From the Torment of Dreams

by Iain McKinnon

  The barriers yielded and in rushed the ambulance.

  Telfor brought the ambulance to a hard stop in the hospital forecourt. The moment it halted Orr threw open his door and ran to the back.

  Together Orr and Zinner wheeled out a stretcher bound Speg. All that could be seen of Speg under the thick red blanket was his square jawed face topped by his short bristly hair.

  A nurse rushed out almost faster than the automatic doors could open. She started pulling the trolley inside, quizzing the paramedics as she did so.

  “What's the patient's status?” she asked in a surprisingly mundane tone.

  Zinner answered, “He's suffering from severe pulmonary distress probably brought on by a...”

  They were now well inside the building. It was time to drop the masquerade.

  Zinner's hand slipped under the red blanket. The nurse was waiting for a prognosis. She saw the blanket fall and trail along the floor. Looking down at the uncovered patient she saw an array of weapons lying across him.

  Zinner raised his arm to shoulder height. As he did so the nurse could see that he was holding a sleek, black gun.

  There was a short burst of light and a soft “phut.”

  She turned and watched as the two medics and the patient ran past her.

  Sliding down the wall was a soldier dressed in green. Moments earlier he had been guarding the doorway. He slithered his way to the tiled floor, a long wet trail of blood marking his descent.

  Suddenly the nurse was aware of someone screaming hysterically.

  Zinner turned as he ran down the corridor. He fired a single shot at the screaming woman to silence her.

  The nurse fell to the ground and the screeching stopped.

  Zinner counted off the round in his second mind. In the odd idle moment he had wondered how humans thought.

  “What would it be like to posses only one brain?” granted, his secondary nodule of grey matter was but a slave to his higher consciousness. Despite its comparatively small size it could take care of so many mundane tasks: strip cleaning a gun, retaining information, blocking pain, and on this occasion, count the number of rounds left in his pistol.

  “Two shots fired, eighteen remaining,” Zinner slowed his pace to allow the other two to catch up with him. Both Speg and Orr were breathing hard when they caught up.

  “Speg, head back to the ambulance. Cover our escape,” ordered Zinner.

  Speg nodded and ran back the way he had came.

  “You understand the plan?” Zinner asked Orr.

  “Let me get this straight,” Orr replied sarcastically.

  “Blow the fuck out of anyone in a uniform. Blow the fuck out of the President and blow the fuck out of anyone who moves,” he looked up at Zinner for approval.

  “Except us. But that's pretty much it. Let's go.”

  The pair jogged down the passageway. They looked ill-prepared to be assassins. Both men carried machine-pistols that were so compacted they looked like a child's toy.

  As they moved towards the entrance of a ward Zinner spotted a bodyguard. He was big and chunky the way bodyguards are supposed to look. This one was wearing a well-cut suit and had a tell-tale wire running from his ear to his jacket.

  Zinner could make the shot from here and be sure of a neutralisation but that might give time for the remaining bodyguards to react. Zinner and Orr held their fire and continued to close.

  The bodyguard started to turn.

  Zinner fired. The shot itself was inaudible. The man fell to the sound of shattering glass as the bullet sliced through a pane in the door ahead.

  The two assailants ran into the ward.

  Twenty beds down, there were another set of doors with a group of dark grey figures visible in the next room.

  Zinner was focused on the task ahead as he ran full tilt towards the President.

  His lungs sucking in fistfuls of air, the fuel feeding his active muscles, his heart pounding in his chest pumping that fuel supply. In his hand the “Liberty” semi-automatic machine pistol was raised in front of him in preparation for the shot.

  As he drew closer he fired a volley of two point two caseless high-energy rounds.

  Jackson heard the sound of glass shattering some way off.

  The canvassing politician stopped shaking his hand and paused in the middle of telling him how proud he was.

  One of his entourage stepped to the door. He looked into the adjacent ward and drew his gun. It had not cleared his shoulder holster when there came a much closer sound of breaking glass.

  The bodyguard flew back and landed sprawled on the floor. Blood spraying out as he fell.

  Two men hauled and grappled with the President, trying to get him to safety.

  Thick popping sounds rang around the room as bullets imbedded themselves in the masonry. Puffs of grey dust erupting from the fresh craters.

  Jackson watched, frozen in surprise, as two men rushed in. They wore paramedic style jump suits; smart pastoral green garments with badges reminiscent of pharmaceutical packaging.

  The gunmen started blasting their way towards the President but Dr Rhea was caught in the line of fire. A blond medic tried to shoot past her at the bodyguards but the bullets were blocked from their intended victim.

  Rhea fell. Her white smock turned crimson in a dozen places.

  Jackson cried out, “Rhea!” as he watched her collapse in a bloody heap.

  On the ground next to her was a dead bodyguard's discarded gun. Jackson bent over and grabbed it.

  The gunman with blond hair caught the action in his peripheral vision. There was no telling who fired first but only Jackson fell back. He grunted like a wild animal trapped in a snare and toppled out of his bed onto the floor. A wet dark surge soaked its way through his housecoat seeping down his right side. Smoke rose gently upwards from a bright pink glow just below his shoulder. Jackson instinctively curled into a foetal position trying to overcome the pain.

  The assassins cut a bloody swathe through the President's guards. Surprise, aggression and sheer firepower protecting them from harm.

  In only a few short, horrific moments the last of the bodyguards were slain, leaving a room full of distraught patients and the unprotected President of Neotra.

  There was no dramatic pause or prose as they gunned down the Head of State. It was swift, violent and calculated. Round after round tore through the President's head and chest. There was no visible relish in the assassin's action. It was just the completion of this part of the job.

  Task done they turned and ran back the way they came.

  Even above the turmoil in the ward Lan could hear a commotion ensuing from the courtyard outside.

  “The guards outside must have heard the shots,” he thought.

  Subconsciously Lan saw a chance to abate the maelstrom in his mind, if not finish it. By tackling the two attackers his adrenaline would drown out Nicola's voice. They may kill him, but death was the only way he imagined his torment could end. Somewhere in Lan's mind self-preservation hung on with the least tangible of grips. Nicola's desertion had left him with little to live for. He held inside him an ounce of hope, that one day he would be set free from his torment, that one day he and Nicola could be together again or that oblivion would wash away his memory of her.

  But he knew deep down that he could never have her again. Things could never go back to the way they were. In times like these the plaintive calls for rationality were drowned out by the darkness inside. He could not find the strength or the courage to kill himself but somehow being reckless enough to be in a life-threatening situation wasn't suicide. His subconscious could justify its self-destructive need in the guise of camaraderie, honour or humanity.

  Lan grabbed the gun that Jackson had dropped. His heart beat faster as he found the familiar empowerment of a weapon in his hand.

  He fired at the retreating assassins. The brown haired gunman returned fire, spraying the room with random shots before disappearing.

  Lan didn't b
other to duck but not a single shot hit him. He leapt up from his bed and chased after the assassins.

  He ran full pelt, bare foot across the rubble-strewn floor. Shards of glass pierced and imbedded themselves in the soles of his feet but Lan's sense of purpose blotted out the pain.

  He ran through the doorway at the end of the ward and caught sight of the two men again. Still running at full speed Lan pointed his gun at the retreating assassins and fired.

  The brown haired medic collapsed like a marionette cut from its wires. The blonde medic returned a suppressive blast and once more Lan ignored the danger. Without even flinching he continued his pursuit.

  The air around him buzzed like angry bees.

  With incredible speed the blonde assassin reached the end of the ward.

  Sprinting after him Lan leapt over a body blocking his path. As he landed on the other side of the dead body the ball of his foot slipped in the fresh blood from the corpse. Lan over-balanced and, unable to check his inertia, came crashing to a halt sprawled over a hospital bed.

  Without compunction the blonde assassin was gone, leaving his fallen accomplice behind.

  Lan lay breathing heavily from his exertion. Adrenaline coursed through his veins filling him with a sense of well-being. A feeling he hadn't felt since the escape. Blackened bullet holes in the material of his housecoat lingered with wisps of smoke. Lan felt a throbbing in his left arm. From one of the holes a patch of wet blood started to soak through the material. Evidently one of the assassin's bullets had grazed him.

  There was a gasp and Lan was torn away from his injury. The man he shot lay on the floor, a torrent of blood gushing from him. The thick dark liquid was spreading out, creeping over the stark, white floor with surprising rapidity.

  The man gasped again and his whole body clenched in spasm. His eyes flickered up and at that moment he caught Lan's gaze.

  Lan pulled back, unnerved by the man's anxious expression.

  The man's mouth gnawed at nothing like a suffocating goldfish. Then the rigidity left, leaving him staring vacantly at Lan.

  A security guard, splashed with blood, came into the ward.

  The guard remained silent as he inched his way closer to the downed assassin. It was clear the man on the floor was dead but he kept his gun trained on him. Undoubtedly the guard was reticent in pursuing the last attacker. Bending down the guard checked for signs of life in the corpse. When he was satisfied that the man was lifeless he let out a sigh of relief.

  “This your gun, son?” the guard said picking up the weapon Lan had used.

  “Yeah, I guess,” said an adrenaline flushed Lan.

  The guard released the ammunition magazine and showed it to Lan. It was empty.

  “You're one hell of a patriot taking off after them like that.”

  Jackson hauled himself over to Rhea wincing from the pain of his bullet wound. She was coughing and choking in fits and starts.

  “Rhea, you're going to be all right. Just hang in there,” Jackson tried to reassure the stricken Doctor.

  Nursing his own wound he crawled up beside her and cradled her in his good arm.

  Her head was heavy and her muscles limp, “Stay with me, Rhea, help's coming,”

  Jackson's voice cracked, “You're going to make it.”

  Rhea's white Doctor's smock was drenched in blood from multiple wounds. Pink froth bubbled out of her mouth as she wheezed for breath.

  “D'... don't lie,” Rhea spluttered.

  “I'm a d... d... Doctor,” A weak smile spread across her cyanotic lips.

  “Shhh,” Jackson gently stroked her pallid cheek with the outside of his fingers, “Save your strength.”

  Rhea spluttered up blood and her pupils shrank into small black dots. The last strand of tension faded from her muscles and a faint hiss of breath gurgled past her blue lips.

  “No,” Jackson forced out on a hoarse breath. The tears rolled off his cheek onto Rhea’s blood smeared face.

  “No!” sobbed Jackson.

  Speg briskly marched out of the double doors towards the waiting ambulance. As he cleared the rear of the vehicle he could see Telfor was talking to a Neotran guard. The guard's voice was muffled by the sounds of the crowd surrounding the hospital but Speg could plainly tell by the soldier's posture and hand actions that he was trying to get Telfor to move the ambulance. Telfor had been lucky, the soldier had failed to spot the dead bodies lying behind the double doors to the hospital.

  Speg looked about, surveying his surroundings. The hospital loading bay was hemmed in by a low wall topped with an iron fence. On the far side of that there was a cordon of police pressing back a mixed crowd of well-wishers and anti-war demonstrators. In the courtyard itself there were a good thirty Neotran troops.

  “If we're discovered here it will be a death trap,” Speg assessed.

  He walked round to the front of the ambulance, his right hand inside his jacket holding onto his pistol.

  “Excuse me!” Speg called to the guard, “I think you'd better see this.”

  The soldier looked at Speg with disdain.

  “What the hell do you want?” he belched out.

  “I think you'd better look at this,” Speg said again.

  He placed a firm hand on the soldiers forearm and tried to steer him to the back of the ambulance.

  “What the hell do you think you're doing!” protested the guard as he shook off Speg's grip.

  Speg desperately wanted to get the guard out of sight of the rest of the troops on the concourse. If he could get him inside the ambulance or through the hospital doors he could quietly break his neck or choke him to death.

  The Neotran stepped back insulted by Speg's manhandling.

  “There's some folk been killed,” said Speg roughing up his Terran accent to disguise it.

  “What?” proclaimed the soldier.

  “In here, they've been shot!” he ushered the soldier away from the front of the ambulance.

  “You,” the guard shouted at Telfor, “get this thing out of the way.”

  The Neotran soldier marched quickly towards the entrance of the hospital.

  The sound of muffled shots shook the crowd.

  The boisterous rabble fell silent for an instant before releasing a collective scream of panic.

  “What the hell was that?” the guard's mouth dropped open and eyebrows vaulted upwards with surprise. More shots echoed out around the forecourt and the rest of the Neotran soldiers ran to find cover. The guard looked up at the floor where the shots came from, still wearing his gormless expression.

  Speg's ear piece crackled into life.

  “Zinner to Speg. Target eliminated. Red on Blue. Proceeding to R.V.”

  Even above the noise of the crowd and the gunshots the Neotran guard heard the distant crackle of the radio. The Neotran turned at the noise and stared at Speg.

  Knowing his subterfuge had been discovered Speg reacted with force. One hand firmly grasping the soldier by the shoulder he whipped the gun out from under his jacket, punched it into the Neotran's chest and pulled the trigger.

  The shot exploded through the man's ribcage hurling out shattered fragments of bone and pulped chunks of organs.

  The soldier gawked at Speg with the same surprised look. His puppy dog brown eyes full of sorrow, shock and confusion. Speg stared back, unable to look away. The gaze between killer and victim lasted no longer than a second but before the Neotran finally keeled over Speg had stared into his eyes for a lifetime.

  A line of bullets whizzed past Speg's ear. He threw himself tight against the rear of the ambulance. A shot seared through the skin of the vehicle and punched out just in front of Speg's nose.

  Speg dropped to the ground and scuttled for cover behind the back tyre.

  From his restricted position he could see only a handful of Neotran troops. Huddling behind cover, their guns poking out firing randomly in the direction of the ambulance.

  “Telfor!” Speg screamed above the din, “Hit the
'Sonics!”

  Zinner scrambled down the corridors with superhuman speed making his way to his rendezvous with Speg.

  Orr was dead or captured but that was of no concern.

  Zinner's mind was on self-preservation. He had to get out of the immediate area fast. He burst through a set of doors into the main stairwell. Sprinting down the steps Zinner heard shots being fired outside on the concourse. Screams and shouts were masked by the shooting and even his superior hearing could not make out what was being yelled. He became concerned. Only a couple of seconds had passed since his transmission to Speg but there was still radio silence.

  The firing was now pierced with a thick pulse of sound; the unmistakable firing of a sonic weapon.

  Zinner's ear-piece crackled into life.

  “Speg to Zinner. R.V. is hot! Repeat the R...” abruptly the transmission ceased.

  “Shit!” Zinner cursed.

  Was Speg dead, jammed or plain unable to finish his message?

  “Zinner to Speg. Abort R.V. Repeat Abort R.V. Fall back. Over and out.”

  Speg was loyal and stubborn, he would have held the position to his last breath if he thought there was a chance of Zinner making it. Zinner's cold reasoning told him it was dangerous for him to get to the ambulance but that there was no point in wasting Speg's chances of escape.

  Zinner could hear running beyond the stairwell back down the corridor. Grasping the handrail he leapt over and plummeted the last three flights to the ground. His thick rubber soled boots slapped hard against the tiled floor. The shock of the landing rippled through Zinner's muscles. His knees and ankles bent to absorb the impact as he landed in a crouched position, one hand flat on the ground to steady himself the other holding his gun in front of him ready to open fire.

  Left was the way they'd come in. To the right, Zinner recalled from the plans, there was a service entrance.

  He looked left.

  The ambulance was speeding away being chased by a hail of bullets.

  Content that his message had got through, Zinner turned to his right and started running. Now came the difficult task of his own escape.