Bad Radio

by Michael Langlois

Then another came in. And another. And still more until the door was flanked on both sides by a dozen of the glassy-eyed horrors. Anne’s knuckles went white around the grip of her pistol as she calculated the odds of taking them all down before they killed us, and then went slack as the same answer came up over and over again.

  Chuck’s face was resigned as well. I could see the fight drain out of both of them.

  Piotr sauntered over to the work table and picked up a pair of long-handled bolt cutters, likely left there for this purpose when he set all of this up. He then went over and clipped through Mazie’s restraints, catching her as she began to fall over. He helped her up, every bit a gentleman and walked her to over to his monsters. She didn’t bother struggling.

  He moved back to Greg and turned to me. He searched my face with a critical eye, looking for something. Judging me. I stared back. He sighed, raised the bolt cutters over his head and swung them down, crushing Greg’s skull. Blood flew. I screamed and launched myself at him.

  I made it halfway across the room before a tidal wave of inhumanly strong, foul smelling bags crashed into me and smashed me to the floor. I heard guns go off as I struggled, punching and kicking and tearing.

  I gave it everything I had, but I never really had a chance. In the end, I wound up face down on the ground, with a bag kneeling on my back between my shoulder blades pointing my face at Piotr with both hands while his buddies pinned my arms and legs to the floor.

  I stopped struggling when I saw what Piotr wanted me to see. He was holding Mazie’s head in both hands, and with a savage jerk, snapped her neck in front of me.

  I came off the floor. The bags were able to immobilize me again, but this time two of them were down as well, heads crushed or missing. I could feel blood on my face and my right hand felt broken.

  Piotr knelt down next to my face, just out of my reach as I struggled. “That’s much better, Abraham. But it seems that I’m going through these hostages pretty fast. We’ll have to be more careful, yes?” Anne and Chuck were standing at the front of the room with two stout cords tied around their necks.

  Behind each of them stood one of the huge alpha bags. One cord went to a wooden handle in the swollen fist of the bag behind them, and a second, longer cord was tied around the bag’s waist to prevent an escape even if the bag were killed.

  Piotr was close enough that I could see the fine drops of Greg’s blood dotting his shirt and jacket. I strained to move, to reach him, and actually managed to drag the bags holding me several inches closer.

  “Good,” he said. “Hold on to what you’re feeling. We’re getting close to the end of this unpleasant business, you and I, and I promise that you’ll be satisfied with the way things turn out. We’ll each get what we want, in the end. For now, however, you’re going to have to trust me. I’m going to have your hands bound behind your back with police zip cuffs. Now, I know they can’t hold you, even as … unfinished as you are, but if you break free, that’s a clear sign that you’re not cooperating, and my slaves over there will simply give a good yank on those cords and kill your friends. Okay?”

  I went limp. Piotr placed one hand on my head, almost reverently. Possessively. “Thank you.”

  Zip cuffs are police restraints that resemble big plastic zip-ties like the kind the hostages had been bound with, only thicker and with two loops that ran through a central plastic block to hold each wrist. The bags pulled the strips so tight that my skin caught in the slot where the band entered the plastic housing, cutting the flesh.

  After that I was yanked roughly to my feet and shoved out the door and into the parking lot with everyone else. One of the prison buses sat idling close by. Piotr took the pistol from Anne and tossed it away. He stepped up to me and pulled my baton out of its holster. He turned it over in his hands thoughtfully.

  “You made this, correct?” I could still hear a touch of his Polish origins under the tacked-on Midwestern accent he used. “Well, I say you made it, but I think we both know that it wasn’t entirely you.”

  “I made it. Just me.”

  “Really. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? That you would create this object, this specific object, right after we met. I mean, what are the odds? Unless, perhaps, our meeting changed you more than you admit to other people. Or to yourself, yes? Well, in any case, you won’t be needing this crude imitation any more.”

  My heart sank as he turned and threw my baton out into the darkness. I never heard it land.

  “Well. Time to get started. I’m a patient man, but I think I’ve waited long enough, don’t you? Thanks to your friends all those years ago, pulling you out of your birth waters too soon and stealing my book. Yes, I think we’ve both waited long enough.”

  Piotr gestured at the open door to the bus with a little half bow, every bit the genial host.

  53

  Back when I was a kid, my folks used to take us to barn dances out in the country. You’d get there an hour or so before the band started up, and there would be picnic tables set out on in the grass outside of the barn. The kids would always eat at separate tables, and the grownups would always arrange us boy-girl-boy-girl at each one. That’s how Piotr had arranged the bus ride, only instead of boys and girls, it was people and monsters.

  The seats had been ripped out and replaced with long wooden benches than ran down the sides of the bus so that passengers would be facing each other across the center aisle as they sat. The benches were all one piece, thick and heavy, and coated with once clear but now yellowing lacquer. They had regular bolt holes in them in the center and on the ends, and these were used to secure them to the brackets set into the floor, but the bolts themselves weren’t what was originally in them. Fresh scarring where the nuts had gouged a circular track into the varnish was proof of that. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place what they had originally been part of.

  Two passengers were already seated at the rear on the left side of the bus, one hostage and one bag. The hostage sat next to his monster, leashed around the neck with cords as expected, but with the addition of a sack over his head.

  I was shoved into place on the bench on the right while my friends were pushed into position on the left, alternating hostage and keeper all down the line. The wooden handles on the ends of the cords remained clenched in the bags’ fists.

  My two escorts sat on either side of me. I was alone on my side of the bus with my keepers, with my friends serving as audience, or maybe jury, in front of me.

  Piotr strode briskly down the aisle, nodding to himself in satisfaction at the weird tableau. When he reached the rear of the bus, he put his hands on top of the coarse burlap sack on the head of the hooded passenger and looked back over his shoulder at me. “Care to guess who we have here?”

  I didn’t have to guess, I knew Henry’s hands as well as my own. When I didn’t respond, Piotr winked at me and then yanked the sack off of Henry’s head with a flourish.

  He looked bad. His lips were cracked and split from both thirst and somebody’s fists, and there was a trail of dried blood that traced a line down his cheek from his left ear. His eyes, however, were as sharp and alert as ever. And angry.

  “It’s always a pleasure to reunite old friends.” Piotr gave Henry a few stinging slaps on the cheek and then went back to the front of the bus and slid into the driver’s seat.

  A moment later the bus roared to life and lurched into motion. Streetlights swept past the windows, throwing sharp shadows and highlights across our faces, both human and other. Thick tentacles that erupted from stretched lips glistened as the light passed over them, swaying and bouncing with the motion of the bus. Above them glassy eyes stared blankly ahead, neither blinking nor looking away.

  In front of me, the gallery of my friends sat and silently regarded me. Anne. Chuck. Henry. I don’t know what they saw in my eyes, but I know what I saw in theirs. Cold anger and resolve and not a single speck of fear or defeat.

  Back at the quarry Anne and Chuck had accepted, even embra
ced the idea that they may have to give up their lives to ensure that Piotr and his creatures paid for what they had done. As soldiers, Henry and I had always been willing to do that. I was touched by their valor and their refusal to give in, regardless of the circumstances. Their quiet resolve in the hands of their captors made me proud and gave me strength.

  “He took me from the hospital, not an hour after you left.” Henry’s voice was strong, despite the raspy dryness of his throat and tongue. “He was close by, just waiting for you to chase down his men. Abe, every step you’ve taken has been a step he’s planned for you, right from the beginning.”

  “I know. And I don’t think this is the first time. How exactly did we end up in that train station in Warsaw?”

  He nodded. “Patty’s nose.”

  “Exactly. Patty would smell bags close by and we’d follow. If we got off track, bags would attack us and then run off, and we’d chase them. Remember?”

  “Makes sense. We didn’t surprise Piotr after all, he led us to that train station, just like he’s been leading you around the country all this time.”

  “I think the surprise was when you pulled me out of that pit before he was ready, and then stole the altar pieces and his journal.”

  Henry leaned his head back against his seat and closed his eyes. “This time he took the altar pieces from us, made sure you had a tracker in case you got off the trail, and collected a nice group of hostages that you care about to keep you under control once you followed him to where he wanted you. Obvious in hindsight. And smart.”

  “If it’s obvious, then tell me what he needs me for. Why lure us there in the first place, all those years ago? And why now? What’s he trying to accomplish?”

  Piotr called out from the front of the bus. “Justice, my friend. No less than that.”

  54

  When the bus stopped, I glanced out the window and realized where I had seen these wooden benches before. They were school bleachers. The bus doors whooshed open and my handlers led me down the rubberized steps into the faculty parking lot of an abandoned high school. The idea of Piotr running around loose inside a school made my hands ache for my baton as I stared at the back of his head.

  “I won my first campaign for mayor on a platform of civic improvement, including a brand new high school,” said Piotr. “That was ten long years ago, all so I could have the old one to myself. It might not look like much these days, but I assure you that it’s as grand and holy a temple as any other.”

  He strode eagerly across the weedy concrete towards the school’s gloomy, gap-toothed main entrance. The bags followed obediently, towing my friends by the neck. My guards simply started moving forward, forcing me to walk between them or be trampled by the one behind me.

  “Ten years is a long time, considering that I built my first pit in less than a month. But then you didn’t leave me much of a choice, did you? Without the holy scripture that you stole from me, I was forced to experiment for years to fill in the gaps in my memory. A lot of wasted sacrifices had to be made, men and women and children, just so I could rebuild what was lost all those years ago. And that’s only the last ten years. I couldn’t even begin building a pit until I had reconstructed the ritual itself, a task that I’ve been working on since I last saw you. I hope you’re proud of that, Abe. So much suffering, all on your head. Yours and Henry’s, I should say. I can understand Henry taking it for himself, since we both share an … appreciation for the truth and the power it grants, but I can never forgive him for not using it once he had it.”

  “Fuck you, Piotr. At least be man enough to take responsibility for what you’ve done, instead of blaming me and Henry.” My voice sounded shockingly shrill and hateful to my ears. I needed to be calmer than this, more in control.

  He stopped to turn and face us, his eyes moving between mine and Henry’s. “Question. Is it moral to have the ability to bring justice to the world and end all of its suffering once and for all, and then refuse to do so? Of course not. That’s the very definition of evil, and you two stink of it.”

  Henry laughed, his deep voice booming out with genuine amusement. “Who are you trying to convince, you crazy son of a bitch? You think that everyone in the world wants to die, on account of their unbearable suffering? Shit, before you showed up, I was getting three visits a week from the Widow Landry up the road. I got no cause to complain. Tell you what, if you’re so miserable, just blow your own goddamn brains out, and let the rest of us get on with our lives. You can’t even fool yourself with that horseshit. You want to talk about evil, why don’t you ask the people you bleed out for your pool?”

  For the first time, real emotion, real anger, clouded Piotr’s face. He stepped forward and slapped Henry hard across the mouth, staggering him. Blood ran down Henry’s chin and his eyes glazed over as he stumbled.

  “Is it responsible to allow greed and pride to fuel war and genocide without raising a hand against it? What does humanity have to offer creation except blind self-interest and cruelty?”

  He turned and hit me next, faster than I could flinch or turn my head, filling my mouth with the hot copper taste of blood and making my ears ring. The blow rocked me back a step, into the bag behind me. I was stunned, both literally and figuratively. Like me, his speed and power were inhuman. By the time the world snapped back into focus, Piotr had turned around and we were moving again.

  There were signs taped to the inside of the wire-reinforced security glass at either side of the double doors that announced the “closed” status of the school. Below one of them was a small construction paper sign, a sun-bleached orange square, with its own announcement in big purple crayon block letters that said, “Good-bye Belmont Elementary! —Mrs. Dumphry’s 1st grade class.” I wondered how many of those kids, now teenagers, had been held prisoner in their own homes. Or had themselves held knives on their families.

  Piotr opened the locks with an old-fashioned steel ring of keys, granting us entry to a small lobby strewn with leftover packing material and trash, the walls still decorated with posters and banners from the last day of school a decade ago. The smell of mildew and wood rot almost managed to cover the sickly sweet odor of decaying meat hovering faintly underneath.

  “Did you like school, Abe?” asked Piotr as he led us down a long tiled corridor, his voice echoing in the empty space. “I did. Of course, my final term was interrupted when the Germans and Russians invaded Poland. Unfortunate. More unfortunate for my father, I suppose, since he was killed at Bzura, and for my mother who was raped and killed in the occupation afterwards. Not so good for my brother who later died sabotaging a supply train with the Armia Krajowa in the resistance, either.”

  He stopped in front of a pair of wooden double doors at the end of the hall, which were chained shut. He unlocked the massive steel padlock and let the chain slither noisily to the floor, then tossed the padlock aside. “You might even say that it was worst of all for me when I survived the attack that killed my brother, prolonging my suffering. And worse again when the AK forced me out for nothing more than giving traitors and enemy sympathizers the justice that they deserved.

  “They threw me out when they found the remains of a German soldier that I had questioned for a few days. Can you believe that? They abandoned me over a piece of German garbage! They said he was only a boy, as if that made any difference. What does age matter? How old was I when my entire world was destroyed? But all of that was nothing compared to what you did. In the very hour that I was to avenge my family and my country, you stepped in on the side of evil and atrocity and savagery and stopped justice from being done.”

  He turned and pushed the doors open wide. “Well, delayed it, in any case. Justice will be done, and by your own hand, no less.”

  Behind him, through the open doors, I stared once more into the face of a nightmare that had been haunting me for the last sixty years.

  55

  The room was all too familiar. It was a room that a part of me had never left, that s
urrounded me every time I closed my eyes. It took a second for me to understand that there were differences between the here-and-now and the persistent past, because the similarities were screaming at me, drowning everything else out.

  It was a school gym instead of a train station, but it was rigged with the same equipment for the same purposes. Instead of heavy wooden beams crossing the ceiling, there were interlocking sections of construction scaffolding, but the chains and hooks suspended from them could easily have been the same, gleaming wetly in the dim light provided by camping lanterns set at intervals on the floor.

  The wooden basketball court had been excavated in the center to make way for a huge concrete-lined depression situated directly under the hooks, now filled to the brim with what appeared to be an inky black liquid, but which I knew would be bright ruby red if smeared across a fingertip.

  The air was humid and foul with the hot copper smell of fresh blood, just as I remembered, because no matter how old the blood was, how long ago the first drops fell from the first victim, the ritual kept it fresh, even warm. Against my will the memory of drowning in it claimed me, nearly choking me with the feel of my mouth and nostrils filling with the thick wetness of it. I had to take deep, gasping breaths until it passed.

  Piotr patted me on the arm while I regained my composure, a look of compassion on his goddamned face. “I’m sorry, Abe.” He glanced at Henry. “I’m sorry your so-called friends pulled you out of your womb, your spring of immortality, prematurely. If you had been fully reborn the way I intended, you would never have suffered all these long years with your memories. You’d have been beyond that. But now, while they let you down and made you suffer, here I am, ready to heal you.”

  The anger that I had been biting down on for the last hour, for the last week, for the last sixty years, turned into something else, something full of bile and jagged edges that I could no longer resist.