The roar subsided, I opened my eyes, surprised I still could – and instantly wished I hadn’t. The guy in the hat was smeared across the booth, a Jackson Pollock of blood, brains and smouldering moustache hair, an oily stain where his head should have been. His unfired weapon spun lazily on the table. Of his hat there was no sign. The feather which had been tucked into the band rocked down through the drifting smoke to land on his gun. Behind me Gwen’s voice cut through the febrile air.
‘Run you numskull – there’ll be more than one!’
She was soon at my table, lithely charging for the exit with her smoking sidearm drawn. I staggered to my feet. A golden sickle tossed by one of the druids whistled past my head and embedded itself with a thunk, quivering in the wall beside me. But you don’t play as much Counter-Strike as I have without learning something about courage. I got up and ran after her, glad to leave the steaming leek daiquiri behind.
The cold wet air hit me like a slap as we emerged onto the street. At least it had stopped raining, which had to be the most microscopic of small mercies ever recorded. Gwen reached backwards and pulled me through the teeming crowds.
‘I thought I told you to lie low, to stay out of trouble.’
‘I was. I’ve no idea how they found me!’
We barged past a line of tourists and saffron-clad Hare Krishnas. Anthropomorphic chrome robots scuttled from our path. Polystyrene punnets of half-eaten chips in curry sauce were trampled underfoot like high-calorie confetti. Gwen picked up the pace.
‘Well they found you, all right. Are you a magnet for chaos? Now we’ve got to lose them all over again – this way.’
She led me along a wide esplanade enclosed by a metal rail, thick with sightseers. Beyond the barrier the city spread out down the valley like a casket of jewels discarded by a careless giant, the emergent late sun rendering the forest of sinuous towers in molten gold. But that wasn’t even the half of it. The sky was filled with aircraft of bewildering size and shape, each bereft of wings or rotors. What on earth was keeping them aloft? The small ones whizzed along in neat lines at breakneck speed, while the big ones drifted serenely with their own purpose and design. I gawped awestruck as a huge oil tanker sized craft glided silently overhead, magenta Saint Elmo’s fire rippling playfully across its hull. If I hadn’t been running for my life I would have appreciated stopping to admire the view, but of course Gwen was having none of that.
‘Will you stop lagging behind, this is no time for sightseeing!’
‘But that –’
‘Come on – or you’ll get us both killed!’
As if hearing her words, the gods of fate chose that moment to prove their perverse sense of humour. Before us the crowds dissolved like the Red Sea parting, as one small flying craft came in for an unscheduled landing. Its doors opened, revealing a team of faceless black-armoured men. Fear gripped me – they were heavily armed and looked like they meant business. I was certain they weren’t accountants.
The shooting started before they reached the ground, which was fortunate, in a way, because the craft’s motion must have thrown off their aim. Exploding rounds peppered the pavement around us. Gwen grabbed my arm and pulled me towards cover. The shelter she had in mind didn’t look up to the job, but it was the only option – a street vendor’s fast food stall abandoned by its operator. A garish cartoon rabbit adorned its metal frame, under a hoarding reading ‘The Big Cheese’. The rabbit was munching a piece of toast covered in thick orange goo. A loudspeaker on a loop sprung to life advertising its wares.
‘Rarebit! Rarebit!’
This was a situation both surreal and deadly in the extreme, Salvador Dali in a suicide bomb vest. We cowered behind the grill’s steel bodywork as the fusillade intensified. Chips of white-hot metal spalled off the leeward side and drummed against my cheek. I could smell cordite and broiling cheddar.
‘We’re done for – whatawedo?!’
Gwen coolly reloaded her gun, then popped up to return fire. It did little good. Our assailants stepped up their attack. The cart was all but swept away in a tsunami of blazing lead. Even Gwen must have sensed our position was futile. They had us overmatched for firepower by at least ten to one.
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‘Rarebit! Double Gloucester and Preseli Blue!’
‘Is this the end? I’m not cut out for this!’ My stomach felt like it had a better place to go. You might think me a coward; I prefer to say I have a healthy commitment to my own survival. Either way, for the first time on our journey, Gwen looked genuinely annoyed – almost peeved.
‘It is the end – for them. This calls for a change of plan.’ She reached into her jacket and pulled out a small silver case, flipping it open as if to check her make-up, which was doing a better job of staying composed than me.
‘Are you out of your mind? This is no time for blusher!’ The indignity of it – it seemed I was to meet my doom while being serenaded by a cheese-fixated rabbit.
‘Scarlet Harlech, Crumbling Crumlin… Rarebit!’
But Gwen was busy fiddling with the device. When she had it to her satisfaction she snapped the lid shut, weighed it in her hand, before tossing it with practised ease over the cart towards our attackers. There followed a pause so pregnant it might have been having triplets. I think our assailants suspected what was coming next.
The world dissolved into a sheet of electric blue flame. No sound intruded, as if the very air had been ripped from around us. Black armoured limbs and lumps of air-car went sailing past our stall, which skidded, pushed across the tarmac by the blast, taking us with it. For a moment all was still.
With a strength that belied her slim physique Gwen pulled me to my feet, checking me over as she did so. ‘Are you ok, are you hurt?’ She ran her beeping hand-help over my limbs and face.
Dazed, and for once not at my rational ice-cool self, I swayed in her arms. ‘Michael Bay called, he wants his explosions back.’ She shook me back to sense. I had a long way to come.
‘I’m getting out of here and you’re coming too.’
‘Rare… b I t… r a r e… b b b…’
It seemed the fast food stall had toasted its last cheese-based snack. Gwen led me around its mangled carcass. Nearby the assault team’s vehicle had fared even worse. Little more than a blackened husk, its bonnet popped and its interior smouldered. As we passed I couldn’t help but look inside. What magic powered these silent craft? Even by the standards of that dreadful day my breath caught in my throat. Where you might have expected some complex engine of bewildering design was nothing of the sort – just a smallish black box, of a size to hold a pair of shoes; sheared-off wires trailed into it and a beefier cable trailed out – but that was it. The device stood out as the only part of the craft still in one piece. Printed on its lid were bold red letters; Jones Corporation J-Drive, Anthracite2 Anti-grav+ Model, 34-38 Gigawatts AC. Somehow I felt cheated. I was dimly aware of the wail of sirens fast approaching. Gwen all but yanked me off my feet.
‘Gawping again? We need to split before Pwllheli Five-O turn up and start asking awkward questions about dead hitmen. Come on – there’s bound to be others!’
The street was empty, but maybe not for long. I shifted, like I might have mentioned personal safety is high on my list of priorities. Soon we were bounding down a flight of steps away from the deserted esplanade. Gwen half turned, glancing over her shoulder.
‘We’ve got to get to the next gate before they shut it down.’
‘Shut it down – can they do that? What gate?’
‘Not likely, but the way these jokers are behaving they might just think so. This is where we need to go.’
At the foot of the steps was a wide tree-lined boulevard, just as empty as the one above. A little way down the street was a ‘tacsi rank’. At least that’s what the glowing neon sign arching above it said. But these weren’t your average black cabs. Sure, they were small and yellow, and decorated with a checkerboard design, but these had had an upgrade. Red and green navigation lights twinkled on stub wings in the moisture-laden air. A whiff of ozone reached my flaring nostrils. Like most of the vehicles in this bedlam, these craft seemed able to fly.
Gwen pulled me through the door of the first in line. The pilot was another of those mechanical marvels, burnished to a high shine and punchably cheerful. Its head rotated the full 180 and its latex face broke into a forced smile. ‘And where do you great folks want to go to today? Special rates to all the major Tenby Casinos. Why not visit the world famous Penscynor Velociraptor Gardens?’
I didn’t get the feeling we’d be hitting the tourist traps. Gwen checked our tail for pursuit, then her eyes went wide in sudden realisation. Turning to me she slapped her hand to forehead. ‘You’ve got a mobile phone on you?’
It seemed an odd question – I didn’t think my old Nokia would cut it in this technological paradise. The phone was in my pocket, on silent but still intact. Gwen snatched it from my grasp and threw it into the footwell of the tacsi.
‘Holyhead Spaceport, Terminal 5 – and make it snappy,’ she shouted to the pilot, before bundling me out the opposite door.
‘What the hell? My phone – took weeks to save up for that!’
But with a sub-audible hum, which stood my hair on end, the VTOL craft was already rising. I watched it leave in dismay, along with my phone.
Meanwhile Gwen was moving down the line of air-cars. ‘You’ll pay with your life if they’ve got a trace on that thing. We’re heading south – follow me.’
I reflected this whole day had been heading south from the word go. Two minutes later we were safe inside another of the flying tacsis, after sending a host of the others to all points of the compass. Gwen set the satnav to the Shane Williams Expressway and we settled back to enjoy the ride. It would be a short flight to the next gate.