1 Life 2 Die 4 (14 page)

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!

I was sure we were both done for – no matter
how nightmarish he looked, the guy couldn’t possibly miss from that
range…

Then he let out the most awful sound I’ve
ever heard … a sort of mournful, agonised groan that made every
hair on my body stand on end. And while we stood there mesmerised,
his entire body just crumbled into a mushy heap, as if it was made
up of hundreds of small chunks that weren’t even connected!

From what Veronica had told me about detailed
objects requiring more energy to send through Time, I guessed
Sahissi mustn’t have had enough juice left to do the job properly.
But true to form, he’d done it anyway and this was the grisly
result.

For precious moments, we both stood there,
transfixed by the revolting pile of flesh, blood and bone spreading
across the aisle in front us. Then Veronica finally snapped out of
it and went to step carefully past. At the same moment, I heard
footsteps to our right and realised Baseball Cap Man had caught
up.

“Duck!” I yelled as I threw myself forward
and dragged Veronica to the ground behind the low shelves
separating us from the muscle-bound killer. At the same time, the
air around us exploded with heavy gunfire and the terrifying sound
of shelving and their contents disintegrating grew steadily nearer.
I estimated we had maybe three seconds until it reached us and
changed into the far more terrifying sound of our bodies
disintegrating!

Obviously realising the same thing, Veronica
turned to me and hurriedly motioned back the way we’d come. With
shattered pieces of electrical equipment and shelving spewing
through the air above us, I didn’t need any more hints. Crouching
low, I bolted back along the aisle while Baseball Cap Man
obliterated the shelving we’d been hiding behind.

After fifteen seconds of mayhem, the area
fell into a sudden, deep silence, broken only by the dull metallic
clicks of a weapon which had obviously run out of ammunition. A
moment later, the heavy thump of the useless ‘cannon’ being dropped
to the ground echoed throughout the department store.

Shortly afterwards, Veronica and I were
hiding in the kitchen appliances section, nervously listening to
the clump, clump, clump of the killer’s approaching footsteps.

*****

22

I knew there was simply no way a guy that size could
walk silently. Yet the inordinate amount of noise he was making as
he stalked after us soon had me wondering whether he was one of
those creeps who aren’t content just to kill their prey - they have
to ‘play’ with it … as if terrorising living things gives them some
kind of primitive thrill.

On the other hand, I guessed he might merely
be trying to make us panic and break cover.

Either way, it didn’t really matter. Whatever
his motivation, Veronica had told me to stay put, so there was no
way I was budging an inch.

I was still terrified though. I’d known it
would be scary sitting there helplessly waiting for him to find me.
Yet I was shocked at just how nerve-wracking it was listening to
the slow measured footsteps of the enormous killer gradually
drawing closer and closer to my hiding place. As hard as I tried, I
found it almost impossible not to imagine what those powerful arms
of his could do to my body … and how much pain it would cause
me.

When I heard him enter the aisle, my legs
started shaking and I knew I simply had to distract myself or I’d
panic and try to run. So, mustering every ounce of creativity I
had, I summoned a mental picture of Veronica standing in a
figure-hugging black leather suit in front of a warm, crackling
fire. Then I imagined her slowly unzipping the suit all the way
down the front…

It almost worked too well! I had her standing
there right in front of me with the suit dangling from her smooth,
shapely knees onto a soft, white sheepskin rug … when all of a
sudden I realised the footsteps were coming from pretty much
directly in front of the fridge door that I’d opened and pulled
back to make a hidey-hole between two large refrigerators!

The glorious vision vanished in an instant,
and I felt a sudden, unexpected surge of anger. I
really
wanted to kill the guy for disturbing that particular daydream! Of
course, if I’d been able to see him peering at the toes of my shoes
poking out from beneath the fridge door … well, I just might have
wet myself instead.

A moment later, when I heard him wrench the
door open, I gave him the game show ‘wrong answer’ tone.

“Er, urrrrr!”

The guy barely had time to discover my feet
weren’t actually inside my shoes anymore before he instinctively
spun towards the sound and peered up in surprise. Having just
climbed up onto the second top shelf in the adjacent aisle, where
I’d previously been hiding between two stoves, I was now leaning
over into his aisle with my arm outstretched, finger poised on the
trigger.

Before he could react, I let him have it …
right in the face!

Of course, the jet of hot air from the hair
dryer I was holding didn’t do a whole lot of damage. In fact, it
didn’t even upset that stupid hairdo of his. But it did have the
desired effect. Hardly believing his eyes, the big brute just stood
there blinking for a couple of seconds, unable to comprehend what
was happening.