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

by Georg Bruckmann

  His stream of words didn’t leave me completely unimpressed. But I kept trying.

  “You haven’t seen what they do to their prisoners. How they break people or kill those they can’t. They ...”

  “Oh, stop it ...”

  With his free hand, he waved my words away.

  “Enough now.”

  The knife moved away from the Russian’s neck a little. I saw Ivan cautiously tamper with his ties.

  “That’s all I can offer you: Ivan dies today, you make sure that I can leave the camp unharmed and I go over to the dog people and tell them that you all will put down your weapons and then we see what happens. And if they blow off some steam, and a few get killed, what’s the difference? If you fight, all of you will die. You don’t know how many they are and...”

  “Wait a minute.”

  I raised my hand and interrupted him. Ivan kept tampering. I had to keep David busy.

  “Who are these others anyway? The ones that help the cult people? The people who use guns?”

  At first he was a little angry that I had interrupted him, but now he smiled almost diabolically and then answered with his soft, whispering voice.

  “Who they are, you ask? These are all the people Ivan once wronged.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “These are all he’s ever attacked. Everyone he stole from. His good neighbors. All whose men, women and children have died to defend one territory or another, one neighborhood of this ruined town or another, or even one building or another, from his greed and megalomania”.

  David was now talking himself into a rage. For a moment he even took the knife away from Ivan’s neck to be able to gesture more passionately. And Ivan kept tampering.

  “They’re all here. The ones from the mall, simply everyone, even many who have had a similar fate as I did. But they aren’t as scared of the world as I was. Most of them have been strong enough to try find a life elsewhere. Well, the word life applies to what they have found - with their broken jaws, their whipped backs and their lost limbs. Lost … to Ivan’s childish raging.”

  He took a break and his tone changed a little.

  “How do you think I felt, huh? Beaten up, humiliated having lost an eye and not the balls to do something about it. Damned to pretend nothing had happened for the fear of everything outside? Forced to simply keep going like nothing happened? It took me a long time until ...”

  Finally, Ivan had freed himself and jumped up, his back of the head hitting David’s chin hard and with a kind of wooden sound. The smaller man was thrown back and the knife slipped out of his hand. Ivan threw himself at him, his gag still in his mouth. One of his giant paws clutched David’s neck. The other one hit his face hard and mercilessly, again and again. David tried unsuccessfully to defend himself and when his body finally lost its tone, unconscious or dead, Ivan let go of him with a final punch and freed himself from the gag. His huge chest rose as he inhaled.

  “Guards!”

  A second later three redsleeves came storming in. The one with the scars and the beard was one of them. It took them a moment to get their bearings, just like I did a few minutes ago, and then, as they couldn’t see David lying behind the table on the floor, they all pointed their weapons at me. I raised my hands.

  “Not that one. This oneeeeeaaaaaa...”

  Ivan went down with a loud scream and clasped a spot on his left leg with his hands. David jumped up, swung astride the injured Russian’s chest, was swaying, his face bloody and the knife raised to a second thrust.

  He lunged out far.

  Ivan looked up to him.

  Observed fascinated the silvery bow that raced towards his heart.

  Knowing he would never get his hands between the deadly blade and his body in time.

  The guards fired.

  The first hit ripped off the tip of David’s nose.

  The second penetrated his shoulder.

  The third one went in the back of his head.

  A stream of blood poured out of the ruins of his nose and the remains of his skull and bathed Ivan in a slimy red.

  Then he fell aside.

  As Ivan pawed himself up, I could see the conflicting feelings in his face. It seemed as if David’s words had touched something in him. Silently, and while David’s blood was dripping from his face, he stood there and absent-mindedly pulled the knife that thanks to the guards had missed his heart out of the wound in his shoulder. While he turned the handle of the blade between his fingers, he sat down on his throne and looked at me thoughtfully. I looked back.

  Yes, Ivan.

  We all reap what we sow.

  Always.

  ***

  The redsleeves had shouldered their weapons again after they had subjected Ivan’s tent to a quick but thorough examination. In in the back room, as I could see from their faces and their quiet murmurs, they found other women. Most of them were dead. Only two had been bound and gagged by David and now, with pale faces distorted by panic and teary red eyes, were gasping for air.

  Ivan raged and whined alternately, repeatedly kicking David’s body or either slapping one or the other redsleeves, which had been careless enough to get too close to him, insulting the respective delinquent as an incompetent, slow and traitorous idiot.

  Of course, he didn’t realize that all this drama was due to his own actions. He saw himself as a victim. Was that the paranoia of the powerful? He had mentioned them before and suspected me of having been sent by them.

  It was a dangerous mixture of repressed feelings of guilt, years of substance abuse and greed for power that made him rage in a way, that suggested that he did not even feel his numerous, smaller injuries in the first place. When he had just stomped back and forth for the fourth time, Rolf’s voice came sounding from outside.

  A second later the tarpaulin was hastily pulled back and the lapdog entered his master’s throne room. His cheeks had regained some color, likely from running and the cold outside, but I could see the signs of exhaustion that the deprivations and stress of the recent past had cut into his face as I turned away from Ivan to look at him closely.

  What did he find out?

  How many were there on the other side of the post-warly empty, snow-covered square waiting to finish us off?

  Just as he breathed in, surely to answer these questions, which at the moment probably had captured all our thoughts, he paused and took in the scenery. Even before he could ask what the hell had happened here, Ivan became aware of his presence and directed his cursing, whining and angry shouting at him.

  It took Rolf several minutes to extract the nature of the events from this flood of roaring words. But when he understood what had taken place here, he interrupted Ivan with a certain, almost imperious gesture.

  “I don’t give a shit. Ivan, we need you here now. On the matter. Get a hold of yourself!”

  My breath almost stopped.

  No one had spoken to the Russian this way in my presence ever before, and in Ivan’s face I could also first see amazement, then a sparkle of his very own anger and then a glimmer of returning reason. Finally the hulk was silent. He looked at Rolf, breathing heavily. The blonde swallowed and waited a second until he was sure that his words would be heard.

  “They’re preparing for assault, Ivan. They’re gathering on the square. We maybe have a few minutes.”

  The redsleeves within earshot looked at each other with anxious eyes. Then their eyes clung to Ivan. The Russian finally had returned to reality completely. I could see his thoughts swirling behind his forehead as he stood in front of me, trying to take slow, regular breaths. His tongue moistened his cracked lips and a cold, malicious fire replaced the hot, wild rage that had just dominated his eyes.

  “Man your posts!”, he turned to the redsleeves.

  “Everybody! You two...”

  Deeply rumbling he turned to Rolf and me.

  “... grab your stuff and then, follow me!”

  Already he wanted to haste outside in
to the hall, leading the way, then he stopped again and let his gaze wander in the tent. Shortly afterwards, like a raptor, he quickly stepped up to one of the tables at the edge of the tent littered with loot, all kinds of trinkets and weapons and grabbed a whip and an impressively looking and subsequently sharpened ornamental saber.

  Then he stormed ahead of us, towards the gallery. I would have liked to ask Rolf exactly what he had learned on his scouting mission, but he turned around wordlessly and followed Ivan before I got a chance. I had no choice but to follow them as well. I left the tent, after having re-collected my stuff, trying to keep up with the two men, and could see that the camp already was in turmoil.

  Sleepers were woken up, weapons checked, cigarettes hastily lit and deep sips were taken from flasks. The redsleeves performed these rituals with a strange kind of grim solemnity. They knew that for some of them it would be the last time they would suck the smoke into their lungs or feel the burning of high-proof alcohol in their throats. The guards and snipers on the gallery knelt tense behind their barricades and bullet traps, their hands cramped around their weapons until their ankles emerged white.

  Ivan and Rolf had been faster than me, and to be safe from enemy fire, they had already ducked down to the broken windows, stared through the icy wind and swirling snow, penetrated the white with their eyes and observed. I followed them and what I saw was ... impressive. Impressive in a lethal way and deeply frightening at the same time.

  Several hundred people gathered in front of the walls and in the streets at the other end of the square and stared right back at us. I knew that they only looked in my direction and could not see me explicitly. At least the logical part of my brain was aware of this fact, but nevertheless I had the impression that every single one of them had it in for me.

  I was scared.

  Every single one of these men and women was willing to kill me, to shoot me, to slay me or to strangle me with bare hands if necessary. No, in those faces, which for me, objectively speaking, were hardly more than moving, bright spots, I thought I could read that they were even burning with violent passion for exactly that. And although our snipers fired sporadically and every now and then on the other side of the square one of the figures collapsed, they did not give up their formation, which made whole bizarre thing even more threatening.

  For maybe five seconds I watched this murderous gathering together with Ivan and Rolf and, just as I wanted to address Ivan, additional movement came into the seemingly rigid lineup of our enemies. An alley opened and at the same time the gun men of our opponents, who had entrenched themselves in the same manner as our own snipers in the buildings and on the roofs, put a murderous barrage on the entire station building and forced the redsleeves into cover.

  Ivan, Rolf and I also dropped to the ground to avoid being hit. While bullets hit around us and ricochets buzzed like angry wasps, a redsleeve crawled on the floor in the direction of Ivan and stretched a quite large mirror shard towards him. The Ivan tore it out of the man’s hand without a word of thanks and held it up so that he could see what was going on outside without exposing his face to the enemy fire, whereby he pressed his back against the wall below the windows.

  Suddenly everyone around me seemed to hold some kind of mirror and stared outside. I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t got such a mirror. No, there were still two redsleeves back in the room of the gallery for which no improvised periscope had been left, and they looked just as helpless as I felt at that moment.

  I just had to know what was going on out there. But there seemed no option but to hold on and wait.

  Yes, there was.

  Over there was another shard of mirror on the floor. Ridiculously small and blunt. It seemed as if the original mirror had been shot out of someone’s hand. One of the periscope-less redsleeves had also spotted it and wanted to reach out, but I was faster. With my prey in my hand, I quickly crawled to the outer wall, to the right of Ivan and Rolf, trying to align the small shard so that I could see something. It took me a while to manage and my hand trembled in fear while the constant inferno of the rifle fire just did not stop.

  Finally I could see something.

  A bizarre rag-man strode along one of the alleys that our attackers had formed in the meantime and I recognized it immediately. It was not only the figure itself that was bizarre, but above all the pack of dogs that followed closely and that seemed to react to even the smallest of its movements.

  How many animals were there?

  Thirty?

  Fifty?

  A hundred?

  I couldn’t tell. The Dogmaster proceeded confidently, just as if he was not the least worried about being struck down by one of our shooters. He fully trusted that the barrage we were under would make sure that nobody in the station even had the idea to aim at him.

  And he seemed right. Followed by his creepy pack, he stepped right into the middle of the square. I had trouble keeping him in focus with the shard. I even lost him for a moment, but when I could see him again, this madman, this skinny scarecrow, had turned to his people and seemed to give some sort of speech. They were still in line, degenerates and others alike. Completely unimpressed by the fact that occasionally one of them fell to the ground with the head blown open.

  After a long time - so at least it seemed to me - the scarecrow turned back to us, pointed with the right hand in our direction and through the crackling and lightning of the enemy fire a strange and large hissing penetrated into my ear.

  Damn it.

  Was that cheering?

  And indeed. After I had moved the mirror by one millimeter, I could observe that our besiegers had raised their weapon-holding hands and ripped their mouths open into screaming black holes like a gigantic horde of rejoicing demons.

  Now the Dogmaster pointed in another direction and not only me, but also Ivan and Rolf tried to realign the mirrors to see what was going on. Through the alley, which the Dogmaster had walked along, something came towards us.

  No.

  It didn’t come.

  It was rolling.

  They rolled.

  The cars.

  A little faster than walking speed, after having passed the road leading towards the station and reaching the edge of the square, they turned to the left and right. Each of the vehicles was equipped with improvised armor. In absurd ways fastened metal plates, sandbags, manhole covers, phone books and in principle everything, which seemed to be able to stop projectiles, made the vehicles into rolling cover possibilities for the absurd army, which we saw opposite us.

  After all vehicles were placed on the spot, between us and our attackers, the Dogmaster, still surrounded by his pack, disappeared behind a particularly well armored vehicle.

  The barrage fire faded away slowly. The cars had reached their destination. Their attack formation was in place. Once again, aggressive, fanatical cheering echoed over the square. The Dogmaster must have spoken again.

  For a moment, I lowered the shard. In the meantime, the room was filled with more redsleeves armed with rifles, nervously waiting for instructions. The whole thing was so incredibly bizarre. The cheering and the war cries of our besiegers. The unfamiliar roar of the engines, which was only dampened by the thick layer of snow that lay in the forecourt and was tossed and reinforced between the facades of buildings that until recently were orphaned. The sudden lack of shots. And then the engines were turned off at once.

  Unreal silence.

  Pseudo-silence.

  Wrong.

  Scary.

  Ivan was still staring into the mirror he held raised, but seemed to be absent. Not so Rolf. The blond man noticed the newcomers and instructed them to spread out.

  “Don’t waste bullets on the cars. Keep an eye on the windows and try to kill as many of their snipers as you can.”

  The redsleeves were eagerly obeying. They knew what was at stake, but their rifle fire, which resounded painfully loud in the small room, could not hope to compete with the hail of bulle
ts we had endured until a minute ago. We couldn’t afford to just shoot in the approximate direction of the enemy to force them into cover. Every shot had to be targeted well.

  Soon Rolf’s orders had been passed on and more shots could be heard from other rooms of the gallery and the roof of the station and our bullets flew towards the enemy. A noteworthy effect on the other side of the square, which I now observed again through the mirror shard, could not be seen.

  They remained unchanged.

  What the hell were they waiting for?

  Then Ivan cried out.

  “There! In the alley!”

  I quickly readjusted my posture, realigned my little shard so that I could see what the Russian meant. It was trucks racing down that alley right towards us. And they burned. As soon as the first one had left the road across the square, which he had used to accelerate, the driver’s door flew open and a figure jumped out, rolled off and pawed himself up again, just to disappear behind one of the reinforced cover vehicles. The heavy truck, still accelerated by its own huge mass, ploughed over the square, pushed smaller debris ahead or simply rolled it over, tore metal posts out of the ground and threw them aside. When the gigantic projectile, to which the vehicle had been converted, had crossed half the square, suddenly more flames burst out of it. At first only on the sides, but when it hit the walls of the building that had been our shelter for so long and shook it down to its foundations, the truck that hit us was no longer a mere truck, but a blazing fireball of enormous proportions.