With these words, Mrs. Da Silva slammed the door right before the preacher’s nose.
This kind of treatment he was used to from the dregs of society in the Eternal City, but here in this peaceful little village it hit him so unexpectedly and brutally in its cold hostility that he just stood with open mouth in disbelief. The fire in the oven in the small basement room had faded completely when he could move again. The light that had come out of the kitchen window into the street was also gone almost completely. Mrs. Da Silva had drawn the curtains.
***
Back in the little house he lived in, he resisted the impulse to get a bottle of wine from the cellar, just like the day before. He had to keep a clear head. The way she had said that her son’s immortal soul wasn’t his business. He had never noticed that she was anticlerical. On the contrary, she attended most of his services. Even if she wasn’t singing along with the greatest enthusiasm and never sat in the front row, as many others did with eager pretense, he still had the impression that she had always listened benevolently to his words. So if one wanted to assume that her negative attitude did not come from an aversion against God or the Church, one had to assume that she had sent him away out of fear.
I am right with that? Am I?
Another explanation did not come to Father’s mind. So what was to be done? He now knew for sure about the presence of a third person in the Da Silva’s house. The fact that Benno was the only one who had seen the man meant two things: first, that the man never left the house, or if he did, then only under the cover of the night, and second, that he had to visit Benno again if he wanted to get a more detailed description of that person. Deep down inside, the priest was sure that it was this man who had made Mrs. Da Silva’s reaction so hostile. I wonder if it was he who was responsible for the malice the boy had shown for about a year?
The priest tried to remember, but he was unable to find anything bad about the boy as he had known him before the reports. But was that a miracle? He himself hadn’t even noticed that young Toni was suffering.
This had required an attention-grabbing punitive measure on the part of the other boys. Only then he noticed. The world of children and adolescents was more mysterious than he had thought. And much darker. Once again, it was the sexual components in particular that worried him. Luca’s sister’s dirty panties. The mare’s anus and vagina mutilations. Maybe something like this had already been pre-programmed in some of the children and had only now come to light. Maybe the stranger caused it, too.
When Father Bianchi lay down in his bed that night, he could not sleep for hours and when he finally dawned, he had nightmares from which he woke up with a damp spot in his pyjama pants. That was completely normal for a priest too, he knew, but this morning he felt particularly stained.
He took a cold shower and had a hearty breakfast, even if he didn’t have a real appetite. In this way he tried to fight fatigue with sufficient calories. He thought that was necessary and justified. No rosary for gluttony. Not today.
He left the dishes as they were, got ready and went to school. He was astonished to discover Toni Da Silva sitting in his seat leafing through a book of Italian grammar. The Father had expected the boy to stay away from him and the class for at least another two weeks, either on his own initiative or at the behest of his mother. But there he was. Father Bianchi was wrong.
Good, he thought, if you want to pretend that everything is normal - then I’ll play along.
In math class, the priest made three mistakes. One nobody noticed, the other two times he was corrected by his students, which was very embarrassing for him. Today Bianchi had no particular desire for the history lessons, which he usually enjoyed very much. Instead, he had a German vocabulary test written. The students grumbled and tried to dissuade him, but he was used to it and he beat down the weak revolt. He had his reasons for this test, and they had nothing to do with any difficult-to-learn language.
“Don’t act like that. It’s just a little test. It won’t take a quarter of an hour. I will even mark it today. And don’t worry, the grades will not be counted. They will only show you where you stand and where you still need to improve.”
A murmur of relief went through the class. Leaves were eagerly taken out and pencils pulled out as the preacher wrote the questions on the blackboard, with the chalk squeaking brightly. While the students worked on their tasks, Father Bianchi’s gaze rested alternately on Toni Da Silva and Benno. Then he took the time to examine each of his students in detail and he tried to recall what he knew about each one.
His conclusion was sobering. Far too little. But at least in one particular case, that would soon change.
When the time for the test was up, he told Benno to collect the sheets. He watched very closely as the boy stepped to Toni’s table when it was his turn and stretched out his hand to his test.
Nothing.
No movement in Toni Da Silva’s face. No hostility, no dislike, but also no shame and no fear, as one might have expected after what Benno and his three friends had done to Toni. He simply gave him the paper without comment and then put his nose back into his Italian grammar book. When Benno came to the teacher’s desk and put down the collected sheets, the priest gave him a note. It was folded and on the outside it said: ‘Please read this letter later when you are alone.’
Benno’s eyes widened and he was about to take a breath to say something, probably to ask what that was all about - but the preacher threateningly raised his index finger and winked the boy away.
He was aware that this procedure, writing secret notes to one of his pupils, could easily be understood as inappropriate, especially since in Germany an abuse scandal made the headlines and of course also reached the Italian papers. But his reputation in the village was impeccable, so he didn’t worry much.
Toni Da Silva had inevitably noticed that he, Bianchi, wanted to make inquiries about him anyway, but he should not see that he had not yet given up, even if his advance yesterday had come out with nothing. It would be best if the boy believed that the events and the reports would have no consequences.
The Father was not hundred percent sure that what he had planned was right. But in the end Luca, Benno and their friends also had sinned when they had taken their revenge on Toni. Why shouldn’t they do something to work off their guilt? In the end, they would probably enjoy it even. An adventure for them and if all would go well a great help for Toni Da Silva and his immortal soul.
MADWORLD
The degenerates stood in a respectful distance in a semicircle around their offering. There had to be about fifteen of the tattered figures and further back, behind the spearmen and archers, even more people were sitting on the cold ground.
Prisoners.
The dirty blonde hair of the girl hid most of her face and the head hung low. She had given up defending herself. Under the rhythmic chant of the others two of the degenerates had dragged her to the motorbike and tied her there. She had fought back then. Even after she was tied, she had screamed and tugged at the ropes for a while, but now she seemed to have given up and instead let the teary red eyes wander fearfully back and forth.
She waited.
They were all waiting.
They were waiting for dusk.
For the twilight with which the dogs would come.
I looked up at the sky. The sun had been in retreat for a while now and would soon have set completely.
I checked my equipment. For the crossbow I only had four bolts, and then there was the machete, which I had taken from a hardware store two days ago. On my belt I still had one of those cheap survival knives with compass and fishing gear in the hollow plastic handle, but this thing could hardly be labeled a weapon. Resigned, I exhaled. No, there’s nothing I could do for the girl. Even if I managed to free the girl - what would I do with the child?
I couldn’t take her with me and alone she would sooner or later peg out anyway. I made my decision, let myself sink behind the burnt-out car wreck whose
hood I had peered over and cocked the crossbow.
While I was inserting the bolt, I was thinking. I had to wait until the dogs really came out of the cellars and urban canyons to get to the girl and attract the attention of the slavers. If the degenerates noticed my shot, it was more than likely that they would hunt me down.
I took aim on the poor, trembling thing for a test, checked the wind direction and watched as the light of the sun slowly departed. They were still in the shadows of the ruins, crept suspiciously around the group, but soon they would have explored the situation sufficiently and then the scent of the girl´s fear would make them attack. The pseudo-sacred chant of the degs gradually became louder and more menacing and soon I saw movement in the shadows of the buildings lining the square.
The dogs were here.
Through the scope of the crossbow I watched the child, who in the meantime had also discovered the dogs and tried whimpering and panicking to keep an eye on all of the beasts at the same time.
The loose circle that the beasts now formed became tighter and tighter, and for my shot I wanted to hit the exact moment when the first animal went on the attack. I imagined I could hear the vicious, hungry growling of animals. But I most likely heard nothing except the distant chant of the wretched creatures who wanted to buy themselves safety from the beasts by sacrificing the girl.
This time it would probably even work, because I wasn’t able to distinguish more than eight of the shadowy creatures - and there was enough meat on that kid for all of them.
Then it happened.
The first animal, the largest, the alpha, left its orbit, the girl screamed and tore herself bloody at the ropes, the dogs howled, barked and growled, then the alpha jumped and bit into the girl’s ankle. The scream was unbearable when the tender skin burst and the bones were crushed. Then the others followed.
That’s enough distraction. I pulled the trigger.
At dusk I could not follow the trajectory of the bolt with my eyes, but half a second after I pulled the trigger, a terrible noise came to my ear. Quiet and barely perceptible under the screaming, barking and growling - the noise that occurs when metal meets metal.
I missed the girl and hit the motorcycle wreckage.
All of the sudden, the screams of the girl seemed twice as loud, and I hit my hands over my ears as I sank to the ground behind the hood, my back to the rusty wheel well and paralyzed by my own failure. I wouldn’t dare to fire another shot.
It seemed to me like an eternity while I waited behind the destroyed car and had to listen to the terribly wet and raging noises.
When I was able to get up again and leave this miserable place, I didn’t look back. The songs of the degenerates had stopped, and all that got to my ears was the sound of the wind. I crept away.
Loser.
***
That happened a week ago. I still woke up night after night bathed in sweat and had then relived the events of that evening. The dream had taken me out of my sleep again today and I sat down in my sleeping bag. Disoriented for a moment, I looked around.
No dogs.
No degenerates.
Instead a pale, early morning sun lit the bedroom of the abandoned house in which I had settled for the moment. My backpack leaned against the wall together with the crossbow and the machete lay on the unused half of the wide double bed I had chosen to sleep on.
I was barefoot, wearing only my dirty jeans, and the rest of my clothes formed a sluggish clew at the foot of the bed. After my recent experiences with the degenerates who offered their sacrifice to the wild dogs, I had become tired of roaming and wandering for the time being.
In a suburb of Frankfurt, at the lower end of a dead-end street, I found a house surrounded by a high fence. The entrance door was turned towards the turning hammer and an overgrown park full of tall trees adjoined at the back. From the bedroom in the first floor I could overlook the street, which gave me a vague feeling of security. I had closed the gate, which interrupted the fence a little over the height of a man, with a chain and a padlock and therefore allowed me to relax a little in the deceptive safety.
I still had canned food for three days and I had managed to shoot a rabbit who must have made it out of the park onto the fenced property somehow.
Sleepy I looked down the street. In front a weathered sign had proclaimed the name of the road. “Mittlerer Hasenpfad”. The asphalt had cracked and ferns, grass and here and there even a young tree sprouted. The front gardens of the other houses also were overgrown, and, as everywhere else, nature pushed with irresistible force into the remains of our so-called civilization.
With a disposable lighter, a handful of which I always had with me, I lit a gas burner and heated some water in a tin cup to stir an instant coffee. I would never have drunk a brew like that before it all changed, but right now it seemed like the greatest luxury to me. As I sipped on the blackish liquid, I gazed across the cloudy sky.
Autumn had come.
Later that day I would check the attic and the cellar for useful things. But for the moment I simply sat on the bed and drank my coffee. I still had to think about the dogs. About them and about the degenerates. To the same extent that the flora pushed forward and occupied the space that man had so suddenly and so terribly released, much so did the fauna.
But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was that in the few years after the Great War and without human influence the animals had very quickly found their way back to their archaic behavior. Dogs now lived in packs again and they had remembered how to hunt. In addition, the simplest of all mechanisms had been applied. In our brave new world the weak and the little ones were eaten or starved to death. Not only were there significantly more dangerous animals in relation to humans than before, but those who made it were really big beasts with sharp teeth who were prepared to kill for their food.
And so it was not only with the dogs.
A very similar development had taken place with the humans. Where there were remnants of civilized behavior, the survivors had formed tribal social structures. Each of these structures had developed its own rules, often based on the right of the strongest, and when you met such a group as a stranger, you had to be extremely careful. Even the smallest argument could quickly end in a deadly fight. It was better to avoid people. People are trouble. Even if they were still trying to maintain a minimum level of civilization.
But there were others. The degenerates were among them. Degenerate - that’s what I called those people who had discarded almost any behavior that had been labeled human before the war. Whether this development was caused by our collective trauma, or whether these people had always been closer to the border of animalism, and now - in the absence of law and order - could live out their disposition without inhibition, I did not know that and in the end it did not matter much to me.
They were nothing more than predators, roaming in groups, stealing, plundering, murdering and raping wherever they could. Mostly these groups consisted of men, but now and then women were also present, and when they were, they usually appeared to try to be more cruel than the men. The dangerous and disgusting thing about them all was their intelligence and their will for unnecessary sadism.
The hurters were another group. They were found where uranium ammunition stuck in the walls and biological warfare agents had been used, or where tactical nukes had turned the large industrial facilities of the world into contaminated debris fields. Many of them had almost nothing human in their appearance. Molten flesh, cancerous, mutilated, without teeth and affected by scabies, they had also come together in small groups. Often they lived isolated from the healthy, who wanted to have nothing more to do with them. Whether out of the fear of an infection or simply out of innate, instinctive disgust. Some of them had gone insane because of their suffering, but I had already been able to barter with others on several occasions. But even I had been anxious to avoid any physical contact back then. Self-protection. Once a hurter woman offered herself to me in se
arch of protection and some company. I could do with her whatever I wanted, she had said, just leave her behind – that I should not do.
I left her behind and wandered on.
I can’t say exactly why I roamed this gigantic battlefield alone. There was no place I wanted to go, no person I cared about and no big goal I was pursuing. Basically, I could have killed myself just as well as so many before me had done. Especially in the first years after the war. I decided not to think about it any further.
I took off my jeans and underpants and began to clean myself with a bar of soap and the rest of the water from the plastic bottle. Every other day I sprayed myself generously with disinfectant, from which I had taken three small bottles from a half-collapsed drugstore. Since there was no more basic medical care by doctors and hospitals, it was more than advisable to pay attention to hygiene. A blister on the foot could be fatal on the run, just like fungal infestation in the crotch. An inflamed ear could be the reason why you couldn’t hear when someone or something sneaked up on you.
You just had to take care of yourself.
When I was done, I got dressed. After the jeans came socks, leather boots and a holey gray T-shirt. I took my machete with me and left the rest of my belongings in the bedroom, because I basically didn’t expect any trouble.
When I had reached the house, exhausted and depressed, the first thing I´d done was to take a quick look in each room to see that no one was here. The door to the cellar had been locked, so I hadn’t dealt with it any further. At the end of my search I had arrived in the bedroom, had blocked the door with a chair and had quickly fallen into an exhausted sleep.
Now I took a little more time. When I arrived I hadn’t noticed the name tag on the door, but everything here looked as if this family had been quite wealthy before the war. You could tell by the furnishings and the contents of the wardrobes. Kitchen and living room were open and generously laid out and separated from each other only by a counter. Modern back then. In a pantry bordering the entrance area, I found some food cans with an acceptable expiry date, which I stacked next to the entrance door. Then there was a small toilet and a larger bathroom on the ground floor. There, in the mirror cabinet above the washbasin, I found a toothbrush still sealed in, a booklet with plasters and a few rolls of gauze. I stuffed my prey into the pockets of the jeans and turned to the cellar door. It was still locked. I felt around a little, and in fact - there was a key on top of the door frame. I used the key and opened the door, the machete on my right. Listening, I stared into the darkness.
The Rats of Frankfurt: The Gospel of Madness (Book 1 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 3