sandwich and settled on a bench to wait. Over the next three hours, she dozed on and off, never allowing herself to relax enough to get any real rest. When the announcement that her train was finally pulling into the station came over the PA, she breathed a sigh of relief. The combination of stress and a sleepless night were starting to weigh on her.

Sliding into another window seat, she paid no attention to the others around her. She was far enough from home now that it was highly unlikely she’d recognize any of them.

“Ticket?”
A man in a blue vest and cap stood in the aisle, looking bored and impatient.

“Oh, right.” She fished in her bag and pulled out the thick piece of paper.

“Do you have ID?”

Next, she pulled out her brown leather wallet and slipped out the non-driver state ID she’d been issued a year earlier. As she turned to hand it to the man, her elbow caught the strap of the bag and up-ended it. Clothing, cash, and the odd toiletry scattered across the floor and under the seat. Instead of offering to help, the ticket guy glanced at her ID with an exasperated sigh and then shoved it back at her along with the punched ticket.

Scrambling to keep everything together, she snagged the ID and ticket from the man and shoved them both into the back pocket of her jeans. She had to crawl on hands and knees along the floor between the seats in order to diligently collect every last cent that had rolled away. Not exactly the ideal start to the next leg of the journey that she’d been hoping for.

When she was certain she had everything
stuffed back inside the bag, she collapsed into her seat again. It was going to be a long day. It had
already
been a long day. The train rolled out of the station and smoothly picked up speed until trees and houses where little more than distortions on the landscape. She watched them all fly by for a while in a mind numbing blur, before the hypnotizing repetitiveness and soft rocking of the train car lulled her to sleep.

She didn’t rouse again until someone poked her shoulder. Blinking away residual sleep, she looked up at the man who had checked her ticket earlier.

“Your stop.”

“Huh?”

“This is your stop. You getting off or you want to buy another ticket?”

“Oh . . . um . . . no.
I’m getting off. Sorry.” She scooped up her bag and pushed past Mr. Personality, out on to the crowded platform.

This time she exited onto an indoor platform and had to give her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. There were people . . . everywhere.
Everyone pushing and shoving to get to where they were going. They all moved with purpose. No one strolled or lingered. It was a city’s worth of people constantly in motion, not taking even a moment to notice the person right beside them. It looked like paradise. Perfect anonymity.
Freedom
.

She’d made it, and for the first time in a long time, she felt like she could actually breathe. How long it would last or where she would go from there, only time could tell. Her plan sort of ended when she stepped off of the train. Now she was making it up as she went along.

The station was enormous. The concourse lined with shop after shop so that it looked more like a mall than a train station. Bodies flowed all around her in a continuous stream, making her feel like a rock in the middle of a river. She took a couple steps, but quickly realized she didn’t have a clue where she was going. She didn’t even know how to get out of the building. In the center of the concourse stood a large round table, covered in a variety of folded paper maps. That looked like as good a place as any to start.

Beside it stood an industrial sized metal trash can, the kind that always reeked because
they’re so huge you just know the trash on the bottom must have been sitting there for days. Heaving her pack on to the table with a loud thud, she rooted through balled up shirts, pants, even underwear before her fingers closed over the soft leather of her wallet.

Everything she had
was in there. Not her money—that was tucked carefully into a side pocket of her bag—but old pictures, insurance cards, social security cards, everything that made her who she was. Who she
used to be
. With a sudden overwhelming sense of independence and autonomy, she dropped the wallet and all of its contents, watching as it disappeared into the dark recesses of the garbage can.

Goodbye, Emerson James
.

Chapter Two

Jay

It was another day just like every other day.
A huge pain in the ass. But things could be worse; Jay knew that for a fact because things
had
been worse. No one chose this life without having known something worse first. Not for long, anyway. Occasionally, some bad-ass wannabe would show up thinking this was all some kind of adventure. A game. They were wrong. It never took them long to figure it out, though, and go running back home to mommy and daddy with their tails between their legs.

He scrounged around the station looking for something to eat. There were usually pretty decent pickings here, especially at this time.
Rush hour. All of those people in too much of a hurry to really finish anything they were eating or drinking. Discarded coffee was almost a given and this morning he could really use it. It had been a particularly rough night.

Jay usually didn’t notice other people. Unless they appeared to be a direct threat, they tended to slip through his life like background noise. But something about
her
made him stop and stare. She was pretty enough—in an ordinary sort of way—but he’d seen his fair share of models and even a few celebrities strolling the sidewalks of the big city. There was something about her, though.

Maybe it was the way she stared wide eyed at everything around her that told him she didn’t belong here, or the backpack stuffed to the brim that announced she was here to stay awhile. Either way, she was a walking billboard for trouble, practically wearing a blinking neon sign that said ‘notice me’.
Never a good thing here. She wasn’t going to last long if she kept up the doe-eyed routine.

Abandoning his pursuit of a morning cup of
joe, he started to follow her, not really sure why. If she was stupid enough to get herself into trouble, what concern was it of his? But he couldn’t help himself. Something inside him needed to warn her, keep her safe from the dangers she would never even see coming but he could already sense. Maybe if he could just scare her off, she would run home like all the others and save herself from anything worse than him.

He was pushing his way through the dense crowd, still trying to figure out the best way to do just that when he noticed another body making the same approach from the corner of his eye.
Herc. Crap
.

The girl paused to scan a display of maps. Could she make it any more obvious? And she’d made the biggest idiot mistake of all. She’d dropped her bag on the table beside her. Never, ever let go of anything you don’t want to lose. That was practically kindergarten knowledge around here. This girl was definitely out of her league.

Herc was one of the biggest guys imaginable. No one knew his real name, but everyone just referred to him as Hercules, or Herc. He never talked, as far as Jay knew, but no one ever gave him any trouble for it, or stood between him and what he wanted. That would just be suicide. The guy was definitely on some kind of steroids.

He swooped in on the girl faster than anyone his size should have the right to move through a cramped space and, in the blink of an eye, her bag—and everything in it—was gone. Herc never paused, just kept moving through the crowd back toward Jay. It took the girl a moment to realize what had happened and then she started frantically scanning the crowd, those wide eyes practically bugging out of her head. Jay felt bad for her, he really did, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. It was already too late.

She must have caught sight of her bag because all of a sudden she started pushing her way through the crowd towards where Herc had disappeared. She was seriously going to chase him? This girl was dumber than she looked. She pushed and shoved and squeezed her way past men and women in business suits and skirts. Jay couldn’t believe what he was seeing. She must have some kind of death wish.

Without thinking, Jay stepped into her path as she tried to shove past. Not even bothering to glance in his direction, she attempted to sidestep him, but he put himself in her way again, refusing to let her pass. Again she tried to move, and again he moved with her. Finally, she looked up at him. Her eyes were like a summer sky and roiling with emotion, half desperate-half angry.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“What are
you
doing?”

“He took my bag!”

“And what do you plan on doing about it?”

“I have to catch him!”
             

“And what are you going to do if you
do
catch him? Hear me when I tell you that he will kill you for whatever’s in that bag. Is it really worth your life?”

“It’s everything.” She seemed to deflate with her declaration, resigning herself to the truth. Whatever it was, it was gone now. “It’s everything I have.”

He felt for her. It hadn’t been so long that he couldn’t remember what it was like at first, but this girl was in way too deep. She shouldn’t be here. She had no business here. She was only going to be trouble with a capital T. And making any of this easier for her would only encourage her to stay. What she needed to do was learn her lesson, get back on whatever train brought her here in the first place, and go home.

“Well, that’ll teach ya to be so careless with your stuff.”

With that, he turned his back on her and left her standing there in the bustling crowd with nothing more than the clothes on her back and the tears beginning to pool in her eyes. No way she’d stick around now. Even knowing he was doing it for her own good, though, he couldn’t help feeling like a douche.

Chapter Three

Emerson

Gone. It was gone. All of it. Everything. Just gone. And so was the boy who had let the thief get away. Emerson was alone and terrified. A
useless coward
. How had she let this happen? How had she been so stupid? Now what was she supposed to do?

All of these thoughts pounded around inside her brain as waves of people continued to wash past her, oblivious of her turmoil. It wasn’t just a matter of
things
she lost. It was a matter of survival. The stuff she’d packed in that bag had been her only chance at surviving this place. Now how was she going to make it out here on her own? The thought was scary enough before, but now? Now it had her frozen in place, unable to even contemplate taking her next step.

Emerson shook her head tightly. Panicking wouldn’t help. She couldn’t fall apart. Not now. Not here. She was wasting time—killing daylight—and there was only so much of it left. Her circumstances may have changed, but the plan was still the same. The first step was to find a place to spend the night. The rest she could worry about tomorrow.

It was going to happen eventually. At least that’s what she kept telling herself as she pushed her way towards the station exit. The supplies in that bag wouldn’t have lasted forever. It was just sooner than she’d expected. She was going to have to step up her game. Really prove to herself that she could do this. There wasn’t any other choice in the matter.

Outside, things started looking up. And so did Emerson. The buildings were immense, disappearing into the cloud cover. The pictures she’d seen of this place hadn’t done it justice. This view alone was awe inspiring and she’d
barely set foot outside of the station. She just stood there, letting the sights, and sounds, and smells wash over her. Bathe her in her new surroundings. Her new home. This was it. This place was her freedom, her reprieve, her sanity. She would make it here and everything would be better, she just knew it.