Strangled Silence

by Oisin McGann

  More men came in, along with the squeaking wheels of a trolley; he heard the sounds of them removing the man from his bed – 'one, two, three and up' – the limp body flopping onto the trolley, its metal frame creaking slightly. He waited for them to leave and then pulled at his restraints. They didn't budge. He lay still and waited again, trying to suppress the waves of fear surging through him. This wasn't right. If he'd been wounded, he'd know about it by now. His head was clearer. There was no numbness in his body now; he had no sense that he had been given painkillers.

  If he wasn't supposed to be awake, he would pretend to be unconscious. Until he knew what was happening, he needed to play every advantage he had. Ivor didn't know why they had been talking about that man's wounds in the future tense, but he wasn't going to wait here and find out. The door opened. He shut his eyes and lay still. Footsteps approached, stopping by his bed.

  'What's this one down for?' a voice asked.

  'Number twenty,' another answered. 'The right one, with minor shrapnel scarring.'

  'Poor sod. Well, at least he's just losing the one. Right, let's get him in there.'

  Hands started to undo the straps. Ivor remained limp. He had no idea how fast he'd be able to move after lying here for all this time, but he was going to get out of this bloody room if it killed him. The restraints were taken off. He hoped they would not look at the monitors, notice how fast his heart was going . . . The sensor was slipped off his finger and hands took him by the shoulders, hips and shins. There were at least three men . . .

  'One, two, three – up!' one of them barked.

  He was hoisted over onto the harder, flatter mattress of a trolley. A faint gasp escaped from his lips as he flopped down and he thought he'd given himself away, but they paid no attention. Unconscious bodies did that too, sometimes.

  Someone leaned over him: he could sense the shadow on his closed eyelids and their breath on his face.

  He heard the snap of the trolley's straps being unwound. Ivor opened his eyes and snatched at the head above him, seizing it by the hair with both hands. With all his might, he butted the man in the face. The drip tore from Ivor's arm, the wound spitting blood.

  There was a second man by his feet and Ivor kicked him in the chest. With a strength born of terror, he sent the man sprawling across the floor. Ivor rolled off the side of the trolley, away from the third man, who grabbed him by the flimsy hospital tunic he was wearing. Ivor swung his elbow back into the man's teeth and tore himself free. The door. He had to make it to the door. His legs wobbled under him at first, but sheer desperation got him to the doorway. The men, who were dressed in orderlies' scrubs, were already coming after him. He slammed the door after him, nearly running into another trolley outside. Pulling it over, he kicked it back into the path of the orderly nearest him, knocking the man off his feet.

  Ivor ran, his bare feet slapping over the linoleum, his ripped tunic hanging open at the back. Whimpers slipped from his throat as he sprinted for a set of double doors ahead of him. A man in a soldier's uniform came through just as Ivor reached them and Ivor hit him with the flats of his hands, hurling the soldier back through the doors. Ivor brought his knees down hard on the man's chest, grabbed his head and banged it on the floor. The uniform had no insignia. Who was he with? A private security contractor? Special Forces? The soldier was wearing a side arm and Ivor yanked it from its holster, flicked off the safety, turned and aimed it straight at the chest of the man behind him. The orderly skidded to a halt, his two colleagues nearly running into him as he did so.

  'Back off !' Ivor shrieked at them, his voice high and frantic. 'Lie down! Down on the floor!'

  The men did as they were told; their faces were masks of restrained frustration. The soldier was on security detail; Ivor found one set of handcuffs on his belt and some plasticuffs in a pouch. He quickly bound the wrists of all four men, interlocking their arms so they were tangled together. Then he started running again. Behind him, the men were already shouting for help.

  Reaching a crossroads in the corridor, he stopped, heaving in breaths. Which way? Jesus, which way? How did he get out of here? A normal hospital had signs in the corridors and hallways, labels on the doors. There was nothing here to tell him which way to go. To his right, a door opened at the end of that hallway. Ivor ran towards it as a man came out. Ivor lifted the gun, putting his fingers to his lips, demanding silence as the man's shock registered on his face. The man was dressed in pale blue surgeon's scrubs; he raised his hands in reflex when he saw the gun. Ivor seized him by the shoulder and spun him round, his arm around the surgeon's neck, pushing him back through the door, holding the gun to his temple.

  There were two other men in the room and one woman, all dressed in scrubs. They stood up as Ivor barged in with his hostage. He looked around in bewilderment, not understanding what he saw.

  It was a bizarre mix of a military strategic planning room and a doctor's consulting room. On two walls were physical and political maps of the various trouble spots in Sinnostan, as well as a table with a plasma display currently showing the region around Tarpan. There were a number of computer terminals and two free-standing transparent displays down the middle of the room. The tables were littered with reference books of different types. On the other side of the room were a number of easy chairs and couches, along with anatomy charts, pharmaceutical charts, a white board, wall-mounted light-boxes displaying X-rays as well as what looked like diagrams of different kinds of armaments: rifle and handgun ammunition, grenades, artillery shells, rockets, all accompanied by photos of the kinds of wounds they caused. Three cups of coffee stood incongruously on a low table between the couches.

  'What the hell's going on?' Ivor wheezed. 'Who are you people?'

  That was when he noticed the roulette wheel. Set into a dark wooden counter in the very centre of the room, it was so out of place he didn't realize what it was for a moment. But there was no mistaking it now that he stared at it. It was big; there were at least a hundred slots . . . no, he could see the number 101 from where he was standing. What was a roulette wheel doing in a hospital? Was this even a hospital at all?

  Nobody had answered his question. There was an oriental man with slicked back hair and a goatee in front of him. The others were looking at him. He was probably in charge. Ivor pointed the gun at him.

  'Who are you?' he demanded.

  'I'm just a doctor,' the man replied calmly, his accent a mix of Chinese and American. 'I can see you're confused. That's just the medication – it's making you a bit addled, that's all. Why don't you put down the gun? You're scaring everybody. Nobody here is going to hurt you. You've been brought here for treatment. You're disoriented and you need to calm down. Please, put down the gun.'

  'Treatment for what?' Ivor hissed at him, his tight grip on his hostage's neck causing the man to choke.

  'Post-traumatic stress,' the doctor said in a gentle voice. 'Please put down the gun.'

  'Bullshit!' Ivor snapped.

  He caught the doctor's gaze flick over to the wall to his left and Ivor glanced round to see what he was looking at. There, on the wall, was another chart. It listed different types of injuries, each one assigned a number. The last number was 101. Ivor frowned, frantic thoughts racing through his mind. His eyes opened wide as realization came over him. Ivor got a glimpse of number twenty before he caught the doctor looking past him and spun round in time to fire a shot through the opening door behind him. A woman collapsed in the doorway, a flower of blood blooming through the shoulder of her pale blue tunic. The shot echoed down the corridor.

  'How do I get out of here?' he snarled at his hostage, pressing the hot barrel of the gun against the man's temple.

  'Agh! Out and to the right, but—'

  Ivor shoved his hostage at the Chinese doctor and pulled the door open, jumping over the injured woman. He heard the clatter of running feet. An alarm sounded. Turning right at the junction, he sprinted for the double doors at the end. I just shot someone, he
thought. What the hell is going on? Why did I just shoot that woman?

  There was no time to wonder if what he'd done was right. He had seen number twenty. He knew what they were going to do to him, even if he didn't know why. What had the orderly said as they picked him up? 'At least he's just losing the one.' Ivor ran like he had never run before.

  Slamming through the swing doors at the end of the corridor, he reached a T-junction. Finally, an exit sign to his left. The sound of hurrying footsteps behind him. He turned and put two shots through the door to slow them down. This weapon had eleven shots. He had eight left.

  He reached the next door in seconds, pushing through it to a large, high-ceilinged vehicle bay beyond. Two military-style trucks and three APCs were parked there, but they were not army or marine vehicles. Who were these people? He could hear the thumping roar of a powerful helicopter outside the big steel shutter doors barring the exit to his right. No way out in that direction – besides, he couldn't afford to get caught in the open.

  He heard shouting behind him. Another door led down a different corridor, one that looked like it might skirt the building, maybe to a quieter exit. Following it for fifty metres, he came to a steel service entrance. It was locked. The only other door led back into the building complex. Ivor panted for breath. Three men in security uniforms appeared at the bottom of the corridor. They moved like professionals. They were all carrying semi-automatic weapons.

  Ivor shoved through the interior door and started running again. The corridor was cold and sterile, its walls and floors lined with white tiles that felt slippery under his feet. He didn't see the alcove to his left until it was too late. A heavy body hit him, driving him against the opposite wall as his right arm was skilfully twisted into a lock, pinning the gun against the wall. As he tried to resist, the man grabbed his other arm and the gun went off, shattering tiles and causing his attacker to flinch aside. They both fell forward, the soldier's weight on Ivor's. Ivor hit the ground with his arms locked behind him. His face struck the tiles, blasting a burst of pain across the left side of his head.

  That was when his tooth came loose.

  24

  Then he was on a trolley, restraints on his wrists and ankles. They had given him a drug of some kind but he wasn't unconscious, just dulled. Number twenty, he thought. Jesus, aren't they even going to knock me out first? The lights of the corridor whirled by overhead, the glow seeming to drag from one fluorescent bulb to the next as if following him. He screamed. They paid no attention. He shrieked and kicked and thrashed around on the trolley, but it made no difference. His movements were weakened by the drug, his screams little more than whimpers. Nobody was paying attention to him, even if they did hear.

  They had taken away his voice.

  The sedative they had given him was too weak again, they were saying. They gave him another shot. Closing his eyes, he waited for unconsciousness. It did not come. Were they going to operate on him like this? One of them noticed that Ivor's eyes were still opening from time to time. Someone else said it was nothing to worry about.

  He was taken into a room lined with eight metal tanks. A breathing mask was fitted over his face, and clips attached to his twitching eyelids to keep them open. The clips dripped saline solution into his eyes – presumably to stop them drying out and obstructing his vision. There was something they wanted him to see. The mask was strapped on and he suffered a terrible feeling of claustrophobia. The sides of the mask covered his ears completely, blocking off his hearing. His senses were numbed, but he felt his restraints being removed and then he was lifted off the trolley and lowered face first into the tank. His wrists and ankles were slipped into sleeves of rubber, bound from four points each with what felt like soft bungee cords. Their grip was yielding but firm. He could move, but not enough to touch the walls of the tank, or even his own sides. His body was so numb he was barely aware of his own limbs.

  He could hear his breath inside his head and smell the rubber edges of the mask, the faint scent of old sweat and some other, chemical odour. The rubber sleeves and a girdle around his waist supported him as the hands let go and water started to fill the tank. He wanted to scream again, but he was too weak. As the water covered his mask and he knew he was going to be able to breathe, he relaxed slightly. Then they covered the top of the tank and everything went black.

  The sedative was wearing off. He could tell because he was able to count up to one hundred without losing track. His limbs still felt numb. There was no sensation but the sound of his breathing, the smells in the mask and the growing pain in his jaw. He knew why they had hung him face down; it was to stop his tongue slumping over his throat and suffocating him if he fell unconscious. The thought frightened him more than anything that had happened so far.

  What were they doing to him?

  He prodded at his loose tooth with his tongue and felt a dart of pain go through his jaw. Despite the discomfort, the feeling gave him relief. It was real, part of him. Something they hadn't taken away. As fear closed over him, he clung to the sound of his panicked breathing, the fading smells inside the mask and the pain in his gum caused by the roots of his tooth. He wiggled at it again – his friend, the pain.

  Ivor screamed until his throat was raw. The noise did not stop. It seemed to go on for ever. Sometimes the lights flashed into his eyes at the same time, sometimes the white noise deafened him so much he couldn't tell if the lights were strobing across his eyes or not. It was so loud he couldn't understand why his eardrums hadn't burst. With no sense of touch or smell or taste, his mind clutched at any sensation. Whenever the noise disappeared, he relished the silence. But not for long. Soon his ears ached for some kind of sound, anything to pull him out of the deaf, blind and empty void that his senses had become. Anything to tell him he was still alive.

  The lights burned their way into his brain, making him feel sick with their pulsing. He retched, but there was nothing to throw up. But when they were gone, the glow scorched into his retina assured him that whatever else, he was not blind. Soon that would fade and he would strain his eyes for anything, anything to focus his mind on. He had heard of this kind of thing: torture that didn't leave a mark. It was mental conditioning, sensory deprivation, normally used for interrogations. But nobody was asking him any questions. Left alone, he had no idea how long he had been there, or whether he was going to be left there. Was anybody coming back for him? Were they going to leave him here to die? How much time had passed? It felt like weeks, but he would surely have died of thirst by then.

  He screamed again, just to hear something. His throat was dry and painfully ragged, as if he'd been swallowing sand. He prodded his loose tooth with his tongue again. It was almost out, just hanging by a thread of flesh. There was a certain satisfaction in feeling it dangle on that strand of skin.

  A film started playing on the glass of his mask. Some kind of heads-up display. It was a scene in Tarpan, what looked like a market.

  'Ivor McMorris.'A man's calm voice spoke into his ears. Ivor was absurdly happy to hear another human being. 'You have been hurt. This is what happened to you. Listen carefully. This is what happened to you. You were filming in Tarpan when a bomb went off, injuring you and your colleague, Ben Considine.'

  'No,' Ivor croaked. 'I don't know . . . I don't know what you're doing, but I know I wasn't hurt. You're lying and I'm not falling for it. Tell me what's . . . what's really going on here.'

  The display disappeared. The white noise cut through him, roaring until his ears seemed like they would implode. He screeched until his voice gave out. Then there was complete silence. He waited: blind and deaf and senseless. His tongue pushed at his tooth. It almost came out and he pushed it back in again. Biting down, he felt the roots stab into the bottom of the socket. The strand of gum was so thin now, easy to break, but he just wiggled the tooth back and forth instead, saving the sensation for as long as possible.

  The waiting seemed to go on for ever.

  'Say something!' he rasped.
'What . . . What are you trying to do to me? I don't . . . I don't . . . I don't understand what's happening. What do you want?'

  'I want to tell you what happened,' the man said gently. 'Listen carefully.'

  The market scene in Tarpan reappeared. It was inter-cut with scenes of a bombing, but Ivor could tell that these shots were from a different place. As the pictures flicked back and forth, lights pulsed behind them and he started to find it hard to keep his thoughts coherent. The voice was gentle, soothing, almost hypnotic as it spoke to him. He stopped wiggling his tooth and listened more carefully. He started to recite the words as he was told.

  'We were sent to the scene of a car bomb in a marketplace in the middle of the village. It was gruesome; the injured had already been rushed to hospital, but there were still a few charred corpses in the burnt-out cars around the site of the explosion. Men with hoses were washing the blood off the road and into the drains. We started filming, even though we knew the insurgents – or the resistance, whatever you want to call the bastards – had a nasty habit of launching follow-up attacks on the people and the soldiers who gathered around these bombsites . . .'