Brenner: The Gospel of Madness (Book 5 of 6) Read online

  Mariam and Wanda

  Tired, Wanda raised an eyelid. Outside, the morning dawned. She registered a mild tension pain in her back. Not particularly strong, but still present. They had spent the night in the driver’s cabin like the last day and the day before. Armin had pushed his seat back and the steering wheel upwards after pressing some lever that Wanda had not been able to see. Then he had stretched out for a long time, at least as well as he could, and pulled her over to him. He’s been looking for her ever since Eva died. She was all right with that. But he never went further than to pull her on his shoulder when it was time to sleep and put his heavy arm around her. Wanda wondered whether he was actually grieving for Eve, or whether it was some peculiar sense of decency that kept him from wanting more. The way it was, it was definitely okay. He made her his anchor. They had quickly reached a hesitant kind of intimacy that allowed them to understand each other without having to say many words. She had already noticed before, at the very beginning, that he was interested in her, but then he had kept a minimum distance, a distance that was probably due to his role as leader and his relationship with Eve. And his will. Oh yes, he had a strong will, and it had been hard to dissuade him from the path he had chosen for himself and his people. The power plants and the factories - a noble goal to shut them down or bring them under control, albeit one that suggested a kind of megalomania. She told him that once, and he just shrugged his shoulders. “So what?” he asked defiantly. “Who’s gonna do it if we don’t? If you set yourself big goals, you can reach at least a few of the smaller ones that lie on the side of the road. And what we do is right and proper. Our people are building something, and we, the field teams, are making sure it lasts!” She had never let the other threat, the Da-Silva-threat, the Degs, disappear completely from his consciousness. Of course he talked it down, and she had to make sure she didn’t get angry when he did. When he spoke of a few lunatics with clubs and spears, when he called them a ‘small gang of stinking idiots’, she had to pull herself together hard. She just couldn’t yell at him hysterically that he had no idea what these people were doing. That he had no idea how many there were and how far they had already spread. That they were evil, purposefully evil, not like you tell a little child that it’s evil when it’s actually just whining, but really evil, much more conscious, much more repugnant than the slumbering destructive power of the power plants and the chemicals in their rusting tanks. But she had made it. She had remained calm and had worked persistently on him. And not just on him. Also on the others, on those who had come with with them now, after the attack of the crow. Leander was one of them. Then there was Regine and Isahnna. They were a couple. When Wanda had noticed their familiar contact with each other, she had not wondered further. When Leander wasn’t with the motorcycle scouts Breitmann and Karim, he was in Roland´s and Tim’s car. He almost always smelled of alcohol when he came by, but she had never really seen him drunk. Wanda had not yet been able to establish a personal relationship with the others who had come with them, mainly because Armin had held her occupied most of the time. Wanda assumed that they had either come with them because they had also lost friends or relatives in the crow Degs’ attack, or because they were tied in friendship to the others. Armin’s been getting pretty settled ever since he lost Eva. Wanda wondered how she could change that as she tried to stretch her legs and back without waking him or Mariam. Experience has shown that it would take their tin caravan another hour or two to wake up completely. Wanda enjoyed the silence. The monotonous humming of the engines had something unsuitable that Wanda could not name exactly. The world had become quiet, and their driving noises did not belong into it, she found. At least it was quiet when nobody was panicking or screaming in pain. This thought led Wanda through time, straight back into battle. She remembered how alive she had felt in this screaming chaos. Her fears - they had been gone when it started. So completely pushed into the background by the rush that they practically no longer existed. They had been replaced by a red, hot feeling of power, coupled with a clarity of thought that Wanda had rarely experienced that strongly. She could vaguely remember having been in a similar condition shortly before being bled out by the vampires. Just before she and Mariam took out the tank crew. She had killed before, since Shepard had freed her, but down in the tunnels in Frankfurt it had been different. There still had been fear in her, and only rarely anger. All she had done was react. Now something was different inside her, and she liked it. Her nightmares were less frequent. Thomas’ disgusting old horny face and the grimaces of Onehand and his stinking tribe, the memories of pain and powerlessness when they raped her - all this was now a good bit further away from her than before. She now remembered how Mariam had warned her and pointed at the archers and shouted, how she had reacted, how she had seized the opportunity that offered herself to her as unexpectedly as she had ... Mariam! Wanda turned her head so fast that a vortex cracked and a pain impulse twitched in her spine. Mariam had fallen asleep before Wanda. Leaning against the door and buried under her two blankets. The ceiling pile was still there. Mariam wasn’t. As quietly as she could, Wanda detached herself from Armin and left the car. The air outside was cold, but after inhaling the exhalations of three people that had hung heavily in the cab of the car, Wanda was suddenly wide awake. As she hastily tied her boots, she recalled what Armin had told her about the area they were in. They had rolled parallel to the B10 a bit, slowly, almost at walking speed, because they had to avoid wrecks and craters and cracks again and again. She still remembered vividly how it had got on her nerves that they had progressed so slowly. Sometime in the evening, it had almost been time to camp, Armin had discovered a former sports field on the right side. Both the green strips and the fence that had surrounded the sports field had been breached at one point. Armin thought it must have been a tank, and Wanda assumed he was right. A normal vehicle might have broken through the fence, but could not have penetrated the vegetation and bent the smaller trees like matches. Other tracks, however, were no longer visible and there was no tank in sight. Whatever was responsible for the damage - it was gone. Armin had stopped and stared at the sports field for a few seconds, and the motorcycle scouts had called by radio. Just before Stuttgart, they said. Porsche works in ruins, they said. Armin had answered. The scouts should stay away from there. They’d bypass the valley basin and the city center tomorrow. He said it wasn’t good there. Only handicapped. Malignant. Wanda had become sensitive. She had asked if they were degenerates. No, Armin had replied. Different ones. Wanda would have liked to have asked more, but at that moment he stepped on the gas again and drove their vehicle to the sports field. The others followed, and they formed their usual circle of wagons. Her, Leander, and Armin searched the club restaurant. There was no one there. The windows had been smashed and the door had been open. There was another apartment upstairs. Surely the host family had lived here. Here, too, the door had been open. In the bathtub in the bathroom was the body of a young man. Blue jeans, a T-shirt. He looked like he was asleep. The arms crossed over the chest, the head turned to the side and the legs slightly bent... - no. One leg was slightly bent. The other was torn off above the knee. A piece of bone stood out. The deceased could not lie here for very long, according to the degree of decay, and there was relatively little blood to be seen in the tub. Wanda thought it had drained off. Armin then stepped next to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Come. I don’t think we can solve this riddle. Let’s take care of the living.” She could hear in his voice that he was thinking of Eva when he said the last sentence. She agreed with him, and they went outside again, not without closing the door to the apartment behind them. At least he’ll have a little rest, Wanda had thought. There had been a few cars left in the restaurant parking lot, and Armin had given instructions to vacuum their tanks before settling down for the night. How long has Mariam been gone? Wanda had laced her boots now and looked around. She got a little scared when she noticed that Regine was looking in her direction. Of course she d
oes. She had the last watch. She sat on the roof of her transporter in a cross-legged yoga-pose. “She wanted to go pee,” she replied to Wanda’s unspoken question quietly so as not to wake anyone up. “When was that?” Regine shrugged her shoulders. “A few minutes ago. Walked towards the house.” Regine nodded towards the clubhouse. Wanda had a bad feeling. Mariam has been quiet and introverted lately. Wanda couldn’t say exactly when it started or what it was, that bothered the girl. It worried her, but she couldn’t take care of her the way she had done before. But that also wasn’t necessary anymore. They were no longer permanently in danger of their lives. On the contrary. They were surrounded by friends, or what you might call friends these days. By good people. That had to do, didn’t it? Wanda had so much more to worry about. About Armin. To make sure he went to Rome with them. About Da Silva. Mariam seemed to have her problems with the new people, with the changes. Wanda had tried to talk to her and explain everything to her on several occasions. But these attempts had not borne fruit. Either Mariam had blocked, or one of the others had interrupted the moment of togetherness, or something else had demanded her attention. On other occasions, Wanda had almost felt betrayed by the fact that their relationship seemed to have deteriorated and waited for Mariam to come to her on her own. The girl didn’t do that. And now she disappeared out of the car without a word. That had never happened before. Or did it? Wanda had sudden doubts. Maybe Mariam just hadn’t woken her up on previous occasions. Whatever. In any case, it was a good time to try to have a talk again, and at least her things were still there. That calmed Wanda down a bit. The others were still asleep, if Regine was to be ignored, and Wanda would certainly not disturb them in their sleep. If she could find Mariam a little away from the camp, she could be sure that nobody would eavesdrop on them. She would tell Mariam again that her loyalty and love were for her alone, even if it might have seemed different. That she did all this to make the world safer for Mariam and for others like her. And for herself. Yeah. For herself, too. Wanda nodded to Regine and went off. It wasn’t quite dark anymore, but it wasn’t really bright either. Four o’clock. No. Not at all. It’s winter. More like six or half past six. It would be much darker in the abandoned restaurant or in the forest behind it than here on open ground. Why didn’t Wanda see the light from Mariam’s flashlight? She had a lamp with her, in a small pocket on her belt, right next to the gun Wanda had chosen for her. She had told her to carry that belt with her ever since they had escaped the vampires. Shepard didn’t like that. But it didn’t matter. His ideas were simply still based too much on his life before the war. You had to adapt if you didn’t want to do it like the dinosaurs, if you didn’t want the others to take your place. It could not be the evil ones who remained at the end, and ... Wanda suppressed these thoughts. If she could not see any light in the building, it meant either that Mariam was not in it, or that she was in a room at the back. Perhaps Mariam had sought the security of the walls to do her business in peace, but under the circumstances, Wanda thought it more likely that the girl had gone into the woods a bit, which once must have begun behind the house and now almost surrounded it. Wanda didn’t really know whether to call for Mariam or not. You never knew who might be nearby. They hadn’t caught all the Degs after the battle was over. And also otherwise one could never know whether somebody - human or animal - did sneak up on you, lurking for easy prey. She had to think about the body in the tub. Worried, Wanda walked around the restaurant and penetrated the forest. She pulled her own flashlight out of her belt and switched it on. Between the tree trunks slowly disappearing islands of snow shone. Soon they’ll be gone, just like that. Wanda came closer to one of them and let the ray of light glide up and down. There. At the very right, outer margin there was half a footprint. Basically just a little more than the heel. He wasn’t very big. Not that of an adult. It had to be Mariam’s. Wanda looked out for more tracks as she went further into the forest. She moved west, if she guessed it right. She noticed a strange smell. Light, but the forest did not smell as fresh as one could expect from a forest. Twenty meters further she found another footprint, a whole one this time. The next one was further away, almost a hundred meters in the same direction. She had almost panicked when she hadn’t been able to find any more prints immediately. But then she reminded herself to be calm and just walked slowly in the direction the first footprints had shown her. Every few steps Wanda stopped, turned around her own axis and illuminated the surroundings. The bare branches of the trees seemed bizarre and vaguely threatening to her when they were torn from the protective darkness by the ray of light. They don’t like that. Wanda unconsciously loosened her pistol in her holster before continuing. Why did Mariam run that far into the forest? Surely not to just relieve herself. No, it had to be something else. She wouldn’t want to leave, would she? Away from her? No. She didn’t have anybody else, and Mariam wouldn’t try anything like that without proper equipment. She was too intelligent for that. Her blankets and her backpack had been in the car and ... A branch cracked on the right behind Wanda, and in the preceding silence the sound seemed like a shot. In a flash she swirled around, half crouched, her free hand on the handle of her weapon. She held her breath, listened. Slowly she pulled the pistol all the way out of the holster and unlocked it. The flashlight’s beam cut through the darkness, but it showed her nothing and no one. There was nothing more to be heard. No steps and no distant rustling in the undergrowth. But there... wasn’t something glittering? No. Nothing. The strange smell was a little stronger here. Slowly Wanda turned back again in the direction in which she suspected Mariam. She redoubled her efforts to be quiet. She couldn’t allow anything or anyone to sneak up on her from behind. Something is wrong, she kept saying to herself in her mind as she struggled to keep her body under control, so suddenly flooded with adrenaline. Everything in her wanted to run and scream, scream and shout for Mariam, but she was not allowed to do that. Never lose control again. A fraction of a second she saw in front of her inner eye how she ran back and alarmed Armin and the other Motorized ones. Then she banished the picture and went on. She was already too far away. It would take too long. The ray of light danced slowly up and down to the beat of her cautious steps. There. Another footprint. This time the other foot. Wanda stopped in front of it, turned around again, looked behind. Nothing. Nothing. Nobody. A few steps further Mariam’s footprints suddenly piled up. She could still only locate them in the snow spots, but where there was no snow any more, on closer inspection there were hollows in the soft forest floor and their arrangement suggested that Mariam had run. Heat flooded Wanda. Why was Mariam running? Why that suddenly? Involuntarily and contrary to her resolutions, Wanda also accelerated her steps. Something fluttered in front of her. The color didn’t fit into the forest. Not at all. The something was at hip height on a branch. A little shred of cloth. The color matched Mariam’s jacket. She kept hurrying. Ten meters, twenty meters, always following the footsteps. Then something lit up in front of her again that did not belong in the forest. Further away this time and bigger. Was that a wall? Yeah, Wanda was sure it was a wall she was walking up to it. Soon she could see more, and when she almost stood in front of the little house that someone had built in the middle of the forest, she realized that it was more a solid fence than a wall. It was a wooden cottage, hammered together from all that had been found, appreciated her rational part. Her irrational, however, was still in panic as she slowed her pace and palpated the small structure with her eyes. Not very professional. Either hasty, maybe built during wartime. Someone had tried to escape the chaos of the city. But maybe it was a lot older. Perhaps teenagers had set it up as a meeting place to escape parental control. Either way, it was not a professional construction, patchwork rather, but given this fact surprisingly large. Probably more than one room. Mariam’s tracks led right to it. Why?, Wanda asked herself again. She turned off her flashlight so that she could better determine if Mariam was using her own. But nothing. No light. Only the somehow bluish semi-blackness of a begi
nning winter twilight. Slowly Wanda went on, her eyes fixed on the cottage. She was still hoping for the pale LED light from Mariam’s lamp or some other sign of life, one that could give her certainty. The first time since she had followed the child into the forest, Wanda opened her mouth to call Mariam’s name. Wanda only got to the first syllable. Another gunshot-like wooden crack behind her. Then deep, wet and slimy breathing. It was frighteningly close, and when Wanda became aware of this fact, she could no longer suppress an outcry. At first, she saw nothing when she turned back her gun at the ready. A millisecond of confusion, then she corrected the barrel downwards. The dog was huge, and it stank. The strange smell she had noticed all along came from him. Oh, shit! Oh, shit! The critter is half a bear, she thought. She tried to target its broad skull, but it rocked its head back and forth in a way she had never seen on a dog before. She noticed the countless scars that covered his massive body. Thick, knotty muscle strands were visible under the dirty, mange-eaten fur. Some of the scars came from shots, Wanda recognized. Did he learn what a pistol is, or does he just dodge the flashlight beam, she asked herself. Before she had turned to the animal, it had only panted, she suddenly registered. Now the dog growled at her and bared his teeth. The eyes glowed eerily in the lamplight. it ducked down deep. its head was at the level of her knees, but its eyes were always on her. The growl became deeper, the animal stretched. Wanda did not wait any longer and pulled the trigger fast three times in a row. From one second to the next, the animal had lost its threat. It collapsed and was dead even before it had completely gone to the ground. Wanda noticed that only one of her bullets had hit the head, and that only in its mighty snout. The other two had torn holes in the left shoulder and must have penetrated deep into the chest from above. To be on the safe side, she fired another shot right into the beasts forehead. The mongrel must have chased Mariam into that cottage. I can’t imagine the fears Mariam must have endured. Something in Wanda wanted to pull the trigger again until the magazine was empty, but she didn’t. Instead she turned her attention back to the wooden house. There! Finally! There was light. It shimmered through the cracks in the board wall. Wanda could now see that the side of the house from which she had approached had neither windows nor a door. The access to the inside had to be on another side. The light moved, flickered and changed slowly. Through the cracks she saw a shadow moving inside the cottage. And then all the relief she had felt a second ago fell from her again when she realized that this shadow was too big to belong to Mariam. It took too much light away as he walked past a long, vertical rift was too ... high. Wanda suppressed the cold panic that again wanted to take possession of her and grasped her weapon harder. Who’s that? Was the dog with him? How would he react? Did he have Mariam in his power? She turned off her lamp and sneaked towards the cottage. Now she deeply regretted not coming here with a large group. But it was too late for that now. As fast and as quietly as she could, she approached the strange forest hut and finally crept along the wall around the building. When she reached the corner, she carefully looked around it. Opposite the hut there were three dog kennels. Wooden scaffolding, covered with wire. One was open. In two others,, she recognized the carcasses of several animals when she turned her lamp back on for a second. They once must have been as big as the dog she had just shot. Now in many places bones were shimmering through shaggy fur, and the insects of the forest had not left much of the swelling muscles of the animals. They must have starved to death here. Only one of them had managed to escape. And I just shot this last survivor. She quickly switched off her flashlight before the one in the house would notice the extra light-source. It still flickered and shone ghostly out of the hut, turning the surrounding area into a threatening, nightmarish fantasy landscape of barren trees and pointed, malicious-looking branches. Sometimes, when the light hit the wire grids of the kennels, they glittered. Slowly Wanda moved her finger from the handle of the gun towards the trigger before she sneaked on. On this side of the hut there was no door and no window, too. Again she carefully stretched her head around the next corner. Here clearly more light penetrated outside, which had to mean that there had to be some kind of access to the inside. Before Wanda wanted to face the unknown situation, she paused once more to order her thoughts. Whoever was in there must have heard the shots. She had pulled the trigger four times. That was impossible to misinterpret. Even the Motorized ones must have heard it. She wondered if they were startled yet. Or was she now too far away from the camp for the noise to be perceived as an immediate danger or as an alarm signal? And why the hell had Mariam not used her own gun if she had actually been hunted here by the animal? And - it wasn’t easy for Wanda to admit it - if Mariam hadn’t been able to shoot, why wouldn’t the beast have torn the girl to shreds? Maybe the animal had been fed up and just sneaked after Mariam out of curiosity and driven her here in this way? Then why the sudden race? Inside, she heard a whisper she couldn’t understand. A man’s voice saying something. Son of a bitch. Was he the owner of the dog? She continued to listen, but it was no longer spoken. What if he wasn’t the only one in there? Then Wanda had had enough of thinking and weighing possibilities against each other. If you thought too much and doubted too much, you only lost the initiative. She moved around the corner, carefully putting one foot in front of the other. The light that was still coming out of the hut but was no longer moving or flickering enabled her to see what was on the floor in front of her. So she avoided stepping on a broken branch and knocking over an empty bottle. Now there was no more obstacle between her and the door. It had to be open, judging by the light emission. Good, good, good. She listened for a second, but there was still no sound coming out. Time for the push. She put her flashlight back in her belt pouch. She wanted both hands free. One last time she took a deep breath and stormed into the hut. The first thing she saw was Mariam. She was sitting on a chair across from the cabin entrance. Someone had tied her hands together. The girl’s eyes widened when she recognized Wanda. Hectically she began to slide around on the chair and tried to shout something, but through the gag that cut brutally into her mouth, only dull, seemingly meaningless sounds came out of her mouth. Instinctively, Wanda took a quick step toward Mariam. Wanda still registered how the girl panically shook her head, then something hard hit the joint of her trigger hand with brute force. As soon as the pain impulse had reached her brain, a figure emerged from the blind spot next to the door and slid sideways into her by fear narrowed field of vision. The wooden club with which he had knocked the gun out of her hand, he lifted it again, just as Wanda pushed her legs off the ground to ram him with her shoulder, tightly pressing her injured arm against her body. He was faster.