Entry 02: We found the MacGuffin

Date: Unknown +3 days

Reporting: Sgt. Clayton "Nora" Mossberg

Location: Czestochowa, Poland

After setting down to a campfire with the young folks of Klobuck (all two of them, and an infant), and sharing some food, health care and stories, I was able to divulge from Specialist Spencer that she indeed has a given name; a name that she is not at all eager to be known by, and I would wager that if I called her by it, she would ignore me out of spite. When I asked why she wouldn't want to be called "Nora" (her first name), and politely tacking on that I thought it was a pretty name, she then asked, "Why wouldn't you want to be called Nora?" The answer to which is, obviously, because my name is Clayton, which merely sounds like my parents wanted me to grow up to be a successful mud salesman. She then insinuated that my nickname from now on should be Nora. Well, if it makes her happy, so be it. Kid's had a rough time. At dawn, we would head out to Czestochowa, which would probably be no picnic.

After asking what the fleck marks on our map around our destination meant, it was pointed out to me that our locally-supplied and annotated map had a legend on it, which I had inadvertently folded up and missed. The fleck marks denoted rubble, since Czestochowa had been hit with a tactical nuke some time ago. That concerned me a bit, since currently I do not have any Prussian Blue, potassium iodide or DTPA in my kit for dealing with radiation sickness. (However, I have read that some species of fungi are radiotrophic, and use a process called radiosynthesis--like photosythesis, but using ionizing radiation rather than light as an energy source--and thereby might be able to reduce a patient's rads, but I digress) Now, one of the big things to remember about radiation is time. The "hotness" of an area that has suffered a nuclear attack is largely determined not only by the power of the weapon that hit it, but the time that has passed since the event. According to the 7/10 rule, if the radiation is strongest right after the event, then after 7 hours, it will drop to about 10% of that level, and seven times longer than that, it will drop to 10% of that level, and so on. Forty-eight hours after a nuke goes off, the radiation level (measured in Grays or rads) will be approximately 1% of its max. A fortnight later, it will be about one-tenth of a percent. This may sound awesome, but it's still not safe. The radiation level within a mile of the relatively puny (15 kiloton nominal yield) Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was nearly a thousand rads! The other time-related factor here is length of exposure. An area may have a certain level of radiation, but it takes time for a body to absorb it. You can slowly wave your hand over a campfire with no harm except for maybe a few singed hairs, but if you wave too slowly, or try that same wave over a blowtorch, you might well be fucked. Since Czestochowa was hit probably something like 100 days ago, the 7/10 rule has had a few extra cycles, dropping the magnitude of the hourly dose by a few orders, according to my rough napkin-math. We could go in and poke around, but camping out there was not recommended.

When we neared the target, we reviewed the dead man's journal, to see if there was a literary breadcrumb trail to follow, or maybe even prove the veracity of the document. I pointed out to Major Mackensen that the missive told of having to abandon their broke-down Humvee and a cache of supplies (who doesn't like free supplies?) just a few klicks north of Czestochowa, until closer review of the document showed that the site was a few clicks north of Klobuck, the fucking place we had so eagerly left this morning. Since wasting gas backtracking was not an option, we had to table that for later. You know what that means? There is probably a shotgun hidden there, dammit. One of the things the journal pointed out was how the dead guys had found the treasure cave in the first place, which was by being lucky. They had camped on a hill outside of town with a monastery on it. At sundown, a bunch of bats flew up out of a cave, and that led them to the creepy doom tunnels. Since bats are creatures of habit, we would just have to look for them from the right spot rather than try and replicate someone else's luck. So, we decided to do that, but we had to get attacked by a bunch of assholes first.

Having an ICV is great for many reasons. "Keeping a low-profile in a nuclear wasteland" is not one of them. It screams out "please shoot us because we have stuff to take." We drove straight into an ambush, where guys on horseback crossed in front of us and behind us right when we drove by a building with a sniper in it. Spence, as usual, was on point on her horse. I was riding exposed on the back deck of the rig, keeping an eye on our six and able to patch up 80% of our team with a little scrabble or sprint; if Wharton needed my particular help while he was behind the wheel, things had already moved into deeply fucked territory. I took a shot at this one particular asshole on our ass (and only nicked him, goddammit), when he leveled a gun at me and blasted me on my ass. Sure, the kevlar stopped most of it, but I saw all the tiny little shreds in the carrier, and realized instantly...

That dude had a shotgun!

Eddie and the Major were engaging the guys in the building and the horseman in front. Spence took a hit that spanged off her helmet. I dove off the rig and hid inside a doorway, tossing a smoke bomb to cover our rear, and laid in ambush, expecting the guy to our rear to ride through it, at which point I would attempt to fuck him from the side. That didn't happen, though, because he appeared to dismount and beat feet. Simon pulled a neat move and tried a PIT maneuver on the horse with hilarious result, while our gunners took down the rider. Sensing the shotgun slipping through my fingers, I headed back to regroup, crossing paths with Spencer, who had a waterfall of blood cascading down her face. It turned out not to be too severe, but you know what they say about head wounds bleeding. I patched her up right quick, then heard Eddie calling for my help, too. I jumped back on the M1126 and tended to him while he was still standing in the cupola. He'd taken a burst from the sniper, but had the good fortune to have a bunch of armor plating in the way for most of it. I patched up his scratch, too, but reminded him that, "in these times of scarcity, I can't whip up too many enemy marksmanship medals, so maybe try and duck next time." With the aggressors having apparently run for it and things getting a bit quiet, we took a moment to loot the dead and interrogate the injured, while Spence tried to find her horse, who had beat feet during the fracas after she had dismounted.

Spence came across a couple of weirdos just chilling. She called us up. Me and the Major formed up while Sam and Eddie minded the rig. When we got to Spencer's location, there was an older guy and a woman. They looked like civilians. The guy was wearing a funny robe, like a judge, or something. Then I remembered the name for that bit of clothing: a cassock. The dude was a priest! Or, he had looted a hunk of cloth off a dead one (you know, because they're super stylish and provide the tactical advantage of covering up all the gear strapped on your body that you might need to get to at a moment's notice). The chick had an M4 with an M203 (definitely making her an HVT), while the priest had a sniper rifle slung. If that wasn't weird/suspicious enough, both of them looked to be...praying? Major Mackensen seemed to have no respect for the prayers of Catholics, so he snuck up and laid out the woman. I was hoping that the priest would just surrender, but of course he wouldn't, so I had to shoot him, a good solid shot right in the thigh. He scrabbled over and into a nearby building. I popped smoke at the entrance, giving the Mack a chance to barge in and subdue him. With these two taken care of, we trussed them up and began our interrogation. While the woman was out, I took her weapon and frisked her, finding that she had not only a US army uniform under he flannels and winter pants, but a set of dog tags that identified her as Sgt. Jablonski of the 10th Mountain Division. When she came to, she tried to use the whole "name, rank and serial number" routine on us, probably thinking we would respect that, until the Major pointed out that in this here apocalypse, we were all freed from our oaths and obligations by our former governments and that there were no longer any Geneva Conventions that anyone had to respect. That seemed to get her attention, and made her a bit more talkative, especially when she accused us of being treasure hunters (I do declare!) When we told her our intentions toward the treasure here (find it and get it somewhere important), it seemed to coincide with her objectives: find it and get it somewhere specifically important for an important reason. Naturally intrigued, we asked for details. She said that her unit had been more recently in contact with a Major General Ronald Phillips back in CONUS (just a two-star; none of us had heard of him). Supposedly, he was the highest military authority in the land, as far as they knew. He was trying to reach out to former US forces in the region, trying to get someone to find this Black Madonna in order to get it to the Margrave of Silesia and broker a legitimate path to self-government for Poland. See, most of Poland is pretty damn Catholic, and if this Margrave had a relic like the Black Madonna, it would give him mad street cred with all the Catholics in the region. Then, she dangled that carrot: if the Margrave got the relic, he was willing to find safe passage for some people back to the United States. Since it seemed like Jablonski, the priest and us were sort of working toward the same purpose, we decided to enter into an agreement, albeit one that started out with us keeping their guns, using the simple logic that if you lose a fight when you have your guns, and we let you live and hang around, we're not gonna give them back to you right away because you might still be mad at us and stuff. I did patch the both of them up, which also went along way toward making them more reasonable, I think. Since everyone was being all chummy and confessional and all, I asked Jablonski where Alexander (the guy with the shotgun who was ID'd by one of his buddies we terminally interrogated earlier), and she had no idea who I was talking about. Well, shoot. The main reason we had jumped these two to begin with was because we thought they were with the first group of assholes. Oopsie! We'll count this as a case of collateral asshole splatter, I guess, which sounds like the metal as fuck version of IBS.

With the obligatory "welcome to our shitty bomb-fodder city" ambush out of the way, we got around to doing our thing. Jablonski had been combing thorough the rubble of the city looking for the painting, and we talked her out of that approach by pointing out that, one: A fragile, six century-old painting probably wasn't going to be found inside a building that had been collapsed by a nuke, and two: We had a solid lead on where it was, so could we do it our way, pretty please? She conceded to our wisdom, possibly because I hadn't given Jablonski her gun back, yet. Naturally, the priest knew where the hill with the monastery was, so we beat feet over there and waited for sundown and the bats. Because bats are pleasantly predictable, we found them and saw roughly where they came out from. Unfortunately, we found two caves, so we had to use the very scientific method of "let's take the one on the left" to guide our recovery efforts. Based on the journal, we figured we'd discover soon enough if it was the correct cave or not.

And, soon enough we did. We found the fast-flowing underground stream that, according to the journal, had claimed the life of one member of the original searchers. I had been thinking long about this obstacle, and how to overcome it. While I fiddled with my plan, a crossbow bolt or something whistled down the cavern, nailing Jablonski at drag in the chest. While I divided my time between safety measures and trying to find if Indiana Jones dungeon science was at play here, Jablonski asked for her rifle back, and I said fuck it, and gave it to her. I didn't want it to drag me down when I crossed the water, anyway. Spence volunteered to go across first. I took the rope from our climbing gear and tied it off. The Major grabbed onto it to haul Spencer out of the drink if she slipped. She made it across, and spied some nutbar down the hall armed with a crossbow. Eschewing all my precautions, the damn priest just waded into the water and clambered out the other side. I grabbed the rope and tried to go across, then slipped in the current. Fortunately, Mackensen kept me from drowning, though I did lose my GI-issue combat helmet. No big loss; now I had a perfect excuse to wear that boss steel helmet we found that I've had my eye on for weeks. Hell, I already appropriated the gloves and boots. Clearly, nobody else realized they had armor in them. Hey, it pays to read labels, people. Unfortunately, until we made it back to the rig, my nugget was completely naked, and I was sure that I would soon find that I suffered from a rare genetic disorder where my cranium has a magnetic attraction to crossbow bolts.

The nutter with the crossbow darted down a side-corridor, where the Major followed him and laid on some hurt. The priest, who didn't seem to give a rusty fuck about our troubles, rushed ahead. Spence and I tried to help the Major out--she even shot the crossbow out of his hand--but he didn't need our assist. He just beat the stuffing out of him until he was sleepy, and then we chased after the Padre. Up ahead, he called out for us to be careful because he'd set off a trap. He was just running blind in the dark, while Spence and I had IR goggles on. Since Temple of Doom rules were now in play, we proceeded a bit more carefully, but evidently God looks after children, drunks and fools, so the Priest made it to the treasure chamber before we did. Spence and the Major went inside. I stayed outside the chamber on the off chance that it might be a good idea to have somebody outside the danger zone in case something awful happened. That something awful happened thanks to the priest, who laid eyes on the Black Madonna and naturally grabbed the shit out of it. This triggered an explosion which collapsed part of the cavern, separating me from the rest of the group and trapped Spence, the major and that fucking priest in the treasure room.

So, I'm sure you're probably thinking, "ah, Mossberg, this must be the part of the story where you and Jablonski went back to the rig and fucked your way across Europe and the Atlantic to a hero's welcome back in the states without having to share any of your printer paper with anyone," to which I would say, "While that's a tempting notion because I like girls with pale skin and freckles, of course that's not what happened, because I'm a fucking professional, Goddammit." I went back to crossbow-guy to see if he he had an entrenching tool or something, only to find he'd regained consciousness and bolted. I checked some of the many rooms in these catacombs we'd bypassed (thanks again, Priest!) hoping not to find the nutter, and found a candelabra or something to help dig through rubble. After a few hours of digging from my side and theirs, I was able to reunite the rest of the team with me (since I was on the proper side of the rocks).

Now, with the Black Madonna in our possession, we could make plans to head south to hand the thing off to the Margrave of Silesia, which I found frankly surprising; usually the MacGuffin is way harder to find, which makes me wary of the rest of this trip. This did mean for just a bit of back-tracking though, since Klobuck was on the way to the shortest road south, which meant that we could try and find that hidden cache, and that route also lay through the ruins of Czestochowa. I had one more chance to cross paths with Alexander and take that shotgun from his cold, dead hands!