Lessons

With no motor they'd had to row across the lake, which took them the better part of an hour. The man eased up to the shore, deposited Hans, and told him he'd wait there until the next morning. After that Hans would be on his own. Or dead, most likely. With that Hans got moving, FG42 in hand. As part of his mission Colonel Hoffmann had given Hans a map of Friedrichshagen, pointing him to the Friedrichshagener Grundschule, a red-roofed school in the northwest part of the town. There he'd find this cult.

Hans didn't have much experience with religious groups, now that he had time to think about it. Europe had a long history with religion, not much of it pretty. Jews hadn't been popular even long before the Resource Wars, and Muslims became even more reviled once the wars began and the European Commonwealth invaded the middle east. Hans had seen plenty of burned out mosques that still bore graffiti, even twenty years after The Bomb. The only religion that had skated through the Resource Wars unscathed was Christianity and all its little offshoots, but Hans had skimmed through more than one pre-war newspaper decrying the wealth and excesses of the Catholic Church. What had happened to them, and by extension Italy, was a mystery to him. What remained of these religions he didn't know, but a few new ones had popped up in the years since Der Atomkrieg.

He kept his head up and ears open as he walked, a little on edge by the silence in Friedrichshagen. The suburb, on the far edge of the Berlin sprawl, was quaint and its streets were lined with hundreds of (now dead) trees. A nice place to live, even with the eye-watering levels of inflation and unemployment before The Bomb came.

Hans turned onto Scharnweberstrasse and kept walking. He hadn't grown up poor, exactly, but 'poor' and 'wealthy' had meant little in the years leading up to Der Atomkrieg, when cars started at a million Deutschmarks and gas hovered around ten thousand Deutschmarks a gallon. Most pre-war papers had gas in America listed at around eight thousand marks, though what the currency conversions were like at the time Hans couldn't say. What he did know was that at some point most of the western world at least partially transitioned to electric and nuclear-powered automobiles. The latter were extremely rare in Hans' experience, relegated to established sports car brands like Porsche, or imports like the Chryslus Blitz and Corvega Atomic V8. The former were more common, with commuter brands like Volkswagen and BMW offering electric versions of their flagship models. Electric imports, like the Chryslus Highwayman, were less common.

Not that it matters now, Hans thought, since almost none of them still run.

Which was true enough. The Final Order had possessed vertibirds, a mix of American designs 'liberated' from abandoned American military bases and domestic copies, and the year before he'd taken a ride in an electric Kubelwagen. What ended up happening to it, and the Order's vertibirds, he didn't know, but either way intact and functional cars were almost mythical in the German wasteland.

The Tiergarten tunnel though...

Even now, a year later, a shudder ran through Hans as he thought back to the tunnel that ran beneath the Spreebogenpark outside the Reichstag. Dozens of cars, perfectly intact save for their deflated tires, the entrance crudely but heavily barricaded. Not to keep people out, but to keep what lurked inside in. That he and the others had survived unscratched was nothing short of a miracle.

No thanks to Erich. Nutjob almost incinerated or buried us all alive when he fired that nuclear catapult inside the tunnel.

Hans reached an intersection and paused, consulting the map. He was at the corner of Assmannstrasse and Rahnsdorfer Strasse. He turned left onto Assmannstrasse, following the map as it led him to the school. The real question, he wondered, was what happened to the Order's vertibirds when Projekt Natursturm collapsed. They all ran on gasoline, as far as he knew, which was already rare in Europe before The Bomb came, twenty years ago. It hadn't been too bad, even during the Resource Wars, but when Saudi Arabia lit all her oil fields ablaze when the Bundeswehr was just hours away from taking Riyadh even six year old Hans had felt the aftermath. After that, oil became a fond memory, as did natural gas. Hans had wondered before what had killed more people; the nuclear war, or the winters before it.

He followed the street to the next intersection, where he turned right onto Peter Hille Strasse, and his mind wandered back to the EAA. If the Euro-American Alliance really did have Americans in its ranks then it would explain the armor those Panzertroopers had been wearing. Hans had never seen a model like it before, though it didn't seem as advanced as the suits the Americans at Air Station Richardson had been wearing. Either way it was leagues above the German Semi-Powered Armor Suit. If that was even a glimpse at what the Americans were rocking then it would be a quick war. And it would explain why Colonel Hoffmann had sent him off to do what amounted to busywork; the Panzertroopers would most likely just erase the entire building from existence.

Hans reached the end of the street and looked up at the school building to his right. True to the mission file it was red-roofed and built of red bricks, though most of the color had faded over the years. There were no guards or defenses of any kind, nor were there any signs or posters outside. Hans walked up to the front door and peered inside, careful to avoid the edges of the shattered glass. There was no one inside the school's lobby, though Hans could hear a voice deeper inside the building. The door was unlocked and opened easily.

As he walked down the hall he tried not to look at the drawings and posters on the wall, but couldn't help himself. He'd stop every few feet and inspect them, looking at the sloppy paintings and messy drawings. Each one represented a child like Helga, making the best of their world even as nuclear war loomed overhead. The Bomb had come on a Saturday, meaning most of the artists would've been at home like Hans had been, enjoying the start of their weekend. Had they seen the flash, like he had? Had they ducked under their beds, like they'd been taught to? Had it even mattered?

The nuke that hit Berlin didn't land far from here, he thought. Close enough to burn them all to death. The walls didn't have burn marks, inside or outside, but they didn't have to. At the right distance nuclear bombs killed through inducing instant dehydration, leaving the victims unable to even move as the lack of water caused their organs to shut down. The few capable of movement usually rushed straight for water, the cruel irony being that rapidly reintroducing so many electrolytes killed most through shock. That was the insidious nature of The Bomb; if the flames didn't cook you and the shrapnel didn't shred you, then there were plenty of other little tricks up its sleeve that would kill you.

Hans continued moving, following the sound of the voice. The school was five floors tall and L-shaped, though Hans suspected there was a gymnasium or auditorium of some kind. He checked the corner and then turned right, around the bend, and followed the hall to the end. Sure enough the door there opened up on a gymnasium, where the students would also assemble for performances and announcements. Hans cautiously looked through the window, taking in the sight. There were several dozen chairs, pushed together to form rows. Or pews, rather. They were all facing a lectern, behind which stood a man delivering some kind of speech. He appeared unarmed. There weren't many people in the crowd, maybe only twenty, leaving most of the chairs empty.

Let's try gab first.

Hans opened the door and the man paused. His audience all turned to look, watching as Hans entered the gymnasium. "A newcomer!" the man declared. "Welcome, welcome! Please, take a seat anywhere. I was just about to reach the next part of his message. After which we will all discuss the meaning of his great wisdom!"

Hans sat down in the back row, where he could see the other attendants. They were all adults, a roughly equal distribution of men and women, and sparsely armed. Mostly pistols in holsters, with a few shotguns slung over backs here and there. Hans looked up at the walls of the gymnasium. It was lined with windows, almost all of which were intact. Hans stared at them a moment, wondering how the windows survived the nukes. The congregants all watched the man with rapt attention, though Hans felt compelled to stare at what hung from the ceiling behind the man, catching the sun's light and bathing the crowd in a mix of blue and white light.

This has to be a joke.

"They scoffed at his ideals, though!" the man said. "The nonbelievers! Even after his victories racing motorbicycles and autos, they declared that no man could take to the skies as the Great Otto believed! But they were wrong! Great Otto did take to the skies, stunning the nonbelievers! He invented a magnificent machine he termed the aeroplane, which his followers used to drop bombs on the heretics! Let us all pray! All pray, everyone! Pray that Great Otto will one day return in his aeroplane and drop bombs on all the heretics and mutants!"

The man turned around and raised his arms towards the giant stained-glass BMW logo suspended from the ceiling, and all his followers stood and did the same. "We pray! We all pray that Great Otto will return to bomb all the heretics and mutants!" they all shouted in unison.

Diplomacy was clearly a mistake, Hans thought, rubbing his forehead.

"Alas," the man said after turning around, "Great Otto was not as deft at business as he was at engineering. His companies failed even when his planes soared. But don't despair, believers! With just small contributions you can help me restore Great Otto's planes and together WE will all bomb the heretics and mutants, especially the misers who pass by us and refuse to spare any food and water!"

"Heretics!" a woman shouted.

"Yes, the caravanners are all heretics! They'll all learn their lesson when they're cowering from Great Otto's aeroplanes! Now, come all, and deposit whatever you can in the collection plate! Anything at all, so long as it's pre-war money or silver U-Bahn tokens! Come on, come on!"

One by one the congregation stood and approached the lectern, dropping money in the collection. Hans went last, unable to believe what was happening here. He produced the change Helga had made for him and put an American $5 note in the plate, about to walk away when the man grabbed his arm.

"Newcomer, newcomer! Welcome, we all welcome you. Tell me, what do you know of Great Otto? Have you heard of his majesticness before? How he flew among the clouds and looked down on the commoners before dropping bombs on them? How awed they must have been by his brilliance before his bombs blew their dicks off!"

Hans looked at the man, taking him in. He was about his height, with neck-length blonde hair slicked back. His eyes were brown, matching the color of the BS he was spouting. It was clear even after being in the gymnasium for five minutes that this guy was a grifter, swindling these people out of their money. What he used it for God only knew. Despite his fervor and eloquence, there was just one problem...

"Son," Hans said. "How old are you? You look like you turned 19 this morning. And majesticness isn't a word."

"Nonsense!" the kid declared. "Age mattered not to the Great Otto! He first picked up a wrench when he was just a boy, and look what great things he went on to do! We will all do similarly great things one day."

Hans had heard enough. "Alright kid, listen. You and your followers keep harassing caravans and traveling merchants and it's got to stop, alright? Those guys at the Alliance have Americans in their midst, and you definitely don't want to deal with them. You'd be dead so fast even God himself wouldn't be able to help you."

"What's an American?" the teen asked. "Wait, don't answer that! What else was I supposed to do? My parents kicked me off our farm, said I was a 'freeloader'. They don't understand my gift! My charisma! They'll see, one day! They'll all see."

"Listen to me," Hans said. "Go home. Tell these people to get lost and go home. Go home, stop freeloading, and forget about all this. You'll thank me for it one day."

"He's a heretic!" a man in the crowd shouted.

The teen looked to the man and then back to Hans. He looked overwhelmed, but Hans could tell by the look on his face that he was buying his own bullshit. Or, more likely, afraid of going back to farming. "He... He is! He's a heretic! Grab him!"

Before Hans could react two men from the crowd rushed him and grabbed him, holding him by his arms. The teen took a step back and looked to the crowd, who just watched. The teen slicked back his hair, working himself up. "The Great Otto demands...a sacrifice! Yeah, a sacrifice! NO! WAIT! He'll be our hostage! We'll ransom him, use him to get money from the Alliance! They'll pay a great tribute to the Great Otto!"

I don't believe this, Hans thought. I'm about to be killed or imprisoned by a guy who's never shaved in his life.

"This guy's an idiot!" Hans said to the crowd. "He's scamming you into worshiping some dead inventor from hundreds of years ago. Why are BMW people all so damn crazy?"

"He's a heretic!" shouted the crowd. "The Great Otto demands a sacrifice!"

"Sacrifice!"

"Shoot him!"

Why does this shit always happen to me?

"Alright alright, quiet! Shut up!" the teen yelled to the crowd. He pulled a Reichsrevolver from his pocket. "I'll... Great Otto, in the name of his...aeroplanes, I... I judge you! I judge you, heretic! Begone!"

The teen raised the revolver to Hans' head. A moment later, every window in the gymnasium shattered.