Killer Chromosomes td-32

by Warren Murphy

  "It's too hot to play," Remo said.

  "Even with the mother of your child?" Sheila asked.

  The words hit Remo like a hammer, triggering years of frustrated knowledge that he would never have a home, never have children, never have a place of his own that he didn't have to pay for by the night.

  "What do you mean?" he said.

  "I'm carrying your baby. That's what you were here for, stupid." Sheila was only twenty yards from him now.

  "Why?"

  "Because I'm going to make more and more of my new people. Someday my son will lead them. He'll have the world."

  It wasn't his baby, Remo thought. A baby was made by love between two people. Two humans. This thing, if it existed, would be a grotesque mimicry of an infant, half human, half animal, a snarling vicious beast of a killer.

  If he ever had a baby with those traits, he wanted them to come from him, not from its mother. In that moment, for the first time, he hated Sheila Feinberg, hated her for the mockery she had made of his fatherhood, using him as a stud horse, not knowing or caring how much a child would mean to Remo.

  In his anger Remo called back, "Have the world? He'll sleep in a tree, eat scraps from the butcher shop and be lucky if he doesn't spend his days in a zoo. With you, you half-witted, half-breed, half-assed alley cat."

  Sheila shivered with anger. "I might even have kept you alive," she said. "But you just don't understand. I'm the new breed of man."

  "You're the same old breed of lunatic," Remo said.

  She was ten yards from him now and charged, ringers raised over her head, head tilted toward the side, mouth open and long, white teeth glistening with saliva.

  Her speed surprised Remo, she was almost on him before he could react. Just as she closed the space between them, Remo ducked low, rolled on the ground to the left and came up running.

  Sheila's charge missed Remo and carried her forward into the bushes. She pulled herself back and ran after Remo.

  Remo knew. He was far from what he had been. He had hoped he was 100 percent, but he wasn't even 50. Sheila was an animal at the peak of her strength, in the prime of her power and youth.

  But Remo had something else. He had man's intelligence. It was that intelligence that enabled man to conquer the world by using the bestial instincts of animals as weapons against those same animals.

  He reached the edge of the field, and turned to face Sheila's charge. He pulled the book of matches from his back pocket and waited. When she reached him she feinted left, then came right. He could feel her long nails rake down his left shoulder and knew he was bleeding. At the same time, he went down, under her body, and came up into the pit of her stomach with the stiffened heel of the hand.

  "Ooooof," she hissed as the air rushed out of her body.

  He had missed. The blow would have killed if he had been on target. Sheila hit the ground, rolled to her feet, and spun to face Remo. Her glistening white skin was now caked with dirt and bits of dried grass. She looked like an animal that had taken a mud bath, then rolled in straw.

  Before she could charge again, Remo struck a match and threw it past her. It landed in the gasoline line Remo had spilled and erupted into flame with a whoosh. The dried cane and weeds crackled. Like a fuse lit in the center, the fire sped in both directions circling the two fighters in the field.

  Sheila's eyes widened with fear and shock. Remo knew he had been right. Of all animals on earth, only man had conquered the fire fear. Her stubbing out of cigarettes, her refusal to use a simple, kitchen stove, had told him Sheila too feared the flame.

  She jumped away from the fire crackling behind her. Now she was in a pocket, surrounded on three sides by flames with Remo standing in front of her.

  She charged him again and Remo executed a slow rolling movement of his upper body that carried her by him. As he tried to back off again toward the flames, he was too slow. She slapped out a hand. It caught his ankle and tripped him into the dirt. Then she was on him. Remo could feel her weight on his back, her claws trying to tear out his neck.

  Without panic, knowing what he was doing, Remo scurried forward, carrying Sheila Feinberg on his back. When he reached the ring of fire, she dropped off and fell away from him. Her eyes glistened with hatred as she faced him over a distance of only ten feet.

  "That fire won't burn forever," she hissed. "Then you'll die. You can't keep running from me."

  "Don't jump to conclusions," Remo said. "That's the trouble with you cats, always jumping to conclusions. Now I'm going to attack."

  Remo had taken Sheila's three charges and knew the pattern now. She came in with arms raised, head tilted, belly an open invitation to attack. It was time to accept that invitation before she wore him down.

  Remo darted out of the little cul-de-sac of flame, moving around Sheila, circling her, until there was no flame directly behind him and she felt safe to charge.

  She came in again, arms raised, head tilted. As she neared, Remo went to the ground and came up with the heels of both feet, burying them deep into her soft white belly.

  Sheila went into the air with the thrust of Remo's legs, turning a lazy half-somersault. Like a cat, she twisted her body on the way to earth, to land on her feet.

  Instead she landed on a spike of cut sugar cane, which, like a spear, buried itself in Sheila Feinberg's stomach.

  Almost in slow motion, as Remo watched, her body slid down the bamboolike spike. It exited from her back, bloodied, raw bits of flesh stuck to it.

  She was dying and looked at him with not pain but bewilderment, the look unreasoning animals get when they encounter the reality of their own death.

  Remo rolled to his feet and walked toward Sheila Feinberg.

  She gestured to him with a hand, moving jerkily, like a pantomimist aping a robot.

  "I've got to tell you something," she hissed. "Come here."

  Remo knelt near Sheila to listen. As he did her teeth opened wide and she drove her mouth toward his open throat. But she was slow now. With the passing of life had gone her speed. Remo just leaned back and her teeth closed harmlessly on air. Her face fell back down into the dirt.

  Remo stood and looked down as she breathed her last.

  "Sorry, but that's the biz, sweetheart," he said.

  Suddenly he felt fatigue wash over his body, like a giant wave engulfing a swimmer. He wanted to sleep, to rest, and when he awakened, to rededicate his body to Sinanju. But there was something he had to do first, or there would never be any rest for him.

  The flames had died but the field still smoldered when Chiun and Smith arrived a few minutes later in the rented jeep that had met them at the airport. The rental agent for the jeeps on the island had remembered well the blonde woman with the cage and instructions to the farmhouse were simple and direct.

  Remo was standing in the field, his back to them, as they approached.

  The naked body of Sheila Feinberg lay on its back on the ground in front of him. The gash in her stomach had opened even wider, and when Remo turned to them, Smith saw his hands were red with blood.

  Remo smiled when he saw Chiun.

  "Are you all right?" Smith asked.

  "I'm fine. She wasn't pregnant," Remo said and walked back to the farmhouse to wash.

  Chiun walked along behind him, matching him step for step.

  "Look at you," he said. "Fat. You're fat. Fat, fat, fat."

  "I know, Little Father," Remo said. "I've learned something."

  "It will be the first time. And do you know how much I spent on candles for you?"

  Remo stopped and looked at Chiun. "Doing death rituals? I know something about Sinanju, Little Father. I know that's only for blood of your own blood."

  "Your life was so worthless, I thought I would ennoble your death," said Chiun, peevishly. "Then you went and didn't die on me. All those candles are ruined."

  "We'll get you some more," Remo said. "You know, Chiun, even though I'm not much, you're lucky to have me as a son. It must be goo
d to have a son."

  "It's good to have a good son," Chiun said. "But one like you is like no son at all. Really, Remo, you have no consideration at all."

  "Fat, too. Don't forget that."

  When Remo came out of the farmhouse, Smith had just finished inspecting the woman's body.

  "Was this Sheila Feinberg?" he asked.

  "That's her," said Remo.

  Smith nodded. "Well, at least she won't be making any more tiger people. Did you, by any chance, find out the names of any of the ones still in Boston?"

  "No," said Remo.

  "Well, when you go back there, I guess you can clean them up kind of quickly. Especially now that you know how they behave."

  "I'm not going back there, Smitty," Remo said.

  "But they're still there. Still killing," Smith said.

  "They'll stop soon. They're almost done."

  "You sound sure," Smith said.

  "I am. I told you, she wasn't pregnant."

  Remo would say no more. He was silent riding in the jeep to the airstrip where Smith's private jet waited for them.

  In the plane, Chiun spoke to him softly.

  "She was changing back, wasn't she?" he said.

  Remo nodded. "How did you know?"

  "Her body. It had lost its grace. That thing could not move like the thing that took you from the sanitarium last week."

  "You're right, Little Father," Remo said. "She had been throwing up her meals. She thought it was morning sickness and pregnancy. But it wasn't. It was her body rejecting the change. Her shape was changing too and she was losing strength. She was on her way back."

  "So the others in Boston, they will change back too," Chiun said.

  "That's right. So I guess we can just leave them alone."

  Smith joined them as Chiun said, "Still it was not a bad attempt. If we could make it permanent, we could get some of this NDA..."

  "DNA," said Smith.

  "Correct," said Chiun. "Do you have some?"

  "No," Smith said.

  "Could you get us a bottle?"

  "I don't think they sell bottles. Why?"

  "I have been very busy practicing tolerance for inferior peoples quite a while. If you notice, I have not mentioned that either of you are white. This is part of my new program to tolerate the inferior of the world. But if we got some of this DNA, we could change the whites and the blacks to yellow. Then we could change the level to Korean. And then improve that to North Korean. Do you follow me?"

  "So far," said Smith.

  "Then we could refine all those North Koreans into the best of what anyone can or could aspire to be. A person from Sinanju. Do not be overwhelmed, Emperor, but is that not a wonder to conjure?"

  "Yeah, Smitty," Remo said. "Just think. You'll have four billion. Just like Chiun."

  "I can't get any DNA," Smith said rapidly.

  Remo laughed. "He'll settle for a centrifuge," he said.

  Chiun said even though he was tolerant, it was still just like whites to fritter away what was probably their last chance to improve themselves.

  He told Remo in Korean that would be the theme of his next book.

  "Next book?" asked Remo. "Where's your last book?"

  "I have decided not to waste it on you people. You wouldn't appreciate it. But this next book might bring you to your senses."

  "When are you going to write it?" asked Remo.

  "I would have had it well underway by now if I had not had to waste so much time on you. If you will just leave me alone and keep things quiet, I will finish it in no time."

  "I'll do my best," Remo said.

  "That will not be good enough," said Chiun. "It never is."

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