'It's just one more job,' he said. 'It'll be over before you know it'. Yeah, real reassuring, considering the context.

I was helping close shop for the night, when I saw him come out from around the front counter, my manager. I already knew what he wanted before he told me, not just because of the pleading glint in his eyes, but mostly because I saw the ticket in his hand. Now, normally, I'm a pretty reasonable guy; I do the extra work I'm told to do, but this was way above my pay grade. I had to put my foot down. I asked him why he didn't tell the guy we're closed, and all he told me in his signature, yet questionable Italian accent was, "I tell him I send my most qualified delivery boy. You're my most qualified delivery boy. You do this for me, I give you a nice ten dollar bill, okay?" I put my foot down, alright, right onto my company-issued scooter. Was it dangerous to deliver these pizzas past curfew? Definitely. But that ten dollar bill was going to pay my rent; I can't say no to that, especially when Ms. Tennouji was already getting on my case about it. Plus, Papa Ronan was right about being qualified. I'm definitely the hardest worker at the pizza place, and I've never, not once, missed one of my deliveries. No matter the obstacle, especially if I make a goof along the way, I always make it to the customer's door, and I get there on time. 

I adjusted my glasses and looked at my watch as I zipped down the street at a moderate pace. One minute till curfew starts. One minute till the most hazardous-to-your-health pizza delivery in existence. Yay. I willed my scooter to go faster, but it was already at its top speed of 'slightly faster than running". The streets were empty, so at least I didn't have to worry about traffic. I could be in and out, then maybe stay at a friend's house till tomorrow. I counted the ticking seconds. 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 

As soon as nine o'clock hit, I heard a coughing sound, and I slowed to a stop. I twisted the throttle, but it kept sputtering. Already, I could hear the mechanical scraping sounds from the other side of the block. They were awake, and I was so dead if I didn't get moving right now. More unsuccessful attempts at starting the engine, and panic was starting to set in. I remembered my original after-work plan; to fill my tank before going home. Well, at least there was no doubt about it anymore: I was screwed. Just then, I heard the dreadful sound I'd heard earlier, but it came from a building just down the road. I watched, frozen to my black polyester seat as the roof raised up and folded into a huge robotic hand, and if it had eyes, it would absolutely be looking right into my soul. It reared up like a snake preparing to strike, and I came to grips with my impending death, closing my eyes, breathing out one last time. I felt the pull into the afterlife soon after. Then I hit the ground, my leg caught between the pavement and my scooter. Turns out the tugging was another person trying to get me to safety. They started dragging me away, but I noticed something was missing. With much effort, I pulled away from them and ran to my bike and yanked the delivery bag up from the street just as the claw came down. 

It would have been cool to see the little guy go out with a bang, but there was no explosion because, like I said, no gas. My ride in pieces, I turned to see who had saved me, and saw Millie's face twisted in anger. Millie was my coworker; feisty, cool, and a total pizza-delivering ninja. If there was anyone in the running for beating my perfect streak, it was her. She punched me in the shoulder. This wasn't a playful punch, like we might do at work. "Clint, you idiot! What the heck are you doing out?" She looked down at the delivery bag I was hugging, sitting in the shadow of her front porch. "A delivery? Now? Why?" I thrust the ticket toward her, and she snatched it from my hand. Her face changed expressions a few times as she read, and her eyes widened as she got to the end. “Are you serious? It’s a DAAC?” 

(There’s a priority rating system we use at Papa Ronan's 24-Hour Pizza Delivery, ranging from ‘Drop it off sometime today, maybe, if you feel like it’ all the way to the highest rating…‘Deliver at all costs’)

“Don’t get mad just ‘cause you’ve never gotten one!” It didn’t look like she was buying it, though. She stormed inside her house, and I followed. “I don’t think it matters whether or not it’s a DAAC,” she ranted, “I wouldn’t do it after curfew even if my job depended on it. Your, uh, job doesn’t depend on it, does it?” I shook my head and took back the ticket from her. “Just doing it for, um, incentive from Ronan. Plus, I can’t really say no to him, right? He’s my boss.” I thought I could talk some sense into her, but she just rolled her eyes and punched me again. “Of course you’d do it, you’d deliver this out of the goodness of your heart. I would tell him no, no matter what, out of the interest of, I don’t know, staying alive.” She started to walk away, but stopped before she rounded the corner into her hallway. I don’t know why, but she stood there for a decent chunk of time before she turned around. “It’s supposed to be delivered to 113 Orion Drive by 9:30?” Nodding, I added, “Well, yeah, but I’m gonna have to book it if I want to get there in time.” Millie smiled and shook her head at me. “You can’t outrun them on foot, you moron. You’re gonna need something faster.”

I gripped her waist tightly as we sped through the streets on her own company-issued scooter. But to say this was just a scooter would be like saying a car is a bike with four wheels. See, she’d modified it to the point where you don’t look dorky riding it. It’s practically a motorbike with the pizzeria’s colour scheme of red, white, and orange. Plus, and I don’t know how she did it, but there’s a switch to silence the motor in case she was ever caught outside after dark. We no longer had to worry about being heard, just being seen. The only sound I could hear was the soft crunching of the street underneath the tires, the now light hum of the engine, and my own heavy breathing. I'm actually really glad I ran into Millie, because the thing that made her stand out from all the other employees (and put her in real competition with me) was the fact that she knew the city better than anyone. All the back alleys and shortcuts, all the fastest routes from anywhere to anywhere. She's never on time to deliver; she's always early. In short, she makes being on time look bad.

Even though we were making good time, though, we knew we weren't alone. Every time she was about to turn a corner, she slowed down and peeked around it. A couple of times we saw a shadowy figure prowling far in the distance, or the glimmer of a tail disappearing around the corner of another building. Eventually, though, it got to the point where we couldn’t find another way. I don’t know if they did it on purpose, but we were starting to get boxed in at every turn. We stopped halfway through an alley after the umpteenth reroute, and I heard Millie muttering under her breath, maybe solving another path, but most likely swearing at the inconveniences. I looked around nervously; I could hear growling from somewhere behind us, but I couldn’t see anything. Millie slammed her hands down on the handlebars. “You trust me, right, Clint?” I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah, sure, but why?” She started the scooter moving again as she laid it all out for me. “Well, you see, the fastest way between here and that guy’s house…” We rounded out of the alley onto a straightaway and she revved the engine, “...is straight through the center of town.”

I tried to reason with her. Believe me, I did. It’s just really hard to talk sense into someone at 100 kilometres per hour through the open air. All of my really persuasive arguments were lost in the rushing sound of the wind. Everyone knew the town square was Security Central, basically. Yet here we were, absolutely barreling toward it at an alarming speed. I made a mental note to apologize later (if we made it through alive) in case I bruised any of her ribs or internal organs from squeezing her waist so hard. I even had an inkling of hope in her super-muffler, but it was shattered just as we entered the square. And not just my hope, but at the precise moment the street opened up to the square, the muffler basically exploded off the engine from all the stress. We were a bright neon target of noise.

I looked behind me and saw two of them pop out of an alley, booking after the sound they'd just heard. I looked forward again; maybe if I couldn't see them, I would feel better. I wish that worked out. All around us, coming from what looked like every direction, were a bunch of Prowlers, hunting on all fours like panthers that had locked onto their prey. The setting sun blinded me with the reflection off their chrome skin, so I closed my eyes. I was alright with the noise, though. It drowned out their creepy growling, and swallowed my screams. Millie cried back at me, "Hold on!" I was beginning to wonder if she knew what I was doing the whole time. She sharply banked right, then snapped left, whipping one of the bots in the head with the tail of the scooter before speeding up the handicap ramp leading up to town hall. I'm pretty sure my screaming drowned out the sound of the motor this time as we shot off the end of the ramp. We were in the air for a lot longer than I wanted to be, which is to say, not at all. Finally, with an impact that knocked the wind out of my lungs, we hit the ground just at the other end of the square. "We're almost there," she yelled over the noise as she sharply turned right onto Orion Drive, "we just have to head down—" That was all she got out before we collided head on with a parked car. 

This time, I didn't feel as secure flying through the air as I did last time. I tucked into a roll, and I spun along the pavement. Once I'd stopped, I quickly got up, checked that the pizza was okay (it was kind of smushed, unfortunately), then I ran to see if Millie was okay. I saw her cautiously backing away from the parked car, and I made the mistake of calling to her. She looked back at me, her eyes wide, and held up and finger to shush me, then waved a hand at me to back off. I didn't understand, but I followed her instructions. She slowly made it to a walk, and I caught up to her.

"Hey! What about the bike?" She just shook her head and kept walking; didn't even look at me! I grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back. "We need it if we're going to make it there in one piece!" Millie shook her arm from my grip and grabbed the front of my shirt. "Clint, the only way we're going to make it there in one piece each is if we—" Again, she was interrupted, but this time there was a scraping metal sound. We slowly turned our heads and I finally understood why we were getting as far from the scooter as possible. What I thought was a parked car lazily got up, and I heard a hydraulic hiss escape its throat. I've never seen one up close, and I wished I'd kept it that way. It was terrifying to see the Prowler's panther-like body and shiny copper skin, but the worst thing was the singular red glowing eye in the middle of its head. I couldn't move for the life of me. This was it, no way out. We were dead. 

Did I mention that I was thankful I ran into Millie? If she didn't snap me out of it, I would have stood there like the idiot I was and let it maul me. As she pulled me along, I think she screamed at me to run, but I'm not sure. I still felt numb, but I made an effort to put one foot in front of the other as fast as I could. It was no use, though. I could feel the ground shake as it bounded toward us. It leapt for us, and I heard an ear-shattering boom. It knocked both of us off our feet, and we quickly looked for the source. At this point I was still pretty dazed, so I thought it was my imagination when I saw the security bot laying on the ground several feet away from us. Next to it, however, was a man holding a real big, really intimidating shotgun. He nodded in approval at the body, then marched toward us.

I butt-scooted back as fast as I could, but instead of pointing his gun at me, he reached out a hand. I gladly accepted it, but he moved it away when I reached for it. “No, no, the pizza. You got the pizza?” I slowly unslung the delivery bag from around my neck and handed two boxes of pizza to him. He wasn’t an old man, but his face looked like he’d seen some serious stuff. He grinned as he opened a box right there on the street and began devouring it while walking back to his front door. I glanced at the house number: 113. We made it. I checked my watch: 9:28pm. The madwoman did it; she not only got us there alive, but early to boot.

Millie had already gotten to her feet and was stomping toward the man. “What the hell were you thinking, ordering food this late at night? Don’t you care that we could have gotten seriously hurt?” The guy wasn’t focusing too much on her, though, and he swallowed his food before muttering, “They sent two of you. Good, twice the bodies. Come inside.” He opened his front door and sauntered in, but Millie was having none of it. I don’t think she cared if every Prowler on the block heard her as she called to him, “Hey, you didn’t answer me! Why did you make my friend risk his life to give you a couple of stupid pizzas?” The guy stopped and put his hand on the doorframe. “What’s your name, boy?” he asked, turning his head to look at me. “Um, it’s Clint, sir.” I knew how dumb I looked, so I quickly got to my feet and straightened my back. That’s when I noticed the scrapes and the wetness of my shirt; I was bleeding. Probably from all the times I hit the ground in the last few minutes. “Well, Clint,” he said matter-of-factly, “I needed one last meal before I went out to kill our robot overlords, and you two are gonna help me.”