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

by Georg Bruckmann

  We continued to carefully make our way and when we had reached a distance of about forty meters to our destination, we did stop. Almost at the same time the car’s engines were restarted and the main force of the degenerates and their allies began to advance to the station. They were not racing towards the building like the trucks had done before, but advanced at walking speed in order not to take the cover away from the men and women who were ducking behind them.

  While on the forecourt and from the approximate direction Rolf and his squad had taken, more shots could be heard, a group of Degs on the right - on my - side of the street stepped out of a house entrance. Presumably they had been dispatched as part of the rearguard and should have actually secured in our direction, but fortunately, in this moment they did not. On the contrary, they stormed towards the battlefield and wanted to join with the other attackers. With a quick glance I assured myself that the redsleeves behind me had also seen them. Then I ducked and gave the order to fire.

  A second later, the degenerates lay in bloody snow. The backs shredded, spine and heads shattered by bullets. A straggler carefully pushed his head out of the entrance to the house from which the troop had come. I caught him at the temple and his skull disappeared from my field of vision behind a reddish mist. I continued to watch the road for a few seconds, expecting other opponents to have come aware of us because of the noise caused by our shots. But except that the attackers on the square advanced further and covered the station building with their bullets, nothing moved.

  We went on.

  Should we fall in their back right away?

  Or should we try to take one of the buildings in front of the station and then open fire from a superior position? Gunfire now was ubiquitous and I could no longer tell its origin. Permanent hammering and reverberating shots tortured our ears. We were only a few meters away from the square, so I was relieved of making the decision. Due to some unfortunate coincidence, one of the attackers, advancing behind their armored cars, turned around again and discovered us.

  His mouth opened to a cry that I rather saw than heard, and a handful of his comrades, degenerates and others, also turned around and started shooting. I could hear a man screaming close behind me, then I emptied the magazine of my assault rifle. Two opponents went down, something plucked at the sleeve of my parka and a millisecond later the weapon was torn out of my hand by an invisible force. On the other side of the street, another of my redsleeves went down with a deg-arrow in his head. My glance grazed my empty rifle, which lay uselessly in the snow, and then for a fraction of a second clung to the entrance to my left. In front even more attackers had become aware of us and my redsleeves returned the fire. I pulled out my pistol, shot twice randomly towards the square, then I shouted:

  “In here!”, and stormed ahead into the last house on the left. Before the war, the building once housed an Irish Pub on its ground floor. Fortunately for us, the doors weren’t locked. Rather, it looked as if the building had been looted several times already long before our attackers had settled in. We had to be careful. I was almost certain that most of the besiegers were in front of us on the square and, following the tracks of devastation the trucks have left or crouched behind the armored cars, advanced to the station. But despite all this we would certainly find some snipers on the upper floors.

  When all the remaining redsleeves had finally followed me inside, the building lay under heavy fire and we had blocked the outer door as best we could with parts of destroyed furniture and rubble lying around. I ordered two men to secure the pub’s taproom whose windows led to the station square.

  Only one of them came back.

  “The taproom is empty, but more of them outside have noticed we’re in here. Mirko’s hit!”

  Meaningful the redsleeve tapped with a finger at his head.

  “Okay. We’re going to the roof! We can achieve the most from up there. But until we get to the top, the stairs must be held so that we have our back clear.”

  I assigned four redsleeves to this task.

  “If there’s a decent door upstairs that we can safely lock behind us, I will call you to follow. If not, don’t let anyone through and ... good luck!”

  They nodded. One of them, anxious and eager at the same time, grabbed one of his comrades by the arm and pointed to two solid looking wooden tables in the taproom.

  “Come on, let’s use them as cover.”

  As I led my remaining guys up, the four set up their defenses on the first landing. A good choice. This way they were able to keep an eye on the entrance door, but could not be fired upon from the side through the broken windows of the taproom. As soon as I had turned away to further advance upwards, the first angry blows shook the front door.

  We didn’t meet any resistance on the first floor. The offices there were deserted and seemed, apart from a thick layer of dust and that the windows were shot to a million pieces, like the people who had once earned their living there would walk in to the door and start work at any moment.

  On the next floor things were very similar, only that we saw two dead besiegers lying on the ground, who must have been hit by bullets of our snipers on the roof of the station. They must have died before the trucks had been put to use and had obscured everyone’s view. I took their two rifles and searched the bodies, one of which looked uncannily peaceful, except for the hole in the forehead and the fact that the back of the head was missing. I found a handful of shotgun shells in the pockets. Better than nothing.

  Hastily I took another look out of the windows, down to the square. We didn’t have time. No more time to secure the building and no more time to get on the roof. Shots were fired in the stairwell. Some of them had broken open the entrance door and pushed forward, while the main force of the attackers on the square now formed a semicircle in front of the large stone arch that spanned the main entrance of the station. Ivan and his redsleeves fired from the inside and had already shot down many besiegers, but most of the attackers behind the armored vehicles were well protected from Ivan’s fire.

  The Russian would not be able to hold the damaged barricade for long.

  All that remained of the trucks, which had been deformed by the impact on the outer walls and the fire were bizarre, heavily smoking skeletons. Dense columns of smoke rose towards the loosely falling snow when I gave instructions to spread along the window front and open fire.

  In our first salvos they fell like flies. We barely had to aim, so close stood the enemy superiority behind their armored cars and more than one of our bullets penetrated their initial target and wounded or killed or crippled the enemy behind it as well.

  It took two more volleys before the first of the attackers in front of the station noticed where the sudden barrage came from. I shot him but others had become alert, turned around and returned our fire. Shots were also fired in the stairwell, which didn’t exactly help me not to panic as the number of those who came at us increased steadily.

  As long as there was still shooting down in the building, the redsleeves on the landing were still alive, I told myself. There was nothing better we could do now than simply shoot until we would run out of ammo. While bullets and one or two arrows hit around us, I noticed that Degs and their allies fell even in places that were impossible for us to target. That had to be Rolf and his squad. I was relieved that he had made it there alive. For now.

  Then, the first time since we had left the station I saw the Dogmaster in the turmoil below. His animals raged back and forth between the attackers and increased the mayhem that prevailed on the station square. However, they did not attack anyone. Rather, they seemed confused. The shots and the smell of blood made them wild, but at the same time they still hadn’t found any suitable prey. Our besiegers were certainly all equipped with the stinking rags, the smell of which forbade the animals to attack the carriers and they could not yet penetrate into the station. The barrier, only held by Ivan and his boys, and the smoking truck next to it blocked access.

  The
Dogmaster shouted orders, pointed at the station, at us and in the direction in which I suspected Rolf and his guys, but only a few of the besiegers reacted to his screaming. Most of them didn’t even notice. The chaos of the battle seemed to have completely engulfed them. Again and again small groups tried to storm the barrier and fell, struck down by Ivan’s shots. Every now and then individual groups also tried it at the side entrances and shared the fate of their hapless comrades.

  Soon I had shot my last rifle round and a few seconds later I realized that the others hardly fared better. Damn it. We couldn’t hit anything with our handguns at that distance. As I, with my back to the wall below the window from which I had fired, turned the rifle back and forth, as if I could conjure up another bullet in this way, and looking around the room, I wondered what to do.

  In the moment there were no more shots sounding from the stairwell, but no degenerates had stormed up here either. So I assumed that the group of four on the stairs had successfully fought back the attack on the front door. At least for now. It may be possible that on one of the other floors above us, or on the roof, we would find other dead or living enemies whose weapons and ammunition we could acquire. The idea of perhaps being useful a little longer in this way seemed more attractive to me than leading the redsleeves, which looked at me expectantly and had already drawn their handguns - in case they had one of their own - into a certainly deadly assault.

  I was just about to give the appropriate instruction when one of my people, a full-bearded guy, carefully looked out the window. While a bullet struck close to his head, which he hardly noticed, he roared something that I did not understand at first. Only when a murmur of disbelief went through my guys, my brain put the sounds together correctly.

  Ivan makes a sortie. He’s going to attack!

  Those were the words.

  I got up to see something and my breath stopped. This maniac actually did it. And he had not only ordered it, he himself led his people in the first line. He and the first three rows, that stormed after him and trampled over the bodies of the attackers who had fallen in front of the barricade, headed straight for the semicircle of armored vehicles that by know surrounded the main entrance of the station.

  Some of the redsleeves fired guns, others, who must have run out of ammunition, tried to protect themselves from enemy fire by carrying tables, metal plates, sandbags, large wooden beams and the likes in front of them. Many went down screaming, but when the Ivan reached the first vehicle and threw the heavy, by many hits dented and incredibly massive looking metal plate, which he had held in front of him, over the roof of the car and straight into the face of a degenerate and now jumped angrily roaring on the hood of the car, more redsleeves and other, poorly armed camp inhabitants had already moved up and took the place of the killed.

  I was torn. Captivated by the madness of this desperate counterattack, but at the same time knowing that it would never be possible to win the battle in this way. I could already see that over half of the stormers - ridiculous, improvised shields back and forth - were shot down with guns and spears and arrows and even stones as soon as they ventured out of the building.

  Ivan and his spearhead had succeeded in overcoming the wall of vehicles and they entangled the besiegers in brutal hand-to-hand fights, during which they surprisingly repeatedly managed to gain space and to prevent simply being overrun by the pure mass of their opponents.

  And then happened what I was frightened of the whole time. The stream of redsleeves that had poured out of the main entrance onto the battlefield ebbed away and eventually dried up completely.

  That was all.

  One did not have to be a mathematician to realize that Ivan and his desperately struggling followers with their imprudent action had sealed the fate of the camp and along with that, the fate of the people who lived in it. The pure mass of the enemies was too big, and even if they could hardly use their firearms without running the risk of hurting one of their own - it was only a matter of time before Ivan and his boys would find a bloody end.

  I could already see individual groups of besiegers and degenerates, who had been on the fringes of the Dogmaster’s army, that had remained untouched by Ivan’s desperate cutting and stabbing, penetrating into the unprotected interior of the station. Except for the hurters, who hopefully would defend their platforms as best they could, now no one stood between them and Wanda and Mariam.

  I could spot the Dogmaster again. He and his pack tried to penetrate through the turmoil to Ivan, who stood surrounded by the bodies of the slain and flanked by the last of his redsleeves and had fallen into a true bloodlust. The Russian was dipped in red and I could not say whether it was his own or that of his enemies. If it was his, he just didn’t seem to want to die. He relentlessly struck at his opponents and when one fell, he turned to the next like a raging bear. One of his boys collapsed with an axe in his forehead, when I discovered Rolf and the last two of his people who, a few ten meters behind the Dogmaster, also tried to make their way to Ivan.

  I had to go find Wanda and Mariam.

  We had failed.

  I had to find them and then take them away.

  As far away as possible.

  With every snowflake that reached the blood-soaked ground below us, their chances of survival decreased. We had to hurry.

  “Do you see that?”, I yelled.

  I pointed outside. Of course they saw it. Like me, they were fascinated and frightened and paralyzed by what was happening at the same time.

  “The Ivan and the camp - they’re gone. I’m relinquishing command. Each of you is free to either become a part of the history of this place by going down there and die with Ivan - or to flee and start a new history elsewhere. Best of luck for everyone of you!”

  With these words I turned around and left the room and there was no one who tried to stop me. They knew I was right.

  The lone redsleeve, the only one who had survived the defense of the entrance door behind his table barricade in the stairwell and thus had secured our backs, looked up in surprise when I took one of the stray guns on the ground, squeezed past him and started running. I quickly turned around again when I had reached the street.

  They followed me.

  All of them.

  Maybe there was something like a little bit of common sense in this madness after all.

  I kept running.

  Foreworld IV

  Toni

  The day before it had been the parable with the splinter in the eye, today it was the burning bush that Mr Feretti ruminated until vomiting. After the first time, Toni no longer listened, but once again tried to make a sketch of the pin as he thought about how to use the knowledge he gained last night.

  Toni was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not notice that Mr Feretti suddenly stood behind him. The man’s arthritic finger landed exactly on the drawing of the symbol Toni had just scribbled on. He expected a rebuke, but when this just didn’t happen he felt hot and then looked up. Mr Feretti continued his stupid monologue for the class and kept an absolute straight face, while he took Toni’s pencil out of his hand and wrote something under the drawing. Only when he had finished and moved on - again without interrupting his Sermon - could Toni read the words.

  Careful, boy.

  Toni read both of the hastily scribbled words several times until a grin spread on his face.

  Toni was on the right track and it was Feretti who needed to be careful. Not only that; in him Toni had found a source that could provide him with the answers he was looking for and that drove him so much. And more. He also had the leverage to submit this source to his will. Well, he didn’t actually have this leverage yet, but soon he would.

  At some point this boring lesson in religion did end, and before Mr Feretti left the classroom, he threw a haunting glance at Toni.

  The last two class hours, history and social studies, flew by, and soon it was time for voluntary afternoon work. Grumpily Antoine muttered that he needed to do somethin
g for his knowledge of biology and trotted away with the words:

  “See you later, Toni”.

  Toni, as always, was somewhat undecided, since he had no deficits in any subject taught here at the boarding school. However, he thought, it could help his plans to develop a sudden interest in art.

  When Toni entered the classroom where the voluntary art classes took place, he was amazed. There were female students here, too. Things kept improving. The tables of boys and girls had been set up opposite and separate from each other and there was not only the art teacher Mr. Ruggiero, but also a female teacher in the room, whom Toni had not yet seen until that moment - but nevertheless Toni felt excitement.

  It quickly dawned on Toni why the otherwise so strict separation of the sexes had been suspended here. There were simply too few students who wanted to voluntarily engage in art during afternoon. Just five boys and nine girls.

  “Well! You are... um... Toni Da Silva, if I am informed correctly, yes?”

  Toni just nodded, and when he had responded to the request of the teacher, who still was surprisingly young, and sat down in an empty seat, he looked closely at all those present.

  Ruggiero’s hair was a little too long, and even if he otherwise fulfilled all the conventions that society in general and the boarding school in particular expected from a teacher, the man seemed like a splash of color in a sea of uniform gray.

  This did not apply to his female colleague. Strictly combed back hair held by inconspicuous clasps and a simple costume in earth tones. Toni did not yet know all the names of the students, who seemed to be interested in the fine arts, and also when they introduced themselves to him one after another, he did not bother to memorize their faces and neither their names. They were the kind that always stood on the fringe during the breaks and were mocked by the others. More or less anyway. Most of them barely managed to raise their heads when they introduced themselves and it was clear that they were not particularly interested in him either. It was different with the girls. At least two looked at him quiet curiously. In one of them he recognized the mouse grey girl who had smoked with Fabrizio in the cellar. For a split second, fragments of memory flashed through Toni’s brain. Memories of Azrael mounting his mother. Then, again for only another fraction of a second, his brain replaced the bodies of the two with those of the mouse grey girl and the redhead.