The Ultimate Death td-88

by Warren Murphy

  He couldn't allow himself to become careless now. He still had to find the Leader.

  He pushed the heavy bench into the mob, then dropped it atop two male gyonshis. It burst the skull of one and crippled the second. Human brains oozed out like a fungus.

  Remo bent his knees and uncoiled his legs like a spring, launching himself into the air and grabbing hold of a branch of the oak that extended out over the path. When he felt its bark almost giving way beneath his fingertips, he brought his heels against the temples of two of the vampires, breaking their necks while using them as a toehold to scramble higher into the tree.

  Remo felt a slight breeze at his left calf. One of the gyonshi had managed to land a blow. An eight-inch gash had been slit in the back of his pant leg. It must have missed puncturing his skin by only a fraction of an inch.

  They ranged below him, staring vacantly up into Remo's eyes as he crouched on the branch, considering his next move. There were too many of them to try to jump beyond them. There must have been almost thirty still standing, among them several Three-G workers whom Remo recognized. He couldn't run the risk that a gyonshi at the edge of the crowd might land a lucky shot as he leaped to safety.

  Remo was considering other possibilities, and coming up empty, when he realized that he was not alone.

  There was someone-or something-in the tree with him.

  He spun on the branch, directly into the empty gaze of the late Gregory Green Gideon.

  What little flesh had been left on the body was now almost completely decomposed. Gideon's eye sockets were teeming with writhing maggots. His arms and legs had been tucked away, fetalstyle, inside the tree trunk with him. His splintery ribs reflected the white moonlight like a broken picket fence.

  An idea occurred to Remo.

  A few of the gyonshi had finally realized that they could climb up the tree after Remo. The first, the former Three-G manager named Stan, was searching out a toehold in the wide-grooved bark at the base of the tree when the first jagged rib landed.

  It spiraled downward like a makeshift boomerang, slipping between the gyonshi's own ribs and skewering his delicate heart muscle. Vampire and rib were hurled to the ground, impaled next to a mound of internal organs that had once belonged to an organic gardener from Batavia.

  "Not exactly wooden stakes, but I guess they'll do," Remo muttered. He plucked out a handful of Gideon's ribs like laths from a plaster wall, splintered the ends into rude points and let a half-dozen more fly at once.

  They speared faces and necks. The gathered gyonshi mob screamed and howled and shrieked and fell, but not one retreated. They surged around the oak like rabid wolves, their hands raised, their fingers extended in a last desperate attempt to infect Remo with the same deadly poison that coursed through their own veins and fretted at their dead, diseased brains.

  Remo threw the ribs with quick precision, until his supply ran out. There were several vampires left beneath the tree, standing among their gruesomely disfigured comrades. Remo used Gideon's shoulder blades and collar bones to finish off the last of the survivors.

  When there were no gyonshi left standing, Remo slipped from his perch and dropped lightly to the ground.

  He stood among the gyonshi mob, their bodies twisted, their mouths open in shock. Blood coursed from their newly formed wounds, soaking into the earth, mixing with the stagnant blood of their victims.

  Remo heaved a sigh, and removed the borrowed letter opener from his back pocket. He squatted down and began the distasteful task of slitting the throats of the undead, muttering, "An assassin's work is never done."

  Mary Melissa Mercy had never before seen the Leader so nervous. She had believed him to be incapable of raw fear.

  Yet here he was, his head shaking determinedly from side to side, his white, unseeing eyes opened wide in his purplish face. His self-confidence seemed to be oozing out of his coarse, dead pores.

  "You are fearful, O Leader?" she asked, hesitantly.

  The dead face jerked up at her, his eye-slits narrowing in a mockery of sight. "All has happened as you have described it to me?" he asked, indicating the rough location of the bank of television screens.

  "It has, Leader," she replied.

  He set his jaw thoughtfully, and was silent for a time. Then he said, slowly, "My Creed once ruled the Asian continent, Missy. And in that time long ago, in the subcontinent now known as India, a prophesy was made. A seer who fell victim to us prophesied at the moment of his death that the second coming of the Undead would come in a land yet unknown. And in that land, the last gyonshi would tremble at the sound of the voice of a god who was not the one God." His voice trailed off.

  Mary Melissa shook her head. "There is only one God," she said with certainty. "The God of our Creed, who bids us to punish the stomach-desecrators."

  The Leader's dead face sank, as the brain within his skull succumbed to dark thoughts. "This is the second time I have visited the Final Death on this land, and this is the second time I have faced the gweilo of the Sinanju Master."

  Mary Melissa's brow furrowed. "What would you have us do, Leader?"

  "Fight to the death, Missy. It is all we can do." His jaw snapped shut like a bony vise, and his thin lips pressed tightly together.

  The production floor of Three-G, Inc., was silent as a tomb. Moonlight filtered through the ceiling-to-floor windows, throwing a ghostly semi-light over the huge room.

  Remo left the door behind him open, as he padded quietly across the concrete floor toward the nearest metal staircase. He glanced up at the X-shaped catwalk that connected all four corners of the second-story level. He saw no one through the tiny diamond shapes that the catwalk flooring formed.

  He was slipping past the dormant conveyor belt when he saw a figure hiding in its shadow. It was definitely female.

  Remo recognized her from his last trip to Three-G: Elvira McGlone. He cleared his throat by way of warning.

  She spun around to face him. Even in shadow, her eyes were desperate and fearful, like those of a rabbit transfixed by the headlights of a car. Her face might have been enmeshed in the hypothetical car's grille.

  "Miss McCrone?" Remo asked. Her fingernails, including her index forger, were still coated in the same blood-red polish. She was not gyonshi. He was sure of it. Her index fingernails tapered to points, not edges.

  "McGlone," she corrected. With one hand, she attempted to adjust the lines on her tattered skirt as she rose to face Remo. She pretended nonchalance, while her body language screamed her fear.

  "Sorry," Remo said, taking a step toward her.

  "Don't come any closer!" Elvira McGlone hissed. Even before she wheeled on him, Remo knew that she was shielding a revolver in her other hand. "I swear I'll blow your brains out!" She waggled the weapon menacingly.

  "No bullets," Remo said, nodding toward the revolver, whose exposed cylinder chambers were like tiny caverns. It might as well have been a pencil sharpener. He glanced around the production room disinterestedly. He wondered if there were more vampires hiding close by. Waiting to pounce.

  "Don't test me," Elvira McGlone said. The gun-waggling had become more pronounced.

  "And don't kid me," Remo returned, reaching over to pluck the weapon from her hand. He flipped open the cylinder and shook it like a saltshaker. Nothing came out. "See? Empty." He tossed the gun away.

  Elvira McGlone started backing away, like a toy doll whose batteries have been inserted upside-down. She whipped two Waterman pens from a pocket of her mannish tailored suit and crossed them protectively before her.

  "You keep away!" she shrieked, pushing back into the conveyor belt. In her haste, she tripped over a plastic rubbish barrel and landed on her best side. Her backside. One of the pens rolled away out of sight.

  "Don't sweat it," said Remo, who, until this last manifestation of fright, had thought she couldn't possibly become any more repulsive. "I'm not one of them."

  "I don't care! Go away!" she said, groping her way to her feet.
>
  Remo reached down and took Elvira McGlone by the back of the neck. He hauled her to her feet, working her neck vertebrae with hard fingers until her body relaxed to nearly its normal level of tension.

  The fear drained from her eyes.

  "Let's have it," Remo urged.

  "They've been stalking me for days," she said, catching her breath. "I don't dare trust anyone."

  "Check out the fingernails," Remo said. He offered his hands to her, nail-side up.

  She studied them cautiously, her breathing still heavy. "Okay," she said uncertainly. "Maybe you are normal."

  "If I wasn't, you'd be one of them by now," Remo pointed out.

  "Okay, okay. You've sold me. just what the hell is going on here?" she demanded, her voice a hoarse whisper. She peered over the top of the conveyor belt behind her.

  "Would you believe me if I told you we're surrounded by vampires?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "A week ago, I would have thought you were as flaky as everyone else around here. But now. . ." she composed herself. "I walked in on them while they were turning some of the tourists Gideon brings through here into human slumgullion. That Mercy woman was at the center of it all. When she saw me, I ran. I've tried to get out, but they're watching all the doors. I've kept out of sight, changing hiding places when I can to fool them."

  "They're not very bright," Remo pointed out.

  Elvira McGlone nodded her head toward where her pistol had skittered away in the shadows.

  "But they're dangerous," she said wryly, "and you just tossed away our only protection."

  "It was empty," Remo said, moving toward the stairs.

  "That's because I took out six of them the first day," she explained. When he glanced back at her, she shrugged and added, "I worked five years in a New York ad agency." She followed him cautiously. "My survival skills are as sharp as a U.S. Ranger's."

  Remo hadn't gone up four steps before he spotted a small dark figure hiding behind one of the upright metal banisters. It was the emaciated tiger-stripe cat he had seen during his tour of the Three-G plant with Mary Melissa Mercy.

  It cringed in the darkness, its back arched, its mangy fur slowly rising like porcupine quills.

  Remo reached out to the creature. "You tried to warn me about her, didn't you, tiger?" he said gently.

  There was a gleam in the reflected moonlight. Something was wrong. It was the look in the animal's eyes. It was the same dead-eyed stare he had been given by his gyonshi attackers.

  The cat hissed and spat at Remo, lashing out with its poisoned claws.

  Remo allowed the animal to bound away. It flew backward off the staircase and into the production area, landing roughly against an opened electrical panel.

  The panel sparked at the cat's impact, casting a bright blue aura over the four enormous stainless-steel cauldrons on the main floor.

  The cat dropped to the floor, severely singed but alive. It struggled, finally found its paws, and limped off into the darkness.

  Remo could smell burnt fur. But there was something else. The orange smoke. Very faint. Not quite as much as from a human host. It dribbled up from the cat's tiny nostrils.

  The thin cloud rose eerily in the moonlight, then dissipated.

  Remo nodded his head in silent understanding as he mounted the stairs double-time. Elvira followed.

  They found themselves alone on the second level, overlooking the main production floor. The catwalk extended before and behind them into the shadows.

  "An old Chinese man," Remo said, turning to Elvira McGlone. "Have you seen him?"

  "Yes," she replied. "He spends most of his time with that Mercy ghoul. I think they're in the security room." She leveled a blood-red fingernail and added, "The metal door at the far end of the walkway."

  "Thanks. Now go back to the spot where we met until I come back for you." Remo was just about to move down the catwalk when Elvira spoke, her voice low and husky.

  "There's one more thing."

  "What?" Remo said distractedly, hesitating.

  "This." With a flick of her thumb the artificial nail popped off her index finger, revealing the chopped-off gyonshi guillotine edge. Before the red crescent press-on nail hit the floor, Elvira McGlone had slashed her hand in a perfect diagonal, opening Remo's shirt from shoulder to stomach.

  Eyes wide, Remo jumped back, only to find himself pinned against the railing, the production floor below him. He looked down at himself. No blood. She hadn't broken the skin. Elvira slashed out again. Remo leaned back farther, ready to grab her wrist as she withdrew. He never got the chance.

  The metal railing creaked and gave way. Too late, Remo noticed the shiny bright slits that the hacksaw had made at either end of the railing section. He toppled over backward and plunged toward a huge stainless-steel cauldron far below that was filled with shadows-and who knew what else.

  His mind exploded with a sudden grisly recollection.

  Didn't the gyonshi also boil their victim's blood in big pots before drinking it?

  Chapter 24

  At Folcroft Sanitarium, Dr. Lance Drew was losing a patient.

  "He isn't responding!" The replacement nurse's voice was full of tension and frustration. The heart monitor, which had been beeping like a video game with a nine-year-old Nintendo master at the controls, went quiet.

  "Pressure's bottomed out. He's arrested!"

  Dr. Drew grabbed the twin paddles from the portable heart unit next to the bed. "Clear!" he ordered. Beads of perspiration had formed on his forehead. As one, the medical team jumped back from the bed. The doctor placed the paddles on the pale, thin chest and shocked the heart muscle. He looked up expectantly at the monitor. Still flat-lined.

  "Nothing," said the second doctor.

  Dr. Drew clenched his jaw determinedly. "Clear!" he commanded again. He shocked the heart a second time.

  There was an echoing blip on the nearby monitor. Another. It was followed by a string of beeps.

  "Pulse is climbing!" called the nurse. "Heart rate increasing!"

  The body on the bed arched its back as if in pain, and began spewing a thin cloud of saffron smoke from its mouth and nose.

  "My God, what is that?" the nurse asked, incredulous.

  Dr. Drew gripped the paddles more tightly. He stared at the orange smoke as it rose in the air, spread across the acoustical ceiling tiles, and faded in the glow of the fluorescent light. He shook his head in awe.

  The second doctor looked up from the monitoring equipment. It was beeping steadily now. "Heart rate's back to normal," he breathed. He glanced toward the others, a look of intense relief on his young face. "He's out of it."

  All those in the room released their breaths-for the first time realizing they had been holding them.

  The team became engrossed with their patient once more, forgetting, for the moment, the strange phenomenon they had just witnessed.

  On the bed, Dr. Harold W. Smith's face relaxed, seeming more at peace than it had been in many years.

  Chapter 25

  The first danger, Remo knew, was the falling railing. It was sharp at both ends. Sharp enough to impale him if he fell on it.

  Remo slipped his fingers around the railing and, using his waist as leverage for his arms, twisted in midair to flick the heavy length of steel a safe distance away.

  He relaxed his muscles, and tucked his legs in close to his body in order to avoid any broken bones.

  And so fell neatly into one of the giant stainless-steel cauldrons.

  Remo landed on his feet, in darkness. The big object was empty. No blood. No floating bone or human matter. Just slick, shiny steel all around him.

  Too slick and shiny to climb. Remo prepared to run up one side, knowing that once momentum enabled him to reach the lip he could launch himself back up onto the catwalk.

  He was preparing to do just that when the production facility sprang noisily to life.

  All over the floor, lights lit and machinery began to roar at an e
ar-pounding volume.

  The floor of the tureen Remo stood upon began a relentless move inward on itself, spiraling toward a trio of narrow holes at its center. Razorsharp stainless-steel blades pounded into view above the holes.

  Obviously they had been designed to chop up something, probably an ingredient for one of Three-G's many health products, and funnel the residue down the production line. Remo was determined not to become one of those ingredients.

  He hit the spinning metal floor on his feet and leapt out of the deadly trap. At the same moment, a mass of hard-shelled walnuts was released from a storage bin directly above the tureen.

  They struck Remo like a dense, crunchy waterfall and carried him back inside the cauldron, where the deadly blades continued to whir remorselessly.

  He slid on the floor, feeling the inexorable drag toward its center. He pulled himself to his feet with difficulty. The undulating sea of brown walnuts had buried him to the chest. He could feel the vibrations of the shells as they were crushed beneath his feet.

  The jump would be more difficult now. The sound of whirring Servo-Motors came from somewhere in the ceiling high above. He tried to steady himself but felt his legs gliding slowly inward, like water to a drain.

  The whirring sound above him abruptly stopped.

  Remo did not even have a chance to push off the floor when the second mass of walnuts fell. For a second he scrambled amid them like a drowning man, but the pull from below was too great.

  As the machinery continued to rumble its cacophony of death, Remo allowed himself to be dragged to the tureen bottom.

  One hand shot up, like that of a drowning man, only to sink back beneath the crunchy morass.

  Elvira McGlone released the controls, turned to the nearest TV monitor, and gave a thumbs-up sign. Her eyes were dead.

  Mary Melissa Mercy smiled tightly. "The gweilo is no more Leader," she announced.

  The Leader leaned forward, the swaying motion of his head lessening as his expression tightened. "You see his body, Missy?" he asked, a trace of eagerness adding an edge to the rasp that was his voice.

  Mary Melissa Mercy peered more closely at the television monitor. The noise from the production floor poured out of a tinny speaker at the end of the console. All she could make out in the fuzzy black-and-white image was the shifting pile of walnuts. There was no sign of the gweilo, Remo. "He has vanished below the surface, Master. But no one could survive the chopping blades of that machine. Not even one of these impure Sinanju duck-eaters."