"And so it came to pass, in the year of our Godseem one thousand, nine hundred and seventy two, that Wayne Alexander Metcalf the Third sought enlightenment from Godseem."

 "But he did not do so with humility in his heart. He entered the House of Godseem bearing weapons, attacking and slaughtering the servants of Godseem that were present. A lowly pilgrim was in attendance, humbly asking for an audience from Godseem by way of an ancient and revered totem. Disregarding the pilgrim's right to be heard, Wayne Alexander Metcalf the Third took the man's totem and told his minions to expel him."

 "Wayne Alexander Metcalf the Third approached the Altar of Godseem with a heart filled with envy, greed, and lust for power. He declared to Godseem, 'Hello Gadzeem. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wayne A. Metcalf, the third. And I am your new master.'"

 "But Godseem does not take kindly to arrogance, or brutality."

 "Instead, Godseem smites."

 It was then that the Doctor noticed that the zombies were occasionally stooping to the ground for something. As they bent over, he saw a distinct lack of mind control devices on the backs of their necks. Something subcutaneous, perhaps?

 He watched as one of the stooped-over zombies pulled a plant from the ground, straightened up, and continued lurching forward. Each of the others did the same, stopping at what seemed like random points along the rows of corn to pull plants -- mostly dandelions -- out of the ground and deposit them neatly by the cornstalks.

 They were weeding the cornfield. The Doctor decided to change his approach to them.

 "I say, could I have a word with one of you?" Some of the zombies looked up at him briefly, but then returned to their work.

 The group was still methodically moving through the cornfield toward him, weeding as they went. The Doctor cautiously moved toward them, watching closely for any reaction to his presence. He tentatively put his index finger on the neck of the closest zombie. Unsurprisingly, there was no pulse, and no reaction from the zombie.

 The zombies appeared to be fanning out slightly as they proceeded, suggesting a common point of origin rather than a common destination.

 The Doctor shook the mind control devices in his hand, deep in thought. Where to go from here? Examine the source of the walking dead, or trace the signal from the Master's devices?

 As he was thinking, one of the scarecrows struggled to its feet. Instantly reassuming his defensive posture, the Doctor watched as the rest of the Master's pawns also stood up. The blank looks on their faces remained, but almost as one they shambled forward and joined the other zombies in their weeding.

 Curiouser and curiouser. The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, and prepared to examine the mind control devices more closely, when all of the zombies stopped moving suddenly. As one, they straightened up and turned almost 180 degrees. Their lurching gait quickened, and they almost trotted back the way they came.

 "Well," the Doctor commented to himself as the former scarecrows pushed past him, "This is rapidly becoming a great deal more queer than I'd expected." His curiosity piqued, he began to follow the zombies.

 About half a minute into their trek, a burst of automatic gunfire came from behind the Doctor.

 The apparition swooped down upon him, rage boiling on its intangible surface. For a moment, Metcalf could have sworn he'd heard something like "HERETIC!" screamed into his mind, but the presence of Gadzeem was so oppressive and confusing he couldn't be sure. He brought the stone he'd taken from the Master in front of him in a futile gesture to protect himself, a fraction of a second before he lost consciousness.

 "Is it really right for us to be in here?" Jo asked. "This is private property, after all."

 "As soon as the walking dead and the trigger-happy lunatics are gone, I'll be more than happy to apologize to whoever owns this house." Turlough unbuttoned his jacket, and took a seat on an upturned bushel. "Now, Mr. Tyler, I trust you have some sort of strategy for getting us out of this situation ...."

 "Please, call me Ken." Tyler -- Ken -- flashed a smile at Jo and Tegan. Turlough rolled his eyes. "For the moment, I thought it was best for us all to get out of the line of fire. I recognized you --" He nodded towards Jo. "-- from the briefing that Filer gave me about the help he was bringing in."

 "You were Filer's partner?" Tegan asked, immediately covering her mouth.

"Yes. What do you mean, 'were'?" Realization dawned on Ken's face. "I see. Filer's dead."

 Jo nodded. "I'm sorry."

 "It doesn't matter." Ken waved away the matter of Filer's death with a chilling offhandedness. "There'll be time for mourning later," he said, in the same tone a child promises his or her father to take out the garbage.

 "So, what do we do now?" Turlough asked.

 Ken thought for a moment. A subroutine in the well-hidden implant behind his ear provided the answer: keep the Doctor's friends busy and out of the way.

 "For now, we wait until things quiet down outside, then we head to the Lancaster office and regroup."

 "Borelli, Atkins. Go find out what that was. See if Mr. Metcalf needs any assistance. Wilke, take Borelli's place."

 The prisoner looked towards the church, still making sure to keep on Johnson's good side. "It sounds as though your superior may have found more than he bargained for. Always dangerous, dictating terms to entities who believe themselves to be deities."

 "I don't recall asking for your opinion." By this time, Johnson had emptied the prisoner's pockets (what looked like a marital aid, a collection of tiny circuit boards, a tiny palmtop computer and a roll of cash so thick it could choke an elephant), and was placing their contents into a safebox. Wilke seemed to be doing a fairly diligent job covering the prisoner.

 "I don't recall you forbidding it, either."

 "Name."

 "What?"

 "What is your name?"

 The prisoner chuckled. "Do you know who I am?" Johnson was about to reply when he looked into the prisoner's eyes. There was something strange about them. "I ..." the prisoner began, as a splitting headache descended upon Johnson. All he could say was "No. I don't know who you are."

 The prisoner blinked, and Johnson's headache was gone. "My name is Norman Brown," the prisoner said in his Pittsburgh accent. "I really don't have any idea what's happening. Could you explain it to me?"

 Johnson was about to tell Brown to shut up, but at that moment, Atkins and Borelli dashed out of the church. Atkins swiftly slid next to Johnson and took his place covering Brown, while Borelli pulled Johnson away from the truck.

 "Sir, there's a problem with Mr. Metcalf."

 "What kind of problem ...?"

 At that moment a garbled scream of rage issued from the church doors. Johnson turned to see Metcalf standing on the church's front porch, energy streaming from his superior like water from a surfacing sub. "INFIDELS!" screamed Metcalf, shooting a bolt of lightning from his fingertips. It hit Borelli between the soldier's eyes, leaving nothing but a stump projecting from the end of his neck.

 "Cover!" shouted Johnson, diving for the truck even before he could theorize what had happened inside the church. The other soldiers, well-trained as they were, complied instantly.

 "How dare you defy the sanctity of Gadzeem's home!" Johnson cowered behind the tailgate of the truck, trying to come up with some kind of strategy to defend himself from a superior who'd been possessed by some kind of demon. They certainly didn't teach that one in the academy. He listened as another blast of energy impacted against the side of the truck. Against the side that the fuel door was on.

 Johnson dove behind a tombstone a fraction of a second before the truck went up in a huge fireball. He didn't have time to register the fact that the grave next to him was open, and plunged in headfirst.

 Pain broke across his back, but he forced himself to at least try to move. No nerve damage; it seemed like he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. The violence from Metcalf's position seemed to have died down, and Johnson tentatively poked his head out from behind the tombstone, quickly taking in the scene and ducking back down again.

 Metcalf had been calmly standing in the center of the truck explosion with a figure in front of him laying on its stomach. Dead? Unconscious? Johnson listened carefully, and heard whispering. "Mighty Gadzeem, forgive those who have rashly acted against you. Your new form confuses them, and they deserve a chance to better know you."

 Johnson peeked again, now realizing that it was Brown who was prostrating himself in front of Metcalf.

 "Mr. Johnson!" called Brown. "Order your men to come out and kneel before the man they knew as Metcalf."

 Johnson thought for a moment. "Do it." He shouted, clambering out of the mouldering grave. Slowly, he and his men approached Brown and Metcalf and knelt on one knee. It seemed to pacify Metcalf - or Gadzeem, or whoever it was.

 "You see, Mr Johnson?" Brown asked in a whisper Johnson was sure only he could hear. "*This* is how one deals with a god."

 He pushed open the doors of the barn and walked into what he'd come to know as "the console room." "Master, I have news. Zook's --" Anthony broke off. The Master was standing with a group of the violent Englishmen, with their leader standing in the center of the room radiating a strange energy.

 Englishmen? The same people whom the Master had promised to rid Paradise of? What were they doing here? And why was the Master being so courteous to them? A thousand questions came into Anthony's head simultaneously, but before he could voice any of them, the Master dashed over to him and whispered "Later."

 "Gadzeem, Mr Johnson, let me introduce an associate, Kevin Anthony." The Master continued seamlessly. "I was just explaining to Mr. Johnson what exactly happened to his superior." He guided Anthony to a chair and pushed him into it firmly.

 "Mr. Johnson's employer, Mr. Metcalf, attempted to command the most holy Gadzeem into servitude, but I'm rather afraid it backfired quite severely. Metcalf's consciousness was displaced, and the most holy Gadzeem commandeered his body." The radiant Englishman nodded.

 "The vessel of Metcalf is insufficient for such a being as Gadzeem, and so I have agreed to procure Gadzeem a new body, thus enabling him to act in a much greater scope and much more securely, while simultaneously allowing Metcalf's consciousness to return to his own body."

 "So whose body did you have in mind?" Johnson asked.

 "Oh, I have a body prepared. A very special body. If you'll come with me, gentlemen." The disparate group followed the Master deeper into his TARDIS.

 He was trapped inside the altar.

 It was a living hell. Existing only as consciousness with no sensory input whatsoever. It took only minutes for panic to set in, and Metcalf would have driven himself mad if he hadn't realized that he'd gained control over the zombies.

 That was what was being wafted under his nose. He'd recognize it anywhere. It was a specific brand, in fact, but he couldn't seem to recall what it was.

 "Hershey. It's barely a stone's throw from Lancaster, so I took the opportunity to procure a few samples." The Doctor opened his eyes to find the Master staring down at him with a bar of chocolate in his hand. "I know you like the stuff, so I thought I'd make your last unaltered moments pleasant for you."

 "What is it now?" The Doctor rolled his head up to meet the Master's gaze. He was alone, but the Doctor could hear voices just outside.

 "I'm afraid this is goodbye. I have a Godseem just outside, waiting to take up residence in your body. Of course, to really cement its connection, I need to make sure you're in a state of temporal flux. Changing your past in a significant way should accomplish just that. A big enough change -- like making sure your third incarnation regenerates before he's scheduled to -- should be sufficient."

 At times like this, there was only one thing the Doctor could think about. "Tegan, Turlough?"

 "Ah. I'd almost forgotten." The Master removed a palmtop computer from his pocket and spoke a command into it. "Tyler, you may kill them now."

"NO!"

 "Very sorry, Doctor. Most holy Gadzeem, if you'll come in now? We're ready for you." A glowing energy being who'd taken on the form of an overweight man in his mid-50s entered the room."

 The confusion in his mind almost overpowering him, the Doctor could only say one thing. "Don't do this, Koschei. I've seen the path that this takes you on. I've seen your future."

 "And I've seen yours, Doctor. Believe me, I'm doing you a favor by erasing it. Mr. Johnson, I trust you've given your men the description of the earlier Doctor? Tell your men that they can shoot on sight."

 To Be Continued