He left her alone a little longer. Silently he counted to twenty, and in all the time her face showed no other expression than tension and concentration.
“Go. Get up. Get up. Come around your fancy table and show me your holes. I want to shove your stupid celtic fertility statue right up your ass.”
The triumph he celebrated inside was unbelievable. Slowly, however, he became impatient with his victim. Since he could remember, Toni had been humiliated and beaten up countless times. That would never happen again. It was he who decided what happened. He had earned that.
The Director still didn’t move. Now Toni could see how finally one of the corners of her mouth began to twitch. She’d either burst into tears or scream hysterically. Toni was somehow looking forward to both. He hadn’t felt this alive in a long time.
But the sound that then came out of the Director’s mouth was neither a cry nor did it sound as if she were in tears.
It was quiet, surprisingly gentle and surprisingly high.
It was a laugh. She actually started to laugh. Toni didn’t understand. He didn’t panic.
Toni simply felt sheer incomprehension.
She laughed for long, probably twenty or thirty seconds. It wasn’t a hysterical laugh. It wasn’t a scornful laugh. It was mild and somehow ... it reminded him of his mother’s laughter from when he was still little. I kind of laughter he had only heard in the early years of his childhood when he had done or said something she had found droll.
Anger slowly rose in him, but he controlled himself. He now had to keep his initiative and keep a cool head. He feverishly thought about what he might have done wrong, but he just couldn’t think of it. Then the Director was done laughing.
“You can come in,” she shouted towards the second door. Toni’s head shot around. The door opened and Mr Feretti and the young Mr Rugierro entered the Director’s office.
Feretti was the first to speak. While his fingers were playing with the pin on his lapel, he said thoughtfully:
“He played his cards well, I think. He picked up the trail and followed it of his own accord. And he has shown impressive ruthlessness and initiative. He’s a really good candidate.”
The Director nodded.
“Yes. He is indeed very promising. Azrael was right about him in his reports. The boy really has it.”
Epilogue
Gustav
When the shooting at the gallery started again and the first truck shook the walls of the station, Gustav had just emptied the first bottle of the day. The rumors he had picked up told of a small army that had positioned itself just a hundred meters away from him. Everywhere in the station concourse, around the small island of peace that his hospital tent represented at the moment, there was running, orders were shouted, and then again the walls trembled. Redsleeves screamed from above, the stench of gasoline and fire spread in the hall.
It was about time.
Gustav calmly put the clipboard aside and stepped to the rifle laying on his bed. He put another caffeine tablet on his tongue and swallowed it. Dry this time. Soon they would start dragging more wounded into the hospital. But they wouldn’t find him here anymore.
He took off his gown, dropped it carelessly to the floor, then remembered the small pistol in the side pocket because of the noise. He picked it up and grabbed an outdoor jacket with three bullet holes in its back. The fabric smelled of blood and probably was still wet. He could not have found something better at the moment and the poor devil, to whom it had belonged, no longer had use for it. He put on the black woolen cap that had served him as a mask on his raid. Then he grabbed the rifle and left the hospital tent. None of his helpers lifted their heads as he left. They were either busy looking after the most seriously injured, or had sunk down exhausted in some corner or niche and were just reluctantly awakened from their well-deserved sleep by the noises of battle coming in from outside. A young woman, Sandra, his best student, sat in a corner on a camping chair, holding a cup of cold coffee, staring with empty eyes. They all had seen far too much.
He was also ignored in the station concourse and avoided the redsleeves as best he could. The big fires threw their ghostly flickering from outside into the whole hall, and at the barricade at the main entrance he could see Ivan, who commanded his redsleeves. The defenders at the gallery were constantly firing, and anyone who was able to stand and hold a weapon had been assigned a task. Shepard and Rolf were nowhere to be seen.
Good, because if one of them had asked what the hell he was up to - he didn’t know what he would have done.
The redsleeves, eight in all, which manned a barricade over at the side entrance, had apparently not yet been involved in fighting. Four of them stared out over the barrels of their weapons. The other four were busy building an additional barricade as quickly as possible to protect the small troop if the attackers managed to get into the station concourse. Wise of them, Gustav thought as he rushed past them and towards the metal door behind which the stairs that would lead him to his destination were hidden. Wise, but pointless.
When he arrived on the roof he was tempted to crawl towards the forecourt to see first hand what was going on out there. But he resisted the impulse. His target was much further behind. On his way, bullets buzzed over him from time to time in a steep angle, but that didn’t worry him. Nobody could see him.
Soon reached his destination.
At the edge of the large, perforated glass dome that spanned the surface platforms. The large hole where he placed his rifle between two metal struts was almost at the far western edge of the roof, allowing him to see the entire station concourse through the rifle scope. He systematically steered the crosshair from left to right until he focused on the barricade at the main entrance.
Ivan himself fired at the besiegers together with his redsleeves, then turned around, seemed to scream for more ammunition. Next to him, a head burst open and sprayed him with blood and brain matter. The Russian didn’t even notice, reloaded his big revolver, pulled the body aside with his free hand and took the vacant position.
Gustav now had Ivan in his sights. As his finger slowly approached the trigger, he imagined the large, impressively heavy projectile drilling into Ivan’s damned, mad brain, swollen from drug abuse and unscrupulous megalomania.
The doctor smiled. Now that fucking asshole would pay. There would hardly ever be a better opportunity than this battle. The large-calibre piece of metal would blow the skull of the Russian into a million tiny shreds and later no one would be able to tell from which direction the deadly hit had come.
Everyone would think Ivan died in battle.
But, him, the doctor - he’d know who killed Ivan.
He would know.
Gustav already felt some of the satisfaction the murder would bring ... no ... not murder ... the rightful execution of the man responsible for the death of his love and countless others.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, a volley of gunfire hit the thick wooden plate next to the Ivan, splinters flew around and the Russian quickly turned around, held his face and staggered forwardly bent away from the barricade. A young redsleeve immediately took his position and angrily answered the fire. Another looked after Ivan, spoke to him and only when he put a hand on the massive shoulder of the Russian, Ivan gave up his bent posture and scared the man away with a casual backhand blow. The redsleeve didn’t seem to be surprised by this behavior. While a thin blood thread ran from the right corner of his mouth, he continued to talk and make gestures to Ivan, who again was standing upright, pointing at the small injurie in Ivans face. Then he was hit by two bullets in quick succession. Once right below the ribs and once right into the left eye. Ivan ducked down and was under cover even before the body of his averted helper had fallen to the ground.
Gustav tried to keep Ivan’s head in his sights, but now the Russian raged back and forth and Gustav could see that the splinters had injured him over both eyes and on his right cheek. Ivan roared into the station concourse
, waved with sweeping movements of both arms towards further redsleeves.
They listened to him for a moment, then ran away, only to return shortly afterwards with the individual parts of a previously unmanned barricade. They distributed the large and thick wooden planks, metal plates, sandbags and everything else that seemed suitable to them among themselves. Ivan just didn’t want to stop the whole time, hurried from here to there, angled some more fast-loading wreaths out of an ammunition box, rolled out his whip and drove his men to hurry.
He was just threatening one of them with this very whip, probably because he was not fast enough for him, when an arrow cut the Russian’s left earlobe with the edge of the arrowhead in the middle and missed a woman with a red armband who was about to reload an assault rifle just by a hair’s breadth.
Ivan turned around roaring, turned to the attackers, cried out against them, a cry which even Gustav could still hear in his sniper’s nest. Then he burst off as his ear sprayed bloody drops and, faster than Gustav could get, disappeared with a heavy metal plate in his hands behind the barricade.
That couldn’t be.
That was not allowed to be.
Ivan went outside.
He actually went outside.
Ivan had actually dared to escape his anger and seek another death. For he would die, that much was certain.
Gustav couldn’t let that happen. The fucking coward, this self-important murderer and sadist wasn’t allowed to escape his punishment. The Russian was not allowed to take Gustav’s salvation away.
There was no time to lose.
He had to get to the eastern edge of the roof as quickly as possible so he could overlook the station square and shoot the damn bastard like a rabid dog. With aching knees the doctor stood up and moved hastily towards his target in a crouched position. Bullets flew over him again. Closer this time. As soon as he found a new, suitable position, he set the rifle up and peered through the scope, but immediately lowered the weapon again. The sight that presented itself to him was unimaginably impressive.
He hadn’t expected there would be that many. He had thought that the rumors and scraps of conversations that had reached him in the hospital tent were exaggerated, as exaggerated as the stories of the big black dog - but that was not the case.
The mass of the attackers besieged the main entrance to his right. In front of him, on the right flank of the enemy force, many of the degenerates and their allies fell through an attack led by Rolf. The blond knew no mercy, fired volley after volley into the backs of the enemies and the miserable rest of his squad did the same. Diagonal, on the other side of the square, in an office building, there also seemed to be redsleeves that attacked the besiegers. Further down in the building, in the entrance area, was also fighting, to judge by the stroboscopic muzzle flashes.
As the first attackers began to notice Rolf’s meager counterattack, Gustav returned to his actual target. Ivan and his entourage were like a small island, surrounded by the seemingly endless sea of foes. They had made it about ten meters into the enemy army before their insane counterattack was stopped. They’d gotten about as far as the armored cars that the opposing alliance had obviously used to get as close to the station as possible. Between Ivan and his redsleeves and the main entrance, the ranks of the attackers were already closing, and Gustav perceived with concern that the first ones were already running into the station, swinging their weapons.
Fucking damn Ivan.
He had taken too many men and left the barricades in the hall almost unguarded. The defensive positions would not be able to withstand much longer. Some of the men and women who had let themselves be carried away by Ivan’s madness had already fallen. But the others had not yet lost their fighting spirit. No opponent could stand up to Ivan in close combat for more than maybe ten seconds. In the shoulder of the Russian stuck the shaft of a broken arrow. His ear was still bleeding. Now, the second Gustav had raised his rifle again and aimed it at his target, Ivan hit a degenerate spearmen several times on the skull with the handle of his revolver, just to immediately afterwards give the man a shot in the stomach, which splashed his intestines and parts of his spine backwards.
A slaggy figure surrounded by dogs emerged from the mass of the attackers and approached the Russian. With a touch of satisfaction, Gustav noticed that the Dogmaster’s four-legged creatures didn’t seem to know exactly who to attack. The plan with the stinking rags worked out. The animals hindered attackers and defenders alike in their confusion, but that was much better than having to watch the beasts pouncing on redsleeves or civilians.
Ivan threw the just captured spear at the figure with unbelievable force, but faster than one would have thought of such a lean, fragile-looking creature, it ducked and the projectile penetrated the chest of a degenerate further back and held some of the instreaming attackers at a distance for a small moment.
Ivan and the Dogmaster collided like wild animals.
Both protruded by head’s length from the mass of the fighters. The Dogmaster clutched the hand with which Ivan held his revolver at the joint and bit into it while he with the other hand tried to keep Ivan’s wild punches away from his own head.
The Russian tried to get his paw off the skinny man’s teeth, but apparently it wasn’t that easy. From the corner of his eye Gustav saw that Rolf also somehow became aware of Ivan’s insane failure and began to cut a breach to Ivan with the help of his men, of whom only two were still on their feet. He and his people fired more or less blindly, because the enemies were so densely packed that they could not actually miss them. Ivan had apparently given up trying to use the revolver against his opponent, because instead of continuing to fight for the weapon, he emptied the drum with a jerky and for the Dogmaster surprising movement of his arm into the horde of the following attackers. Gustav saw a knee burst, a face disappear and a hand raised to throw a spear was torn off to a large extent directly at the joint. Then Ivan dropped the gun.
While his fist wouldn’t stop beating his opponent, he pulled the now empty hand, into which the Dogmaster still had bitten, towards him so that the heads of both fighters touched. Only when Ivan had bitten a piece of meat out of the cheek of the Dogmaster, the degenerate loosened his own jaw and released Ivan’s wrist. Pain and animalistic hatred glowed in the eyes of the deg. His mouth and teeth were as bloody as Ivan’s. No, they were even more bloody. Now that Ivan had freed his hand, Gustav could see that the Dogmaster had cut the Russian’s artery with his teeth.
About half of Ivan’s counterforce was still on their feet. The others lay on the ground in the cold, uninvolved glittering snow and were trampled beyond recognition by the invaders and their fellow redsleeves alike.
Gustav decided that he had watched the grim duel of the warlords long enough. He didn’t have much time left.
It had to be him.
Nobody else was allowed to do it.
Gustav grasped the rifle more firmly, but whenever he had Ivan’s head in his sights, the fierce struggle of the two unequal leaders made him disappear from the crosshairs far too quickly.
Then, finally, the two opponents had once again clung to each other in a deadly embrace. The Dogmaster had rammed a knife into Ivan’s mighty chest and Gustav could not say exactly whether it had penetrated or whether it was stuck in the thick layers of his clothing. The Russian, for his part, had dug his fingers into the Dogmaster’s knife hand and held it firmly. His other hand had closed around the degenerate leader’s neck and squeezed, while a disturbing amount of blood ran from Ivan’s wrist, wetting the Dogmaster’s chest.
So they stood for a few seconds and Gustav pulled the trigger.
The bullet pierced Ivan’s massive shoulder, shredded the Dogmaster’s chest and was then stopped by the face of a degenerate woman further behind. Gustav pulled the trigger a second time before Ivan could understand what just had happened. His redemption, his satisfaction, was so very near.
But no!
The second bullet only blew through the
air between the seriously injured Russian and the dying Dogmaster. Ivan let his useless arm dangle down flaccidly and the so liberated hand of the Dogmaster felt its way towards the knife, which was still stuck in Ivan’s chest. The Dogmaster’s fingers closed around the blade’s handle and both swayed when Ivan gave up his stranglehold, instead pulling his opponent close to him again and taking his neck in a stranglehold.
Gustav wondered whether the Russian was whispering one last insult into the Dogmaster´s ear.
Another quarter of his redsleeves had fallen in the meantime.
This time Gustav aimed more carefully. By now, he knew the characteristics of the rifle.
The memories of everything that the Russian had taken away from him, of every single wound that he had had to treat because of his arbitrariness and megalomaniac lack of self- control. Every body that’s been buried behind the surface platforms out there.
He pulled the trigger a third time.
Almost at the same time their heads burst open. The angle had been ideal. The blood of the two enemies mixed into a slowly rising rising red cloud that produced steam in the winter cold.
The Dogmaster’s life ended first.
The dead body slipped down on Ivan’s still upright, almost decapitated corpse and remained so, the remains of the skull leaned against his stomach above waistline. Then the Russian’s knees gave in and their corpses supported each other, kneeling shoulder to shoulder, and few seemed to notice at that moment.
Gustav looked down on them for a few more seconds. Then he looked for Rolf, who had almost arrived at the scene with his last two men, but could not yet see what just had happened.
Ivan’s right hand. Ivan’s lapdog.
Gustav kept his head in his crosshair for a little while.
Then, with his last bullet, he shot a degenerate who went after the blond.
Was that karmic balance?
Under Ivans Knout: The Gospel of Madness (Book 2 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 23