Something that each of his disciples who wanted to find his way back to paradise also had to go through. The first and second stages dealt with sexual brutality, described forced and voluntary acts with men, women and animals. Levels three and four described rites about killing living beings. They slowly worked their way up to bigger and bigger animals. Began with mice, rats, rabbits, went on to cats and dogs, until one finally arrived at adult humans and at the very end at infants.
All this under the pretext that only in this way could recognize one’s own nature and return to one’s original state - the state desired by God for all mankind. Levels five and six were aimed at destroying instincts of self- preservation, health consciousness and vanity.
Da Silva simply responded to nature’s call where he heard it, was suffering from lice and fleas and other vermin, describing every developing eczema, every pustule and every millimeter of scratched skin as a gift from God himself. According to Da Silva, the first six stages of cleaning had to be repeated constantly until they really were mastered. Repeated until all acquired and socially handed down inhibitions and behavior patterns had been discarded. According to Da Silva, one was only then a true child of God when one no longer knew any sense of injustice, drive control and conscience. When one has been completely dehumanized. An animal. And an animal could feel neither remorse nor guilt.
Then followed the seventh and final stage. The completion of dehumanization. That’s what I call it.
Da Silva calls it ‘sealing the metamorphosis.’
In order to say a last goodbye to his humanity, he had gradually pulled off his skin and rubbed salt into his raw flesh. At the climax of the ritual, he finally etched his face off bit by bit and subsequently burned it. At least that’s what he wrote, because if all this was true - which I didn’t assume, since in my experience all self-proclaimed prophets were miserable liars and cowards - then it was hard to believe that he could still put anything on paper, no matter how confused.
I needed some time to let his poisonous, mad words sink in a little.
It was obvious to blame all human aspirations, technological progress and the various ideologies for the great bang, the war and the end of our civilization. At first glance, the thought was obvious. If all of humanity had remained hunting and gathering, it would never have developed such a gigantic destructive potential; indeed, many of the fundamental problems that led to the last war would never have existed. Overpopulation, large poisoned and uninhabitable areas, industrially exploited to the point of complete desertion, hazardous waste dumps that made people sick, large-scale border conflicts, religious fanaticism, poverty-born uprisings - all these grievances that were halfheartedly looked at and listened to when there still were news broadcasts, but constantly ignored - there simply would not have been enough people in the world to cause all these things. There wouldn’t even be words for it.
On the other hand, it was not technology, art or science that led to the last escalation, but greed, fear, envy, ideological stubbornness and religious delusion. Imagining, all this, how the war and the devastation must have affected the already very religious, or superstitious if you like so, survivors of the bombed-out Rome and Vatican City, it was somehow no longer that incredible, that in their trauma they longed for an explanation for all this and this perverse muddle-head Da Silva found his followers, who, in turn perhaps also clerics, fanatical, confused, but eloquent and educated, spoiled other weak spirits.
A twisted religious mass hysteria.
I let myself get carried away in the flow of my speculations, beholding inside my mind how an ever-growing, blood-red and cancerous circle spread from Vatican City across the ruined Europe.
What followed in the malicious gospel then was a long list of rules and laws that the members of the sect had to obey to. They were divided into three categories, which determined the severity of the penalties for violations. I do not remember everyone, but on the whole it was about the ban on the use of civilization goods and technical objects, which was repeatedly and extremely inconsistently loosened up, and it quickly became clear to me that the degenerates should remain reasonably effective and capable of taking action during their hunting expeditions - despite all the bans.
The hierarchy I had noticed in the degenerate group was also anchored in these laws. Leader of such a group was automatically the longest-serving man. However, he could be challenged and killed by the next eldest at any time. Women were excluded from the hierarchy and could not advance any further.
What surprised me was that women in general were not simply regarded as the cause of Da Silva’s original sin and therefore as absolutely inferior lifeforms. That would have fitted in the overall picture, I thought. But he probably knew how much he needed every breathing person who was ready to follow his confused gospel if he really wanted to free the world from the remnants of civilization.
The sectarians were commanded to destroy all knowledge of the old world where they encountered it. On the road to innocence and to paradise, where the miserable remnants of humanity would reach in ten times ten years, it was necessary to step by step erase civilizational achievements from the map and from the collective consciousness - for only in this way could the progression from depraved, arrogant sinners to true children of God take place successfully for all of us.
Then rules and laws, regarding details of the missionary mission, that had led the group I had come across as far as Frankfurt followed. Every full moon there was an initiation fest for new candidates who should or had to walk the long way to true innocence, as Da Silva called his system.
After the great initiation ritual, which of course only Da Silva himself could perform and which could only take place in Vatican City, the candidates were sent out in groups of five.
For a year they were to roam the world, let their desires run free and return to Vatican City with twenty-five new cult members and deliver their prisoners. Those who had completed this cycle three times were either allowed to stay in Vatican City or could find another place to settle and establish another sectarian center.
The task of these branches, as I called them for myself, apart from recruiting new members by persuasion or torture and brutal brainwashing, was to burn and destroy all still existing cities and settlements that did not want to bow within a radius of at least seven days on foot.
This was especially aimed towards all of the many new communities of survivors who had emerged from the chaos of the great war, but the command for destruction also included abandoned libraries, schools, hospitals and everything that reminded of the time of hubris.
The book was dated 2017. Were there new centers of degenerates already? Were they already finishing their destructive work? When did it all start?
My head was now full of confused propaganda, my own counterarguments formulated unintentionally in my thoughts, an infinite number of religious phrases and metaphors that Da Silva used to lend weight and credibility to his words and thus in a somehow eerie persuasiveness. Horrific visions of the effects that the mad cardinal and his sect would have on the miserable remnants of civilization waved around in my mind’s eye.
I just skimmed through the rest of the book and decided to read it another time and more carefully tomorrow. He described, I grasped this during cross-reading, the methods that the disciples had to use to break the will of their prisoners, gave instructions on torture methods and systematic psycho terror - everything that Wanda, Thomas and Mariam had endured.
Then followed some sides with promises. They basically said that those who would die in the course of Da Silva’s purification phase in ten times ten years when the great goal would have been achieved would rise again and receive their holy blessings.
For the Lord tests the soul, and he who is pure of heart and full of innocence shall be witness to his love.
I imagined Da Silva preaching day after day in his decayed chapel to slaves and abducted, shouting his confused message into the world, a burned and scarred fi
gure in red cardinals cloths, enthroned above raw orgies of animalistic lust and darkest violence and again and again secreting his insane slogan in ever new form:
Dehumanization brings innocence.
In fast motion I saw groups of five degenerates spreading out in all directions and returning to their place of origin with their prey. I saw the number of disciples around Da Silva grow until they populated all of Rome, a seething anthill overflowing with malice, like bacteria in the petri dish, nourished by blood and pain and fear. Again I saw them swarming out and forming new tumors on the map of Europe. The Cardinal built himself an army.
I closed the book, had a sip of water.
What should we do?
What could we do?
Travel to the the settlements one by one to warn them? They wouldn’t listen if they didn’t believe it, and even if they did - they were small, self-sufficient groups. To my knowledge, there were hardly any settlements that accommodated more than fifty people. Such a settlement did not have much to oppose Da Silva and his disciples. Maybe ...
Suddenly I was torn from my thoughts when the door burst open and Wanda stepped into the kitchen. I wasn’t quite over the small shock yet, when I saw how worried she looked.
“I think Mariam’s sick,” she said.
While we were rushing to the girl, I remembered how quickly she had fallen asleep. I didn’t think anything of it.
***
When I left the property and Wanda closed the gate behind me, I wondered how best to proceed. If I were moving in the middle of the road, I would be easy for everyone to see. If I stayed on one side of the road, close to the buildings, I’d make an easy target for a surprise attack. Because around every corner and every bush a wild dog could lurk and also the two Degs, who had survived the battle of the dead end, suddenly came back to my mind.
We hadn’t seen a trace of them in two days, and Wanda and I were basically of the opinion that the two had gone for good. Maybe they would try to get back to Rome, or, more likely, join another marauding gang. However, there was also the possibility that the two of them, the man with the shot through hand and the woman with the jaw shattered by my hammer throw, were lying in wait somewhere and were out for revenge.
But all that speculation didn’t help.
We couldn’t do more than keep our eyes open and be on our guard. Me here, on the streets of overgrown Frankfurt and Wanda on her guard post in the house. She and Mariam were halfway safe for now - and as long as they remained quiet. At least, that’s what I thought. Mariam lay feverishly and with chills in my bed and Wanda had to keep an eye on the dead end and take care of the sick girl.
I still reproached myself that I hadn’t discovered the wound in Mariam’s little foot earlier, but that was probably because she hadn’t sustained the injury in battle, but that it must have happened a few days earlier. Basically, it wasn’t a big deal. The girl had stepped into a splinter of wood during her imprisonment, which must have drilled itself into the sole of her foot and because of the merciless marching speed, which the degenerates had demanded and also from fear of their drastic punitive measures the child had said nothing and walked on and on.
Mariam had concealed her injury, perhaps even forgotten it for a few days, and had now been caught up with her failure. I should have wondered as soon as she fell asleep so early last night. I should have noticed her high temperature, but I had been far too absorbed by the dam book to look after Mariam. I was angry with myself and this Da Silva in equal measure.
Now, in the first light of the pale sun, I set out to get antipyretic drugs and antibiotics. Wanda would have left too, referring to my shoulder wound and my bruised ankle, but I had not accepted that. Not because she was a woman, but because Mariam and Wanda had known each other for a long time and the girl had much more trust in Wanda than in me. She could still go for medicine on her own if I didn’t make it back by tonight. We discovered the splinter in the night and cut it out and disinfected the wound. But the inflammation was already too advanced. We feared that if the fever lasted longer, Mariam would not have enough strength to resist it.
Wanda still stood waiting behind the fence. I wanted to say something encouraging, but in the end we both left it with a timid wave.
I turned around, put the ready made crossbow in my left crook and walked up the dead end with my right hand loosely around the handle. When I reached the hill of dead bodies that Wanda and Thomas had piled up at some distance from our fence, I could not help but look at the dead, some of whom were on my account. The decay was not yet very far advanced, but if you looked closely, you could see movement in those, in their agony distorted faces. The insects were at work. Some of the bodies had also been pulled out of the heap by the wild dogs and their innards lay scattered on the pavement. Averting my gaze, I listened inside myself.
No, I hardly felt pity. The sight of the horribly disfigured dead only stirred up my anger at Da Silva, who ultimately was responsible for all of this with his mad sermons and his poisonous words.
Arriving at the entrance to the dead end, I peered down the crossing road to the right and left.
No movement. Not a sound.
I turned left first. Then, after a few meters, I turned right again. As in our dead end, the front gardens, which separated the abandoned houses from each other, were completely overgrown.
About fifty meters in front of me two cars had jammed into each other and I could see that in one of the cars there were still two dead people sitting on the front seats. One could see that they must have died a few years ago, and I didn’t perceive the sight as an alarm signal. Apart from occasional bullet holes in the facades of the houses, the former residential area had obviously been spared major destruction. This changed about a hundred meters further.
The bridge that spanned the fallow, overgrown railway tracks that began on the left in my field of vision and disappeared from it again on the right lay in ruins. The newly grown grove could not be wider than the track bed, I thought. I decided to cross it and continue on my way northwest, although I would have preferred the bridge.
After I had passed the small slope leading to the track bed without further damaging my bruised ankle, I sneaked through the thicket undergrowth, tensed to the extreme. It made me nervous that I couldn’t see what was ahead of me. The dense, dark green simply made it impossible to see anything more than five meters away. Once I was startled when some animal right behind me made the tall grass and the young, about man high trees tremble and rustle. I held the crossbow aimed the direction of the noise and stopped for a few seconds, but the sound moved away from me and relieved I turned again and continued on my way.
Soon thereafter the vegetation cleared and the terrain rose gently. I had made it without any major incidents and crossed the tracks. A rotten street sign at a crossroad told me that if I kept to the left I would move along Hohlbeinstreet. There were two other streets branching off. For a short moment, I let my gaze glide a little helplessly between the three possible paths. Then, to my great relief, I saw the characteristic red pharmacy sign shining out from behind a tree. I approached it, and I could quickly recognize the words “Bonifatius Pharmacy”.
That went like clockwork. Not even two kilometers from our shelter - and I had already found what I had been looking for.
I accelerated my gait and with each step I could see a little more. The glass front of the pharmacy was still intact, although the lower part of the large window was barricaded with wooden boards, beams and some sandbags. The entrance door was a gap wide open, contrasting the improvised fortification.
Looking back, I should have been more careful, but the thought of being able to bring Mariam the necessary medication as soon as possible made me slack. For a short, strange moment I saw my face reflected in the glass of the door and I noticed it smiling. I pressed the door open with my shoulder, and as soon as I had done so, a deep, rumbling growl came from the twilight to my ear. Hectically, I tried to see more detail.
&
nbsp; The stands with the toiletries and vitamin supplements that identified pretty much every pharmacy I had ever entered had fallen over and their contents lay scattered all over the floor.
Then I saw them.
Two large, shaggy dogs, scared from numerous fights, lay on the semicircular sales counter.
They rose slowly and frighteningly self-confident, remained standing tensed and growled in my direction with malicious eyes. They hadn’t gone over to the attack yet and I took my chance and pulled the trigger.
Since I hadn’t taken the time to aim, the shot wasn’t perfect. I hit the left of the two animals in the shoulder. The bolt must have got stuck in the bone because it penetrated only a few centimeters deep. Both dogs made a leap towards me. The injured animal was a little faster. I held the crossbow with my left in front of me, with my right I tried to draw the machete. It all happened very quickly. Even before this information was completely processed by my brain, the injured dog came up on the floor and jumped. But instead of attacking me, it pushed past me, pushing my left leg to the side and then howling out of the pharmacy. I had trouble keeping my balance. The second animal had bitten into the bow-part of my crossbow and tugged wildly on it. That dog didn’t really stand a chance. As he drooled and tore and growled, I finally drew the machete all the way out of its sheath and let it go down on his neck, making sure that the blade found its target without any problems by pulling on the crossbow in the exact right moment.
The dog collapsed with his neck severed and a few seconds later he died without making another sound. I breathed heavily. After I had convinced myself that the crossbow had not been damaged, I cleaned the machete on the dead animal’s fur and put it back into the sheath. While I readied the crossbow again and inserted a new bolt, I was mildly annoyed that the other dog had disappeared with my bolt in his shoulder. Deep inside I knew, however, that I had been more than lucky to have survived this situation, into which my lack of caution had brought me without even a scratch.
The Rats of Frankfurt: The Gospel of Madness (Book 1 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 8
