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 think?"

  "What?"

  "We were talking about agriculture and gardening."

  Petra looked at me, firmly examining my face, and the others who seemed to have forgotten that I also was sitting at the table turned to me.

  "I ... I was in my thoughts. But farming and gardens sound great."

  Mr. Mack smiled, Mrs. Simon poured herself some coffee, Scarface looked slightly angry, which he always did, and Petra said:

  "You know, I think we're all getting along pretty well here."

  She made a gesture into the room, and I quickly saw what she meant. The members of the escort for Mr. Mack and Mrs. Simon had mixed among the Hurters and had their own lively conversations.

  "I don't think we need you as a watchdog. Why don't you go check on Gustav?"

  Did she really want to send me away, like an inattentive child who couldn't stand to behave at the adults' table anymore? Instinctively, I tried to disagree, but she was right. It was good enough for me to know that the negotiations were under a good star. I wasn't really interested in the details. I grabbed the jute bag, just said goodbye and left the cafeteria.

  First, I went into my room and shook the contents of the bag onto my rumpled, musty bed. The clothes were indeed freshly washed, and I noticed that they had also been repaired and that they had sent me some extra sets of socks, underwear and a thin sweater. It was probably some kind of excuse for the hardship of the previous day. I thought it was a little puny, so I decided not to return the things I was now wearing and to keep them as replacements. But now I wanted to put my own clothes back on.

  When I closed the door to have a little privacy, my eyes fell on my backpack, crossbow and rifle. They had given us the backpacks and the rest of the equipment when we left the apartment tower. I felt the sudden urge to take my stuff and leave the polyclinic behind me.

  Not yet, I said to myself.

  I went looking for Gustav.

  I found him in a stairwell where he had opened an electrical cabinet and was busy wiring the inverters, or at least some of them, to the existing electrical system. What I did not expect was that three members of the High People, two young men and a woman of about thirty, would help him with his work. When he noticed me, he stopped in his tune, pointed the tip of his screwdriver at me, and said:

  "Ah, there you are. How's it going upstairs?"

  "Going well. They don't seem to be getting along badly."

  "Well, that's great. I didn't expect anything less. This is Mark, Elyas and Mara. Mara's an electrician."

  The three of them nodded at me and smiled politely. Then Mara took the floor:

  "I've done many of the installations in the tower."

  I wondered if she had also helped Mr. Mack set up his camera system.

  "Impressive performance, I must say."

  She seemed to be pleased about this little kindness, because she smiled, a little shy, but honest, as far as I could see. Her two companions also nodded approvingly.

  Elyas said:

  "Yeah, she's got it all figured out."

  Gustav joined the expressions of respect.

  "Great, huh?"

  Then he fell over and began to twitch.

  "Shit!" I shouted.

  "He's having a seizure!"

  The three had reflexively jumped apart. Of course, seizure was the wrong word for what Gustav was going through, but there was no time to explain it to them. The fucking idiot had pushed himself too far.

  "You, electrician girl, Mara, hold his head and try to stop him from biting his tongue. You two..."

  I pointed at those two.

  "...hold his arms and legs."

  They reacted surprisingly quickly to my instructions and gave me the opportunity to search Gustav. It took me about five seconds to find the ampule in one pocket and the syringe in another.

  Only a few drops of the liquid were left.

  Shit.

  I had never talked to him about the specific dosage. With my thumb I pushed the mint green cap off the needle and then pulled up the syringe. I dropped the empty ampule carelessly, then rammed the syringe into his thigh and pushed the piston forward.

  It took a whole minute for it to get better. Not as usual. He must have stretched that stuff pretty good. This assumption was confirmed when it slowly became clear that the cramps had become weaker, but did not want to stop completely. When, after a while, they at least relaxed enough we did not to have to hold the doctor anymore and could be sure that he would not injure himself, we brought him to his room. When he was lying in his bed, sweating, wet and pale and with his face distorted with pain, I turned to Mara:

  "Do you think you can get back to work?"

  She was also pale, but not as pale as Gustav. The sight of the suddenly collapsed doctor had gotten to her. Also to me, but I've seen this before. Finally she just nodded and walked out. Her two friends followed her hesitantly. Someone wanted to say something, but didn't.

  "Please get me someone to look after him," I shouted after them. Then I turned to Gustav.

  "Was that the last vial?"

  He nodded weakly.

  "Shit!" I looked at him. "You are a goddamned asshole, you know?"

  He had always been thin. Now he seemed emaciated, hollow and like someone who had been kept in a dungeon with water and bread for decades.

  "Is there any other way to make it better?"

  When he answered, his voice was brittle and rough, and he had difficulty finding the right words.

  "Anything with Bri...ara...etam o-oder, or maybe Cl...omethia...zo...zo...zol. But i...I don't know, wethit really works. K-no idea... if it's just for the symptoms..."

  When, after a few minutes, two Hurterpeople finally came in, accompanied by a worried looking Petra, Gustav's face displayed his deep despair.

  He did nothing more than stare at the ceiling with empty, feverish eyes and slowly but steadily shake his head in a negative gesture. In brief, I informed her of what had happened. She'd take care of him as best she could. I went back to my room and grabbed my things.

  It just didn't work out. I just couldn't do it. As much as I wanted to catch up with Mariam and Wanda, I couldn't leave Gustav behind in this condition. With my weapons and my backpack over my shoulders I went back to the cafeteria. Mrs. Simon and Mr. Mack were still sitting at the same table where I had left them and were looking forward to me with curious, worried faces. One of the young men was with them. I'm sure he had told them what had happened.

  "Do you know where Sonja is? She must show me where she found the dead children."

  ***

  The air was surprisingly warm when I left the premises of the polyclinic. The snow had receded and existed only in islands that were getting smaller and smaller, which, more dirty than white, stood out from the muddy-wet brown of the earth and the gray of the asphalt and the buildings. Everything disappears sometime. It had been Mrs. Simon who had told me that Sonja was with a few people up to plunder the wholesale market. If I remembered correctly, the bodies were found not far from there. Mrs. Simon had described the way to me quite well. It led past the tower of the High People, and basically I only had to follow the road to find the wholesale market after a few kilometers to my left.

  I already knew the way to their tower, so I probably wouldn't have any problems finding Sonja. Of course I should make myself known in time to avoid being accidentally shot in the head. Following the tram tracks, I stomped off and had to be careful not to follow the inner urge to spend all my energy to speed things up. Nevertheless, I reached the realm of the High People quite quickly. Outside, in the immediate vicinity, I couldn't find any of them, but the sounds of life penetrated from the building to my ears. I tried to discover the cameras they had installed to secure their territory - but I could not. With every step I took, the noises became quieter, and when I had left their invisible territorial border behind me and overgrown, wild gardens and fields to the left and right of me were stretching out,
which were only divided by the road I was on and single-lane railway tracks, there was nothing more to be heard. Despite the pressure I felt, despite my desire to help Gustav, the moment I was surrounded only by the barren nature of winter and had no people around me, I felt a heavy burden falling off me.

  Maybe I shouldn't have started all this back then. The thing with the degenerates. With Wanda and Thomas and Mariam and all that had followed. Maybe I should have just kept walking, like I did now, just walking. But it was too late to think about it. Not only had I changed the lives I had entered, these encounters had also changed me. Somewhere dogs barked, not so close that it worried me, but close enough to make me concentrate on my surroundings again and postpone thinking until later. Anyway, the first buildings of the neighboring village appeared in my field of vision, and the wholesale market could not be far anymore. In fact, Mrs. Simon's directions soon proved to be correct. Once again, as I had done all this time, I repeated the names of the drugs Gustav had given me. Briaraetam. Diazepam he must have meant. And Clomentihazol. Then I repeated again. Then something on my left caught my attention. To the left the ground fell down about two meters from the road. Down there, about eighty meters away, I saw the masked figure of one-legged Sonja and the figures of three other members of the High People who had also covered their faces with scarves.

  I was tempted to call to reveal myself, but I let it go. Instead, I walked a few more meters along the road until I reached an intersection from which a road branched off that led first to the wholesale market and then to the highway. At least that was what the large weathered, formerly blue sign on the main road to my right claimed. The four hooded ones had a cart with them, and it was indeed quite possible that it was one of the bicycle trailers I had captured just before they started hunting me. Bicycle thieves. But that didn't matter now, because as I walked down the branching street towards them and watched them load their loot into the cart and their backpacks, I had other things on my mind than to get angry about it. After all, they were practical. When I was only a few ten meters away from them, two more came out of the wholesale market, also heavily loaded with cartons and canisters. I thought the contents were orange juice or orange juice concentrate, but that was hard to see at a distance. So it was at least six. Slowly it was time to make me known to them before one of them would react nervously or startled to my presence. So I raised my arm and called Sonja's name. Faster than I had expected, they had taken measures, pulled their pistols and covered behind the cart and their backpacks. Their eyes looked for the caller and finally they found me. I waved at them, and a second later they had relaxed again.

  I could see Sonja saying something to her companions, then she started running towards me as the others turned back to their duties. We met on the access road to the market grounds. Once again I was amazed how well she was able to move despite her leg prosthesis. In a nutshell, I told her what had happened and why she should show me where the vampires had killed and bled out their victims. The face under her shaved head was skeptical.

  "We've already searched everything there. Do you really think you will find a clue to their whereabouts?"

  "I really can't say, I don't know, but I have to try. When you're done here, do you think you could send one or two of your people to the local pharmacies to look for Diazepam and Clomentihazole? And if they find something, could they take it to the polyclinic?

  "Ahmed!" she summoned one of her men. She gave him the appropriate instructions and had him repeat the names of the drugs three more times before sending him off.

  "Thank you." I said. She just nodded.

  "Wait here."

  She went back to her people to talk to them, but it wasn't long before she was with me again.

  "I don't think it'll get you anywhere, but I'm willing to show it to you."

  When she had talked to me, she had removed the scarf she had wrapped around her head as a courtesy, and I could see that she was wearing a gloomy hard facial expression.

  I was aware that it could not be easy for her to lead me to the place where her child had been killed. But I also knew that this fact was a motivation for her at the same time. She wanted to believe that we could find a clue there. A clue to the whereabouts of her daughter's murderers. She would not only lead me there, but she would also keep her eyes open for any straw she might make use of. We walked in silence, and it didn't take us long. It was only half a kilometer that we had to walk through the next village to reach the right house. It turned out there that I had been wrong.

  "Here it is. But I just can't go in there. Once was bad enough. I ..."

  I told her it was okay.

  "It's down. In the basement."

  I was looking at the front door. The building had survived the war unscathed. But someone, I did not know whether it was the vampires or the members of the High People, had torn the front door out of its hinges. It was lying on the ground a few meters from the building. It was a damn shame it was spring, I thought. No more tire marks. I left my backpack, rifle and crossbow with Sonja and took only a pistol and the flashlight down with me. Earth and stones were stuck to the soles of my boots and were now grating ugly under my feet as I went down the stairs. At that moment, I didn't feel particularly threatened. What worried me much more was the possibility that I might overlook something important. I admonished myself to be thorough. There were three doors downstairs. On two of them I had already seen walking down the stairs, and another now was to my right, right next to the bicycles of two adults and three children who had been parked there under the stairwell - an eternity ago, and which most likely no one would ever need again. I started with this door. I pushed the handle down and distorted my face in anger as the door squeaked loudly and then swung up. This part of the basement was actually used as a cellar, and individual compartments were created with lattice structures made of roof battens. It only took a fraction of a second to see that. However, I had not been prepared for what followed another fraction of a second later. A hissing, a squeaking, the trampling of countless little feet, and an amorphous, billowing flood of small creatures trying to escape from the light of my flashlight.

  Rats.

  Glad they didn't come my way, I quickly closed the door again. Disgusting creatures, but it made sense. I had recognized the outline of a freezer whose door had been open. Of course. Without electricity, that thing wouldn't cool anymore. When it no longer cooled, it did not take long for the decomposition process to begin and the decomposition gases produced must have pushed the door open. Maybe there was another reason. In any case, the rodents had already eaten away everything years ago. But since they were already there, they could also declare this cellar their new home, I assumed.

  I turned to the next door.

  A laundry room and a boiler room connected to it. Only a single green towel hung from the clotheslines, which were stretched slightly above head height. There was one door left. Someone had broken the lock. I prepared myself for what I was about to see and entered the small basement apartment behind it.

  Some daylight fell through the tiny windows high up in the walls.

  Of course the High People had already picked up their dead and buried them somewhere. I didn't expect otherwise. Suddenly I wasn't so sure I wasn't wasting my time here. I looked around the apartment. I tried to disregard the ghostly bloodstains that didn't exist and the ghastly pictures that had made themselves all the more ready in my brain as best I could.

  Stay objective.

  The apartment looked like that of a widowed pensioner. Apart from the ubiquitous dust, of course, it was very, very neatly and simply furnished. The stove, the sink and the cupboards in the kitchen were old and without frills. The same applied to the furnishing of the bedroom. The narrow bed that dominated the small room was still impeccably made, and where I had found dishes standing around, mouldy scraps of food and half-read books and magazines in other apartments that I had infiltrated over time to plunder or sleep in, everything here also was i
mpeccable. As far as I could see, the vampires had left nothing, but nothing at all. I opened one of the bedroom closets. It was empty. I opened the next one on the other side of the bed. Also empty. Wasn't that weird? I pulled out the bed drawer and the light of the flashlight cast dancing shadows into the semi-darkness.

  Also the bed box was empty, if one wanted to refrain from a pair of old worn out slippers. I went back to the kitchen. The old fridge was empty, and it had been wiped out. Only now did it strike me that no rodent had found its way into this apartment. No rat or mouse droppings. Nowhere. I pulled out one of the three chairs that had been pushed under the kitchen table and sat down for a moment. No clothes, no food. No one had fled from here during the war. But no one had moved out either. The furniture was still there. It was rather as if someone had packed for a longer holiday and put his apartment in order.

  All right, let's say that's true.

  Then what does that mean?

  When I was about to get up to tell Sonja that I couldn't get ahead here and would need a while, and that she could walk quietly, I hit something with my left foot. Something fell over, and the sound that was created had the acoustic texture of plastic and some metal. I shone my lamp under the table. A cleaning bucket, green and with a wire handle. I went down on my knees, picked it up and looked inside. The four lobes that were in there had been neatly folded, and as I unfolded them, one by one, I discovered brown, mostly dried bloodstains and black dust fluffs. Only in the middle along the line, which had been created by folding, was there still a tiny amount of moisture in one rag. I rubbed my thumb over it and smelled it. A hint of nearly dried detergent.