1 Life 2 Die 4 by Dean Waite Page B

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