“How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours.”
“Something’s happening?”
“No. Nothing. Outside...”
He nodded briefly in the direction of the gallery and station forecourt.
“... there’s shots once in a while, but lately it’s been quiet.”
“Okay. You guys hold your positions here, all right?”
He hesitated for a moment, as if he wanted to say something else, but then nodded. When I had moved a few steps away, I stopped again and turned around.
“Yes you’re right. One of you may sleep at the time. Take turns. But no one goes into the tent, understand? No one!”
Again he nodded and I could see that I had interpreted his hesitation correctly and had given him the desired instruction.
And now?
Should I go find Rolf? I was still quite drowsy and felt hung over somehow. I looked around the main hall and discovered that two of the men who yesterday had drunk with Stumptooth were preparing food over the flame of a gas torch. The rest of the group slept, packed in thick jackets and distributed on two large wooden pallets so as not to have to lie on the bare floor. Their weapons were next to them. Stumptooth was nowhere to be seen.
Yes, the time immediately after the attack had been exhausting for all of us. Not to mention the fight itself, of course. The two cooks looked at me suspiciously as I approached them.
“Do you have anything left?”
Their unwillingness to share their meager ration with someone was obvious, but after some back and forth one of them gave me a half-full can of Chili con Carne. The stuff hadn’t been very tasty even before the war, but while I tried to put some of it in my mouth and eat without burning my tongue, I was happy for any bit of energy it would give me.
“Has Ivan been here today?”
I turned to one of the men, interrupting my efforts, and received a close shake of the head in response.
“And Rolf?”
Another no. Strange.
Somehow I expected Rolf to be up on his feet before me. However, I was not particularly surprised that Ivan was still hiding in his tent. Probably because I was happy about it. Nevertheless, at least we were besieged and even if we were as well prepared as possible to fight off a dooming second attack, I in Ivan’s place would have shown my face to maintain moral or, if it didn’t work out with moral, to swing the knout a little to keep the boys on course.
I wandered aimlessly, kept my eyes open for Rolf, circled tents and barricades, chatted briefly with one or the other and generally got the impression that, although the individual people were afraid of the enemy waiting outside for us all, I also noticed a grim determination that seemed to be strongest among those who had lost friends or relatives in yesterday’s attack. Some of the bereaved even burned with fighting spirit and lust for revenge and I tried to remember their names and faces. Later, we might need these very people.
Soon my tour had led me to the hospital tent once again. Here too, things had become much quieter. Just as Gustav discovered me and beckoned me in, some helpers brought additional blankets to better protect the injured from the cold. As I worked my way to him between the stretchers, the few beds and the improvised loungers, I noticed that he now seemed completely, really completely emaciated.
Deep circles around his eyes, his cheeks hollow and his apron and gown encrusted with blood all over. Beside me a man, whose head was under bandages, babbled whiny words in delirium, when I stepped to the doctor.
“dogs... I’ve got dog-teeth and...”
Gustav braced his upper body heavily on the edge of a lounger opposite the man, on which a sleeping or sedated woman lay under two blankets. Her right hand was missing. From somewhere he conjured an almost empty liquor bottle and held it out to me. I just shook my head and answered the gesture with my chili tin, whereupon he shrugged his shoulders and tipped the rest of the booze down in one go. A slight tremor seemed to take his body out of his control for a second. Then he took a deep breath and his posture tightened.
“What a fucking night!”
He made a gesture that involved the entire environment.
“If I sit down now, I won’t come back up until I’ve slept for at least two weeks. Well, never mind. How are the girls and how are things outside?”
I summarized the events for him. He had experienced the attack himself, but when it was over, he had had so much to do that the subsequent events and decisions had been out of his focus and he had not noticed anything about them. I briefly wondered whether I should really tell him that Wanda and Mariam had used the attack to escape their prison tent, but then decided to do so quite quickly. We spoke very quietly and in his voice I could not hear the alcohol. My hope that Gustav would tell me more about the allies of the degenerates or the story of David was not fulfilled.
“Damn Ivan. He got us into this shit and we all have to pay for it now.”
The doctor looked down on his bloody hands gloomy and also hateful. Then he looked at me again with his red veined eyes.
“Wanda and the girl are... good for you. Take care of them.”
At that moment I didn’t know exactly what he meant and nodded simply because I could see that these words were important to him. Then he waved away the drunken heaviness of meaning with a gesture of his hand and his gaze glided over the injured.
In the last bloody hours he had saved many lives. Two of his helpers, a woman and a man around sixty and obviously a married couple, or in a similar relationship at least, had wrapped themselves tightly and exhausted on an unused blanket and slept the deep sleep of exhaustion. Three other helpers walked around, cooling the foreheads of those with fever or taking care of the small fires and lamps that lit and heated the big tent to equal parts. By and large, they seemed to have the situation under control.
I advised Gustav to rest and he agreed with me. I had denied myself to tell him that he had really done great tonight. He would have grumbled something and made a dismissive gesture anyway. As I left I wondered if I hadn’t better said it and what exactly he meant by his words about Wanda and Mariam.
Rolf was still nowhere to be seen, neither in the main hall, on one of the platforms, nor with our tense snipers in the gallery. The last thing I did in order to find him was going to his tent. Because it was just the last place I would have suspected him. But he wasn’t there either. After - it seemed to me - endless inquiries, I finally found a redsleeve woman who could tell me something.
I received the information without asking any further questions.
Rolf had already left a few hours ago with two men to spy on our attackers.
I was not very enthusiastic about this news. First Rolf was at least as tired and exhausted as Gustav, secondly I had searched the whole camp for him for nothing and thirdly I would probably have to report to the Ivan alone.
I didn’t like this idea at all, regarding how Ivan had presented himself lately, no, actually the whole time. He had always been a psychopath, but discussing our future course of action, on which everyone’s life might depend on, with a person that likes standing tall in a hail of bullets and this totally convinced of being bulletproof - no, that was hilarious. And maybe a bit dangerous for me. Especially since I was pretty sure the Russian still didn’t trust me.
Lost in thought I went back to my tent. The long thin one, I could see that from some distance, had laid down to sleep and his friends were still bravely awake doing their job. I didn’t like the idea of just waiting to see what would happen any more than I liked the thought of the meeting with Ivan. But that’s the best I could come up with for now. The wounded were cared for as well as possible and the camp was fortified as best it could. There really wasn’t anything to do right now.
Or was it?
I stopped, sighed and turned away from my tent. At that moment I hated our attackers from the bottom of my heart.
This permanent threat they posed, this Sword of Damocles that just didn’t w
ant to fall, that made everyone here quiet, tense and anxious. And even though some small groups, most of them younger women and men, pretended to have longed for such a situation in order to finally prove themselves - the fear that hung above all our minds like a heavy, black cloud was almost tangible with hands.
I hadn’t even felt this restless, this threatened in the dark cell into which Ivan had me thrown.
Yeah.
Ivan.
What the hell happened was wrong with that guy? Everything he had lived for was in danger. He should be bothered - psychopath or not, shouldn’t he? The basis of his power, his kingship, his status was under attack, and he did absolutely nothing about it. If he wasn’t aware of how many lives were at stake, how much everyone, or at least most people here the camp, relied on him, even if he led a merciless, hard and arbitrary regime and was an insane, disgusting sadist - it was just incomprehensible, why he chose to hide in his tent.
Rolf looked at Ivan as the least possible evil and therefore supported him. In the last few days, the blond pragmatist seemed to be the only one who could keep the Russian more or less on track. I hoped that he would not pay for his advance into enemy territory with his life and that he would find a way to end this damn siege.
And I hoped that Wanda, Mariam and I would find a way to escape by spring at the latest.
And I hoped this and I hoped that, and thought, and hoped, and thought, and hoped.
At some point I woke up from my thoughts and realized that I was standing in front of Ivan’s tent. And that, judging by the skeptical looks of his bodyguards, probably for quite a while now.
I shook off the last remnant of my trance-like condition, looked one of the men, a guy with scars, which he could only partially hide under a shaggy full beard, in the face and told him in a firm voice that I had to talk to Ivan.
There was no way around it. I could see the doubts and the dislike in the man’s face. They jumped right at me. I must have really made a strange impression. Somehow I could understand him, but finally he stepped aside, abstained from a comment and nodded at me. Apparently, he remembered me and Ivan’s speech on the stairs of the gallery. Before I walked past him I asked, well aware of the pointlessness of this question, whether Rolf had been here in the meantime.
Hope just dies last.
The bearded man denied of course and put the tarpaulin aside. I went in and he closed the tarp behind me. Somehow I had expected to find the massive figure of Ivan sitting at his table or on his pseudo-throne, but that was not what I saw. The inside of the tent was darker than usual and it appeared empty. I looked around for a second, trying to discover Ivan somewhere.
The first thing I noticed was the bodies of two of Ivan’s concubines. Their throats had been cut. Now he’s gone completely insane, I thought. Only when I had nearly taken my assault rifle from the shoulder in order to be able to defend myself against the mad Russian if necessary, a quiet, strange voice said:
“I would rather not do that if I were you.”
I registered that it wasn’t Ivan’s voice talking and froze.
Something was moving back there. A big, strangely amorphous shadow. Almost at the separated part of the tent, which was Ivan’s private domicile. This lump of blackness moved slowly and awkwardly towards me and when it left the dark and reached the circle of light of one of the few burning oil lamps, I could see that it was an one-eyed man pushing the bound and gagged Ivan in front of him.
He held a knife to the Russian’s throat and must have slipped off with the blade from time to time. At least this was the conclusion I drew, considering the many thin and deep red runnels that sprang from Ivan’s face and neck. His eyes were open and his jaws fought wildly but unsuccessfully against the gag.
“Not a sound. Otherwise I’ll stab him right away, you understand? Put the rifle on the ground and keep it quiet, all right?”
I obeyed.
“That’s the spirit. Good boy.”
The one-eyed man hiding behind Ivan, of whom I could only see part of his face and the arm with the knife, held the Russians head firmly in his grip and watched me closely with his lonely eye.
“And now you put the other weapons with it. Come on.”
Again, I did what was asked of me and while I consciously performed the movements very slowly so that the man with the knife could not possibly interpret them as hostile, my brain started working again. Surprisingly, it didn’t do it as feverishly as I knew it from comparable threatening situations. My thoughts were strangely calm. The one-eyed man simply had to be David. One eye and a grudge. He had not fled the camp after he committed his treason. He had come here, hid, lurked and waited. When he realized that the redsleeves would repel the assault, he had probably decided to finish it this way.
“Take off your jacket and cover your stuff.”
Again I complied and spread my parka over the cold, shiny hodgepodge of deadly metal, which I had piled up at my feet in the meantime. At first I thought that David would not notice the blade on my new leg armor, but already he hissed:
“Nice try. The knife, too. Come on, come on.”
Again I did as I was told. Now I was completely unarmed and stepped away from the pile, into the middle of the tent. With his palms open, I asked:
“Now what?”
“Sit down.”
He pointed towards one of the chairs at the large table and pushed Ivan, who seemed to have given up his resistance and his wild eye-rolls and chewing on the gag, towards the chair opposite me, on the other side of the table.
There we were now. The gagged Ivan and I, while David stood behind his hostage, the knife still on Ivan’s throat, and straightened up.
“You’re David, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. I’m David.”
As before, he whispered in a surprisingly soft voice and was now looking at me closely.
“I watched Ivan’s little speech. I was wondering when one of you two was gonna show up.”
He meant Rolf and me for sure. When I didn’t say anything else, but simply kept my hands visibly on the tabletop and waited for more, he continued.
“Why would a guy like you be want to be the henchman of this filthy piece of shit here?”
He gave Ivan a little push and he snorted angrily.
“What Rolf is all about, I more or less understand. But you? Well, I don’t really care, to be honest. This will end soon anyway. I’m gonna send this disgusting, bloated vodka keg to hell. The question is: then what happens to the rest of you?”
His single eye did not show the slightest movement when he continued to stare at me.
“These cult freaks are pretty bad. If you don’t give up, they’ll butcher anything and everything around here, you know? I talked to their leader. He’s one-of-a-kind, the dog man. That’s why I haven’t yet put an end to this Russian swine here.”
He gave Ivan a bump in the back of the head.
“Wanted to give you all the chance to stay alive. This one’s only breathing so I don’t get shot right away, if you know what I mean. But ... I wouldn’t really care, just for the ones on the platforms it would be a shame. The fucking redsleeves may rot in hell for all I care...”
“Did he promise you that, the dog man? That he would leave the hurters alone? And you believed it? If you listen to me, I’ll tell you a few things about these cult freaks, as you call them.”, I interrupted him.
He hesitated for a moment, seemed concerned to lose the initiative and also a little surprised that I knew something about the degenerates. In the end, his curiosity triumphed.
“All right. Then say what you have to say, but quietly.”
The knife on Ivan’s neck didn’t move a millimeter while he was listening to me. I told him everything I knew about the degenerates. Everything I had experienced. Right from the start. Everything from their so-called Bible and also everything that Wanda had told me about them. I finished my monologue with the words:
“And you want to help these
guys? You want to hand over the people here to this dirty bunch of sadists, the people you’ve lived with for so long? Just to kill Ivan? I heard the short version of your story. He is to blame for...”
I pointed to my own eye.
“Yes, it was him, the fucking pig. And I’m gonna make him pay. For everything.”
Initially I had made my point as soberly and calmly as I could, but now I began to appeal to him.
“And the others? What have they done to you? These cultists and their dog man - you don’t think they’re keeping to any agreements, do you? And even if they don’t take down everyone right away and steal the supplies, I just told you what they’re doing to their prisoners, didn’t I? Do the people here really deserve this?”
For a small, tiny moment I thought I had dampened down his desperate, hateful fanaticism a little, but the next moment he replied with fiery passion in his one eye:
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you’re lying. Maybe not. Maybe the dog man’s lying. Or maybe he’s telling the truth. I’m fucked anyway. Done with everything. Just like you and the rest of the world. This is all just a last twitch, a pointless act of denial. This camp won’t change anything. The cultists won’t change anything. See the big picture, man! On the platforms they die of radiation cancer and the above grind themselves for a little food and warmth. We are all going down. But that one...”
Again he bumped into Ivan, who this time did not even snort anymore, but stared into the void in a strangely resigned way. Something in David’s words had apparently gotten to him.
“… I can still hold him accountable. I can make him regret. I’ll bleed him to death knowing I survived, and who knows? Maybe, maybe, maybe the people here deserve such a fate, too. Such a fate, as the dog man brings it to them. For following someone like Ivan. For letting him do what he wants. For making him their sovereign. What for? For a little security and food? That’s enough, so they subordinate themselves to someone like him? Just because he’s unscrupulous enough to take what he wants? For letting him crush my eye for nothing? You say their lives are in danger? I say this is no life at all. Yet I wanted to give you this little chance to keep this joke you call life. If you just give up and let the dog man take Ivan’s place. What’s so much worse about that? What difference does it make which madman oppresses these miserable creatures down there? A... a fucking ex-dealer or some religious nut? Does it really matter?”
Under Ivans Knout: The Gospel of Madness (Book 2 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 17