The Rats of Frankfurt: The Gospel of Madness (Book 1 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series))

by Georg Bruckmann

  I guessed that’s what the blond guy was called, because the Ivan looked straight over my head and behind me again.

  “... already took care of the diesel business very well. Rolf knows exactly why he does what I ask him to do. He knows that safety can only be achieved through numbers ... the larger the group, the safer the individual. That’s why we need to feed all of us so well here. That is why we need a hierarchy at the end of which there is someone who can make the important decisions quickly and correctly. That someone...”

  He explained unnecessarily.

  “... Is me. And for me to make the right decisions, I must be kept unbothered by the lower tasks. You’ve proven that you’ve got something inside that brain of yours, and that one...”

  He gave Wanda another push.

  “... and the child... they are obviously your motivation.”

  He grinned again.

  “And at the same time they are my assurance that you will do everything in your power to carry out all the tasks assigned to you to my absolute … sa-tis-fac-tion. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I understood very well - despite his heavy accent. He needed someone to do his dirty work. Part of me just wanted to jump up and strangle this disgusting, smug man with my bare hands. But two things kept me from doing it. On the one hand, the presence of his bodyguards, and on the other, the logical part of my brain understood this: Even if I was deeply opposed to his methods - Ivan was quite right about certain things.

  It took a large group to allow to live in a relative security, at least here and now. And this group had to be well fed and nurtured. And once such a group had exceeded a certain size, you really needed a hierarchy to get everything under one roof. Even though Ivan probably secured his status by distributing weapons, food rations and consumer goods and exercising direct and indirect violence, he had obviously been quite successful in protecting his people so far.

  He used Wanda and Mariam as leverage to get me to cooperate, and I decided to play along.

  For the time being. Talk again in spring. Then … we’ll see.

  “I have conditions,” I said out loud.

  Ivan, who had tried to read the content of my latest thoughts directly from my face, jumped up roaring.

  “What have you got? Conditions? You...”

  His roar suddenly stopped. He smoothed out his beard, brought the bottle of vodka he had knocked over when he had yelled out back into its original position and sat down again. The anger had disappeared from his face but was still glowing in his eyes. With seemingly emphatic kindness, he asked aloud:

  “And what kind of...”

  An erratic gesture with the hands.

  “... what are you conditions?”

  “One”, I started without looking at Ivan.

  “... Wanda and Mariam will not be locked up in the same damn cell you put me in, nor will they be placed on the subway with the hurters. They get their own tent and are to be left alone by you and your people. Two: I want my things back, the crossbow, my knife and so on. Three: ...”

  And now really raised the stakes.

  “... I want to move freely here, without any watchers constantly following me. Fourth, you’re gonna answer some of my questions. There is much else I need to know about this place to be of use to you, and...”

  I broke off. I could think of nothing more and I cursed myself for it. It almost worked, this showing self-confidence-thing. For a few seconds Ivan looked at me in silence. The dangerous glow in his eyes was still there and in his head it worked.

  “One,” he said then.

  “... Yeah, they’re getting their own tent up here, as a sign of my confidence. But you will hopefully realize that it will be those two, who will have to pay for every mistake you make? They’ll get a nice big tent with everything they need and where they can rest for a while. Guards will be standing outside, and if one of them sticks out the prying nose without being asked to do so, then it will be cut off, and then the two ...”

  He pointed to the separated part of his tent behind him, in which his private rooms and probably also his small harem were located.

  “... Will have to stay here. At my place. Two: Yes, you get your weapons and your other belongings back - but certainly not in here. Not inside the station. You’ll only get your stuff outside the camp. Under no circumstances you will be carrying weapons in here, and if you get caught with one, the ladies will move in with me too ... understood? That one...”

  He pointed to Stumptooth.

  “...will take care of your stuff. He’ll hand it out to you when you go outside and make sure you give it back when you don’t need it anymore.”

  Stumptooth nodded bravely, but felt visibly uncomfortable with the whole thing. He had just been given responsibility. He obviously didn’t like the feel of it.

  “Three: forget about free movement. As long as I don’t hear any complaints, you can sleep with the woman and the girl in the tent. Otherwise you will always and everywhere be accompanied by two boys while in camp. I can’t have you running around trying to do some nonsense. If you need anything, you can tell your guards. Fourthly, I will not answer any questions, but I will of course give you any information that I consider necessary for the successful fulfillment of the respective task.”

  Okay, so he played the tough guy, but I still was glad to have been promised temporary safety for Wanda and Mariam.

  I’d have to earn the rest of my trust and privilege.

  Time would tell.

  As a sign of my agreement, I merely nodded.

  Wanda, who had been staring at the tabletop the whole time, suddenly raised her head.

  “In case the gentlemen are done now, I want to go see Mariam.”

  Not loud, but clear and precise.

  Ivan turned his head in her direction, took an painfully slow sip out of his water glass, which had been filled again in the meantime. Honey-sweet, he said:

  “Of course, my dear. Go!,” and waved us smilingly out of his tent. Wanda, who, unlike me, had not made any preparations to get up, demonstratively lifted her wrist with the rope on it and looked at Ivan in an inviting way.

  “Oh, my... how could I forget?”

  Surprisingly gently he took her hand in his huge paw and I could see that Wanda had to pull herself together in order not to show her reluctance.

  With the other hand, Ivan took a knife from the food aching table and drove down the inside of her extended forearm from the crook of her arm in the direction of the rope, with the tip of the knife leaving a reddened line, but without actually carving Wanda’s skin. Then he suddenly grabbed

  her hand tighter, Wanda gasped and Ivan cut the rope with a quick, precise movement.

  Wanda had jumped up before the loose ends of her ties touched the table top and for a moment I feared that she was going after Ivan.

  It took me a second to realize with relief that this was not the case.

  “Got fire, the bitch. Now take her to her girl,” Ivan gave his final instructions for us for today and grinned.

  Wanda snorted contemptuously, walked around the table and we left the tent accompanied by two redsleeves, while Rolf prepared to take my place at the table and sit down opposed to Ivan. As we went out, we could hear Ivan ordering the remaining redsleeves to pitch a new tent.

  We approached the hospital tent, in front of which another guard with a red band on his arm stood and looked forward to us with mild interest, side by side and under the attentive eyes of our own guards and the bystanders. After confirming that, as the redsleeve had already expected, we wanted to go see the “new girl”, we were granted access.

  In the tent there were eight beds, apparently looted from ambulance cars, and three real hospital beds. Four of the mobile beds were occupied. A man in his sixties had recently undergone a leg amputation, so it seemed and stared at the ceiling with his eyes glassy from the painkillers. Next to each other, on the other side of the corridor that the beds formed, lay two obviously
pregnant young women who interrupted their whispering when we entered. As we moved further inside the tent, I took another look at the fourth patient. It was a young boy who looked like he had just survived a fight with one or more wild dogs. He was asleep.

  “Mariam?” Wanda shouted questioningly.

  From one of the back hospital beds, under a thick eiderdown, sounded a quiet and weak:

  “Here, I’m here.”

  I was incredibly relieved to hear Mariam’s voice and Wanda and I immediately rushed towards the bed. There she lay, pale, sweaty, fearful, but awake and in her right mind.

  When she saw me and Wanda, she began to cry softly and reached for our hands. So we stood for about ten minutes until someone approached me from behind and gently touched my shoulder.

  A tall, slim man in a white coat, which he wore over his clothes, stood behind me, perhaps about fifty, with curly- brown hair getting a little thin and a narrow pair of glasses, probably already mended several times.

  “Hello. I am Gustav,” he said. Meanwhile Wanda had sat down on the edge of the bed, stroking Mariam’s little head and looking at me and Gustav attentively.

  “The little one is doing quiet well,” said Gustav, shaking my hand, which, to say the least, threw me a little off balance. Gustav, who noticed my surprise upon this gesture, smiled and said with a wink:

  “Oh, there is little to hold on to these days, but good manners are certainly not the worst thing. Do you agree?”

  A little embarrassed I did agree and he got back to the point.

  “Well, the girl still has a high fever and is dehydrated, but in a few days we’ll have her nursed up again. I’ve given her antibiotics and I’m going to give her a light sedative. Sleep is still the best medicine.”

  He pointed to the free loungers.

  “You can sleep here tonight,” he said. “...and I’ll check on both of you ...”

  He looked at us one by one, and got caught briefly in the bruise on Wanda’s face.

  “... for your own sake and for mine. We don’t want you to bring any epidemics or vermin into our camp, do we?”

  We accepted his offer. When Mariam thanks to the sedative quickly fell asleep again, Gustav asked each of us briefly and professionally behind a screen improvised from some sacks as used for garden waste, stretched in the back of the tent and examined us quickly and thoroughly.

  While he was looking at my older and newer injuries, he was making small-talk, but it wasn’t unpleasant for me. I had seen this form of distraction with many other doctors before the war. It somehow seemed to be part of the standard medical repertoire.

  Soft-skills was the name used for this back then ... or something like that. If that was true, he in any case had some. When his examination arrived at my ankle, the whispering stream of harmless words broke off.

  “I’d like to x-ray that tomorrow.”

  “X-ray?”

  When he saw the unbelief in my face, he for a fraction of a second looked as if he just had aged twenty years. This expression vanished instantly and his usual smile returned.

  “Yes, Ivan is very concerned about the health of his people. I have almost everything you need here. We have to be very grateful to Ivan.”

  I agreed with him politely, impressed by the living standards here in the camp, but I did not forget the moment when the mask of carefree happiness had fallen. When he released me, he made me promise to come back for x-rays the next day.

  I waited at Mariam’s bed while the doctor devoted himself to Wanda’s wounds and I tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on the conversation between the two. Mariam slept deeply and soundly, and in the meantime I was sure that I could be reasonably satisfied with the way things went.

  Mariam would live, Wanda had a black eye, but she was as safe as she could be from degenerates and wild dogs.

  How things would work out with the Ivan - well, we would see.

  The next days went by so relaxed that it almost drove me crazy. The x-ray of my ankle, not in the hospital tent, but in a separate tent located on the tracks near the chugging diesel locomotives, showed that nothing was broken. Gustav said some words of relief, yet splinted the foot and encouraged me to take care. Mariam recovered completely within three days and then moved from the hospital tent over to the tent that Ivan had had set up for us. Wanda and I did some catching up on the things that had happened since I left that day.

  She and Mariam had been surrounded and overwhelmed early in the morning by a dozen of Ivan’s boys, obviously led by Rolf. In the course of the short brawl, Wanda had already done half of the leg amputation of the man we had seen in Gustav’s tent with the help of an axe - perhaps the same one I had thrown when the degenerates had stormed the house - so that Gustav probably not even had to cut the bone. The guy had the misfortune to be the first get too close to, but Rolf then had commanded his men so skilfully that she could do no further damage among them and she had been overwhelmed without suffering serious injury. She seemed almost ashamed of it.

  Smiling, I pointed out to her that it could have been worse all in all, but regretted it immediately when I slowly realized that Wanda had just been escaped from captivity and was now a prisoner again, even though this new prison - at first glance at least - was much more civilized and pleasant than the previous one.

  At some point everything was said.

  Also a question that had been haunting me all this time in the back of my mind had been answered by Wanda. I wondered if Wanda hadn’t tried to find medication for Mariam herself, as agreed, after I hadn’t returned at the appointed time.

  Wanda’s explanation was simple.

  Shortly after I left, a large pack of wild dogs appeared in the dead end and had begun to besiege the house after the bodies of the degenerates outside the fence had been eaten. Wanda assumed that they could smell Thomas’ corpse.

  One of them, obviously the pack leader, had been injured and was particularly vicious. He had attacked the fence several times in frenzied rage and almost made it over it. Only the appearance of Ivan’s people had been able to persuade the searing pack to retreat. However, this retreat had not been complete, because after Wanda and Mariam had been captured, the troops were surrounded and pursued by the animals all the way back to the camp in the station.

  Wanda, while being tied up, had learned from the nervous words of Ivan’s men that the dogs were becoming an ever-increasing problem. The injured boy, whom we had seen sleeping in the hospital tent, made this impression appear credible.

  Gustav, who always visited Mariam in the late morning, lent us some books from which we read to her alternately. However, he exchanged only a few words with us. She was still sleeping a lot, so the printed pages provided us with entertainment for a few days. In the reading-free time we were busy to stay halfway in shape and motivated ourselves with small competitions. I was surprised how much strength was hidden within Wanda’s lean body and I had to work very hard to keep up with her.

  Of course we discussed our situation and made plans and plans only to discard them shortly thereafter, but soon this topic also was exhausted, and then everyone hung on to their own thoughts.

  Wanda still completely shielded her inner life from me and the rest of the world, and even when she twitched in her sleep at night and spoke confused words, her face was an impenetrable mask most of the time and especially during the day.

  We had no contact with the rest of the camp. The food was brought to us, and we were only allowed to leave the tent when we had to go to the public toilets of the station, which were still fully functional and in tiptop condition.

  Of course, this could only ever happen one after the other and always accompanied by two redsleeves. We picked up conversations around us then and when and over time it turned out that the remaining Degs from Onehand’s group had been discovered and killed by Ivan’s patrols. Onehand himself, with one or more bullets from one of Ivan’s new assault rifles in his body, managed to escape successfully.

  To
o bad.

  On my short trips to the toilets I got the overall impression that the degree of organizedness

  in the camp had increased even further in the past few days. Everyone seemed entrusted with some task and was working with zeal.

  After five days all our wounds and major injuries had healed as far as possible, which slowly but surely made the forced inactivity more and more unbearable. Of course we tried as best we could to make plans and predict the coming events, but neither the fragments of the conversations of our guards nor those of the women and men passing by the tent, whom we could eavesdrop on, gave us information about relevant events of any kind.

  I watched from my cot as Wanda began to teach Mariam the basics of mathematics after her quick and precisely performed daily push-ups. While looking at them, I wondered for the thousandth time what Ivan could ask of me, and especially when that finally would happen.

  I had discussed the situation more than once with Wanda, whispering quietly, and we now agreed that I should try to make the best possible henchman Ivan could wish for.

  By doing this we wanted to gradually gain privileges and trust, which in return should enable us either to flee here at a time of our choosing or to actually get things to a point where we could convince Ivan to take action with us against Da Silva and his degenerates. The small settlements and ruin-communities only had a chance against the Degs if they could prepare themselves, preferably under an united leadership. None of us considered an escape attempt feasible at this time. We were too well guarded and the risk for us, and especially for Mariam, would simply be too great.

  I had told Ivan about the events of the last weeks, but he hadn’t shown too much interest. Luckily for me, he didn’t seem to be a religious person either, although you could never say that for guys like him.

  Of course I had not taken the book, The Gospel Of The New World, with me when I went to get the medicines. Wanda confirmed to me that it was probably still in our shelter in the dead end, because Ivan’s boys had not stopped looting after they had overwhelmed Wanda.

  “You didn’t burn it?”