Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel Read Free

ride, and ordered banana splits all around. The ride looked more like a futuristic white football stadium than a roller coaster, but of course the tracks were all inside in the dark where you couldn’t see what was coming next.
    The line moved quickly and Aubrey got closer to the front.
    “Sorry, son, full up. Have to wait for the next one. Won’t be long,” a guard said.
    Aubrey waved at his parents and climbed up on the rail to wait as the cars left the station. There were video games for people waiting, but he wanted to psych himself up for his ride.
    The first indication he had that something was terribly wrong was the kind of screaming he heard coming from inside. It wasn’t excited screaming; it was terrified screaming. And there was an awful smell coming from inside, like burning wires and rubber and something else, that smelled like—and then he saw the flames filling the tunnel and heading straight for the station. There was a roaring fire inside Space Mountain and people were being burned alive. He ran for his parents, ran for his life really, because he’d no idea if the whole thing could explode or not, and when he reached them he started crying.
    “There’s a fire in there, a f-fire in there, Dad,” he sobbed. “Inside the mountain. Those people, they thought it was going to be fun and now—they’re dying!”
    At that moment there was the gut-wrenching and ear-piercing screech of torn metal coming from high above.
    The Marleys looked up to see an entire section of roller-coaster cars, still full of screaming, wildly gesticulating people, some of them on fire, come flying through a rip in the rooftop, soaring at least a hundred feet above the ground. It was too horrible to grasp. Marjorie turned away just before the flying death trap slammed into a large crowd waiting to enter Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.
    Christopher and Marjorie each grabbed a child and began to run maniacally toward the park entrance. The screams and yells coming from every corner of the park told them Space Mountain wasn’t the only ride that had malfunctioned so horribly. It seemed that everywhere they looked there was death and destruction: black smoke and fiery orange flames were rising throughout the park, and mobs in a high state of panic were clawing and trampling one another in an effort to escape this nightmarish Kingdom of Death.
    Christopher Marley shouted at his wife and suddenly detoured toward the scene where the flying cars had landed on top of the waiting crowd, leaping over the fallen bodies of his fellow citizens. He did the best he could, balancing on his one good leg, using his crutch to pull as many of the injured from the tangled wreckage as he could before EMS and park security forces arrived en masse.
    Hugging his daughter to his chest, running toward his wife and son, he had a terrible premonition.
    This is no accident.

One
    H awke had been in the bloody thick of it all his life. When not engaged in fighting for his life, he dreamed about it. But this hellish nightmare was all too real to be any dream. Surely near death. It felt so very close now, the cold hovering all around him; some vast, grinning blackness, a protruding bony finger beckoning, urging him to surrender. How much longer could he run? He was spent. He could hear his wild heart screaming, begging his body to stop. Grievously wounded, he was shedding blood from countless gaping rips in his flesh, suffered when first trapped by the wild ones of the forest.
    Somehow, he’d lost his bearskin coat in that last fray. Nearly naked in this freezing, bone-chilling cold, his clothes mere scraps of rags. He looked down at his feet, shocked at the stinging pain of each step in the crusted snow. He’d lost his boots, too, both feet shredded and weeping blood. He heard something, low and wolfish, rapidly gaining ground on him. He looked over his shoulder, shocked at the bright red path he’d made through the woods. How could he lose these