From the Torment of Dreams

by Iain McKinnon

  The ambulance filled with the sound of popping as bullets burst through the flimsy metal frame.

  Speg let out a cry and grabbed his arm.

  Telfor looked across to see a bullet had pierced the cabin and ricocheted into the limb.

  The ambulance careered from the road and mounted the pavement as Speg lost control of the steering wheel.

  The bodywork scraped hard against the stone facing of a building. Sparks flew from the grind of metal against the hard granite wall.

  From his position at the infrasonic console Telfor dived forward and tried to regain control. He stretched past Speg and yanked hard at the steering. His left arm hooked round the passenger seat for stability, Telfor struggled to gain command of the wheel. His control was sporadic and harsh. Violently the ambulance lurched away from the building's façade. The wild jerk made Telfor over-compensate as he fought for control and veered drunkenly into the middle of the street before Telfor steadied his steering.

  “You get my arm, I'll get the wheel,” Speg fought off the initial blow. Blood poured from his wound but he knew he'd been lucky. Another centimetre and it would have struck the bone and that would have cause the shell to tumble. The spinning round would have fragmented, shattering the bone and shredding the tissue. The blunt force trauma could even have killed him.

  As it was, all he had to worry about was bleeding to death.

  Telfor surrendered the steering to Speg and smashed open a survival kit.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Speg yelled.

  “I'm getting a bandage for your arm.”

  “Fuck, man! We're in a damn ambulance an' you wreck one of our med packs for a fucking bandage!”

  Telfor was scared. More scared than ever before in is life. He wanted to curl into a ball and cry, but he knew he couldn't. He knew the futility of surrender. For what they had just done there would be no prisoner of war camp. It would mean torture and death. The only thing possibly worse than being captured by the Neotrans was Speg's fury. This had been Telfor's first taste of war. He'd seen the monuments, been told the heroic tales, studied the history but none of it had prepared him for this. Fear parched his throat, dread crept down his spine to nest in his stomach. Telfor knew he'd never been a brave man but he'd never figured himself for a coward. Here he was in the presence of supermen. Men like Speg seemed at ease with the terror.

  All Telfor could do was panic about not getting hurt.

  Speg glared at him in the rear-view mirror.

  Telfor mustered a weak, “Sorry”.

  “Get the fuckin' bandage on me. I'm bleeding to death here!” Speg tried to calm the rage in his voice. A screaming voice in his mind assured him he had good reason to be angry but his intellect knew he might have to rely on Telfor to escape.

  “What about the bombs?” Telfor asked.

  “Leave them. Zinner might not be clear. Besides he can detonate them by remote.”

  In pursuit through the back streets two Neotran patriots fired wildly at the fleeing figure. One of the men wore a dull green uniform and helmet. The other man, the one leading the pursuit, was clad in a smart business suit and dark trench coat. He carried a pistol; the soldier an assault rifle.

  Zinner careered into a main street, stumbling over the wheels of a pushchair as he charged into the crowd. The mother screamed and cursed while stooping to cradle her child. Ignoring her Zinner hauled himself up and continued running.

  From behind him came an authoritarian yell, “Police! Everybody down!”

  The young mother huddled low with her child. Many of the civilians ducked down. The majority stood, as if detached, watching the commotion. They seemed to deny any danger simply by being impartial to it.

  “Good move,” Zinner thought.

  The two men pursuing him were not police, one was internal security the other a soldier. They were official but a shout of “N.I.S.” or “Military Police” would have bewildered the crowd. Calling attention to the pursuit wasn't in the interest of saving innocent civilian lives. By getting people out of the way they made shooting Zinner easier.

  “Time for a little mayhem,” Zinner clutched the remote detonator in his pocket and sent the command to the bombs.

  In the streets surrounding the hospital a dozen explosions went off. They were small and largely ineffective. The heavy security had necessitated well-concealed, inconspicuous devices. This seriously restricted their power but enough panic and disruption would be caused to slow down any mobilisation.

  One of the devices detonated harmlessly behind the following Neotran pursuers and the noise and shock of the explosion caused them to falter. Zinner stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of the explosion. He whipped round and instinctively fired at the soldier. In one swift move he emptied his clip, spun round and was running again.

  The bodyguard in plain clothes flung himself to the ground but for his companion Zinner's shots had been too accurate.

  The soldier fell to the ground his green fatigues riddled with red welts. He hit the ground hard, juddering with the impact, to lie lifeless beside the security officer.

  The bulk of Zinner's volley met their target but a handful of shells had cut down passers by. The screams of the injured melted the crowd's indifference. There were shouts, cries for help and blindly the panic-filled mob ran.

  Running over prostrate citizens or barging past them Zinner made a dash for the train station.

  As he zig-zagged through the crowd a shot whistled passed him. It stopped when it caught a young woman in the back. She dropped to the pavement silently, her long hair tumbling down behind her.

  The pursuer's shot had been wild.

  “Got you mad!” Zinner said to himself, “Now you've had hit a civilian you'll be cautious and slow to act.”

  Zinner leapt over the woman's body and ducked into the first doorway he could find.

  It smelt acrid. A thick stench of musty urine filled his nostrils. Zinner quickly looked over the public lavatory and positioned himself in a cubicle.

  Carefully, the president's bodyguard edged his way around the door. The rubber soles of his shoes squeaked as they kissed the tiled flooring.

  “Splosh!”

  The guard spun round, gun aimed in the direction of the noise. The urinals gurgled and spurted as a fresh deluge of water washed out the trough. He turned his attention to the row of cubicles. There were five in total, three of the toilets had their doors shut.

  He bent down to look under the doors. In the one nearest to him he saw a pair of military boots. He smiled at his good fortune and aiming his gun at waist height he fired.

  The Gents' was filled with the thunderous purr of his machine pistol. The spray of bullets pierced all five of the cubicles, bursting huge splinter edged holes into the wooden panels.

  The smoke from the muzzle swirled in soft silent cyclones.

  A tart, burnt smell wafted through the stale air.

  A door creaked and sheared off its hinges. It had been a diversion, all there was in the toilet were a pair of boots. The guard turned looking for an exit his quarry might have escaped by.

  Zinner's hands had turned white from the pressure and his shoulders bulged from the strain. His hands and feet wedged into the corners of the end cubicle stung with the exertion. He hung there like a huge spider glued to the ceiling. The shots had passed harmlessly through the partition beneath him.

  Silently he slid down. With one swift swing the door was open. It creaked on its damaged hinges. In an instant he was out of his lair, like a tarantula hungry for lunch, he leapt on the security officer.

  Alerted by the noise the man started to turn.

  But Zinner was too quick. He swept the man's legs, and as he fell he punched him on his way down.

  With an axe kick Zinner brought the ball of his foot slamming into his opponent's chest. The blow hastened his fall to the ground.

  His whole body juddered from the double impact of the floor and Zinner's kick but before he had time to rea
ct a second blow fell.

  This time there was the crunch of a sternum snapping.

  The man was far from dead. Dazed by the shattered rib cage he thrashed under Zinner's boot reeling in agony.

  Zinner knelt on top of his victim and thrust his thumbs into his warm gelatinous eyeballs. The guard flailed his arms, hands slapped at Zinner's face, like a drowning man trying to reach shore. Zinner's thumbs pushed in further. The cornea ripped and gave way, slashed open from Zinner's nails.

  As the vitreous liquid oozed out he angled his intrusion upwards, pushing towards the top of the cranium. The bodyguard let out a pitiful wail that gurgled and strained. Pinned to the floor under Zinner's weight he could do nothing to stop him.

  The tough muscle of the seleratic membrane was the last obstacle to Zinner's progression into the brain. Contorted and stretched from the pressure the muscle ruptured and popped. In less than a second the journey ended with the penetration of the man's anterior lobe.

  The guard convulsed and the crying flattened to a low hiss.

  Zinner paused for a moment. The Gents' had become peacefully quiet. He pulled his thumbs out of the dead bodyguard's brain and looked at them. There was a strange mixture of blood and clear plasma from the eye sockets. Scraps of clear jelly like retina were lodged under his fingernails and blood covered most of his hands.

  Beneath him the body was still twitching in an echo of its last struggle.

  Zinner stood up and walked over to a sink. From a dispenser on the wall he squirted thickly scented green liquid soap onto his hands. He washed in the cold stream of a tap that was marked hot water.

  Zinner dried his hands with a paper towel and discarded it into the waste bin. He knelt back down over the corpse and started rifling through the pockets. There was a wallet with a small amount of cash and loose change. On the inside face there was a small colour photograph. The portrait showed the dead man with his arms around an attractive young woman. She had long dark hair and dark red lipstick. They were laughing with each other and the man bore the imprint of a kiss on his cheek.

  “Sloppy,” even if Zinner had personal items like this he would never carry them with him. If he were captured it could prove a lever for an interrogator or intelligence officer.

  He delved into the man's inside pocket to find a couple of magazines of ammunition for his gun and an ID badge in his breast pocket. Best of all he found an unopened packet of sweets.

  He stripped the corpse of his trousers and hastily pulled them over the top of his jump suit.

  He retrieved his boots and put on the dead man's dark trench coat. Picking up the dropped gun he checked the chamber and the ammo. Satisfied it was serviceable he flicked the safety on and slipped it between the belt and his trousers.

  Zinner walked out of the gents' toilet savouring the taste of fruity candy.

  Following an alternate escape route Zinner made his way to the train station. From there he could make his way to the suburbs. Getting away from the centre of town would make it easier to rendezvous with Cope. Failing that the lax security would make it far more likely he could make his own way out of Jala or be picked up by a dropship.

  Zinner had travelled the distance from the gents' toilets to the station in a little over three minutes, walking briskly among the crowds, running down the deserted back alleys. In the cluttered urban concourse travelling on foot was faster than any vehicle. But Zinner wasn't concerned by a pursuit, he was racing against the Neotrans' response. He had to get out of the city centre before the security forces cordoned it off.

  Through a narrow back street he entered a service access to the train depot.

  The loading bays and walkways were alive with workers. Over a hundred people would see Zinner but not one would spot him. His bright green overalls had been concealed by the set of dull clothes stolen from the dead guard worn over the top.

  With the gait of someone eager to get home he marched through the bustling shop floor.

  A supervisor caught Zinner's gaze as he approached. The man looked hostile in his own bureaucratic way. Zinner's enhanced eyesight picked out the name on the supervisor's security badge. Before he could be quizzed Zinner nodded his head, popped a sweet in his mouth and said, “Bye Bob.”

  “Yeah. See ya',” replied the supervisor, oblivious to who this man was.

  Any con man would have been proud of Zinner's casual confidence. To Zinner it was another weapon.

  The station beyond was lively with traffic. He couldn't see any police or military presence but in a transit hub as large as this there would be some.

  The crowds were unaware of the political assassination that had taken place only a few minutes ago. Zinner was wary, he knew that by now all of the law enforcement agencies would be alerted.

  He walked invisibly through the throng and up to an automated ticket dispenser. After fishing in the lining of his stolen coat he removed a handful of change. Zinner depositing most of it into the machine, a pink cardboard ticket with a magnetic strip down its centre was forced out of a slot at shoulder height.

  He plucked out the ticket from the machine and made his way along the concourse. The station was beginning to fill with commuters keen to get home and forget about their day's work. Zinner joined a short queue to be funnelled through a turnstile and onto the platform.

  “Did you hear,” one commuter said to another, “There's been some sort of explosion at the hospital.”

  “When was that?”

  “Just ten minutes ago, I heard a policeman say so as I came in,”

  “I heard something on my way to the train station but I just thought it was construction work or something.”

  A noise grabbed Zinner's attention. A radio crackled somewhere in the busy station. The noise would have been inaudible to the other people waiting on the platform but Zinner's acute hearing picked it out of the hubbub. Zinner traced the sound back. Where he bought his ticket a knot of policemen now stood. One of them was talking on his radio, the rest were waiting for him to finish. The conversation ended and he tucked his radio mike back into his breast pocket. He addressed the gathered police officers, dishing out orders. The briefing finished they started to spread out.

  “They're looking for me,” Zinner reasoned.

  Nonchalantly he walked to the far end of the platform. He'd be cornered there with no place to run to, but it might buy time until the train arrived.

  Zinner spotted a pretty girl in a short skirt buying chocolate from a vending machine. Her outfit was formal and business-like but the skirt was cut high above the knee. She had shoulder length dark hair and couldn't have been long out of her teens.

  Zinner stood away from her. Even though the police were looking for a man he knew their eyes would be drawn to her. He decided that if a gunfight were to start he'd take her as a hostage, they'd be less inclined to endanger an attractive female.

  A policeman walked onto the platform at the far end and started working his way forward. Zinner slipped his hand inside the long coat and put his fingers around the grip of his pistol. Closer the policeman came, checking the commuters as he went.

  There was a low rumbling sound from along the platform. Zinner looked down the track into the darkness of the tunnel, it was black and cold, all he could make out was the occasional flash of body heat from rats as they scurried out of the train's path. He could see the policeman out of the corner of his eye methodically working through the crowd, drawing closer. The rumbling grew louder until at last the headlights of the train could be seen emerging from the tunnel at the far end of the station. The policeman was halfway along the crowd of waiting passengers as the train started decelerating to pull-up at the platform. It trundled ever slower as if teasing Zinner. It was like watching a roulette wheel with its ball dancing around the numbers, just willing it to stop and end the frustrating suspense. Sluggishly the train's wheels screeched one last time and came to a stop. Zinner walked up to one of the doors. There was a large palm sized panel that read “
Open”, the light behind it was a strong red. He pressed the smooth plastic button.

  The policeman was having a harder time moving along the platform as the mass of bodies surged forward to the carriages. The door hadn't responded quickly enough, Zinner pressed the button again. He looked down the train to see the policeman was now only a few metres away. For the third time Zinner hit the button marked open. The pretty girl was right beside him with the policeman almost next to her.

  Zinner pulled the gun from his pocket and held it at his side beneath his coat.

  The doors opened and the commuters heaved onto the train. The policeman stayed and surveyed the boarding passengers. Zinner walked into the carriage and sat down facing away from the platform. The window opposite him was an imperfect mirror, through the dark shards he could only catch glimpses of the platform behind him. Zinner tried in vain to spot the reflection of the policeman, to reassure himself he hadn't been noticed.

  From down the platform his acute hearing picked up the running of feet.

  Zinner knew he shouldn't but he afforded himself a look round.

  A man in a dark blue suit with an attaché case was making a dash for the train.

  The policeman stepped forward to intercept him.

  “Excuse me, Sir,” the police officer said.

  At that moment the doors slid shut. The sound of the train's engine gearing up drowned out the rest and a moment later the train jolted forward as it pulled out of the station. Zinner craned his neck and looked back. As the platform disappeared from view Zinner could see the policeman questioning the agitated commuter who had missed his train.

  Not only is it darkest before the dawn, it's also coldest and Speg was well aware of how cold it had become. Snow was lying on his gun as he trudged forward. He and Telfor had spent the night walking through the darkness to a rendezvous. The ambulance was too easy to spot and the freshly erected roadblocks had made it too hazardous to use a stolen vehicle. So they had set fire to it and continued on foot to meet up with their Waden contact. Cope was to meet them and take them to a safe house but he hadn't shown up. After an hour of waiting, slowly freezing to death Speg and Telfor had moved on. They had waited as long as they dared, the bitter cold and the fear of detection had forced them to move.