They did what he asked, and he pushed his motorcycle loaded with his and their luggage and went after them. After they had walked about one hundred and fifty meters, Wanda stopped. Mariam took another step before she noticed it and then stopped walking as well.
"What is this supposed to mean?" it sounded from Robby. "Go on, go on. The people we chased out of the school building will definitely come back as soon as the cars are out of town. They better not realize we're still here. I don't think they're in a good mood."
"What if you missed him?"
"What?"
"Well, this man you are looking for, this Walter Mahler. What if you missed him? What if he's hiding somewhere? Wouldn't it be good if we stayed overnight somewhere from where we could watch the school? Maybe he'll come back. Maybe he'll turn up. Surely you had a reason for suspecting him here, didn't you?"
"Yes, we did, but my orders are different. And what do you even care? Come on, now."
"Well, I guess you can't expect someone named Robby to be proactive." Wanda's voice suddenly sounded mocking.
"Go on now, I said."
Wanda cursed inside. It was a really thin straw she was reaching for now. She knew that it was extremely unlikely that she would be right with her unfounded assertion, but eventually she had nothing to lose. These people had no use for her and a little girl, but Robby wouldn't kill them either, and he didn't seem interested in rape either. She'd seen that in his eyes before.
But Wanda had use for the Motorized. She had to give them something to make them allow her and Mariam near them so she could convince those people of her cause. And this blonde, pale eyed doctor would be an ideal start. Apart from that, all she could do right now was to make Robby not leave them behind and take both of them with him instead. But how was she supposed to do that?
"Now to the right, here, into the small street," Robby conducted from behind.
The road was narrower than the others and partly blocked by cars standing across, so that she and Mariam had to move closer together.
"Look out, Mariam, once we've set up camp for the night, we'll tell him everything we've experienced, you hear? It's important that he understands that we need protection from him and his people, that we're neither a burden nor a threat to them," whispered Wanda as Robby fell a few meters behind because he had trouble pushing his machine around a particularly tight spot.
"But why? Why is this so important? Shall we not go to Rome and kill the Cardinal?"
Yes, we do, Wanda could have answered, but if we can have an army, we should take it with us, don´t you think?
Instead, she said:
"We need a break, and I want to know what they're up to, the motorized ones."
"Stop whispering. Take the next right."
Robby had mastered the bottleneck and come closer again.
Twice we walked right, Wanda thought. She couldn't let her little triumph show. Her little tip with the initiative seemed to have fallen on fertile ground. He led them in a circle back to where he had captured them!
"I'm cold!" Mariam complained.
"Thank your mother, that was her idea. Fire's out. No light. After all, we don't want to be discovered here."
Robby stood at the window of the room where he had catched them a few hours earlier, as easily as a hunter would catch a particularly stupid pair of rabbits. Wanda was still angry about it. She should have been more careful. On the other hand....
He had taken the trouble to lift them through the window because he did not want to loosen their shackles, even though they both complained that their hands had long since gone deaf and blue. Only when they had reached the top of the stairs did he first fix their legs again with cable ties and then cut through the strong plastic straps on their wrists. He gave them some time to get the blood circulation going again. He was careful, Wanda noted, as she took Mariam's hands in hers and rubbed them warm and massaged them. He kept an eye on them the whole time. The sub-machine gun in his right hand pointed to the ground but was unlocked and his index finger rested on the trigger guard to protect the trigger from accidental release.
"Better now?"
"A little."
Robby gave them a minute. When the time ran out, he hummed:
"That's enough of that. Put your hands out again."
"But we're not ready yet," Wanda protested in a whining tone that Mariam had never heard from her before, but whose purpose she immediately understood. She went along.
"It still hurts a lot, please, just for a little while!"
"Nice try, but no one invited you to sneak up on us. Hands out, let's go!"
Fucking hell, Wanda thought while she was obeying. He let me get him to come back here, but he's not a complete idiot.
When they were tied up again, this time he had tied Mariam's right hand to Wanda's left, he dug into the bag that Mariam had to carry. He brought something to eat and a half-full bottle of liquor to the surface. Wanda was amazed to find that next to a glass of cucumbers, some canned fruit and in a vacuumed bag of dried meat there was a loaf of bread among the food. Bread!
Robby recognized the unspoken question in her eyes as he cut it into thick slices with his knife.
"Yes, we have a bakery. This is a little older, but it's still very good. Help yourself. And take a sip from the booze. Sorry, something better wasn't available, but at least it will make you warm from the inside."
"You have a bakery. You have cars and guns and vests and you are so many. Who are you people? Where's your camp?"
"Do you really think I'm gonna tell you this? Don't even think that we owe you anything. We're doing enough for you already. For all of you."
"What do you mean? What are you doing? You're just raiders! What do you want from this doctor Mahler?"
Robbie's face distorted and for a moment Mariam was afraid that he would hit Wanda, but before he could catch up or at least get carried away with a comment, he had himself under control again.
He obviously didn't like being called a raider.
"Eat now. Drink. Take a good sip of that booze. Then I'll give you a gag and you'll have a break."
"Don't you want to get to know us?"
Robby laughed in played amusement, reached for the bottle of brandy and took a big sip.
"No – what purpose would this have? Tomorrow I'll let you go and give you your things back and then we'll never see each other again. That would definitely be better for you. We really don't have time to take care for everyone who has lost his path, and we can't allow anyone to follow us."
They ate in silence for a while. Wanda and Mariam sat on the floor while Robby stood at the window and watched them and the school building alternately. Wanda asked for more liquor and took a strong sip, then she held out the bottle to Mariam. The girl also took a small sip, and when she had brought the first burning in her throat behind her, a second, bigger one. The warming from the inside was right, but it also made her tired and dizzy. She put her head on Wanda's shoulder and closed her eyes as Wanda began to tell their story before Robby would remember his threat and gag her.
He did not gag them, but after a while, which he had spent with his back to them at the window, he even began to ask interposed questions. Above all, he seemed to be interested in the degenerates. The more Wanda told, the more his facial expression darkened, and that was exactly what Wanda had hoped for. She didn't have to exaggerate to make him more and more concerned, first concerned and then angry.
"They, this Cardinal ... they poison everything ... you must ... we must stop them, stop them before their number is so great that it is no longer possible! For the good of all! That's exactly what you're doing, isn't it? Right? Am I right?"
She did not tell him that the welfare of humanity did not play a particularly important role for Wanda, that it was rather the selfish desire for revenge that drove her. She did not say that she wanted to skin the Cardinal and cut slices by slices out of his foul-souled body, like a roast. She didn't tell him that she would like
to do the same with each of his followers. That she wanted to shoot their neglected bodies into countless shreds, that she wanted to prick out eyes, cut off tongues and mutilate genitals so that the degenerates could no longer see their victims, no longer spread their sick gospel and could neither rape or procreate. She didn't tell Robby all that.
For him she wanted to carry the common good in her coat of arms, because that was something she believed him to be receptive to. She looked up at him, looked for his brown eyes. He looked back. She couldn't read his face. Then a soft noise from the schoolyard.
"Damn!" Robby whispered in disbelief after turning away from Wanda in a flash and staring into the schoolyard.
"Damn it, you were right! No way! There's Doctor Mahler down there!"
Shepard
The hallway just flew past me. In the twilight I only noticed that a barricade had once stood here as well, its individual parts - wooden pallets, an old chest of drawers and some rain barrels filled with earth - surprisingly neatly lined up to my left along the wall. In front of me, also on the left, but further back, the brittle stone staircase with the wooden railing led upward, to the right of it a narrow passage, at the end of which the back door was waiting for me.
Be open. Please, be open!
The moment I put my hand on the door handle and pressed it down, behind me I heard the quick steps of several people, then a wooden rattling and a suppressed curse. One of the masked must have gotten his foot caught on a wooden pallet. The door handle gave way, the door swung open to the outside, and I reached a littered backyard, which the building I had just crossed shared with three other high blocks of flats. In the middle there was a fountain about two and a half meters high and just as wide, or rather a water play, made of concrete and sheet metal pipes with a flat basin all around. The pump, which had once kept the whole thing moving, had long since stopped working. Stone benches had been set up around in a circle.
When the first shot rang, I first thought it was meant for me, expected to either be hit or be able to see the impact of the bullet in one of the stone benches or in one of the house walls. But then I realized that the echo had come from further away and had been thrown back and forth between the walls of the house several times before it reached my ears.
I already saw Gustav in front of me, deadly hit, falling into the dirty snow, but then more shots sounded and as long as they were shooting, he was probably still alive, wasn't he?
Within that one second, when I had heard the shots and thought of Gustav, I had circled the fountain and was almost in the driveway of the opposite house, which lay tunnel-like in front of me. Then my leg broke off under me. Whether it was because, despite the exercises I had done in my hospital room, it was still not fully restored, or whether I had simply slipped on the melting snow, I don't know. In any case I landed on my back, the back of my head hit the ground hard and I bit my tongue.
Shots fired again.
Far away.
Far away.
Close.
Far.
Close.
Close.
A bullet had to have hit the ground close to me, because some drops of snow and water flew into my face from above.
I was rolling around, just rolling away, trying to see something. Masked shadows. They were standing to the right and left of the back door of the house. Between us was the silly ornamental fountain. One of the figures was cut into puzzle pieces by the metal water gutters for my view, but I could see how the hand with the small revolver in it followed my movements. I could see the hammer tightening and the other masked figure moving sideways to flank me. I rolled further away, across the ground, to bring one of the stone benches between me and them. Another bullet missed me, then I fired three shots across the bench in the approximate direction of the figure trying to get into my back myself. None of them had hit, at least I couldn't hear any screams, but when I lifted my head a little, I could see that the masked man had given up on his attempt and had taken cover behind one of the stone benches. Where was the other one? I turned my head.
The other had miraculously multiplied within the short time. Where I had last seen him, three new masked had joined in. One of them was the woman with the lower leg prosthesis. They spread out their formation, forming a semicircle around the back door. There, in the stairwell, I could see even more blurred movement. Fucking hell. Meanwhile, the barrels of so many guns pointed in my direction that I had no chance to leave my cover and continue my escape without being shot to death instantly. Anybody would see me.
From further away - from even further away than before - the air carried more shots. Gustav and his pursuers moved away. The woman's voice reached my ears again.
"Come out, you son of a bitch, and you'll have a fair trial!"
What was I supposed to do? I was deeply reluctant to just give up, but if I jumped up and ran away, or tried to fire back until they were all dead ... no, I could forget that. No chance. With every breath I took, there were more and more of them who went into position here in this backyard and put their weapons on me.
Negotiating was the only option I had. But first, I should find out as much as I can about these people.
"Is he with you? Is Tommy with you?"
"He's alive, if that's what you mean, asshole, but it doesn't change anything! We found him half dead and almost frozen in the snow."
"Good. I'm glad. Is he here? I want to talk to him!"
"What else is there to talk about? You wanted to kidnap him, you attacked him and when he fought back, you shot him, you filthy pig!"
"No, that's not true. I've made myself guilty to him, that's right, but not that way. Not like that!"
"We can deal with this later, you piece of shit! Come out with your hands up, and you'll at least get a chance to tell your version."
"What if I don't?"
"Then we'll take this as an admission of guilt and take care of you here and now, of you and your friend back there."
"You'll have to get him first, right? Do you really want to risk your lives for the lies of a confused boy? Did he tell you about the degenerates? About the tunnel? About Ivan? About Wanda and Mariam?"
"None of this reminds me of anything, but I'll tell you something. We already have your companion, they're bringing him in right now. And one more thing. Yeah, all of us are willing to risk our lives for a little boy. Children are all we have left. Everything we have left. Nothing else can prevent us from disappearing from the world in twenty or thirty years."
"No, you're bluffing. You don't have him. You couldn't have gotten word from your other people."
"I don't need to know," she interrupted me.
"Did you count the shots? No? Me neither, but it was definitely less than ten. It's a very simple calculation. We had ten men on this side. Even if it was your companion who fired all the shots, and even if each of them hit, there would still be enough of our people left to capture or kill your friend. It's been quite a while from this direction, in case you haven't noticed."
I hadn't noticed. I had to concentrate on my own situation. But I had noticed something else.
Our people she had said. So she was the person to negotiate with at the moment, a kind of spokeswoman, but she didn't consider herself the head of this group, at least not in the manner of an Ivan.
"And what if my friend just hid? When your people have lost him? What if that's the reason they don't shoot anymore?"
"Yes, that could be possible. But that wouldn't change the fact that we've nailed you down and will shoot you like a rabid dog if you don't throw away your weapons and get arrested without further resistance!"
That was an argument, and I would act accordingly, but I needed to know more, I needed to know more before I´d give in.
"You were talking about a trial. How's that gonna work? Who will decide about me? You? You seem a little biased to me, if I'm honest."
"We will all decide. Everyone has a voice and everyone will listen to you. However, if you continue t
o resist and end up hurting or killing one of us - well, then we would really be a little biased, as you can imagine. We..."
She broke off and I could hear smacking footsteps in the snow, then murmuring and the rustling of clothes and the snorting of men making an effort.
Then the woman's voice again.
"I was right. We got him. We have your companion!"
"Gustav?"
"Yes! I'm sorry!"
It was his voice.
***
They had tied us up and then led us back the way I had taken from the bike shop. Followed the path to the bike shop and continued along the tracks. It was at most two or three kilometers that I dragged myself along next to Gustav and surrounded by them. The capture itself had been ... unspectacular. After I had dropped my weapons over the stone backrest onto the seat of the bench behind which I had sought cover, I slowly got up with my hands raised. They hadn't even been particularly rough or brutal when they tied me up. The woman with the prosthesis, whose face I - like everyone else's - had still not seen, had been standing close to me the whole time, pointing her pistol at Gustav's chest. He was a little pale, but apparently unhurt.
"Caught one?"
He just shook his head and the woman lifted her pistol so that the barrel of her gun now pointed exactly at Gustav's forehead.
"And that is the only reason your are still breathing! Now shut the fuck up."
I obeyed the order because I was sure she was right. It was really a stroke of luck we didn't kill any of them.
The longer we walked, the more the adrenaline-soaked confusion in my head retreated and I could think a little better again. Had we killed one of these people, we would undoubtedly have been shot to death shortly afterwards. At least now we had a chance. They had spoken of a trial, whatever they understood by it, of a majority decision. This fact alone gave me some hope, because it meant that they still adhered to the old rules of human coexistence in their own way, or at least tried to do so as best they could.
Circle of Wagons: The Gospel of Madness (Book 4 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 10
