THREE
They emerged from the warehouse into biting, chilled night-time air, breath forming into barely visible clouds. Snow lay on the ground, trampled and rutted, coloured with mud from the road. Both the time-travellers walked in the vehicle ruts, since there was no pavement, and no street lighting either.
'The heart of darkest Russia,' joked John, trying not to slip in the slush and mud. There was no reply to his quip; the Doctor had his head up, sniffing the air like a bloodhound.
'Smoke,' he intoned. 'Woodsmoke. Not a bonfire.'
'Perhaps they like barbequeues in Trevilho,' commented John, sniffing the air but failing to detect anything.
'Not in a town of mostly wooden buildings,' said the Doctor. 'Only the really important ones here are made out of stone or brick. Everything else is made of wood, since there is a readily abundant supply in the forests.'
Having spoken, he looked around and took stock. Currently, they were in a street hardly worthy of the name, rather it was the gap between two large brick buildings that seemed to be storehouses. A brick wall that joined the end walls of each building also blocked off one end of the street.
'Come on, Doctor, let's get moving, I'm freezing here,' complained John. The only reply was a wagging finger and a "ssh!".
'Did you hear that?' asked the Doctor. 'Gunfire, I'm sure of it. We need to tread rather carefully from now on.'
Professional interest spurred John into listening, and he also thought he heard the faint crackle of automatic gunfire, distantly.
The pair walked slowly and cautiously to the end of the alley, listening carefully, the only sound the grate of shoes on mud and snow. John peered around the left-hand corner, the Doctor the right-hand.
With a start of recognition, John realised the long, dark object perambulating away from him on the other side of the street was not, despite it's appearance, a multi-headed monster but a queue of people, moving away and around another corner, led by someone in white clothing.
'Doctor!' he called in a low voice. In a second he was joined by the Time Lord, who just missed the end of the queue vanishing from sight. 'Damn! You just missed it – a load of people going off across the street. Must be evacuees.'
'Hmm. Perhaps,' came the unconvinced reply.
The Doctor felt acutely uncomfortable. Things in Trevilho seemed out of kilter already. Smoke, gunfire, and a mysterious column of people out walking in the middle of the night. The streetlights on this road were out. Another sign of untoward events?
'Let's try for the centre of town,' he said, leading the way across the street, John following after him, looking uneasily to either side, picking up his companion's lack of ease, and feeling a lack of weapons.
Only seconds after they disappeared around the same corner the queue had passed, a group of shadowy figures moved down the centre of the street. Coming across the tracks that John and the Doctor had left, the furtive collection tracked them back to the warehouse. Stopping briefly to check whether the building was empty, they sneaked inside …
'Keep it still! Keep it still!' shouted Zelenski, pulling on the rope that held their captive's left wrist tied to the table. The rope caught tightly around the creature's wrist, having been wound once around the mahogany table leg for leverage. Zhadov, sweat visible on his pate and bald brow, pulled equally as hard on the rope binding the creature's right hand. Petrosian, much lighter in build than the two men hauling on the arm-ropes, found himself struggling to control the thing's legs, which were bound together at the ankles. He hastily threw a loop over the ankles, tightened it and leaned backwards with all his sixty kilograms, reducing the hideous white monster's thrashing to a pronounced rapping of heels on the tabletop. He threw a clove hitch under the table, around the wooden leg, allowing a slight relaxation.
'Nicely done,' gasped Zelenski. The creature lay in a crucified position on the sturdy table, unable to do more than thrash it's head from side to side, and drum it's heels on the table-top. Blood from gaping wounds that used to be eyes leaked across the creature's face, and onto the varnished veneer beneath it.
'Comrade Bondarski will not be easy to placate about the table,' said Zhadov, half-joking. They had hidden the monster away in an annexe of the town hall, and Mayor Bondarski might not be happy about that.
'Then I will indent for abrasive cleaning fluid,' replied Zelenski, staring at the monster. 'But until I mention it, neither of you are to discuss this capture with anyone. Not with anyone at all. Is that clear? Good.' He rubbed at one temple, feeling tired. Feeling bewildered, if the truth be known, looking at this thing that had emerged from the mine. Fish-belly white, impossibly wiry and thin, bald and with an impressive arsenal of incisors.
'Looks like a goddamned vampire,' whispered Zelinski to himself. The mutilated horror on the table stopped writhing in undetermined agony and looked – wrong word but apt – looked at him.
'Tell me exactly how we caught this specimen,' asked Zelinski, beginning to feel twitchy, scritchy nerves under his skin, alongside the need to understand the background here.
Petrosian shrugged his shoulders in a wonderfully liquid gesture.
'Zhadov and I got it from Patrol C4 . They were the ones who poked it's eyes out with bayonets, and they found the thing after blowing up a house with dynamite. It was too injured to escape or harm them, not so badly hurt that it couldn't be tracked.'
Indeed the horrid squalling thing lay quiet for the first time in hours. Zelinski didn't feel comforted or correct about how it had arrived here.
'Prepare to send a radio message to – ow!' for the creature had bitten him on the left wrist, transforming from resigned alien to rabid weasel in less than a second, flicking its head to the left with eager clashing incisors. Zelinski hopped across the room in a mixture of rage and pain, waltzing back to hit the creature across the brow with his Tokarev, hard enough to hear bones crack. More dreadful than being attacked was the loss of face he felt in front of Zhadov and Petrosian.
Once again, John whirled round, expecting to see a Hideous Something creeping up behind him.
Nothing.
'This is worse than Maiden's Point,' he complained. 'And this time I don't have a gun. Not a one.'
They had made fair progress once the Doctor decided to head northwards, despite icy snow, uncleared pavements and ankle-deep mud. So far they hadn't met anybody on the streets, the streetlights were still out and only occasional windows in the wooden tenements were lit, lit by candles to judge by the flickering glow. Their footsteps on the wooden pavements reminded John of Westerns he'd seen in his youth.
'If you don't carry a weapon then people will avoid pointing one at you,' said the Doctor, turning back to speak at John in a slightly pompous tone, so quickly it was obviously a rehearsed speech.
'You might tell them that,' said John, quietly, pointing at four men with guns who suddenly emerged from a wooden alleyway just in front of them.
Simultaneously, and as if on cue, a sharp sudden blast came from the town to the south, followed by a slow rumble.
'That came from where we left – ' began the Doctor, looking a little worried.
'Shut it,' snapped one of the gunmen, a little weasel of a man, cradling a rifle.
'Who the hell are you? And what are you doing waltzing around in the dead of night – without any guns, either?' asked another, fully as big as John, emphasising his questions with the muzzle of a shotgun.
So many strange things had already happened to John that his sudden and total comprehension of idiomatic Russian lacked complete surprise. For several seconds, however, his tongue refused to function, and it was lucky for him that the Doctor began speaking straight away.
'My dear chap, there's no need to threaten me. We're here to find out exactly what's going on.'
This remark provoked raised eyebrows.
'Oh yeah?' sneered a third man, this one carrying an aged-looking submachine gun. 'And how'd you get in past the cordon? Flew in, did you?'
'Something like that. We have our own transport,' remarked the Doctor, ruefully.
'Your own – you're not KGB, are you?' asked the big man, suddenly looking alarmed. John saw an opening.
'What do you think we are? Spies who hiked eighty kilometres from the Finnish border! Get real!'
'Neither are one of Them,' said the fourth man, who had been silent so far. 'Semyon, we ought to take them to the Mayor.'
'An excellent idea and one we were putting into practice ourselves,' said the Doctor with vigour. 'Let's get moving.'
The small man led the way, whilst the one carrying the submachine gun walked to one side, looking at John with naked hostility.
Who or what are "Them", he wondered, which is exactly what the Time Lord thought. The Doctor felt an unpleasant recollection at the back of his mind, too vague to recall, which slipped away when he tried hard to bring it back out of long-gone memory.
Their captors led the way across unmetalled roads, paths covered with melting snow and ice, past long wooden tenements. Only when they passed a small factory, with railings painted bright green, had there been an effort to get rid of snow and slush. The brick-built pavement lay swept clear of snow for a good fifty yards on either side of the factory gates, which were chained shut. Outside the gates stood a glass-fronted factory noticeboard, with a copy of "Izvestia" pinned up inside. John took this in at a glance when they walked past, noticing with renewed puzzlement that he could read and make perfect sense of the Cyrillic script. Another thing he noticed made him falter in his stride, only to be prodded on by the man carrying the submachine gun.
'Nice antique you've got there,' he commented in a sarcastic tone of voice.
'It'll still do a good job of cutting you in two,' said the man, venom in his voice.
'Shut up, Misha. You too, mister,' said the big man, Semyon, in a tired tone. Misha promptly shut up. John decided to remain silent, too. The Doctor, walking quickly, darted a glance back at John and pointed to the east. At first John dismissed the rosy glow as dawn, before realising it was far too early for that, and then remembered the Doctor's remark about smoke. Burning buildings?
Abruptly they turned a corner and into light, bright electric light in stark and brilliant contrast to the gloomy paths and byways they had already walked. Ahead of them lay the town square, swept mostly free of snow, paved and cobbled, with a bronze statue of Lenin on a plinth in the middle. Trees and lamp-posts, flourescents shining bravely, stood sentry-like around the perimeter of the square. Directly opposite the group stood an imposing neo-classical building, with wide stone steps and heroic statuary to either side.
'Ah, the Mayor's offices,' deduced the Doctor. Strange how the worker's representatives always managed to find themselves superior accomodation! He also noticed how the building seemed to be in a state of siege; sentries armed with automatic rifles stood at the entrance, the windows were sandbagged or battened shut and the group got long, hard, doubtful looks when they entered.
The interior of the entrance hall sported a black-and-white tiled floor, Doric columns, marble inlays and gold leaf on the ceiling. This elegance and opulence was spoiled by mud trampled all over the floor, the sandbagged entrance, the trestle tables supporting machine guns and nervous armed soldiers and civilians bustling everywhere.
A soldier in dark blue strutted over to the group with their prisoners. John recognised him as a member of the MVD military, the Ministry of Interior force that actually constituted a small army in it's own right. The Doctor recognised him as a typical petty-minded little dictator, eager to exert his bullying self when and where he could.
'Who have you brought us this time?' sneered the policeman. John took an instant dislike to him, and felt a common sympathy with the patrol, who immediately bristled with hostility.
'Two strangers, out wandering the streets, Captain,' replied Semyon Ivanov, in a flat and toneless voice. 'Said they're here to find out what's going on, and wanted to see the mayor.'
'Oh really?' said the officer, looking both prisoners up and down.
'This one talks like he comes straight from Moscow,' commented the weasly man, indicating the Doctor with his thumb. He pointed at John. 'And he ain't from round here.' The officer didn't seem impressed.
'You may go now,' he said to the air, not bothering to look at the group of armed civlians.
'Is there any news of the missing?' asked Misha, the man cradling the submachine gun, sounding only slightly less aggressive than when threatening John.
The officer turned an astonished look upon the man.
'That information is restricted. Don't even ask about it!'
Misha audibly ground his teeth together, and the muzzle of his gun wavered approximately in the direction of the MVD captain's chest.
'My wife and daughter are gone,' he hissed, concluding with an unflattering description of the captain, his parents and his habits. The Doctor turned slightly to look at the big man, Semyon, indicating that he ought to intervene with a nod of the head. Semyon took the hint, moved forward and gently pushed the gun muzzle away from the officer.
'Come on, Misha. Let's go get some kip.' He shepherded all three men away.
'You were going to take us to the mayor?' prompted the Doctor, allowing the captain to recover himself and save face by leading them away down the hallway.
'Yes. The mayor. Follow me.' A second MVD soldier joined them as an escort, following on behind. The bullying officer's façade rang a little hollow now. The Doctor felt he had the measure of the captain, and allowed his attention to focus on the town hall as they passed through it. Through an open door he witnessed a nurse binding up the left arm of an injured soldier, and behind her a harrassed-looking doctor talking urgently into a phone. The next door, only just ajar, revealed a switchboard of the plug-and-hole variety, with a drawn woman wearing headphones in attendance. An armed sentry, looking impassive, stood firmly in front of another door.
They were led upstairs, along a balcony and to an anteroom, where a mixed group of soldiers and civlians stood or sat, smoking, drinking tea from glass cups and talking in urgent tones. John coughed at the strong smell of tobacco, the smoke visible in layers across the room, indicating either a lot of cigarettes or no open windows. Other, earthy smells came to his nose; cabbage and black bread.
'Wait here. And you'd better have your ID ready,' snapped the MVD captain, walking over to a glass door with "Mayor" painted on it. The Doctor ignored the threat and instead cast a calculating eye across the assembly, most of whom ignored him. One or two people met his glance, before returning to their drinks or smoking.
'Doctor!' hissed John, now able to talk without being overheard. 'That factory we passed – did you see the paper on display there?'
'Hmm? Oh, the mine equipment factory. No, I didn't.'
'The paper was dated the twentieth, which has to have been yesterdays date – we aren't ten days ahead of this place getting blown up, we're only five days away!'
For once he witnessed the Time Lord struck by a sense of shock and surprise.
'Oh no! The TARDIS – I haven't reset it for non-Gregorian time elapsed. How stupid could I have been!'
He tried to explain to John quickly and simply the effect of transferring from one calendar convention to another – the net effect being a slippage in dates.
'Nor am I happy about the explosion we heard when that patrol captured us. I think it came from where we left the TARDIS.'
John felt his heart sink into his boots. Not only were they dangerously close to the destruction deadline, their transport out of this place might well have been destroyed too!
'Ah, here comes our little dictator, back again. From now on, let me do the talking.'
The MVD captain walked amongst the onlookers with an air of importance, as if he and only he knew what was worth knowing.
'You two –' and he pointed at the travellers – 'come with me.' Their escort shuffled along behind, until the captain shook his head.
The mayor's office, beyond the anteroom, was an immense room panelled in mahogany, with a picture and a bust of Lenin. A green carpet, slightly threadbare, covered the floor up to six inches short of the walls. The mayor himself stood in front of his big oak desk, chatting quietly to a small group of men, four in all, who looked tired, drawn and unshaven.
Led by the MVD officer, the Doctor and John clumped across the carpet to the desk.
'Prisoners as requested, sir,' saluted the officer.
'Yes, thank you, captain,' replied the mayor, a short, stocky man in his fifties, thinning on top and with lots of five o'clock shadow. 'You can wait outside. I'll call if we need you.'
Disappointed, the captain stalked away. The mayor was careful not to begin talking until the door closed behind the officer.
'You've been caught out after curfew, and the captain thinks you're spies. What do you have to say for yourself?'
'And where are your internal passports?' asked a tall, wiry man in glasses, his thin, intelligent face wearing a perpetually wary look.
'Don't have them,' admitted the Doctor cheerfully. 'Left them in our transport as I didn't expect to get arrested and marched here at gunpoint. Didn't Number Two contact you with our details?'
The tall man looked blank at this, but a third party, riffling a set of papers, looked up suddenly. He had fierce eyes and a severe crew-cut.
' "Number Two"?' repeated the mayor, not following what the Doctor meant.
'Number Two Dzerzhinsky Street,' explained the Time Lord politely and cheerfully. The mayor gulped in recognition.
'Oh. KGB Headquarters. I see. No. No message,' he replied.
'Who the hell are you!' asked the crew-cut paper-checker, putting the sheaf down and looking at the travellers with anger. John caught a glimpse of steel teeth, ana dirty bandage on the man's left wrist. 'I'm local cell chief here, and I didn't get any message about new arrivals. You're trying it on!'
Sighing mildly, as a patient parent might, the Doctor carried on with his tissue of lies.
'My dear chap, get in touch with Dzerzhinksy Street yourself, ask for Section Seven, Internal Inspectorate and the file on Doktor Ivan Kuznetz, and Lieutenant Ivan Izvestilnyuk.'
The steel-toothed man wagged a cautionary finger.
'We can't. You know we can't. The phone lines are down.'
Silently, the Doctor thanked being nosey earlier on – he knew the phone switchboard hadn't been working because none of the lights were on, but it had been a gamble.
Don't they have radios? wondered John, keeping his musings silent.
'Exactly,' continued the Doctor. ' Moscow can't make heads or tails of what is going on here, not from what you've reported so far. This is a strategic facility, you know. Metallurgical alloy combines in the Urals rely on the nickel mined here.'
The silent accusation of being a saboteur in all but name remained in the air, causing the KGB man to shrink inside his shabby suit. John wondered how on earth the Time Lord managed to take control of the situation so easily, when the odds were stacked against them.
'Now that we've established that, perhaps we can get down to facts?' said the Doctor, gently. 'I take it you are the crisis committee?'
The mayor nodded and introduced each of the team. The tall man in a beige suit was Evgeniy Klimentov, Chief Mining Engineer at the Nickel Extraction Combine; the man with steel teeth was Evgeny Zelenski, senior officer of the three-man KGB cell here in Trevilho; a fourth, swarthy man with a sweeping moustache, silent so far, was Avtandil Abuladze, a driller on loan from Baku; a big, shaven-headed man also from the KGB, and lastly the mayor himself, Stepan Bondarski.
The tall engineer began speaking.
'It began when we blasted a new gallery in the nickel mine. The inspection team – they get sent in from Leningrad for major jobs – didn't report or return after over ninety minutes. Neither did the Mine Rescue Team. From their report we knew the mine was passable - but still nobody returned. I came back to the MVD here in town to request a large force of armed men to go and examine the mine interior. That got delayed when the mine's security detachment ignored my orders and went into the gallery.'
Pausing to light a cigarette, the man continued.
'It – it seems that a kind of wild creature got released from an underground cavern, through a hole created by our blasting.'
'Not just one?' asked John.
'No. No, not just one. Dozens, according to the only eyewitness to survive.'
'What colour are they? How many eyes do they have?' asked the Doctor with excitement.
'Eh?' replied Evgeniy, stupidly. Lack of sleep, lack of food and perpetual terror were dulling his wits. 'Colour? How many – '
'They are white as snow,' stated the swarthy, hitherto-silent man. 'Naked, white, and with glowing red eyes. Of which they have only two, for your information.'
'Oh,' replied the Doctor, in a disappointed tone. 'Not Silurians, then. Pity. We could have negotiated with them.'
A long-dormant memory suddenly clicked, and he snapped his fingers.
'Aha! Got it! John, your contact's transcript wasn't very accurate, was it!'
A puzzled John shook his head in surprise.
'It wasn't "Dark Children", it was "Children of the Dark", or more correctly, "Children of the Night". Think about that. Children of the Night.'
John thought. The line came from a cheesy black and white horror film, for all that he could see.
'They aren't very child-like,' said Avtandil, drily. 'But you are right about daylight. Never seen in it.'
'They resemble giant leeches,' added the Mayor. 'They drink blood, human blood. And they can put a spell on you. They walk up to a person, stare in their eyes and that person goes off with them, never to be seen again.'
Is there any news of the missing? Misha, the small hostile man with a submachine gun, had asked. His wife and daughter, recalled the Doctor.
'You make it sound like –' began John, before stopping. The Time Lord looked queryingly at him. 'Like vampires.'
'Exactly. Just like vampires. Because this is not the first time such an event has happened.'
All eyes were instantly upon him after a statement like that. Relishing the attention, the Doctor perched himself on the desktop.
'I just remembered where I'd heard it before. In the Schwarzwald, in 1592, German miners unearthed a colony of these creatures, numbering in the dozens. They killed thousands before being destroyed. And, yes, their existence did give a popular basis to the myth and legend of the modern European vampire.'
The Russian officials looked at each other. If the tall, white-haired stranger had come to them nine days earlier, they'd have thrown him into the sanitarium's padded room. Today he had their fullest possible attention.
John looked more sceptical.
'You mean you can fend them off with garlic, crosses and holy water?' he scoffed, only realising after the words were out of his mouth that he was in an atheist state that frowned, to put it mildly, on religion.
'Absurd!' sneered the Mayor, mistakenly thinking that John had been mocking religious icons.
'Not so absurd. We kept some of them at bay with garlic on the first night.' murmured Avtandil. 'It doesn't seem to work any more,' he added, resignedly.
'How does this German event help us here, now, in the Soviet Union?' asked Zelenski. 'How do we stop them? How do we destroy them?'
The Doctor stood again, incidentally taking a pirogi from a plate on the Mayor's desk.
'I'm not so sure you can destroy them, certainly not all of them. You mentioned an ability to control people by direct mental influence,' he said, turning to the Mayor.
'I did? Oh – the spells.'
'Not spells – a powerful applied mental force. That kind of mental ability gives them an intrinsic binding force that renders them difficult to kill. Normal bullets won't have much effect until you literally shoot them to pieces.'
This sounded dismally like the Autons, thought John. Unless you used really big bullets.
'We know that,' snapped Zelenski.
'We found that out the hard way, Doktor Kuznetz,' said Evgeniy. 'These things came out of the mine and started towards Trevilho, and would have been here if sunrise hadn't intervened. Kopensky – the captain who brought you in here – sent his men up to the mine with instructions to evacuate the shift-workers and liquidate anyone who wasn't a miner.'
'Let me guess,' broke in the Doctor. 'They didn't find any miners.'
Evgeniy nodded, feeling ashamed that he'd survived when his colleagues hadn't.
'Not a single one. Barring the Mine Rescue Team there ought to have been about seventy men on duty. There was blood on the floor in the accomodation block, scattered around, a few tables and chairs overturned.' He struck another match and lit another cigarette. 'Kopensky's not very forthcoming about what happened next. He sent out an alarm call from the radio in the local MVD's personnel carrier, and got another fifty men trucked in. His men say they cordoned the mine off entirely and didn't find any tracks leading into it from anywhere. Half of them went into the mine and tried to keep in touch over the phone system. Within minutes a gun-battle broke out and none of them came back.'
Zelenski got up and went over to the Doctor, facing him at very short range.
'Now what do we do! You tell us, Mister Moscow Metropolitan Man! Go on!' he spat.
The angry KGB officer seemed ready to inflict violence upon the taller man, balling his fists and setting his jaw aggressively. John balled his right fist, ready to step in with an uppercut; the Doctor wasn't a young man and it simply wouldn't do to allow a crop-headed thug –
Using the index and forefinger of his right hand, the Doctor pressed them firmly to Zelenski's chest, just above the sternum. Instantly, an expression of alarm and horror appeared across the man's face as he found himself utterly paralysed.
'I really do detest violence, you know,' said the Time Lord, casually finishing off his pastry. 'It solves nothing. You can regard this, Comrade Zelinski, as a pre-emptive move.' He removed his fingers, allowing the stunned victim to stagger over to a chair, looking alternately bewildered and angry.
'How have you kept them at bay?' continued the Doctor, ignoring the sulky Zelinski..
'Er – with fire. Fire. Burning buildings and blasting dynamite,' said the Mayor, stumbling over his words.
'The answer is: not very effectively,' added Evgeniy. 'They came into town on the first night and took hundreds with them. Hundreds. The MVD soldiers, the ones that were left, tried to shoot them and plenty got killed for their trouble. The Mayor declared an emergency and the town males were given arms.'
'We discovered, by suffering ambushes in the dark, that the creatures were hiding in the basements and cellars and sewers during daylight. Come darkness they sneak out again,' added the Mayor.
'We call them "creatures". Don't underestimate them, however,' spoke the second KGB man, Zhadov. 'First of all they brought down the town's telephone lines, in seven different places at once, so we couldn't fix them. Then they cut the power coming in by pylon cable.'
'Evacuate,' said John, knowing what would be coming in five days. 'Clear the town now.'
The Mayor shook his head.
'Impossible. Moscow has sent Red Army troops and MVD soldiers from across the whole Murmansk oblast to cordon off the town.'
Zelenski looked up at this recitation.
'No information about our lack of success is to be allowed to get out. The rest of the oblast, never mind the West and the Americans, cannot be allowed to know how utterly helpless we have been. Moscow thinks of these creatures as a living infection. None must be allowed to escape.'
'Even at the cost of this town's people?' asked the Doctor, in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried a great deal of weight. Zelinski merely frowned in reply.'We have five days before the Red Army moves in with tanks and flamethrowers,' explained Evgeniy. 'Everyone in the town will be forced to remain here until the creatures are dealt with. Then – I suspect medical testing and detention.'
You suspect quite the wrong thing, thought John to himself, unhappily.
The Georgian had walked aimlessly across the room, looking out of a window and returning to inspect both John and the Doctor at close range. John got a cursory glance; the Doctor drew a much sharper scrutiny.
'Well, Comrade Kuznetz, how do we deal with these creatures? Comrade Zelenski asked you, perhaps not the way I would, however the question still stands.'
'Use heavy machine guns,' interrupted John, recalling the names of Soviet weapons from familiarisation lectures. 'A few rounds from a Dushka will knock them apart.'
The Mayor shook his head.
'This isn't an armed camp, Comrade Izvestilnyuk. We don't possess such things. No, we can't go ask the cordon for a loan of weapons. A dozen people are dead already from approaching the roadblock. Shot without warning.'
'What weapons do you have?' enquired John, aware that the Doctor was deep in thought and not answering any questions at present.
A buzzer on the table summoned Captain Kopensky, who was asked by the Mayor to detail what arms the townspeople had.
'AK-47's, for the most part. One RPD light machine gun, with a single belt of ammunition left. Shotguns, hunting rifles, a couple of sub-machine gun souvenirs from the Great Patriotic War. Fused sticks of gelignite for the mine, Molotov cocktails. Ammunition is running low for all firearms, and we can't get any more.' The façade of an over-confident apparatchik dropped temporarily. 'The ammunition is unlikely to last out even tonight.' Kopensky straightened up again. 'We will, however, continue to perform our socialist duty to the end.'
A slow, mocking clap came from the Doctor.
'Bravo!' he said. 'Before that comes to pass, perhaps I could see the body of one of the creatures. You must have at least one available?'
Kopensky cleared his throat in embarassment.
'Really, you know, if I am to find the creatures weak spot, I shall need to study one,' continued the Doctor.
'I could go and sweep bits into a sack,' offered Avtandil, to the Doctor's look of dismay. John bit back a snigger. Apparently fighting with dynamite didn't leave much in the way of corpses to deal with.
'That makes things more difficult. John, I need to go back to our transport to obtain information. No, don't worry about the vampires attacking, it's dawn now. Look.'
The group looked out of the window, to see a watery sun peeking above the horizon. Whilst their attention lay outside, the Doctor took John aside.
'I have an idea about these creatures, John, which requires getting back into the TARDIS. Try to keep these people occupied until I return.'
FOUR
Not a difficult task. With the arrival of sunshine and safety, most of the makeshift garrison in the town hall disappeared into temporary dormitories for long-overdue rest. Within a minute the only people still moving around were John, Zelenski and an MVD private. The KGB's senior officer clearly didn't trust John any more than he trusted the Doctor.
'These vampires don't like fire, am I correct?' asked John, clattering down the stone stairs to the ground floor.
'Not a bit,' confirmed Zelinski. 'It kills them. So they keep far away from it.'
'Uhuh. I take it you have wire and detonators for your industrial explosives? Good.' He carried on walking, looking for –
'What are you after!' snapped Zelinski, short of both sleep and temper. 'You're prowling like a wolf after sheep. What do you want!'
'Paint. In tins. And vaseline.'
'Eh?' said the KGB officer, not following John's chain of thought.
'Tins of paint. Where do you keep them – oh, I know! That factory making mine equipment. Probably has petroloidum, too.'
Lessons learnt in classes about Improvised Explosives were coming back to John.
'Petroloidum? Look, I really don't know who you are, you with your fancy shoes and accent. One thing about you I do know, and that is you aren't getting into the factory.'
John turned slowly to look at Zelinski. The trio of John, KGB officer and escorting soldier were in the basement of the town hall, walking down a ill-lit corridor made of badly-laid wooden planks, Zelinski getting visibly more agitated as they walked on. The doors to either side opened only onto bare, unlit rooms. John pushed one open.
'Take a good look. If you continue to be obstructive I'll throw you in there. Now, paint tins. It doesn't matter if somebody else gets them, as long as they arrive here within the hour.'
Zelinski opened his mouth.
'Shut up!' shouted John, beginning to lose his temper. 'Get those paint tins and det cord and I'll show you how to improvise napalm, you buffoon!'
Three doors down from that door so carelessly thrown open by John, a frankly scared Petrosian looked at the white monster on the tabletop. Earlier that morning Zhadov had replaced the ropes with wire cable, thinner than rope and less likely to be snapped or frayed, and the ends were tightened with pliers. Just to be on the safe side, Petrosian had tied a rag around the thing's head, covering the empty eye-sockets. These precautions still didn't prevent the creature from practicing it's most frightening ability; telepathy.
Not that Petrosian didn't know about the concept. Science-fiction novels, a permissible vice in the Soviet Union, had introduced the idea to him as a teenager. Meeting a real telepath in the flesh – well, that was different, most especially when the creature looked so repellent.
Let this one go! came the sinister drift of mental communication from the bound vampire.
'When my grandmother lies down with the devil,' commented Petrosian. The creature might be able to send messages to him mentally; one thing it couldn't do was control him. The missing eyes probably explained that.
Ritually, for the hundredth time, he tested the wire bonds. Still taut, still taut. Sitting himself down on the flimsy wooden stool by the radio table, he smoked another cigarette, checking the notes Zhadov had scribbled on the pad by the microphone. They were the results of an interrogation earlier in the small hours, mostly one-sided: who are you; where do you come from; what is your organisation; what political orientation are you, etcetera, etcetera. Typical stuff, with hissing, teeth-baring and spitting the atypical responses. He and Zhadov took care not to get bitten, wary after Zelinski's unpleasant lesson in the creature's hearing and neck length.
Behind you!
Petrosian whirled off the stool, drawing his pistol and aiming in one swift movement, moving just as the instructors taught him.
Nothing there, of course. The creature was trying to frighten him. Damn, where had Zelinski gotten to! There ought to be two of them watching this thing at all times, given that it was non-human, telepathic, hostile and the precursor of hundreds of others.
And another thing. Why didn't Zelinski tell the mayor, or Kopensky, or anyone, that they had a live vampire available in the cellar? "Orders from Moscow," Zelinski told them. Neither of the other two agents dared question that, just as they permitted their senior to code and transmit information about these things to headquarters on his own. Someone, somewhere, thought Petrosian cynically, would be trying to ingratiate themselves with the heirarchy by being able to produce a live vampire and a method of exploiting same.
The thin sunlight didn't provide any warmth, even if it did provide illumination. A small breeze that nevertheless possessed icy knives within itself sprang up once the Doctor moved across the square. He encountered groups of armed civilians on his way back to the TARDIS, interspersed with occasional MVD soldiers, all of whom looked at him curiously. None dared to stop him, protected as he was by the indefinable air of a man with serious official business to conduct.
Unerringly, he retraced his footsteps of the night before across the sleet and mud-covered roadways, slowing to rub his cheeks. With a sense of foreboding, he saw footsteps that didn't belong to himself or John entering the alleyway leading to the warehouse where the TARDIS was hidden.
'Oh no!' he gasped involuntarily.
Where the warehouse once stood, a giant pile of rubble now existed. No trace of fire damage, and considerable scattering of lighter debris – the result of an explosion.
'Oy. You. What're you up to, mate,' asked a hoarse voice behind the Doctor. He turned slowly, not wanting to provoke hasty responses. Three men, stubbled, pouchy-eyed and dirty, also carrying rifles, were looking at him with interest.
'I said –' repeated the scruffiest of the trio, a man looking like an operatic bandit.
'Yes, yes, I heard you. I came back here to get my – er, transport – yes, my transport - from the warehouse. And now I find –' and the Doctor waved an expressive arm at the pile of bricks and timber that lay in front of him.
'Yeah. We did that,' said the other man, proudly. 'The White Devils left an infernal device in there, they did. Big blue box. So we blew it up.'
His tone invited praise. The Doctor gave it, sarcasm informing every word.
'Sorry your wagon's gone, mate. Still, you've always got your legs, eh?' commented the bandit leader, to the amused sniggers of his companions. At this masterstroke of humour they departed.
'Humans!' said the Doctor sadly, shaking his head. 'Why do I bother.' The detailed information in the TARDIS files would remain there. Only a bulldozer could remove the tons of rubble lying on the TARDIS, and bulldozers were in short supply at the moment. Well, in that case, he needed to recall the information needed. Which meant a series of mental exercises to unearth memories dormant for a hundred and fifty years.
'Fire!' yelled John. Zelenski closed the contact and current coursed through the wire, detonating the blasting cap and gelignite stick portion. The explosion shattered the ten litre paint tin, hurling paint across the square; paint thickened by vaseline and ignited by the explosion, creating a cone of flame thirty metres wide and equally as long. The flames lay and licked on the town square for ten minutes afterwards.
'Get the idea?' asked John, rhetorically. Scattered spectators for half a mile around came to see what had taken place in the town square, including one mature lady who roundly condemned the hooligans scorching official town trees.
Zelinski became less obstructive once he understood and witnessed exactly what John intended to create with paint and explosives. After all, as the young officer explained, a barrier of fire would kill or deter the vampire creatures most effectively, without requiring any of the now-scarce ammunition. Zelinski barely stopped to hear this exposition, hurrying off back to the town hall at a fast walk.
Lazy swine! Off to get a kip, condemned John mentally.
'I'm going to write to the town soviet, you hooligan!' squawked the indignant matron in front of John. 'Vandal! Not even the Germans managed to damage our town square trees! Now look at them!'
'Madam,' sighed John, in exasperation. 'I hope you get the chance to. Really.'
The Doctor had toured the perimeter of the town square five times before anyone plucked up enough courage to ask what he was doing.
'Thinking,' he replied, occupied. Not a very comprehensive answer. Replying "Attempting to trigger a long-term memory cascade by virtue of time-relevant mnemonics" would have meant nothing to the person asking.
After seven tours, the person in front of him turned out to be John.
'Earth to Doctor. Are you with us?'
'Not quite. I regret to say that the TARDIS is now sitting under a hundred tons of building. The explosion we heard and worried over last night was indeed a demolition squad at work on our warehouse.'
John's eyebrows rose with alarm and dismay.
'Don't worry too much,' said the Doctor, a twinkle in his eye. 'It takes more than a few hundred tons of rubble to damage the TARDIS. Our problem will come in removing the ruins to get access. That, and having my notes stuck inside.'
'Oh, yes, that's a much more pressing problem than being stuck in the Soviet Union with no documents, and being a hostile foreign soldier to boot.'
'Sarcasm, John, does not become you. Let us convene a meeting in the town hall.'
Four men from their previous meeting, barring Zhadov, were present in the mayor's room, along with several other selected men and a female doctor. All were looking tired and drawn. They regarded the Doctor with wary suspicion, not allowing any degree of understanding to show.
'Firstly, let me say that these creatures who have been attacking your mine workings and town are not native. By that I mean they are not indigenous to this planet.'
Startled looks and whispers began in the listeners.
'The description you gave me did agree with that of a race of creatures known, somewhat facetiously, as the Cadaverites, and more formally as the Karausians. They were tall, thin, lacked any pigment in their skin and lived on blood. However, they were also pacifists with high moral and ethical values, who considered killing to be utterly depraved. Being an intelligent and civilised race, they cultivated artificial blood substitutes to live on. Nor did they ever wander around naked.'
The Doctor only seemed unaware of the stir he created in his audience. In reality he knew just what they were saying and probably thinking, too.
'This is preposterous!' scoffed a stranger, who looked well-fed and comfortable, and also annoyed. 'You are either insane or lying.'
'Tell me, Comrade – Comrade ?' riposted the Doctor.
'Comrade Bessmertanova. Young Communist League Director,' answered the man, haughtily, crossing his arms.
'Comrade Bessmertanova, do you think that those creatures from the mine are Finnish saboteurs? American-led paratroops here to cause mayhem? Large, blind, albino mice?'
'There's a rational explanation for this – this event,' blustered the man.
'There is,' said the Doctor. 'Mine,' he finished.
'Their clothing covered their bodies completely, due to their extreme vulnerability to ultra-violet radiation. In full daylight, here on Earth, they would die within seconds. This is one reason you have never been attacked in daylight, and why the creatures from the mine don't venture out into the sun – it would be fatal to them.'
The incredulous murmurs grew more interested.
'How do we kill them in the absence of sunlight?' asked a stranger sitting next to Zelenski.
'Wooden stakes,' muttered the KGB officer, sullenly, to a small ripple of amusement.
'Silver,' stated the Doctor, simply. Seeing that he had their attention, he continued in the same matter-of-fact tone. 'Silver bullets, or a silver knife blade or spearhead. Silver disrupts the neural pathways of the Cadaverites, so a silver bullet will kill them almost instantly. Gold will also work, after a delay of up to a minute.'
There were puzzled comments of silver? Did he say silver? Amongst the listeners. John tried to recall what he knew about vampires, decided that the Hammer films of Christopher Lee didn't really amount to a reliable source and wondered about werewolves; did that outbreak in Renaissance Westphalia or wherever begin legends about silver bullets and lycanthropes?
'Unfortunately, we do not possess the silversmiths you are doubtless used to in Moscow,' said Zelinski. 'Nor is the Combine a gold mine.'
'Think, man!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'What building found in every town would contain large amounts of silver!'
Zelinski still didn't see it, even if several other people expressed realisation.
'The local church,' realised John, dredging up memories from his political science lectures. 'Silver plate, silver candlesticks, silver incense burners – lots of silver.'
Mayor Bondarski coughed in slight embarassment. The local Orthodox church, he explained, no longer possessed bourgeouise accoutrements like silver plate, which had been repossessed by the state to –
John put one bear-like arm around the Mayor, tightened it to a near-painful grip and led him off to one side.
'Put the word out to the faithful, Comrade Bondarski. Silver items to be deposited in a container on the town hall steps, no questions asked, before nightfall. No, no, don't argue, just run along and do it.'
Rubbing his bruised shoulder, the Mayor left with bad grace, looking back at John, who merely smiled blandly to the departing official and those who had bothered to watch him.
'I also noted that illumination in the square outside is by flourescent lights,' continued the Doctor, giving John an appreciative nod. 'Designed to copy daylight, hence emitting a certain amount of ultra-violet radiation. Any people taking shelter in the square would be defended from attack by our hostile friends. A contingency plan taking that into account would be wise.'
One of the listeners brightened visibly at hearing this; he was the town's principal civil engineer.
'Why, yes, that's right. What's more, the remaining power line into Trevilho runs underground so it can't be cut by those creatures, unlike the phone wires. I know we have plenty of spare flourescent lights in storage. That's good thinking!'
'Lastly, I have to ask what these creatures want,' finished the Doctor. 'What are they trying to do, and why? Do they merely kill for the sake of it? Are they abducting people to use as human livestock? How many of them are there?'
'Lots more each night,' stated Kopensky, causing the Time Lord to give him a sharp stare. John realised the Doctor had been startled by the officer's offhand remark, which didn't appear at all unusual.
'Lastly, it is essential that we get communications restored with the outside world. Moscow must be made aware of the facts, and permission gained to evacuate the town.'
Predictably, the KGB men present weren't happy at the prospect of evacuating Trevilho, which would be an admission that the situation had slid out of control. Surprisingly they didn't make much of the need to get the phone lines restored, a fact which both travellers would recall later. Kopenksy pointed out that many of his men were dead or missing, and that the situation had indeed slid out of control, like it or not.
'Don't you have a radio?' asked John. Surely the MVD would have at least a back-up for talking to Moscow in case the phone lines were brought down by snow or accident.
'Yes, we have a radio. It is waiting for replacement tubes from the stores at Kachenga. Our other radio was in the BTR, which is still up at the Combine. You may care to go up there to retrieve it.'
'Maybe later,' suggested the Doctor. 'In the company of Comrade Bessmertanova, who can determine exactly what our unpleasant visitors are at close range. Hey, Comrade? No? You're not coming. How disappointing. In the meantime, my colleague and I have been without sleep for two days, and in view of how much needs to be done tonight, we need to rest for at least a couple of hours.'
The stern-faced female doctor led them from the room, which started to buzz with conversation behind them instantly the door closed.
'Follow me,' she instructed them, in a tone that brooked no nonsense, leading them downstairs into a long room full of camp-beds, filled centrally by an immense, immaculately-polished table with crystal vases positioned every few feet along its length, set upon lace doilies. Various civilians and a couple of MVD soldiers lay on the camp beds, reading, smoking or sleeping. The smell of sweat, cigarettes and cabbage lay over everything, a smell John started to recognise as definably Russian.
'There,' said the doctor, pointing at two vacant beds, her voice jumping with indignation.
'No wishing us sweet dreams?' shot back John, sarcastic and daring, beginning to take his shoes off.
The woman darted him a look of mixed dislike and disdain, two spots of scarlet forming on her high cheeks.
'Monsters from outer space indeed! The sooner we get back in touch with your headquarters, the sooner we'll get the truth about you two. Zelinski might only think it but I'll say it: you're spies!' and with that she was off, stalking across the parquet floor, the effect spoilt by a drowsy man cursing her noisy footsteps.
'There's two things I deliberately didn't tell our audience, John,' said the Time Lord off-handedly. The young officer cocked his head expectantly; the Doctor had a habit of delivering the biggest news in an understated way. 'The Cadaverites are extinct. They were never a very numerous race and the last one died over a thousand years ago.'
'Then it looks like they had a reprieve. What was the second thing?'
'They died out through deliberate choice, John. A highly-developed ethical sense meant they could no longer carry on perpetuating their race at the expense of others.'
Sitting on the edge of the camp-bed, John shrugged.
'Sorry, I don't follow you. They got a case of conscience?'
The Doctor shook his head.
'Not quite. They always had conscience. No, they turned their back on replicative absortption. Several races I've encountered use it to reproduce, but the Cadaverites took a self-sacrificing step beyond it. A commitment to ethics, indeed.'
The sound of "replicative absorption" impressed John. When his companion explained exactly what the process involved from the victim's point of view, the officer felt his skin crawling over his muscles.
'So. Not bothered by bullets, unless they're silver. Inhumanly strong. No sense of mercy. And they can just walk up to us, give us the big stare and we meekly follow them off to die. Did I miss anything out?'
The Doctor shook his head to dismiss one point.
'They won't be able to hypnotise me. And, you know, I may be able to help prevent them from doing the same to you.'
'Go on!' said John, impressed, as the Time Lord produced a small double-sided mirror from his pocket.
'Just concentrate on the mirror …' began the Doctor.