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

by Georg Bruckmann

  He smiled at me with the kindness of a poisonous snake.

  "Tommy? Tommy, will you come over here, you little runaway?" the degenerate leader shouted back into the church in a sweet tone. His voice and the reflections that echoed in the church even overlaid the songs of the degenerates and the cries of Brownjacket outside on the square for a moment. Nothing happened. But he knew Tommy's name. I had no reason to believe he wasn't telling the truth. He had all the aces in his hand. He didn't need a bluff. As if for confirmation, he then continued speaking more quietly:

  "He needs a moment. He likes being up at the organ so much. Until he gets here, I can tell you a little more. Do you know Christiano? No? Well, Christiano now lives in the station in Frankfurt. Got some problems with some crazy stubborn guy. Big, blond guy, and pretty unkind to us. Well. Anyway, Christiano sent me out to talk to the guy for a few words, if you know what I mean.

  I hate to admit it now, but the truth doesn't disgrace anyone, does it? My people and I couldn't catch this guy. After a few days we had had enough of running into his little silly traps all the time. As if they could change things! So we came back to the station and told Christiano. He was not happy at all and began to scold and threaten and so on. He ordered me to take some more people with me and a local guide. Well, you know, I kind of felt sorry for the kid. Again and again he wanted to run away and back into the tunnel in which his father still rots. Haha. A guy this young needs a job to grow on, doesn't he? I have chosen him as my useful local and have taken him with me."

  As if in thought, he looked up at the towering church ceiling while playing with a lock of hair from the paralyzed doctor.

  "Do you agree with me when I say that orders must always be formulated precisely, yes? In any case, Christiano sent me away with the following words: Without the head of this ghost haunting us here, you don't have to come back. Well. I didn't get his head, so I didn't have to come back. I got tired of losing people all the time. The guy showed up here, he showed up there. Showed up behind us. Showed up above us. Very bad for morale. Then I remembered my order and decided to lead my people away from Frankfurt. Christiano wanted just like this, didn't he? Well, anyway, we've had a lot of fun since then. We've decorated a lot of streetlights. Did you see them? Do you like them?"

  He didn't wait for my answer.

  " In Darmstadt we wanted to stay a little longer. There was a little something to decorate there, too. Didn't suit the impatient brat. He took off. Just like that. After all the care and kindness I've given him. Imagine that! I was worried. I even sent two people after him. They didn't come back. I'll be damned! And then, a while later, we were done decorating and already moved on again, we found him! Just like that! Sitting around on a car in Hemsbach nibbling on a raw cat. Yeah, you didn't mishear. It was really raw! Tell me, is this something personal with you, or do you just don't like kids? Because you shot him, I mean?"

  I didn't say anything. Rather, I used his self-opinionated chatter to keep looking around. Tommy was still not in sight and I could not see any more degenerates in the church. They either stood here with us, or they took care of Brownjacket's agonizing demise outside.

  "I, for one, like kids a lot. So soft and cuddly. No question about it. Of course, I took him back. Well, then he told me about his little Heidelberg adventure, and that you met each other. And then I thought to myself: Look, the guy hasn't even run half as far as I would have done in his place. Tell me, are you really that arrogant, or is that just stupidity? Didn't you realize that sooner or later someone would be looking for you? No matter. In any case, we all made our way to Heidelberg to visit you. Where's the brat? Silvia, go and have a look."

  One of the degenerates who had stood behind me in a narrow semicircle went off to carry out the order.

  "He'll be so happy to see you! However, this also creates a small problem. I'm also very happy that you found your way here. But which one of us is going to get you now? Tommy or me? I think my demands outweigh my expectations. After all, you killed two of my relatives. And for his father's death, it's more our responsibility than yours to be fair. But the boy doesn't see it that way. Maybe we'll share you. Yeah, sharing's good. But how exactly are we gonna do that? It's really supposed to be a great event, isn't it? Even nicer than that one out there!"

  He tilted his head and demonstratively listened to the chants and Brownjacket´s screams. For a while my opposite numbered out what he wanted to do to me. But then he got impatient.

  "Tommy! Silvia! Where are you? How am I supposed to discuss with the boy which of us gets which of the guys bones if he prefers to hang around? I thought this was important to him. A little disappointing, I must admit. Silvia! Silvia?"

  Nothing moved.

  "Oh, damn it. You have to do everything yourself. You three take our visitors downstairs. The rest of you come with me. He's probably behind the organ again."

  We were taken away. Now, for the first time since he met me in church, Mr. Paul found the courage to speak.

  "Hey! That's not what we agreed. You have guaranteed me that you will let me go again, and that you will leave us alone if I ..."

  The degenerate leader did not even turn around to mock Mr. Paul for his gullibility.

  The cellar into which they locked us up was empty and small, but big enough so that we didn't necessarily have to go to each others throats. It stank miserably. They hadn't even left a bucket. Fortunately there was still a halfway clean corner for everyone somewhere. For everyone except Mr. Paul.

  While he was stammering excuses and justifications all the time, I wondered how long he could stand still. The doctor had huddled in a corner and hid her face in her arms. The other two of the High People were still tied up, which was probably the only reason why they did not attack the traitor. Not that I didn't feel this need, but in our current situation it didn't make sense. Apart from that, Mr. Paul was very convincing with his new about-turn. Of course he was. There was no better reason than the prospect of a slow death to get someone to reconsider their position. I still told him to shut the fuck up, and in fact he went silent. In the end, all he wanted was to protect his people. Couldn't really blame him. That he had driven me and a car full with his comrades straight to the butcher to achieve his goal - now one could argue about that. The pragmatic Rolf would have done the same, I was sure of that.

  The big picture above all else.

  My big picture were Wanda, Mariam and Gustav, closely followed by Tommy. As I looked at the exhausted and frightened faces around me, I remembered the reason why I had actually come here. I held a small, quiet speech as I tried to bypass the shit and the piss pools and loosen the shackles of the two betrayed.

  We had to stick together if we were gonna survive this somehow. No revenge on Mr. Paul, and we would keep the vampire doctor alive. I repeated this part twice so that I could be sure that she had heard it too. Then I went back to my seat and thought.

  These degenerates here were very sure of their cause and more than aware of their considerable majority. Their leader was no fool. A bold statement when it came to a degenerate. But when he told me that he had arbitrarily defied a direct order from Christiano, it only confirmed my theory that not all who submitted to Da Silva's poisonous gospel did so out of religious conviction. He only used it to justify his ways. He had probably already had sadistic fantasies of omnipotence since he had reached puberty. Pedophile motherfucker. I tried unsuccessfully to repress the images of Tommy he had planted in my brain. For these images alone, I wanted to kill him if I could get the chance, regardless of whether they were true or not. An improbable, though uplifting, thought. Just stupid that I had no idea how to do it. The only thing that was within my current possibilities was to get the doctor to speak.

  "Hey, Blondie. Do you know why I'm here?"

  I had to talk to her five more times until she raised her head just enough to look at me. Every time I gestured in the direction of the others so that they just kept their mouths shut. She did not need to h
ear that her death had been an integral part of our original plan. She could not yet know with certainty that the bodies of the children of the High People had been discovered at all. I had to be very careful.

  "We've been looking for you because we need the formula for the antidote. You remember Gustav, don't you? He'll die if you don't help him. You're someone who saves lives, aren't you? A doctor. With a Hippocratic Oath and all. The same oath Gustav took. Do you know how many lives you would indirectly save if you prevented him from dying? Huh?"

  She was still looking at me with her distant gaze, and I was not sure if she understood what I was saying about flimsy arguments. One thing was quite clear, torture or threats of violence would not work. She wasn't afraid of us after all the things the degenerates had done to her. The bone fragments in her nipples may have been one of the more harmless things.

  I kept trying.

  "Haven't enough people died yet? Brownjacket out there? The rest of your people? Are they here? As prisoners? Or are they already hanging from the lanterns? Be that as it may, nothing can be changed now about what happened here and between us in Heidelberg. I don't hold anything against you," I lied to her shamelessly.

  "Now you can do better, you know? You..."

  She didn't say a word. She just crawled towards me through old piss and old excrements, without lifting her head off the floor or being aware of all the rubbish. She plucked my jacket with her dirty, blood-crusted hand. The pleading in her gaze reminded me of that of a toddler. I gave her the piece of cloth. She took it, still not able to return my gaze. After she had covered herself, but without closing the zipper of the jacket, she reached for my hand. I resisted the impulse to withdraw and let her do it. She crouched across from me and held my left arm diagonally outstretched in her left arm. She croaked something I didn't understand until the third time. The word sleeve. Under the tense gaze of the others I did what she demanded and pushed back the fabric of my sweater. She babbled and cawed further chopped syllables, which seemed to consist only of consonants. I was so focused on understanding what she was saying and asking myself what the degenerates had done with her neck that I only noticed her other hand, which was tampering with one of her breasts when she interrupted her babble and then began to tremble and pant with pain. She pulled out the bone fragment. Seen from up close, it looked even more barbaric than above, in front of the altar. Blood, fresh and already dried, and small skin and flesh scraps covered surface of the more than finger-sized, bony thing. She looked at me like she wanted to say something like: Sorry, but that's the best I can do. Then she started painting on my forearm.

  I know a chemical formula when I see one. I couldn't make anything of it, though. She painted big letters and pressed the tip of the bone deep into my skin. Instinctively I jerked back when the light pain came as she ripped open the top layer, but then I realized she just wanted to make sure nothing would blur. After she had painted the first letters and numbers and connected them with short strokes, she pressed her maltreated breast together, collected red liquid in her palm, dipped the bone splinter into it again and continued.

  She did it three or four times.

  It was disgusting, but necessary. The alternatives offered by the filthy range of dyes in here were clearly less attractive. At some point she was finished and crawled back into her corner.

  I looked at her work.

  Cave painting on meat. The others watched wordlessly as I held my arm still and let the vampire's blood dry on my skin. Only when I was sure that nothing would blur, I pushed the sleeve of my sweater down again. It might have been two or three minutes.

  I looked up.

  "Thank you."

  She didn't respond. With both arms she held the jacket closed and pressed it tightly to herself. She had lowered her head again.

  "If I hadn't seen so many disgusting things today, it would have been at the top of my list of disgusting things," one of the others murmured. I agreed with him, but it didn't help. The hand she had held with her dirt-crusted fingers I wiped off on my trouser leg, but it didn't do much good.

  The best thing about bad smells is that you get used to them relatively quickly when you are permanently exposed to them. I was hoping that this effect would soon set in.

  "Rest. That's the most practical thing we can do now."

  A hollow phrase with which I tried to conceal my own helplessness. I had the formula now. But I was stuck in a shit-filled basement. Along with a traitor, a traumatized, naked mass murderer and two others whom I could see were struggling to keep from expressing their anger at Mr. Paul and the vampire doctor after all. Anger was good when it was purposeful. At least better than resignation.

  In the next thirty or forty minutes, nobody said a word. Without my jacket I became colder and colder, and I imitated the doctor's rolled up, sitting embryonic posture. Actually, I had no reason not to take my jacket off her again. But something stopped me. Probably it was the tiny hint of guilt I felt in her.

  Why hadn't I thought of looking at the lock on the door before? Or the hinges? Perhaps one could do something in one way or another with the help of the two bone fragments?

  Carefully, I rose and walked over. It was the typical pre-war cellar door. Heavy. Solid wood. Three brass hinges. But the lock was anything but modern. Maybe you could really... yeah, maybe. Bone was soft. Might be able to fix it up with something. On the rough stone floor in case of need. And even if it didn't succeed, it was better than doing nothing. I went, still anxious not to step into anything, over to the wretched figure I had for a time thought to be my greatest enemy. Only when I had come up to half a meter did I see the deep red pool of blood around her.

  "Shit!"

  I pushed her head up. Her eyes were empty and the neck didn't want to hold her skull by itself.

  She was dead.

  Only then did I see the two holes that she had carved in her carotid artery without any of us even suspecting it.

  ROLF:EXODUS II

  Rolf rose from his musty blankets. He hadn't slept well, as usual. Probably he had also had a nightmare, as the thrown over bottles on the knee-high side table told him. When he fell asleep, they had still been standing. He had probably fought in his dreams. Either that or someone had been here.

  But that was impossible.

  He was in Ivan's bunker.

  Am I not?

  No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He wouldn't go crazy right now. That were just the aftereffects of the amphetamines. At first, he took them because he needed to feel safe. Meanwhile he tried to reduce consumption, but it was difficult.

  But still; no, he wouldn't search room after room with the weapon in hand, as he had done so many times before.

  I'm not afraid. Just drug induced paranoia.

  He followed nature´s call and closed the plastic bucket with the corresponding lid. He didn't feel like taking it out now.

  Again he stepped in front of the mirror and looked at his face. His eyes. Karla had told him they were cold. But also that she had seen good in them.

  Was that what had to happen? A good deed?

  There was no one left to answer that question.

  Then I must probably find the answer myself, he said loudly and watched in the mirror how his mouth formed the words. But brushing my teeth first wouldn't be bad either.

  Rolf brushed his teeth twice, then washed himself, although he didn't know exactly who he was doing it for, and then took another look at the alarm clock's digital display.

  Twenty to four.

  Pretty early. But no matter. It was dark outside, and that was all he needed.

  Once again he put his equipment together. He would definitely take the two sub-machine guns with the silencers with him. When he took them off the shelf, he found their weight comforting. Nevertheless, he noticed that they were too light. The magazines were empty.

  I'm getting sloppy.

  Rolf sighed, took out the two slightly curved clips and put them in his pocket. Then he put the guns ba
ck on the shelf. He grabbed some boxes of nine-millimeter cartridges and two more loading strips and went back into the living room. He placed the utensils on the side table and wiped the fallen bottles on the floor with a casual movement. One of them splintered, but he didn't care. Then he started putting bullets in the magazines.

  Why doesn't that bother me? he asked himself and took a look at the broken glass at his feet.

  He answered his own question quite quickly.

  It doesn't bother me because I'm not staying here. I've made my decision. The time in Ivan's bunker is over.

  When he had formulated these words in his mind, he felt better.

  Again he saw Karla's face in front of his inner eye.

  Good.

  He kept pushing bullets in magazines.

  In as many as he thought he could carry.

  Three hours later Rolf was back outside on the moonlit streets of Frankfurt. He had packed. Sports bags and backpacks full of weapons, equipment and food. He'd taken them out of the bunker. They waited to be used in the hallway of the building that housed Ivan's stash. During the time it would take him to free the prisoners of the degenerate cavalry, no one would discover and steal them.

  It had been his pragmatism that had made him make this decision, even if he was not aware of it.

  For the prisoners of the degenerates in the station he could do nothing. He had tried for weeks, but his tactics were unsuccessful.

  But for the three dozen people, for those thirty or thirty-six souls - for those he could do something. They were guarded by only a few Degs. He was able to cope with them without running into the arms of his certain death. And, who knew - maybe a few weeks later, when they were fed and had recovered from their strains, he would return here with some of them. To put an end to the reign of Christiano.