Moon Over Chisinau

Voroshilov was not looking forward to New Year. He found public holidays difficult. They were for married men, those with families, not for bachelors like himself. They were long grey days holed up in his apartment with the wireless, attempting to read a novel and resist the lure of the bottle. He had few regrets about the choices he had made in life but those he did possess would return in those lonely hours.

He did have some family. His surviving sister in Smolensk and his fine young nephew Alexei whose photograph took pride of place on the bureau, but they had never been close and there were too many years between them now. He had seen them perhaps half a dozen times in the past two decades. The life of a Chekist was a lonely existence, but it was the one he had chosen, and for all their faults, for all the mistakes the Committee for State Security had made, he still believed he had done some good.

So he had taken the assignment off Artemieva and enjoyed the younger mans relieved smile as he realised he would not now miss his children opening the gifts old Father Frost had left beneath the Fir Tree. He collected the thin case file and the equipment he might need and instructed his secretary to make the necessary transport arrangements.

He had been fortunate enough to have travelled extensively within the Socialist bloc but this would be his first visit to the Moldovan SSR. He boarded the sleeper at the Kievskaia Station and settled into the compartment for the fifteen hundred kilometer journey to Chisinau. Despite a great deal of experience of long journeys twenty seven hours in a cramped overheated compartment was still a trial. He was polite to his travelling companions but made it clear he was not interested in their small talk. They were soon merrily drinking and playing cards and ignoring him. He spent the time reading and sleeping and staring through the windows at the snow covered plains. He was heading to wine country. It would be a much pleasanter assignment were it summer he thought ruefully.

It was warmer than Moscow when he arrived, a degree or two above freezing. A thin carpet of powdery snow lay across the City. He took the opportunity to stretch his legs before making his presence known to the local KGB. It was an undistinguished Capital, a provincial city with little of interest for the visitor. An attractive enough city centre with a fine Orthodox Cathedral and City Hall but like so many Soviet Cities it had been extensively damaged during the Great Patriotic War, and it was mostly hastily constructed modern concrete boxes that lined the broad avenues.

He tired of the snow and boarded a trolleybus to the local headquarters. The carriage was filled with workers. Many had been drinking and were laden with bags and packages, it was only two days until the holidays and the city was in a festive mood. The people were different here he observed. There were fewer Slavic faces, they were darker like their Romanian cousins across the border.

Eventually he found an undistinguished grey building on a frozen square. The sole agent on duty was offhand, almost insolent. Like many who had lived through famine Voroshilov was a small wiry man, balding with large blinking eyes behind thick spectacles. He knew he was physically unprepossessing; a fact he had used to his advantage many times against those who underestimated him.

He took his papers from his inner pocket and laid them quietly on the desk before the agent who blanched and stuttered a welcome before showing him to an impressive office, offering coffee and the local brandy before running to alert his superior. Voroshilov remained polite. He did not admire those who attained a degree of responsibility and then used their power to tyrannise their underlings. They call themselves socialists...

The local intelligence chief soon appeared. A large man, the crumbs down his front and the alcohol on his breath indicating he had been dragged away from a good dinner.
"Comrade!" he cried heartily "An honour!" A political animal rather than a policeman Voroshilov thought; a breed there were far too many of today.

"I am here on the most pressing business" he stated curtly as he presented his credentials; senior enough for the local man to agree without demur.
"Whatever you need Comrade" he agreed nodding vigorously. An agent of this importance was not welcome in his fiefdom and the sooner he was back on the train to Moscow the better. "You have our complete cooperation".

He refused offers of vodka and food and gave the shaken fat man a list of resources and records required by morning before being driven in a battered old Moskvitch to the Hotel Cosmos where Anna had arranged a suite. He never slept well on the first night in a new bed and he stayed awake thinking into the early hours. Four bodies found in as many weeks. The local police clueless and blaming a madman or a rabid animal of some kind. The events had been noted by one of the analysts employed to monitor provincial police and intelligence reports for unusual events and who had dutifully reported the spate of killings to the twelfth directorate.

He awoke at dawn and after a breakfast of coffee and black bread and cheese he was driven to the site of the most recent murder. He inspected the frozen crime scene thoroughly. It was in an isolated area of a large park close to the city centre. The snow was still stained pale pink. The local Police had belatedly followed Moscow’s instructions and covered the scene with a tarpaulin to protect it from further disturbance until he arrived, but the snow was so churned up by the struggle and the boots of the police that there was little it could tell him.

He visited the mortuary where the unfortunate victim lay. The attack had been brutal. Much of the face had been devoured and the chest ripped open. The internal organs and entrails were missing. He saw the victims hands were a bitten bloody mess. The poor fellow had attempted to defend himself. It was hard to believe that a human being; even an infected one, had done this. But he had seen worse. He had seen many terrible sights in his years in the service.

He surveyed the other three crime scenes. The first two were on the fringes of the City. In a vineyard, and in an alleyway behind an apartment block. The third victim was found in the grounds of a city high school. They had only recovered half the poor caretaker; the rest he surmised to have been eaten. One did not have to be Ivan Putilin to work out that the perpetrator was growing bolder, venturing further into the city in search of prey. Each killing had occurred in the hours before dawn. Like many predators the infected hunted under the cover of darkness.

He contacted the directorate and confirmed that this was indeed a suspected outbreak rather than the work of a conventional murderer. The Lubyanka liaised with the Interior Ministry so that by the time he visited the city police headquarters the Chief of Police was expecting him. A tough, sharp faced man there was no false bonhomie for the visitor from Moscow. Voroshilov guessed a military background as he watched him bark out orders, ordering the requested files to be found immediately and arranging for him to start interviewing the officers who had worked on the cases.

He called Anna in Moscow. "I have spoken with the Romanians" she reported "as ever they are as closed mouthed as they can be without displaying outright hostility. Our assets there have been far more helpful. They have discovered that the Securitat have been investigating a similar string of crimes around Iasi".

"Thank you. Ask our friends in Bucharest if they can obtain any more information" he said before replacing the receiver in its cradle. It probably came down from the Eastern Carpathians he thought. Later there would be time to attempt to retrace its journey East in the hope of identifying the initial point of infection. Despite all their good work over the preceding decades each time they thought they had extinguished this contagion it would burst into life again.

At least the killings so far had the hallmarks of a single perpetrator. The victims had been fortunate enough to have been slain outright; the infection had yet to spread. It was his charge to stop it now before some poor soul survived an attack and became infected themselves. In Siberia he had witnessed how the situation could escalate if it wasn't halted at the earliest opportunity. No one wished to have to return to the days of mass culls.

He again worked late in to the night poring over case notes and maps of the City attempting to triangulate the lair. Unlike with the Nightwalkers there was no cunning beyond the bestial amongst the infected. No higher thinking. The Academy of Sciences was sure of this. One of the few things they were certain of despite the considerable resources they had expended since Khrushchev’s day in studying the disease. But it chimed with his experience. If there were some vestiges of humanity left in the victims he had never witnessed it.

The next morning he again called for a car and driver. This time his ride was a smart new Volga. The local KGB chiefs own he suspected. The fat man was determined nothing uncomplimentary would be reported back to Moscow. They returned to the vineyard where the first victim had been found. He instructed the surprised driver to rendezvous with him at the final site in three hours and began to walk.

He had wrapped up for the conditions: felt lined boots, his greatcoat with the astrakhan collar, a fur hat and leather gloves. He was feeling the chill in his bones as he got older. The shrapnel in his ankle collected as a boy soldier in the fighting outside Konigsberg ached in the icy cold. He wondered how long he had left in the field. The Deputy Director was already making noises about him retiring from active service and becoming a controller. He realised his physical reactions weren't as fast as they once were but assured himself that skill and experience more than made up for the slight slowing in reactions that came with age.

He could have been in the suburbs of any soviet city he thought as he trudged through the endless estates of large concrete apartment blocks set along wide tree lined boulevards. Like so many cities Chisinau had lost most of its housing stock in the war. The authorities had to throw these homes up as fast as possible. Still they were decent enough he thought. Far superior to the peasant’s hovel he had been raised in.

It was just over a kilometer from the vineyard to the second crime scene. The victim, a local baker, had been found disemboweled behind the building in which he lived. It was literally on the edge of the city, backing on to flat open countryside. The schoolyard where the unfortunate caretaker had met his demise was deeper into the town. Trudging there he realised what a green place Chisinau must be in the warmer months. There were many small parks and derelict spaces, allotments and gardens between the blocks. He imagined the predator flitting between them in the dark; prowling the fringes of habitation in the hours before daybreak, gradually growing bolder. Each night venturing a little further in as the citizens slept.

The weather and the incompetence of the local Police meant there was no remaining physical evidence at the sites, but he had not expected there to be. It was the feel of the place he wanted to experience, the lie of the land. Like all good hunters he needed to get into his targets mind, see the world through its eyes and from there hope to predict its behaviour. That was how his grandfather had taught him as they hunted deer and game in the Pripet Marshes so many years before; the gnarled old man passing on the skills which would later make Voroshilov such a valuable asset to the state.

He returned to headquarters and commandeered an office; sending out for newer and more detailed maps and firing questions to the intimidated agents concerning each locale. With a metal ruler and mechanical pencil he drew lines connecting the crime scenes identifying at least a dozen possible hiding places. Undoubtedly many more if one took into account abandoned buildings and overgrown spaces not shown on the maps. Each would have to be searched. They would drive this beast into the open.

He looked through the last month’s crime reports. He should not have been surprised that no one had connected the murders with the recent spate of livestock killings; he was all too familiar with the incompetence of local Police Departments. He leafed through recent missing person reports. At least two were possible victims. Both respectable family men who had gone missing in the early hours, both residents of the North-Eastern suburbs. He sent officers to interview their families and tentatively marked their last locations on the map. He had established its hunting ground. Now he needed to locate its den.

The following morning was New Years Eve. He was still half asleep when a banging on the hotel door announced the discovery of a fresh cadaver by a postal worker on her way to work. It was an hour after dawn when he arrived. The blood stained snow was strewn with the half eaten remains of the victim; a local indigent according to the police.

They had made an effort to preserve the scene this time, determined to impress the man from Moscow with their professionalism. They had cordoned off the small park and had already started going door to door. He inspected the remains before ordering that nothing be disturbed until a photographer arrived to document the scene. Then each recovered body part would be carefully packed and sent to an address in Leningrad for further study.

The directorate did not simply exist to exterminate the infected. Its remit also involved the study of the disease; the attempt to discover as much as possible about its nature and origins. It was notably more successful at the former than the latter he thought cynically. They had provided the specimens both alive and dead but in twenty years the brains had failed to discover more than you could learn in half an hour’s conversation with a veteran field agent.

Still, it was 1970 he thought. It was a new world. If they were to ever triumph over this disease it would be through the rational application of scientific methods not peasant folklore about full moons and silver weapons. He cursed the stupidity of the world which meant their activities must be conducted in the shadows, but he understood the political realities which necessitated the secrecy.

This condition had been eradicated so long ago in the West it had become a myth. The Capitalists were shameless. Their propagandists would stop at nothing to discredit the workers state and would ruthlessly use this medical emergency to accuse them of backwardness. The CCCP must maintain its dignity in the eyes of the world. The many achievements of the Party must not be allowed to be overshadowed.

The dogs arrived. The canines agitated even before they bound out of the truck. He had seen this reaction before. The scent of the infected infuriated them. They scurried around barking and snapping at each other and their handlers who desperately tried to calm them enough to get the scent. They ran eastwards barking wildly until they lost the trail in the freshly falling snow. He wondered if it was worth wiring Perm to send him experienced Siberian trackers, but decided that he needed to capture the beast now and it would be days before they got here.

He returned to the car and studied his map of the city, neatly marking off the latest killing.
"What is this area here?" he asked indicating a large blank a little to the East of the line he had drawn between the most recent crime scenes. The driver studied the map.
"An old cemetery" he shrugged "Jews".
"Drive" he ordered while signaling the men to follow him.

A Jewish cemetery he thought. Chisinau had been occupied by the Germans during the war and its large Ashkenazi population exterminated. There would be few grieving relatives left to tend the graves, few visitors, the perfect place for one of the infected to hide.

He felt an old pang of regret at the mention of Jews; remembering the old Czech Rabbi and his doughty daughter who long ago who had helped him deal with an infestation of Nightwalkers. He had been a fool to let her go. There had been no other since.

The graveyard stood in one of the workers suburbs surrounded by a high masonry wall. He ordered the large padlock that secured the gates cut; he did not have the time to wait for the key holder to be found. The Jews must have been quite a presence here once he thought surveying the ranks of broken overgrown tombstones dating back centuries. A grey stone passional crowned with a fine cupola stood in the centre of the graveyard surrounded by skeletal birch trees.

One of the Policemen yelled that he had found something. A trail of shallow indistinct prints led across the cemetery, made almost indistinguishable by the gently falling snow. Besides the tracks were the occasional fading scarlet spot. He ordered the men to draw their weapons and to shoot on sight. He was not going to attempt to capture this specimen with these amateurs. He recalled the infected little girl he once encountered in the Tomsk Oblast. Out of sentimentality they had tried to capture her and two good young men had lost their lives before he had ended her misery with a bullet to the head. He only hoped he could finish it today without losing any of these men. They had no idea what they were about to encounter.

He instructed the Police Chief to surround the small building with his men.
"With me" he told the local Chekists. They kicked the rotting wooden doors open. A rush of fetid hair hit them; the thick animal stink told him they had the right place. Shafts of light fell through the broken roof. The interior was a tumble of smashed furniture. The remains of an old fire and the number of smashed bottles indicated that indigents sheltered here at times. One of the agents shone a powerful flashlight around the room and he heard gasps as the beam alighted on a large pile of gnawed bones; some still bearing telltale shreds of cloth.

"It's here" he whispered, stepping into the room and signaling the others to be silent. He stood stock still; each sense alert, ready to react to the slightest murmur or movement in the air. He spun around as the sound of a window exploding outwards and frantic gunfire shattered the silence.

A bullet slammed into the wall six inches from his head as he leapt through the doorway.
"Idiots" he cursed the panicking policemen as he took aim and fired at the wild figure attempting to scramble up the wall. They followed his lead and started shooting in that direction. One of their number lay unmoving on the snow; his head half ripped from his shoulders. A shot hit the target in its shoulder and it fell out of sight behind the tombstones. He reloaded.

"Circle" he barked at the men, waving at them to move into position to entrap the target. This was the truly dangerous point, when it was injured and at bay. They approached carefully, Voroshilov using hand signals to move the men into position. He remained calm despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Suddenly a cry as one of the men was knocked backwards by the leaping beast. He caught the figure darting between gravestones from the corner of his eye and swung around firing. He never ceased to be astonished by their speed. They pursued it firing, the hail of bullets smashing into the splintering tombstones. He bellowed orders for them to maintain a safe distance and attempt to encircle it as they desperately reloaded. They had it trapped now in a corner of the cemetery and it bounded between and over the tombs in a desperate attempt to escape. It must have taken a dozen bullets before it fell; a half starved filthy wild haired man. Patches of thick matted hair covered its body and his thick yellow fingernails and sharp canines were grown inhumanly long.

"Careful!" he yelled "Careful!" as they approached gingerly. He kept his pistol fixed on it, alert for any movement, the slightest sign of animation. They were only a few meters from it now when in one blindingly fast motion it threw itself into the air at a young policeman who fired blindly into its stomach. It twisted like an angry snake across the snow in front of them. He saw into its red angry eyes as he jumped backwards just a fraction too slowly; he felt its teeth tear through his boot and sink agonisingly deep into his foot. He pointed his weapon down and fired; blood and brain splattering his trousers as its skull disintegrated.

Two of the men helped him to a tomb where he slumped down heavily. He waved them away as they started to fuss over his foot. He had no time to lose. He noticed the Police Chief was staring at him and he nodded back. The old soldier understood what this meant.

"I am infected with a disease termed Lycanthropy" he announced calmly to the shocked men. He gave the fat local KGB chief a number in Moscow to call immediately. He handed over his gun and took off his signet ring; dictating the address of a synagogue in Prague it was to be sent to. He ordered himself handcuffed and gave strict instructions to the nervous agents on how he was to be contained until a specialist recovery team arrived.

His blood felt like it was boiling. He was hot, disconcerted. Somewhere deep inside him he could feel a fury rising. His head was pounding. His teeth were beginning to ache. He knew the infection had already spread to every part of his body. He had often wondered what it was like to be infected; whether the self died or a small part of ones consciousness remained beneath the bestiality. Now he was going to discover for himself.

He noticed the men had formed a perimeter around him. Good, they were learning. He was dimly aware that the Police Chief had taken charge and he approved; the ex-military man would be capable of controlling him until help from Moscow got here.

It would not be long now. The Police Chief leant down and whispered in his ear.
"I could shoot you Comrade" he confided. "We will say you broke your restraints. Better that than becoming like him." He indicated the bloody corpse on the floor.
"Thank you my friend" he said "Thank you, but no. I have spent my life in service to the people; I have enough heart not to fail them now"

He could hardly think. His head was swimming. He was trembling uncontrollably. He wanted to retch. Why were his hands tied? His last conscious thought was that the pale winter moon still hung in the watery morning sky, and the horrified realisation that the distant howling he could hear was coming from his own violently writhing body.