Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

The protruding mirror hit the brickwork and snapped off, spinning past him. But the moped itself missed the wall by the barest fraction of an inch.

He straightened out. Older buildings rose on each side, a jumbled mishmash of houses abutting commercial properties. The alley itself was strewn with rubbish, empty boxes and pallets, even washing lines hanging across it.

Light shone down the alleyway from behind, shadows stretching away in his path. Chase looked back. The car had also made the turn and was coming after them. The bike shot past the alley, undoubtedly intending to turn at the next junction to intercept them.

He twisted the throttle, but with two passengers the moped couldn’t match the car’s acceleration. Its engine roared behind them-

Sophia shrieked as the car nudged the back of the moped, and even Chase let out an involuntary yelp. He regained control, but the car bumped them again, harder. The top of the wooden box popped open, flapping on its hinges.

“What’s in the box?” Chase shouted.

“What?”

“In the box! Is there anything in it?”

Sophia twisted around. “Food!”

“Throw it at them!”

He expected her to ask why, but instead she did as she was told and lobbed the contents of the box at the car like paper grenades. Bags of cooked rice and noodles burst open on its windshield, spraying stickily across the glass.

The car dropped back, the driver’s vision impaired. Chase glanced at it. The wipers started up, smearing food across the windshield, but it would only take a few seconds to clear.

He looked ahead again, saw a washing line spanning his path, the alleyway narrowing beyond it…

Sophia was out of ammo. “Eddie!”

“Hang on!” He reached up with one hand as the moped shot beneath the line, plucking a hanging shirt from its pegs and tossing it back over Sophia’s head. It landed on the car’s windshield, sticking to the glutinous mess and blocking the driver’s view.

Chase swerved the moped over to the left to avoid a messy stack of barrels and broken planks. The car followed, the man in the passenger seat spotting the obstruction and yelling for the blinded driver to avoid it-

Only to smash into the corner of a building jutting out from the other side of the alley.

The car came to an abrupt and terminal halt. Both men were catapulted through the windshield in a shower of glass and blood.

“Should’ve worn their seat belts!” Chase said as he reached the end of the alley and made a sharp turn back into traffic, once again heading southeast. He raced between more slow-moving cars and buses, the stink of fumes stinging his nostrils. “Not that far to go now-”

The motorbike suddenly swept out from an adjoining street and cut in front of them. The rider grabbed for Sophia.

“Shit!” Chase braked hard, swerving away from the bike and passing in front of a van. It didn’t stop in time, hitting the wooden box and ripping it from its mounts to smash apart on the road. Out of control, the moped skidded and crashed into the side of another car. Chase’s elbow slammed against it hard enough to crack the window.

“Eddie, keep going!” Sophia cried. The bike’s rider, one of Yuen’s uniformed security guards, waved a gun to make the traffic stop and let him through.

Grunting in pain, Chase shoved the battered moped off the car and looked for an escape route. There was nothing in sight. One side of the road was occupied by a shopping mall, all illuminated billboards and glaring neon.

The man on the bike was now in their lane and riding towards them, gun raised-

Chase revved the engine and turned the sputtering moped towards the mall, weaving between other vehicles. He heard the crunch of a collision behind him. The guy on the bike would be forced to go around the accident, but it would only take him a few seconds to catch up.

Glass doors ahead. He hoped they were automatic-

They parted just before the moped reached them, little more than an inch of clearance on each side of the handlebars as they zoomed through. Shoppers dived out of their path.

“He’s still coming!” Sophia warned. Chase didn’t need to look back to know that the motorbike rider had entered the mall as well, the sound of the bike’s engine an echoing roar under the shrill stutter of his own ride.

There didn’t seem to be anywhere to go, only a bank of escalators leading up to another level and the entrance to a department store-

Chase gritted his teeth and rode the moped through the doors. He felt the little bike slithering as the surface beneath its wheels changed from tiles to cheap purple carpet. Racks of clothes whipped past, women shrieking and jumping out of the way as he sounded the feeble horn.

He felt Sophia shift position behind him. “What are you-”

She grabbed the clothes on a large rack as they passed. The rack toppled and crashed to the floor behind them. Chase heard the motorbike’s brakes lock, then a Chinese curse as the rider slammed into it and the bike instantly flipped end over end in the air, landing with a sickening crash on top of the driver. “Nice one!” he cried.

“I’m more than just a pretty face, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” They emerged from the other side of the store into a large atrium. Chase still couldn’t see an exit. “How do you get out of here?”

“That way,” Sophia told him, pointing at a ramp on the other side of the atrium.

Chase drove for it, keeping his thumb on the horn button. “Get out of the bloody way!” he roared at a group of dawdlers blocking the path, who seemed oblivious to the rapidly approaching bike.

Sophia directed him up the ramp, following the signs for the exit. The mall’s security personnel were finally responding to the chaos, trying to close the doors and trap the moped’s passengers inside. Chase took out the gun and fired a single shot up at the ceiling, which prompted the guards to reconsider their actions and flee for cover as he rode past and out onto a street.

He had a fairly good idea where they were-Mei had driven him through this part of the city when she’d picked him up. They weren’t far from the maglev station. He rejoined the traffic and buzzed down the road. The buildings on either side were now mostly blocks of flats. He made another turn to get onto a wider highway-

A rush of noise from above, then suddenly they were pinned in a circle of glaring white light. The spotlight of a helicopter.

“Is that the police?” he shouted. The chopper was coming in low above the road, its rotors whipping up a fierce wind around them.

“Worse!” Sophia yelled back. “My husband!”

“Chase!” boomed Yuen, voice amplified through a loudspeaker. “Stop the bike and let my wife go, now!”

“You up for that?” Chase asked. Sophia shook her head. “Me neither.” He darted the moped between the milling cars, squeezing through every gap he could find. The spotlight followed like the pointing finger of God.

“Chase! Last warning! Stop right now!”

“Keep going!” Sophia ordered. “We’re almost there! And he’s in a helicopter-what can he do?”

The answer came a moment later as the chopper dropped even lower and roared overhead, barely above the height of the streetlamps and phone cables. The blinding spotlight was now pointing back at them.

Chase screwed up his eyes against the glare, narrowly avoiding the back end of a sharply braking car as its driver was dazzled. He realized what Yuen had in mind-the chopper was heading for the concourse outside the station, either to hover just above it and block their path, or even to land so that more of his men could come after them.

Vehicles screeched to a halt around them, their drivers blinded. The crunching bangs of collisions pierced the thunderous noise of the helicopter like gunshots. Traffic ground to a standstill, horns blasting.