1 Life 2 Die 4

by Dean Waite

  It was only the girly way they threw their two enormous grenades that tipped me off.

  As the melon-sized explosives lobbed through the air towards us, Veronica swung the bike sharply to the right, twisted the throttle hard and we shot into the Queensland Art Gallery’s underground car park.

  *****

  10

  While we flew towards the ticketing booths, I jumped at the withering burst of machinegun fire that erupted from the front of our bike. The boom-gate blocking our path disintegrated in a storm of red and white splinters and by the time the over-sized grenades exploded we were already thirty metres away, hurtling through the packed car park as Veronica took us swiftly back to top speed. The nearness of the roof emphasized our dizzying acceleration and, despite the danger, I felt myself smile while I listened to the up and down revving of our meaty engine changing rapidly up through its gears. The noise reverberated powerfully off the concrete walls, floor and ceiling around us and thumping relentlessly into my eardrums.

  Even so, I couldn’t stop grinning.

  The scattered people wandering through the car park shrank back towards the cars parked along either side of us, their shocked looks seeming strangely normal to me after having seen little else for the last fifteen minutes or so. Halfway along, Veronica ducked the bike nimbly round a car that was pulling slowly out of a parking space, and I noticed that our back wheel stayed flat on the ground while the rest of the bike tilted over and then back up again. Talk about keeping maximum rubber on the road. This thing must corner like a dream! Which was fortunate I realized when I looked ahead again, because we were approaching an unforgivingly solid concrete wall at breakneck speed!

  My heart pounded even more wildly while my adrenal glands served up more of their specialty dish. A moment later they started dishing out seconds when the unusually loud whoosh of missiles reached my ears. I threw a fearful look behind us and wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified – this time there weren’t any lasers painting my back, but the two over-sized rockets blasting out of side-mounted tubes of the pursuing bikes made those puny ‘Target-lock laser-guided missiles’ look like kiddies’ toys!

  “Left,” Veronica shouted obscurely, and I somehow grasped her warning. At this speed, if I leaned the wrong way when we turned, I’d be flung from the bike like a marble from a slingshot!

  I leaned steeply to the left while both she and the entire body of the bike did likewise. My left hip skimmed along centimetres above the ground as we flew round the corner at a speed that would have sent any normal bike skittering across the concrete to become a permanent fixture in the wall. A second later we shot into a pedestrian tunnel just as the missiles hit the wall behind us.

  The explosion was unbelievable! Flames billowed out through the confined spaces, consuming the area in a searing, deadly heat, and the noise felt like someone was hammering on my eardrums. Thanks to our brute of a bike, however, we managed to outrun the bulk of the blast wave.

  A few seconds later, when I peered back at the aftermath, I felt a deep admiration for the engineers who’d designed this car park. I’d been imagining the whole thing collapsing in on itself, but somehow the structure held despite the utter devastation which had just been visited upon it.

  Relieved that the whole place hadn’t come crashing down around us, but hoping the explosion had taken out the bikie chicks, I turned to peer ahead over Veronica’s right shoulder. The narrow, brightly-lit pedestrian tunnel we were flying along kept going straight for a hundred metres or so and I noticed it had a set of steps leading up to the left about halfway along. A few panicked people were racing towards them and I couldn’t resist a dry smile as I wondered if their eagerness to get out of there was due to the massive explosion or the hog of a bike screaming along the underground passageway towards them! Possibly both, I decided as the last of them leapt from the tunnel and scampered up the steps just as we rocketed past.

  When I looked ahead again, we were approaching a T-junction way too fast to stop! Then Veronica slammed on the brakes and they bit hard – much harder than I’d thought possible. Of course - I’d forgotten about the phenomenal gripping power of that monstrous back tyre! Even so, I found I had to squeeze the bike hard between my legs to keep from shoving Veronica forwards off the bike as my momentum did its best to send both of us careering into the wall ahead!

  A second later we veered into the left branch of the intersecting tunnel and I waited for Veronica to slam the throttle forwards and get us out of there. Instead, she caught me completely by surprise when she kept the bike turning hard left through 180 degrees and along a short ramp that sloped up beside the tunnel we’d just come out of. She caught me even more off guard when she stopped!

  “What are you doing?” I demanded incredulously. Now that the bellow of our engine had died away, over its throaty idling I could clearly hear the distant sound of the other two bikes roaring towards us along the tunnel, their riders having clearly escaped the worst of the explosion too.

  In a flash, Veronica was off the bike and stepping over to the wall on the far side of the corridor we’d just turned off. Ignoring my question, she whipped something from her pocket and pushed it against the wall. Then, still holding the object, she stepped back to my side of the tunnel and slammed it hard against the wall. This time it stuck.

  “Improving our odds,” she said.

  Puzzled, I peered closely at the device while she slipped back onto our bike and gunned the engine. Just before we leapt forwards up the ramp, I made out a hair-thin thread leading back across the opening to a small, grey dot on the far side.

  We were ten metres away and already moving fast when the first bikie chick came round the corner and her front wheel hit the trigger-line. I was looking back at the time, so I got a crystal clear view of what happened. The device she’d just triggered must have been a cleverly directed charge on a very slight delay, ‘cause she managed to get her bike halfway through the opening before it exploded towards her. I’d expected yet another powerful, uncontrolled explosion, so at first I thought the thing must have miss-fired. There was a surprisingly soft bang accompanied by a thick cloud of smoke as the detonation fanned out vertically in a thin, directed line. Then, as I worried about how many more of those rockets the woman might have on board, her bike skidded from the smoke and toppled onto the ground in two halves.

  It was as if some giant chainsaw had just sliced the thing cleanly in two about halfway along!

  I felt pretty sure I’d have recurring nightmares about what the charge had done to the rider of the bike. It helped a bit to remind myself that, just thirty seconds ago, bike-chick had tried to blow us into a million pieces. And that, technically, that meant Veronica had been 999,998 pieces less nasty to her. All in all, I suppose you could say she got off quite lightly!

  Despite my efforts to laugh it off, however, I swallowed uncomfortably and turned to peer dully ahead. That was the end of any lingering doubts I’d had that this game we were caught up in was deadly serious and that Veronica had come ready to play. I probably should have felt sick. Instead, as I thought some more about it, I felt a massive sense of relief. For the first time, I dared to think that maybe we could actually beat these crazed killers and live to see another day.

  Then I remembered the second biker and realized I couldn’t afford to think too far into the future. All that mattered was staying alive from second to second … and taking out the rest of those maniacs before they turned us into worm food!

  *****

  11

  Moments later, we blasted out of the tunnel and turned right onto Melbourne Street. Just ahead, the Victoria Bridge arched gently away from us, over the River towards the Queen Street Mall. In different circumstances, I might have dwelt on the fact that this madness had all started about a kilometre and a half dead ahead of us, on the far side of that Mall. As it was, I was too preoccupied with all the cars driving straight at us! Not to mention the fact that we were trapped on the wrong side
of the road by a concrete and glass barricade to our left, which ran along the centre of the bitumen for another fifty metres.

  Veronica didn’t seem at all fazed by the wave of cars racing towards us, their occupants no doubt made reckless by their desire to get away from all those explosions around the CBD. In fact, she continued to accelerate as she dodged left, past the first car. The squeal of skidding car tyres filled the air as she zigzagged smoothly past four more. Then we were on the bridge, past the end of the barrier, and crossing onto the left side of the road.

  I let a relieved sigh go just before I spotted a bus about fifty metres ahead, coming at us way too fast. It was one of those ‘stretch buses’ that are like two separate buses joined in the middle by a concertinaed section. What made my heart skip a beat, however, was the unmistakable figure of the driver - Baseball Cap Man had found us!

  I saw his mouth twist into an evil grin as he wrenched the wheel hard over. The bus veered sharply to the right … too sharply … and began to tip. Seconds later it was sliding along the road on its side, stretching all way from one edge of the Bridge to the other, thick showers of sparks spraying out where the metal sides ground along the rough bitumen. There was no way past. But at least I knew we could just turn around and ride away from it.

  Then, over the grinding scraping racket of the sliding bus, I heard several bursts of gunfire and noticed windows shattering all over the side of the bus which now faced skywards. A moment later, bad-guys’ heads started popping from the smashed windows like rabbits from a warren! Well, not quite like that I guess, since rabbits don’t usually pull evil-looking guns out of their burrows with them!

  Now I knew we were in trouble. Even if we turned back, we’d look like sieves before we made it ten metres. When I glanced at Veronica, however, she didn’t look at all defeated. Instead, while I’d been enjoying the ‘evil bunny show’, she’d pulled up her sleeve and raised her arm to point at a lamp-post ahead and to our right. A moment later, just as had happened back on Kurilpa Bridge, something shot from what I could now see was a gun-like device strapped to her forearm. I heard the dull clang of it hitting the lamp-post and only managed to spot the almost invisible thread stretching from her arm to the post because I knew it was there.

  At the same time, the fingers of Veronica’s other hand had been dancing across a keypad at the centre of the handlebars. My concern over the fact that this meant neither of her hands were on the handlebars quickly paled into insignificance when three words started flashing on a small display at the top of the panel: “SELF-DESTRUCT ON IMPACT”!

  “Hold tight!” she ordered.

  I strengthened my grip around her waist an instant before we passed the lamp post and the cord dragged us smoothly from the bike, arcing us round to the right. The g-forces built rapidly as we swung up and round, barely clearing the railings before flying out over the edge of the bridge. I could hear the sound of about five automatics firing simultaneously and I grimaced, expecting to feel a succession of sickening impacts. But when I glanced round I discovered Baseball Cap man and his mates had correctly guessed that right now the bike was far more of a threat than we were. Thankfully, they were all desperately firing at it instead of us.

  I guess the front of the speeding motorbike must have been heavily reinforced, since they didn’t have a lot of success with triggering the bomb early. Unfortunately though, just before it tore into the centre of the bus, I saw Baseball Cap Man scramble from the shattered front windscreen and hurl himself up and out over the edge of the bridge. He was one guy I’d really have preferred to see taken out of the equation.

  While he dropped out of sight on the far side of the bridge, the intense g-force I’d felt as we swung round the lamp-post abruptly vanished, and while I listened to the rapid whir of the line reeling back in, Veronica and I began to fall. I completely missed what must have been a pretty impressive fireball ‘cause my head instinctively whipped round to see where we were going to land … and how many limbs I was likely to break. Lots, I immediately realised. A moment later we crashed into the top of a tree while the enormous boom of the bike and bus exploding together drowned out the sound of its upper branches giving way under our combined weight. At least they were the kind of limbs I didn’t mind breaking. And I felt suddenly glad I’d worn jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, otherwise my legs and arms would have been shredded as we crashed down through the branches. As it was, I got little more than a nasty cut on my left hand before we finally lost our momentum and came to rest in the more sturdy lower branches.

  Without pausing, Veronica scrambled down onto a staircase just below us that lead up the side of a very old-looking rock structure. I quickly followed her lead and a few seconds later we emerged from the stairs onto a rough, rectangular concrete platform. She bolted towards an archway perched on top and while I followed closely I glanced sideways at a plaque attached to the side of the arch. I wasn’t surprised to see it was a bronze relief of a young boy’s face – I’d already realised we were now standing on the last remaining section of the original Victoria Bridge, which had been left standing as a monument to an eleven-year-old boy who’d been accidentally killed near here around the end of World War I. My year six class had been here a few years back as part of a ‘History of Brisbane’ excursion and now, as we raced by, I was intrigued to spot the faded remnants of Joey Spettini’s chewing gum still wedged beneath the plaque where I’d watched him carelessly shove it so long ago.

  While I marvelled at Joey’s spearmint legacy, I turned to Veronica and was surprised to discover her growing shorter! When I glanced down at her feet, I realised it was because she was disappearing into the ground on a small platform. Hurriedly, I jumped down beside her, and while we descended swiftly into darkness, I glanced nervously about in search of bad-guys. Thankfully, there were none in sight. Moments later, when a trapdoor slid silently into place above our heads, the unwelcome thought popped into my head that it felt like I was descending into a grave … and that there’d be plenty of room for a second plaque up there on that arch - say, one to a fourteen-year-old boy killed by a hoard of mysterious assassins on this very day!

  *****

  12

  I suspected the chamber we were now in hadn’t been part of the original bridge specifications, but there was absolutely no doubt about the car that was crouched beside us. I was pretty sure nothing like it could exist now, let alone back when the original bridge was built! Like the other machines which Veronica kept mysteriously stumbling across, it was made of bare shiny metal, glinting faintly in the dull, greenish lights that had come on at various points around the chamber. The mere sight of it brought an ecstatic smile to my lips. Narrow and short, it seemed barely big enough to encase two seats side-by-side and, presumably, a motor at the back (though it must have been impossibly small to fit into the available space). Although the vehicle sat higher on its surprisingly wide wheels than any racing car normally would, it seemed likely that someone equipped with a particularly efficient wind-tunnel had abandoned their family and friends for countless hours to perfect its streamlining. As I stared at it in awe, I had the giddying feeling it was capable of things I’d only ever dreamed of.

  Still smiling, I reached for the door and climbed in as Veronica stepped round to the driver’s side. While I settled into the steeply-reclined, black leather seat, she squeezed in beside me and I became suddenly, and very acutely, aware of her faint but deeply intoxicating perfume.

  “We should be okay here for a while,” she told me softly, and I noticed an odd inflection in her voice. When I turned to look at her I saw a confused jumble of emotions playing across her face. Our eyes met and for a moment there was electricity in the air again. Then she frowned and abruptly turned to peer ahead through the windscreen.

  I frowned too. Besides a vague hint of fear and her usual air of gritty determination, I was sure I’d detected an unfathomable sadness in her big, beautiful eyes. Yet the overriding impression I’d received was of a fier
ce, thinly veiled sense of longing. It instantly brought back the words that had never been far from my dazed mind since she’d spoken them: “I’m your wife.”

  “Veronica … why do you think we’re m ... married?” I asked, surprised to discover my voice sounded strangely husky, like hers, while I forced the final bizarre word out.

  I watched her smile silently to herself while she peered ahead through the windscreen at the rough, dimly lit rock wall. It was clear that she was seeing something quite different in her mind’s eye.

  “I remember when I first met you,” she began obscurely, “as if it was only yesterday.” Her voice sounded kind of dreamy, and there was a hint of laughter, as if she found the thought amusing somehow. Naturally, I assumed it was because she was joking about remembering when she first met me. We both knew it had been less than half-an-hour ago! She couldn’t possibly have forgotten if she’d tried!

  “You seemed so terribly sad,” she continued. “And at first you just stared oddly at me, as if you were looking straight through me. Then your eyes suddenly focused on mine and you smiled so warmly that it felt like the sun had risen inside me.”

  She smiled again and it was such a genuine look of joy that it left me feeling deeply shaken and confused. That wasn’t how I remembered it at all! By my reckoning, I would have had a look of absolute shock and horror when I’d seen her for the first time, as I’d stumbled across the pedestrian crossing and she pulled out that mean-looking gun of hers!

  As if reality was quite irrelevant to her, Veronica’s expression stayed like that for long seconds before she gave a sudden, girlish giggle.

  “You know, ever since I was a little girl, I’d always imagined some incredibly romantic marriage proposal … perhaps at the top of the Eiffel Tower … or over a candle-lit dinner in a beautiful garden somewhere.”