Shepard
For a second, I was paralyzed. I took a quick look over at Jan. He was still asleep, slumped against the wall and his chin on his chest. There was nothing to be done with him and waking him up with a call - well, that wouldn’t be a good idea either. This would also warn the degenerate, who just went to his knees in front of the cellar window, probably to check whether there was a way into the house. Had he seen our tracks? Had he watched us enter the building? He might. Then why did he come after us alone? Was it one of Benito’s men who somehow escaped the new degenerates? I avoided his searching gaze by pressing myself against the outside wall next to the window, even if I did not believe that he could even recognize what was in the cellar under the given lighting conditions. I looked at the little bolt that could lock the window from the inside. But on the one hand it was not very strong and would give in to a courageous kick with ease. On the other hand, it was too late for that anyway. I cursed the burns on my hands. Just a few hours ago, I had been sure that I could behead the drunken degenerate on the street with one blow. I wasn’t anymore. I don’t know if it was fatigue or why I didn’t have the necessary trust in myself at that moment. In any case, I didn’t pull out the machete to welcome the deg if he actually tried to come in. If the fucking motherfucker really wanted to get into the basement, he’d do it with his legs first. And that would be my best chance to get him as safely as possible. There were somehow quiet and somehow grating noises to be heard as the Deg pressed on the window. For a moment, my gaze was caught by the fascinating cracks in the crumbling window paint, which in the twilight of the cellar looked somehow like a spider’s web and yet quite different. I lurked. At that moment, I was the spider. Would the fly get caught in my net? I’d have honestly preferred it if it just kept flying. But the fly didn’t go away. A filthy, abrasive hand pressed the small window open. Then nothing happened for a few seconds. Then a foot. Then the second. And then the degenerate pushed himself into the basement. When the Deg had stretched his legs far enough in, I acted. I shot forward from my lurking position like a moray eel from its cave, wrapped the legs with my arms, pressed them firmly against my body and tore the degenerate into the cellar using my complete weight. I heard a frightened wheeze where something was wrong. When gravity pulled the human body down, the legs slipped from my grip. The missing counterweight made me hit the freezer. It hurt, but I didn’t care. I knew the Deg had hit ground a lot harder. From the corner of my eye I could see that Jan had heard something. His dull eyes opened slowly and his open mouth muttered something, but I couldn’t watch him anymore. I swung my leg out and let my foot crash into the side of the degenerate as hard as I could. Once again, a little higher this time, sideways against the chest. A hollow, dull sound, muffled by the many layers of clothing and shreds of fur that did not fit together. Again. Again. Every hit had made the son of a bitch wheeze again, while every sound of pain had become softer. Exactly that had been my intention, apart from the sudden desire to hurt this asshole, which came out of my subconscious. Kicking the air out of his lungs as fast as possible so he couldn’t scream. My sudden and brutal attack had brought me at least one second in which I let my gaze speed here and there. The weapon. Where was the Deg’s weapon? Nothing. Nothing. No knife, no club, and even less no spear. I looked down at the figure at my feet. It moaned quietly and the fingers on the hands of the arms, which it had now pressed protectively against the upper body, moved. The degenerate was still lying on the stomach and had not lifted the head. No danger at the moment, as far as I could see. I took the few steps necessary to move past my victim, to the basement window. A quick look outside. The moaning of the degenerate and the fact that Jan murmured something made it hard for me to listen. I can’t tell where the impression came from, but I had it. There was movement on the devastated streets of Viernheim. Tracks, it shot through my head. Like in a silly comic I for a second saw deep footprints leading exactly to our hiding place. This picture didn’t stay in my head for long, then I managed to shake it off. If that was really the case, then there was nothing I could do about it without going outside. And that was way too risky. All I could do was close the basement window again. I pressed it firmly against the frame, and fortunately it stayed in place even though the latch was damaged. The degenerate moved now, tried to lift himself up to understand what had happened to him, I assumed. Wanker. I felt a hot desire grow within me, wanted to tear him around and hit my fists against his face until it was no longer there, until every single tooth was knocked out. But my hands wouldn’t be up to it. Once again I kicked, against the head this time and from top to bottom. A primitive, pounding movement that collided the skull of the deg with the basement floor. Now he was quiet. I noticed I was trembling. My life, and also Jan’s, in those few seconds depended on everything going quietly and quickly, or as quietly and quickly as possible at least. Now the danger was averted for the time being, and the tension fell away from me. Jan stared in my direction but his eyes were still cloudy and I didn’t know if he had understood much of what had just happened here. In fact, a second later, he closed them again and dawned back into his hopefully comforting drug slumber. I looked around quickly. There had to be something here I could tie up the Deg with. There was something just above the skis. I went there. But the Velcro straps that had been used to tie them together in pairs were too short. But there was more. A few expander belts hung out of an open box. With them, I tied my victim’s hands together on his back. Then I did the same with the ankles. Afterwards I rolled him roughly on the back. I’d ... fuck no. It was Silvia. Benito’s bitch. Her skin, as far as I could see, it was actually just her hands and face, was covered with abrasions and cuts all over. I couldn’t have done all that to her. Some of them were also old scars, but the majority of the small injuries were fresh. Did her escape mean that Benito and his people were to find their end through the hands of the other degenerates - for nothing else could have been the reason for their intrusion into this cellar? Probably. It looked like it to me. And what about Tommy? Did she know anything about his whereabouts? In fact, on closer inspection, two of her teeth were crooked and only a few shreds of bloody strips of flesh prevented them from loosening and falling down into her throat at that moment. The sight of this destruction of human flesh helped me over the fact that I had not been able to use my fists as my violent impulse had made me wish. But at the same time I was relieved that she was still alive. And not just because she probably knew something about the boy’s whereabouts. No. She certainly knew what the new degenerates were all about. This could be important. She opened her eyes. I saw them wandering in their sockets in search of something to help her orient herself. She didn’t succeed. She was still too far away from the real world. But that wouldn’t last too long. I was looking for something to gag her. In the third box that I opened, I found children clothes that nobody would need anymore. A pair of socks. A T-shirt. Skooby-Doo. Mariam in the house in the Hasenpfad in Frankfurt. Wanda. Her fucking letter. Gustav. Damn shit. I really shouldn’t have wasted so much time. I wanted to know what Silvia knew, yes? Then I should wake her, shouldn’t I? I wanted to go on as fast as I could? Then I should also see to Jan getting back on his feet or leave him behind if necessary, although this would bring me even more self-hatred than I was already carrying around with me anyway. I... No. Above all, I should finally stop thinking too much and start acting instead. I looked down at the clothes that I carefully held in my hands so as not to hurt myself unnecessarily. Whoever is gagged cannot cry out for help, but she would not be able to tell me what I wanted to know. I threw the stuff back towards the box. I missed. Then I knelt down next to Silvia. She wouldn’t scream for help when she was on the run anyway, I realized. She was just as interested in not being discovered by her persecutors as Jan and I were. I was supposed to get her out of her head world, whatever it looked like in it. Not particularly beautiful, I’m sure. I tore the two teeth out of her mouth, which had been almost knocked out anyway, when I had made sure that
her face crashed against the basement floor. I bet I got that nose, too. I threw the teeth behind me. They collided with the freezer and somehow it sounded as if one rolled the dice on a game evening. Game night. Ha! Let’s play, Silvia. The pain hadn’t made her scream, but her eyes were wide open now. There wasn’t much blood on my fingers, but some was. For a moment I was afraid that the blood of these degenerates would mix with mine through the injuries on my hands. I wondered if their illness was contagious. But I already knew the answer. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be so damn many of them, would there? I was dizzy for a moment. Maybe it was really the air in the cellar, maybe it was also the ominous pictures of what I was willing to do with Silvia to find out what I wanted to know. More teeth. Eyes. Fingers. Everything you could easily break on a body. Those thoughts were unnecessary. The degenerate began to speak as soon as she had finally grasped the new situation and recognized me. “You... What? Okay. Okay. What happened, that was ... that’s how it is ... that’s what the Cardinal wants. And Benito ...” I found it amazing that she felt compelled to justify herself. Out of fear of me, out of fear of my revenge, that much was clear, but her face had not been afraid. In spite of everything, although she had been tied up and badly beaten up by me, she was not really afraid. It was more like such things simply were part of the natural course of things for her. I really couldn’t say whether it was expediency that spoke out of her, or whether she really thought so. I tried to figure out how old she was. Under the dirt, the scars, the scratches and the bloody mouth, the original face was hardly recognizable. She could have been ten years younger than me, but also ten years older. Either way, I was sure she too had experienced the war and the time before it. Did she have any memory at all of how people had lived together before the worldwide firestorm and the smoldering fires that had followed it for years? How long has she known Benito? Whatever. I asked her about Tommy. She said he was fine. That Christiano had him. I asked her what ‘fine’ meant. She didn’t understand the question. I asked her about Christiano. Yeah, he’d be here. She wouldn’t know why. Something must have happened in Frankfurt. I asked her if Christiano wanted to take revenge on the deserters. Yes. That’s what he wanted. But he also wanted his men and women back. I asked her if in that case he’d just execute the leaders. She said yes. I asked her if that’s why she escaped. She said yes. I asked her if she’d let Benito down. She didn’t say anything. I asked her how many people were after her. She said she didn’t know. I asked her if she had a plan and where she was going. She didn’t know, she said. I asked her if she knew a safe way out of town. No, she said. For a while, I was wondering if there was any way I could trade her for Tommy. Then the time factor came into my mind again, and then I came to the conclusion that it would mean my end anyway, if I came into a situation in which such a thing would be up for debate at all. She knew nothing and she was of no use. I didn’t need her anymore. I got up and my knees cracked. I was now standing beside her head. I put my right foot on her neck. Then I moved my weight forward. Her eyes were pouring out. She wasn’t expecting it. She rattled and wriggled and managed to get away under my boot. She was gasping for air, trying to say something, but she couldn’t. Looking at me with big eyes. I took a step forward. She pushed herself further away. One more step. She tried to push herself further back, but there was the wall. Dead end, bitch. I kicked her in the chest. Now she held still when I put my foot on her neck again. “Stop it, man, are you crazy?” Jan’s mumbling voice. My aversion rose up in me. Did he have to return to the living just now? “Don’t you hear? I told you to stop.” Louder this time. The rustling of clothes told me he was trying to get up. “She burned people alive, Jan. She laughed when they died. She laughed when people were being impaled. She fed their flesh to her cannibals and hung the remains on street lamps and speared them on fences. Your people, Jan. And mine.” I was increasing the pressure as I was saying this. “You don’t know that. Stop it, man.” I had to make an effort not to break out of the tone of my pressed whisper into a real roar. “Yes, I do.” Silvia’s body was still twitching. “Are you sure? Is it really that simple? Murdering someone is different than killing them in battle. You don’t want what that does to you.” “Don’t you tell me what I want. I’ll finish her off. I...” I took the foot off her neck. Something in my head snapped back in. A few seconds of silence disturbed only by Silvia’s rattle. Sounded like something broke in her throat. I turned to Jan. He had managed to get up in the meantime, but still had to lean against the wall in order not to fall. I looked at him. Then I asked: “Your brother?” He nodded. “Because of the woman?” He nodded again. Because of the woman, of course. Silence. I could hear degenerates running past us outside. I shrugged my shoulders. A few hours later it had become dark. I had the vague hope that they would stop looking for me or for Silvia when it was dark, so we had waited grudgingly. Or rather, I had gritted my teeth and walked impatiently up and down. The other two were smarter. Jan dozed off again, and whether Silvia slept or just pretended, I do not know. We didn’t leave the basement through the window. We went upstairs, through the stairwell, where we broke into an apartment on the ground floor. We crossed it and left without stopping for a search, through a window. Jan was weak. Silvia’s hands were now tied at the front, and I had gagged her after all. I couldn’t use my own hands properly. What a wretched trio we were. The exit from the window gave each of us at least one additional bruise. I felt better out in the cold than in the stale air that had prevailed in the cellar. Also in Jan the spirits seemed to awaken again. The rest phase had probably done him good, even though I was still expecting him to finally collapse at any moment. But maybe he didn’t have any internal injuries after all. If he made it to Heidelberg, Gustav could look after him. We walked quietly, silently and cautiously. At first I was surprised that Silvia didn’t try to escape, but then I remembered that she couldn’t go anywhere. Instead, I realized that she was obviously determined to do her part. She had not resisted when I had gagged her, nor had she kicked or beaten me when I had loosened her shackles and tied her hands together in front. Now Jan went ahead and Silvia next to me. Every few seconds she turned back to see if anything was happening. Every now and then a distant cry was heard. They still did their degenerate things in church. The further we moved through the city, the quieter the screams, the supplications and the whining of those who had fallen from grace became. With every step we took, I became more confident, and when we finally reached the edge of the city and shortly thereafter the highway that had brought me here, it was as if a heavy load was falling off me. Fucking Viernheim. Nothing, but nothing good had happened here. But where else would that have been the case these days? For a while we followed the highway towards Weinheim, until Jan said that it was a detour and that we probably would reach your destination faster cross-country. Maybe he would have been right if we hadn’t been completely exhausted. Perhaps he would have been right if the former fields next to the highway had not been completely overgrown. Perhaps he would have been right if thaw had not set in, softening the ground and making every step on wet earth difficult. Apart from that, I still had the hope that one of the vehicles that had been left here would be roadworthy. A car would simplify so much. But I had trusted Jan, his local knowledge at least, when he had led us out of the city by the shortest route, and I had not insisted on going back to the rusty chariot that had brought me and the unfortunate of the High People here. So we stayed on the highway. Once something rattled and then fell silent again, and I remembered the wild boars that had crossed the road on our way here. Sonja had been alive then. The others too, including the wretched Mr. Paul. Fucking wanker. Soon we had reached the point where we took a long curve to the right and a slight ascent to the A5. About ten meters away from us some vehicles had crashed into each other. When we reached the spot, I understood why. A crater about three meters in diameter. None of the vehicles still looked usable, but one of them was a police car. Through the pane I could not see what was inside. Carefully I o
pened the door, careful as not to inflict any pain on my burned hands. The car was empty. No weapons and nothing else useful. Would have been too nice. The cops must have left the car after the accident, probably to help. What had become of them afterwards - no idea. I also opened the back door on my side of the car to see if there was anything useful on the back seat, but that hope was also disappointed. I looked over to Jan, who examined the first vehicle directly in front of the crater. When, after he had stood upright again, he noticed that I was looking in his direction, he slowly shook his head. Okay, shit. We also checked the other cars. Only in one of them did we find a body. According to clothing a man behind the wheel. Wasn’t much left of him. We went on, and although the gradient of the driveway that was to bring us from this highway to the A5 was not very steep, we were all three bathed in sweat when we brought it behind us. Jan still went ahead and I stayed with Silvia. I can’t remember exactly how long we had walked, but after a relatively short time we turned right onto a motorway restplace. I was thinking. If we were to follow the road as far as possible, it might take us four or five hours to reach the polyclinic. From that point of view, it would not carry much weight if we took ten minutes to inspect the parking lot. I’ll make it short. We couldn’t find a usable vehicle, but in a truck that was neatly parked on a designated side strip, there was some shrink-wrapped food on the wide driver’s bench. On another car two bicycles were mounted on a frame. Even those would have helped, but we couldn’t get the shackle lock open. At some point Jan said that one should no longer spend one’s time here, but go on, and that’s what we did. I had decided against giving Silvia food, too. She didn’t seem to expect it at all either. She seemed rather absent, if you ignored the fact that she still turned back every few seconds. We made a few more kilometers and reached another highway exit. When it came into sight, Jan said that from here he would know roads that would lead more directly to the polyclinic. It would not be necessary to fight our way across any fields. I looked at the sign announcing the departure. Big pale letters. Heddesheim, I could read with a little effort. I must have frowned, because Jan mumbled after a few seconds, in which I had not answered immediately, something that sounded like: as you wish. And in fact, I was off the idea... well, it kind of worried me. Here on the A5, despite the relative darkness of the evening, we could see early what was ahead of us and also what was happening behind us. Apart from that, I already knew the route and didn’t want to get involved in any experiments. So we just went on without leaving the highway. I’ve had plenty of time to think. What would we do with Silvia once we had reached the clinic? The easiest and safest thing for everyone would be to execute her after all. But despite everything I had done to the woman today, this option was off the table for now. Perhaps we should have the High People judge her. We could drop her off on the way to the clinic. On the other hand, I would have to tell them what had happened to their people in Viernheim. I wasn’t able to do that. Not today. Maybe they’d intercept us on the way to the poly anyway. Could happen, of course. But even then, I would insist on going to the clinic first and bringing Gustav the formula. Probably wouldn’t be easy, but in the meantime I wasn’t a stranger to them anymore, and most likely they would have enough trust in me to let me go. We walked for a while, and the thought occurred to me that it was strange that it looked as if we really needed something like a prison again. Words like legal system, guards and ethics danced up and down my mind. On the next few kilometers I twice saw stars before my eyes, and the idea of sitting on the hood of some broken down and abandoned vehicle and simply never getting up again seemed more and more seductive to me. Suddenly Silvia made excited noises with her gagged mouth. I turned to her. Tensed and stepping from one foot to the other, she looked in the direction we had come from. Again, she tried to say something, but I couldn’t understand it. The fact that she was afraid was unmistakable. And then, two or three seconds later, I understood all too well what was bothering her so much.
Brenner: The Gospel of Madness (Book 5 of 6) Page 18