Under Ivans Knout: The Gospel of Madness (Book 2 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series))

by Georg Bruckmann

  The local landowners were stubborn and sticking to their property with all their force. They weren’t willing to share what they had. In the course of these unrests and violent disputes Gustav had sided with the starvelings. When it turned out that their cause - according to Gustav they only wanted what was necessary - was hopeless and the group had been greatly decimated, they sought their salvation in flight. He and a handful of other men and women soon moved here, soon there. Sometimes they were allowed to stay for a while in one or the other community, worked there, bartered, hired out as guards of tiny caravans that connected the settlements in the countryside and the few enclaves in the cities that still existed, or went on looting raids on their own account.

  Then there was a disagreement within the group. It had probably been about some woman and the end of the story had been that Gustav and his fair lady left most of the others dead and went on alone.

  Soon after, the two arrived at Frankfurt, where they had been picked up by one of Ivan’s patrols. The woman, who was obviously very dear to Gustav’s heart, was seriously injured by Ivan’s boys during the arrest and Gustav screamed and raved in the underground cell into which the two had been locked for the time being until the medical equipment he requested was finally brought to him. He succeeded in saving the woman’s life, even though, according to Gustav, she was no longer the same as before. From then on she was absent. Apathetic. And finally, only a few weeks later, she simply died despite all his efforts and care. Just like that. Life-tired in the truest sense of the word.

  Gustav’s perseverance and his abilities as a doctor had previously become known to Ivan, who had already ruled over the main station at that time. And so it came that Ivan, quite like with Wanda and me, used Gustav’s affection for this woman to press him into his service. Gustav was made the camp’s doctor and the woman remained in the cell in the subway tunnel under heavy guard.

  While I wondered how many prisoners Ivan was holding down there and whether the cell in which I had spent some time was probably the same cell which this woman had stopped living in, Wanda continued with her report.

  It had gone well for some time. Gustav patched up Ivan’s infantry, sewed knife-, arrow- and gun wounds, pulled bullets from guts, treated the hurters as best he could and took care of the lady of his heart in the little free time he was granted. When she finally died miserably and Gustav had found her dead on the cell floor one day, he secretly swore revenge, because he blamed the solitary confinement to which Ivan had sentenced the woman for her dwindling will to live. On the surface he played the obedient doctor, who did not know where else to go, but in reality he had another reason to stay here.

  He wanted Ivan dead.

  His mask is surprisingly perfect, I thought after hearing all this. While I admired his calm, friendly manners before, I did so now, with the knowledge of his story, all the more. Like a perfectly camouflaged hunter he waited for his opportunity, stretched out his feelers and lurked. This also explained why he had sought contact with Wanda - contact with us - from the very beginning. The parallel was obvious. He must have identified us as potential allies already the day we arrived.

  Now I wasn’t worried anymore. That man would never rat us out. For him, we were probably the best chance in years. I mean, sure, there must have been plenty of opportunities to get to Ivan with a hidden knife during all the time Gustav lived here, but he obviously thought further. And somehow I also believed that he had developed a certain kind of sense of responsibility, not towards Ivan and his red-banded pseudo-elite for sure, but in any case towards the handicapped and crippled hurters on the subway platforms. Moreover, he was obviously someone who wanted to stay alive. His revenge would never take on suicidal traits. He just wasn’t the type.

  I could live with that.

  Besides all that, I now realized that Wanda’s openness had given us a perfect ally that I would never have found with my eccentricity. And so I stretched out my hand across the table to Wanda.

  “Shall we bury the tomahawk?”

  The answer came promptly. She grabbed my hand, shook it and said:

  “But not too deep. We might need it”

  Meanwhile it was noon. Mariam, who had eavesdropped on Gustav’s story at first, put her nose into the Brothers Lionheart.

  “Do you think Gustav could somehow manage to smuggle one of us in?”, I asked though I knew the answer already.

  “I don’t think so. Too dangerous. I think he’ll question Onehand himself. We should do what he recommended. Stay alive. You need to sleep. Lie down. I’ll take the first watch,” she said, took out the gun from under the pillow and turned her gaze to the tent entrance.

  Wanda

  Wanda had a guilty conscience, although she believed that even if Mariam should get caught on her nocturnal excursions against any expectation, there was hardly any serious danger for the kid. Nevertheless, she felt uncomfortable as she stared at the tarpaulin in front of her. Again she had dreamed at night, dreamt of her time with the degenerates. Just a few weeks ago. The blows, the hunger, the rapes and the constant, so tempting encouragements to play along with the rules of those degenerate pigs. To become like them. The constant fear of death under which she had lived. The collapse of Thomas. First psychologically, then morally, just as Onehand - of whom she knew that his real name was Andrin - and his people had wished for it. She laid her hand over her crotch. She could almost still feel her being torn and pushed, felt the echo of the coarse, dirty and blood-encrusted hands on her skin, which she had held and pinched and scratched and squashed and beaten.

  She had to fight hard not to lose herself, as so often before, in a frozen state of remembered horrors and mental powerlessness. Those damn, horny, vicious grimaces in front of her inner eye. She had to banish them. She had to take action. She would never be powerless again. Never stand idle again out of fear and the falls hope that things simply would pass. She must always remember that.

  Her conscience also plagued her because of the things she asked Gustav, who risked much more for her than Mariam. Gustav was a good man. A healer. He meant well with all of them, even though Wanda accused him of having partly selfish motives for the care he gave them.

  She looked at the gun the doctor had given her. A little bit of fortitude, a little bit of security.

  Not in the long shot. But better than nothing.

  She wondered again why he was helping them. Simply because they had not yet completely adapted to camp life? Because they weren’t assimilated yet? How did she know that expression? Because they were still alien elements, under Ivan’s influence, but not yet completely subjected to him?

  And what about him?

  She had asked him for his name back then, when Thomas have still been alive and she had almost forgotten what the old man had done to her for a few hours in gratitude and exuberance. He just answered:

  “Does it really matter? Just call me something.”

  Had he lost more than others? So much that he couldn’t bear his own name anymore? Everyone who was still alive today had lost infinitely much and when Wanda thought about it now, it seemed ridiculous to her. Couldn’t he just have come up with a name if he didn’t want to give up his real one? In her mind she had already tried to give him a name. She had tried with the brand name printed on his crossbow, then with the one on his knife, but both seemed too silly to her. After all, she had moved on to simply calling him “Shepard”.

  Yes.

  That was a good name for him.

  Shepard

  Two or three hours later, I had woken up and scanned my surroundings with tired eyes, Wanda didn’t seem to have moved even a single millimeter. Still sitting at the table, the gun in her hand and her motionless face pointing towards the entrance of our golden cage. I watched her for a moment longer, then I yawned to make her understand that I was awake.

  “What time is it?’, I asked in the soft whispering tone we had become accustomed to since we were prisoners here.

  “Soo
n will be evening,” she said.

  “Did something happen?”

  She shook her head first, but then added:

  “Yes. A patrol seems to have been fired upon somewhere up north. Two wounded, and no one saw the shooters.”

  “Shit. Then Gustav will have his hands full with work. Do you think he got some information out of Onehand?”

  “To be honest, I can’t imagine Gustav leading an effective interrogation in the hospital tent right now. There are just too many other listeners around.”

  “Yes, yes. How should I know? Maybe he can give him some drug to make him more talkative? He’s a doctor, after all.”

  “Doctor or no doctor, I don’t think he will be able to achieve anytime soon.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll have something by tonight,” I hoped.

  Yeah, maybe he would make it tonight, provided Onehand still would be alive by then.

  “Tonight? Do you really think so?”

  That question sounded a little mocking. I basically doubted that too, but I said nothing. Then I rose.

  “I’ll take a look outside.”

  I pulled back the tent tarp, told the two red-sleeved guards at the entrance with a casual I-go-and-take-a- piss what I intended to do and strolled slowly towards the toilets. Since I was the only one of us three who was allowed to move through the camp without a guard escort, I was the best scout we had.

  As expected in winter, it had darkened early. The interior of the station hall was illuminated by a wild mixture of electric spotlights, torches, small cooking fires and oil lanterns. Some hurter people queued up in orderly rows to get food distributed by Ivan’s boys, with which they then moved back onto the subway platforms to prepare a meager dinner down there, among their peers.

  Work was also done elsewhere. It looked as if Rolf was commanding a squad of redsleeves that reinforced the barricades towards the station square. Just as a patrol of three men announced their return by shouting loudly and then was allowed to enter, he interrupted his work, went over to the men and spoke to them. The conspicuous bustle in the camp worried me a little, but for now I decided to continue my way to the toilets.

  When I returned to the tent after a few minutes, I was also allowed to enjoy an improvised meal prepared by Wanda and Mariam in my absence. While I spooned up the warm stew and wished to have a piece of bread, I told them in a few words what I had noticed. Rolf’s behavior still was a disturbing riddle in our minds and before we finally untied the laces of our boots and stretched ourselves out on the field loungers, Wanda and I tossed a coin to determine who should take the first watch. I got the second shift again, but I couldn’t get any sleep and when Wanda came over and handed me the gun, she looked at me silently for a few seconds. I had the impression that she wanted to say something but finally she went back to her lounger without a word, rolled herself up under the rough blanket and seemed to have fallen asleep quickly.

  That night I several times had the impression that someone was tampering with the tarpaulin of our tent. But every time I pointed the gun at the spot in question and was as quiet as I could be in the twilight of the oil lamp, the sound disappeared a few seconds later. Maybe it was just the icy wind blowing through the station and playing on my tensed nerves.

  The next morning the whole camp seemed to be up early. Wanda and Mariam had me and our tent guards accompany them to the sanitary facilities. While I waited for them outside the toilets, I tried unsuccessfully to start a conversation with the two redsleeves and to sound them out a little, but apart from an occasional, dismissive humming, they said not a single thing of use.

  When we were brought back to our tent a while later, to my surprise Gustav was already sitting at our camping table. In front of him was another small stack of books for Mariam and he leafed through one of the works as if lost in thoughts. He obviously was very tired and slowly looked up as we entered and when he greeted Mariam with a mild but absent smile, I noticed that he was indeed completely exhausted.

  Wanda must have noticed it too, because she wordlessly set out to start the gas cooker, certainly with the intention of bringing the last remnants of the instant coffee apportioned to us to use. When we had the steaming, pitch-black liquid fairly divided and some dented metal cups in front of us, the conversation turned away from the general topics and turned to the topic of Onehand.

  “Well. I got nothing, really nothing at all, out of this guy. He kept silent like a tomb. At least when he wasn’t cursing or threatening me as if it was him who was in a position of power, and not I,” Gustav said, taking a sip of coffee and winced before continuing and describing his attempts to get some information out of Onehand in more detail.

  However, the most important thing had already been said. He had learned nothing and, despite his injuries and his tattered cheek, Onehand was obviously well enough to be able to maintain a considerable defiance. Gustav was visibly contrite about his failure and that’s part of the reason why I threw in:

  “Well, the way you look, you’ve certainly had your hands full, haven’t you? We heard about the patrol ...”

  “Yes, terrible thing,” he kept interrupting me.

  “A mean flesh wound, and I might have to take a leg off tomorrow. And on top of that, I euthanized two of the hurters yesterday. Radiation cancer. Fucking shit.”

  Gustav was done. Completely exhausted, at least for today. But the fact that he suffered so empathically with his patients immediately grew some additional sympathy inside me. He was really a doctor by conviction.

  “Well. Never mind,” he grumbled indistinctly.

  He tried to banish what had just been said from our further conversation with a wiping, coffee-spilling movement of his hand, then he pulled something out of the side pocket of his dirty gown. Something in a knotted plastic bag. He opened it a little awkwardly and put the contents on the table. The first thing I noticed was the dirty, encrusted condition. Then I registered that it was a scarf. Then a thought formed in my head. And then, suddenly, I noticed the disgusting, biting smell, fought against my gag reflex and the thought took flight.

  “This is what I found on this Onehand. He had it in his pocket, but a little of the smell still got out. That’s why I became aware of it.”

  Meanwhile, we all jumped up, held our noses and tried to breathe through our mouths.

  “Man, put that away! I think we all understood what you wanted to show us,” Wanda addressed Gustav. He did as he was told, but the foul smell that emanated from the scarf was to remain in our tent for several more hours.

  “Yes, that smells pretty bad, doesn’t it? But the question is, why would someone carry something disgusting like that? I mean, even your degenerates have olfactory nerves, don’t they?”

  I suppressed the impulse to tell Gustav it wasn’t our degenerates and said instead:

  “I have no idea, either. But if he really wants to keep it, why don’t you stuff it in his filthy mouth and sew it up?”

  “I’d like to...” Gustav smiled tiredly. “... but...”

  He tapped his forefinger on his cheek.

  “Yes, that’s right. That wouldn’t make things any better.”

  There was a second hole in Onehands mouth.

  The following outburst of the cheerfulness prompted one of Ivan’s boys to stick his head out into the tent to see why everyone here was suddenly laughing to tears. The color of the man’s face suddenly changed to green when he noticed the stench. He opened his eyes wide, then his head had disappeared from the tent entrance and muffled choking noises came in from the outside.

  We laughed a little more.

  As we slowly got a grip on ourselves again, Gustav got up and said goodbye with the words:

  “Ivan will probably have you picked up later. I’m gonna feed Stinkhand up a little bit and be there. Ivan doesn’t want the guy dying away under any circumstances.”

  Gustav completed his farewell and waved in the direction of Mariam, who had unsuccessfully tried to escape the stench
by hiding on her lounger under a mountain of blankets and only her feet peeped out. I don’t think the interrogation would be especially funny for Onehand. I didn’t expect it to be squeamish either, but if Ivan wanted the doctor with him... well, it would probably be a very ugly thing.

  A few hours later, the time had come. Rolf entered our tent without announcement, accompanied by four boys, and Wanda’s hand shrugged towards her pillow, under which she had hidden the gun. Fortunately Rolf did not seem to have registered the movement. He turned directly to me and snapped at me.

  “The interrogation is taking place downstairs. Ivan is already here and this Onehand should be ready by now. Come on!”

  We went on side by side. Two boys walked in front of us and two boys walked behind us. The path led us down, past the tracks of the hurters and the smell of this living, chaotic but miserably sick pile of human life was not much better than the one that had spread into our tent a few hours ago. What always surprised me, however, was the coexistence of lamentations, children laughter, the moaning of the sick, but also that of lovers. Next to an old man lying on his back staring at the concrete ceiling with glassy eyes, a small group of adolescents played, many of whom were missing one or more limbs. Behind a screen, smoke rose from a small cooking fire, an one-eyed woman with a burnt face and missing fingers laboriously repaired some piece of clothing. Everything that life held ready for a human being, everything that the wide spectrum of human emotions allowed, happened here on the tracks in the narrowest space. Thoughtfully I turned to Rolf and nodded towards the hustle and bustle.

  “Tell me, Rolf, there must be people there who can do more than just vegetate down here and let healthy people feed them, right?”

  Rolf gave me one of his unfathomable looks. He seemed to be thinking. Either he thought about what he should answer to my question, or whether he wanted to respond to it at all. Then he said: