Circle of Wagons: The Gospel of Madness (Book 4 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series))

by Georg Bruckmann

  She'd wait.

  She'd wait till she could hear the sub-machine guns of the motorcyclists rattling. Then she would stab the degenerate in the back, and she would know no mercy.

  Shepard

  We ran. In Sonja's eyes a murderous lust had appeared, as if this woman's iron self-control was about to collapse. The two soldiers, hunters, or whatever you wanted to call them, her people, radiated almost as much aggression as she did. Again her lower leg prosthesis did not seem to hinder her in the least when she stormed deeper into the pedestrian zone with her rifle at the ready. A part of me wanted to stop, wanted to call for caution, but I got infected. It wasn't long before I noticed the sign, which announced that in a few meters, in less than two seconds, we would reach Apostelsquare - the center of the Viernheim pedestrian zone - including the church. A few square meters of the northern part of the square I could already see by the running and up and down moving backs in front of me.

  "Stop! We don't even know what's there ..."

  But Sonja had already bent around a corner to the left. I reduced my speed, let my sprint fade out and finally stopped. Sonja's people had already disappeared around the corner as well. Goddamn it. What if they walked right into a degenerate camp? Carefully I shoved my head around the corner. The square was empty.

  Empty, apart from further naked corpses, which had been exhibited on the slender, formerly pseudo-modern lanterns like exhibits of an insane artist and the trees that had grown out of their original enclosures. In that one second I noticed that Sonja and her people had also stopped, that a bird of prey, a young falcon I believed, was being driven away by several crows defending their feast, that the gate wings leading into the impressive building below the steeple were open, and that another cry was heard. It was just as terrible as the first one we took as an opportunity to rush into action. And it came out of the church. It was clear to all of us that a confrontation was imminent, but this bizarre picture took the air out of our sails for the time being. The deserted square. The dead. The scream. Sonja's people turned to her, waiting for instructions. Sonja, in turn, turned towards me. I waved her over. I didn't care if they thought I was a coward or not. When they reacted positively to my gesture and we retreated back to the school street, I would be glad that it had gone so smoothly.

  "They're in there!" Sonja whispered and nodded towards the church.

  "Yes. They are. And they're still going along with..."

  I made a vague gesture towards the victims of the degenerates, whose sagging hair and limbs on the lanterns and trees were caressed by the cold wind.

  "We must...", she said.

  "Yes, but not without a plan."

  The third of the gruesome cries that reached our ears that day already sounded much weaker than the first two.

  "We don't have much time!"

  "So what do you suggest, Sonya? Storming in and shooting at anything that moves? The four of us? Look around! Do you really think that this corpse forest was produced by only a handful of..."

  I looked for the right word, but then I took the wrong one.

  "Those ... people? How many dead have we seen so far? Fifty? Sixty? We have no idea how many of those sons of bitches are in the church."

  The first time since I had sat in the car with the man, one of Sonja's companions, the smaller of the two, raised his voice.

  "He's right. What if we run into the middle of a superiority? What if we get killed? Then who's gonna warn the others in the tower? From what's happening here? They're damn close to our territory. If they wanted to, they could be there by tomorrow. If they were up to it, even tonight."

  "They don't even know we exist! Besides, there's Mr. Paul, and ..."

  I interrupted her again.

  "We agreed with him to rush to aid as soon as there was shooting to be heard, remember? That is, if we start them up here, he will come in storming and run straight into their arms."

  "Then what do you want to do? Just let happen what's happening in there right now?"

  Again she nodded towards the church.

  "We can't..."

  A noise.

  No screaming.

  But one that I still knew only too well.

  A bowstring had been released.

  "Attention," I wanted to shout, but the word got stuck in my throat when I saw that the arrow, which inevitably belonged to this sound, just as inevitable and - as it seemed to me - in slow motion drilled into Sonja's head. First a mere scheme, then feathers seemed to float above the back of her head. Then the tip came out just below her left eye.

  It was not a homemade arrow, I perceived in astonishment, and was then amazed that I perceived this detail. Sonja's eyes fluttered, the rest of her dying mimic remained hidden under the shawl she had wrapped around her shaved skull. Then she just fell over.

  Not out loud.

  Not dramatic.

  Almost silent. Only her rifle clattered quietly at the dirty plaster as it slipped from her hands.

  The angle, I kept thinking.

  The angle.

  The angle.

  The angle.

  Finally my eyes reacted to this thought and I tried to trace the trajectory of the arrow back. I discovered the figure on the northeastern edge of the roof of the church. It just put a new arrow on the bowstring. It had been a long shot. Probably sixty meters. A good shot. The smaller of Sonja's people had kneeled down and grabbed her by the shoulders, shook the dead, as if he could undo everything in this way.

  The other just stood there looking at his hands, which had been speckled in a bizarrely gentle way by a few fine drops of red. Linus. He was the only one I could get my hands on fast enough. I grabbed his winter jacket at the height of his upper arm and tore him back. But he hadn't been the target of the next arrow. It hit the upper body of the smaller one. It was just a quiet wheeze that escaped the young man, an involuntary expulsion of air that catapulted saliva and blood particles out of his mouth. Then the kneeling fell over, Sonja's shoulders slipped from his grip and he collapsed over her, as if he wanted to protect the dead from the world with his own body.

  Had to be a modern bow.

  With translation.

  The shooter hadn't screamed yet. He hadn't yet told his cronies that we were there. Not the rifle. Too loud. The crossbow. I pressed the long gun into the hand of the last remaining member of my squad, pushed him back a little and tore the crossbow from my back.

  The weak optics of the scope were just enough to bring the guy closer. The face under my crosshair looked feverish, highly concentrated. Black, shaggy hair, chin-long and strawy. Then the head was gone because the man was moving. Moving to pick up a third arrow and place it on the string.

  The head was too big a risk anyway, even if I would have gladly paid him back with the same coin. The shot had to sit. From the man's left clavicle, I moved the crosshair onto his larynx, then a millimeter up, as he just pulled the tendon of his bow back and moved purposefully. You needed a good stand for that, and until he would have let go, he would no longer move significantly. I corrected a little further upwards, tried to foresee the curved trajectory of the bolt, then I pulled the trigger. At roof height the wind must have been a little stronger than below, because I didn't hit the archer in the middle of the body, as I had intended, but a hand's width further to the left of the solar plexus. But it was enough. The figure let go of the bowstring, the arrow sailed far above us, then he lost his balance, fell backwards and disappeared from our field of vision. Simultaneously with his fall, a new, tortured cry flew out of the open church doors across the square towards us.

  Hopefully, it would make the archers' falling sound inaudible to his pack. By now, at the latest, I could really be sure that these butchers were degenerates, as the barbaric decoration the archer had worn on his body had revealed to me.

  Of course I hadn't been able to see everything exactly, but the vague impression of small bones had remained in me. They may have come from chickens or small rodents, but they
may also have come from human fingers.

  The masked man next to me started stammering.

  "You got him! You really got him!"

  Childlike joy in his eyes, enthusiastic fever, then hot rage.

  "You've led us here! It's your fault that Sonja is dead and Elyas is dead and that..."

  He gasped for air, struggled for breath, had lost the thread, started again somewhere else.

  "The vampires aren't here. You misled us. These are your enemies, not ours. They didn't kill our kids. You..."

  I ripped my gun out of the man's hands before he would get any more stupid thoughts and get louder and rammed the butt into his stomach. The air stayed away from the horror, but his gaze slowly cleared again.

  "Bullshit! You know very well that I couldn't have known that, could I?" I whispered, with as much emphasis as I could afford.

  For a second he looked at me expressionlessly, then he swallowed and nodded.

  "Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. It's just..."

  "Yes, I know."

  I looked back to the Church of the Apostle. Then back in the direction we came from, down School Street.

  "We have to go back. We have to see Mr. Paul. We have to find him and come back with more people!"

  He nodded affirm and then said quietly:

  "No. No, they won't give you more people, not after this arbitrary action has gone this way. That's not our style. Not the way of Mrs. Simon and Mr. Mack. They're... they're just hoping. But they do nothing. They'll use the fact that we stole the car and left without permission as a pretext. Look what happened. You're going the wrong way. We'll just stay here in our safe tower and let the world be the world. Do you understand?"

  "For all I care. People from the polyclinic, then."

  Now he laughed mockingly.

  "The cripples? The Hurters? You want to come up here with them? It's about the antidote, isn't it? What if those vampires aren't here, huh? So far, we haven't found a trace of them."

  The blow with the rifle butt still bothered him and he rubbed his stomach while my gaze glided back and forth between him and the church roof and what I could see from the Apostle's Square.

  Oh, shit.

  He was right.

  Did all this even make sense? Or had I just wasted energy and life in my urge to do something? I needed time to think and started reloading my crossbow to give myself something to do. Sooner or later, in one way or another, they would find that something had happened to their post on the roof. Even if the masked man was right about me and the High People were not willing to take action, were not willing to act - we had to warn them, didn't we?

  And also Petra and her beloved Scarface in the polyclinic ... they all had to at least get a chance to prepare for the degenerates. Even if it could be that in the end they were not on the way to Heidelberg at all.

  "Come on now. We must..."

  Sudden noises let me whirl around.

  "Something's happening!"

  I crept past the bodies of Sonja and the smaller one and ducked to the corner of the last building of Schoolstreet and looked over to the church.

  They came out. To the left, in the middle of the square. And there were many. At first, about a dozen spearmen. Men and women in roughly equal shares. Like the archer on the roof, they had decorated their weapons and clothing with small applications of knuckles tied together. Somehow the spears had strange tips.

  Were those carved shins?

  While the dozen spearmen displayed a vigilant, fighting attitude, those who came out of the church after them seemed much more relaxed. Many of them, at least thirty, held bottles in their hands, and most of them seemed clearly drunk.

  This - this had to be some kind of victory celebration!

  And then we finally found out who had screamed so terribly.

  Four screams - four nails.

  They carried something in the midst of the drunks. It had to be heavy, because there were at least six or eight degenerates who struggled with it.

  A cross.

  When they erected it in the middle of the Apostle's Square, using rope constructions of tied cables and lashing straps, I bit my lips so as not to shout out loud.

  Brownjacket!

  It was Brownjacket whom they had crucified and whose cries we had heard. He was in a terrible mess. Not only the nails in his wrists and ankles were responsible for this, no, he had so many injuries that hardly a square centimeter of healthy skin could be seen. Of course, encrusted blood could also be responsible for this impression, but nevertheless: What I saw here was not much more than a lump of meat trembling with fear and pain.

  Questions, an infinite number of questions.

  Where were the other vampires? Where was the leader? Where was the doctor? Was she alive? What had Brownjacket done to deserve special treatment in the form of a celebrated crucifixion while all the other victims of the degenerates had simply been hung from trees or street lamps?

  Almost forty more degenerates streamed out of the church.

  In the meantime there were so many that I was afraid of losing the overview. But did I even want to see that? See what would happen next? The answer was yes. I ...

  "You idiot!" he hissed next to me.

  "We've got to get out of here. All it takes is one of the devils to turn around and we're as good as dead. Come on!

  Now it was me whose jacket was torn. The hooded one pulled me back. I reluctantly let it happen. One building further back, into a courtyard driveway.

  "Listen. The guy on the cross. I know him. I know him. It's one of the vampires, you hear? We were right, we..."

  "Well, congratulations, you asshole. Are you happy now that you were right? Sonja and Elyas are still dead! Wanker! So that's one of the vampires, huh? Wonderful. Then they'll get their just punishment now. But that doesn't bring the children back to life either. We're done here. There's nothing more to do."

  He almost succeeded in persuading me of something like a guilty conscience, but only almost.

  "Didn't you see all the dead people at the lanterns? The vampires you hunted with your wrath and anger, because of which you got involved with all that, because of which you came with me - compared to these damn bastards, they were still gracious, weren't they? After all, your children were not mutilated alive and hung in the streets. Go ahead, go ahead and find Mr. Paul. Get in your car and get out of here. But if you do, tell them everything! Everything, you hear? And make sure they find out at the polyclinic, too."

  "And you? What are you up to? That's at least a hundred!"

  "I saw it myself. That's why I don't give a shit whether you stay here or not. Basically, it's even better if you go."

  "Have you lost your mind?"

  "Yeah, yeah, that's right. Get out of here! And take your moral indignation with you."

  "Are you sure? I mean..."

  "Get the fuck out of here. And don't let anyone catch you."

  He left.

  I also did, but not back into the Schoolstreet and then away from the pedestrian zone, but further down the overbuilt driveway and thus arrived at a small inner courtyard.

  With my eyes I felt the surrounding buildings around me. If I wanted to pass the hundred or so degenerate people on the square to see if they had any more prisoners inside the church - and if so, if the vampire doctor was among them, if this stupid blonde slut who held the key to Gustav's life was still breathing - then I had to bypass Brownjacket's execution, which they wanted to celebrate so confidently, in a wide circle.

  I would only be able to do that if I were to find my way through the abandoned houses, where I would be protected as best I could from accidental glances. To my shame, I must confess that for more than a brief moment I was playing with the idea of simply firing a few shots into the air so that they would become aware of the hooded Linus, who was just moving along the Schoolstreet, and open the hunt for him.

  Distraction.

  What had the High People done for me? Did I owe these guys any kind of l
oyalty? When I thought it through more carefully, however, I realized that it most likely would not be all of the degs, but only a small part that would jump on him. It wouldn't improve my situation. On the contrary. All of them, including those who remained behind, would then be put on alert and that was the last thing I wanted. Should you be ...

  A slight grinding noise made me drive around and I put the gun in action. Then I let it sink again.

  It was Linus.

  He dragged the bodies of Sonja and his comrade into the driveway. Damn it. Damn it. I completely forgot. If the degenerates had seen them, they would have noticed in one way or another that something was wrong. Since I had moved a bit away, he didn't see me immediately, but when he saw me, he nodded to me before finally leaving the driveway to the right.

  He did that for me.

  Loyalty. Fuck.

  I went back into the driveway and then, as he had done, pulled the two dead bodies deeper into the backyard, behind a smelly dumpster, using considerable force. Something clattered quietly. Sonja's prosthesis had separated from her thigh and was only held in place by the fabric of her trousers.

  She didn't need it anymore.

  I avoided looking at the dead eyes.

  I used a car to climb the roof of a van. I used the van to get to the roof of a garage. From there through a window, which I was fortunate enough to be able to lever open quite easily, to the first floor of a residential building.

  This building was right on Apostle Square, and I was tempted to break into one of the apartments on the other side to see what was happening down there. But I resisted. I had to go much further down, further away from Schoolstreet and further away from the church, so that I could circle the assembly at a safe distance. It was really a stroke of luck that the houses here had been built next to each other that close, without any distance. A stairwell window that could be opened from the inside gave me access to the roof of the neighboring building, which was a few floors lower. I let myself slide on the shingles, sweaty, in fear of making a noise. This fear was unfounded, as I noticed when I balanced along the side of the sloping roof facing away from the square. They had begun to sing. A hundred throats sang a rough perversion of God's love is so wonderful. It was incredible. They even managed something like a canon. Sick. Spooky. From the roof into the adjacent apartment block. An apartment on the third or fourth floor that still had traces of a drinking session that must have taken place ages ago. I bypassed the empty and half-empty bottles and glasses, some of which had fallen over and which were spread over the living room table, the floor and all the other surfaces on which you could put something. I found the boozer in the bedroom. Dead a long time. A bottle in one hand and a large amount of empty medicine boxes and empty blisters on the bedside table. He wasn't the only one who escaped the war this way. I'd seen that many times before.