Free Where the Birds Hide at Night by Gareth Wiles Page B

soon enough he had his wish, lifting his hand away and letting the corpse drop to the floor like an over-ripe gooseberry.
    Alex stepped back and looked down at what he’d done. He couldn’t quite believe it, as though it had happened in a dream away from his conscious control. Not really worried by his actions, he turned and walked out as the cell door was once again shut and locked.
    * * *
    Technology outstripping morality,
    A Pandora’s box of devils
    Unleashed.
    Nature endlessly self-replenishing,
    Trundling, trundling along
    Endlessly.

WHAT HAPPENED TO NOOSE NEXT
(PART ONE)
    Noose couldn’t see the face on the carpet from his hospital bed, but he knew it was there. He could just sense that he was being watched. Only one guard was currently in place, and he wasn’t looking at Noose. If anything, he was looking down at the floor. Was the floor carpeted? Being a hospital ward, probably not; but Noose just
knew
that the face was down there looking up. Why wasn’t it on the ceiling where he could keep an eye on it? The face was being rather cunning, he thought, and evading him. What was it up to?
    The guard gave out a little yawn and checked his watch. Sorry to be keeping you up, Noose thought. He dare not have said it out loud. No, this whole situation had crushed his interaction with others to not much more than a responding to questions basis. It didn’t do to enter into any kind of jocular retorting with the guard. In many ways this was what he missed most about Peter Smith – they had been such good verbal sparring partners. The same could have been said about Sergeant Stephen Noble too, but that had also ended in misery. Still, Noose was alive and this was perhaps his last hope at somehow coming up trumps in the end. Being alive afforded him at least the most minute smidgen of opportunity to put right what had occurred. With the key to the handcuffs in the palm of his hand, he needed only to wait for some strength to return before he could mount an escape bid.
    Right this second a figure swept in, cloaked from head to toe in a creamy silk garment, their face shielded by a heavy hood. They held up a small device to the guard’s neck, who promptly dropped to the floor unconscious. Two more hooded figures followed, all three standing over Noose’s bed. ‘Everything is nothing. No order, no lies,’ they droned in unison. ‘Deny your anchor, scape the goats. Everything is nothing. No boundaries, no battles.’ One moved closer, pressing the device against Noose’s neck.
    * * *
    â€˜Have you been attentive?’ Peter Smith asked. Noose opened his eyes and looked around, but he couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. ‘Have you been paying attention?’
    â€˜Peter, is that you?’ Noose replied in desperation, seeing that he was the only person in the room. He was lying flat on a hard metallic slab, free from binds but still cursed by weakness following the attack in the prison. All around him were bumpy brown walls of earth, the damp musty smell of the moist air almost choking the poor man. He struggled into a sitting position, rubbing at his neck. ‘Where are you?’ he called out again to Peter, but there was no reply. Peter was dead, and that was that.
    Noose stayed sitting in the same spot for quite a while, in some way glad he was no longer shackled to a hospital bed but in another way concerned about his current location. He’d become a man who was put in places, and taken about under the control of others. He had always been the one doing that before, so it kind of irritated him to have the tables turned. Anywhere was better than prison, though, so he quickly accepted the fact that the hooded figures had rescued him. It briefly crossed his mind that it may not have been a rescue at all, and that what might happen to him next could be so much worse than what had happened in prison. If that was possible.
    â€˜Everything is