A caravan of nondescript, black sedans and large armored trucks turned steadily onto the old dirt road leading into Paradise. Among their number traveled a lone black limousine, conspicuous as the center of power.
Wayne A. Metcalf, III, took one last puff from his cigar, then pitched it out the window. He cranked the window handle, and the tinted black window began to rise. Wayne A. Metcalf, third of that name, wasn't the kind of man to worry about accidentally starting fires. In fact, he had personally seen to the torching of many buildings believed to be the headquarters of enemies of the state. He stared out the window emotionlessly as the Pennsylvanian farm land rolled past outside. It had been a long, hard climb to the top. Well, he wasn't exactly at *the* top yet, but that would come in good time. He had come a long way from his days as a U.S. Army private fighting Nazis in World War II. After the war, he had returned to his hometown of Gainesville, Texas, and joined the police force as a staff detective. An observant eye and a no-bull attitude had lifted him through the ranks until thirty years later he was a secret Assistant Director of one of the government's most important federal agencies. Mr. Metcalf shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the limo slowed down to pass an Amish buggy. He hadn't managed to retain his muscular physique after all these years, but then again he didn't really need to. He had several hundred agents at his disposal to do his fighting for him. He just gave the orders. And didn't take any crap from anyone.
The convoy of vehicles reached the center of the small Amish town and stopped. Methodically, car doors opened, men in suits or black uniforms stepped out, and car doors slammed shut. SWAT team soldiers wearing bullet-proof vests and riot gear jumped from the back of the armored trucks. Amish residents, dressed in plain-looking clothes, stared in curiosity or fright at this invasion of their peace and tranquility. The rear door of the black limo opened, and Wayne A. Metcalf stepped out. His cowboy boots kicked up dust as his 5' 11", 250-pound frame rested on solid earth. A gaggle of agents stood patiently, waiting for Metcalf to give orders. The residents stared on in silence.
"Let's see what these people are made of," Metcalf said softly to his assistant, Agent Johnson. Together, with a crowd of agents in sunglasses covering them like Secret Service agents, Metcalf and Johnson strode up to the General Store. A man with a long beard and straw hat stood on the wooden porch, arms folded, eyeing their approach with a hint of disdain. Metcalf waddled up the wooden steps and stood before the plain-looking man.
"Can I help you?" the man said. It was difficult for Metcalf to tell whether the man was sincerely polite, or trying to hide his anger. At any rate, it irked him that this man wasn't intimidated by Metcalf's show of force.
"Yes, you may," Metcalf replied. "We're here to investigate some murders that have been reported here recently. You wouldn't happen to know anything about these murders, would you now?" Metcalf doubted that a man like this could be capable of poking another man in the eye, let alone murdering someone, but you never knew -- there could be some town-wide conspiracy going on, or some strange pagan rituals. He'd seen weirder.
"Nope. Don't know nothin' Ôbout any murders," the man said, and then turned around to go back into his store as if losing interest. Metcalf motioned to his agents, who quickly grabbed the man and turned him around to face Metcalf. The man didn't struggle.
"Well, Mr. Passive Resistance . . . you won't mind if my men search your store then, will you?" The Amish man stared stonily at Metcalf, and shrugged his shoulders. Metcalf nodded his head toward the store and stepped out of the way as a handful of black-uniformed henchmen darted into the store and began rifling through it, knocking jars of vegetables and bottles of homemade maple syrup to the floor and smashing down the wooden door leading to the store's interior. The man looked on, and couldn't disguise the anger beginning to build inside him. Metcalf laughed to himself. All he needed to do was provoke one of these timid sheep into attacking him, and that would be all the excuse he needed to storm this little town and take his true objective.
"What happens in our town is none of your business," the Amish man said, looking at the ground. Metcalf walked right up to him and raised the man's chin to stare into his scrawny little face.
"It is now," Metcalf replied.
"What power gives you the right to do this?" the man said, keeping his voice remarkably neutral, but showing the anger in his eyes. Metcalf stared down into those searing eyes.
"Richard M. Nixon, President of these United States of America gives me the goddamn power." Metcalf pulled a black wallet from his pocket and flipped it open in the man's face. "Can you read these letters, son? F-B-I. That stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I'm here to investigate the hell out of this little backwater. And if you don't want to cooperate, then you might be joining your murdered friends." He shoved the Amish man backward into the wooden wall, and turned around to stare at the townspeople watching in shock and horror. As one, they all turned and went about their business.
"Don't pretend you didn't hear me," Metcalf bellowed to the townspeople. "The sooner someone comes forward and speaks up about what's going on around here, the sooner we'll leave your little hamlet in peace. Otherwise, we might just leave it in pieces." The townspeople pretended to ignore him, but he knew that they all had heard him, and were terrified. Good.
One of the agents, wearing a dark gray suit, emerged from the store. "The store's clean."
"Good," responded the boss. "Take some of your men and Ôsearch' some of the houses. That should intimidate them enough to stay out of our way." He walked down to where the SWAT teams stood patiently, surrounding their vans. "Get ready to move out. Who has the map to the old church?" One of his henchmen unfolded a map on the hood of a car, and Metcalf examined it, trying to decipher its symbols.
"There's our objective, gentlemen. Your orders are to take the church intact. Do *not* destroy anything inside. That's the center of all this funny business." The men saluted, and climbed back into their trucks. Metcalf rubbed his hands in glee. None of his men knew the real reason for their mission here. That intercepted CIA transmission about the local murders and disappearances had provided the perfect cover for his long-planned strike. Soon he would have all the power he could ever need. The power of a genie.
The sound of a branch snapping caused the Doctor to turn around. He saw shadowy figures moving through the trees toward him yet again. The Doctor sighed and dropped back into his fighting stance, ready to battle even more of the scarecrows. But as the figures emerged from the trees, the Doctor realized that they weren't scarecrows. They looked like the Amish men and women that lived here, dressed in plain clothes. But as they came closer, the Doctor could see that their clothes were covered with blood and dirt, and their faces were decayed, with blackened flesh hanging off of the bone. They shambled toward him with an unsteady, unnatural gait.
They were Amish Zombies.
Her thoughts began to drift back toward the death of her and Turlough's Doctor. The other Doctor's companion, Jo, was moping alongside of them. Tegan had to stifle a giggle at the woman's pre-disco clothing, more than ten years out of date. Of course, it wasn't out of date to Jo, but Tegan wouldn't have been caught dead wearing clothes like that in the eighties. It was surprising how much fashions could change in just ten years. Tegan wondered how strange and futuristic her neon-colored clothes looked to the short Brit. Jo was probably stifling a laugh as well.
"Look -- there's a phone," Jo pointed out. Tegan found the idea of a pay phone in Amish country suspicious for a moment, but realized that it was probably used by the occasional tourist, or the less-pious Mennonites in emergencies. Jo hastened her step toward the phone booth, and Tegan and Turlough followed. As Jo opened the door, she gasped in shock and bent down. Tegan and Turlough crowded in to see what she was looking at.
It was the shrunken body of a man dressed in a suit. Jo was stifling a tear. Turlough turned around in disgust. "Of all the dirty . . ."
"Did you know him?" Tegan asked. Jo nodded and began to sob.
"His name was Bill Filer. We met him earlier," Turlough explained.
"He worked for the American CIA," Jo explained through her tears. "He's the one who informed us the Master was here in the first place."
"Why did he do it?" Tegan shouted. "Why does he go around killing people like this?!" She kicked the side of the phone booth, and felt herself near to tears. "He comes to this innocent little town, plants mind-control things on these technologically impaired people, kills the Doctor -- our Doctor --" she corrected herself, "kills this poor man . . . when is it going to end?!?" She pounded her fists against the telephone booth door.
"The Doctor will stop him," Jo said softly. The others looked at her. "Well, it's only logical, isn't it? If he survives to become your Doctor, he must survive this and take care of the Master's schemes, right?" Turlough and Tegan looked at her uncertainly. The Doctor must have done a really good brainwashing job on her for her to put this much faith in him. Tegan could never have that much faith in the Doctor. Not after what had happened to Adric . . . .
"Maybe you're right," Tegan responded. "I wish our Doctor was still alive, though. The two of them together would have been more than a match for the Master."
"Yes, but they never could have met. Or have you already forgotten the Blinovitch Limitation Effect?" Turlough observed snidely to Tegan. Tegan still didn't trust this alien boy who had so recently tried to kill the Doctor at the Black Guardian's behest, but he had a point. She had almost forgotten the energy released by the two Brigadiers on board Mawdryn's ship . . .
Tegan and Turlough came to the realization at the same time.
"When the other Doctor touched the doll --"
"-- the Blinovitch Limitation Effect didn't work --"
"The Doctor's still alive!" they exclaimed in unison.
Jo looked on in confusion, not understanding a word they were saying.
"Never mind," Tegan said by way of explanation. "It would take too long to explain. Take our word for it -- *our* Doctor's still alive! We've got to find him!"
"That's wonderful!" Jo exclaimed, then looked down at the shrunken corpse in her hand. She remembered that not everyone had been as lucky as her new companions' friend. "Excuse me just a moment. I need to make a phone call." She went back into the phone booth, and picked up the receiver. She listened for a moment, then pressed the bar several times and clenched her eyebrows in confusion.
"What's the matter? Do you need money?" Tegan said, reading the label above the coin slot on the phone that read "$.10."
"No," Jo replied slowly, hanging up the receiver. "The phone line is dead."
"Probably the Master's work," Turlough hypothesized. "Let's try to find him -- he probably has our Doctor."
"I still have this energy detector that my Doctor gave me," Jo announced, pulling an object from her pocket. "I found a really strong energy source at the old church. It might be the Master's TARDIS."
"Let's head there then," Turlough decided. They had begun to walk down the dirt road towards the church when the silence of the town was shaken by screams coming from a house nearby.
One of the agents smiled and grabbed the woman's arm. "Things must be pretty boring out here. What do you do for fun? Want me to show you some fun?" He snickered, and the terrified woman tried to pull her arm back. The young girl shrieked again, causing the other agent to pick her up and place a hand over her mouth. "Let's all go outside, shall we?" the first agent suggested.
As they went outside, a man confronted them with a pitchfork in his hands. "Let her go," he requested.
"Ezekiel!" the woman yelled.
"I don't think so," the agent replied. He tugged on the woman's arm, and the man with the pitchfork came toward the two G-men. He raised the pitchfork.
And the agent holding the girl shot him in the leg.
Ezekiel went down.
Ezekiel's wife screamed. "What did ye do that for? He wouldn't have hurt ye! He was just out pitching hay!" The little girl struggled against her bonds.
*You will be punished for your sins.*
"Who said that?" asked the first agent.
"I said that!" yelled the woman.
"No, the Ôsins' thing. Did you hear that, Phillips?"
"Yeah."
The woman looked at them as if they were insane. Tears were running down her cheeks.
That was when the zombies emerged from the forest.
"Let's find out!" Jo replied.
They ran toward the house from which the screams had come, ducking under rows of black, brown, and blue outfits hanging on lines outside to dry. They came to an abrupt stop when they saw the shuffling figures mulling around the yard.
"What are they? More of the Master's slaves?" Tegan asked angrily.
"Let's go see."
A young girl in a plain blue dress and bonnet ran screaming away from the zombies who were surrounding a man dressed in a gray suit. An Amish man lay on the ground with a gunshot wound to his leg, and another non-Amish man lay on the ground, smoke rising from his body. The man still standing emptied the contents of his semi-automatic into the body of one of the zombies, yet still they came. At last, one of the zombies grabbed the man, and he screamed in agony as smoke began to rise from his searing flesh. The man's scream died away as he fell to the ground in a scorched heap.
"What are they?" Jo gasped.
"I don't think they're the Master's," Turlough observed. "They don't have mind control devices on their heads."
"Let's get out of here and find the Doctor -- Doctor*s*," Tegan suggested.
"Psst!" whispered a voice from behind a row of bushes they were passing as they ran.
They turned toward the bushes, where a man stood up, peeking over the flora. "Are you with the CIA, or UNIT?" he asked them.
"Yes," Jo replied. "What's going on?"
"A lot more than anyone thought." The man emerged cautiously from the bushes, and they could see he was wearing a light-gray suit with big lapels, similar to Filer's. "My name is Tyler. I think I might be the last CIA agent alive in Paradise."
The Master knelt before the stone altar and raised his hands, as if in prayer. "Gadzeem, Gadzeem, I summon thee. Appear before me!"
The old church shook, and some plaster fell from the ceiling. The Master could hear the sounds of shuffling creatures behind him, but he didn't turn. Not yet.
"Gadzeem! In the name of all that is holy, I summon thee! You cannot resist the call of the sacred objects to which you are bound!" The Master dropped the ancient Indian stone from his hand onto the altar. The building shook again, and a white mist began to gather above the altar.
The sounds of shuffling zombies was frighteningly close behind him now. The Master spun around, coolly pulled the Tissue Compression Eliminator from inside his elegant black suit jacket, fired twice, and shriveled the nearest two zombies into tiny husks. He spun back around, blowing on the end of his TCE as if to cool it.
The entity had nearly materialized now. Soon it would be in the Master's power.
"Welcome, Gadzeem --" began the Master, but he was interrupted by the sound of gunfire from outside. This hadn't been part of his plan. It couldn't be the fools from UNIT or the CIA -- he had already dealt with them. Someone else must be making a play for the genie, for their own purposes . . . .
A stained glass window smashed in as members of Metcalf's SWAT team descended inside by rope, and soldiers in riot gear fought their way into the building, destroying zombies with hand-held machine guns and grenades. The battle was over in less than a minute.
The Master stood surrounded by soldiers with guns trained on him from all sides. He raised his hands in surrender, knowing he could never fight his way out with just his TCE. He soon realized that the soldiers weren't staring at him -- they were staring at the apparition which had materialized behind him.
The Master was about to turn around when a large, heavyset American wearing a suit and cowboy boots strode through the door, chuckling. "Well, well, well," the man drawled, walking down the aisle toward the altar and the Time Lord, "it seems someone nearly beat me to the prize."
"May I be of service to you?" the Master asked in a very convincing American accent. He could feel his hold on the situation slipping. His only hope was to ally himself with this dangerous American until he could betray the fool and capture Gadzeem for himself. He could feel the energy from Gadzeem beating down upon his back. Trapped between an asteroid and a hard place.
"I don't think so," Wayne A. Metcalf, III, replied. "Boys, take him out to the truck." The Master made a break for his TARDIS, but was captured by over-zealous agents who knocked him senseless to the floor. Metcalf strode up to the altar, to where the glaring white genie glowered down at him. He picked up the ancient Indian stone which the Master had dropped there.
"Hello, Gadzeem. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wayne A. Metcalf, the third. And I am your new master."
TO BE CONTINUED