1 Life 2 Die 4

by Dean Waite

  Now that we had moved out from the cover of the balcony, I looked round and my heart sank - the section of wall that had forced us out here wasn’t the only one that had appeared. Another one led away at right-angles from the first one, blocking our way back under the balcony for another four metres or so. We began shuffling towards the far end of that section, bullets still slamming loudly into our shield with every step. Then I blinked as another section of wall appeared next to the second one, blocking off a further four metres! Before I could say anything, another appeared beyond it … then another … and another!

  By now, alarm bells were ringing deafeningly in my head as I watched the wall spread away from us like it was nothing more than a huge computer graphic being copied and pasted across a screen! On a sudden whim, I snatched up a nearby chair and swung it hard at the wall beside us. Perhaps it wasn’t actually as solid as it looked…

  Bad idea. The chair rebounded and almost knocked me over. The vibrations jarred my wrists and elbows and rattled my teeth till I thought they would drop out! That was certainly no computer graphic! And there was no way we were getting through it without either a big wad of C4 or a very large bulldozer.

  Feeling dumb, I dropped the chair and did my best to avoid eye contact with Veronica, focussing instead on the rapidly-growing wall which was progressively cutting off our way back under cover. Then movement to the right caught my eye and I looked round to find a second wall was growing along the far side of the food hall! Almost as fast as my eyes could follow, the sections of magically appearing wall swiftly closed in on each other from opposite sides.

  Moments later, they met, completely blocking our way forwards!

  “Time to retreat,” I whispered nervously. But when I turned back I got an even bigger shock: the same thing had obviously been happening behind us! The mysterious wall now ran all the way round the edge of the open food court, completely sealing us inside!

  “I feel like a Christian waiting for the lions to be released,” I breathed nervously, even more acutely aware that if anyone appeared up on the opposite balconies, we’d have no chance out here with only a single shield to protect us.

  It didn’t help my nerves when I peered back at Snake Eyes and noticed his mouth moving as if he was talking to someone. A split second later, Veronica glanced up and yanked me sideways as a lump of rock the size of my head smashed into the tiled floor right where I’d been standing!

  “That probably would’ve hurt,” I whispered dryly, trying my best to appear cool, calm and collected while my heart raced. Then I glanced up and nearly had a heart attack - directly above us, a boulder the size of a large refrigerator was dropping towards us in much the same way that a large refrigerator would drop towards us!

  Without a word Veronica lunged forwards, dragging me with her.

  A moment later, I glanced back and saw the mammoth boulder smash onto the tables and chairs we’d bolted past, the flimsy furniture disintegrating as the rock pulverised it into the floor. Powerful vibrations rippled up through my feet like the shockwave from an earthquake, and for a moment I thought the boulder might continue on through into the lower level, perhaps even cracking the floor enough to send us down with it.

  But somehow the floor held.

  Relieved to still be alive, I looked up and blanched when I saw another boulder, even bigger than the last, dropping towards the floor ahead of us. We veered sharply away, further out into the open, and watched in awe as the monolith crushed a steel drink vending machine like it was nothing more than a single flimsy aluminium Coke can! Once again, powerful shockwaves rippled out across the reinforced concrete floor, this time accompanied by geysers of brown, fizzing Coke gushing out across the floor.

  When I tore my attention from the devastation, I realised we were getting ourselves deeper into trouble. The tables and chairs were more densely packed out here in the middle of the food court, and Veronica was finding it increasingly difficult to navigate through them with the riot-shield.

  Without warning, she stopped and whipped out that vicious looking pistol of hers. In the blink of an eye she’d levelled it round the side of the shield at Snake Eyes and fired. At the same time, I glanced up and saw something dropping towards us again, but this time it was so big it took me a moment to register what it was. When I did, my jaw nearly hit the floor. An entire four by two-and-a-half metre section of concrete wall, like the ones that had trapped us in here, was falling towards us on its side!

  Without hesitation, Veronica dropped the shield and we bolted through a gap in the tables, hurling ourselves forwards, diving as far as we could and praying we wouldn’t feel the crushing weight of the concrete slab flattening our legs behind us like blobs of Playdough under a sledgehammer.

  Ironically, after having slowed us down so much, the thing that saved us was all the furniture. Its combined strength slowed the slab’s fall by the extra three or four milliseconds we needed to get our feet completely clear. As I hit the floor and slid, I heard multiple metal rods snapping and groaning and the crunch of wood dissolving into splintered dust. Then a gush of air hit me and an enormous boooommmm echoed through the cavernous open area.

  We were alive, but I wasn’t about to celebrate. In the instant after the impact I couldn’t help thinking our escape was pointless. Snake Eyes must already be taking aim, preparing to fill us with lead now that our shield – our only protection - lay crushed beneath the section of wall! If Veronica was three times as fast as I thought, she might be able to fire up her shield-field in time to save herself. But I knew it was game over for me. I was simply too far away for her to protect me as well.

  Hell … even if we didn’t get shot, with the help of Snake Eyes’ directions they’d be sending another of those humungous slabs down on top of us any moment now!

  I knew we were done for. Yet I rolled to the side as fast as I could, determined to make it as hard as possible for Sahisi. I was already on my feet when I registered that not only were there no bullets ripping through my body, but the whole area had descended into an eerie silence.

  Confused, I flicked my eyes up to Snake Eyes … and saw a motionless arm pressed awkwardly against the bottom of the glass railing where he’d been standing. It took a second for my brain to catch up with everything … then I realised: Veronica’s single, hurried shot must have caught him off-guard and found its mark, leaving Snake Eyes stretched out on the ground, where all good snakes belonged.

  “Awesome shot,” I complemented her. “What do we do n…?”

  The rest of my question was drowned amidst a tremendous din like rolling thunder. Amidst the roar, I felt the floor tremble beneath my feet as if a frightening number of very heavy, very hard objects were slamming into things and doing untold damage to them.

  When I spun round, I was confronted by one of the most astonishing sights I’d ever witnessed. At the far end of the walled in area, a row of rocks the size of basketballs lay embedded in the floor, all the way from one side to the other, amidst shattered chunks of furniture; while above them, and slightly closer to us, a second row of similar rocks was plummeting toward the next line of tables and chairs. A second later, when this second row impacted and sent pieces of mangled furniture flying about through the air, another row was already dropping from above and just ahead of the previous one. When I looked up, I saw yet another row materialise three storeys above and begin its lethal descent. Each row was perhaps half-a-metre closer to us than the previous one, leaving no hiding space untouched.

  The entire walled-in area was being systematically sterilised!

  “Come on,” Veronica yelled above the deafening racket. But I was already moving, having cleverly worked out all by myself that we needed to get away from the plummeting lines of deadly boulders!

  I’d never seen or heard anything like it in my life. Whenever I threw a glance over my shoulder, there were always about four rows of boulders stretching right across the plaza, each at a different stage of their descent. And as soon as
one row smashed into the floor, another would appear about eight metres up and half a metre closer, to begin its deadly dive. It gave the disturbing impression of a massive wave of destruction bearing down on us as we bolted towards the far wall. And I knew that when the wave of rock reached that wall, nothing would be left alive anywhere within the walled-in food court!

  I could easily guess why it was happening. Having lost Snake Eyes’ updates on our position, but knowing we were trapped inside the walled-in area, Sahissi had decided on the far less subtle approach of obliterating absolutely everything within the walls. And right now I couldn’t help thinking he was doing a damned impressive job of it!

  I felt a glimmer of hope as a sudden thought occurred to me: perhaps he would run out of energy before he completed his methodical demolition. Then movement up to our left caught my eye and I swore. It wouldn’t matter anyway: running along the second floor balcony was a hulking figure with an almost bald head and a gun that looked as if a tank driver somewhere must be wondering who’d stolen his cannon. Baseball Cap Man had found us again!

  *****

  20

  As we sprinted away from the mind-numbing roar of the lethal wave of rock, I watched Baseball Cap Man smile and raise his enormous gun towards us. Just our luck - apparently he was one of those proactive types who liked to dive straight in and get the job done! I’d hoped he might at least kick back and wait to see if his bosses plan worked first. Instead, he was taking full advantage of the fact that we were restricted to running flat out in a dead-straight line to avoid being caught and flattened like road-kill by the unending cascade of boulders. It was hard to believe things had just gotten worse, but they had. A child could probably have made the shot (though the entire under-tens footy team wouldn’t have had a chance in Hell of handling that ludicrously over-sized weapon of his!)

  As he swung the barrel towards us, I heard a familiar short sharp sound from beside me, like a powerful electrical discharge. Once I’d whipped my head round, I saw Veronica’s arm raised towards the roof and a thin line rapidly playing out from somewhere up her sleeve.

  “Grab on!” she yelled over the bellowing crash of the wave of rock which was now almost on top of us.

  I swerved towards her and locked my arms around her narrow waist yet again before my eyes followed the line upwards, searching for the tiny hemisphere I knew was attached to the end of it. I couldn’t see it from here, but when the line suddenly went taught and we began lifting off the ground, I knew it had found its mark somewhere on the ceiling five storeys above us, and that the tiny motor was swiftly reeling the line back in.

  Desperately hoping the change in direction would throw Baseball Cap Man’s aim, I looked up just as the next row of rocks appeared directly above our heads and began their descent. We were now being lifted towards them as they accelerated down at us, effectively doubling their closing speed!

  But we also had the forward momentum we’d built up from running. As the row of boulders plummeted towards us and we flew upwards, we were also swinging forwards on the line. A heartbeat later I felt a gush of air and the closest of the deadly row of rocks shot past us, one of them smacking into my shoes on its way past. Thankfully, in mid-air there was nothing for it to grind my foot against, so I copped little more than a jarring bump before we continued on our way, sailing upwards and forwards while the rocks obliterated yet another row of tables and chairs beneath us.

  I’d already noticed the four parallel rows of escalators running diagonally up to the left across the otherwise open space ahead of us. Now when I looked up I realised we were accelerating towards them at a frightening rate! In the usual, thoughtful way of these guys, Baseball Cap Man tried to distract us from the danger by sending several large and lethally fast chunks of lead zooming past within centimetres of us. A second later, when he stopped shooting and headed for the lift, I looked back to discover we were a couple of seconds from smashing squarely into the side of the top escalator!

  Of course, being in front, Veronica would bear the brunt of the impact. But besides this thought giving me no joy at all, I realised the bones in both my arms (which were clutched tightly together in front of her) would also be shattered and my grip would fail. After I’d completed the gut-churning drop back to the ground floor, I’d look more like a blob of tomato sauce than anything human. Then the wave of boulders would reach me…

  There was nothing I could do but stare in horror as we hurtled towards the solid side wall of the top escalator. Well, there was one other thing, I realised: I could close my eyes and think about the incredible body my arms were wrapped around. Sadly, I’d barely begun to do this when I realised our motion had changed. Snapping them open again, I discovered Veronica was somehow slowing the play of the cord, subtly changing out direction so that we were now heading more forward than up, straight at the gap between the top two escalators.

  My relief didn’t last long once I realised we were actually no better off. If she was planning to jump onto the lower escalator as we flew through the gap, she was kidding herself. She could play around with our direction, but we had no way of slowing ourselves, and at the speed we were now moving, we’d be slammed into the far railing before we’d even dropped far enough to land on the escalator. I had a sudden flashback to the movie ‘George of the Jungle’, with George swinging headlong into yet another tree. Unfortunately, I knew his repeated rapid recoveries belied the truth that such impacts would, at the very least, see him left unconscious for hours before spending weeks in intensive care. And sadly, the metal railing of the escalators looked even more unyielding than rainforest trees.

  As we reached the gap, the whole cavernous mall suddenly fell into an eerie silence, the wave of crashing boulders having presumably completed their brutal demolition of the area behind and below us.

  “Don’t let go!” Veronica urged abruptly, her voice sounding startlingly loud amidst the sudden, unnatural silence now blanketing the deserted shopping arcade.

  Of course, I had no intention of doing so, having already decided it would result in every bone in my body being shattered against the far railing. But it didn’t take much thought to realise holding on was going to be equally as painful. Our thin supporting line was just about to hit the side of the escalator above us, so in a moment we’d be whipped straight up into its concrete underside! I wondered if we’d end up embedded in it forever, like a couple of old dinosaur fossils. But even if we bounced off and dropped onto the lower escalator - and somehow survived – I knew we’d be lucky to regain consciousness before Baseball Cap Man arrived to show us a close-up view of that outrageous gun of his.

  I gritted my teeth as we shot into the gap between the two escalators. Then I heard the whir of the tiny motor again and realised Veronica was now cleverly playing the line out, allowing our momentum to carry us straight through between the two escalators. A split-second later, when we came out the far side, the whirring stopped and my momentum almost yanked me free as we whipped up and over - like a yo-yo going ‘round-the-World’. As we arced upwards, gravity slowed us enough that when we were finally dumped in an awkward heap on the slowly moving steps of the top escalator, we avoided serious injury.

  It took me a moment to realise I was now lying on top of Veronica’s back with my head resting on her wonderful backside while the escalator carried us slowly up towards the top floor. And just as had happened back in the room beside the railway tunnel, despite our perilous situation I felt instantly and acutely aware of every single point of contact between myself and that magical body of hers.

  “Go, go, go!” she urged, snapping me back to reality, and despite her slightly husky voice, I had enough of my wits about me to realise she wasn’t coming on to me.

  At the same time, I heard a soft click and noticed the thin line which had supported us drop to the floor, obviously severed from the contraption on her arm by some built-in cutting mechanism she’d activated so we could make a swift escape. With the line gone, we wouldn’t be
doing any more Tarzan impressions today.

  Scrambling to my feet, I noticed Veronica seemed stunned, as if she might have hit her head when she’d landed. I quickly helped her up while throwing a hasty look over my shoulder … and spotting Baseball Cap Man rising slowly into view inside one of the glass elevators, still holding that ridiculous gun of his that would have had a casual observer thinking he was out hunting dinosaurs.

  I caught a fleeting glimpse of Veronica’s gun lying three steps below us before I spun back and began helping Veronica up the slowly moving escalator steps. We were four steps away and moving fast when the glass lift wall exploded under the impact of a cascade of brutal, oversized shells.

  Moments later, while the escalator behind us shook violently at the powerful impacts, we reached the top and crouched as low as we could while we scrambled frantically for the Myer entrance.

  *****

  21

  We both knew Baseball Cap Man was only seconds behind us as we bolted into the store and veered right along a railing which ran around a second escalator shaft. The escalators both left from the far side, and I could only hope Veronica wasn’t planning to lead us round to them. By the time we got there Baseball Cap Man would almost certainly be turning us into mush with his mega-gun.

  We were sprinting forward along the aisle when Veronica abruptly skidded to a halt and I barely managed to stop before slamming into her. Confused, I peered over her shoulder and spotted the reason for her sudden stop - just five metres ahead, a man had appeared in the centre of the aisle and was pointing a pistol straight at us! At least I think it was a man. He had two legs, a head and a body. But his left arm was half missing and blood was spurting from the end of the stump, splattering all over the white tiled floor in front of him! His face looked repulsive too – almost as if some gruesome surgeon had roughly divided it into small chunks before removing every other piece, rotating it through one-eighty degrees and sowing it back in place!