Ntshona

by Matthew A Robinson

  After returning to the driver’s seat of her car, Cat audibly inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Right. We’re going back to my place in the city now. I want you two to be aware that there’s a chance we’ll encounter some problems. It’s unlikely, but it might happen”.

  “What kind of problems?” inquired Lon.

  “Police problems,” she said. “If we get stopped by anyone, although I don’t think we will, then Eve, you get in the back seat, and both of you stay silent”.

  “How ominous,” Lon said, “do you really think they’ll stop us for something?”

  “I don’t know, but prepare yourselves anyway”.

  “Right,” said Eve.

  Cat proceeded to power up the car and its internal displays, and headed out of the hospital car park bound for the city centre.

  The sky was no longer naturally light, yet the skyline to their front illuminated the atmosphere like a beacon.

  Slowly, both Lon and Eve drifted into sleep.

  “Wake up!”

  “Huh?” Lon felt dazed, had he not just fallen asleep? It felt that way.

  “Wake up!”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Eve.

  “Straight in front of us,” said Cat.

  Lon became cognisant of the fact that he had certainly been sleeping for much longer than he had realised; the buildings in the near distance implied they were much closer to the city centre than when he had drifted off.

  “What are they doing?!” Eve was quickly frightened.

  “It looks like a checkpoint,” stated Cat.

  “Checkpoint!?” echoed Lon.

  “Stay calm,” sad Cat, “I warned you something like this might happen”.

  “Can’t you turn around?” asked Lon.

  “Look around you Lon, there’s too much traffic. Besides, if we do a U-turn just before reaching a police checkpoint, don’t you think it will look a little suspicious?”

  Lon’s heart was pounding. “Eve, get in the back”.

  “Oh, right!” she said, and unfastened herself from the front passenger seat and climbed into the back with Lon’s help.

  “What now?” asked Eve.

  “Stay quiet and don’t move,” Cat told them both as she powered down the lighting in the car so that only she was clearly visible. “Pretend you’re not there, don’t even fucking breathe”.

  They both pressed themselves tightly to the back seat to be as far from the view of the driver’s window as possible. The footwells were not big enough in this car to hide in.

  The traffic quickly tightened and progress along the road became slow.

  The red and blue flashing lights ahead felt to Lon and Eve as though they were saying, “You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die”. The imposing feeling, coupled with the sense that they were physically trapped inside the car lay heavily on their chests. Breathing quietly was not an option.

  Tediously the cars ahead moved on one by one, ever so slowly bringing them closer to their fate.

  Many minutes passed before it was their turn.

  Numerous police personnel were spread out along the checkpoint, investigating traffic in each lane, travelling in both directions.

  A lone policeman attended Cat’s car. He tapped on her window.

  Lon could see his face clearly, yet he could not see Lon due to the darkened glass.

  Cat slid open her window. “Good evening officer,” she said in a manner as casual as ever.

  “Good evening madam,” said the policeman, “we’re currently checking for drunk drivers. It gets hectic over the holiday season. Could you please breathe into this machine for me?” he thrust his hand into the car holding a breathalyser device.

  Lon found it hard to believe what he had just heard. Checking for drunk drivers? Here? Talk about elaborate.

  “Certainly sir,” Cat complied with the policeman’s wish.

  “Thank you madam,” he took back his hand and checked the device. “Okay, your blood-alcohol content is perfectly normal”.

  Both Lon and Eve could feel the blood pumping in their throats. The check was surely over now.

  “Where are you headed, madam”.

  “Home, I live near the centre”.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been working all day”.

  The two terrified young adults in the back slowly turned to look at each other, and communicated messages through the looks in their eyes. Why was the policeman being so inquisitive? Clearly he was not simply looking for jolly Christmas drivers.

  “Where do you work?” the officer continued to pry.

  “Despite it having absolutely no significance to this check, I work at Donholdings Plc”.

  “I see, and what do you do there?”

  Cat was becoming frustrated, yet knew she had to keep her cool. “I’m a secretary”.

  “I see”, said the policeman again.

  Lon saw him look at the back window.

  “Do you have any passengers?”

  She tried desperately not to look in her rear-view mirror. “Can you see any passengers?” said Cat, trying her best to refrain from sarcasm.

  “No, because it’s dark. Can you please open the back window for me?”

  She tried not to panic. “Being a drunk driver isn't the same as a drunk passenger, is it?

  “Madam, let me see who’s in the back”.

  “Is it illegal to have a drunk passenger?”

  “Open the bloody window now, or I’ll arrest you,” he said in a firm and fierce tone.

  Cat was extremely worried as there was nothing much she could do but comply. She slowly opened the back window and thought frantically of what to do. The road in front was devoid of cars; the vehicles which were previously checked were long gone, leaving a lengthy stretch of empty road. She could put her foot down and speed away.

  The window came down, and completely unexpectedly, the policeman quickly took a step back.

  Lon had a pistol ready, pointed straight at the policeman.

  Cat saw this in her rear-view mirror, and concurrently felt relieved and distressed.

  Lon was shaking violently. “Stay silent. I don’t want to shoot, but I will if I have to. Let us drive on quietly, and don’t bring attention to us”.

  The officer knew that he had to comply, thus he silently took a few steps back and gestured for them to move forwards.

  Cat pulled the car away, trying her best to do so in a natural, unstressed manner.

  They all breathed a sigh of semi-relief.

  Lon and Eve kept an eye on the policeman, as they anticipated he would soon inform his colleagues, which, after the car travelling several metres, he did. He threw his hand over his shoulder, pointed at the car and yelled.

  “He’s just told the other police! Step on it!” yelled Lon.

  The car’s wheels screeched on the tarmac, and the vehicle’s speed increased rapidly.

  “We need to get out of sight so I can change my plates and paint colour!” shouted Cat.

  Lon and Eve kept watch through the back window while Cat dodged and weaved through the cars in front and in the adjacent lanes.

  “Their cars are chasing us now!” cried Eve.

  “That’s to be expected,” said Cat.

  The police vehicles in pursuit were quickly gaining.

  “Can you go any faster?!” shouted Lon.

  “I could, but we might die!”

  “We’ll probably die if we get caught though!” Lon yelled back at her.

  “Good point!” she put her foot down harder, and the car’s speed steadily increased, as did the difficulty of her task of avoiding other entities on the road.

  The police vehicles followed suit and too began meandering through the traffic, yet in a more careless manner.

  “Jesus! That police car just clipped a civilian car! They’re fucking crazy!” shouted Lon.

  “I thought you knew that!” Cat replied.

  “Just imagine what they’d be
doing if car windows weren’t bulletproof!”

  In an unforeseen twist, a portion of the road in front of them exploded, sending pieces of civilian cars into the air, yet barely scratching the perdurable surface of the road.

  “What the hell?!” Cat violently slammed on the brakes and screeched to an almost stop. “What the fuck was that?!”

  “I think they just fired a rocket!” screamed Eve.

  “A fucking rocket?! They really want us dead!” exclaimed Lon, “Keep moving!”

  Cat accelerated again, and sped away more quickly than before, as their lives certainly depended on it.

  “To what lengths will they go?!” cried Eve.

  “I don’t know,” said Cat, focussing nearly all of her attention on the road, “but they really don’t like you two!”

  “Look out! I think they fired another one!”

  Again, a portion of the road in front of them burst into flames, closer to the car this time.

  Cat was forced to halt the car completely, which skidded around the explosion area and ended up facing the wrong way.

  All their hearts were pounding rapidly as if playing blast beats on their chests. They could clearly see out of the front window the police vehicles coming ever closer to them.

  “Dammit, if we can just get to a junction!” yelled Cat as she span the car back to face the direction they were travelling, before she recommenced acceleration.

  “They’re close!” Eve screamed.

  They were nearing a built-up area where, they were hoping, the police would cease launching rockets.

  “We’re close to a junction! There’s one straight ahead!” shouted Cat; it was a busy junction, yet they had to take a turn as soon possible. “Hold on tight!”

  The car gathered more and more speed until Cat slammed on her handbrake and the vehicle began a fairly semi-circular skid across the intersection, trying to take a turn to the right. She could only maintain minimal control over the car’s movement, and frantically attempted to avoid any form of collision.

  Luck was certainly on their side at this point, as most of the vehicles already at the intersection were yielding for cars coming from their direction.

  Again Cat accelerated hard and disappeared from the view of the police. “I should be able to change the car’s plates and colour now,” she said before decelerating. “Keep an eye out for me”.

  This road was a little busier than the previous one, so an extreme car chase with a side of rockets was less viable.

  Cat gave up control to the vehicles computer so she could reset the car’s number plates and change the body’s paintwork. She then retook control. “Alright, they shouldn’t be able to spot us now”.

  Most of the pursuing police vehicles could be seen taking the sharp corner as Cat did, but they could not accelerate a great deal after that due to the road’s accumulated transportation. Yet, it did not stop the two motorcycle police that had just come forth from the traffic.

  Neither Lon nor Eve, who were watching the emerging motorcyclists, expected them to go straight to their location, but instead to continue forwards into the distance.

  “They’ll probably go right past us,” said Cat in concurrence.

  However, they began to slow before reaching Cat’s car. One of them raised his hand in preparation for something.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Eve. “He’s holding a baton”.

  Cat could see through the rear camera display on the windscreen that the policeman on the motorcycle was gripping not a baton, but an electric baton. “Wait, that’s used to break windows,” she stated, still sounding panicked.

  “What? Do they know where we are?” said Lon.

  “I don’t know how they could,” Cat said.

  Yet it still seemed as though they were heading straight for Cat’s car.

  “I think they do know where we are!” said Eve.

  The two motorcycles drew closer to the point where they were on either side of the car. The policeman with the electric baton cocked his arm, ready to swing at Eve’s window.

  Eve yelled as Cat hit the brakes and narrowly avoided being hit by the car at their rear.

  The policemen continued forwards for several metres prior to braking. Now the machine guns strapped to their backs were clearly visible in the car’s headlights.

  “How do they know where we are?!” Lon’s heart began to beat faster again.

  “I really don’t know Lon, but I think it’s time you use your guns!”

  “What?! I don’t want to shoot anyone!”

  “Look Lon, do you think they’d think the same about you? They’ve got fucking machine guns; what do you expect them to do with them? Give me a gun”.

  He took a deep breath and passed her the pistol he had been holding since the checkpoint. He then leant over to retrieve the other two guns from the compartment beneath the back seat, handed the remaining pistol to Eve, who looked more bewildered and frightened than he himself, then removed the machine gun for his own use.

  “If you don’t want to shoot them, then shoot the tyres on their bikes!” Cat shouted. She once again yielded control to the autopilot system, opened her window, and began to shoot.

  “I really don’t know how many shots these guns have,” said Lon.

  “We’ll just have to find out,” said Cat before squeezing the trigger again.

  Eve wound her window down ready to fire.

  “Do you know how to shoot it?” asked Lon.

  “Yeah, I used to play VR quite a lot when I was in uni,” she took a deep breath and also began to shoot of the window.

  The two policemen were clearly taken aback by the flying bullets and retreated to tailing the car where they could ride and shoot at the same time more easily. It was practically impossible for them to use their machine guns, however, they both had two backup pistols each, just like the motorcycle policeman from whom Lon had acquired his firearms earlier that day.

  “It’s gonna be difficult for me not to hit civilian cars with this,” stated Lon. This was to be his first time to fire a real automatic.

  At this point bullets were taking to the air from both directions.

  “It doesn’t matter if you hit civilian cars, the windows won’t break!” Cat shouted.

  “I’m worried about cosmetic damage! I told you I’m not gonna shoot directly at the policemen!” He took several deep breaths before exposing himself through his window.

  Cat ceased firing due to Lon’s obstructive head. “Be careful you idiot!” she focussed on the rear-view camera screen and noticed that, thankfully, the civilian cars behind them had retreated.

  Lon’s exposed upper body was an obvious target for the one policeman, who switched his sights to him from Cat. Lon dodged the next couple of bullets by pulling his head and arm back into the car. “Dammit, I have to use my left hand!” He took another deep breath in an attempt to control the adrenaline. His heart was thumping with such strength could feel his eyes beating. The grip of the gun felt strange in his left hand; he felt weak. He squeezed it for a few seconds, and tried to make it feel more comfortable. Again, he took a breath and re-exposed himself. The pistol outside was still pointed at his head; he knew that he likely had less than a second to take a shot. The scene unfolded before him in slow motion, and he felt an intense surge of adrenaline as he fumblingly lined up the shot. He pulled the trigger.

  The motorcycle’s front wheel partially shattered, and the whole thing began to spin dramatically as the rider was launched off and slewed down the side of the road.

  Lon pulled himself back in through the window and collapsed into his seat. “Adrenaline is one hell of a drug!”

  Eve dropped herself back in her seat as Lon had, looked at him and asked, “How the hell did you do that?”

  “Nice one!” Cat yelled at him. “That was fucking amazing! Now do it again!”

  The remaining motorcyclist was gaining on them with a clearer intent to ‘apprehend’ them.

  “Okay, Ev
e, let’s swap seats,” he said, and he climbed over her to the opposite side of the car. “It should be much easier with my right hand!” he shouted, then pushed his head and arm through the window. He was initially surprised as this policeman was closer than the last, but despite Lon being an easier target than the previous time, destroying this wheel was a much simpler task. He squeezed the trigger and again let off a single round.

  Cat, Lon and Eve were treated to an encore of the previous show, however, they had no time to applaud, for they saw in the not too remote distance two or three, or possibly more, extra police motorcycles headed for them.

  “We need to turn at the next junction so I can change my plates and paint again,” said Cat.

  “How did they still know where we were?” asked Eve.

  “They’re tracking us somehow,” stated Cat.

  “Oh!” Lon had a bingo moment, “I think the policeman who stopped us at the checkpoint threw something at the car when we pulled away, it could’ve been a tracking bug”.

  “Why are you only telling me this now?!” Cat yelled at him.

  “Because it just looked like he was pointing at us”.

  “You’re right!” said Eve, “I thought it looked strange how he was pointing at us, it makes sense”.

  “Dammit, that means we must stop and one of us has to get out and check for the thing,” said Cat.

  “I’ll do it,” Lon volunteered, thinking he could perform the action more quickly than the other two. That, and he did not want them to be in such a vulnerable position.

  “Good, I’ll pull up once we get round this corner”. Cat took a left turn and quickly stopped the car by the side of the road. “If you find a tracker, throw it,” she said.

  “Lon swang open the door, jumped out and ran to inspect the back of the car. In plain sight attached to the boot door was a roughly one-inch wide, almost spherical electronic device. Without time for a thought he ripped it from the metal of the car and launched it far in the opposite direction to which the car was facing. He saw it hit the floor and bounce several times before rolling into a drain. He hastily returned to the door he exited from and took his seat within the vehicle once again. As he did so, he became aware of a colour change in the car’s paint.