Black Cat Weekly #52

Chapter 5

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The mosquito swarms, black, undulating, and infinite, stretched horizon to horizon over the Siberian wilderness. No instrument forged by man or God penetrated this terrible dark living fog. Not the headlamps of the police car on a lonely road, not the keen vision of the man at the wheel, and not the golden rays of a late summer sun.

The parasitic clouds were ravenous. Murderous. A man exposed would die in half an hour from blood loss, be driven mad by ten thousand bites well before.

Inspector Ilya Dudnyk, with a career on both sides of the law, was familiar with exposure, death, and madness in all their myriad forms. He was a cautious man, successful in sheltering the citizens of his oblast from violence and the oligarchs who employed him from justice. This afternoon, his most generous patron, Konstantin Aristov, he of the fashionable “lap tigers,” had summoned Dudnyk to Aristov Manor. The old man wanted to make some family announcement and needed Dudnyk as muscle in case things got out of hand.

Things often got out of hand at Aristov Manor.

Out here law was an import.

The drive to Aristov Manor was three hours from town through forests, tundra, and semi-swampland, but Dudnyk went alone without hesitation. The pay was worth the journey even with the eleventh plague of Moses in the air. Truthfully, he’d come at half the price. One afternoon out here earned him as much as a month of casework in the city. And the work was usually simpler.

If not safer.

Dudnyk’s police car rumbled through a flooded section of road, the mosquito haze rising like a mushroom cloud as the tires cut through the waters. God help him if the car floundered. The vehicle interior was sealed like a spacecraft and just as limited in air. The vents couldn’t be opened, or those tiny monsters would be inside in seconds. All that global warming, the newspapers said, brought longer summers, more melted ice, and left limitless still water for their breeding grounds. In one measly hectare were as many mosquitos as people on Earth. And there were 1.3 billion hectares in Siberia. Do the math. Like something out of the apocalypse.

The car cleared the water, the tires back on firm ground. Through the rearview mirror, Dudnyk watched the amorphous black shroud resettle behind.

Damn creepy.

His mobile rang. The office. “Yes, Ludmilla?”

The office.“Just checkin’ on you, Inspector. How’s the drive?”

“Air conditioning went out but almost there. Konstantin Aristov call again?”

“No... though I did want to alert you. There was a prison break at Kapitsa. A little after two p.m.”

“Well, the escapees won’t make it a hundred meters with these conditions.”

“Just one got away, stole thick clothes, fireman’s gear and several cans of repellant. It’s only thirty kilometers from Kapitsa to Aristov Manor. Survival’s not impossible.”

impossible“Might as well be three thousand with this plague. My money’s on the mosquitos.”

“Should I call the manor?”

“No. I’ll handle it. Take the rest of the day off, Ludmilla. I don’t want anyone disturbing us out here. Let the sewing circle know I’m off grid.”

“Yes, Inspector. Thank you. Good day.”

“Good day, Ludmilla.” Dudnyk hung up.

Curious. An hour into the journey, Konstantin Aristov’s lawyer had called Dudnyk’s mobile, said they’d captured an intruder in the manor. A woman. Insisted that Dudnyk arrive as soon as possible. Which he was, but this was still Siberia after all. Nothing is near.

Curious.He clicked his teeth in thought. This intruder couldn’t be the escaped prisoner. The timetables didn’t matchup. And Kapitsa was an all-male penitentiary.

Two people were out in this blight. Two who shouldn’t be. Three, if he included himself.

The mosquito clouds briefly parted to reveal an eerie array of jumping firelight and steady electric lamps ahead. The electric source radiated from the windows of the three-story manor complete with rotunda, Doric columns, and a second-floor veranda overlooking a gated courtyard.

Aristov Manor. As expected.

But it was the substantial firelight that surprised Dudnyk. An earthen moat had been dug around the estate’s perimeter, a deep trough filled with combustible material that sent flames and smoke into the air, the burning billows meant to drive off the insects in a swirling war of gas and swarm above.

With its flaming pits, gilded manor, and rising billows, the Aristov estate was like a narcotic dream of Hellish opulence, reminding Dudnyk of a painting he’d seen in the Hermitage called “Beelzebub’s Palace.”

Fitting. After all wasn’t Beelzebub “The Lord of Flies”?

But mosquitos would do.

The road wound around the estate margin towards the opened front gates, where an earthen bridge bisected the vaporous moat. Dudnyk’s car penetrated this smokey barrier, crossed the bridge into a yard populated with numerous buildings including an astronomical observatory, bathhouse, greenhouse, and what he knew to be animal pens. Here a private cell tower rose high into the smokey night, an antenna of sorts that allowed Konstantin Aristov to communicate with his vast empire from any point on the estate. The car then passed into the courtyard where an array of fiery mosquito-killing cauldrons lay as near to the manor as possible without risk of gusting winds setting it ablaze.

A compact three-wheeler with rent-a-car plates was parked along one side of the courtyard. A visitor. Or intruder. Either way out of place. The expensive cars of the Aristov family were housed in the main garage while the humbler vehicles of the staff were confined to another garage to the rear.

He took a photo of the plates with his mobile.

Dudnyk switched off the police car engine and emptied his last can of mosquito repellant, covering his exposed skin and applying a layer along collar and cuffs. Then he slipped on his gloves, donned a riot helmet brought for the occasion, and pulled his face shield down.