Michael Langlois - Bad Radio

“Impurities, mostly. We have feldspar out here, which is good as long as it’s fairly regular in the granite, but big veins of it don’t work for us, so they’ll dig a new pit to get back to saleable stone. Doesn’t happen very often, though. You can run a quarry for twenty or thirty years. Quarry One started in the late seventies and ran through about ninety-six or so. That was all before my time.”

We hiked about half a mile before spotting more crane masts, this time brown and scabby with rust. A low hill squatted between us and the bottoms of the cranes.

“Shh.” I stopped and listened. I could hear an engine in the distance, and the faint roar of tires running through low grass and gravel. “Sounds like there’s a security patrol driving around back here, so let’s see if we can get out of the open.”

We ran to the hill, which was dotted with large shrubs and small trees, as well as several large irregular chunks of stone.

The growling of the tires grew louder, then stopped. A few seconds later, the engine died and car doors slammed. I jumped a little. The sound was shockingly close.

Weeds scraped at my neck and chin as I belly crawled up the face of the steep hill, the motion as easy and familiar to me as it had been nearly seventy years ago in the field in Europe. I peered down over the top, hidden by grass and head-sized rocks.

Close to the base of the hill was a large police van with the back doors gaping open. Six uniformed figures stood perfectly still next to it. They were stout, with big guts and big chests blending into one massive barrel with tree-stump legs and gorilla arms. Black armored vests made them look even larger. They all wore riot helmets with tinted face shields pulled down.

I frowned and looked harder at the cops. I figured that Piotr would have been running an all-bag crew, but never in my life had I seen bags standing perfectly still like that. Scratch that, the one in the diner had been eerily still, too. And the guards out in front of the plant. Were these something different? Or did they just act differently? This was a really shitty time to find out that I didn’t know as much about the other side as I thought I did.

The van was parked at the edge of the old quarry, a huge square stone pool half the size of a football field. The granite had been mined from the face of a tall hill, easily a hundred feet higher than the surrounding terrain, and a good fifty feet below it.

A rectangle of stone and earth was missing from the ground, cutting the hill in half and leaving a deep green lake in front of the sheared-off vertical face, like a giant’s swimming pool with a granite cliff on one side and a downward sloping ramp on the other side leading into the water.

The left and right sides of the pool were flush with the ground, with the water lapping a little less than two feet below the edge.

The top of the hill had been leveled, and two massive metal crane arms sprouted out of the flat stone top. They appeared to have been bolted directly into the granite. One of them was still tall and comparatively slender, though dark brown and pitted with rust, while the other was broken about halfway up with the top half pointing down towards the water, looking for all the world like a broken fishing pole.

A long metal shack stood behind the two cranes. Occasional gusts of wind rippled the glassy surface of the opaque water. Even in the wan, cloud filtered sunlight the emerald water and cut stone had a stark and elemental beauty.

The unmistakable roar of a diesel bus drew my attention to the gravel road leading up to the pit. Air brakes hissed as the long steel carapace of a prison bus pulled up next to the lake. There was movement behind the barred windows.

The front doors jerked open and another armored guard emerged, followed by a stream of handcuffed men, one after another, until maybe twenty of them stood in frightened knot. A second guard exited the bus, and between the two of them, they began herding the prisoners towards the quarry. They didn’t speak. Instead, they simply pointed and the men started stumbling forward.

Anne and Chuck had eased up on either side of me to watch. Anne’s breath tickled my ear as she leaned close and whispered, “You think this is the first busload?”

“Probably. I think those giant bags just got here.”

“If this is where the Mother is, I’m guessing that those men are about to become a fresh batch of bags.”

“Not if we can help it.”

The police van by the edge of the quarry swayed a little, and someone emerged from the back. The top of his white cowboy hat obscured his face as he stepped down. As he straightened up, the wind snatched the hat off his head and ruffled his wispy white hair. He smiled with good humor as his hat tumbled and skidded away from him.

It was Piotr.

As a group we flinched back from the edge. Piotr had that effect, like a porcelain doll in a horror movie. He looked perfectly normal, even attractive, but somehow more nightmarish for it.

The sense of wrongness coming off of him was palpable, like seeing a fresh, clean-cut corpse sit up and smile pleasantly at you. As he walked towards the captives, even his stoic guards swayed back ever so slightly.

I started to edge towards the top again, but Anne grabbed my arm. She put her lips on my ear. “I don’t like this. We should go.”

“Can’t. This is my chance. Piotr’s here. I can end this right now.”

She started to speak again, but I pulled away and eased over the crest of the hill so that I could see what was happening. Anne and Chuck silently followed.

As soon as I saw Piotr’s face, I was gripped so strongly by a desire to smash his head in with my baton that I had to clench my fists and my will against the sensation. I squeezed my eyes shut until the tide of compulsion receded. The whole episode only lasted a few seconds, but the near loss of control scared me. I’d never experienced anything like that before.

Down below, two of the silent guards were working. They held a filthy, handcuffed man between them while Piotr looked him over, noting the bruises and split lips with professional interest. At this distance, his voice carried well enough for us to just make out the words.

“Let’s take a look at you. Or rather, inside you.” The man jerked but the sudden movement produced no give in the iron grip of his captors. Piotr ran his hands over the man’s head, smiling and nodding to himself as he were picking out melons at the market. The man’s shudder was visible, even this far away.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to join us today. Just don’t have what it takes. But don’t worry, you’ll still be able to help the cause in your own way. I can always use more donors.”

I wondered if Piotr realized how he looked down there, casually herding prisoners like cattle as if he were unloading railroad cars in front of a labor camp. Must we become that which we attempt to destroy? I thought about the portraits in Georgia’s house and the things that I’d done on this journey so far, and about the things I was willing to do before it was over. I didn’t like the comparison, but I didn’t flinch from it. I’d do whatever it took.

Piotr stepped back and the guards pushed the captive away from the edge of the quarry to an open area and flanked him. While the first two guards were busy with that, two more from the group by the van peeled off to grab another victim from the bus. It looked very well practiced. Two guards stood at the van, two were holding a victim for Piotr, and two were standing next to the rejected captive.

The next man got the same treatment with Piotr searching his eyes and touching his face, but this time Piotr smiled and patted him on the cheek. The man tried to lunge forward to get at Piotr. “Good man. You’ll be a welcome addition to the family.”