The Wrong Stuff td-125

by Warren Murphy

  Before his eyes the smooth black side panel of the van began to bulge. It was as if something from within were exerting enormous pressure against the vehicle's metal shell. The bubble swelled like a cancerous growth, extending out toward the side of the armored truck.

  And as Martin watched, dumbstruck, a nub appeared in the side of the massive bulge. With impossible speed, it sprouted out into a slender black leg. It was joined by another, then another.

  The eight legs grew with time-lapse rapidity. As soon as they were fully formed, the body popped free of the metal from which it had been born. As it clung to the side of the van, the huge spider legs twitched and stretched, seeming to test their own strength.

  Another bulge formed at the top of the round body. This one formed not a leg, but a compact oval. Slowly, the fat nub at the end of the thorax turned to the armored car. And for Martin Riley, stunned amazement turned to abject horror.

  It was a face. Or half a face. One eye, a mouth, a nose. Even indentations where the ears should be. The thing that looked at him from out of that hideous body wore the head of a human being. And its single, soulless eye was staring directly at Martin Riley.

  "Sweet Jesus," Martin breathed.

  "What?" Chuck Kaufman complained. He was straining across the driver's seat to see what Martin was staring at.

  "The thing!" Martin yelled, his head snapping around. "That thing from the paper! It's out there!" A squeal of tires.

  Martin spun back around.

  The van was spinning out of control. Dropping back into two lanes of oncoming traffic. It hit the jersey barrier, flipping onto its side, bouncing back over. Sparks flew as it careered into a speeding station wagon. A minivan struck from the other lane, spiraling nose to tail.

  Tires screeched as the pileup began.

  The SecureCo truck sped away from the crash. Martin was blinking fear as he studied the mirror. Cars crashing. Smoke.

  All rapidly shrinking in the distance. No sign of the spider.

  A flash of something large in the side mirror. Skittering along the drab green shell of the armored truck. Martin's stomach melted when he saw the big black legs crawling quickly around the rear, out of sight.

  "What the hell just happened back there?" Chuck was asking as he glanced at his own side mirror. His eyes grew wide. "My God!" he breathed.

  A tractor trailer had just raced around a distant curve toward the pileup. Too late to stop.

  The air horn bellowed as smoke poured from locked tires. Jackknifing, the trailer whipped around, flipping up onto the pile of stacked cars.

  The explosion was massive and instantaneous. A plume of orange streaked with curls of angry black erupted high into the clear blue Florida sky. Speeding from the scene, the armored car rattled. With a sinking feeling, Martin knew it had nothing to do with the explosion.

  He plowed on.

  "Holy shit, Riley," Chuck breathed. His eyes were stunned as he spun back around. "We have to stop!" Martin was still hunched over the steering wheel, sweat beading on his forehead. Not only did he not slow down, his foot pressed harder on the accelerator. "Get out your gun," Martin ordered.

  "What? Riley, we have to-"

  "Get out your gun!" Martin screamed. One hand on the wheel, he wrenched his automatic from his hip holster.

  His urgency was a spark that hopped between them. Confused, Chuck pulled out his own gun. The truck rattled again.

  This time there had been no explosion to mask it. The pileup had already vanished behind them. Chuck glanced at Martin. "What is it?" he asked, realizing now that something was terribly wrong.

  A long, torturous shriek of metal erupted from the rear of the truck. It was followed by the sound of gunfire.

  The fear now large on his face, Chuck scampered to his knees, sliding open the panel between cab and back.

  When he peered through the bulletproof Plexiglas, the shocked gasp that rose from deep in his belly struck a note of raw primal fear.

  Something huge scampered freely around the interior of the truck. Crooked legs stabbed like black elbows from a rounded body. And in two of those legs was the third member of their team.

  As Chuck watched, the spider lifted the man high in the air, one leg ensnaring his head, the other his chest. When the spider tugged, head went one way, body the other.

  Beyond the creature, the twisted door gaped onto the vacant highway. The spider flung the bloody body parts out onto the racing tar.

  Behind the steering wheel, Martin saw the decapitated corpse bounce away behind them.

  "What do we do?" Chuck begged. He was still staring through the narrow sliver of Plexiglas.

  The spider seemed to zero in on his voice. The head with its one ghastly eye turned his way.

  "Kill it!" Martin yelled.

  As soon as he spoke he heard a sharp crack. Twisting in his seat, he found that the bulletproof panel had been shattered. Through it, a single thin leg jutted in from the rear of the armored car.

  The leg had impaled Chuck Kaufman through the eye, burrowing deep into brain.

  Chuck just hung there, slack jawed. Blood thinned with ocular fluid streamed down his cheek.

  And as Martin watched, numb, the first inquisitive rip of the long black leg appeared from Chuck's dead ear.

  Martin slammed on the brakes.

  The speeding armored car jumped to one side, skipping down the jersey barrier. It screeched and sparked and dug a furrow half a mile long before it finally came to a stop.

  Before it had even stopped completely, Martin had popped the door. He fell out of the cab, slamming onto the concrete barrier that divided the two opposite highway lanes.

  The fall broke two bones in his arms. Despite the pain, he managed to get up and run...directly into the path of oncoming traffic.

  Fortunately for Martin Riley, he didn't feel the impact of the car that struck him. There was a numbness. A sense of lifting, of movement. Then nothing at all.

  The force threw Martin back against the concrete barrier over which he'd dropped a moment before. Even as Martin's lifeless body collapsed to the tar, the concrete block against which he'd been thrown shuddered.

  On the other side of the barrier, the SecureCo truck pulled back onto the empty highway.

  The gouges in its side were gone. As it sped away, the rear door that had been wrenched apart with inhuman force was once more intact.

  It raced quietly away from Martin Riley, who in the last minutes before his untimely death finally realized that his daughter's friend had been right all along.

  The bogeyman was real.

  Chapter 12

  When Remo and Chiun returned to their rental car after leaving Santa's Package Store, Remo suddenly noticed the newspapers he'd left in the back.

  "Oops, I forgot," he said. "As long as we've got mail to send, might as well kill two birds with one stone."

  Grabbing up the pile, he quickly skipped through them. With the sewing-kit scissors he'd bought he snipped a few articles. He stuffed the rest of the newspapers in a rubbish barrel at the side of the road.

  He returned to the car, placing the articles on the back seat. From the passenger side the Master of Sinanju stared at him in suspicion as he pulled out into the thin traffic.

  "You are up to something," Chiun observed.

  "Yep," Remo replied. "I'm up to twenty-seven in a twenty-five zone. Lemme know if you see a cruiser. I hear these Florida cops are a real pain in the ass." Chiun's frown only deepened when he saw Remo's thinly satisfied smile. As they drove, the old Korean tried to sneak a glimpse at the clippings.

  Reaching over the seat, Remo snatched up the articles, stuffing them in his pocket.

  "This is my hobby, not yours," he warned. "If you want a peek, maybe you could tell me what was so important for you to think about that you couldn't talk to me for a week."

  Chiun's face was bland. "I was thinking that you were an idiot," he replied.

  "You've thought that for years," Remo pointed out.
>
  "Yes, but I had never devoted the time necessary to delve into the many-layered depths of your idiocy. I was astonished, Remo, to find that in one week I only plumbed the surface. I fear that it is a project that will consume much more than the meager days that remain to me."

  "I'll hire a biographer," Remo droned. "And just for the record I don't believe you, and if you keep being nasty I'm never gonna tell you what I'm doing. So there."

  "Why should I care what moronic things you do to waste your stupid time?" the old man sniffed. "And perhaps if you kept your dull round eyes on the road and your paws on the wheel you would notice when we are being followed."

  Remo had noticed the black van, too.

  It had pulled away from the curb with them, trailing them from the liquor store. Remo decided to test to make sure. He slowed. The black van with the tinted windows slowed. He accelerated. The pursuing van kept pace.

  "Whoever's driving isn't that inventive," Remo commented. "You'd at least think he'd pretend to not be attached to my bumper."

  They were passing an office-supply store that advertised a FedEx pickup. Pulling into the parking lot, he steered around the main building.

  The van followed close behind.

  Cutting alongside the buildings, Remo stopped in the empty back lot. A storage trailer was backed up to the loading dock. Nearby, trash littered the ground around a green Dumpster. Graffiti adorned the store's rear wall.

  Once it cleared the side of the building, the black van picked up speed. It squealed to a stop just as Remo and Chiun were climbing from their car.

  Side panel and rear doors sprang open.

  When the six men emerged from the dark recesses of the van, it was all Remo could do to keep from laughing out loud.

  The men looked like extras from a low budget scifi movie. All were dressed in silvery white jumpsuits. Matching gauntlets and boots covered hands and feet.

  From big plastic holsters that were slung low over their waists, the men removed chintzy weapons that could have been manufactured on a Hollywood back lot. The ray guns were covered with blinking plastic knobs and gold stripes. The men aimed the funnelshaped ends at Remo and Chiun.

  "Halt!" one of the men commanded. His jumpsuit extended up around his head, forming a silvery skullcap through which peeked his face. Like his companions, a slender microphone stretched out in front of his mouth.

  "I wish this dingwipple town would make up its mind," Remo complained to the Master of Sinanju. "Is it trick or treat or deck the halls?"

  "Do not ask me," Chiun replied. "I recognize none of this nation's heathen seasons." His narrowed eyes were focused on the ray guns.

  Remo had noticed the same thing that had caught the eye of the Master of Sinanju. The blunt end of a very real .45 stuck menacingly from the open end of each plastic gun.

  "What were you doing at the liquor store?" the leader asked. A badge on his chest identified him as Major Healy.

  "Are you kidding?" Remo asked, his tone flat. "Have you looked around town? With all this Christmas cheer up the yin-yang, drunk's the only way to get through the day."

  "Negative," Major Healy said, shaking his head. "That's a nonresponsive answer." His ray gun rose higher. "Why were you there?" he pressed.

  Remo looked from gun to the major. Finally, he turned his attention away from the gunman completely.

  "We need to save one, Little Father," Remo cautioned the Master of Sinanju.

  "Why?" Chiun asked disdainfully. "America is not running low on fools."

  "They might know something," Remo insisted. "And we've been crossing our wires on this lately. So just make sure you let me save one of them, all right?"

  "You may do what you wish with yours," Chiun sniffed. "Just keep them away from mine."

  As they argued, Major Healy's head bounced back and forth between them. He leaned back when he found Remo's extended finger pointing an inch away from his face.

  "Just so we're clear on this, I'm saving Marvin the Martian here," Remo warned the Master of Sinanju. "Don't kill the one with the really stupid look on his face, okay?"

  "I will do my best not to confuse him with you," Chiun said. "However, I make no promises."

  "What do you mean, don't kill me?" Major Healy said, sneering. "In case you didn't notice, I'm the one with the weapon."

  "Oh, yeah," Remo said. "Yoink."

  All at once the major felt a lightness to his gloved hand. When he looked down, he found that his gauntlet was empty. More horrifying, when he glanced back up, he found where the handgun had gone.

  Remo held the gun in both hands. "Haven't you heard toy weapons promote real violence?" he admonished.

  As he spoke, he squeezed. The plastic that encased the handgun turned brittle and cracked. Underneath, the very real metal gun seemed to grow rubbery. With a groan of metal Remo twisted the gun until barrel kissed stock. When he was through, he tossed the horseshoe shape over his shoulder. The gun landed in the overflowing Dumpster on a pile of cardboard boxes.

  "Swish," Remo Williams said, smiling.

  A shocked expression blossomed on Major Healy's face. He fell back, bumping hard into the side of the black van.

  "They are hostile!" he yelled. "Enforce directive two and eradicate the enemy!"

  The other five men were arranged in a fanning arc. At the shouted order, the group tightened around Remo and Chiun. Gloved fingers clenched firmly on triggers.

  The man nearest Remo almost fired. The instant before he did, he saw a flash of movement. The world became a blur.

  Remo grabbed the gunman by the collar of his silver space suit. The man went from zero to sixty in half a heartbeat. So abruptly was he launched that the g-force pulled back his face into a smiling grimace as he screamed through air.

  "To infinity and beyond!" Remo exclaimed as he swung the man straight into the side of the van. Van went bong. Head went splat.

  "Pay attention," Chiun warned. "You will not lay blame at my sandals if the wrong fool turns up dead."

  As he spoke, the old Korean's hands flashed out, long nails perforating the belly of the man nearest him. So fast and precise did they move that not a mark or tear appeared in the space suit. The man realized something was wrong only when he felt his organs grow heavy inside his suit. With an audible slurp, organs slipped from the razor slit Chiun had sliced in the man's abdomen. Like a frog negotiating its way through a snake, the wet bag of organs slithered into the thighs of his trousers. By the time the blood began to bubble out the tops of his boots, the man had already pitched forward onto the ground.

  Remo was inserting the broad plastic end of a ray gun into another man's mouth. "Anyone wanna tell me who they work for?" he called to the others.

  "Don't tell him anything!" the major commanded, cowering near the van. "We've got the prime directive to uphold."

  "Suit yourself," Remo said, slapping the gun butt. The weapon formed a new holster in the gunman's cerebellum.

  There were only two men left. Quaking in his space boots at the side of the van, Major Healy suddenly realized which way the solar wind was blowing.

  "We're compromised!" he yelled, diving into the back of the van. "Initiate self-destruct!" Frantic hands rolled the side panel door shut.

  Remo and Chiun had taken hold of the two remaining men. Human cargo in hand, Remo windmilled right, Chiun, left. When they let go, the men whirled like loosed tops. Twin spinning blurs, the two men twirled straight into each other, bodies meeting with a bone-shattering crunch. They struck with such force that their bodies fused into a single fleshy unit. An undertaker would need an electric carving knife to cut the men apart.

  Remo spun away as the silver-wrapped bundle of arms and legs collapsed to the ground.

  The van door through which Major Healy had disappeared remained closed. The cab was empty, the engine silent. As he approached the side door, Remo heard the sound of knees scuffing across the floor.

  "Ground control to Major Asshole," Remo called, reaching for the
silver handle. As he did so, he heard a small click from the interior. A roar flooded in behind it.

  A few yards away the Master of Sinanju's weathered face flashed sudden alarm.

  "Remo!" Chiun shouted. Even as he yelled, his kimono skirts were billowing as the old man raced for cover.

  For Remo, it was already too late. The explosion came too fast for him to flee.

  The van erupted in a ball of flame. And as the panels blasted apart with horrifying force, Remo felt his body being thrown back by the leading edge of the mighty shock wave.

  Chapter 13

  There wasn't time to dive for cover. No time to outrun the blast that had erupted from the van's interior. Remo didn't even try to fight it. There was no point. It would be impossible to resist a force so powerful.

  When the hot leading wave pummeled his chest, he allowed himself to be flung backward, joining with the force of the fiery, violent surge of energy.

  All around him swarmed deadly daggers of hot twisted metal. The remnants of the van moved with him, keeping pace. For what he had to do Remo knew there was no margin for error. He would either survive or he'd be shredded to hamburger by the shards of flying metal.

  As he soared through the air, fingers of flame raced out after him, singing the hair on his bare forearms. No matter. The fire was irrelevant. The flames would recede before they caused any real damage.

  The roof of his rental car flew beneath him. As it whipped by, Remo was already stretching out the toe of one loafer. He caught the upper door frame of the car.

  Flex, push.

  His speed increased. Even as the force of the explosion began to die he continued to accelerate.

  The Dumpster flew up. Remo caught the lip with one extended hand, latching on tight. Up and over, he whipped behind the safety of the waste receptacle, his soles brushing lightly to the trash-covered ground.

  Metal fragments pounded the far side of the Dumpster.

  Beside him crouched a familiar wizened figure. "What, Remo, did you learn from the one you saved for questioning?" the Master of Sinanju asked blandly.

  Remo's face was sour. "From now on I'm saving a spare," he groused.