The Source

'Read this!' said Khuv, thrusting Savinkov's note at him. 'It's something of a dying declaration. Things are begi

Luchov stared at him, said: 'Since that time when he had his breakdown? When they found him down there in the thing's room? Poor Vasily, and he always seemed to me such a harmless little man.'

'Well, he's not harmless now!' Khuv snapped. 'Right, we're off to find him. Put the word about: if anyone gets to him first they're to hold him, by any means possible. And if they can't hold him they must kill him - also by any means possible.' He ushered his men out of the room, called over his shoulder: 'Search-parties in threes, Viktor. For God's sake don't let anyone tackle him alone!'

The mortuary was situated off the main perimeter corridor above the magmass levels. In its time it had housed the victims of the Perchorsk Incident, and for a while it had been a cold storehouse, but right now it was a mortuary again. And Agursky was the only one with a key. On their way to the place Khuv and Litve had separated from the other two KGB men; Litve had commandeered one of the Projekt's flame-throwers from its bracket on a wall, and the Major had equipped himself with a snub-nosed sub-machine gun taken from a reluctant soldier. They'd been to Agursky's laboratory and found it locked, with the lighted sign over its door proclaiming it 'vacant'. Likewise Agursky's room, which Khuv had opened with skeleton keys. Agursky could be anywhere in the complex, but they might as well try the mortuary. All of the bodies from the murders were down there, on ice, where Agursky had supposedly been examining them. Word of the manhunt had not got down to the core, and the magmass levels were silent as usual. Khuv and Litve looked down there for a moment - down to where the lights were low and the wormhole-riddled walls moulded into weird shapes - before turning off along the short straight corridor through solid rock to the door of the mortuary. It was locked but it wasn't a security door; Khuv's keys opened it. They swung the door wide and stepped inside, and Litve went to put on the lights. They didn't come on. The light-bulbs had been removed from their fixtures in the low ceiling.

A little light filtered in from the corridor. Khuv and Litve stood just inside the open doorway, glanced at each other, then at the tables against the wall, and at the long narrow boxes on the tables. At the back of the mortuary machinery made a slow, regular breathing sound, sending frigid air circulating. Other than that there was no sound, no motion. The room was a giant refrigerator.

Litve primed his flame-thrower, lit the pilot light. Its blue flicker threw the shadows back a little. 'Major,' Litve said, his voice nervous and echoing, 'there's nowhere he could hide in here. Let's go.'

Khuv tucked his elbows in and shivered. He blew into the palm of his free hand. 'All right,' he said, 'but don't be in such a hurry.' He turned in a slow circle, paused for a moment to watch his breath pluming in the air. Then he relaxed a little. 'OK, we'll make for the - ' and again he paused, listening intently. After a moment: 'Did you hear something?'

Litve listened, shook his head. 'Just the pumps back there.'

Khuv stepped toward the makeshift coffins where they lined the walls. 'While we're here,' he said, 'it might be a good idea to check on what Agursky's been up to. You don't know him quite as well as I do.' He shivered again, but not from the cold. 'He has fu

With Litve moving up beside him, he looked into the first casket. Klara Orlova had been brought down; white as a 'candle and stark naked she lay there. The gash across her neck, which went from ear to ear, looked like a black velvet choker. On a young girl it would have looked erotic - if one was unaware that in fact it was a fatal wound.

The two men stepped to the next box. The contorted face of a young soldier, still silently screaming, looked up at them. God! Khuv thought. You'd think someone would have closed his eyes!

The next box was empty, and as Khuv moved on Litve quickly crossed the room to where a box stood on its own on a separate table. It had a lid loosely laid on top, which he lifted down. On Khuv's side of the room, the next box contained the second soldier. His face was a raw red mess, completely unrecognizable. Two more boxes to go. Khuv made to move on, and -

Across the room Litve drew breath in a shocked gasp. 'Erich!' he said.

'What?' Khuv strode over to where he stood. Litve seemed frozen in horror; but he was right, the man in the box was the missing KGB agent, Erich Bildarev. He was naked and of course dead; the ribs over his heart were crushed in, as badly as if he'd fallen on a bear trap. Khuv grasped Litve's arm, more for support than any other reason. His breath came faster, making a string of tiny plumes. At last he managed to gasp: That's the last bit of proof we needed. Savinkov was right, Agursky's our man!'

Then, across the room, someone - something - said, 'Ahhh!'

'Jesus, Jesus!' Litve cried out, going into a crouch and whirling to look across the room. Khuv turned with him, his eyes bulging to penetrate the gloom. The last two coffins lay there, their contents as yet uninspected. But even as the two men clung together and stared, so there was movement. A tiny plume of air rose up from the first coffin, and another from the second. And Andrei Roborov and Nikolai Rublev sat up in their boxes and stared back at them!

Their injuries, visible even in the poor light, said that this could not be. But it could be, it was. Rublev's cheek was absent from the left side of his face, so that the left eye gazed from a bony orbit; the cadaverous Roborov's skull dripped pus and brain fluid, which crept like wax down his pallid cheeks. They sat there in their coffins, stared, then smiled - and their upper eye-teeth curved down like fangs over their lower lips!

Khuv tried to gasp, 'Oh God - oh, my God!' but his tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth. The eyes of the dead men - no, of the corpses, the undead men -were pits of glowing sulphur cratered with blood, and they continued to smile.

'Burn them!' Khuv finally managed to gasp. 'Quickly, man, burn them!'

'Oh?' said a sly, familiar voice from the door. Then you must hope that your flame-thrower is not one of the many which I have emptied!'

They looked that way, saw Vasily Agursky step back out into the corridor and close the door. His key grated in the lock. 'Agursky, wait!' Khuv yelled after him.

'Oh no, Major,' came Agursky's faint answer. 'You've found me out, and so there's no more time for waiting.' His footsteps rapidly faded.

Meanwhile, Roborov and Rublev had climbed out of their coffins. Khuv saw them, ran for the door. Astonished that his legs obeyed him, he hoped his hands would do the same. As he went he took his keys from a pocket, trying to distinguish the right one from its feel.

At the door, fumbling with the bunch of keys, he glanced back. The two dead men (and for the first time Khuv thought of them as vampires) were advancing on Litve, their hands starting to reach for him. Khuv shouted from a sandpaper throat: 'What are you waiting for, you idiot? Burn them! Burn the fucking things!'

Litve came out of his trance, aimed his weapon and squeezed the trigger. Nothing! The flame-thrower hissed but that was all. The pilot-light flickered. 'Jesus.r Litve screamed. He came scrambling, dodged Roborov where he went to grab him.