Circle of Wagons: The Gospel of Madness (Book 4 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series))

by Georg Bruckmann

  The waves beat over him and tore him away. Only a tiny part of his core was left behind. Toni concentrated on this tiny core, while the rest of him screamed and yelled and implored and howled and whimpered and gave the men everything they wanted from him. He gave them his fear and his pain. He shouted at them so loudly that at some point someone had mercy with him, or perhaps just worried that his shouting would ensure that this little jungle prison could be discovered.

  The man's mercy manifested itself in a blow with the stock of a rifle that ended Toni's pain for that one moment.

  The pain didn't go away for long. When he awoke from his powerlessness, it seemed even stronger to him than during the torture. They had been hot then. Now they were dull and everywhere and deep inside his body, and no matter how he turned and moved carefully, they did not want to go away. It took Toni superhuman effort to make sure he was alone in his underground cell, but it was not until he did that that he used his meditation routine to push back the blazing impulses of his nerves. It only worked with great effort. He turned the torment into a more neutral feeling, one that his consciousness no longer absorbed, although it did not want to pass. He went at a distance from the pain, but only so far that he could just think again.

  The part of his brain he didn't need for thinking Toni used to whimper and moan. A variation of lucid dreaming. Toni had perfected this technique to make the endless boredom of his priestly education more bearable. At least that's how it was at first. Then, when he had realized the full potential slumbering in this method, he had displayed a kind of obsession for a while. He's benefited from that now.

  He made an inventory of the cell. There was new food and a new bottle of water. This time it was clean. Toni wondered why. Then he noticed that his heaviest wounds, especially his hand, were covered by partially bled through, but still quite clean bandages. They had probably been afraid that he would die before their general had gotten what he wanted from Toni. Toni wondered if this could mean that they would leave him alone for a while.

  Besides the meager rations, they had thrown the book down to him again. Maybe they thought he had learned his lesson. Toni hoped so, for it was only for this purpose that he had faced the pain to almost full extent. And there was something else. The letters from Antoine. He didn't admit it to himself, but at that moment they exerted an extremely consoling attraction on him. Careful not to let any of his wounds - he hoped they had cleaned the dog bite well - break open, he crawled to the spot where they lay.

  He weighed the bundle in one hand. Antoine was a faithful letter writer, Toni thought. Then he began to read, but he only quickly flew over them. It didn't take long, then he put them away again. Antoine's affections, the eternal litanies about how much he would miss Toni and how much he believed in Toni's great plan. It simply bored him to read it all over and over again. Actually, he didn't even know why he kept the letters at all. It would have been enough for him to simply read about Antoine's progress in infiltrating the Swiss Guard. Antoine didn't do bad. And this considering the fact that he had to be extremely careful and cautious - Toni actually had to take off his imaginary hat to Antoine. But it wouldn't do any good if he died in that shithole in Africa.

  Africa.

  Perhaps it had been the foreign continent that had awakened the need in Toni to keep something from his old homeland with him. Yes. That was it. Probably that's why he didn't burn the letters after reading them. That was stupid of him. A far too human emotion for someone - no, for a principle - who wanted to rise above humanity.

  Was that why Antoine's love and loyalty repelled Toni, even though it flattered him? The humanity inherent in Antoine's lines, despite his unscrupulousness and malicious intellect?

  Yes. Probably. I guess that's it.

  Godlike. Don't make me laugh! I still have a lot of work to do in this regard.

  Gods and men ... Mankind had invented so many gods, and never even one man had tried to become one. Even the attempts of the Loge of the Seeing had been ridiculous, and subjected to small-minded, human concepts. Hedonism, even if it was absolute - all well and good. But ...

  A sharp pain went through Toni and he bent down. For two hours or more, he couldn't think. When he could at least move again, he ate all the waste they had given him. He spat out part of it again. Then he ate it once more.

  That's what they did to him. They had had the audacity to irretrievably change his body against his will. His anger began to burn as he chewed down the already chewed porridge. But there was something else he had seen up there in the light.

  What he had read in their faces. It hadn't been hate, he remembered with astonishment. No fanaticism either. Not like the Inquisition. Not even the cold professionalism with which the local police or perhaps an interrogation specialist from some Western secret service would torture, or the ... something moved far back in Toni's memories. He felt for it, but it was intangible and misty. Then his attention returned to his recent, terrible experiences.

  It had been a quiet kind of joy that these men had radiated. A certain kind of innocence that came from ... yes, from what exactly?

  The only one who had had something of a scruple, at least at the moments when it had become life-threatening for Toni, had been the camp's young commander. All the others had looked rather playful, like cats who had been given a very special mouse.

  Was it the skin color? Did his white, or rather cancer-red, burst and strongly sunburned skin make him a fly to them, which could only be pulled out of its wings for fun? Is that it? Didn't they recognize a fellow man in him?

  Well, he wasn't a mere man, and he didn't want to be that either, but they couldn't know that, could they?

  He pondered and felt his facial bones. The broken eye socket. The spot was swollen and he had the impression that the bone under his thin skin gave way. But that could be deceiving, he thought. He was glad he didn't have a mirror here, even though he wondered what he looked like now. Pretty monstrous with certainty. It wasn't just the finger, Toni thought. They deflowered his body as a whole. He remembered that it was said that bones grew stronger after being broken.

  For a brief moment, the thought gave him comfort. If that was true, they should go ahead and break every single one of them. They'd see. Maybe ... but no. He had never felt so weak and miserable in his life before. Not when Azrael had beaten him in his methodical way, not when the lodge had disciplined and used him in the first few years.

  He ... he had to give those men something if he wanted to make it out of here. Anything. And even if he did, his chances were slim. But if they would go on like this, if he allowed them to, there would soon be nothing left of him. He thought, and as he thought, at a furious pace he changed from revenge to fear, to anger, to resignation, to defiance, to helplessness and countless other stages and back again. It took him some time to calm down. At some point his thoughts stopped racing and branching out more and more. Slowly they became clearer again.

  Even since the mutilation of his body still filled him with horror, he was more afraid of this horror than he feared for his hull. They could not succeed in changing his mind through his body!

  Now he managed to keep the pain at a distance a little better. He slowly crawled over to the book. Toni picked it up with his left hand. It felt strange. Not because the spot where his little finger had once been pounded painfully, but because his grip was different. Unskillful, not in balance, and the book almost slipped out of his hands. That this did not happen, he recorded as a small victory, and he decided that he would need even more of those small victories to survive all this, this nightmare, about which he still did not know how exactly he got into it.

  Maybe that's exactly what the key was. His memories.

  Perhaps the writing would help him to repair the damage the narcotic had done to his head more quickly. Certainly a rape-drug or something, Toni assumed. The fact that he could recall using similar drugs himself made him a little more optimistic.

  With his healthy right hand he
picked up the pen.

  Then he remembered the urine stream and withdrew from the hatch. In his corner he began to write. One thing was clear to him even before he put his first words on paper. If he wanted to use the writing process to clarify his situation for himself, he could not lie. Later, he could still tear, chew and swallow the written sheets and write a version that would possibly bring him protection or mildness. But now he had to write down the whole truth.

  Two versions, then. One for himself, one for the General. He didn't know how long it would take. Maybe they'd read it before he was done. But good. He could worry about that later. Now he had to start.

  Toni only stuck to the facts in what he wrote down, but in spirit he also relived his feelings of that time. He remembered his train of thought and the reasoning behind his actions. Suddenly he even knew what had been that intangible thought he had tried to grasp earlier. Vascotto. There it was again, the tingling in his head. Of course, he was here on behalf of the mob boss. No, not by his order, that was wrong. But it had to do with him.

  They had maintained loose contact after the event in the catacombs of Rome, and one evening Vascotto had invited Toni to dinner again. At first Toni had feared that he would be killed, but that had been more of a superstitious fear than a concrete one. It had turned out differently.

  Vascotto had had a suggestion for Toni. One that Toni was only too happy to accept.

  He didn't even have to trick much to get himself into a position where he could benefit from the Mafia boss. He had simply gone into the waters of Herod and sought his friendship. This stupid joker was so obsessed with missionary work in Africa that he had already filled out all the application forms and made all the necessary contacts before entering the seminary. Toni had made friends with him, even though he had found it difficult to hang out with this man, if you could call him that at all, and for Toni it was an especially great sacrifice. But it was more than worth it. Toni and Herod had succeeded in being sent together to Merkanto to spread the word of the Lord.

  When he first set foot on the new continent, he had seen nothing but limitless potential. He would earn truly indecent amounts of money here, much more than with his small drug network in Rome. He would satisfy Vascotto and give him new sources of income too. Not that Toni had any serious interest in a luxury life. For him, money was a tool, a means to an end. A knife he would use to cut his name into the bark of the world tree. And perhaps he would even succeed in completely peeling off this bark, this hardened crust of human stupidity and mediocrity.

  That's how he had felt at that moment. Like Michelangelo in front of a block of marble, just before he would apply the hammer and chisel for the first time. And that's not all.

  Here he would be able to obtain the most abysmal pleasures, as they would not have been easily possible in Italy, at least away from the sect. He was confident. He knew very well how to manipulate and build a network of replaceable helpers. That worked the same way in every place in the world.

  The new strange impressions that poured into him and Herod caused the creature to babble like a waterfall as they left the airport looking for a taxi. Herod sweated like a pig, whereas Toni seemed to have absolutely no problem with the humid heat of this country. Toni remembered how he had hidden the uninteresting words of his companion from his consciousness so that he could calmly let the strange surroundings have an effect on him. Toni just soaked it all up.

  The noisy life all around him. How people left, and how they interacted with each other. He saved every nuance of smell, every gesture of a street vendor, of a driver waiting next to his car or of the police officers patrolling in groups of two in their shabby uniforms. He simply absorbed every tiny detail and analyzed, categorized and ordered what he saw in his head, divided it into interesting and uninteresting, useful and useless, potentially dangerous and potentially helpful.

  When they reached the village where they were about to work six hours later, the thought processes that took place in Toni's head had not yet ended. He had no memory of what he had said to Herod, while an old taxi driver had taken them out of town in his rickety car, through the shabby suburbs, and finally far inland.

  The village bore the name Maritao and was one of the larger ones, as far as Toni could tell. It had perhaps sixty or seventy wooden houses, partly covered with rusty corrugated sheet metal, and in general much improvisation took place here. An inventive architecture of practicality. Chickens and other small animals were practically everywhere around him. Either in cages and rudimentary wooden or stretched out wire fences, or the livestock simply walked free because they knew they would not go far from the places where they were fed.

  Numerous car wrecks were to be seen at the roadside. Young men screwed around with the better preserved of them, while others stood next to them giving advice. The ones Herod and Toni passed in their taxi turned their heads and most of them turned their faces to a welcoming smile and raised their hands to wave.

  Herod waved and joyfully smiled back. Toni would have preferred to ram his elbow against his larynx with a quick movement of his arm for this silly behavior. In general, he had to show a high degree of self-control in Herod's presence. But not for long, Toni was happy in his thoughts. Not for long, my moronic friend ... This chaotic country, which had to struggle with so many problems, would surely offer him one chance or another to get rid of the stupid idiot once and for all.

  The village had a central market square with about a dozen different stands, a small church where they would preach, and a school building right next to it. He and Herod would live in a small extension of the church. The mere fact that there was a separate school building suggested that this village was one of the more prosperous of its kind. Elsewhere, as Toni had educated himself, for the sake of simplicity the lessons took place in the church.

  The fuss that the inhabitants of the village made when they greeted the two priests was amazing. In fact, Toni had to make an effort not to be touched by the emotional and the genuine, unfiltered joy and friendliness that was shown to them here.

  As he now remembered this impulse of weakness while writing in his earth cell, he distorted his mouth to a disgusted, contemptuous smile, causing his face to hurt a little more again. The pain quickly spread to the rest of his body, and until he had regained control of it and put it in its place, he stopped writing. He stretched out on the ground for a long time and concentrated on remembering that first day. He could still write later, when he was better again.

  He and Herod were greeted by a woman of about thirty, carrying a little girl in her arm. Two other children hid behind their legs and watched him and Herod with big eyes. She introduced herself as her housekeeper. Her name was Imani and Toni knew he would have her soon. She showed Herod and him around and told them about the village, its inhabitants and the biggest problems. Most of the younger men worked for a foreign mining company. In the morning they were picked up by the company´s trucks, and in the evening they were brought back, being completely exhausted. The women and children cultivated a few fields that had been wrested from the rain forest at the edge of the village or took care of the cattle. The housekeeper stressed that they were all good Christians, but that there were still problems. The money the men made - it wasn't much. There was alcoholism and, as a result, often violent clashes, both among men and within families. One would be blessed, especially in comparison to other villages, one would know that, but nevertheless there would be a great dissatisfaction.

  She said she hoped that the two preachers would not only shed some light on the souls of the people, but also help in practical matters to develop the village. Education - school teaching - was the most important aspect. They'd be from the rich West. They should know how to do better.

  Toni grinned inwardly, because of this erroneous assumption. He certainly wasn't here to make anything better for her. And Herod? He was simply too stupid to do it. Toni remembered staring at Imani's seductive buttocks under the colorful dress as she walke
d through the village ahead of them. She was at least three times as intelligent as his idiotic partner and had a much higher level of energy. It would be a pleasure to take her.

  Of course he wouldn't write that in his report, but now he remembered how he had coerced her, harassed her and then simply raped her. In fact, Toni now got a hard on despite his desolate condition, although his little finger had been chopped off and the eye socket had been smashed.

  While he was playing with himself, he dawned away.

  ROLF:EXODUS I

  Milan

  Ducked, Milan sneaked ahead. The certainty of having five of his best men around gave him some confidence. They formed a circle, a kind of protective cocoon around him. They would protect him from every danger, including the ghost. That meant, if the ghost made it this far at all.

  In the southern suburbs of Frankfurt, there had been no signs of his activity so far. Nevertheless Milan did not feel quite comfortable in his skin. A little insecurity remained deep inside him. A spark, which tried to become a fire and which he had to extinguish again and again.

  Pull yourself together, he admonished. He wasn't here for the ghost. He was spying here. His task was to inform his father Christiano in time about what was going on in the southern districts at his headquarters in the main station.

  And there was something going on.

  Riders.

  They camped in a courtyard surrounded by three multi-storey, burnt out and partly bombed out residential building skeletons. Their camp was open on one side, and of course they had focused their attention on this very weak spot when they had assigned the guards. Consequently, Milan had decided to sneak through the houses to see what the newcomers were all about. He counted nearly four dozen horses, slightly less fur-dressed and armed men and women, and a large number of prisoners.