Under Ivans Knout: The Gospel of Madness (Book 2 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series))

by Georg Bruckmann

  But she really couldn’t blame Mariam for that. She had done her best. And now Wanda herself had to do her best to honor the efforts of the girl. It was impossible for Mariam and Tommy to return to this particular storage room, because as far as Wanda had understood the story the girl had told, the place would be buzzing with angry redsleeves soon.

  But they had more than enough weapons anyway, especially if one included the other three bags, waiting in their hiding places. It was okay if the children slowed down tomorrow night.

  ... the children...

  Wanda was amazed about how naturally she involved Tommy in her strategic considerations. How hard would it be for Mariam to just leave her new friend behind? Was she even able to do that? Did she understand what a greater goal was? That a greater goal always required sacrifices?

  Wanda knew that she was asking too much of Mariam, but for her sudden facts had simply become the truth. She and Mariam would never be prisoners to anyone again. She and Mariam would never part. She would kill Da Silva and kill as many degenerates as possible in the process.

  Only then would she be ready to look for a safe place to stay for herself and Mariam. A place they would live a good life. Only then would she be ready to think of something abstract like future. Only then, she knew, would her nightmares - perhaps - let go of her. And until then, she would do whatever it took to make her greater goal come true.

  Everything.

  She felt deep gratitude for Shepard, but he had not experienced what she had experienced. He couldn’t understand how hot her hatred for the degenerates burned. How violently the greed for revenge boiled in her. How close it was to just erupt. She was aware that it was this difference in their motives that might eventually lead for them to part ways. She tried not to let him notice, to allow him to use her and Mariam as a safe, mental anchorage when he was overtired and often returned from his travels with new, bloody memories behind his forehead. She didn’t always succeed, but at least she tried.

  Steps outside the tent, and then the voice of Gustav, who snarled at the guards to let him in, tore Wanda out of her thoughts. She quickly hid the vest away again, not to hide it from Gustav especially, but certainly from a possible curious look of the redsleeve guards.

  The doctor looked like shit, and he smelled like booze. Yet he greeted her as kindly as he always did. But the routined, usually pleasantly flowing conversation did not really want to get going today. She noticed that he only wanted to work through the usual points to suffice the courtesy. So her answers were quite brief and she refrained from asking him for a map of the tunnels for today. He left two more books for Mariam, who was just waking up when Gustav said goodbye and left the tent.

  Shepard

  Rolf and I were not the only ones who noticed the crackling and strangely all-encompassing change. Redsleeves grabbed their weapons more firmly, spun in circles and tried to locate the source of the unrest. Tent tarpaulins were pulled back and other men and women came out of the their sleeping places hesitantly and with suspicious, sometimes sleepy faces.

  Then the first scream was to be heard, followed by a series of shots. The sounds came from far away, from below, out of the tunnels. Rolf tightened up and while pointing to a group of Ivan’s boys, he said: “You! Over here, with me!”

  A window in one of the pre-war shops in the gallery of the station broke, and a woman fell down in a rain of sharp-edged glass splinters. A dog had bitten itself deep into her throat and, while they were still falling, the woman stabbed the animal with a knife. When her head hit the floor of the station concourse, the knife flew away in a high arc and both remained motionless. In the following moment of shock, in which the bystanders stared at the dead woman and the fatally wounded, twitching dog in horror, it was dead silent in the huge hall, and the moment one of Ivan’s boys drew a pistol to give the animal a quick death, a figure with a rifle in its hands appeared in the shop up in the gallery. The pistol of the redsleeve and the weapon of the unknown gunmen barked simultaneously. The redsleeve was hit in the leg and went down with a scream. While the alien shooter put a second bullet in the middle of the man’s chest, Rolf aimed at him and shot three times in a row. At least one shot must have found its target, because the figure overturned and stumbled backwards and then disappeared from my field of vision. Another second of shock and while the crack of the shots echoed in my head, many things happened at the same time.

  Ivan, a revolver in one hand and an axe in the other, angrily stormes out of his tent. Behind me, from the direction of the above-ground platforms, barking sounds from far behind. One of Ivan’s boys, one of those Rolf had yelled at a second ago, loses his head in a red explosion of blood and brain matter. Rolf screams commands and, followed by a handful of quick minded men and women, storms forward towards the main entrance. More windows burst and more unknowns with rifles appear behind them. While the men seem to open fire indiscriminately and focus on everything that moves, I turn around, towards the platforms, towards the distant barking. I can see something odd at the edge of the illuminated area. A black dog, a big animal, stands on one of the benches that a few years ago had offered a seat to stressed out travelers and howls a sustained wolf howl into the night. Next to the bench lies the motionless body of a guard. Behind me I hear Ivan roaring and cursing and in the meantime most of those who had not fallen during the first salvos of the attackers have shaken off shock so that they can take cover and return fire. Shots are fired everywhere. As I watch other four-legged shadows trot out of the winterly darkness, I realize that I am unarmed. I tear around a redsleeve that has just taken aim on one of the attackers at the top of the gallery, shout into his ear and point to the animals that seem to be gathering. The man’s eyes grow big and he opens fire. While one of his comrades is still preparing to follow his lead, I turn away. In front of me I see Rolf and his squad shooting up the stairs leading to the gallery, trying to storm, while Ivan, tall and strong as a rock and surrounded by a bodyguard of hurriedly armed redsleeves, stands in the middle of the turmoil and gives cover fire with his revolver, while he screams wild curses in the direction of the attackers. The station hall is littered with dead and injured. One of the figures in the gallery ignites a Molotov cocktail, throws it in a flaming arc and a red sleeve, which has sought cover behind a pile of water canisters, turns into a living, screeching torch. I scan through the chaos with my eyes. The long howling of the black dog breaks off. My eyes find the dead body of one of Ivan’s boys. I bump into a bleeding redsleeve woman spinning on her own axis in panic and sprint towards the corpse. Next to the dead man lies a rifle and there is a pistol in his belt. There also is a knife right next to it. While I pick up the weapons and stuff two more pistol magazines into the pockets of my parka, I further ahead see Gustav pulling a wounded man behind one of the barricades by his arms.

  Gustav.

  Wanda.

  Mariam.

  I wonder if the guards are still doing their duty outside their tent. I hope so, because apart from the gun Gustav smuggled in, the redsleeves are the best possible protection for them at the moment.

  I have to see them.

  Right now.

  Rolf and his squad seem to have decimated the attackers on the gallery and have now climbed half of the stairs. Ivan reloads his gun. Three of his bodyguards lie dead on the ground and the remaining four continue to cover Rolf and his people. The long howling reaches my ears once more and forces me to turn around.

  Behind the alpha dog now seemingly countless other dogs have gathered, romping about excitedly and aggressively, trampling on their dead fellow dogs, which had been killed by the shots of the two redsleeves behind me.

  And what’s this?

  Back there, behind the pack, a figure appears, a human being, a man. He must be at least as big as Ivan. I think I hear a shrill, high-pitched whistle between all the shots and the screams of the injured. The howling of the black, four legged beast breaks off and the next second the pack races towards us. They are fast a
nd there are at least thirty of them. I ripp up the carbine and pull the trigger.

  Click.

  Chamber empty. Load through. Shot.

  An animal falls. Load through. Shot.

  Another hit.

  After each shot, while I’m loading, I scream as loud as I can:

  “Behind us!”

  Load through.

  Shot.

  Missed.

  “Behind us!”

  Meanwhile, some of the redsleeves near us have finally become aware of the danger and do it the same way as me and the other two. But it’s too late.

  When my rifle is empty, the first animals are only about ten meters away from us. I drop the rifle and I pull out the gun. They’ll be coming down on us like a storm of pointed teeth. While I keep shooting with the gun, I see one of the redsleeves, whom I first made aware of the pack, panicking and running into one of his comrades field of fire further back. He dies instantly. A second later another one is jumped by a big animal and intertwined both roll across the floor. Now the first dogs have passed me and involve many of the defenders in bestial close combat. I ram a new magazine into the pistol and continue shooting at the animals that are still flooding in. As I lift my eyes for a fraction of a second, I see the black animal still standing on the bench staring at me. Next to him is the huge human silhoutte. It seems to be stroking the black dog´s head. My magazine is empty again. I’ve got one more. Why haven’t any of the animals attacked me yet? Only nine shots left. The last animals pass me yelping and meanwhile almost everyone around me has become aware of the critters. I see Ivan smashing an especially large specimen, one of the first to pass me with an axe and hurl it off. But another one jumps him from behind. Only two of his bodyguards are now on their feet and one of them, a young guy, shoots the animal twice in the chest from the side at close range. In the gallery Rolf and his men are in trouble. The sudden lack of cover fire has made the attackers braver and three dogs, one of them with blood-soaked fur, rushes past Gustav, who still takes care of the injured behind the barricade, towards the group of the blond. A bullet drills itself in a leg of the animal from behind, the dog somersaults and remains howling and in wild spasms and panic-stricken at the foot of the stairs. The two others attack one of Rolf’s redsleeves and under the weight of their bodies the man goes down.

  Mariam.

  Wanda.

  Finally I get moving. Gotta get to our tent. On my way there I use the knife several times and stab dogs that are biting meat out of this or that defender. After some time I came closer to the gallery, see Rolf using his obviously empty gun to punch one of the attackers in the face and then shoot the man first in the leg and then in the heart with his own weapon. Not many of his strike force are left, and Rolf seems to have suffered several injuries. One of Rolf’s men pulls a dog away from his downed comrade, and as the animal bites into the barrel of his gun he, with a quick, tearing turn of his wrist, a step backwards and a curvature of his trigger finger makes the beast´s skull burst. At close range, I can see the bodies of some of the attackers. Mostly normal, functional clothing. But there are also degenerates among them. What’s the point of that? The people from the mall? I can see our tent now. There are still redsleeves nearby and the tarp looks undamaged. Just now the guards fire almost synchronously at an attacking dog, which is torn around by the impact of the bullets, somersaults and remains dead. All right. I’m a little reassured. Apparently, the attackers have failed to extend the fighting to the entire camp. I can hear that there is also fighting down in the tunnels, but up here the chaos is slowly fading away and with this fading my perception of time is normalizing again.

  When I first looked at my dog-blooded arm and my hand, the blood on it and the knife in it, I slowly realized that I was not in immediate danger and allowed myself to look around consciously for a moment. Many of the dead redsleeves show wounds from arrows, spears and throwing knives. Under the ubiquitous crashing of the shots, the lightning of the muzzle flashes and the manic attack of the pack of dogs, this had escaped me until now. Rolf was still involved in fights at the gallery, but in the meantime he had received reinforcements and it looked like he was gaining the upper hand. Ivan and the pitiful rest of his bodyguards now again supported him with cover fire and here and there one of the defenders desperately fought off one of the last animals that had remained of the huge, threatening pack. The bench at the back of the platform was empty now. The tall figure and the black dog have disappeared. Again I asked myself why none of the animals had attacked me. Everywhere were the dead and wounded, and the archaic warcries that had marked the beginning of the battle had turned into lamentations and sounds of pain. I saw Gustav shouting something while he was stopping bleedings and otherwise caring for the injured. Shortly afterwards, two of his helpers, a man and a woman, timidly stretched their heads out of the hospital tent and turned back when they saw the chaos. He himself had not even been scratched, and even though the thick wood of the barricade, behind which he had entrenched himself, smoldered and smoked and shavings were shot out and arrows and spears stuck in it, it had withstood and protected him from worse.

  I was torn back and forth, wanted to run to our tent, our golden cage, but Rolf was still involved in a battle in the gallery. I felt no loyalty to the man. It was more like he was kind of protecting us, me and Wanda and Mariam. That the whole camp protected us indirectly, even though we were trapped here. Even if Ivan was a sadistic pig, and Rolf was an unscrupulous pragmatist and Stumptooth... I didn’t know a word for that one. If the camp, the station would fall to whoever, then it would be over with the relative security we enjoyed here. This security was too precious to give up, especially when it was winter and the attackers were teaming up with the degenerates or whatever it looked like. And there were the others. The hurters and the old and ...

  I stopped thinking and started to move towards the gallery. For lack of a better opportunity, I put the knife, which I had still clasped tightly, into my jacket pocket and drew the pistol again. As I moved forward, I tried to have my eyes everywhere at the same time. Only a few shots were fired now and when I had passed Gustav, who was completely absorbed in his work as a doctor and did not even notice me, and had reached Ivan and his bodyguards, who had still directed their weapons up towards the gallery, but no longer fired, I heard Rolf’s voice from above:

  “That’s it. No one left here.”

  He stepped to the top of the stairs, accompanied by a few bloodstained redsleeves. Now he addressed Ivan, who hesitantly lowered his revolver.

  “But you have to come up and take a ...”

  He pointed behind him.

  “... look out there. But be careful you’re not seen from outside.”

  Soon I knew what he meant. Ivan stormed up the stairs like an angry boar and hardly let Rolf stop him, who once again exhorted him to be careful. I followed him closely. Up here, too, there were dead and injured everywhere, except that it was mainly attackers that had gotten hit. Not like below almost only redsleeves, inhabitants of the camp and dogs, and a biting smell of blood, ripped bowels and something else lay poisonously in the air. We all held our hands in front of our faces now and crept down to the destroyed window front. The semicircular square in front of the station was empty, except for the bodies of a few of Ivan’s boys who had the task of securing it.

  In the snow we were able to trace back the footprints of the attackers as far as the light conditions allowed. But that wasn’t really the ominous thing. At first I stared into the night in a strangely dim way, not being able to make anything of what my eyes showed me. Finally, Rolf just pointed straight ahead, not to the ground below us, but to the buildings opposite.

  Flickering light could be seen everywhere and shadows moved behind the windows. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. The half-decayed and partially bombed company- and residential buildings were overflowing with activity. In places, where none of Ivan’s boys permanently installed barricaded secured access to the subway blo
cked the view, movement could be detected.

  We were surrounded. It was a Siege.

  ***

  Ivan just stared, he was unable to take command. Rolf took the floor.

  “They’ve come from the sides and sneaked up on our outposts. I don’t know how this could have happened without making some sort of noise, but they did it. Then up the facade, and inside they were.”

  To underline his words, he made a circular movement and everyone knew that he meant the room full of corpses in which we found ourselves.

  “The facade is simple. Not an obstacle. If you look out the window to the right and left, you will find ropes and ladders. They must be theirs. One climbs up and attaches the ropes, the rest follows.”

  “But why the effort?”, I threw in.

  “Because they knew exactly how well the main entrance and the entire ground floor were secured. They were well informed.”

  “Then it’s also possible that the ropes were attached by someone inside, isn’t it?”

  Ivan and Rolf were staring at me now. I noticed the high number of larger and smaller injuries that the two had sustained. Bruises, scratches, cuts and bites and Rolf’s face was already swollen on one side as if he had taken a blow with a club. He was lucky that obviously no bone was broken. We were all glad still to be alive. Ivan now stared again at the houses on the other side of the square and the semicircular street directly in front of them. With his rumbling accent, he said:

  “They want to siege us. Assume to attack us. Those maggots. It’s them. Want to kill me. Kill me because I’m better.”

  He straightened up.

  “Look at me,” he shouted across the square as loud as he could and stepped on the shattered remains of the broken and broken windows.