1 Life 2 Die 4 by Dean Waite Read Free Book Online Page B

– not the shockwave - had been
responsible for the abrupt change of direction. A moment later the
roof disappeared beneath us and we were falling again, dropping off
the edge of the library towards the mouth of a tunnel leading under
the Victoria Bridge southern access. Ironically, this time I found
myself wishing we’d fall faster – if we didn’t get beneath the
level of the tunnel’s roof, we were both literally about to lose
our heads!
    I reckon Redhead must have been a pretty
caring kind of guy ‘cause he chose that exact moment to distract us
from our predicament. The air came alive with whistling chunks of
speeding lead, and in the space of a heartbeat I stopped worrying
about the danger ahead and focused instead on the swarm of bullets
whizzing past my ears. His thoughtfulness inspired both of us to
duck that little bit lower, and a moment later, the roof shot past
in a blur as we rocketed into the safety of the tunnel.
    Having already extended themselves, the wheel
stems once more absorbed the impact and once again it felt
for-all-the-world as if we’d landed on an invisible ramp rather
than hard, flat bitumen. Unfazed, we raced on through the short
tunnel, its rows of yellow lights zipping past in a hazy blur.
    “We’ve lost them this time!” I called
excitedly over the howl of the engine.
    “Nuh uh,” Veronica replied as she slammed on
the brakes and I was thrust roughly into her back. My chin came to
rest on her right shoulder, and from there I got a clear view of
the lethal looking pair of killers sitting astride silver and
purple motorcycles in the centre of the tunnel ahead of us. They
were everything Veronica wasn’t – short, stocky and bereft of any
trace of femininity. At first I even mistook them for guys.
    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