If the relatively short time in the tent, in which I had been exposed to this smell, had already been sufficient to ensure that the dogs had not attacked me, then the more it seemed reasonable to assume that already a small piece of one of these rags would also be sufficient to protect its wearer from the trained dogs. In the meantime we had almost got used to the smell and so, after we had rebuilt the macabre barrier afterwards, we sat together in a circle on the floor and cut the pieces of fabric apart. It wouldn’t be enough for all of us, but as many inhabitants and redsleeves as possible should be equipped with one of the foul-smelling talismans. I then took some of the stinking shreds down to Tommy’s platform to make sure that Mariam, Wanda and at least a few of the hurters who lived down there were safe from the dogs.
Somehow I expected that everything would be the same down there, at least by and large, but the faces of the sick and crippled looked a lot more fearful and desperate than on the previous occasions I had come by.
I soon learned that a handful of attackers had reached the platform, and after being cut off from their comerades and encircled by some redsleeves, shot at anything that could breathe indiscriminately out of their panic and fear. There had been many dead and injured on the platform, whose ghastly whimpering and screaming had filled the tunnels before the redsleeves and the hurters finally had managed to kill the attackers with combined forces.
At first I couldn’t find Wanda and Mariam, and the longer I searched for them, the more adrenaline and sorrow wanted to take control, but then I finally discovered them.
Wanda was busy explaining the new situation to a few young men and women, who, apart from various adhesions, still seemed halfway healthy, and Mariam sat on the floor, together with a boy who actually looked quite normal, and talked to him quietly.
That had to be Tommy.
I saw to it that Wanda and Mariam got one of the miserably stinking pieces of cloth first and gave the rest of the bundle to one of the young guys so that he could distribute the rags at his own discretion. Wanda brought them up to speed and would supervise the defensive preparations. When I had just turned around to walk away, I stopped again, introduced myself to Tommy and thanked him for his help. He smiled briefly and shyly and pressed a nearly molten chocolate bar into my hand without saying a word. He was scared like everybody else. Understandable. Chewing, I went back up into the hall and felt the sugar suppressing my tiredness a little.
I had not yet got used to the weight of the vest and let my shoulders circle uncomfortably. I would feel better, I thought, if I could find Stumptooth to get my crossbow and the rest of my stuff. But first I had to talk to Rolf again.
On my way to him I found a pistol with a full magazine next to a broken, shattered vending machine, which today seemed to have served as cover for someone and had at least been useful in this way again. There was still some blood on the weapon. I wiped it carelessly on my parka and put it in my pocket. Two were better than one.
I found Rolf where I had left him: watching the enemy from the exterior of the gallery. I noticed that there hadn’t been shots in quiet a long time. Presumably the attackers had arranged themselves with our resistance in the meantime and had also barricaded their windows or maybe had evaded into rooms further back of the occupied buildings. Rolf turned to me as if he felt my presence in the room. Six redsleeves with hunting- and sniper rifles kept an eye on the forecourt over the sights of their weapons. Should Rolf notice my new wardrobe, he said nothing. I was wearing my parka over the vest anyway and the man had a lot other things on his mind.
“I’m glad you’re coming. I was worried you suffered a breakdown and lay on the ground crying.”
His eyes sparkled mockingly.
“Anyway, that stuff over there...”
He pointed to the right corner of the room. There was an assault rifle leaning against the wall. One of those I discovered, I think, and next to it were four magazines, as well as my crossbow and machete.
“...is yours now.”
I took it and put the magazines in my pockets while Rolf watched.
“Man-oh-man, they really put us through our paces,” he finally turned to me again. I nodded.
“That was well planned, clearly.”
He agreed with me and then said:
“I’ve been thinking for a while and I don’t believe the attack was prepared from the inside. They expected a lot less resistance, otherwise they would have attacked us immediately with all their men at once. But they didn’t do that.”
I disagreed with him.
“And what if the attack only gave them the opportunity to make camp in the buildings opposite us? A diversion?”
The blond guy stroked his chin.
“I don’t think so. Too many casualties on their side. But it’s all too much for me, and maybe I’m mistaken. We don’t know anything except that they control the dogs and that some of your special friends are with them. In the end, they’re all here just for you, huh?”
“Not Very likely,” I objected.
I quickly told Rolf once again that I had messed with a relatively small group of degenerates who, if this perverse Bible of Da Silva was valid, acted independently from each other. I also told him about the lunatic’s commandments, and concluded with the sentence:
“One thing is certain. If they take the station, if that really should happen then their allies will fall next. And what do you know about them? Who are they? All the others? The people from the mall I heard such a lot of talking about?”
Rolf thought for a moment, then he replied:
“Yeah, might actually be the ones from the mall. Maybe they’re out of food. But could also be a group from somewhere else looking for a new place.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“We have no idea what these people are about. All I know is we don’t have enough men to cover the platforms. The tunnel guards are now reinforced and can hardly be overrun because it is quite narrow down there, but up here, the backside ...”
He flinched when a shot sounded from a distance and three of the snipers next to us returned fire, although the shot had not been meant for us.
“Shit! Stop it! Save the bullets,” he growled at the redsleeves before turning back to me.
“Gustav’s completely busy. Is at this limits. Earlier I sent one of the boys over there to check on the state of affairs. He said it’s like a slaughterhouse down there in the hospital tent.”
I immediately believed Rolf, because I myself had seen how the attackers had raged among the rats.
“I have had all ammunition distributed to junctions and barricades. But another firefight like the one we had earlier, and we are practically defenseless. Gustav’s finished with the meds, too. The only things we really have enough of are food, electricity and water.”
“Well, that at least,” I replied.
“Unless they realize we need to save ammo, we may be able to hold them off for a while. Maybe some of our people should collect the bows and the throwing weapons as a precaution.”
“I’ve already arranged that. Assuming we can actually still stall them for a while, how do we proceed? We can’t attack them. Not exactly. They’d just pick us one by one like on a shooting range if we showed our noses on the square.”
I agreed with him. The tactical situation was really, really bad.
“Soon the sun will rise. Then we’ll maybe see a little more.”
Rolf grumbled his answer.
“I don’t think we’ll like what we’ll see then.”
“How many have we lost?”
“There are forty-three of us and twenty-six of them on the pile. At least eighteen more are in Gustav’s tent. Tendency declining.”
When that was said, we decided to stop thinking for the time being. The snipers had their eyes on the place and would sound the alarm if a new attack should roll in from there. The tunnel posts had also been manned again and fortified by additional barricades.
“Come with me. I wa
nna take a look at the platforms,” Rolf instructed me and went ahead.
At the end of each platform two redsleeves had been positioned, of which nothing could be seen anymore. The rails leading away from the station were overgrown with bushes and small, young trees curving under their load of snow. We investigated platform after platform and found - nothing.
No trace of the guards who had been on duty there and no sign of a struggle. Not on any of the platforms. Only when we arrived on the platform from which the dogs had entered the station, we found clues to what had happened. The footprints of many animals that came out of the snowy thicket. And the traces of a single person. It almost looked like marching in a goose march straight towards the platform and had gathered here before they started their crazy storm attack. The prints in the snow were clear and very easy to read. We quickly examined the surroundings of the remaining platform ends.
Nothing.
No bodies.
No shell casings.
No more footprints.
Not from man, not from beast.
I wasn’t sure if I really had to explain the meaning of these facts to Rolf, but I did so anyway.
“Rolf, there was no one here when the dogs came. From the looks of this place, all the guards must have left their posts before it started. Only this single redsleeve I’ve seen, the one that was probably killed by the big black one, had been on the platform.”
“Yes. That was Bernd. We now use him in the front as a bullet trap. Shit ... but ... but that can’t be true,” Rolf mumbled into himself.
“Impossible!”
“Rolf. Who’s in command of the platform guards?”
For a few seconds the blond man stared into the night. I could hear his teeth gnashing. Then he said a name. Quietly and without expression in the voice.
Gustav
Gustav had now been on his feet for over twenty-four hours. He amputated, sutured, injected painkillers and gave a quick, merciful death to those who were too badly wounded and who had nevertheless been brought into his tent. He snorted at one of his helpers who had stared at him a little too long as he threw down a caffeine pill with a big sip of scotch. The stupid Russian had finally managed to create a situation that had already claimed far too many victims and maybe would in near future cost many more lives. His gaze wandered over the wounded on the loungers and over those for whom there were no loungers and who therefore had to be cared for on the floor.
From outside, the echoes of shots kept coming in. It would start again soon. In his mind’s eye he saw them gathering in the forecourt and whenever he lifted his eyes from a terribly torn leg or a gunshot wound again and took a look out of the hospital tent, he saw redsleeves running past, manning barricades and carrying boxes and bags with ammunition. Some times Rolf and Shepard and once even Ivan passed by.
Ivan.
You damn son of a bitch.
Under him, the old redsleeve, whose cheek he had just sewn up, shouted angrily and in surprise. Gustav had simply torn off the thread. A small drop of blood came to light and then, like the other drops of blood that had previously crawled out there, dried on his cheek. Gustav apologized to the man with a casual murmur and, when the man was not satisfied but continued to complain loudly, he threatened to inject him with a hypnotic and make him bark like a dog if he did not immediately would shut up.
That had an effect.
No new patients had been dragged into the tent in the last thirty minutes, so he assumed the angels of death had done a good job. He went over to another lounger and took a handbook on field surgery that one of his assistants had used to leave one of the ugliest stitch work on a young woman’s forearm Gustav ever had seen. But it did its job and that was most important. Gustav took the book to the compartment, separated from the rest of the hospital tent by room dividers, which he used as an office and examination room - at least when there was no war going on.
Ivan’s voice sounded from outside. The damn Russian gave one of his speeches again. That was really one of the advantages Gustav enjoyed, being lord of the hospital. He didn’t have to listen to that smug drivel. He could always claim an emergency to stay away from the speeches. He had hidden the two bundles wrapped in rags between the outer tarp of the tent and an old filing cabinet, which he didn’t really need, but still wanted to have around because he gave the hospital tent a more professional touch. Should he be putting the gun together by now? While trying to find an answer to this question, he sat down on his knees and wrapped from under his private lounger the two pistols he had hidden there. He stretched out long on the lounger, placed his weapons on his chest and hesitated. He looked at his hands. They were still in bloodied latex gloves. Blood of people whose lives he had saved or at least tried to save today.
As he lay there now, completely exhausted from his work and his alcohol abuse, but still chemically awake from the much too rapidly decreasing effect of the caffeine tablets, it all seemed so infinitely pointless to him. He periodically came into this mood, knew it quite well, and he also knew that it would soon leave him again. However, if he could, if he succeeded in carrying out his plan - maybe then his demons would finally leave him in peace.
The pictures of the isolation cell in the cellar, of the cell in which she had died, or better: of the cell that had taken the last rest of her will to live. Pictures of Ivan eating and drinking and whoring and acting as master over life and death. Gustav removed the magazines from the handles of the pistols. They were full. While he let them snap back in, loaded the chamber and checked that the weapons were secured, his subconscious had already made the decision. Ponderous and on slightly shaky legs he rose. He put one of the pistols in the back of his trouser waistband, the other, the smaller one, in one of the side pockets of his dirty doctor’s gown. Almost reverently he took the two bundles of rags out of their hiding place and put them on his lounger. Then, as if for prayer, he knelt down before them and opened them.
He took his time.
Carefully he assembled the jet black metal parts, screwed on the long, heavy barrel, then the muzzle suppressor. Finally, he pushed the scope onto the rail and let it snap into place. It was misaligned and he turned the wheels until he thought it was as well adjusted as it could be without a test shooting. The magazine held five rounds, of which he unfortunately only had four. The others he had lost in the narrow passageway leading to the armory. He cursed his miserable drinking, but he couldn’t do without it. He loaded the magazine and let it slide into the gun, in which it disappeared with a click to two-thirds. Then he hid the gun under his ridiculously thin blanket and left it behind.
It wasn’t time yet.
But the time was getting closer. He could feel it.
He’d use it.
Shepard
The name Rolf said was David. As soon as he had spoken it, quietly and whispering, he turned around and stormed away.
Down the platform towards the station hall. Surprised I stopped for a short moment, looked after him and was confused. Then it dawned on me. Stumptooth also had spoken of him. Of David, I mean. Ivan had beaten him up badly for an insignificance, a minor insubordination, so badly, that he had lost an eye. That had happened before my time here in the camp and I couldn’t remember ever seeing an one-eyed man here either. But what did that mean? It was like a beehive in here. I hurried to catch up with Rolf, who had returned to the main hall in the meantime. Hectically he turned his head from one side to the other, trying to see right through civilians and redsleeves alike on the hunt for this David. Was it really possible that man had developed such a hatred for Ivan that he would send everyone who lived here to the knife along with him, just to get his revenge?
Well, nothing was impossible, I admonished myself, because in fact I had already seen examples of far greater madness in recent years. Basically, the man’s motives played no role at all. I thought a little longer about his situation and came to the conclusion that David, if he had even a little intelligence, must have left the camp the mom
ent he had deserted from his post and ordered the redsleeves under his authority to do the same.
He had no way of knowing that we would successfully fend off the first attack. And neither could he have been sure that he himself would not die in the chaos of the battle or that one of his subordinates would not report this sudden and unusual deviation from protocol to another officer.
“Rolf, this is no use. I’m sure David’s not up here anymore, or even in the camp, I guess. Where did he live?”
Rolf interrupted his attempt to develop an x-ray vision through pure willpower and looked at me with throbbing temple veins and in grinding jaws. After two seconds his face relaxed enough that he could speak again.
“Come with me. We’ll go there.”
I followed him and soon we stood in front of a shabby one- man tent on one of the subway platforms. I looked at Rolf questioningly. The blond man, who had meanwhile drawn a gun and pointed it at the entrance of the tent, sensed the question before I could pronounce it.
“Yes. He ... he lived down here with the hurters. Didn’t want to meet Ivan upstairs. Since the thing with his eye ...”
With the barrel of his gun Rolf pointed to the appropriate place in his own face without noticing it.
“... he only went up in case of an absolute emergency. And you know what? I assigned him as platform guard and put the men under his command. I did this. I felt a little sorry for him and I thought if I forced him to at least come up to his shift at the rails, he would lose a little of his fear. And now? Shit!”
“Yes, but you couldn’t have known this would happen.”
“I guess that’s true. But still...”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he pointed the barrel of his handgun back at the tent. The hurter inhabitants of the underground settlement had gathered around us in the meantime and watched this scene tense, keeping a few meters safety distance.
“David! If you’re in there, this is the moment you better get here out of your own free will. Do you hear me? David!”
Under Ivans Knout: The Gospel of Madness (Book 2 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 15