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

by Georg Bruckmann

  “Look at me! You’re not gonna get me!”

  Before Rolf could stop him, he pulled his revolver and fired indiscriminately at the illuminated windows about seventy meters away from us. When he had to reload, it was spookily quiet for a second.

  Then the fire was returned.

  In the windows of the buildings around twitched muzzle flashes. There were many. There were ricochets buzzing around us. Rolf reacted in the blink of an eye, kicked his lord and leader in the hollow of the knee in order to save his life and he succeeded. The huge russian went down and remained lying on his back, laughing like a lunatic.

  “That’s what I said! You’re not gonna get me!”

  One of the redsleeves that had accompanied us was not so lucky. His chest was literally sifted, which made Ivan laugh even more. Rolf looked at me. As if on command, we each grabbed one arm and pulled the Lord of the Rats out of the field of fire over both dead attackers and redsleeves alike.

  When we had dragged Ivan, who fortunately didn’t fight back but instead was still laughing like the madman that he was, almost to the stairs of the gallery, we sat down on the floor for a moment and let a group of redsleeves storm past us, who wanted to see why there was shooting again.

  And then something made me pause in my observations.

  There it was again.

  The stench.

  Not the blood.

  Not the ruptured intestines and in agony emptied bowels all around.

  Onehand’s disgusting scarf.

  That was it.

  I looked around, and then I saw it.

  That’s why none of the animals had attacked me. Each of the dead attackers had a similarly smelly rag hanging out of their pockets. Yeah, that’s the way it had to be. The dogs had to recognize this smell as friendly, or at least as somehow belonging to them. Gustav had contaminated our tent with it and there had to be enough of the smell sticking to me or my clothes so that it still worked. That’s probably why Gustav was spared from the pack, too. He probably still carried the cloth in his plastic bag. Wanda and Mariam had also been safe from the animals in this way all the time.

  When I noticed that Rolf, who had also gotten up and overlooked the devastated battlefield below us, turned to me, I explained my theory in brief. Ivan also seemed to have listened, for his insane laughter was slowly fading. While I sorted my thoughts and Ivan got off the ground, Rolf took the command. He understood. As loud as he could, he roared into the station:

  “Everybody here! Everybody to me!”

  Ivan, who had understood that he was slowly but surely bound to lose his command, joined in the shouting. Soon all the redsleeves that could still stand on their feet had gathered at the foot of the stairs and a steady stream of redsleeves, civilians and even hurters also poured out of the corridors leading down to the underground platforms. My heart leapt when I discovered Mariam in the far back of the crowd, pushing a little fearfully towards Wanda. Astonishment soon spread in my head when I noticed that the two wore clothes I had never seen on them. The amazement gave way to real surprise when I saw that Wanda was armed. And carried a backpack on her shoulders. So far, none of Ivan’s boys seemed to take offense.

  All right. Nevertheless...

  Sure, after the guards outside our tent, like everyone else, had followed the calls of their leaders, the way had been free for the two of them. Damn, as much as I could empathize with Wanda, that she finally wanted to act, finally wanted to do something, the thought that she led Mariam through this horrible battlefield hurt me very much.

  And what was that backpack for?

  Was she trying to escape?

  Now?

  Against our agreement?

  In the middle of winter and while we were under siege?

  Without me?

  Just as I wanted to go down to them, Ivan with a false, paternal smile put his hand on my shoulder. Every murmur, every anxious whisper and every quiet conversation in the crowd was silenced as he lifted his other arm up into the air.

  His speech was pathetic and over quickly.

  Yes, we were attacked, but the attackers had been driven back for now. Now was the time to show what we were made of. We’d have to stick together. Every woman, every man and every child, whether red-sleeved, civilian or hurter, simply everyone was obliged to make their contribution, then we would prevail.

  In this manner, Ivan went on for a little while and then, at the end, he said:

  “The practical concerns of this matter will be dealt with...” He tore up mine and Rolf’s arm with a grand gesture at the same time.

  “... by these two here!”

  The crowd among us showed no emotion, which I found very eerie. No cheering, no grumbling. Neither questions roared wildly into the hall, nor angry accusations for all the death around.

  Was that the shock?

  Now Ivan took two steps back and stood behind me and Rolf with his arms crossed behind his back. Rolf noticed that I was completely surprised and again took initiative. While the instructions were given and a chain of command was established, guards were assigned and reports on the situation in the tunnels were given, I lifted my eyes and looked through the large station concourse with the partially bombed dome roof and over the platforms into the night.

  The dogs had come from there. The dogs and the man who commanded them. Then yesterday night’s and today’s efforts came over me as heavy as lead and so I concentrated only on standing upright as long as all eyes were still on Rolf and me.

  This wasn’t over.

  ***

  At some point Rolf had finished delegating and in the meantime the station hall burst with activity. Weapons and ammunition were brought in, further barricades were erected or reinforced with all possible and impossible things, snipers and scouts were dispatched and dead bodies were taken aside, whereby the bodies of the attackers and the defenders were piled up separately due to my tiredly mumbled instruction. Well, actually this was at Rolf’s command, who had repeated my words louder and more clearly.

  Ivan had disappeared back into his tent after indiscriminately reinforcing his personal bodyguard with some confused redsleeves. Gustav had acted very similarly.

  He had grabbed anyone who hadn’t received instructions from Rolf and started to organize care for the injured in and around the hospital tent. Still standing next to Rolf in the gallery, I watched redsleeves walking around in groups of two with grim faces and administering quick blows of mercy to those who were so badly injured that they had no chance of survival, plundering everything useful - weapons and ammunition for the most parts, but also food rations, liquor bottles and other equipment - from their dead friends and stashing all this stuff in a central place in the hall.

  It was a bizarre, frightening spectacle when one of them held a moribund man’s hand and spoke to him calmly and soothingly, while the other, like an angel of death, raised his axe behind the luckless. I had witnessed such procedures from time to time since the war had plunged our world into madness - but this seemed indescribable due to the multitude of dying people who had to be released from their suffering. Each one of the involuntary angels of death had to be highly credited that they tried as best as they could not let the affected people feel anything and most of them succeeded quite well. Things just turned black, with a snap of a finger, and then it was over. From time to time, however, an injured person seemed to feel what was about to happen and then tried to defend himself, clung to even the weakest spark of life and fought with the last remnants of his strength to free himself from the grip of the sad angels.

  The horror of these scenes was reflected in the faces of the merciful men and women and quite a few of them just sank down on the bloody floor on the spot when their work was done, hiding their eyes with their hands and rocking, whimpering quietly, with their upper bodies to and fro.

  Leaving Rolf behind me, although I have had a lot to talk to him about, I slowly moved towards Wanda and Mariam like a sleepwalker, moving through the ang
els of death, the workers and through all the remaining chaos. Wanda had taken off her backpack. Mariam was sitting on it, while Wanda was kneeling next to her, talking to her in a calming way.

  I kept an eye on them, ignoring all the misery around, as I was moving towards them. They were dressed in thick clothes that were somehow ... wrong. At first I didn’t think much of it, but soon I saw that the wrinkles didn’t fall as they would have been expected to with other garments.

  When I got closer to them and they also noticed and looked at me, I realized the reason for the strange appearance. The clothes had been reinforced. The already coarse, dark fabric of the trousers Wanda was wearing was covered with thick leather patches and a multitude of small pockets, sewn on and fastened in an adventurous but solid looking way. Large washers, struts, flat wrenches and centimetre-thick tubes were inserted in those sewn-on mini pockets and loops of leather and double-reinforced fabric, fixed with wires and cords and all that was arranged so cleverly that the knees remained mobile. I let my gaze wander over them from top to bottom. They wore vests under their thick but open winter jackets, which had been worked in a similar way.

  I involuntarily wondered how much this improvised protective clothing might have weighed and immediately after that it came to me that Mariam and Wanda must have worked on it all the time when I had been out on patrol. Later, when we had time to talk to each other in more detail, Wanda would confirm my assumption.

  At night, whenever I fell asleep away or completely exhausted on my bed, Mariam had carefully crawled out from under the tarpaulin, had crept around the guards and had gone looking for tools and other usable material. After the first of these adventurous excursions, she made friends with Tommy, a hurter boy who, together with his father, lived in a place of a few square meters on a subway platform, and who was of her own age. It turned out that the boy was extremely resourceful in organizing food and other useful things and was happy to help the new, seemingly mysterious girl. This way Wanda soon had everything she needed to occupy herself and to make the tenacious boredom of her imprisonment more bearable. I took a little more time to take another look at the two of them. The protective clothing made their bodies appear more massive, this way at least visually compensating for the hardships they had endured.

  When I reached them, I tried to bring about a little smile but in their faces I could read that it had probably not quite worked out. For a second we stood in front of each other, in the middle of all this chaos, and there was occasional gunfire sounding from the gallery.

  The redsleeves held our attackers at bay in the manner of snipers. But it wasn’t really a firefight. Rather, the bullets seemed tell our besiegers: You’d better not don’t get too close, hear me?

  Finally, before I could say anything, Wanda instructed Mariam to stand up with a small movement of her hand. Mariam obeyed immediately and then began to tinker with the fasteners of the backpack. When the container was finally opened, Wanda, still in silence, reached in and pulled out another reinforced vest, which she held out to me.

  “Here. This is for you.”

  I received the heavy garment and looked at it more closely. It was not bulletproof for sure, but it certainly increased the chances of survival. The vest was similar to the clothes Wanda and Mariam wore. Two iron pipes protected the spine, others protected the shoulders and on the rest of the surface a wild collection of parts had been attached. The vest would probably protect pretty well against blows and as far as arrows and bullets were concerned - well, at least there was the vague possibility that a bullet bounced off one of the attached metal parts. I strongly doubted that this assumption would remain valid for hunting- and assault rifles, but with small-caliber pistol shots and ricochets, one might perhaps be lucky.

  “The pants we made for you aren’t finished yet - but we have this.”

  As I put my parka down to slip into the vest, I looked at the two almost identical objects she held presented to me. Two Oreily brand shin guards. I almost had to laugh out loud when I read the label print. These objects had also been reinforced by the two and a survival knife with sheath was attached to one of them. I had no idea how they got their hands on it.

  “Yes. Thanks,” I mumbled, because I didn’t know what else to say. There was a lot more to that words than politeness. At that moment he realized that Wanda and Mariam had by no means intended to leave Ivan’s camp without me. They had neither lost faith in- nor their patience with me. They had simply done the best they could in their situation.

  “Thank you,” I said again, kissed Mariam on the cheek and slowly nodded to Wanda.

  Then I told them what had happened while they were both still trapped in the tent. When I was done, I closely looked at them again.

  “Do something with your hair if you want to be out here. At the moment nobody pays attention to you, but when Ivan crawls back out of his tent and discovers you, I don’t know what will happen. He’s a ticking time bomb right now, and I don’t want you...”

  I stopped.

  I would have liked to order them to find a hiding place somewhere. But where was it safe? Back to the tent? Into the golden cage? We had just been attacked from all sides. Well planned and carefully orchestrated. After what I had picked up with half an ear, the fighting in the tunnels had been even fiercer and even more cruel than up here. And as for the guards on the surface that had protected the ground level platforms by which the dogs had invaded the hall - I didn’t think any of them had survived the attack. No, the tent had definetly lost its protective function. Now it was as dangerous in there as anywhere else. Apart from that, I could not force them into anything, especially since I understood what a disgusting feeling powerlessness could cause within the soul of a man.

  The vest weighed heavily on my shoulders and I once again realized that I was completely exhausted. The weight of the shin guards, which I tested by taking a few steps back and forth, added to it. Well, what the hell. It just had to work somehow.

  To my great relief, after a short time Wanda made the suggestion to accommodate Mariam to Tommy’s place. The platform on which he lived was approximately in the middle of the subway station complex and therefore about equally far away from all possible fronts. Mariam agreed, because she worried about her new friend anyway. She had last seen him a few hours before the attack and wanted to know how he was doing. I agreed, and Wanda said she wanted to stay with the two kids. Maybe she could organize some extra defense down there. It would also put her out of Ivan’s sight, so I liked the idea a lot.

  At the moment, the Russian was probably as dangerous to us as our besiegers, and sooner or later he would certainly start raging through the camp and shout his orders. He’d better not see them.

  For the time being, this seemed the most acceptable solution for all of us. The two had meanwhile wrapped some rags around their heads and this way hidden their hair. Now they looked a bit like bizarre desert nomads and their almost partner look, together with the difference in size, made me smile. As I watched them make their way through the still startled, shocked camp, I reassured myself once again that this really was the best way. Wanda was carrying a heavy iron pipe in her hand and I had seen a small gun on her hip. Mariam only had a knife on her belt, but it didn’t matter. If necessary, Wanda would fight for her like a lioness. I knew she would.

  I was looking for Rolf, but I didn’t find him right away. When I asked for him, a redsleeve, one of the angels of death, which looked frighteningly young from close by and in whose face the things he had experienced still were clearly visible, showed me the way, by faintly nodding towards the gallery. So Rolf was upstairs again.

  Works were still going on everywhere around me. I meandered through the chaos and tried not to get in the way of any of the busy bees. Arrived at the gallery and at the room from which we had recently pulled out Ivan, laughing like crazy, I found Rolf.

  He had just instructed a redsleeve with a hunting rifle in his hands to keep an eye on a certain window in one of t
he buildings on the other side of the station square, and the man nodded eagerly. I called Rolf from behind and he turned to me. Even his stony face showed sleep deprivation and stress now, but he was still clear and fully focused.

  “Yeah? What do you want?”

  I told him again about my observations regarding the dogs and the pieces of cloth. For a while he just looked at me, then he made a gesture that was supposed to say: do you really think it’s gonna do any good? And then he gave me the green light to grab a couple of guys and make my plan come true. As I left and turned my back on the shot window front, now reinforced by manned barriers, I saw out of the corner of my eye how Rolf shook some pill from a small dispenser into his hand and swallowed it dry.

  Painkillers?

  Caffeine?

  I was tempted to talk to him about it, because a little chemical energy would have done me good too, but I then decided to let it go and got to work. I instructed a few redsleeves to come with me. They trotted hesitantly after me, directly towards the pile of corpses to which the dead attackers, had been piled up.

  Rolf had been as pragmatic as always when he had given instructions to pile up the dead on the wall that separated the hall from the square in front of the station, thus giving them a purpose as a barrier and bullet trap. I knew one of the guys who followed me from my patrol missions. His name was Andreas, if I remember correctly. Big, a little spongy, still the last remnants of his baby fat in the pink face. Now that I had given my instructions, he was as pale as everyone else. There was some grumbling and nagging, but when I made it clear to them why it was better to do what I asked them to, they submitted.

  Body after body got ransacked by us and not only my new subordinates spat their stomach contents into the hall. Also I had to vomit several times, that intense was the smell. I hoped very much that I was right and that our stinky loot would be worth the effort as I looked down on the disgusting pile of rags that was the result of our morbid doing.