062: Interrogation

Paterson, October 2nd, 2000

We've got our high value prisoner strapped to a board.  "Possible spinal cord injuries," says Doc.  Stashed away in a hole.  "Got to keep him safe and isolated until we can question him," says I.  Moon-pie offered me a thermite grenade.  "Let's see him get up after a 2500 degree suntan."  Maybe after.

Doc briefs me on his status, "He's alive.  The concussion alone should have killed him." She ticks off symptoms, "Very underweight, fever, scarring across the abdomen.  The abdomen's sunken inward as well.  Feels loose."

"When will he wake?"

"Should be dead.  Damn if I know."  Her face tightens up,  "Look, Captain, there's others that need me still.  Why we wasting time on him?"

"Because I want you to.  Can you wake him?"

"I can give him a stimulant.  Might wake him.  Might push him over the edge."

"Like you care.  Give it to me and get back to the troops."

Right now, my choice.  I call our 'principles' back for the interrogation.  Leo, Moonie, Ed.  Alphabit tells me to call him when we need his ax.  He'll go back to minding the gap.  I honor that choice, he can have the Cliff Noted version later if he wants it.

My needle slides home in his arm.  Moments later he wakes with a gasp.  "Good day, Rutkowski."

He gawps at me.  Panics a moment as he pulls at the bonds before visibly bringing himself under control. 

English, "Do you understand me?  How many fingers?"

"Yes.  Two."  In English, that'll make this easier.  On me anyway.

"Correct, how are you?"

His eyes close.  He convulsively swallows before blurting out, "Damned.  I will burn forever in hell."

"Undoubtedly, why do you say that?"

"It is truth."  He pants, panic or the stims, "You won't believe, but it is all that is left to me."

"I have found a great capacity for belief these days."

"So you say now.  I'll tell you anything you want.  Just one request, please."

"You're in no position to be asking."

His eyes open.  Search out mine.  Nothing put desperation swimming in there.  "Please, before you kill me.  Let me make confession to a priest.  For my soul's sake."

He's a rat bastard, a murdering, enslaving, probably raping bastard.  This much I can give him.  "Yes, I promise you.  You'll have a chance for confession and absolution before your execution."

He actually smiles.  Then first in trickles that grow into a torrent he tells me of Czarny, himself, and the other lieutenants.  Their unit was stripped to the bone in mid '99 to reinforce others in the Polish Second Army.  Czarny, a colonel of infantry, and his closest followers, were surplus to needs.  They could carry a rifle or, as they did, desert and return home to Piskonia.  There Czarny assumed control of the local militia, reached out to surrounding towns, tied them all together with pledges of assistance and mutual defense.  They gathered other deserters, formed a trained core, the start of his army.

Rutkowski swallows dryly.  Asks for water.  Resumes.  "It all changed in November .  Czarny, he liked to hunt.  In the cold of winter he went out and didn't return.  We searched, the next day and the one after, but found no sign of him.  He came back out of the woods five days later.  He'd always been a strong, charismatic man, but now he had a fire burning in him.  He brought together those of us from the old division; Zajac, Wozniak, me.  He told us of his revelation.  How an angel of God came to him in the wilderness.  The blessing laid upon his head and the plan to reunite Poland under God's Will.  God's Will, Wozniak opined he'd suffered from a fever.  If only it had been a fever.  Czarny countered.  The angel was waiting for him.  He was to gather those closest to him.  Bring them to it.  They'd see the truth of the matter.  We figured, we'd go.  We'd be able to talk him back down when nothing happened.  If only."

Moonie has his patented 'how long are you going to listen to this shit' look on him.  Ed's queasy.  Leo, calm.  "Then what happened."  Moonie snorts disgustedly.

"In the Bible the angel appears to man and says, 'Be not afraid.'  There is reason for that.  You can't look at it directly.  It shines with light.  There are wings and eyes and scales.  Nothing connects as it should.  It is holy.  We, men, are not worthy.  It spoke to us, a thunder in our ears, heads, at the moment our souls.  We knew it was true.  Czarny and us had been chosen.  God wanted Poland, his blessed country, to throw off the yolk of the atheist Russians and the money-loving West.  We'd build it again as a new Holy Land.  It starts here, now.  It laid the Lord's blessing upon us.  Zajac, then Wozniak, then me.  They screamed with the power of it.  I did too.  Every nerve alight, every muscle pulled tight, I thought I would die.  Instead, I woke a day later.  It took us two to stand again.  Czarny cared for us until we could return to town."

Moonie flips Rutkowski the bird as he leaves.  Ed's broken out in a nervous sweat.  Leo and I, calm rocks..
"It told Czarny to take the high tower in the waste.  To make it his castle.  The Lord's Temple.  We came to Warsaw.  We took the Palace of Culture from those who'd come before us.  Made them work the ruins and fields.  Czarny worked with whoever he could.  River raiders and bandits joined us for the safe base and food.  Other communities fell to sweet words or an overwhelming show of force.  Only Sielce stood at the end."

"We tried to take it by storm.  The defenses were too strong.  The people too stubborn.  They kept to their defiance even after we obtained the D-30 howitzer and spent our shells on their land.  If anything, it made them fight us harder.  Who would blame them, they're true Poles."

"We gathered more men.  Bought more men.  Traded for more rounds for the D-30.  Both explosives and blood agents.  We would crush them!"

"And then you came," bitterly, "with your big boat and tank and men.  You broke the Admiral and his fleet like they were matchsticks.  You blew the big gun just before the chemical rounds arrived.  And you took the Baron and I.  Would that you did not give me back."

"Why?"

"It came back and spoke to the three of us.  Only the voice was the same.  The form had changed.  It told us that it had worn the other because men are cowed by it.  Now that we were blessed it could show us its true nature."

"You hadn't seen it before?"

"Not since it had blessed us.  Only Czarny saw it.  Until he was dead."  His eyes close.  I wonder if he needs another shot.  No, he's gathering his courage.  "It was shaped like a man, powerfully built.  Over two meters tall, nearly one wide.  Thick gray skin, like plates, covering all except the eyes.  It had no mouth, instead a long tentacle with clashing teeth at the end.  It spoke through there.  It condemned me.  I had been faithless and that was why Czarny was dead.  I needed to be purified." 

"The other two beat me while it watched.  I could see, the eyes feeding on my pain, this was not a angel.  It was a demon and we had served it.  Willingly, eagerly, worshipfully.  Then I knew how damned I was.  It all came crashing down."

"The next day, Zajac and Wozniak drug me out into the courtyard.  They strapped me to a frame.  The demon was there and all the men.  It spoke to them.  Telling them of the price of failure.  How their lives belonged to it.  As it finished it turned to me.  In a whisper it told me only I had the eyes to see it.  The others saw their beloved Baron.  They would see his strength, determination, and power.  How wrong it was.  They saw a madman.  They saw a madman reach into his subordinates guts and pull out coil after coil of guts."

"I woke in a cell.  Zajac was outside.  Crying into his hands.  He told me they'd cut off the section of gut and stitched it closed.  I was to be kept for a future use.  Perhaps to lead the next assault.  Perhaps to feed the angel when it grew hungry.  He wouldn't elaborate.  I'd been placed on a starvation diet.  My body would eat itself to heal the would.  I should remember that as the least expression of it's displeasure.  He gave me half a sausage and a number of pills.  Antibiotics for the gut."

"You came again.  Taking that which we'd stolen.  It gave me this chance.  Take the gateway and be forgiven.  Fail and die."

Rutkowski winds down, spent with the effort of talking.  Leo fills the silence.  "It rode the tank, the T-80, yes?

"You saw it?"

"I saw something, through the thermals.  Something like you described.  I believe you.  How do we kill it?"

"You can't.  It is a demon.  A fallen angel.  How do you kill the lord's first work?"

Ed chuckles mirthlessly, "Bell, book, and candle.  Hey, Cap, how's your faith."

I answer him sharply, "My faith is fine.  It's been using men as cat-paws.  Its not all powerful."

Leo smiles grimly, "Yes, it ran when I tracked the tank.  It ran away.  Rutkowski, what angel runs from men?"

"They, they don't."

"No, they don't,"  I tell him.  "We'll handle this the same old way.  First an overdose of lead.  Then high explosives."

"Right on, Cap," Ed brightly kibitz.  "There are few personal problems that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives!"

We questioned him hard on mundane details.  Troops, vehicles, stores as last he saw them until we became punch drunk.  He begged, sobbing, for the priest as we left.

"Deal with it.  This is the start of your atonement.  You can die shriven tonight or you can save lives.  More people, innocent and not, are going to die before this ends.  You can save them.  Sleep on it."