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

by Georg Bruckmann

  "What do you see?" asked Mariam, who could only see the events vaguely without the telescope.

  "They get in and keep going."

  "And what do we do?"

  "I think we should follow them. At least for a while, and at some distance. It's a big group and so well equipped that we won't get into trouble behind them if we don't let the distance get too big. I am quite sure that anyone posing a threat will hide safely when they come rolling in."

  "But what happens when they notice us? They're out plundering, aren't they? What..."

  "Don't get upset. They're not degenerates, and plundering - that's what we all do, isn´t it? These people might be able to ... maybe ..."

  The engines were started and the strangers drove on.

  "Do you hear that, Mariam?" Wanda looked directly at the girl. "They are so many, and so well armed, that they can go loud and proud and do not need to hide from anyone. They don't have to sneak around the street and throw themselves in the dirt at the slightest noise. Also, they treat their women as equals, it seems. They can't be that bad."

  Mariam wasn't convinced.

  "Yes, but what if they think we're bad?"

  Wanda locked her face.

  "Maybe you're right. We'll observe them for a while and find out more. Come on!"

  It was not difficult to follow the troop at dusk. The taillights made it easy for Wanda and Mariam to remain unseen and still not let the distance become too great, and, as Wanda had hoped, they did not present a particularly high travel speed. The road conditions did not allow that at all.

  Because they don't know the area and don't know what awaits them behind the next bend, Wanda thought.

  They maintained their tactic of stopping in front of each village and sending two motorcycles forward to scout out the situation, which gave the two hikers the opportunity to reduce the distance, which grew despite the adverse circumstances, again and again.

  In the long run, Wanda thought, if the settlements and villages were no longer lined up close to each other like pearls on a chain, they would need a vehicle themselves if they wanted to continue following the wagon trail.

  "They haven't plundered anything in the last few villages," Mariam said.

  Wanda had also noticed that.

  "Maybe there wasn't anything to get?"

  "They didn't even look."

  "Of course they did, they sent the motorcycles ahead again. Perhaps they have their trucks already fully loaded?"

  "Hm... could be," Mariam gave in, but Wanda could see that she was still thinking about it.

  The tactical approach of the Motorized, as Mariam had named them in the meantime, had already become a fixed ritual as Wanda and Mariam watched as they stopped at the next town and once again the two motorcycles were sent out. Mariam, who was observing through the rifle scope of Wanda's weapon, noticed that they changed the riders of the motorcycles before each reconnaissance mission. When she told Wanda, she answered:

  "That's only fair. They spread the risk evenly."

  Mariam liked that.

  A few minutes later, as if the word "risk" had been a prophecy, the shots of automatic weapons sounded from the direction of the town. The dark bearded man spoke excitedly into his headset, held back his people who were already on the point of taking cover behind their vehicles with the weapons ready, with one slight movement, listened to what the button in his ear told him - then he made a soothing gesture into the round.

  After a while both scouts returned, healthy and safe. They didn't seem particularly excited, as Wanda, who had taken her gun from Mariam again, was surprised to note. Half an hour later, after the Motorized had left the town again, the two hikers learned why.

  There was a big pack of wild dogs lying dead in the street. Some had been overrun by trucks and transports.

  "They must have been dead by the time they were run over," said Wanda as her gaze glided away from the shot and crushed dogs and over Mariam's pale face. The girl nodded, her lips pressed together at the sight, and Wanda added: "Yes. With enough ammunition you can take on that many at once."

  During the night the two found shelter in a half burnt down barn, from where they could just see the bright light, which went out from the car castle, to which the Motorized had set up their vehicles.

  "We must keep the fire small, or they may notice us."

  If their fires were usually nourished by shattered furniture whose paintwork had filled the air with unhealthy fumes most of the time, Mariam today had discovered a large supply of firewood under a coarse blue plastic sheet.

  "Too bad. Now we've got good wood and we can't use much of it."

  "Yes, that's right. Well, that's the way it is. But still better than freezing. Get close. I'll stay awake and make sure you don't roll in during sleep."

  "Why do you want to stay awake?"

  "I've been asking a lot of you these past few days. I want you to rest tonight."

  Wanda fetched a can of red cabbage from her backpack, pulled off the lid first, then the label and put it in the embers on the edge of the small fire. Then she cut with her knife a large piece of a smoked ham and handed it to Mariam.

  "Come on, you gotta eat."

  "Do we have enough?"

  "Enough for two days, but by then we should be looking for some food again."

  Wanda had taken it seriously when she said that Mariam had earned an undisturbed night's rest, but she also wanted to avoid missing the start of the Motorized ones.

  I can't let that happen. No way. No way.

  And she didn't. They continued to follow the slowly creeping vehicles. Two villages later, which had been spied out and crossed by the car people according to their usual system, they arrived in Buechelstadt. As in the other villages, the buildings had been built close to the river and the main road.

  Wanda and Mariam moved along side streets parallel to the town's passage, using the humming of the trucks' large engines and the occasional howling of the more screeching motorcycle engines to determine the distance they had to the convoy.

  They had been following them around the city in this way for about ten minutes, and suddenly there was something different, and the woman and the girl stopped as if rooted.

  "Listen! They turned off the engines."

  "Not all of them. The ones from the motorcycles are still running."

  "That's right. They don't usually do that."

  "I'm sure they've found something of interest. A gas station maybe, or a supermarket that hasn't been looted yet?"

  Mariam said nothing more about it, just listened a little more concentrated. Around the block of houses lying between them and the Motorized, the sound waves generated by the opening and slamming of vehicle doors and the clattering of many pairs of boots came distorted. Those noises, and mutilated remnants of scant, summoned orders. They listened for a few seconds, then Wanda decided:

  "Come on, we'll sneak through one the houses, then we can see what they're doing!"

  Mariam nodded, then quickly made the short distance to a broken window on the ground floor and stopped in front of it.

  "Here maybe?"

  Wanda looked over at the girl and the window. Then she followed. The door of the house was closed and looked undamaged, as were the other windows. She didn't wonder why only this one window was shattered. It was part of their daily lives. They constantly witnessed the effects of past events all around them, the exact course and the reasons of they would never decipher, but always try to guess. She nodded and, carefully trying not to make any noise, began to remove the shards of glass and smaller splinters that still were in the window frame.

  "Give me the pieces and make sure you don't cut yourself," whispered Mariam, while, from the other side of the house, a screeching motorbike engine could be heard, quickly moving away.

  Soon the two had made it and the window was free of the broken glass.

  "Okay, that should do it. I'll pull myself up first, then I'll catch up with you. Hold my rifle, woul
d you?"

  Mariam reached for the gun, and Wanda pulled herself up, paused briefly to take a look into the room behind the window, then she finished the movement, caught up with one leg - then she had managed to enter the apartment.

  "Everything okay?"

  "Yes, Mariam, there's nobody here. Give me the gun ... okay, I got it ... now your hand ... okay, wait, back, you're too heavy for me. Take the backpack off and give it to me ... yeah, good ... now your hand... yeah, it's working."

  The kitchen of the apartment where they now found themselves looked as if the owners had left it hastily, yes, they didn´t even have enough time to switch off the stove it seemed. The contents of the stainless steel pot had burned to a black, crumbly crust, and the bright tiles around the stove were soot-blackened. It's a miracle no fire broke out.

  The rest of the apartment also showed similar traces. After Wanda had made sure that really nobody was here, she waved Mariam out of the kitchen and made her follow through the apartment. Five seconds later the two of them peered through the semi-transparent curtains, which had already been old-fashioned before the war, and watched the spectacle that took place on the main street.

  The two trucks had stopped in front of a pierced paved square, so much they could see, while the vans stood in front of and behind them across the road to shield them. The square could only be seen through the small gap between the trucks, and the large vehicles hid the actual events.

  "Not possible to see what´s happening. We need a higher vantage point."

  Mariam, who could see even less than Wanda, nodded and pulled her pistol.

  "We'll go up, all the way to the top, then we can see everything."

  The front door was locked. Wanda cursed quietly, but soon they had found the front door key in a drawer of the chest of drawers, on which a telephone stood mute forever. Wanda turned it around in the lock and opened the door, whose squeaking reverberated loudly and audibly through the stairwell.

  "Shit!", hissed Wanda.

  Mariam had remained calm and listened into the stairwell.

  Nothing happened.

  No one seemed to have heard anything.

  "Okay, come on, stay close behind me," Wanda whispered.

  Even since she didn't believe that there were still living people somewhere in the house, she held her rifle in the right position, remembered better, shouldered it, pulled the strap tight and took out her own pistol. The stairwell was too narrow to maneuver well with a rifle.

  They sneaked upstairs, always further up the stairs, further up and further up. Mariam stuck to staying behind Wanda and secured downward.

  They paused when they heard a noise and listened, but it did not occur again and they could not tell where it had come from.

  "Maybe a bird. Keep going."

  After a few minutes they had arrived at the top and found themselves in front of two doors. One that was open found itself on the wrong side of the house. They wouldn't be able to see anything from this apartment. Again Wanda cursed quietly. Mariam, who had immediately grasped the situation, turned to the locked door without further ado, knelt down in front of it, lifted the doormat, stretched out her hand and grabbed something.

  A key.

  The girl gently put the key into the lock, turned it, pushed the handle down and the door swung open.

  A real, joyful smile shone on Wanda's face.

  "Well done, Mariam!"

  A quick patrol revealed that this apartment had been abandoned as well, then they stepped to the window and finally they could see what was going on.

  The square, from which they had only been able to see a small part so far, looked as if it had once been a schoolyard, Wanda recognized. Mariam was too young to have ever gone to school, but she seemed to quickly associate Wanda's stories of the time before with what she saw right now.

  "Are those table tennis tables there? Right where they're standing?"

  "Yes, you're right. Smarty!"

  Wanda's face smiled again, but her eyes greedily sucked on what the Motorized did.

  As always, the black bearded man led the command, sending his people - his many people - to the tactically important points. The overgrown schoolyard was enclosed by a three-story, U-shaped building. Four of the armed men lurked in front of each flank of the building, keeping an eye on the windows. Many of the windows were shattered, and on closer inspection, Wanda saw bullet holes in the facade. Around the leader of the Motorized had formed a semicircle of nearly twenty women and men. Bulletproof vests, MPs and assault rifles. They could see, however, that it must have been plundered together. Various models and designs. Impressive collection, though.

  Wanda whistled barely audibly through her teeth, laid a hand on Mariam's shoulder, and pulled her closer to herself. The armed listened to Blackbeard for a few more seconds, then a woman raised her hand, stepped forward half a step, and then it was she who spoke, and Blackbeard was the one who listened. When the woman was finished, he nodded briefly, then he gave the signal to start.

  "Look at this. They're about to go in."

  "What are they doing there? I mean, why are they here in the first place?"

  Wanda didn't know the answer. She hadn't thought of that at all, Mariam was right. What would such a ... such a force want in a school?

  The formation advanced slowly, with four in the middle facing the main entrance. The rest swarmed out and kept an eye on the windows across the barrels of their weapons, as the other team had done all along.

  "What's that on the big cars?"

  Wanda tore her gaze away for a moment from the clockwork-like course of this precise operation. She knew that Mariam did not mean the now manned machine guns on the truck, but the other superstructures. The little girl had seen many weapons in her young life.

  "Those are antennas, and that back there is ... what's it called... ah... a drone. It can fly and through the cameras, it ..."

  Movement on the truck, and Wanda broke off her sentence.

  They could barely see the MG shooter of the rear truck lowering his hand from his ear. Then he got stuck behind his gun, swiveled the gun carriage around and set his sights on the school. The front four, who had crossed the schoolyard the fastest, pressed against the walls of the school building on the right and left of the entrance door. At the same time Blackbeard received a megaphone from a much younger man. His tinny voice carried far through the city.

  "If there's someone in here - I'm sure you've noticed us already. We are far superior in number and equipment. And we want this building. You have thirty seconds to either open the door for us and come out without weapons, or leave the building on the back. In thirty seconds, our machine gun will shoot the door in shreds, and my people will go in. Everyone found in the building is in danger of being killed or injured, whether hostile or not. We would very much like to avoid a battle, but in the interests of our safety and yours, I can only strongly recommend doing what I have ordered. Time is running ... now!"

  He lowered the megaphone and looked at the watch on his wrist. Wanda was counting.

  He let forty seconds pass before he turned to the man at the machine gun and gave the order to fire.

  The noise was deafening, but it took barely three seconds for the doors of the school building to be dismantled into countless, tire-sized pieces, and before the dust had cleared, the armed had disappeared into the building. Ten seconds Blackbeard stood there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, then three single shots sounded inside the school, which were answered a fraction of a second later by the polyphonic rattling of automatic weapons.

  This was followed by silence.

  The silence was followed by words.

  Words spoken by someone who had come up the stairwell.

  Words spoken by someone who was now a short distance behind Mariam and Wanda.

  Shepard

  "Well, when it started, I had just gotten married. No dough in my pocket, but it was enough for our first apartment. She was just in the middle
of her apprenticeship as a draftswoman, and I just had my journeyman's certificate in my pocket and then started working for my uncle's forwarding company. You may remember all the whole thing ... you come home from work, hang in front of the TV in the evening and then switch off the news. At that time, of course, I didn't know that it had already started, that only became clear to me later. Attacks here, terror there, war in some fucking Middle East country, America mucking around, Europe allegedly wants to defend some ideals, Russia and China are in a clinch ... back then everything came out to your ears, fucking annoying, ha, and today you'd be happy if there were still news that could annoy you. In any case, I didn't realize it until they started shooting down each other’s jets because of some airspace violation, those fucking idiots. Then it started, first, as always, in the East, and two years later the war arrived here.

  No one would have believed that. The whole thing has lost its logic, so the sparse rest of logic that might have been behind it. Also the ethics, well, but they were long gone, anyway.

  I don't know how you experienced that time, but for me it was all highly unreal. I didn't get it until the cities literally burned. And like me - like us - almost everyone was like. What is there to do about this whole theater of dumbness when you can't influence it anyway, right?"

  Gustav nodded and stretched out his demanding hand in my direction. I reached into the bag and gave him the pliers he needed to strip the thick wires and twist them together.

  I had been on my feet again for about a week, which was largely thanks to Gustav. At first, he tried to talk me into it. To get me to stand up, I mean. But I didn't want to. I couldn't. I refused. I just wanted to lie there on my sickbed staring into the gray sky. I was obligated to do my exercises, trained my weak legs, yes, but beyond that I didn't want anything. They brought me food and did everything else for me. And I walked in circles around my bed or lay in it staring. I didn't blame Mariam. She had been with Wanda, much, much longer than she had been with me.