1 Life 2 Die 4 (15 page)

He’d just gotten himself together enough to
angrily snatch the dryer from my hand when the refrigerator hit him
square in the middle of the back. Our hastily formulated plan had
worked! From her hiding spot behind the second refrigerator,
Veronica had taken advantage of the covering noise from the dryer
to tilt the massive appliance right on top of him!

He grunted at the impact and a look of
shocked surprise crossed his big, ugly face as he toppled forwards
and was pinned against the floor and the shelving on my side of the
aisle.

For a second I thought he was dead. Then I
saw the fridge move and realised I’d been overly optimistic.

Without really thinking about what I was
doing, I scrambled onto the top shelf and leapt into the air like a
wrestling champ flying high for the kill! Then as the fridge began
tilting back up, I landed on it with all the force I could muster,
keeping my legs straight to maximize the impact.

I was only a feather-weight compared to
Baseball Cap Man. But the fact that he already had a Whirlpool 640
litre ‘frost free’ on top of him seemed to swing the balance in my
favour. The fridge abruptly dropped back down and a pained groan
emerged from beneath as it came to rest.

After topping the fridge, Veronica had moved
out into the aisle. Now she stood a couple of metres away to my
left and when I glanced at her, she flashed an admiring grin and a
wink up to where I was perched atop the fridge. I was struck yet
again by just how spectacular she looked, even with her clothes on!
More gorgeous than any woman I’d ever seen, and a thousand times
more full of life! Earlier today, I’d decided I’d be prepared to do
anything for Veronica … even die for her. Now, I was gripped by a
sudden and unwavering conviction that I would be insanely happy
spending the rest of my days with her … even if we were doomed to
share them with that lunatic Sahissi and his cronies.

I grinned back …just as Veronica’s smile
abruptly vanished to be inexplicably replaced by a defeated,
haunted kind of look that made absolutely no sense to me. I
shuddered as goose-bumps rippled over my skin. Considering we’d
just whipped our enemy’s butt, her devastated look seemed
completely out of place. Had I missed something vital?

I whipped my head round, convinced I’d find a
gun pointing at my head.

But the aisle was empty.

Then I felt the fridge wobble beneath me and
I suddenly remembered that if things were still going according to
plan, Veronica knew exactly what was about to happen. When I spun
back to stare into her deeply troubled eyes, I was seized by an
ominous sense of dread - what could she possibly know that had left
her looking so utterly shattered?

*****

23

“This way!” she screamed at me, and her voice held a
genuine, gut-wrenching fear I hadn’t heard before now.

She was obviously desperate to get away from
there. Yet for some reason she just stood at the end of the aisle
while I leapt down from the fridge and ran to meet her. After
guiding me past her she ran at my heels while we bolted off along
the aisle.

When I glanced back I was startled to see
Baseball Cap Man had already managed to scramble from beneath the
fridge and was now taking his first wobbly steps after us. He was
recovering fast though, regaining his balance and rapidly building
up speed as he lumbered towards us. We only had a lead of about ten
metres, and I couldn’t help feeling bitter that it would have been
at least a couple more if only Veronica hadn’t been so
condescending as to wait until I was past her before fleeing. That
couple of metres might end up making all the difference, yet she
had decided to treat me like some inept child who had to be herded
in the right direction! After everything we’d been through
together, I felt angry that she could still think so little of
me.

“Keep going straight,” she called from behind
me, and despite my irritation - and the powerful urge to get out of
Baseball Cap Man’s line of sight - I did as I was told.

Ten metres on, when I glanced over my
shoulder and caught a glimpse of Veronica’s face, an eerie tingle
ran up the back of my neck. Her expression had that same look of
inconsolable sadness I’d noticed in her eyes when we’d first
encountered each other on the zebra crossing earlier today - only
this time it was a thousand times stronger.

Baffled, and feeling increasingly nervous, I
turned back to see a small opening appearing in the wall up ahead.
As I sprinted towards it, I realised it was a small door sliding
upwards. Soon the opening would be big enough for us to fit
through, and although I had no idea where it led, I was sure
Veronica had opened it using one of her ‘tooth switches’ … and that
it was our only hope of salvation.

We bolted madly on through the kitchen
section, shelves full of pots and pans and all sort of kitchen
paraphernalia disappearing past in a blur as we closed on the small
opening. Then I was close enough and I dived head-first … sailing
through the air … hitting the polished floor … and sliding through
into darkness.

It came as a shock when my outstretched hands
hit a wall barely two metres inside the doorway. Thankfully, I
managed to absorb most of the impact with my arms before my head
slammed solidly into the wall.

Dazed, I looked back just as Veronica slid in
after me. I drew a sharp breath when I glanced past her. About
fifteen metres back, Baseball Cap Man was standing beside a shelf
full of kitchen utensils, clutching a fistful of knives and
grinning wickedly.

“Shut the door!” I yelled.

When the silence dragged on for an
interminable half-second, I peered down at Veronica. My eyes
suddenly widened and my heart felt as if it had stopped -
protruding from Veronica’s back was the solid, stainless-steel
handle of a large carving knife!

I was paralysed with horror, unable to even
blink as I stared down in disbelief.

This couldn’t be happening!

Then I caught movement from the corner of my
eye and glanced up to see Baseball Cap Man launch himself towards
us, racing for the small opening.

My survival instincts kicked in.

“Veronica - you have to tell me how to shut
the door!” I urged while I quickly rolled her onto her side,
desperately hoping there’d be time afterwards to stem the bleeding
before it was too late.

The moment I stared into her wide, lifeless
eyes, it felt like someone had reached inside my chest and ripped
out my heart.

Gutted, I reached round and yanked the knife
from Veronica’s back. I almost felt like plunging it into my own
chest. It was simply unbearable knowing she was gone … unthinkable
that she had come back through Time to save my life and that it had
cost her her own!

In a sudden flash of realisation, I
understood all of those sad, haunted looks I’d spotted during the
afternoon. The whole time, while we’d been trying to escape
Sahissi’s ruthless assassins, Veronica had known she was going to
die! Yet she’d doggedly stuck to the plan which I had personally
outlined to her in the future, refusing to take the risk that if
she tried to change things then I might end up being killed instead
of her!

On top of my devastation, I felt an
unbearable stab of guilt at my sadly misguided anger a few seconds
earlier when she’d waited for me to pass her before racing for the
safety of this tiny ‘panic room’. Now it was suddenly all too clear
- she’d knowingly placed her own back between mine and the deadly
knife which she knew Baseball Cap Man would hurl at us. She hadn’t
been condescending at all –
she’d been sacrificing her life for
mine!

Rage surged through my body as I looked up to
find the muscle-bound murderer of my gorgeous future wife
accelerating towards me with a fistful of evil-looking kitchen
knives in each hand. And more than anything I wanted to go to him –
to take the bloodied knife I held in my own hand and to do whatever
I could to avenge Veronica’s death!

I had already begun to rise before my brain
kicked into gear.
Was I a complete idiot?
It would be
suicide against a monster like that. And dying now, no matter how
much I felt I wanted to, would be unforgivable after the dreadful
sacrifice Veronica had made to keep me alive.

Instead, as Baseball-Cap Man sent a bunch of
lethal knives rocketing towards the opening, I leaned forward and
kissed my stunning guardian angel on the mouth, shocked at the
sound of my own agonised groans as knife after knife slammed
brutally into her back. Trying vainly to ignore the dreadful
impacts, I slipped my tongue past the smooth softness of her warm,
lipstick covered lips so that it came to rest on her two front
teeth – the ‘override’ switch she’d told me about. Her body shook
one last dreadful time as yet another knife slammed into her
exposed back while I broke then remade the connection twice before
pulling my lips back from hers and separating my tongue from her
teeth for a third and final time, activating the switch.

Through watery eyes, I peered over her
shoulder to see Baseball Cap Man diving towards the shrinking
opening…

Moments later, the door sealed and I heard
his huge body thump solidly against the far side.

*****

24

I don’t really know how long I sat there cradling
Veronica’s soft, limp body in the darkness and listening to
Baseball Cap Man smashing things against the door in a frantic
effort to get at us. My watch had a light, but I didn’t bother
using it. Time seemed irrelevant now.

Everything did.

After an eternity, the banging stopped
abruptly and I knew Sahissi had finally used up every last drop of
energy he had. Baseball Cap Man had been dragged back to the Future
and I could only hope his boss would be insanely unimpressed with
his failure to complete his mission, and that he would want to
drive this point home to Baseball Cap man in a thousand different
and very painful ways.

I sat there in silence for what felt like
ages more before Veronica’s lifeless body suddenly vanished too.
One second she was lying peacefully in my arms and the next I was
holding nothing but air while the door slid silently open in front
of me.

In a state of shock, I stumbled from the tiny
room, squinting under the dazzling fluorescent lighting while I
slowly pushed my way past the huge pile of assorted objects which
Baseball Cap Man had used to try to get through what was obviously
a very heavily reinforced door. The place now seemed utterly
deserted as I shuffled back towards the now-stationary escalators
before realising how completely drained I felt and deciding I
needed to take the lift instead.

While it slid slowly down the side of the
open food court, I peered out through the broken glass walls at the
devastated scene below. The furniture still lay in splinters all
across the shattered floor tiles, but the boulders and wall
sections had vanished, obviously dragged back to the future, just
like Baseball Cap Man, now that Sahissi’s machines had shut down
for good.

The lift reached the ground floor and I
stepped out, wondering what everyone else would make of the ruin in
here and elsewhere along our twisting, turning escape route through
the City.

One thing was pretty certain - they’d never
guess the truth.

And I certainly wasn’t about to tell them.
Despite all the witnesses to some of the stuff that had happened
here today, I knew that could easily be a one-way ticket to the
crazy farm.

Still in a daze, I walked weakly down the
Myer Centre stairs then out into the Queen Street Mall before
turning north. The sound of blaring sirens carried from a couple of
blocks away, but the entire Mall area now seemed deserted too.

A few minutes later, I was approaching a
barricade near the end of the Mall, wondering what kind of
reception I’d get from all the people clustered behind it –
especially the five or six stern-looking police officers milling
about on this side of the barricade. When one of them spotted me
and hurried over to see if I was okay, I put on a brave face and
said I was fine. I told him I’d been shopping when I’d heard all
the commotion and had hidden in some toilets inside the Myer Centre
until things quietened down. I said that now I just wanted to go
home.

After writing down the false name I gave him,
he was happy to let me go, probably imagining all the extra
paperwork he’d just saved himself by not interviewing me in-depth.
And as I made my way through the inquisitive crowd, I couldn’t
really blame him. After today, I figured a hell of a lot of people
were going to be buried under mountains of paperwork.

Once I’d navigated through the crowd, I
plodded slowly to the end of the Mall, hardly noticing the
scattered pedestrians who were doing their best to get on with
their lives despite all of the day’s dramas. I didn’t really know
where I was going. I just wanted to find somewhere quiet. Somewhere
away from the place where Veronica had died. That’s when I realised
I’d reached Edward Street and I looked up to see the zebra crossing
just eighty metres ahead - the one where I’d first seen Veronica
earlier that afternoon.

Without warning, the full force of what had
happened today suddenly hit me. I had met the most incredible woman
– my future
wife
– and we’d been harassed by brutal
assassins for hours until I was eventually left cradling her
lifeless body in the darkness of a tiny safe-room.

The rush of emotion flattened me like a
speeding semi, bringing me to an abrupt halt at the edge of the
pavement with tears welling in my eyes.

I’d never felt so utterly crushed and
hollow.

Or so horribly guilty, knowing that Veronica
had died to save me.