Chiun had vacated the cab and was standing by the darkened swimming pool.
"I assumed you wanted the rest of the rabble to remain unassassinated," he commented. Behind him approached the party crowd.
"You let them take the taxi?" Remo asked.
"And the knives from the sleeping staff," Chiun said. "It was either that or kill them all."
"You know, it's not like it was one extreme or the other."
The mob, armed with knives confiscated from the unconscious kitchen crew, fanned out to create a half circle around its prey. Remo and Chiun were trapped with the swimming pool to their backs.
"Let's finish this up! I wanna go dance!" complained a young woman in a pink halter top and a short pink skirt, accessorized with a gold navel ring and a stainless-steel boning blade.
"Can we assassinate them now?" Chiun asked.
"No. Forget it," Remo said. He nodded over his shoulder. "We'll go this way and hope we can find another car."
"We run like cowards?" Chiun squeaked.
"Annihilating this lot would be the courageous thing to do?" Remo demanded.
Chiun sniffed. It was his "I concede the point" sniff. The first of many blades came slashing at the Masters of Sinanju, but the Masters of Sinanju were no longer there. They were speeding across the surface of the swimming-pool water in a blur of leather shoes and sandals, and then they had vanished into the blackness. The party crowd looked at one another, silent and very, very confused.
"Can we go dance now?" demanded the woman in the pink halter top.
As a group, they decided that was the only alternative.
Chapter 40
"Your shoes are wet," Chiun said accusingly when they reached the front of the hotel.
"They are not."
"They are."
Remo almost allowed himself to get dragged into the argument, but a distant sound distracted him. "Saved by the siren."
A moment later it had grown to a piercing wail. "A fast siren," Remo noted.
"Not as fast as your powers of deduction," Chiun remarked.
"Don't suppose the prez has got the cops out looking for us?" But Remo knew that wasn't the case when he caught the look in the eyes of the cop who was driving. A fraction of a second later the car was past them.
"I'm going to check this out," Remo said.
"Why?" Chiun demanded.
"Just because!" Remo said over his shoulder as he started running.
"CHIEF!" said Candice the dispatcher. "What?"
Candice nodded at the chief's window.
The squad car was going about forty miles per hour. The guy running alongside it was making a circular motion with his hand to tell the driver to roll down his window.
Chief of Union Island Police Checker Spence had seen some crazy-ass shit today. He chose to ignore the absurdity of what he was seeing now. After all, if he admitted there was a guy running alongside his car at forty miles per hour, then he might as well resign himself to the same sort of insanity afflicting Officer Simone, who giggled in the back seat.
"Where's the fire?" the running man asked.
"No fire. Murder."
"Where's the murder?"
"Coming your way, son," Spence said. "There's a mob of vicious killers on the loose in the heart of Union Island City, and they're headed this way. Our civil control team is about five minutes behind me, sounding the alarm."
"So where are you hightailing to?" Remo demanded. The chief barely slowed the squad car as he maneuvered through a curve in the road. The running man never fell behind. Not an inch.
"I got a crazy man and an innocent woman to protect, and I'm obliged to get our island president out of harm's way. I'm going to pick him up at the Seven Seas."
"You're putting Greg Grom's safety ahead of the safety of hundreds of sleeping tourists?" the running man demanded.
"Of course I am, fool! In times of danger the president's safety is always the top priority," the chief recited. "Under no circumstances will I allow harm to befall the Island president, regardless of the circumstances."
REMO WILLIAMS STOPPED running and watched the squad car disappear into the night.
"Well?" Chiun asked, arriving a moment later at his side.
"That son-of-a-bitch president has got everybody brainwashed. Every one of them. They've got some sort of murders happening in town, and the first thing the chief of police does is drive out to secure Greg Grom's safety."
"Why are we not going after the president, as well?" Chiun asked.
Remo shook his head. "He said something about a mob of murderers. I have a feeling the bunch from the tour bus broke out of their cage."
Chiun put his hands in his sleeves. "Are you insinuating we should once again chase that band of miscreants? I think one time is sufficient."
"I could use a hand. There's a lot of them."
"Why would they let them go free?" Chiun demanded.
"How should I know!" Remo exclaimed. "Why'd they go nuts in the first place? I don't have any answers here. Everybody on the freaking island is crazy. That's your answer. Any more questions you have, that's the answer. Now there's crazy people that way and there's crazy people this way, but the ones that are this way may or may not be committing murder, depending on how much stock you put in the carload of crazy people who just went from that way to that way! Any more questions?"
Chiun, who had his mouth in a tight, pale little knot, said, "Yes, I do-"
"Stuff it! I'm going that way. You go wherever the hell you want."
And with that, Remo started running again.
"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY," boomed the PA system on top of the squad car. "Do not panic. Walk quickly to the street and proceed due east, away from the town. I repeat, proceed away from town."
The word had already gone out. Fire alarms were blaring in the hotels. Sleepy tourists were milling about, looking for an explanation.
"Proceed away from the town," the PA on the squad car blared as Remo jogged toward it. "No, no, away from the town!"
Remo stepped onto the hood and walked onto the roof, where he knelt and poked his head into the open window.
"Need your car."
"What?" the driver asked, and the word screeched out of the twin public-address horns mounted on the roof. Remo kicked off one horn and removed the other one with a twist, then handed it to the officer behind the wheel.
"Guess you're out of commission in the civil control department anyway," Remo observed. He opened the door and dragged out the driver, rolling him into the manicured grass on the roadside. Remo slipped into the driver's seat and grabbed the wheel before the car even swerved.
The cop in the passenger seat dropped his mouth open, then closed again. "Hey, you can't-"
Remo never learned what he couldn't do. The surprised-looking cop in the passenger seat was gone, replaced by a very old Korean man half his weight. Remo gave him a grin.
Chiun didn't smile, but there was a little something at the corner of his lips as he pointed a thumb over his shoulder, back in the direction of town, and said, "That way."
Chapter 41
With a quick tap on the security pad, Dawn Summens disabled all the exhibit alarms in the great hall of Union Island's Museum of Natural History.
The great hall was lit only by the glow of the floor-mounted aisle lights and the exit sign. That was all the light she needed. She crossed to the wood-and-glass case labeled Union Island Blue Ring Octopus.
There it was, carefully settled on a rubber-coated stand. It was an ugly, dried husk of gray matter no larger than a cat. It didn't look much like an octopus. The tentacles had adhered to its body during the drying process, which it had undergone some six hundred years ago.
As the sign explained, this was the one and only surviving specimen of the Union Island Blue Ring Octopus. That had been a lie up until very recently. But now, with Greg Grom's cache depleted, this really was the last one.
Dawn opened the case and took the exhibit. It weighed n
o more than a couple of pounds. She shoved it into her shoulder purse, pounding it and crushing it until it fit inside. Not that it mattered-she was just going to grind it up anyway.
As she closed the case, behind her she heard the buzz of a telephone, then the scrape of chair legs. It was old Professor Builder two floors up. For a moment Dawn wondered if somehow the phone call had alerted him to her presence.
But it was something else getting him all worked up. "Oh, my God!" she heard him exclaim as he ran from here to there. "I see them!" he told his caller. "They're everywhere! Killing? Killing who? I don't understand."
What was that all about?
She went to the window to see for herself.
It took her just a moment to understand the slow-moving figures on the street. The drugged ones from the tour bus had escaped from police lockup. They were on a rampage, but it wasn't the same sort of rampage perpetrated on the mainland tourist town of Pigeon Fudge. There hadn't been time for much wholesale slaughter in Pigeon Fudge.
But there was now. The maniacs were carrying body parts like war trophies. The scattered, slow-moving, dull-witted mob was wandering through town and heading right for the museum.
It was time to go.
"Who's there?" came an urgent demand from the darkness. The rotund shape of Professor Builder was at the bottom of the stairs. Dawn hadn't even heard him coming down. Builder moved to the wall.
"Don't turn the lights on, idiot," Summens said sharply. "You'll attract them like bugs."
"Who are you? Show yourself."
"Professor, it's me. Dawn."
"Minister Summens?"
"Yes, Prof. Have you got your keys? We need to get away from here fast."
"Yes. But how did you get in?"
"There's no time, Professor! They're coming!" Builder did a fast walk across the great hall, slowing just slightly to gape at the empty glass case where the last desiccated Union Island Blue Ring had been on display.
"Minister Summens, what is going on?" the old professor wheezed.
Dawn ignored him, opening the private entrance door. There were clomping figures wandering onto the museum parking lot. "We'll have to make a run for it."
"I can't run, Minister Summens," Builder panted. He wasn't a healthy man.
She nodded. "Give me the keys. I'll get the cart and we'll meet up at the bottom of the stairs."
"Yes. Yes," he panted. "I can get that far." He put the key ring in her hand. "The key with the black plastic handle."
"Thanks, Professor," Dawn Summens said, and she bolted out the door, attracting the attention of several dead-eyed figures in the vicinity. One young man in a very soiled shirt and tie was just twenty paces away. He came for her without a word, dangling a severed forearm from one hand.
She moved fast, feeling strangely calm but also oddly vibrant, and reached Builder's golf cart in seconds. She started the cart and stomped on the gas, yanking the wheel tight to the right and speeding across the lot to the young man with the extra limb. He was one of the PR logisticians brought to the mainland to help coordinate the president's busy tour schedule.
Dawn Summens sideswiped him with the golf cart, and he landed hard. As she pulled the cart into a tight U-turn, she saw the old professor laboriously reaching the bottom step as two dead figures lumbered toward him from either side.
"Hurry, Minister!" he wheezed.
"Sorry, Professor. This thing can't carry us both."
"Minister, please!"
It was true. The little cart barely reached ten miles per hour when she floored it. Just think how slow she'd go with that flabby old man weighing it down. She swerved around a blank-faced woman with bloodsmeared hands and pulled onto the street. The last she saw of Professor Builder he was in the grips of his two attackers, one on each arm and pulling in opposite directions. They were going to yank him apart.
She wondered how long that would take.
Chapter 42
Jimmy and Ellen Sandiro had planned their vacation to paradise for eighteen months. They wanted it to be perfect. And everything had been perfect for the first few days. Sunshine, relaxing on the beach, delicious gourmet buffets and endless rum punch at the poolside.
Now this. The one night they decided to go out on the town, they got mugged, right in front of the piano bar. "Jimmy!" Ellen shrieked and tackled the man who was holding Jimmy's ankle while four or five crazy people yanked on his skull. The man with the ankle refused to drop. Ellen refused to give up. She locked her arms around the attacker's neck and heaved, trying to muscle him away from her husband.
The attacker staggered and dropped the ankle, then sort of shrugged Ellen right off him. She collapsed hard on the sidewalk and found herself staring at a face. A face on a head. A head on the sidewalk.
Jimmy.
Her scream was cut short as she was lifted by her ponytail and she felt the horrific stretching of her vertebrae. Christ almighty, she didn't want to be a head on a sidewalk!
Her ponytail was released and she cracked her head on the sidewalk, mercifully blotting out her consciousness.
REMO'S STIFFENED FINGERS shot into the man's throat with enough force to crush it. The man wordlessly released the woman's hair and staggered away, grabbing at his throat in an attempt to take a deep breath again. He was doomed to failure.
Remo grabbed a pair of attackers by the shoulders and mashed them together. The next one got backed into the wall-backed in hard.
Chiun had taken care of the others. He was standing calmly with a pile of bodies on one side, a pile of the freshly harvested arms and legs on the other.
"Giving them a taste of their own medicine?" Remo asked.
"Yes, but I fear they did not appreciate the poetry of my justice."
ANOTHER KNOT of mute, plodding figures had gathered around a palm tree just off the main street. Two vacationing couples had somehow managed to shimmy up the arched tree trunk and crowd together on top. Remo and Chiun arrived just in time to see one of the men slip halfway off the trunk. From there it was an easy job for his attackers to grab him by the ankles and haul him down.
"I'll take that," Remo said, whisking the man bodily out of the clutching, stained fingers of the attackers, who turned on Remo with bloodshot, yellowing eyes and ghastly faces devoid of expression.
Remo put the surprised man on his feet and penetrated the knot of attackers in a blur of stiff fingers and kicking feet. He crushed a quartet of skulls in under four seconds.
Ignoring their dead companions, two more of them plodded toward Chiun, who stood waiting impassively until they were on top of him. Then he penetrated both foreheads with a finger, moving so fast the victims in the tree and the man on the sidewalk couldn't follow the movement. Their attackers had gone from dangerous to dead so quickly they were having trouble coming to terms with it.
Remo and Chiun left them still trying to figure it out and went on with their janitorial duties. The last of the mess that needed cleaning up was conveniently gathered all in one place.
There was a splash of blood and a torso on the steps on the side of the Union Island Museum of Natural History. The head and limbs that had once been attached to it were inside, dropped carelessly on the floor. The lights were on, and a silent crowd was inside admiring one of the exhibits.
"Real movie zombies never go to museums," Remo noted. "Of course, real movie zombies also eat people."
"Do not give them any ideas," Chiun cautioned. Some of the figures gathered at the exhibit lolled their heads and rolled their eyes at Remo and Chiun, but turned back to the case.
"What's so damn interesting?" Remo asked. He stepped up onto the greeter's desk and got a glimpse of the legend on the case.
"Union Island Blue Ring Octopus. All right, now I'm totally confused."
"It is the source of the poison," Chiun said. "Not the laboratory fakery that we smelled on the tour bus, but the original, natural poison. These victims of the poison must sense its vapors."
"Yeah. Can't stop ea
ting Union Island octopuses. The sign says it is now extinct. This was supposed to be the last known specimen," Remo related. "But the weird thing is the case is empty."
As that moment the crowd snapped the case off its base and threw it to the floor with a thud. The crowd began sniffing the display and the inside of the glass. "Will you please finish this," Chiun directed.
"Yes, yes, yes." Remo lashed into them. It passed through his mind that these people didn't ask for this to happen to them. But he also knew, they were irreparably damaged. Their humanity was erased. Their metabolism was crashing. They were mindless, dangerous hulks, and the poison was killing them fast. It was a mercy to end it now. Remo did so, quickly, then stood in the silence as the last body collapsed.
He bent and peered into the display case, giving a shallow sniff. He nudged a corpse and uncovered gray powder on the floor.
"Somebody took the octopus recently. Like today."
"Do not touch it," Chiun warned.
"Don't plan to," Remo said. "Whoever took it, I hope they were wearing rubber gloves."
Chapter 43
Dawn Summens felt strange. Her cheeks and mouth were getting numb. She kept rubbing her face to stimulate circulation. Her lips were dried out and felt cracked, and she wetted them again and again. Something on her face. Gritty.
Even at just ten miles per hour, she was having difficulty controling the golf cart. She drove out of town, swerving through bands of fleeing tourists. Everybody was headed for the docks where the cruise ships landed their tour groups. Grom would be there, and she had plans for Grom. Reassuringly she nudged the purse with her arm again, just to make sure it was still there.
A curve in the road became a major problem when she found her hands weren't responding to her brain's instructions. She gripped the steering wheel, but it refused to budge until she leaned her entire body. The cart swerved through the curve, but now the road curved back the other way. Dawn fought to steer through it. Her hands wouldn't work. She tried to lift her foot from the accelerator pedal but found it stuck there.
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