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

by Georg Bruckmann

  The vibration must have been felt by everyone, probably even down to the subway platforms. Now I could only see the reflection of the fire and it seemed to me as if the room temperature had already now, one second after the impact, clearly risen, and that although this moving incendiary projectile had not hit the wall directly below us, but a some ten meters further to the right against the wall.

  We jumped up almost at the same time, Ivan, Rolf and I. The time of the mirror shards was over.

  “Rolf, we can’t let another one get here!”

  He had heard me, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he turned around as the first enemy shooters fired at us.

  “Everybody up! Don’t let anything come through this cursed alley! Shoot! And shoot well if you value your life!”

  The other burning trucks, that had followed the first through the alley were taken under fire. The front of the vehicles, which, it looked like, was heading straight for the fortified main entrance of the station, broke out after a hit into the right front tyre and disappeared from my field of vision without destroying the barrier at the main entrance. I thought I heard it tip over. But the other three trucks crashed into the station building in different places. The violent, earthquake like vibrations made me dizzy from some primal fear and from below the bursting of large glass panes and the splintering of wood could be heard. Gigantic fireballs lit up the whole place and the rising smoke blew in and made our eyes tear.

  “Damn, if it continues smoking like this, we’ll soon be blind!” cursed Rolf. The redsleeves’ shots were fading. The men and women found no more targets.

  “We have to get out of here, Rolf!”, I shouted.

  Next to me, a young redsleeve woman went down and stared at the bubbling blood coming out of her left thigh. Rolf, who stared outside with reddened eyes and unsuccessfully tried to follow the events on the other side of the square, did not react at first. Then he tore himself away from the terribly fascinating sight of the flaming inferno and turned in my direction.

  “Rolf, we must either get up on the roof, if that helps, or we’ll have to flank them!”

  He stared at me for an eternal second. His face showed no emotion. Then he nodded at me.

  “Ivan!”, he roared through the chaos.

  “We’re going out! As long as the trucks are still burning, we can’t see them, but neither can they see us, and they can’t come in all at once. Withdraw the line of defense back into the main hall. Let them in slowly, one by one - and then kill each and every one of those bastards!”

  Rolf had had to grab the Russian by the shoulder to stop him from firing blindly into the now ubiquitous smoke with a hunting rifle that had belonged to the hit redsleeve woman. For a moment, Ivan’s face looked like that of an unwilling, defiant child, but then he realized that our shooters were useless in their current position and would only waste valuable ammunition if he did not revoke the fire order. You can’t hit, what you can’t see. His accented voice pushed through the all-embracing cacophony all around when he ordered to leave the gallery. Only a handful of redsleeves should stay behind to prevent our attackers from climbing the facade again.

  Rolf and I rushed forward and behind me I could hear the Russian giving further orders. In the station concourse we were looking at nothing but pure anxiety. The massive shocks caused by the trucks crashing into the walls and the flickering reflection of the fires outside did not fail to have an effect on the defenders. Questions were shouted at us. I could see that, contrary to my expectations, the barricade that had been erected to secure the main entrance was partly on fire and had been pushed apart like a lego castle crushed by an angry child.

  “Make room, idiot!”, I yelled into the ear of a squad leader who stood in my way and then told him that Ivan had the command and would organize the defense in the hall, before I pushed him aside and hurried to follow Rolf. Then I saw the blond running towards the escalators and turned around again.

  Yes, Ivan had understood what the Rolf had in mind, I realized with relief. He stood tall on the stairs of the gallery and shouted orders into the station concourse. At least for the moment, he seemed to be on the matter.

  Rolf disappeared downstairs. While I followed him, the thoughts were racing in my head.

  Using cars - this could not have been the idea of the degenerates. They despised the modern technology of the Old World. But apparently they didn’t mind that much, at least not if this technology helped them achieve their goals. The outcome justifies the means, I guess. And what was Rolf planning down in the subway tunnels?

  I would have ordered the snipers to the roof and hoped that the few meters difference in height would have enabled them to overlook the flaming hell on the square and to be able to engage the besiegers again. Rolf, who had completely ignored the redsleeves in the main hall, obviously planned something else. And while I followed him, it slowly dawned on me what it was. He probably wanted to use the tunnels to get into the backs of our opponents, just as he likely had done during his spy mission a short time ago.

  And indeed, when I reached the bottom of the stairs and had catched up, he had stopped and pointed, apparently indiscriminately, to redsleeves that had been assigned to defend the subway platforms of the hurters.

  “You and you ... and you back there with the assault rifle. Come with me!”

  The men and women addressed swallowed. They felt they had to go to battle now. But they obeyed and joined us, while their comrades remained behind in the ominous knowledge that they would not be able to hold the position assigned to them with their reduced numbers, if the enemy should make it to them. The more alert began immediately to recruit replacements from the healthier of the hurters to fill the gaps.

  Rolf repeated this process at every platform and barrier we passed, so that our troop soon consisted of about thirty redsleeves. He also did this when we reached the platform where Wanda and Mariam were hiding. It felt like being stabbed in the back.

  Defenseless.

  If we failed, they would die. And Wanda and Mariam with them. I stared down the track, trying to catch a glimpse of the two, but I could not see them in the crowd of the hurters, observing with a strangely indifferent anxiety what was going on and the foremost whispered backwards, what they saw.

  Finally I was pulled along by the redsleeves Rolf had selected and rejoined our troop. Then we had reached the last barricade, which was supposed to defend the outermost tunnel.

  Here Rolf interrupted his doing for the first time. He ordered to stop and turned to his troop.

  “I owe you an explanation, I know that. You shall get it, but you will not like it. By now, even the dumbest of you should have noticed that we’re under attack. Our attackers are far superior in numbers and they are not stupid. Unfortunately not. We can’t stall them on the square forever. They will come and some of them will surely make it into the hall. The Ivan, the man who has been a strict but just leader, who has provided for you, who has given you food and a place to sleep and some of you even a place to raise a family, will fight back the attackers for as long as he can. But...”

  Rolf was interrupted by murmurs and heckling.

  “... but...”

  He took a break for dramatic purposes, waited.

  “... but he can’t do it forever. If we fail on our mission, the camp will fall. And what those animals out there...”

  He pointed with a big gesture behind him, and it seemed to me as if he was imitating Ivan.

  “... then will do with the survivors, nobody knows. But I’m sure it’s not gonna be very pleasant. Today, absolutely everything we have built with our sweat and with our blood since we found our way out of the turmoils of war is at stake.“

  I stayed at the edge of the group and alternately watched Rolf’s tense figure, erected to full size, and then again the faces of the redsleeves listening to his words. Rolf’s inflated rhetoric seemed to work for most of these people. They listened to his words as if spellbound, but I could also spot some faces on the
fringes of the group who, disgusted by his pathos, spoiled their faces. One, a small pockmarked man who seemed to be rapidly approaching his sixties, even spat out in disgust. Not good.

  Those who grumbled were certainly the smarter ones among those present and had seen through Rolf’s overacting. But still, it was vital that now everyone held together. This group was not allowed to break up. Then all would be lost. Or should I seek my salvation in flight? Find Wanda and Mariam and then get us out of here? Despite the merciless winter cold and hunted by degenerates and perhaps by redsleeves, too? Despite the overwhelming number of enemies around who had certainly set up posts all around Frankfurt station? The answer, that I gave myself was no.

  We had decided to stay here for a good reason and now was a very bad time to doubt this decision. I slowly moved towards the sixty-year-old, while Rolf continued to appeal to the sense of togetherness and loyalty, pulling out all the stops. I reached the man just as he turned around to sneak away. My fist hit him directly into the solar plexus with full force and his forehead landed on my shoulder as he folded over and gasped for breath.

  “This is too important. I won’t let you go, you cowardly piece of shit,” I whispered into his ear.

  “If you leave, others will follow you and I cannot tolerate that. It’s nothing personal, but if you take another step in the wrong direction, I will shoot you.”

  Ignoring two irritated bystanders, a man and a woman, who were so close that I assumed they were a couple, I grasped the old man’s face with both hands and forced him to look at me. Slowly, so that I could be sure that, he would understand every syllable, despite the blow he just had taken I said:

  “If you try to run again, I will kill you. You have a purpose here. And if you only stop a bullet with your head that was meant for a better man than you, that’s reason enough for me not to let you go. Do you understand that?”

  A millisecond primal rage glowed in his gaze, a small hint of resistance. Slowly I let my thumbs move towards his eyes and as I increased the pressure with which I held his head, his resistance faded.

  He nodded.

  I could feel the readiness to fight leaving his body.

  “Look at Rolf and listen.”

  I let him go and pointed to Rolf, who was about to finish his speech. The man obeyed without objection.

  “I’m behind you,”

  I whispered once more in his ear, then I finally let him go. He had understood.

  Rolf concluded his speech with the words:

  “That’s why we’re the ones who have to put their lives on the line here. Not for Ivan, but for all those who were allowed to live a good and safe life here and for all those who want to continue doing so in the future. Believe me, there’s no better place than this. And it is worth us spilling the blood of our enemies, and it is worth us spilling our own blood. We will walk along this tunnel and into the backs of our enemies. And we will be strong in mind and deadly in our deeds. We will not falter. Don’t hesitate to fire. Especially once we get back to the top. And yet another thing: there’s a guy up there. He’s tall, thin and ragged. The guy who commands the dogs. Those dogs that have been giving us so much trouble in the last few weeks. The big black one will also be up there. The one who attacked our patrols and some of you may think he’s an evil spirit. Well, it’s definetly not a ghost. The one who kills this animal and his master will never again have to pick up a weapon, never again do guard duty and never again risk his life to have food. The one who kills the Dogmaster will lead a life of plenty. I promise you that! And now: Follow me!”

  ***

  While we were sneaking along the tunnel, tense and ready to fight, I couldn’t help it. I had to admire Rolf. He had his people under control. He had convinced them. And it did not matter whether he himself believed even a word of what he had just said. He believed that the camp had to survive and would do anything for it. Not only because of the security it offered to him.

  No, that didn’t seem important to him at all, he was far too willing to take risks. He had, like all of us, lost everything in the great war, then found a new meaning to his life and now he stuck firmly to it. The camp was for him what Wanda and Mariam - I now finally understood that - had become for me.

  I pushed the old wannabe-deserter ahead of me and caught a glimpse of Rolf’s undisguised face, illuminated by the flickering light of the oil lamps and torches.

  His mouth was flaccid and open and he was dragging himself rather than forcing ahead, but apart from me none of the redsleeves, which could only see his broad back, seemed to notice that. When he became aware of my gaze, he had his facial expressions under control again within a fraction of a second and tightened himself.

  What do you want?, his eyes asked me.

  “This one goes in front,” I said, pushing the old man to the top of our group.

  I was surprised and a little suspicious. We hadn’t encountered any resistance yet. With an opponent smart enough to blind our snipers and use vehicles like artillery grenades, I would have expected a well-timed, coordinated attack on all fronts - and thus also in the tunnels. But as it seemed, the Dogmaster and his allies concentrated exclusively on the station forecourt. I thought about it for a while and then we had reached the access to the surface. In the Münchner Street we got to the frosty air again. Rolf was the first to carefully stretch his head into the pale daylight and take a quick look at the surroundings before he came a few steps back down again and beckoned me and the others to him.

  “Look out. We are now a few hundred meters behind the besiegers, and...”

  As soon as he said that, a few shots cut through the ghostly calm around us. They came from the station and couldn’t have been meant for us. Nevertheless, most of the redsleeves and also I pulled their heads down and reflex.

  “...he here...”

  Rolf pointed at me so that most of the redsleeves could see it.

  “... will lead one half of you and I will lead the other half. Together we advance the Münchner Street and then I lead my troop up Moselstreet, then turn to the left into Kaiserstreet. We’ll stab them in the back as hard as we can. We will not go undetected for long and we must take advantage of the element of surprise while it lasts. Take down whom you can on the way, and as soon as a serious resistance is formed, hide into the buildings, divide up. You’re forcing them to do the same this way. Take from their dead what you find in weapons and ammunition. You’re gonna need every single bullet, got it?”

  A mute nod went through the crouched redsleeves. No one felt like euphorically agreeing. Then it started. With a movement of his arm Rolf divided our desperate, doomed group in the middle, then pointed to the right half and just said:

  “Follow me.”

  Silent, still crouched and with their weapons ready, they followed him. The other redsleeves looked at me. Expectant, grim and fearful. But still determined. Suddenly the old deserter ran up the stairs. I tore up the assault rifle, but he was already out of my sight. Three miserably long seconds passed. Then the echo of a single shot reached our ears. Shortly afterwards the screaming began and it was the voice of the deserter. I clasped my assault rifle tighter and took the last steps on to the surface. Feverishly my eyes searched the windows of the ruined houses all around, looking for the shooter who had struck down the coward. The old man lay on his back, a few meters from the staircase his hands cramped around his torn stomach, and could not stop screaming. While I heard the footsteps of the redsleeves running behind me, I found the sniper on the third floor of a house, put my aim on him and fired a volley. As if in slow motion, I saw the first bullets crashing into the window frame around him. Only the last bullet of my burst tore the left half of his skull off and exposed his brain. Then he fell backwards and I couldn’t see him anymore. In front of me, Rolf’s squad just turned into Moselstreet. A few more shots were heard.

  Only now, when I could see everything with my very own eyes, I became fully aware of the madness that was inherent in our endeavor. We h
ad to bring a few hundred meters behind us before we could even reach the station forecourt and behind every window, in every single abandoned building on our way there could lurk an enemy. And with every shot we fired, it would become more likely that the main force of our attackers at the station square would become aware of our presence.

  We could only hope that Ivan in the meantime offered them sufficient distraction. But the trucks still burned in the distance and hindered the besiegers and the defenders equally. Only the devil knows how much fire starters and other chemicals our besiegers had packed into the trailers of the huge vehicles.

  We dragged ourselves forward and it was as if some kind of hostile, sticky slime was holding our boots to the ground. With every step I took, I set my iron sights on a new window, always prepared for a shadowy figure to appear behind it and take aim on me. But until we reached the turnoff that Rolf and his half of our ridiculously small counter force had taken, nothing like that happened.

  We crossed the intersection and for a second I took the liberty of looking back at the redsleeves, which, it seemed, I led to certain death. They were all still there. No one had disappeared in the opposite direction and they were all staring down the road, just like I had done a second before, over the barrels of their weapons, taking cover between a car wreck and the rubble of a bombed Chinese snack bar and waiting for further orders. It might have still been about a hundred meters to go before we could stab the Degs and their allies in the back.

  “Stay close to the walls,” I told the men. In front, where the street canyon opened towards the station square, I could see the ant-like mass of our besiegers, who were still waiting behind their barricades of armored cars for their order to attack. We hadn’t been discovered yet.

  Perhaps that’s what has been so frightening - the large number of functional vehicles they had somehow gotten hold of. It had almost felt like a small time travel to see the cars driving in position in front of the station. A false flicker of memory of the hectic normality of a time before the bombs had fallen and everything went to hell.