The Ultimate Death td-88

by Warren Murphy

  The Ultimate Death

  ( The Destroyer - 88 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  As people begin dropping dead after consuming Chicken King poultry, the Destroyer and his omnipotent Asian mentor begin to suspect that a vegetarian vigilante is on the loose.

  Warning: Death is bad for your health

  The great health-food movement in America was a victim of fowl play. Folks who had switched from prime beef to pure poultry were winding up dead meat. The country's Chicken King was squaking at the top of his lungs, the flesh-starved citizenry was yelling blur murder, and Remo and Chiun were the only one to know that a vegetarian vampire was on the loose. But even the indefatigable Destroyer and his omnipotent Oriental mentor did not know how to stop this friend feasting on cold vengeance and warm blood...

  Destroyer 88: The Ultimate Death

  By Warren Murphy apir

  Chapter 1

  On the day they suspended his disemboweled body from a tree and drank his salty blood as it bubbled, still warm, from his red, open throat, Gregory Green Gideon was worried about his country's salvation.

  There was a terrible irony in this. Gregory Green Gideon believed in health. It was his abiding passion. Yet his unexpected evisceration was destined to enable the greatest menace to the health of the United States since the swine flu to flourish in the very temple Gregory Green Gideon had consecrated to saving America from dietary perdition.

  Like most true believers in a great cause, Gideon was not born into his faith, but was a convert to it.

  Right up to the very day he quit the Happy Face Ice Cream Company of West Caldwell, New Jersey, to start his own health food concern in the wilds of Woodstock, New York, Gregory Green Gideon had been an unrepentant marketeer of solid sugar frozen foodstuffs. His was a career that blazed across much of the fifties and sixties-the Golden Age of Sugar in American life.

  It took his wife's massive coronary to show him the light.

  After years of swilling soda and popping bonbons-not to mention slurping down a Happy Face flavorbar after every meal-Dolly Gideon's blood-sugar level was exceeded only by her prodigious weight. She tried diets, starvation, and even a quadruple bypass, but ultimately, her 472 serum cholesterol level brought her down like a blubbery redwood.

  Despite her gross looks and grosser eating habits, Gregory G. Gideon had loved his wife. He turned away from her headstone, and then from Happy Face, one dreary autumn day in 1971, and never looked back.

  Besides, the handwriting was on the sidewalk. The streets were becoming infested with drug pushers. Parents refused to allow their children to run down the road waving money openly. It was only a matter of time before the jingling neighborhood Good Humor trucks would go the way of the icewagon.

  Happy Face ultimately went retail-only to be aced out by gourmet ice creams, which already had their percentage of supermarket space locked up tight. "Confections" and "glaces" with such exotic names as "Hagar Flaven" and "Bordeaux Creme" would supplant mere ice cream-even though they were made in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

  No, the future lay in health foods, Gregory Green Gideon decided. He tore up his pension, threw away his ties, burned his wing-tips in a potbellied stove, and moved into an environmentally friendly log cabin in New York State. There he was, forty-five, short, paunchy, and balding-the absolute image of the stereotypical salesman as played by any number of middle-aged New York actors-about to embark upon a frightening new sugar-free life, like a pioneer of old.

  His years of food sales experience ultimately stood him in good stead. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that people buy food for three reasons. First, to stay alive. But once you got past that, there remained only the two sides of the eternal food coin: because they thought it would taste good, or, more importantly to Gregory G. Gideon, because they thought it was good for them.

  Gideon had spent a lifetime convincing the public of the former. Now he was out to convince them of the latter. He started with a single product: a strange fruit-and-nut bar made by Violet Nussbaum, an old woman in neighboring Bethel, New York. She would grind up figs, dates, and mandarin oranges, cement them together with honey, then mix in ground-up chestnuts, pecans, and acorns. She called it the "Mysterious East Bar," and tasting it was like rolling around Yellowstone Park with your mouth open.

  Gideon bought the rights to mass-produce the thing for seven hundred and fifty dollars. Within a year the old woman had passed away, and Gregory G. Gideon's "Fru-Nutty Bar" made its fetid debut under the Three-G label.

  To say it was an immediate success would be stretching the truth, but like Gideon, the Fru-Nutty Bar had staying power-and a strange, barky aftertaste. He kept pushing, and the public kept tasting.

  The new health food manufacturer was amazed. Every fiber in his ice cream-oriented body told him he was committing commercial suicide by mainlining a log of strangled fruit and nuts, but he broke even within a year. Within two, he was making a tiny profit.

  Revitalized, Gregory Green Gideon put his marketing skills to work to find out exactly why anyone in his right mind would buy-let alone eat-such a thing.

  He commissioned a private poll. Gideon quickly learned that health faddists don't think food is good for them unless it tastes bad. They liked the Fru-Nutty Bar because it looked, tasted, and was named so ridiculously. It made them feel somehow stronger for having consumed the unconsumable, like brushing their teeth with salt and baking soda.

  Gregory followed up his original offering with the new, Vitamin C-enriched Cee-Fru-Nutty, which made them pucker. Then came the new, oat-packed Bran-Fru-Nutty, which made them constipated.

  Either way, the customers knew they were getting what they had paid for. Gideon patently refused to make the eating experience more palatable with a chocolate covering or the more fatty nuts, like cashews, and said so right on the label. In fact he eventually took out the honey, and replaced it with a truly revolting soybean paste. It had a nice sheen to it, though.

  Word soon got around health food circles that Gregory G. Gideon wasn't fooling anybody. He wasn't selling "lite" products that were actually "hevy." He wasn't hiding lower calories behind higher fat content.

  He was giving his public exactly what it wanted. There was no stopping him. The initial snack bars became an entire line of Fru-Nutty supplements: Fru-Nutty Chips snacks, Fru-Nutty Smoothie drinks, Fru-Nutty All-Grain Burgers, and even bite-sized Fru-Nutty Suckers.

  Gideon was stunned by the amount of money that poured in, and he plowed it back into Three-G, Inc. He went from a rented storefront to a run-down factory, then from a ten-year-old warehouse to a brand-spanking-new office and manufacturing building built specifically to his requirements.

  Unlike Happy Face Ice Cream, which was housed in a vintage World War II building that would have made Rosie the Riveter nostalgic, the Three-G Incorporated building was all clean, shaded glass, with alternating solar heat panels in a checkerboard design. It was built in the shape of a square, with a small park in the center like a carob-and-pistachio center.

  On the last day his blood warmed his own body, Gregory Green Gideon stood before one of the picture windows, contemplating what he had wrought. He stared out at the little grove nestled in the middle of his headquarters, the ultramodern glass panels shielding the ultraviolet and infrared rays of the sun from his eyes. He watched as the fruit trees and nut bushes swayed in the early morning wind. He smiled tightly at the thought of them taking nutriment from the very ground where his wife and elderly benefactor lay.

  "To everything," he hummed, "turn." His loved one had died, to be buried in the earth, to serve as sustenance to the insects-who themselves were crushe
d into the dirt to feed the foliage. Then the trees and flowers grew fat with fruit, only to fall to the ground and feed the earth once more.

  All I do, Gideon reflected on the day of his death, is interrupt the cycle somewhat. I take the fruit of the dirt, grind it up, and feed it to my fellow man.

  And they ate it,, too. No matter how bad it tasted. But-and this was a big "but"-not, contrary to popular belief, no matter how bad it looked. And therein lay the problem of the day.

  "Turn, turn, turn," he muttered, suiting words to action. He now faced the top of the giant silver tureen. He stood on one of the elevated walkways of his manufacturing division. They formed a big square around the edges of the room, then made an X between the four mixing vats that stood twenty feet high in the space.

  He stared with a tight frown at the tureen top, his hands behind his back. "There is a season," he sang, taking a jaunty step forward. Between him and the tureen was a small table, upon which was a small plate, upon which was a single portion of the product which was being mixed in the vat at that very moment.

  Gregory G. Gideon looked down at what he was promoting as a "Bran-licious Chunk Bar."

  "It looks like a cow pat," he complained to his staff. They could only look stunned and stare reproachfully at each other while clutching clipboards. "You call that a Chunk Bar?" he asked, motioning toward it. "We can't call that 'Bran-licious.' " He pinned his top researcher with a stare. "What does that look like to you?" he demanded.

  Despite his years of testing products that would make bulimia seem a viable alternate lifestyle, Gideon was still small, rotund, and balding. He had the shape and demeanor of a child's clown punching bag. The kind with the smiling face and round red nose. The kind that, no matter how hard you hit it, rolls back upright with the same pleasant smile.

  The researcher lifted his square granny glasses, poked his sharp nose at the flattened, lumpy brown thing on the plate, and sniffed. "It looks," he said dryly, "like a cow pat."

  "Exactly," said Gideon. "Exactly. And there's no way we're going to rename this 'Bran Turd.' When I say 'Bran-licious,' I mean 'Bran-licious.' "

  "What's the difference?" wondered a firm, female voice.

  The air conditioning seemed to get cooler, and quieter. An unspoken gasp hung in the air, like a popped soap bubble. The group parted like the Red Sea to reveal Elvira McGlone, the head of marketing.

  Gideon had gotten her straight from Manhattan's prestigious University School Of Business. They turned out corporate warriors who were as tight as hemp and as tough as railroad spikes. They produced graduates who could convince the Nazis they lost the war only for lack of effective PR.

  McGlone was no exception. And Gideon liked that. Truth be told, he had recruited her because the rest of his staff were retrograde hippies hibernating in Woodstock. She stood out among them like Teddy Kennedy trying to pass himself off as one of the New Kids On The Block.

  The entire staff were in lab coats, but beneath those all was jeans and flannel. McGlone was in a tailor-made Lady Brooks suit that might have been stitched around her as she stood fuming impatiently. Her dark blond hair was tied in a bun so severe people swapped unfounded rumors of a face-lift, and her makeup seemed to have been applied by a sharpened tongue-depressor. Her expression might have been chopped from ice. She made the word "sexy" sound like a curse.

  "Mr. Gideon," she replied in a condescending tone, "if only you'd let me show you how to position your products in the marketplace."

  "I already know our 'position in the marketplace,'" Gideon said testily. "We are the company with the solid product. Not," he stressed, "the hard sell." Then he added, his voice acquiring an edge, "I don't want a new ad campaign, I want a Bran-licious Chunk Bar!"

  He stared at them. And they stared back. They stood that way for a full fifteen seconds before Gregory G. Gideon blinked. "Oh, go on. Go on," he said, waving them away. "Get out of here. We'll mix it in yogurt cups and freeze it if we have to."

  The others mumbled their full support and shuffled out the side door.

  Only McGlone remained behind to try to reason with Gregory Green Gideon.

  "If only you'd put in a little more glucose . . ." she began.

  Gideon sighed. "Ms. McGlone," he said. "You still don't understand. Our customers don't drink a product simply because the latest singing star is being paid to do so. Our customers don't eat a product just because they see a dozen dancers in leotards singing their hearts out on television. They're the kind of people who read labels. They're the kind of people who notice the word 'glucose,' and its positioning in the ingredients list. And if it's anywhere other than the very, very last, they don't put it in their bodies. And, what's worse for you and me, they don't buy it." Her face still wasn't registering anything but stiff impatience. He tried one last time-not knowing it was truly the very last time.

  "Ms. McGlone-Elvira," he pleaded. "We are not selling cola. We can't take something of no nutritional value and create a sensation through packaging and promotion. We're selling physical well-being here, not peer pressure. We're selling self-control, not self-destruction. Turn your thinking around. I know it tastes bad, but it isn't bad. In fact, if you eat enough of it, it actually begins to taste good."

  It was useless. There was a "gone fishing" sign inside the frosty blonde's eyes. She was deep inside her own head, double-checking her mental market-share.

  "Think about it," he said anyway.

  "I'll write a report," she replied tightly, and turned away, removing her white jacket in defiance.

  Gideon watched her go, eyeing with curious detachment her firm, workout-toned rear beneath the tight, tailor-made skirt. Shaking his bald head, he turned away.

  The sun warmed his face, and the garden blew in the upstate breeze. He inhaled deeply, feeling the expensive shirt, knotted silk tie, and tailormade, three-piece suit give with the breath. No piece of his wardrobe was cheap, or itched. He had money in his pocket and in the bank. He had a solid company, and a future.

  Life wasn't bad. No, it wasn't bad at all. If only he could figure out how to make this brandung look like a bran bonbon.

  Gregory G. Gideon put his hands on the edge of the giant tureen. The stainless steel felt thick and cold to the touch, creating its own strange comfort. He looked down into the lumpy brown mass, and tried to think like a health nut.

  What did the mixture require to make it work? Gideon closed his eyes and saw a vision of Fru-Nutty Balls, wrapped in recyclable paper, with the G.G.G. imprint on the flat bottom of every single one. He imagined hands pulling open the paper seams to reveal a crunchy, chunky nugget of fiber, fruit, and pasty nuts, all held together with . . what?

  "Color."

  For the first time in years, Gregory G. Gideon began to think in color. There was more to the health food life than pasty white, deep black, sticky brown, or shades of gray. There were blueberries, and yellow corn, and oranges, and ripe red strawberries.

  Gregory G. Gideon saw red. Ruby-red apples. Rich red cherries. Rose-red raspberries. He saw a swirl of red curling through the Bran-licious Chunk Bar. He saw the scarlet vein corkscrewing up along the sides of the circular muffin, giving it just a touch of sin and holding it together.

  But what should it be? he wondered. Which berry should it be?

  "Blood," a raspy voice intoned from somewhere in the room.

  Gregory G. Gideon blinked. "What?" he said.

  "Blood," the raspy voice repeated.

  Gregory Gideon turned around, his hands still on the tureen lip for balance. He found himself staring into the face of the most beautiful girl he had seen since his wedding day.

  She was as different from Elvira McGlone as a gem was from a rock. She shamed McGlone's sex. There was absolutely no purpose for McGlone to be a woman as long as this creature existed. Her hair was red-strawberry blond, in fact. Her eyes were green. Her nose long. Her lips curled in a tiny perpetual smile. And freckles danced across her smooth flesh.

  She was a vision in whi
te. She was dressed all in white; from the tip of the strange cap nestled in her fiery mane, through her zip-front dress, down her stockinged feet, to the bottom of her sensible white shoes. She was absolutely lovely.

  But she was not the one who had spoken. She couldn't be. That voice had been raspy and thin, with a singsong tone. It had ended, even the single word, with a slight sound of complaint that grated on the ear.

  "And who might you be?" he wanted to know.

  She smiled down on him, a half-foot taller, and not as far away. Her curling lips curled all the more, and she said in a husky whisper, "Mercy."

  Gideon was stunned, and enraptured. She was a sensual wild child, as natural as McGlone was packaged. She wore no makeup, but still her eyes shone, her lips were soft and inviting.

  All manner of questions came immediately to mind, but what he said was, "What do you want?"

  He immediately regretted it. Because that other voice returned, repeating what it had said before.

  "Blood."

  The beautiful, wild-haired girl with the cosmetics-free face stepped aside, looking over her right shoulder. As she gave way, another figure appeared. Standing in the center of the elevated walkway was a hunched, sunken-cheeked, emaciated Asian man.

  He wore a black gown with ornate red piping that went from his chin to the bottom of his sternum. The ends of his sleeves and hem were likewise decorated with intricate red weaving. But that held Gideon's attention only for a fleeting second. What was most interesting was the skeletal man's head.

  His hair was thick around the fringe of his skull, although the crown of his scalp was totally bald. The hair was long, coming to his shoulders, and a strange color of steel-blue. His skin tone was dark, and an equally strange color, as if he had a disease.

  Gideon remembered that one of his wife's distant relatives had a fluid disorder, which flushed her flesh almost green. This man seemed to have rust inside him, because what once must have been pale, even yellowing, flesh, was now a deep, sickly purple.