“Somehow it always sounds so much worse when he says it,” said Walker. “What’s wrong, Eddie? Are we to take it you know of this place?”
“If there was anywhere else to go, I’d go there,” I said. “Running. I know this city’s reputation. I know what it is and what it was for, and we shouldn’t be here.”
“I want to go home,” Peter said miserably.
“Russia,” Honey said thoughtfully. “I have contacts here, if I can just find a working comm system . . . What’s so bad about this place, Eddie?”
“Who cares?” said Peter. “It looks warm.”
“This is one of the old secret Soviet science cities,” I said. “Abandoned years ago. X37 means we’re in Tunguska territory, in northern Siberia.”
“Wait a minute,” said Peter. “As in, the Tunguska Event of 1908? That must be what we’re here for!”
“I hope so,” I said. “There’s a mystery in X37 too, but I really don’t think I want to know what it is. X37 was a bad place where bad things happened, and just maybe they still do.”
“It offers shelter and the possibility of warm clothes and food,” said Walker. “First things first.”
And so we became the first people to enter X37 for many years, lambs to the slaughter, walking its empty streets looking for a suitable store to break into. To keep all our minds off the cold and to keep the others from asking too many questions about X37 just yet, I did my usual Drood font-of-all-knowledge bit and filled them in on what I knew of the great Tunguska Event.
In 1908, at 7:17 a.m. on the 30th of June, something hit northern Siberia with enough force to shake the world. There was a huge explosion in the remote and largely uninhabited territory of Tunguska, later estimated to be between ten and twenty megatons—more powerful than any nuclear bomb ever exploded. The force of the explosion felled some eighty million trees, uprooting them and knocking them flat over a range of eight hundred and thirty square miles. The light generated by this impact was so bright and lasting that men in London were able to read a newspaper in the street at midnight.
But the event wasn’t properly investigated until some twenty years later. The First World War and the Russian Revolution got in the way, and the Soviet authorities consistently refused all offers of outside scientific help. In 1928, a team of Russian scientists made the long and difficult journey into the frozen heart of northern Siberia, to investigate, and that’s when the mystery began. Because what the scientists found there made no sense at all.
Everyone’s first thought was that a really big meteor had finally made its way down through the atmosphere and struck us what should have been a killing blow, but there wasn’t any crater. Nothing. Not even a dent in the ground. So it couldn’t have been a meteor. Next thought: a comet. Since comets are mostly composed of ice and gas, it was just possible that a really big comet had made its way down through the atmosphere and exploded at ground level. Such things had been known to happen, on a much smaller scale. But in every such case, the exploding comet had driven certain identifying chemicals and elements into the ground, and there weren’t any at Tunguska. So, not a comet.
Then someone came up with the idea of a great volcanic explosion from underground caused by accumulated pressure. Except that would have left a crater too. There have been more theories down the years: a crashing alien spacecraft, a miniature black hole just passing through, even an escape attempt from Hell. But my family would have known about those. A century after the Tunguska Event, the scientists are still arguing and getting nowhere.
“That’s all very well and groovy,” said Peter. “But that’s there, and we are here. What is this place? Why doesn’t it have a proper name? And, most important, why the
Oh, shit
?”
“All those old science cities had bad reputations,” I said. “But X37 was in a class all its own. And, it may be coincidence or it may not . . . but we’re not that far from one of the great Drood secrets. Some miles from here, something very old and unspeakably powerful lies sleeping, buried deep under the permafrost. We need to be really careful while we’re here that we don’t do anything that might waken it.”
“Just for the sake of argument,” said Walker, “what would happen if we did?”
“The end of everything,” I said. “The destruction of the world and humanity as we know it. Hell on earth, forever and ever.”
“Ah,” said Walker. “Let’s not do that, then.”
“Best not,” I said.
“You can be such a drama queen sometimes, Eddie,” said Honey. She looked at me suspiciously. “How is it you Droods know so much about this godforsaken area anyway?”
I smiled as much as my frozen mouth would allow. “Wouldn’t you like to know . . .”
We trudged on through the deserted city. Still no sign of anyone. The only sound in the streets was the tramp of our unsteady feet echoing back from blank, unresponsive walls. We were all deathly tired now, inside and out, every movement an effort. I felt like shouting out to challenge the quiet, to see if anyone might answer, but I didn’t. If anyone was still alive in this abandoned place, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be the kind of people I’d want to meet. And even beyond that . . . this city was too still, too quiet. Like a crouching cat ready to jump out on its prey. It felt like we were being watched. From everywhere.
The streetlamps were out, and there wasn’t a single light burning in any of the windows. No sign of any power in any part of the city. Now and again we’d come across an old-fashioned boxy car with its doors open and its windows and windshield shattered. Great rusty holes gaped in the metalwork, as though it was rotting away. The buildings were all typical old Soviet architecture: massive concrete blocks and brutal stone edifices, with all the character and appeal of a slap round the face. No sign of occupation anywhere.
We finally found a clothing store. Behind the smeared glass there were heavy coats and hats on display. We gathered before the display like starving children confronted with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Walker tried the door, but it was locked.
“Let me beat some feeling back into my hands, and I’ll have that lock picked in under a minute,” said Honey.
I armoured up and kicked the door in. My golden foot slammed the heavy door right off its hinges and sent it flying back several feet into the store. I armoured down. The others were all looking at me. They still weren’t used to seeing me in my armour and all the things it could do. Good. Keep them respectful and off balance, and maybe they’d think twice about killing each other. Honey looked almost envious that I should have such a useful thing and she didn’t. Certainly beat the hell out of her yellow submersible. Walker looked thoughtful. Peter kept his distance and tried to pretend he wasn’t staring at the torc around my throat.
Inside the store, we grabbed the heaviest overcoats we could find from the display dummies and wrapped ourselves up in them, almost moaning with pleasure. We then spent some time just walking up and down, hugging ourselves with furry arms as warmth slowly returned to our frozen bodies. We swore and grimaced as feeling bit back into our numbed extremities, and when we could feel our hands again we clapped on lumpy hats and heavy leather gloves and long woollen scarves. We were out of the bitter wind at last, but our breath still steamed on the damp store air. Walker suggested breaking up the furnishings to make a fire, but I had to say no. I didn’t want us doing anything that might get us noticed. Not yet. Peter had all but buried himself under the biggest coat he could find, together with an oversized fur hat and half a dozen scarves. The colour had come back into his face, and the ice in his eyelashes had melted. He noticed me watching him and scowled.
“I’m still cold,” he said, his voice muffled behind a pulled-up scarf. “And very hungry.”
“And utterly unfashionable,” said Honey. Incredibly, she’d managed to find another long white fur coat to replace the one she’d left in Arkansas. And a white pillbox hat, white gloves, and white leather boots. Somewhere, a nude polar bear was shivering in his cave and cursing mankind.
Walker looked smart but casual, which was no mean feat when wrapped in old-fashioned Russian tailoring, which went in more for bulk than quality. He looked at the mechanical till on the counter, with its dusty brass keys, and frowned.
“Do you suppose we ought to leave . . . something? As payment? Feels a bit like stealing, otherwise.”
“Leave it to who?” said Honey. “Everyone’s gone.”
“Odd, that,” said Peter from deep inside his huge fur coat. “It’s like everyone just got up and left. Maybe they left some canned food behind. You got a can opener in that armour of yours, Drood?”
“How can you be hungry already?” said Walker. “You had some perfectly nice charred beaver only a few hours ago.”
“I am trying very hard to forget that,” said Peter. “Look, I am so hungry right now that if we should happen to come across a monster in this city, I am going to kill, skin, and eat the whole thing. Not necessarily in that order. In fact, someone had better find me a monster pretty damned soon, because you guys are starting to look increasingly edible.”
Strength returned with our new warmth, and we went back out into the street. One direction seemed as good as any other. I was still wondering what we were supposed to be looking for, which particular mystery Alexander King had sent us here to solve.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” said Walker.
I shrugged, though my heavy coat muffled most of the movement. “If we are where I think we are, we’re a long way from the impact site of the Tunguska Event. So I assume we’re here to find out what happened to this city, to X37. On the whole, I think I’d rather stick my dick in a light socket.”
“You still haven’t properly explained what the problem is with this city,” said Walker. “Why was it built all the way out here, in the middle of a wilderness? I thought the Soviets only used Siberia for forced labour camps. What happened here, Eddie? Where is everyone?”
“Well,” I said reluctantly, “X37 was one of a whole series of secret science cities, all of them without any official name, just a designation. Because none of them officially existed except on very secret maps, in very secret offices. The building programme began in the fifties, at the height of the Cold War. Scientists were soldiers then on both sides, their discoveries ammunition for the war. The science cities were built using forced labour from the camps, deliberately set miles from anywhere civilised. Partly for security, partly because some of the experiments being run were so extreme that even the Soviet people wouldn’t have stood for them, but mostly so that if anything did go severely wrong, no one else would be affected. Especially if the whole city had to be shut down or bombed into rubble to cover up what had happened. Which did happen more than once, to my certain knowledge.”
“So only scientists lived here?” said Peter.
“Scientists and their families and enough people and infrastructure to support them,” I said. “And a military presence, to keep an eye on everyone. Most of the people who lived here probably never knew what horrors were being perpetrated in the strictly off-limits laboratories. Curiosity was not an encouraged trait in Soviet Russia.”
“What kind of . . . experiments are we talking about, exactly?” said Walker.
“Nasty ones, from the few files I’ve seen,” said Honey. “Early organ-transplant technology, using criminals and dissidents as sub jects. I once saw some disturbing black-and-white film of a man with two heads, both of them very much alive and aware. Other subjects were exposed to radiation at varying doses, just to see what it would do to them. They were a long way from any kind of protection or cure in those days. They needed data to work with.”
“Then there was chemical warfare,” I said. “Biological, psychic, and supernatural: all the officially forbidden weapons of war. The Geneva conventions didn’t reach out here. But . . . as the years passed and the pressure of the Cold War intensified, the research in these completely deniable cities took stranger and more dangerous turns. City X17 was tasked with trying to open gateways into other dimensions. They must have had some success, because the whole city vanished in 1966. That did leave a crater. X35 specialised in making superhumans out of ordinary people, using drugs, radiation, tissue grafts, and implanted alien technology. All they got for their trouble was a series of very expensive monsters. Who broke loose, in the end. The military hit the whole area with a thermonuke in 1985. No one got out.
“X48 produced cloned duplicates of important personages, with organic bombs hidden in their bellies. The ultimate suicide bombers, and the very best unsuspected assassins. My uncle James terminated that programme with extreme prejudice back in 1973. But X37 . . . was the worst of all by far.”
“Did your family shut this city down?” Honey said suddenly. “Did you do this?”
“No,” I said. “The Soviets hid what they were doing very successfully, until it was too late. By the time we got a whisper of what they were trying to do, it had already blown up in their faces. All we could do was send in a couple of agents to watch from a safe distance and stand ready to contain it, if necessary. It wasn’t. X37 ate its own guts out.”
“What the hell did they do here that was so terrible?” said Peter.
“Yeah,” said Honey. “I’d like to know that myself, before I take one step farther.”
“X37 specialised in genetic research and manipulation,” I said. “Ripping human DNA apart to see what made it tick. Cutting-edge stuff, in the early 1990s. They were looking for secrets, for marvels and wonders, and they found them. Poor bastards.”
The others waited, but that was all I was prepared to say for the moment.
“If I remember correctly, most of these science cities were shut down or abandoned in the nineties,” said Honey. “Too expensive to run in the more austere days of the new order, with the economy crashing down around everyone’s ears. A lot of scientists weren’t being paid, so they voted with their feet and walked out. The soldiers didn’t try to stop them, because they hadn’t been paid in months either. A few cities survived for a while by switching over to commercial research, with corporate or mafiosa backing, but by the turn of the century all of these backwater places were deserted and abandoned. Expensive leftovers from the Cold War, pretty much forgotten in the new corridors of power. No one cared. No one even remembered what most of them had been working on.”