1 Life 2 Die 4

by Dean Waite

  I made the mistake of thinking about how I should spend my last half-second on Earth … and nearly used it all up in the process. After that, I didn’t even have time to lean over and kiss the delectable lips that were pursed in concentration beside me.

  Feeling seriously disappointed, I braced myself for the shattering impact of the first missile...

  Instead, a roar filled my ears and a powerful force shoved me down as if a giant hand was pushing me hard into my seat. I was completely disorientated for a second. Then I glanced out the window and realised I was feeling the g-force caused by our mini-car suddenly blasting upwards into the air! We were already high enough to see the tank Veronica had predicted, waiting in ambush about twenty metres back from the far side of the wall. And sadly, my relief at getting out of the way of the missiles died abruptly - judging by the way our vertical motion was already slowing, we’d soon be falling back toward the bridge and we were going to land almost directly in front of that tank! Whatever kind of rocket propulsion system this thing had, apparently it wasn’t powerful enough to keep us in the air for any decent length of time.

  I peered down at the tank, recalling the one we had scuffled with in the Piazza. I imagined the gunner licking his lips as he watched us nearing the top of our flight-path and realised his gun was already pointing at the exact spot where we we’d soon be touching down. At the press of a button, one of its powerful explosive shells would rip through our car, turning it into a wasted wreck!

  I felt my stomach rise into my mouth as we reached the top of our flight-path and began falling. Then I heard the sound I’d been dreading: an enormous ‘BOOM’ that blasted up through the air around us. I didn’t need to look back to work out that the six beefy missiles had just turned the massive rock wall into a million deadly projectiles that were now hurtling out through the air in all directions. Naturally, I was thankful it was the wall that had been blown to bits, rather than our car. But considering we were flying through the air not far from where the pile of huge rocks had been, I knew we were in for one hell of a battering from the shrapnel, even before we landed and got blown to bits by the tank!

  Then I saw it. I’d been so fixated on the tank, I hadn’t noticed that just ahead of us was the beginning of a steel roof which ran along the middle of the bridge. A tentative smile grew on my face as our car flew forwards and landed on top of it, bouncing a little before racing away to the sound of deadly chunks of the obliterated boulder wall smashing into the metal sheeting beneath our wheels. I imagined the gunner in the tank below swearing as he struggling to bring his gun up and over, and to guess exactly where our car was on the roof above him.

  “Nice trick,” I complimented Veronica, thankful that our rocket-powered escape seemed to have worked.

  “Liquid fuel rocket boosters,” she told me in her usual understated manner.

  The next moment, I jumped as the roof just ahead of us exploded leaving a jagged, gaping hole. Luckily for us, the tank’s gunner had misjudged our speed. But as our wheels raced either side of the void and we sped on, we both knew he’d caught a glimpse of our car and that it would give him a pretty clear idea of where to fire next time.

  Of course, Veronica wasn’t about to make it easy for him. I felt our car slow dramatically as she applied the brakes. A moment later the roof ahead of us exploded at the exact spot we would have been.

  Once again, we gave the tank a sneak-peek at our motion as we drove over the hole. This time, as soon as we passed it Veronica slammed her foot down hard on the accelerator. The machine leapt forward and a half-second later the roof blew apart just behind us while we thanked our lucky stars the trick had worked again. Better still, with the hole behind us this time, the tank’s occupants wouldn’t get a glimpse of our speed as we hurtled onwards, making it harder to judge the next shot.

  “Don’t panic,” Veronica said calmly.

  I turned questioningly towards her, but when she just continued to stare fiercely ahead through the windscreen, I followed her eyes ... and realised what she meant. Ahead of us, the roof we were travelling along ended abruptly. Thirty metres further on, I could see where another section of roof continued on across the bridge, but for some reason the designers had apparently thought it would be a really neat idea to leave a thirty-metre gap (perhaps in support of the local umbrella industry, I thought wryly). I knew that when we dropped back to the road, we’d be sitting ducks for that tank, along with any of the jeeps and bikes that had made it past the wreckage of the boulder wall.

  When I looked back at Veronica, she’d already finished using the steering wheel keypad again. This time the display read ‘40mh’ and all of a sudden I clicked what it meant: ‘40 metres horizontally’. And ‘6mv’ must have meant ‘6 metres vertically’. The rocket booster control system must be programmed so you just have to input a horizontal or vertical distance. From there, it apparently knew enough about projectile motion to work out exactly how much thrust was needed. I remembered learning about projectile motion in Science and just had time to think about how much better our class might have done on the test if Mr Edgerton had had access to a car like this to demonstrate some of the concepts … then Veronica hit a red button at the side of the display and I was smashed into the seat again as the car leapt into the sky.

  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!