1 Life 2 Die 4 (11 page)

As our car arced up through the air like a
giant football that had been punted down-town, I peered out through
the windscreen and boggled at the view. To our left were the
densely packed high-rises of the City centre, while straight ahead
lay the leafy, green Botanical Gardens, with the buildings of the
Queensland University of Technology scattered about in the
foreground, the tiny figures of students wandering about between
them. Behind the Gardens, off in the distance, sat the imposing
Story Bridge, an intricate latticework of grey, steel beams
spanning the River a couple of kilometres downstream, while off to
our right the River turned back sharply left as it flowed beneath
the long white bridge supporting the Riverside Express then drifted
on past the rugged orange and brown cliffs of Kangaroo Point.

For a moment I felt fortunate to be seeing
all this from a perspective few, if any, would ever have enjoyed
before. Then we began to drop and reality set in as I abruptly
recalled one of the snippets of information we’d learned in
Science: barring a slight slowing due to air resistance, the speed
at which a projectile leaves the ground is the same speed at which
it returns. The memory of how I’d been slammed down into my seat on
‘take-off’ told me we’d left the ground fast … and that meant we
were in for one mongrel of a landing!

I stared down through my window as the
sheet-metal roof raced up to meet us. This was going to hurt a lot!
Then I heard another powerful ‘whoosh’ and felt the car’s descent
slowing. Of course! I should have realised the thruster rocket
would be programmed to fire on landing as well, to slow the
vehicle’s descent. The stress really must be getting to me.

When we touched down on the roof, the jolt
was little worse than driving over a speed-bump. But as we raced
on, my relief lasted about 0.3 of a second before the air outside
my window was torn apart by another of the tank’s huge, explosive
shells. The wide gap in the roofing had given the gunner a clear
view of us, and he was once more doing his best to turn us into a
smoking mess!

*****

16

At the same time, I realised we were going to have to
take another space-trip. Ahead, the Riverside Expressway ran at
right angles over the top of the Goodwill Bridge, and the roof we
were hurtling along ended abruptly about a metre from its solid
concrete edge!

While Veronica’s fingers flitted over the
keypad, obviously programming in our next jaunt, I peered up at the
four lanes of traffic racing either way along the Expressway … just
as another of those damn tanks appeared out of nowhere across the
lane closest to us! Its gun was pointing just to our left, and as
the turret swung towards us I braced myself for lift-off.

But we just sped on ...

Panicking, I glanced at Veronica and
discovered she was still punching buttons. The sound of screeching
tyres had filled the air as the drivers in the westbound lanes of
the Expressway struggled to avoid the tank which had inexplicably
appeared before them, blocking two of the three lanes. Then, as I
peered down the barrel of the huge gun and suddenly wondered what
it might feel like to have a ten centimetre diameter shell enter my
mouth at about four hundred kilometres an hour, we finally lifted
off. At the same time, I saw a flash from the end of the tank’s
barrel and knew my last supper was on its way!

Instead of blowing my head apart, however,
the powerful vibrations from it rocketing past beneath our car sent
nervous shivers up my painfully compressed spine. A moment later my
head whipped towards the sound of a massive explosion behind us.
Despite the pain in my back, I grinned. Sahissi really wasn’t
having a good day: the shell had scored a perfect hit on one of his
jeeps, which had somehow managed to navigate through the rubble of
the boulder wall. It was now little more than a flaming chassis,
the top having been blown clear off by the explosive impact.

Still smiling, I turned back to discover we
were sailing through the air above the Expressway and had already
reached our highest point. As we began dropping back to earth, I
glanced down and realised I could no longer see the tank. I guessed
this was because it was now directly beneath us and found my smile
fading as I wondered how our car might cope with landing on a tank!
Thankfully, I was pretty sure our forward motion would take us past
it. Not that that necessarily meant we’d be safe, of course. If the
tank could get its gun lined up on us, we’d be in for a serious
hammering at close range!

I’d barely had this thought when I heard a
‘
whoosh
’ and the world started to spin sickeningly. For a
moment I thought we’d been hit. Then I noticed the flames shooting
from our car looked very different to what you’d expect if we’d
just been shot by a tank. This incredible little car must be
equipped with smaller thruster rockets which were now firing to
spin us round horizontally, lining us up with the direction of the
road beneath. My gut told me they were slowing our forward motion
too, and by the time we’d passed through about ninety degrees, we
were dropping pretty much straight down towards the southbound
lanes of the Expressway.

The side thrusters cut out and there was a
brief moment of silence before others fired to arrest our spin.
Then they stopped as well and I felt the primary rocket kick in to
cushion our landing.

This car … rocket ... whatever it was … was
unreal!

I just hoped that tank wasn’t lining us up
for the kill at this very moment.

When we touched down, we were pointing the
wrong way along the centre eastbound lane of the Expressway with
cars veering crazily to either side in a desperate attempt to avoid
a collision. I threw a nervous glance towards the tank, over on the
westbound side, to find its gun rotating rapidly towards us. Then I
heard the squeal of our own wheels over the blaring horns and
screeching tyres of the other cars. Our tyres gripped and we leapt
forwards, heading the wrong way along the Riverside Expressway,
dodging cars while we tried to stay ahead of the tank’s rotating
gun turret.

Just like back on the Victoria Bridge,
Veronica’s reflexes were astonishing as she weaved us through the
oncoming traffic, even daring to take one hand off the wheel so she
could punch in another little excursion for us on the keypad. A
couple of seconds later, she swung the car left and we launched a
few metres up through the air before barely clearing the west-bound
lanes and dropping towards the mangroves lining the edge of the
River. I thought we were about to end up embedded in the mud … then
the rocket thrusters fired again and shortly afterwards we touched
neatly down on a pedestrian pathway that hugged the water’s
edge.

Moments later, we were hurtling along the
path while I cringed at how narrow it was and wondered whether the
reason they hadn’t painted this awesome machine was that a coat of
paint would have made the thing too wide to fit on this particular
path!

“Incoming! Brace yourself!” Veronica said
unexpectedly.

I instinctively spun round to look behind
us.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem to matter much.
The air behind shimmered and the missile that had been speeding
towards us simply stopped in mid-air.

I was halfway through a relieved smile when
the thing exploded and the car jolted forwards, kinking my neck
painfully.

“Must have had a proximity fuse,” Veronica
pointed out evenly.

I rubbed gingerly at my neck. “You could have
warned me,” I grumbled.

Despite our dizzying speed, and the fact that
she was driving, Veronica turned and raised an eyebrow at me.
“Exactly which part of ‘Incoming! Brace yourself!’ did you not
understand, dear?”

She sounded far too smug for my liking, and I
was about to say something stroppy before it finally sank in that
when I’d looked back, one of those bikes – obviously the source of
the missile - had been tailing us about fifteen metres back.

I threw another nervous look over my shoulder
– it was still there … and gaining fast!

“I hope you’ve left that shield thing on,” I
said.

“Can’t,” Veronica replied bluntly. “It uses a
mountain of energy … we only ever had enough power for ten
seconds.”

“Ten seconds!” I exclaimed and cringed at how
embarrassingly screechy my voice sounded.

“Eight point one now that I used it to stop
that missile and the one just after we left the Piazza,” she
elaborated. Then her expression became suddenly tense and her hand
shot to the control panel. A moment later, an explosion jolted us
forwards again.

“Make that six point four,” she said when she
pressed the same button again to turn off the shield.

I looked nervously ahead while our car veered
away from the water, following the main path to the right, under
the Expressway. Beside us, a narrower path continued along the
River’s edge on the other side of the massive concrete supports
holding up the Expressway. When I glanced back, for a moment I
thought the biker had given up. Then I spotted him emerging from
behind one of the supports, heading along the smaller path parallel
to us.

“Do those shields work on the side of the
car, too,” I asked hopefully.

“Not as well,” Veronica admitted. “Why?”

“’Cause the bike’s just about level with us,”
I informed her, pointing weakly to my left.

An instant later, bullets raked along the
side of the car and Veronica had to hit the shield button yet
again. The next twenty or so bullets stopped one after the other in
the shimmering air outside my window before dropping harmlessly to
the bitumen. I knew we were lucky – the weaker side-shields were
unlikely to have stopped a missile, but thanks to his
forward-facing missile tubes, the rider had been forced to use his
gun instead.

Even so, our luck was almost spent – the
shields were rapidly running out of juice. Soon they’d be flat out
stopping a speeding mosquito!

At least the guy obviously had no idea we
were close to losing our only protection. He ceased fire and
Veronica immediately flicked off the shield-field to save
energy.

“Three point two seconds,” she murmured,
calmly spreading the joy.

“Is this glass bullet-proof?” I asked
hopefully.

“It’ll probably break if you breathe on it
too hard,” she informed me humourlessly. “When you want a car to
fly, I’m afraid you have to sacrifice anything and everything that
adds unnecessary weight.”

A heartbeat later she hit the shield button
again as the guy resumed his attack. Meanwhile, my hopes plummeted.
I probably had about three-point-three seconds left to live!

Terrified, I glanced ahead and noticed the
path rose up a gentle incline before emptying out onto a quiet
lane. I peered to the left and felt a sudden spark of hope: the
path the bike was following must be an old pathway that had been
there before the Expressway went in over the top of it, because it
kept going level for another fifty metres before ending abruptly at
one of the massive Expressway supports!

I flicked my eyes back at the bikie guy and
felt a further glimmer of hope when I saw that he was still
focussed on us, paying minimal attention to where he was going. Now
all I had to do was keep him looking this way for about two more
seconds…

I’m not really sure what the guy thought when
I did a blow-fish on the side window, and I don’t really care. All
I know is it kept him looking towards me just long enough. Then, as
we shot up the slope towards the road, he finally glanced forwards
and his jaw dropped.

A moment later, he and his bike disintegrated
into the three metre thick concrete pylon.

*****

17

After slowing to navigate a tight s-bend, we were
soon racing up the gently sloping road towards the intersection
with Queen Street. As we emerged at the top, with the Victoria
Bridge on our left and the Queen Street Mall to our right, I
glanced left and swore at the sight of another motorbike waiting in
ambush. Veronica saw it too and spun the wheel right, sending us
into a dangerously fast, skidding turn. As we accelerated towards
the mouth of the underground bus tunnel leading in under the Mall,
I heard the sounds I dreaded most – the soft ‘whoosh ..... whoosh’,
of a pair of those smaller, laser-targeted missiles being
dispatched one after another, perhaps two seconds apart.

Veronica and I were both painfully aware our
shields were completely dead. And that despite getting a bit of a
head-start while the guy had been painting our car with the killer
missiles’ targeting lasers, the glowing Cyclops eyes would keep
both missiles glued to us until they caught up and remodelled our
fragile little vehicle the way a stick of dynamite remodels a paper
bag.

When I threw a frantic look over my shoulder,
I could see their red devil eyes closing fast, the lead one almost
on us. Then I heard a familiar noise and something flew from the
back of the car to engulf the first missile – one of those nets
Veronica had used earlier when we were on the bike.

The missile was so close when it blew that
the car was slammed forwards by the shockwave, and I couldn’t help
imagining what it would have felt like if the explosion had been
inside the car. We wouldn’t stand a Paddle Pop’s chance in
Hell!

And there was another one hot on our
tail!

“Tell me you’ve got more of those nets,” I
pleaded while my eyes scanned the billowing smoke behind us for any
sign of the remaining missile. Perhaps the explosion had detonated
it too.

“Nope,” she told me calmly. “Had to get rid
of them to allow for the extra weight of the rear booster
rocket.”

At first, I didn’t register anything after
‘Nope’ - I was too distracted by seeing the second missile punching
out through the smoke and high-tailing it towards us. Then
Veronica’s words clicked into place in my frazzled brain and I
threw her a baffled look just as she hit a blue button on the
steering wheel console. We were about to enter the underground
busway tunnel when an ear-splitting roar filled the air and I was
flung viciously back into my seat. For a moment I thought the
missile must have caught us. Then I looked back and saw flames and
smoke bursting from the back of the car and realised Veronica had
ignited the ‘rear rocket booster’ she’d just told me about!