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

by Georg Bruckmann

  I wonder if they'd already seen him.

  Of course they had, he had waved and yelled.

  Thirty meters.

  If they were untrained shooters, I had a chance if I moved fast. Pistols weren't very accurate. To the side, in one of the houses maybe? But as soon as I would start running, I was sure they would start shooting, which they hadn't done yet.

  If they really wanted to kill me, they could have just shot me in the back, couldn't they?

  On the other hand, if they wanted to talk, why didn't they just call?

  No, there was a silent threat from these figures. The distance between us decreased agonizingly slowly, but steadily. Backwards, I wasn't fast enough, but I didn't want to look away. The thought of not being able to see them anymore was creepy.

  Had they perhaps not fired until now because they no longer had many bullets and could not waste them?

  It was a mystery to me what they wanted me to do. The two trailers I had carried outside through the burst shop window of the bike shop were hardly a livelihood one would to defend with arms, were they?

  They were still mute, from their cloth and scarf covered mouths only white breath clouds penetrated outside, but not a single sound. So incredibly quiet, so quiet that only Gustav had noticed them, and that only because he had looked in my direction anyway.

  Why hadn't I heard them?

  How long had they been following me?

  I turned my head and tried to catch a glimpse of the doctor. He was still there, kneeling, the rifle at the ready, half behind inverter modules, using the devices as cover, and behind him, a little further away, with increasing horror I saw another loose chain of masked and armed figures. Gustav couldn't have noticed them yet, as concentrated as he looked in my direction.

  Our only chance was the houses. Entrench ourselves in the houses, or flee through them, through the backs and smaller alleys and escape the masked, or at least pull them apart to a degree that they could not play out their numerical superiority. And that had to happen soon. If I hesitated any longer, they would be so close that even this last way out would be blocked.

  "Step aside, Gustav, they're behind you too," I yelled, although I was sure he couldn't understand my yelling any more than I could understand his a few seconds ago. But he would see me running away to the side and drawing the right conclusions.

  When I finally set my legs in motion, which seemed terribly sluggish and heavy at that first moment, someone was yelling.

  It was a woman's voice, and it belonged to the figure with the prosthetic leg. And I could understand those words. The words I heard as I ran towards the first open door on my right side sounded angry and hateful, and they were:

  "There we are too, everywhere we are, child murderer! But run if you like, run!"

  Child murderer.

  The meaning of this word only seeped into my brain when I had already dipped three meters into the semi-dark hallway.

  Tommy.

  Mariam and Wanda

  "Don't be afraid, Mariam. It's gonna be okay. They're good people. Just do what he says," Wanda tried, with raised hands and a soothing tone of voice, to influence all those present equally. Mariam's face turned towards the man. Like the other Motorized ones, he wore a protective vest whose exchangeable armor plates were visible under the fabric.

  Heavy, was Mariam´s first thought. She couldn't tell if Wanda was right about her assessment. At the moment the man just seemed threatening, probably because he hadn't opened the visor of his motorcycle helmet. And that he had a small, poisonous looking machine gun pointed at her.

  "Kneel. Balls to … face the wall, girls. Hands behind your back."

  "We're not resisting. There's no reason to shoot us," Wanda said as she turned around to follow the instructions. She used the same, emphatically calm tone as before.

  Mariam heard the man come closer, heard the soft, leathery crunch of his clothes. He stepped behind Wanda. Mariam turned her head stealthily. Wanda actually didn't seem scared. Somewhat tense, yes, but not frightening, rather ...

  The man reached for Wanda's hands. Mariam couldn't see exactly what he was doing, but soon he made a jerky movement, a strangely high and somehow coarse sounding sound, and Wanda pulled a wry face and sucked in air for a fraction of a second. Cable ties.

  Then the man came to Mariam. She was startled and jerked as he pulled her hands up a little, tampered with them, and finally the sound was heard again and her wrists were pressed tightly, but not too painfully against each other. She guessed he was a little more gentle with her.

  Although she had noticed that, confused, panicked thoughts crept into her brain.

  "I should have shot him. Now we are to undress again and have to pull the carts. We shall be beaten and touched and ... and shall hunger and in the end we shall die. I should have shot him. Anything's better than that. Anything..."

  "Stop yelling, kid, or I'll have to punch you in the face, you hear?"

  The man pulled her to her feet with ease and then turned her around at the shoulder. He brought his face to the height of hers, and now he folded the visor up.

  That helped.

  Mariam started to calm down slowly, and when she had calmed down, the man with the surprisingly gentle brown eyes chased them outside the building, past his motorcycle leaning against the back wall of the house, then around the corner, towards the schoolyard. Mariam had struck her knee when he had maneuvered them out of the broken window on the ground floor in front of him, but he did not seem to care about that.

  Just before they arrived at the second corner, he told them to stop and announced their arrival by radio.

  "I got our two pursuers... yes... no... no... no problems... haha... no, you'll see them in a minute. We'll be coming round the corner now, it'd be nice if nobody shot us... well, sure, you bum... okay, we'll be right there."

  Then, to Wanda and Mariam:

  "Come on, nice and slow, pass behind the truck and turn left."

  They obeyed.

  In the few minutes that their capture had lasted, the atmosphere in the schoolyard, shielded from armored vehicles, had changed. Where previously tension and the fire of automatic weapons had reigned, the mood was now more relaxed. The men and women who had stormed the school had just returned, one by one. None of them were injured and the barrels of their weapons pointed to the ground.

  "What are you doing here?" Wanda turned to their guard.

  "Armin can tell you that if he wants to."

  He nodded over towards the black bearded one, then he added:

  "But he's still busy." Then he pointed his sub-machine gun at the rear wheel of one of the trucks.

  "Sit down over there."

  When they had obeyed the order, he pulled two more cable ties from a pocket of his heavy motorcycle trousers and tied their ankles together.

  "Pascal?" he shouted towards the second truck further back.

  "Keep an eye on them, will you?"

  Wanda stretched her head, couldn't see at first who he had addressed his words to, but then she noticed that the MG gunner on the roof of the big vehicle swiveled the barrel of the gun in their direction and pointed his thumb up.

  "Don't even try to run away. I'd be sorry for you."

  "We're not going to," Wanda answered.

  Then he walked away in the direction of the black bearded man, who knocked on his people's shoulders about twenty meters away and received their report. Now the motorcycle man took off his helmet, and they could see that he had not only brown eyes, but also hair. He did not interrupt his leader, but slowly walked over to him, standing a little away from the group and apparently listening to what was being said.

  It wasn't until everything was told that he stepped forward.

  While it was now his turn to report, all of them again and again turned in the direction of Wanda and Mariam. After about a minute in which the two prisoners tried to learn at least something from the two men's nodding, shaking their heads and shrugging their s
houlders, the motorbike man left to get his machine, Wanda thought, and the black bearded man, accompanied by another man and woman who had belonged to the Storm Team, walked across the schoolyard and entered the U-shaped building over the rubble of the doors disfigured by the MG fire.

  Mariam ran her eyes up to the machine gunner who was still watching them.

  Pascal.

  "Wanda, what do we do now?" Mariam whispered, although none of the Motorized ones seemed to pay attention to them. Except Pascal on his machine gun, of course.

  "Nothing. It's gonna be okay. There's nothing to be afraid of. They're not degenerates, they're not red sleeves, they're not vampires. Look around. No prisoners. Except us. They warned those who were in there at school before they shot. You can't be more fair than that these days."

  Mariam said nothing, but tried to reconcile the image that Wanda had just drawn with what her own eyes saw.

  Those of the Motorized who stood on the fringes of the action, keeping an eye on the surroundings, were attentive and concentrated, but none of these sentries seemed anxious. They stood straight where red sleeves or degenerates would have lobbered, and they showed themselves open where the vampire hunters would have hidden and lurked.

  Yes, these people were different, but was that good?

  Those who had nothing to do stood together in small groups and chatted quietly, without cursing or threats, but not without showing a certain, hard-to-grip vigilance.

  After about ten minutes the motorcycle man came back. He pushed his machine. Wanda's and Mariam's backpacks and their weapons he had hung right and left on the handlebars together with his helmet. He parked the motorcycle in front of Pascal's truck.

  "Take a good look at them, Mariam. I don't think they're gonna hurt us."

  After this request from Wanda Mariam began again to let her gaze wander. Then she noticed something.

  "There are so many, and there's not a single injured person in it. Nobody's a Hurter. No one is missing an arm or a leg, no one has radiation ulcers. How is that possible? They probably kill their wounded and sick, or send them away!"

  "No, Mariam, think about it. It must be different. I just don't think this is all of them. There's got to be more. They've set up somewhere, and these are just the ones who have some outside job to do. They only take the healthy with them."

  "Yeah, maybe."

  Mariam was not convinced by Wanda's explanation and continued to watch as the cold could crept from the floor through her jacket.

  Wanda, however, had asked herself a different question while trying to reassure Mariam. Why would anyone storm a school with such effort? They obviously made no plans to occupy the building or use it as a camp. What was the mission of these people? What did they want? What was it that drove them to work together so well? And then the most important of all questions ... she kept watching.

  It took two hours for the black bearded man and his people to get out of school again. His face had been tense and attentive before, but now it seemed sober and resigned. A small group of his people was close to the entrance, and the woman with the short, reddish hair addressed him. He shook his head, her face briefly twisted, as if to a soft curse, and then the black bearded man went on to the middle of the secured area. There he stopped and raised his voice.

  "We didn't find a trace of him," he shouted, and then, after a short break in which the disappointment of all those present was almost tangible, added:

  "But at least there are some things in there that have value to us. Go inside, get the books and chemicals from the science rooms. Don't break anything. A handful of people have settled in there. They'll probably come back when we're gone again. Leave them their supplies."

  Someone else called something back. Mariam and Wanda turned their heads towards the new voice. It was Pascal who, when he began to speak, stood up behind his machine gun so that the black bearded man could see that it was he who spoke.

  "And the team on the back is sure he wasn't with the people who took off?"

  "Yes, unfortunately! He wasn't here, we were wrong."

  Slowly Wanda began to understand what all this was about. The Motorized ones were looking for someone, and to see if someone had been to school, they had just scared everyone up.

  "You see, Mariam, they're smart. They made a lot of noise here and put observers on the other side. They startle people, they get scared and run in the opposite direction. So they can see if the man they're looking for is here, without having to search room after room or engage in big discussions."

  Mariam was slowly but surely annoyed by Wanda's enthusiasm for these people. They had taken them prisoner and Mariam was quite sure, someone was shot dead inside the school. On the other hand, she could understand the interest Wanda felt.

  The Motorized were really different. Nobody, including herself, Mariam knew would have left the school´s supplies untouched if she had had the opportunity to help herself. She found she was hungry. She suppressed the feeling as good as she could. Then she thought:

  Nobody's that generous when they need something themselves. So the fact that these people still were generous could only mean that they carried more than enough supplies, and probably also that they knew exactly where they could get more once everything they had was used up.

  "I wonder who they're looking for," Wanda's voice interrupted Mariam's mind. "And I wonder when they'll give us something to eat."

  She was hungry too.

  Both questions were not answered until late afternoon. Meanwhile both Wanda and Mariam were frozen and their trousers and the lower part of their jackets were soaked with molten snow.

  Once they had tried to get up so that they could at least jump on the spot, or do knee bends or something like that, but a barked command from Pascal made them prefer to sit down again and press close together as to lose less of their body heat to the winter air. They watched as the Motorized carried their loot out of the building and loaded it.

  In the course of the afternoon the mood of the black bearded man had become worse and worse, so it seemed. He didn't snap at his people, but he radiated a restlessness that seemed to spread among those who were around him. Mariam could also feel this and could bear it worse and worse to be tied up and defenseless. Only Wanda's presence and her steady It-Will-All-Be-Good prevented Mariam from falling into panic and a helplessly angry screech.

  Then, finally, the black-bearded man came over to them. Seen from up close, he looked a little younger. He had to be about Shepard´s age, Wanda thought.

  "So. Who do we have here? Why are you following us?"

  "I'm Wanda, and this is Mariam. We're hungry."

  He looked down at her with his face still, then he reached into a bag and took out a picture.

  "Have you seen this one anywhere?"

  The smiling man depicted on the worn Polaroid was a bright-haired fifty-year-old, Wanda estimated. The mop of hair on his forehead had already receded a little, the eyes were of a watery blue and he was shaved smooth. Even though he smiled, he seemed strained. The eyes lay deep in their sockets, and even in the small, slightly blurred image one could see wrinkles of tension.

  "Do you know him? Yes or no?"

  "No, I'm afraid not. Who's that?"

  "This is Doctor Walter Mahler."

  "Why are you looking for him?"

  The black bearded man ignored the question and first held Mariam, then Wanda the photo closer to their faces.

  "Think very carefully. Have you seen this man anywhere, at any time?"

  Wanda shook her head again.

  "And you?"

  He looked at Mariam with a forceful stare and knelt down in front of her so that she could see better.

  "No," she said quietly.

  He straightened up again and put the picture back in his pocket. Then he turned his back on them and shouted:

  "We're done here. Pack up and get out of town!"

  Immediately movement came into the Motorized. Vehicles were started and they began
to board.

  "Hey, what about us?" Wanda wanted to know. The black-bearded man looked briefly back over his shoulder.

  "You'd better crawl away from the truck before it leaves."

  The vehicle was already vibrating.

  He turned away again and called out to the front:

  "Robby, you found them. Keep them here until tomorrow morning, then you let them go, give them their things back and follow. I'm sure you'll catch up with us on that bike of yours quite soon. You know where we're going."

  Out of a small group that had still been busy loading the last transporter, the brown-eyed one approached.

  "Yeah, all right."

  He thought for a moment, then went to one of the armored vans, spoke briefly to the driver, opened the tailgate and came back with two large cloth bags. He knelt down in front of Wanda and Mariam, and as the vehicles slowly started rolling everywhere around them, he cut the cable ties that pressed the ankles of their feet against each other with a knife that had been stuck in a scabbard on his left calf.

  "Come on, get up."

  He stretched out his hands to them and helped them up.

  "What's in the pockets?" Wanda asked, stepping from one foot to the other and Robby grinned briefly.

  "You'll see."

  He lifted up the big bags, one with each hand, and weighed them against each other. One of the bags seemed a little lighter. He put that around Mariam's neck. The other around Wanda´s.

  "Something to eat and wood," he smiled.

  "Come on, let's find a nice spot before it gets dark."

  The last truck rolled away, and Pascal raised his arm to an ironic greeting gesture, which Robby answered with an extended middle finger. They both laughed. As the truck rolled off the square, the laughter of Robbie's face disappeared.

  "Come on, down the road. You guys go ahead and don't try anything, all right?"