As long as I had traveled through the destroyed country alone, I had managed to avoid most of the dangers and let the things around me run free. I had been aimless. Indifferent. Not necessarily careless, but somehow ... superfluous.
Only since I had met this gang of degenerates and their prisoners had there been something like goals for me again.
Necessities.
Wishes.
The urge to put an end to the atrocities of the degs had driven back the emptiness in me. Not completely, but at least to such an extent that I had developed a kind of drive that somehow helped me to a strange kind of calm contentment that had not felt for a long time. While I was still thinking about all these things, exhaustion came back and ambushed me.
When I came conscious again, it was still dark all around, but something was different. Soon I realized what it was. There was a new smell in the room.
Actually, it smelled like food. Like roasted meat and fresh bread. My mouth watered instantly. After some crawling around I felt the tin plate that someone must have brought into my prison while I slept. I forced myself to eat slowly, which I managed with great effort. When I had eaten everything completely, I scanned the whole floor again. They had also brought me a bucket for my needs and on its floor I actually found a roll of toilet paper.
Very obliging.
It looked as if I was going to be kept in darkness here for a longer time. But for what purpose?
It made me angry that I didn’t know how long I had been down here already, and I took it upon myself not to fall asleep again.
I’d grab the guard and escape the next time they would bring me food, I said to myself. I had no weapons or tools, not even shoes on my feet, but the swelling on my skull had decreased significantly and the pain was only a faint echo compared to my last waking period.
I got up, stretched my body, did some timid push-ups, but when the headache threatened to get worse again, I let it go.
Go slow.
Take it easy.
Why didn’t Ivan just shoot me? He had accused me that “they” had sent me to kill him. Who was he talking about? Some neighboring community? The people from the mall that Stumptooth talked about? I was angry with myself. I should have just voluntarily surrendered the gun that had been the cause of the whole drama when they had scanned me. But instead I had laughed at the inability of the two henchmen and was proud of the little trump card up my sleeve.
Yeah, well.
That backfired.
Since physical training was still canceled, I had little else to do but to continue to get angry about myself, to put my ear to the cold, rusty-gray metal door and to listen.
To my displeasure I couldn’t distinguish concrete sounds. What came to my ear was a kind of jittery background noise that arose from the everyday life of Ivan’s community. Far-flung murmurs, sometimes a laugh, sometimes sounds of pain, sometimes knocking or hammering, which pointed to some kind of repair work and an omnipresent deep chugging, everything from far and fading away irregularly. None of this had struck me in my first waking phase, so I assumed it must have been night when I woke up. And then I’d gone back to sleep.
So the next day must have begun, right? Or the day after that.
My thoughts turned back to Wanda and Mariam. I could only hope that Wanda had found a way to get medication or otherwise help Mariam.
While I was still thinking my helpless thoughts, sounds came through the metal of the door, new sounds and closer this time. Hectic clattering of feet that came to a halt somewhere near my prison. A man and a woman following the voices, but I could not distinguish individual words. Then something heavy bounced against the door, giving off a hollow, dull sound. Somebody moaned. For a moment a faint strip of light penetrated into the darkness of my cell and I could see that I had correctly estimated the approximate size of the door. A little rustling, a few more hoarse whispered words, then slow, weak blows started to shake the metal door. Within two minutes, the frequency and strength of the shocks increased, followed by suppressed wheezing and became louder until the two had finished their hectic, secret act.
Then a short moment of silence, again quiet, incomprehensibly muttered words, the new rustling as they put their clothes back in order - then the steps went away again, but this time in different directions.
While I had witnessed this little intermezzo, images of Wanda had crept into my head time and again, and I had only partially succeeded in banning it. So far she had shown little personal interest in me. I was there, she was there, Mariam was there and otherwise only a hostile outside world, which hardly allowed for anything like romantic feelings. There also was no need to talk about the terrible experiences Wanda had made during her captivity. If Mariam had not survived her fever, Wanda would probably not waste any thought on me, but just assume that I was dead or simply left her and the child behind.
Drop the ballast and move on.
A little while ago, I probably would have done exactly that. I wasn’t sure why I even thought about it. Why did I care what Wanda thought of me? Somehow, however, we were connected by what had happened. At least, that’s what I secretly seemed to hope.
I forced my thoughts to return to the unknown couple. Where did one go, if one wanted to be undisturbed for a few minutes, in a situation like this, in an improvised camp that seemed to be bursting with life and yet was in an indeterminate, permanent state of war with the outside world?
You’d go to a place a little more out of the way. That was a bit remote, but not that remote that one ran the risk of being attacked by something or someone from outside. A place within the area controlled by Ivan’s people, in any case.
They had left my cell in different directions and the fact that they had loved each other here - if it had been an act of love and not a deal for better food or something like that - suggested that my cell was located in some passage way, which probably bent a few meters away from the door and in this way protected from unwanted looks. Furthermore it was very unlikely that during the whole process a guard stood next to my cell door and watched the two of them ... unless the man was the same guard who was now patrolling up and down the corridor ... but no, he’s been gone too long.
Should I try to communicate with them the next time? Would they even come back here?
I wrapped my arms around my upper body. I was cold. Maybe I could get in touch with them and get them to let me out of here. But what could I offer them, with nothing on but my pants and a dirty T-shirt?
The door obviously sat a tiny bit loosely in the frame, as the faint light that the two had caused had shown when one of them, probably with the back, hit it hard at the beginning of the short love play. Was that a possible starting point for an escape?
A brief hand check of the door brought a sobering result. Without tools I could tamper with the door until I turned black. Not a chance.
Time passed miserably slowly. At some point the sounds of life around me gradually faded away and things around me calmed down. Another day lost, another day of uncertainty.
For the last few hours I had been walking around in my cell in circles, one hand loosely against the wall. The contact with the cold concrete seemed to calm me down somehow and my thoughts shot a little less quickly through my head.
I had to stay awake. Stay awake and listen.
When did they bring me food?
I couldn’t tell.
The next time I should not eat all at once, I decided because I had got quiet hungry again in the meantime and slowly but surely I made friends with the idea of using the bucket, which I had delayed as well as I could so far.
I was walking in circles for a while again. Then, groping and with great care, I checked the length of my fingernails. Then those of the toenails. Then I tried to determine the number of joints in my body. Then I tried to pass the time by pulling out beard hairs and tried to count them, too. I wondered how much longer I could stand my imprisonment without going mad. At some point I fell asleep again.
I woke up when the heavy door swung open with a metallic noise and the figure of Stumptooth appeared in the frame in front of the glistening bright light that so suddenly maltreated my eyes and made them tear. He came in sniffing and threw a casual look in the bucket. Behind him in the passage I could see the blurred silhouettes of at least three other men and one woman. So many. Too many.
“Ivan wants to see you, get up!”
He was now closer, only one step away, which forced me to look up to him. I pulled myself up and stretched. Behind Stumptooth two of Ivan’s boys with their red armbands had entered the cell and watched me carefully, their hands on the pistols on their belts. I tried to look as harmless as possible. With a shrug of my shoulders and a nod, I expressed my silent agreement. Stumptooth went ahead, and I could smell his alcohol vapors. Ivan’s boys took me into the middle and a third, a blond, tall guy in his forties, who had been waiting outside the cell, was the tail light.
I was reasonably correct in my assessment of the placement of my prison. When I took a quick look backwards past the blonde, I could see that the passageway led at least fifty meters away from the center of the camp before the lights faded and finally went out completely.
They made me walk me in the opposite direction, and already after a few meters the passage made a sharp bend to the left, before after another fifty meters it hit one of the underground platforms on which Ivan had placed the hurters, his “protees”.
I was led through the crowd and had to be careful not to step my bare feet in any unsavory dirt or stumble over one of the figures who, although it was probably noon judging by the highly frequented cooking places, were still lying here and there in the middle of the former subway platform. Either they actually slept or were unable to move on their own. After just a few days of absolute isolation, this crowd of people represented a serious overload of stimuli for me.
Quiet conversations, murmurs, laughter, whimpering, curses, asthmatic cough - all this merged into a cacophony of dirty life, and the smell of excrement, open wounds, skin diseases and cancer, paired with the scent of boiling stew and other canned food warmed up over small fireplaces, made sure that I was happy when they roughly pushed me up the stairs, high into the, contrasting the claustrophobic confinement down here, almost gigantic-looking station concourse. I sucked the comparatively fresh air deep into my lung and let my eyes wander over the center of Ivan’s camp a second time. Only now did I realize that not only tents had been set up to give space to the individual “departments”, the infirmary and the workshops, but also the premises of the prewar shops, which delimited the station towards the city and whose glass fronts were covered with rubble and wooden parts, were partly used by Ivan’s people and almost everywhere hectic-looking, but nevertheless well organized hustle and bustle could be observed.
I was sure I still hadn’t seen or understood everything that was going on here when we finally arrived at Ivan’s tent.
Two things caught my eye, though. Today Ivan’s redsleeves were much better armed than when I arrived. About one out of three of them carried an assault rifle with a belt over their shoulders. Ivan must have sent people into the tunnels to get the guns from there. After all, I had crossed the tunnel unharmed and so there was little danger for Ivan’s people to be expected. The other thing I noticed was this: The low-frequency hum, which I had noticed several times before, obviously came from two old, red-and-white locomotives of the Deutsche Bahn, which - probably to keep the noise and exhaust pollution within limits - were standing far behind on the tracks, just under the gigantic, perforated dome, which spanned the station concourse. From the locomotives an insane cable construction led to the individual tents. That was how Ivan supplied his camp with electricity. Whether these locomotives had standardized generators built in or whether Ivan’s technicians had put their hands on them, I could not say with my limited technical knowledge. However, I hoped for the people here that there was enough diesel to get them through the approaching winter. Stumptooth abruptly tore me out of my observations when he told me to move on and enter Ivan’s tent.
In the tent it was dim, as usual, and when we entered, only the blond guy who had been behind me the whole time accompanied us, while the two redsleeves who had flanked me seemed to consider their job done and stayed outside, I could not believe my eyes.
Ivan was not sitting in his throne-like chair, but at the table that now stood in the middle of the tent. A true feast was waiting there on this table. Ivan looked at me and smiled a broad smile as our eyes met.
But that’s not what shocked me so much.
Right next to Ivan sat, tensed and with a black eye in her pale face - Wanda.
Tangled thoughts racing through my head. At the outer edge of my mind I noticed that the four men of Ivan’s guard, who had positioned themselves at the back wall of the front area of the tent, tightened up and watched me closely.
I forced myself to stay calm and let my gaze roam through the room deliberately slowly once again. Ivan’s scary face still smiled at me, his massive body signaled absolute self-confidence as he pointed magnanimously at the place opposite him and Wanda. Stumptooth had turned to me and grinned at me gloatingly.
“What a surprise, huh?”, he mumbled.
I didn’t see the blond guy, but I assumed that he was waiting behind me just as attentively and tense for my reaction as the rest of Ivan’s boys. As I slowly moved the few meters from the tent entrance to the seat offered to me, I could see that Wanda had a rope tied around her right wrist, which, meandering loosely, disappeared somewhere under the table.
Her gaze was searching mine, and in her eyes I could read anger, pain and also a little bit of fear.
“Where’s Mariam?”, I asked Wanda and Ivan alike as I sat down. I had digested the first shock and now tried to face the new situation as cool as possible.
“They took her,” Wanda replied with an indeterminate gesture of her free hand.
“Gustav takes care of them,” it sounded from Stumptooth, who was about to sit down, too, but was stopped by a malicious look from Ivan and then retreated to some place in back with his head bowed. You could literally feel his childish disappointment, and I almost smiled.
No feast for you, my friend.
“The child is well.”
Ivan was now paternal and benevolent.
“Gustav is a doctor, and he’ll do anything to make the girl feel better.”
Then he added:
“You see, you owe me, don’t you?”
I was beginning to realize that Ivan wanted something from me. And he was willing to use Wanda and Mariam as leverage to get it. I knew that I was by no means in a position to negotiate. Yet I replied, as unimpressed as I could:
“We’ll see when she’s back on her feet. If she doesn’t get better, Ivan, I’ll do anything to make you pay for stopping me from bringing her the drugs.”
An empty threat, without any chance of coming true. But still.
I of course knew, that the girl probably had a way better chance of survival here in Ivan’s camp, at least if it was true to what Ivan said and that Gustav was actually a real doctor. I could not be sure if the medication and my and Wanda’s good will alone would have been enough to help Mariam.
“Yeah, yeah ... listen,” Ivan began, ignoring my words.
“I’ve been thinking about things for a while, and you might even be a little right when you say I could use some help here. Therefore...”
He tilted down a big, half-filled glass with a clear liquid and shook hardly noticeably. Then he slowly began to walk around the table.
“... I’ve decided to check out your story. And lo and behold ...”
He laughed briefly and laid one of his bear paws on the back of Wanda’s head, who involuntarily ducked away a little and then turned around and sparked at him.
“... my people have found her ...”
He gave her head a slight push aside and then used his paw to refill his glass.
“... and they found your girl. I’m very, very happy you didn’t lie to me. Would have been a real shame for you.”
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I put my index finger under my left eye, and Ivan understood.
“Oh, the black eye ... Yeah, you know, sometimes women just don’t know what’s good for them, and then you just have to convince them.”
His eyes sparkled maliciously as he added with laughter:
“So far, by the way, we’ve only made your girls come along - and nothing else.”
I continued to say nothing, but looked at Wanda, who confirmed the truth of Ivan’s statement with a barely perceptible nod.
After all.
I waited until Ivan continued.
“Well, you know... there are a few things that ... must be done. Things that are important to me and my people...”
Once again his all-encompassing gesture, before again taking a seat opposite me.
“... and that are necessary for everyone here to continue to be fine. As you said yourself - I can’t take care of everything myself, as much as I would like to. And besides this one...”
He pointed his fleshy finger behind me where I suspected the blond guy.
“... as you observed, do my people actually have relatively little initiative of their own, which in fact means that most of them are either too stupid, too broken or too sick to be entrusted with somewhat more difficult tasks ... guard the bridge, don’t let anyone through here or there ... something like that works quite well. But an order like: Take a few people and see if you can get a little diesel out of the gas stations in the area, and if not, steal the stuff somewhere without being traced back here - you can’t do something like that with the guys being unsupervised. And the diesel-thing is just one small example of the more difficult tasks that arise from time to time. Actually, Rolf here...”
The Rats of Frankfurt: The Gospel of Madness (Book 1 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 13
