ALICE CLUTCHED HOPE’S hand and led her at speed down the staircase of the entrance tunnel. Half way along, and running like the clappers, he stole a quick glance over his shoulder. The patrol car was bumping its way down the steep staircase into the tunnel. There was no way he had expected that to happen.
“Faster!” he yelled, lifting the pace.
With a loud bang, sparks flying from its chassis and exhaust as it bottomed out on the last few steps, the patrol car landed on the tunnel floor. Somehow it had made it in one piece, just as Alice and Hope reached the end of the tunnel.
A quick scan of their predicament presented Alice his escape options: the train platform or a small group of shops.
Following his gut, he headed directly to the front door of one of the shops — to Hope’s shock and horror he barged right through it, leaving the shattered remains of the door hanging on its hinges.
Hope was left speechless, wondering to herself: what is this guy?
The interior of the shop was decked out with an elaborate promotional display. In the centre of the room was a plinth supporting a sarcophagus. On top of that was a statue of a reclining, naked woman. Alice recognized it, and the realization shook him right to his boots. He looked around and saw a massive banner on the wall, featuring a Harley Davidson motorbike.
Absolutely astonished, he read the caption out loud: “Sons of steel ride the shine.”
As Hope joined him he said: “What a trip … I was right here, on this very spot, one hundred and thirteen years from now. Djard was there,” he pointed at the floor. “And Ex was there, Secta over there...” He turned back to Hope, took her by the shoulders and said excitedly: “I’m not spun out … it really did happen!”
“I never doubted you for a minute, Alice,” said Hope, almost laughing.
He swivelled to the sarcophagus. “The bike came out of this thing…”
“I see,” she said, trying to piece together what he was talking about. “Extraordinary.”
She figured he was reliving the experience of being in this place in a different time, perhaps even a different dimension.
It was a ghostly experience for Alice, and difficult for him to grasp. He racked his brain, trying to determine what weird magic had drawn him to this very place, when he could have gone anywhere trying to escape the cops. Was it destiny?
“If there’s a bike inside it we could take it,” Hope said hurriedly.
“No, we have to leave it for Ex?”
Hope pulled a quizzical face, then realised Alice was trying to make sure of the future.
He walked towards an advertising display on the wall, as if drawn by some supernatural force.
He stopped at the display and read the sign out loud, “The key to the future. The shine!” He reached out a tentative hand to take the chrome pendant hanging by a loop of thin leather in the elaborate display. He stared at it with great reverence. This was the key. Alice knew it would open the sarcophagus to give birth to a bike — a bike that would somehow alter the destiny of mankind.
He slipped the leather thonging over his head so the talisman hung around his neck.
Hope heard a noise outside and said urgently: “Troopers! What are we going to do?”
Alice wasn’t listening. He was still tripping on the future. Hope shook him and shrieked: “Alice! listen up!”
The jolt worked. Alice switched back to reality. Desperate to find an escape route, he spotted a Honda XR600R off-road bike on display in a dark corner of the room. He raced over, hopped on and kick started it. The big thumper 600cc 4-stroke engine growled like an angry beast.
“Come on,” he yelled.
Hope darted over, jumped behind him and together they rode through the smashed door.
The two cops who had made it down the stairs were standing beside their car, barring the exit. They drew Tasers and took aim.
“Hold on!” Alice warned Hope.
He revved the engine and fanged the bike right at them, knocking the first trooper out of the way. His partner had no hope of getting off a Taser shot, so he scrambled back into the patrol car and tried to execute a quick U-turn to chase the bike up the tunnel.
Alice pulled the bike up twenty metres short of the fifty or so sandstone stairs leading out of the subway and up to freedom. He revved it like a bull getting set to make a charge.
Hope figured out what he was thinking, and shouted: “You’re not going to do that, are you? You’re not going to—”
He was … Alice gunned the bike, dropped the clutch and popped a wheelie over the bottom steps so the power of the rear wheel would take them up. He gunned it hard, and roared towards the top of the staircase and into the night.
The bike soared out of the subway station and broadsided to a stop in a screech of smoking rubber. Blockading their escape route were patrol cars with dozens of troopers taking cover behind them and aiming their weapons. One was aiming what appeared to be a remote control. It wasn’t looking good for Alice and Hope: the odds were stacked against them.
Alice turned to his passenger and said: “I don’t think they’ll shoot if you’re with me … You sweet to have a crack?”
“I’ve come this far, haven’t I?” said Hope, bravely. “By the way, that trooper with the remote is identifying us to a drone … It’s now or never Alice. Give it your best shot my friend.”
Alice revved the throttle and dropped the clutch. Once more, the bike reared up in a wheelie, heading directly for the closest patrol car. With impeccable timing, Alice gunned it and the powerful bike scrambled up and over the bonnet of the car.
Behind it were the other two cars, and the sheltering troopers were heading for cover. As the bike landed, the trooper with the remote was running for cover behind the open driver’s door of his car. Just as he made it, Alice ploughed into the door, knocking the trooper over back-breakingly hard and jamming him between the door and the car. This opened a narrow corridor of escape — not down the road the troopers were expecting him to take, but cross-country, through Hyde Park.
The bike was perfect for the terrain, and Alice enjoyed fanging it through the lush green spaces, hurdling paths and other obstacles.
Hanging on white knuckled, Hope was keeping one eye on the sky, knowing that a drone was tracking them.
Alice rode down a flight of stairs to the footpath over Park Street. Surprisingly, there was no traffic jam and they crossed the intersection easily. He zoomed up more stairs to the Liverpool Street side, and headed for the Anzac War Memorial. As they reached, it he could see blue flashing lights speeding along Elizabeth Street, running parallel with them on the right. Looking at the Memorial, Alice couldn’t help thinking of Kinks and Zule, wondering if Ex and Djard had made it back to them safely. It seemed another world away. It was more than that — it was another dimension.
He slowed down as he passed the Emden Gun, and descended the stairs to the footpath on Liverpool Street. This time, traffic had backed up in front of him. That let him wend his way across Liverpool Street without the troopers on the ground seeing him. But they were seeing him through different eyes.
Hope gave Alice a prod: “The drone is at three o’clock.”
Alice looked up to his right. She was correct — the drone was hovering about two hundred feet in the air, directly over Liverpool Street. He could almost feel it staring at him.
“I’ll fix the little bugger,” he snarled, and slipped into a quiet little lane away from the main streets. He stopped the bike.
“Hop off,” he told Hope. They both climbed off and stretched their tense muscles. “We’ll hang here to see if we’ve lost the drone. The filth will arrive any minute.”
He was banking on being covered by the narrow lane, which ran like a gully between twenty storey buildings. And in truth, both of them needed a break from the chase, if only for a chance to catch their breath.
“I’ve got to ask,” said Hope. “And I guess this is as good a time as any, especially considering we might not get through the night alive … You said you went to the future and found Secta there.”
“Yes, he’d survived the holocaust in the bombproof section of Oceana headquarters. Oh, and he’d shot up some sort of longevity serum.”
“Yes I know, we’d been developing it together. How long had he been trapped there?” Hope asked.
“Get this … a hundred and thirteen years!”
“Unbelievable! The serum worked then? Did he look the same?”
“Not much different,” said Alice. “Aged some, if that’s what you mean. A little insane. A lot insane, in fact.”
Hope paused for a moment, thinking. “So you turned up one hundred and thirteen years into the future,” she said. “How did you escape from the hologram unit?”
“A barbarian babe called Djard apparently triggered it to play,” said Alice. “Then a big dude called Ex got dirty with it and whacked it with his sword. Next minute, I was there.”
“So … how did you get back to now?”
“Secta used his scientific voodoo shit to send me back. He wanted me to stop the accident … oh, and to release you.”
“But how? How did he do that?”
“I dunno. We went to his lab, the one with the chair and all on Level Seven. He fired up all his equipment — I guess he just reversed the process.”
“Brilliant,” she breathed, awestruck.
“I guess so,” said Alice. “Lucky too, because I was dying. Now that was rough.”
“Dying?”
“Yeah, he said I was demolecularising, whatever that means.”
“Means your cells were breaking down … But Alice, you realise what you’ve become? By succeeding, my friend, you are the world’s first time traveller.”
“Right. The weird thing is,” said Alice, lost in his own story, “Even though Secta is such an arsehole, he knew that sending me back to save you and change time meant his own death.”
“Because once you succeed, his timeline would become invalid,” she said, nodding.
“Yeah, future’s end.”
“I didn’t think he had any humanity left in him,” she said. “Well I guess there’s a first time for anything.”
“There was a tribe of female warriors called the Vixen living in the Anzac Memorial that we just rode past … they had a Queen called Zule, and a warrior chief called Kinks.”
“All female?”
“Yeah, no men. All killed off by these horrible mutant monster things — Roogas. We killed the last one so the Vixen would be safe.”
“God,” said Hope, shuddering. “But hey, if we’re successful, none of it will never happen,” she added.
“That’s pretty difficult to get my head around,” said Alice. “Sad, too … these folk became my friends.”
“Time travel has its quirks.”
“You got that part right,” said Alice, with a grimace. “And I gotta tell you, I still don’t feel so great.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s like mega jet-lag, but all this junk Secta pumped into me, all the demolecularizing crap, has me feeling pretty crook.”
“Well, once we’re done, we’ll go back to the lab and fix you up,” said Hope, not sounding entirely convinced.
A dizzy spell passed over him. He staggered a little, and had to grip Hope’s shoulder to stop himself falling.
“Whoa!” he cried. “See what I mean? I feel punch drunk. Everything sort of shimmers and I spin out … makes me want to chunder.”
She took his hand, “It’s not surprising, after all you’ve been through,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “There’s too much to do to be crook right now. Can’t waste any more time chinwagging.”
“There’s so much more I want to know,” said Hope.
“It’ll keep for another time,” Alice replied. “Can you ride a bike?” She raised an eyebrow. “Course I can,” she said.
“Okay, to make sure this happens it’s smarter for us to split up,” said Alice. “It’ll double our chances of getting to the ferry on time. You take the bike and head for Jones Bay Wharf. I’ll find another way and meet you there. If I don’t make it, get to the bridge of the ferry and make the captain stop the cruise. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said, then suddenly kissed his cheek. “Just couldn’t resist kissing the great Black Alice,” she grinned. “I expect to see you at the ferry, so don’t do anything foolish, you hear?”
“Watch out for that drone,” he said. “It’ll be up there, lurking.”
She hopped onto the bike and kicked it to life.
Alice gave her a playful slap on the butt. “Ride like there’s no tomorrow,” he yelled. “Coz if you don’t, there won’t be one. Chaa!”
With a cocky wink, she tore off up the alley.
Blue lights flashed on Alice’s face. He jogged off in the same direction Hope had driven. A cop car pulled into alley and blocked his path. Two troopers got out with guns up. A screech came from behind Al, he swivelled round to see a black van taking up the alleyway, troopers pouring out of the back hatch. He was surrounded. The ranks of troopers from the van parted to allow a black uniformed SSD official with bright red hair to step through. Karzoff stopped ten metres from Alice and glared at him. “There is no way out of this for you Alice.”
“Thought I zapped you Karzoff … let me go, I’ve gotta stop the ferry … it’s going to…”
Karzoff cut him off. “I have my orders,” he paused for effect, then announced sharply, “open fire.”
Everything shimmered supernaturally for Alice — a hail of bullets was travelling towards him in super slow motion. He easily dodged them like a prize-fighter weaving from side to side.
To Karzoff watching with the troopers firing, Alice appeared to be moving like greased lightning.
Several of the bullets Alice had dodged took out the two troopers at his rear, who had also fired. One of their bullets, Alice had avoided, hit Karzoff. The red-haired officer dropped to his knee and screamed, “Kill him!”
Alice watched the second volley coming towards him. This time he crouched and then sprang into the air like a big cat, high enough to get over them. He landed on the bonnet of a cop car parked behind the van.
Amazed by his own supernatural abilities he mumbled to himself, “Far-out, what a trip.” He jumped down, got into the car behind the wheel and burnt rubber reversing out of the alley. Another cop car blocked his exit. He stepped on the gas, rear-end rammed it, and then with the tires screaming, pushed it out of the alley.
“So, I guess that shimmering of time was your doing?”
“Some assistance perhaps but only to energize you enough to help yourself. You have great powers of imagination Alice your path is set out before you.”
Alice walked closer the glowing orb, it’s light reflecting in his eyes. “So it seems,” he mumbled, deep in thought.
“You know nothing of it, as it is yet to come.”
“You’re speaking in riddles again. Look,” he snapped irately, “I lived it — I’m alive to tell it all aren’t I? Why do I need to relive it?”
“You re-walk the path of consciousness because there is much more for you to learn from the experience.”
He accepted there were things he had missed, important things. “Okay, okay, I get that … but why me?”
“To understand that we must continue, only you can answer your own question.”
A light flashed in Alice’s mind.
There was a motorbike tailing him. He figured it for a trooper or agent despatched to beat the traffic, and guided after them by the drone. The positive side was they were onto him, which left Hope free to complete the mission.
Hope had decided to continue through alleyways until she was clear of troopers, but the next one she turned into was blocked by a patrol car. She was hemmed in. The alleyway was so narrow that the patrol car’s doors were only a foot from the walls, preventing the bike from getting past. Hope had no option but to go over the top in the same way Alice had done earlier.
She hit the gas, raised the front wheel and climbed the bike onto the bonnet of the car. When the front tyre hit the windscreen it skidded sideways, and she came off, plummeting down behind the car. The troopers opened their doors and scrambled out. Ignoring them and her fall, Hope leapt to her feet, climbed back on the bike and roared off.
The driver rammed the patrol car into reverse without closing the doors, and promptly wedged the car firmly between the alley walls, much to the dismay of his partner.
The traffic ahead had prevented Alice outrunning the bike. He pulled over and got out of the car. The bike stopped, the rider took off his helmet, drew a pistol and started Alice’s way.
Alice needed a weapon. He spotted an old-fashioned, metal rubbish bin in the gutter, overflowing with junk. When he lifted the lid he found a half-metre rusted iron bar and pulled out … it would have to do. The bin lid would also be handy. Holding it in his other hand like a shield, he stepped out to confront his adversary.
The clouds in the stormy sky parted for a moment, allowing the full moon to shine on the face of his opponent. He recognised him immediately. Drago … the very dude he suspected of killing Stain — a suspicion Honor had all but confirmed.
Garbed in black leathers, Drago stopped a few metres from Alice.
“Didn’t get enough when I belted you at the Bourbon and Beef?” Alice growled.
The big man said nothing — just glared at Alice.
“Your boss Honor told me you murdered my girl,” he said, stretching the truth to get a reaction. “Get off on killing defenceless women, do you? Weak bastard!”
Drago simply raised his silenced 9 mm pistol and fired.
Alice anticipated the move, and used his shield to deflect the shot. There was a zing as the bullet passed through the lid, missing him.
Alice wasted no time. In a flash, he lowered the lid and flung at Drago like a Frisbee. It was a terrific shot … it hit Drago’s gun hand, giving Alice the opening to rush him with the iron bar.
The first blow came down hard on Drago’s wrist, knocking the gun from his hand and breaking his arm with a loud snap. Alice brought the bar back up on an angle at speed, and with an almighty blow sliced it across Drago’s cheek, opening him up big time. Drago staggered backwards, blood pouring from the deep cut, but he wasn’t done yet. He let fly with a huge punch to Alice’s solar plexus.
Alice was only just hanging on after his last dizzy spell, so the punch in the guts had him in bad shape. With the breath knocked out of him, he pulled Drago into a clinch to give himself time to recover.
Suddenly, the flashing blue light of a patrol car lighted up the street. It pulled up next to Drago’s bike and two troopers got out.
With an almighty heave, Drago freed himself from Alice’s clinch. He looked at the gun on the ground. Alice anticipated he’d go for it … but he’d have to bend down to pick it up.
Drago knew Alice was on to him. It was a Mexican stand-off.
The two troopers had exited their vehicle and were aiming their guns, but couldn’t make out who was who in the dark.
After a moment’s hesitation, Drago went for his gun. Alice brought the iron bar down on the back of Drago’s head. Drago collapsed onto the roadway, skull split open. Alice had done it. He’d fought through and beaten the bastard who’d killed his girl. He dropped the iron bar irreverently on Drago’s sprawled body, and staggered to the cop car.
Inside he looked in the rear-view mirror. A shape appeared: Drago, rising to his feet with his gun in his hand.
Alice didn’t give it a second thought, just jammed the car into reverse and trod on the gas. The car roared and ploughed back into Drago just as he was aiming the gun. There was a bump as the rear wheels went over him, then another as the front wheels followed suit. Alice hit the skids once he’d cleared his enemy, and could see him in the headlights, still trying, torn and bleeding, to get up from the ground.
“Stuff you!” Alice snarled. “Chaa!” He floored it, hitting Drago in the midsection. Draped over the bonnet of the car, staring at Alice through the windscreen with a horrified expression on his bloody face, Drago could do nothing. Another cop car pulled up as a blockade.
With Drago draped over the bonnet Alice drove at the cop car and T-boned it. He then whipped it around, flinging the remains of Drago off the bonnet, and gunned it up onto the pavement around the crippled cop car.
Mal made his way forlornly up the gangplank onto the ferry. Blue was waiting for him at the midships doorway at the top of the gangplank.
“Where’s Al?” Blue bellowed to get over the music playing on board.
Mal stopped and shook his head, “Don’t know mate. It’s too late for him now.”
Hope had struck a main street with heavy traffic. Expecting to see troopers at any moment, she decided to cut through an adjacent park. It was tougher than she’d expected — she was forced to dodge between trees, flowerbeds, dog walkers, evening joggers and park benches.
She bounced across the uneven ground, and when the rear wheel fishtailed as it skidded in the soggy soil, she nearly lost the bike again. Regaining control, she could see the harbour up ahead. In the distance was the wharf, and hopefully the ferry. It was time for a dash through the city, racing time, the cops, and the coruscating purple flashes of sheet lightning, which emblazoned the canvas of the rolling storm clouds above. Loud crashes of thunder boomed along the chasms of the city streets as she raced, like the mighty metallic blows of Thor’s hammer.
Again, in the rear-view mirror, Alice could see his pursuers closing on him. He saw a narrow, cobblestoned alleyway up ahead, constructed during the early nineteenth century and intended for nothing bigger than two horses passing. He got an idea, and slowed down to let the troopers catch up.
When he came to the alleyway, he turned sharp into it and floored it. At a blistering pace, he roared through the seriously tight alley, scraping both sides of the car against the brick walls, but with enough precision to make it through. The patrol car in pursuit wasn’t so fortunate and jammed tight in the middle of the laneway.
Unable to open the doors, the troopers would be stuck there until they could be towed free.
Alice glanced at the dashboard clock. It was 23:40. He was running out of time. “Damn!” he cursed, stomping on the gas. Harris Street was a long line of cars, stuck at a series of traffic lights. Each time the lights changed only a couple of cars edged through. No time! “Stuff it!” he growled, and pulled the car onto the median strip. He drove along it, wheels straddling the low barrier, clearing the strip by a whisker.
As he approached the traffic lights he could go no further — their poles were set into the middle of the strip. He wrenched the steering wheel. Sparks flew as the car bottomed out on the wrong side of the road. Oncoming cars swerved sharply to avoid colliding head-on.
One car swerved the wrong way and smashed into a parked vehicle. The car behind rear-ended it, then a truck trying to avoid the pile-up drove onto the pavement and slammed into a shop window. The truck, unfortunately, was carrying a load of pigs bound for the abattoir, and the impact shattered the wooden cages on the back. Huge honkers were galloping helter-skelter, running for their lives among the carnage of piled-up and gridlocked cars. Alice had spawned unmitigated chaos. Alice hadn’t even checked the rear-vision mirror. Completely unaware of the pandemonium, content that he’d pulled off a coup, he simply turned onto the right side of the road, now free of traffic, and continued his merry way toward Jones Bay Wharf.