The Ultimate Death td-88

by Warren Murphy

  His lips were dry, his nose upturned like a pig's, and his almond-shaped eyes covered with the stiffest of skin parchment.

  "What did you say?" Gideon asked breathlessly, a sudden tightness in his chest.

  "Blood," said the purple Oriental for the fourth time, his lips coming off his yellow-stained teeth, and his eyelids finally rolling up.

  The Oriental's pupils were revealed, white as milk. Gregory Gideon could see that the other man could not. He was totally blind.

  It was the purple-skinned man's sudden emptiness of expression that inspired Gideon to move. All emotion had left the man, as if a spigot on his throat had opened and any feeling had coursed out of his face and into his torso. He had the dull, dead look of a shark as it sinks its fangs into its prey.

  "Missy," the Oriental hissed, and the radiant vision of femininity lifted her left hand.

  It seemed the most gentle of movements, as if she were directing a servant where to put her ice tea, but abruptly the girl's hand got between Gideon and the space between the two strangers.

  The health food entrepreneur stopped dead in his tracks when he felt her fore-fingernail slip beneath the flesh of his double chin.

  He had just glimpsed it as it slid beneath his view. It had been a half-inch long, with no color-only the gleam of some strength-giving polish. Its edge had been cut diagonally in a perfect line, like a guillotine blade.

  It was incredibly sharp and thin. So sharp and so thin that it slipped through two layers of his skin without igniting a single nerve ending.

  But he knew it was there. He felt it, like a dull pressure. It seemed to spread across his entire body, paralyzing him.

  "Hey!" Gregory Green Gideon said in surprise.

  "Don't worry," the girl said mildly. "I'm a trained nurse."

  Only then did he recognize her wardrobe. She had been too close, and he had been too surprised. It was a nurse's uniform. But now surprise had turned to shock, and she was holding an organic needle at the juncture where his head met his neck.

  "My nurse," said the strange purple man, now as close to him as she was. "For a quarter-million days, she had nursed me back from life-the life which the gweilo with tiger's blood had cursed me to. For five million hours, she toiled to return me to my natural place-amid the Final Death."

  Gideon's eyes were like pinballs, bouncing from one of the strangers to the other. He echoed the unfamiliar word. 'Gweilo'?"

  "Foreign devil," the strawberry-blond goddess translated with a smile. "Devil-man."

  Gideon started to protest, but the cuticle in his throat forced him to quiet down. "What," he whispered hoarsely, "are you talking about?"

  "You must forgive me," the ancient one said without apology. It was more of an order. "I am an old man, who knows too much of human ways. Although I cannot see I can peer into human souls, and I know what evil lurks there."

  Gideon frowned, wondering where he had heard that phrase before. He almost asked, but the implanted fingernail made him think better of it.

  "Why me?" he finally asked.

  The old Asian's long, thin, drooping eyebrows furrowed. "You must know," he said. "Can't you even perceive it?" His long, wide palm rose smoothly like an ornate kite, his fingernails looking even stronger and sharper than his nurse's. They came to rest lightly on Gideon's vest.

  Gideon was surprised by the man's gentle touch, and perfect placement. Although his white eyes were turned away, it was as if the diseased old man could see.

  "You are not of the stomach-desecrators," the pale purple Asian said. "Although I can smell the meat you have eaten, you are not one of them."

  "One of who?" Gideon said quickly, in panic. He looked pleadingly at the young woman, but her expression was as placid as an untroubled pond.

  "The stomach is the center," said the old man, lightly rolling a button on Gideon's vest between his middle and fore fingernails. "It is the house of all life and death. The soul dwells there. Destroy the stomach, and you destroy all. It is the death of the Final Death."

  There were those words again: "the Final Death." It was not where the old man was coming from. If he could be believed, or even comprehended, it was where he was going.

  "We are the holy saviors of the stomach," continued the old man with a sickly, unseeing smile. "We travel the earth as the living dead, punishers of all those who embrace meat."

  "Oh, God!" Gideon moaned. A cult, he thought. He had heard of these wild-eyed crazies who lived in the Catskill Mountains, but he had never encountered them.

  "No God," the old man intoned. "Only the Final Death." He brought his visage directly in front of Gideon's face. "You had promise," he told the frightened man. "You could have been one of us."

  The old man sighed leakily. "But the gweilo tiger must be punished. He must know the Final Death. He must become one with it."

  He turned his head until his large, delicate left ear was pointing directly at the girl's mouth, his white eyes staring at Gideon. "Do you remember?" the old man asked her.

  "Oh, yes," she said with a warm smile, and looked directly at Gregory Green Gideon. "I'm sorry," she told him pleasantly. "You're a nice man." Then she flicked her finger.

  All at once, Gregory G. Gideon could hear the sea. He could feel the wind off the desert. And far in the distance, he could see his wife Dolly waving at him. She had never looked more beautiful.

  Free of the fingernail in his throat, he stumbled away. His hands slapped the edge of the tureen, and he lurched over the edge. He caught himself just before his feet left the walkway.

  Odd, he thought. Someone was whistling. It was an odd whistling. Tuneless. Prolonged. But that wasn't possible, because both strangers were still talking.

  "The cutting of the lifeblood," the old man recited.

  "The slitting of the throat," the girl answered.

  "The release of the life-force," he continued.

  "The slicing down the stomach," she replied.

  "The destruction of the Holy House," he said.

  "The stripping of the carcass," she said.

  "The homage."

  "The Final Death."

  Gregory G. Gideon smiled. His mouth muscles could hardly sustain it, and his lips moved like weak rubber bands, but he smiled. He couldn't help it. The whistling was somehow relaxing. He felt every muscle in his being relax as it continued inexhaustibly. He had never felt anything like it before.

  Gregory Green Gideon never knew it was the sound of his life's breath escaping through the paper-thin slice in his throat, before the blood erupted through.

  All he knew was that suddenly the whistling was gone, and all his troubles were over. The swirl of scarlet he had been looking for was coursing down the side of the tureen and making a lovely ribbon of red in his Bran-licious Chunk Bar.

  After they had skinned the meat from the raw bones, and drank of his blood, the purple-skinned Asian turned his sightless eyes in the direction of the wind. He sniffed the air. Revulsion twisted his corpse-like features.

  "Missy," he asked, "what do your eyes see?"

  The redhead looked down into a verdant valley, her green eyes narrowing to grow hateful as a cat's. Her lips were now too red.

  "I see, Leader, a valley desecrated by a terrible place."

  "What kind of a place?"

  "It is a place of torment, of slaughter, where people wallow in outrage. Where men profit from unbridled inhumanity."

  The old Asian nodded. "And what is the name of this unholy abode?"

  "It proclaims itself 'Poulette Farms.' "

  The old Asian addressed as "Leader" nodded. "It is there that we will begin," he said, his piglike nostrils dilating before the scent on the wind, his blank eyes unwinking as a serpent's gaze. "And if our ancestors are with us, it is there that the House of Sinanju will end."

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo, and all he wanted was the popcorn.

  "Butter?" asked the bored youth behind the counter.

  "That's not butte
r," said Remo. No one paid any attention to him, since he was wearing black slacks and a black T-shirt. It was warm even at night now, so everybody was wearing T-shirts, jeans, and athletic shoes.

  No one paid any attention to his deep-set dark eyes above pronounced cheekbones, or his unusually thick wrists either. Any white man in this neighborhood had better be pumping iron-for his own good.

  Of course no one noticed that it was only his wrists which were "ripped"-as if Remo had been doing wrist curls eight hours a day for the last twenty years and no other exercise. Everybody in the theater lobby was an expert in the art of avoiding eye contact.

  The bored youth returned to the streaked, cracked-glass counter, and plopped down a cup the size of a small snare drum filled to overflowing with yellow-white kernels, completely coated in a shiny liquid.

  "Three dollars," the bored boy said in a bored voice.

  The sickly odor of the stuff attacked Remo's nostrils, making him grimace. "No butter," he said.

  The boy ignored him, until he realized that his outstretched hand was covered by neither bill nor coin. "Huh?"

  "I said, no butter," Remo repeated.

  The boy blinked. "Yes, you did."

  "No, I didn't. What I said was, 'That's not butter.' "

  The boy blinked again. "You said butter," he repeated stubbornly. " 'Butter' was in the sentence," Remo agreed, "but it was not used in the affirmative."

  The boy finally looked directly at him. "Huh?"

  "Hey, man!" barked a teenager behind him. "Get your friggin' popcorn and get outta the way!"

  Remo looked over his shoulder. A latino teenager in a leather cap with no bill, a baseball jacket, no shirt, plenty of gold chains, ripped denims, and oversized basketball shoes with loose laces stood there, exuding defiance. Remo's even gaze, high cheekbones, and thin lips didn't impress him. His expression of hostile sullenness seemed to have been cast in iron at birth.

  "I am trying to purchase popcorn," Remo said. "And it isn't easy."

  "He said butter," the counter boy added, as if they were on a TV court show and the tough in the leather cap was the judge.

  "That's not butter," Remo said more loudly. "It's flavored soy oil, and has the same effect as coating your stomach with 10W40." He pushed the huge cup back at the boy. "I want no-accent on the no-butter."

  The counter boy looked like he was going to complain again, but he saw no pity in Remo's eyes, and no patience in the tough's. "Okay, okay," he said, dumping the soiled kernels into a plastic garbage can. The only thing that cost money was the cup anyway. He went to scoop out another wad of popcorn.

  "No," said Remo. His tone stopped the boy in mid-movement. He looked up in annoyance.

  "Not that stuff," Remo said casually. "That's got a monosodium glutamate and salt mixture on it." The boy looked down at the popcorn as if it were poisoned. "The yellow stuff," Remo explained.

  "Yellow stuff?"

  Remo turned to keep the tough informed. "They pour the stuff onto the kernels while it's popping," he said. "It's supposed to keep it fresh, but all it actually does is make you thirsty, so you'll buy carbonated fructose water, which will make you hungry all over again."

  The hood in the leather hat looked him straight in the eye, his jaw jutting out. "You loco, man?"

  "No," said Remo. "I used to work in a movie theater when I was a boy. I know this stuff."

  What he wasn't telling them was that it had been this very theater where he had worked. As his employer might say: "That wouldn't be prudent." Even if a deep check of employment records couldn't possibly reveal the name Remo Williams. They had been pulled and burned long, long ago. After Remo Williams' death.

  The Rialto Theater in Newark, New Jersey, had fallen on hard times since Remo left to become a Newark policeman. It had been shut down the last time Remo had been on lower Broad Street, but some brave businessman had refurbished it just within the last three years.

  In that time the tile floors had cracked, the curtains had been ripped, the ceilings had grown dirty, and the lobby video games locked down with more chains than in an Alabama prison, but the remnants of its glory days were still there. No matter how many walls and increasingly smaller screens they installed to make ends meet, the Rialto still held memories.

  Remo remembered seeing Dr. No, The Three Stooges in Orbit, Psycho, and Gorgo here. He remembered his high school dates clutching at his arm, and how he had clutched at their shoulders, waists, and chests in response. He remembered the cuddling and kisses. But most of all he remembered the huge heroes on the big screen, taking on every kind of villainy and blasting it into eternity without ever losing their hats.

  "Take your damn popcorn and get the hell outta my way, man!" snarled the hood.

  Remo looked into the teenager's dead, defiant eyes. The tough was practically begging him to try something. He wanted any excuse to blow off the steam of the streets.

  It reminded Remo of his other life. He saw it behind his own eyes, as if it were one of the Rialto's movies. He remembered his trial for killing a pusher. He remembered the guilty verdict. He remembered the last meal, the long walk, and the cold strapping-in ritual at the electric chair, as if he had just come from it.

  And he remembered the switch being pulled.

  He remembered waking up in Rye, New York, at a sanitarium that looked like a cross between a computer factory and a high school. He remembered a tiny old man with wispy white hair and beard who could dodge bullets. He remembered the old Korean teaching him how to do it.

  Remo saw in the teenager's eyes the reflection of what he had become. "Here," he said, grabbing the popcorn tub from the counter boy's hands and giving it to the hood. "On me."

  The teen stared at him; first in surprise, then in distrust, but finally in grudging acceptance. "Needs butter," he grumbled, thrusting it back across the counter.

  Remo leaned on his elbow on the counter. "By all means," he said, gesturing to the counter boy. "Slather on the soybean oil."

  As the counter boy worked the antique butter pump, the latino youth sized up Remo. "You queer or something?" he spat.

  "You're welcome," Remo said pleasantly.

  "Yeah, yeah, gracias."

  When the transfer was complete and Remo had paid, the hood trudged away and the boy behind the counter heaved a sigh of relief. "Do you know who that was?" he asked.

  "No," said Remo. "Who?"

  The boy looked at Remo as if he were an alien. Then his expression changed. Remo could see that the boy realized that was what this skinny white man most probably was-to this neighborhood. "Only Tarantula," he said. "Head of the Spanish Spiders, that's all."

  Remo glanced after the hood in the hat with mild interest, but the teenager had already gone inside Cinema Three, under the sign that read TRANSFORMED TEEN TAEKWON DO TERRAPINS III: SHELL GAME.

  "No kidding?" he grunted to the boy behind the counter. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "But now that we're alone, let's make a deal. I bet you've got an actual, honest-to-god popcorn-popping machine in the back. How much would it take for you to make me some with nothing on it?"

  The boy looked at him with wonder, then greed. "Nothing?"

  Remo made a small space between his forefinger and thumb. "Just enough corn oil to pop it," he said. "But no MSG, no salt, no oleo, and no magic yellow powder, okay?" He pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

  The counter boy licked his lips. "It's going to taste awfully bland," he warned.

  "That's okay," said Remo. "I'm not going to eat it. I'm only going to smell it."

  The theater was already a cacophony of people shouting at the screen as Remo chose a row and carefully slid along the back of the seats in the row in front of it, lightly stepping on the sticky cement floor wherever there were no feet. The row's occupants were ready, even eager, to complain, but he gave them no excuse.

  Remo sat down, placing the tub in the middle of his lap. He looked up at the screen. On the billowing, patched white sheet was the blurry image of fo
ur humanoid sea turtles in polyurethane and foam-rubber suits. The scene shifted to Central Park at night. It looked just like Central Park by moonlight-except for the ninjas in the trees. They were more plentiful than the squirrels.

  Remo held the tub beneath his nose and took a big sniff.

  "Ah, that's good!" he breathed, taking another long inhalation of popcorn aroma.

  "Whatchu doin', man?" laughed a teenager beside him. "Think that stuff's coke, or something?" He turned to the man beside him, "Hey, Gomez!" he cackled. "Look at the anglo, man! He think the popcorn is some good blow!"

  "You wouldn't believe what they put on it nowadays," Remo told him flatly. "It'll burn out your insides."

  The boy laughed. "You're flyin', all right." He turned back to the screen. "Bitch is gonna get stuck now!" he shouted.

  Remo looked up. Sure enough, the sea turtles' very human and very blond sweet young girlfriend had been surrounded by ninjas near the Alice in Wonderland statue. Just another night in Central Park.

  "The bitch'll have to show them where to put it!" a raucous voice shouted. The entire house laughed. Except Remo.

  "You don't mean they're going to soil that girl's virtue, do you?" Remo asked in a loud voice, his tone mock-concerned.

  A voice laughed. "No man, they wanna pork her! Oink, oink, oink!"

  "Imagine that . . . ."

  Sure enough, just after the sweet young girl's shirt had been ripped a lone sea turtle showed up, and now the ninjas were circling him. Remo watched in a detached manner, wishing he could actually eat his popcorn.

  But his system was now too sensitive to suffer the sharp edges of the puffed kernels. Almost nothing but steamed rice and duck and fish had passed his lips for the last twenty years. He felt sad. What good was it to be the greatest assassin on earth, if he couldn't even eat a simple staple like popcorn?

  Cancel that: the second greatest assassin on earth. He was the latest in the unbroken line of Masters of Sinanju. A small, thin, wizened Korean was the keeper of the sun source of all martial artistry. It was this man, the Reigning Master of Sinanju, who had taken the fresh-from-the-grave Remo Williams and taught him proper breathing, correct diet, and more importantly, how to fully utilize the incredible powers locked in his sleeping mind and body so that he could become the enforcement arm for CURE, a government organization so secret only the President knew it existed.