Unnatural Selection td-131

by Warren Murphy

  Judith sensed her confusion. "You want to know why you're here," she said. "Eschewing the boring human notions of the metaphysical, you are here because I programmed you to be here. Just the tiniest leech DNA. Green Earth is right to want to save them. Those things have one of the strongest homing beacons for the few square feet of swamp they were born and bred in than virtually any species I've ever come across. It's pretty useless in a leech. It's not like they can migrate. But then, they can't drive. I assume that's how you got here."

  "Yes," Elizabeth said.

  "Did you feed along the way?"

  "No, we ate before we left."

  "Good," Judith said, more to herself than to Elizabeth. "I want them here, not wasting time investigating every half-eaten corpse at every Mass Pike rest stop."

  Elizabeth growled confusion. "Who?" she asked.

  A flicker of self-satisfaction crossed Judith White's face. "In good time," she promised. "For now, you're only part of the equation. Get something to eat."

  She waved at a few uneaten Green Earth bodies that had been stacked against the wall. The men who had come with Elizabeth didn't need a second invitation. They pounced on a body, dragging it out onto the floor.

  As they began to feast, Elizabeth made a face. "I prefer a fresh kill," Elizabeth complained.

  "There will be plenty of time for that later, once more of the others have arrived."

  "If they arrive," Elizabeth said. "If the same thing happens to them as happened to us, they'll be lucky to get here at all." With the words came a soft shudder of fear.

  Judith felt it in the woman. Fear was unusual for her species.

  Elizabeth had chased back two of the males who had accompanied her from New York. She had settled in with the others at the protester's corpse. Her rounded bottom settled back on coiled legs.

  "What do you mean?" Judith asked.

  "We were taken captive. Two humans nearly stopped us from escaping."

  Judith sensed it again. The fear. "Describe them," Judith ordered.

  "They were fast," Elizabeth said. "And strong. They weren't like the others. I sensed no fear in them."

  "What did they look like?"

  Judith was surprised at the urgency in her own voice. The others noted it, too. Worried eyes glanced up.

  "One was Asian," Elizabeth said. "Too old for a meal. No meat on his bones at all. The young, white one had dark hair. About six feet tall. Deep eyes, high cheekbones. He had very thick wrists."

  With the description came a cold shudder that passed like ice through her body. This time, Elizabeth was not the source. Her meal was abruptly forgotten.

  Elizabeth was instantly alert. Back arched, she stood up on hands and feet. Brown eyes darted to empty shadows.

  It was instinct. Elizabeth didn't know why she was searching the corners of the warehouse. Only that her body had picked up a telegraphed dread.

  And Judith White was the source.

  The others sensed Judith's alarm. A thrill of panic rippled through the drafty warehouse. Males and females alike stopped whatever they were doing. They pawed the floor and sniffed nervously at the air for some unknown fear.

  But while the rest didn't know why they feared, Judith White knew. It was those two. The men Elizabeth Tiflis had described could be no one else.

  Judith was angry at the instinct that made her fear. If she were to succeed, she would have to master the panic.

  Animal noises filled the warehouse. The creatures that had once been men and women paced and snorted at shadows.

  "Calm yourselves," Judith growled loudly. "There's nothing to worry about."

  Spinning, she left the fearful creatures growling at the walls of the big warehouse. Judith White hurried back to the safety of the front office. To quell the fear.

  Chapter 19

  The bare bulb was snapped on from a switch above. A moment later, Harold Smith climbed down the basement stairs.

  A set of keys from his desk drawer was clutched tight in his hand as he made his way around the bottom of the staircase. Nearby was the secret wall behind which CURE's mainframes hummed. Smith bypassed that part of the room.

  He found a small steel door tucked away behind the ancient boiler. Grimy letters on a discolored brass plate read "Patient Records." A note written in Smith's hand instructed any Folcroft staff who wanted to enter the room to see Director Smith for the keys.

  The paper was yellowed from age. Smith had posted the note thirty years before. No one ever asked for the keys.

  He unlocked the heavy bolt and pushed open the door.

  Inside was another bare bulb.

  Smith rarely came into this room. The last time was a year ago when he had finally gotten around to showing it to Mark Howard. Before that it had been years. The only person to come down here with any regularity was Smith's secretary. Whenever Eileen Mikulka needed to access old patient records, she used her own set of keys.

  Six big filing cabinets held a century's worth of Folcroft medical records. In addition to these, three small stainless-steel drums sat against the far wall. There was a temperature gauge on the side of each tank.

  When Smith peered at the dial on the nearest container he saw that it was holding steady at -196 degrees Celsius.

  The other two tanks were no longer functioning. Smith considered pulling the plug on the third tank. For a moment, his hand hovered near the off switch. After all, it had already served its purpose. For all the good that had done any of them. He had explained that to Mark the previous year, as well. But the pragmatist in him won out.

  There might yet be a need. He left the tank running. A small refrigerator-the kind used in college dormitories-sat unplugged in the corner. Smith plugged it in. Fishing in his pocket, he took out the aspirin bottle of Judith White's formula and put it in the fridge.

  He'd find out proper storage later on. Perhaps he'd have to start up one of the other liquid-nitrogen tanks. And with any luck, Remo would get him an undiluted sample of the formula. That would be best for a vaccine.

  When he was done, Smith shut the refrigerator door and took one last look around the room to make certain he hadn't forgotten anything. Satisfied, he closed the storage room door, locking it up tight once more. In the dark closet, the old fridge chugged softly.

  Chapter 20

  The deer carcass lay in the wet grass at the soft shoulder of the road.

  There had been a feeding frenzy. Virtually all but head and legs were gone. As Remo and Chiun sped by in their rented car, Remo saw many footprints amid the scattered brown fur around the creature. Although the prints looked human, they were softer, with the weight more toward toe than heel.

  "That's the third one we've passed in two miles," he commented grimly.

  The Master of Sinanju had remained silent for the past few miles, concern for his pupil weighing heavy on his shoulders. But when his eyes strayed from the dead deer to the road ahead, a spark of life lit his dour face.

  "Your persistent stubbornness is too stressful on my delicate senses," the old Asian announced from the passenger's seat. "Stop for a moment that I might collect my frazzled nerves." He tapped an urgent fingernail on the dashboard, pointing to a tiny strip mall that was speeding toward them on the right. "There is a good spot."

  Remo followed his teacher's extended finger. "That's a real estate office, Little Father."

  "Is it?" Chiun asked innocently. He pretended to see the sign for the first time. "So it is."

  For a time two years ago the old Korean had been on Remo's case to buy a house in Maine. The rocky coast and bitter winter reminded him of his native Sinanju. Remo thought he'd won that battle when they'd moved into their new town house in Connecticut.

  "We're not stopping," Remo said firmly.

  "A good son who did not cause his father in spirit to worry for his well-being all the time would stop."

  "We're not buying a house in Maine. Case closed."

  Chiun watched the building zoom by. He sank back into his
seat, folding his arms inside his sleeves. "You are an evil man, Remo Williams. We are already in the emperor's potato province. What harm would come of looking?"

  "Walking out with a deed for one thing," Remo said. "Look, Chiun, I'm happy where we're living now. Living in Connecticut is close to Smith, but not too close. We've got a couple of airports nearby. It's convenient. Maine is too far off the beaten path."

  "I am not surprised that you would be content with our current accommodations." Chiun sniffed. "I have never known a pig to complain about the quality of the mud he is wallowing in. I, on the other hand, am not happy. For one thing, it is only a matter of time before squatters take up residence in the home adjacent to our own. At my age I do not need to worry about Gypsy horse thieves keeping me awake until all hours of the night with their smelly cooking and rowdy tambourine banging."

  The other side of their duplex had remained vacant the entire time they'd lived in Connecticut. The Master of Sinanju had done yeoman's work chasing away any potential neighbors. But since their work for Smith sometimes kept them away for extended periods of time, the old Korean had been growing more concerned that the empty town house next door would be rented while they were away.

  "I'm not worried that we'll get neighbors," Remo said absently. He had caught sight of something up ahead.

  "Of course not. You would let any undesirables move in. It is up to me to maintain the quality of our neighborhood."

  Remo was about to say something on the nature of racism, freedom in America to live wherever you wanted and Chiun's definition of undesirables, which included-on a good day-everyone in the world who wasn't Korean and-on a bad day-them, too. But he was too distracted to speak.

  At their approach, the thing that had caught his eye had turned into several things. As they rounded a bend in the road, the several became several hundred.

  In the passenger's seat, the Master of Sinanju's spine became more rigid as he sat up stiffly in his seat.

  The winding road passed by a dairy farm. On both right and left wide grazing fields stretched to dark woods.

  Intermingled with the smell of manure was the stench of death.

  "Holy cow;" Remo said softly.

  Throughout the predawn fields were scattered the carcasses of hundreds of dead dairy cows. The animals lay in mottled grass, sightless eyes staring up at the brightening sky. Flanks were chewed; bellies were gaping black wounds.

  Fences had been broken near the road. Some of the cows had been tossed out by a tumbledown stone wall.

  A battered truck was parked at the side of the road. Three farmhands were struggling to load a dead cow into the rusted back. Two more of the animals were already sprawled on a blanket of damp hay. With a final heave, they shoved the dead animal into the rear of the truck.

  The men watched in suspicion as Remo and Chiun drove by.

  A lone dead animal was dumped a few dozen yards down the road, its milky white eyes staring blankly at oncoming traffic. A sign near the gutted cow pointed the way to the Lubec Springs bottling plant.

  "That's not just White that did all that," Remo commented as they passed the last cow. The farmland fell away as woods closed in darkly around them.

  "Animals seek their own kind," Chiun said. "In this they are like men. She has created more like her elsewhere. Did you not think that she would here, as well?"

  "I guess," Remo said. "I just didn't think there'd be so many. That was a hell of a lot of dead cows back there."

  As they drove, he found himself more and more studying the deep forest that lined the road.

  He found the turnoff for Lubec Springs. They parked their car near a house that seemed abandoned and headed up the road to the bottling plant.

  "Perhaps we should not have parked so close," the Master of Sinanju suggested as they walked the forest-lined road. "The animal may attempt to flee if it feels threatened."

  Their steady, gliding feet made not a sound on pebble or sand as they slipped like shadows through the dim light.

  "She won't run at the sound of every car," Remo said.

  "Unlike you, she retains a hint of human intelligence. She surely knows the difference between a car engine stopping and one that has driven by."

  "Maybe," Remo said. "But even if she's skittish, it looks like we don't have to worry about the rest of them taking off."

  His senses were trained on the woods around them. Remo had been aware of them ever since he parked the car. A rustle of fallen leaves, the soft crack of a twig. Stealthy sounds that-except for the two men walking along that lonely Maine road-would have gone unnoticed by human ears. The sounds of animals circling prey, closing ever tighter. Their numbers continued to swell the closer Remo and Chiun came to the bottling plant.

  Remo spent a few moments picking out individual heartbeats. He lost count at three dozen, finally giving up.

  "Okay, so there's even more than we thought," he said as they walked along. He pitched his voice so low only the Master of Sinanju would hear.

  "Do not include me in your assumptions," Chiun replied, making a show of ignoring the woods around them. "And I will remind you once more to have a care."

  "Relax," Remo said testily. "So there's more than we bargained for. Four, four dozen. Big schmiel. In case you forgot, I have met these things before, you know."

  Chiun nodded gravely. "And it is apparent that my memory is better than yours. I recall the first time your belly was split open. In your second encounter, your chest was torn apart."

  "Blah-biddy-blah-blah-blah," Remo said. "I lost some ground, but I rallied in the end."

  "Only after your Sinanju training all but disappeared."

  "That was only the first time."

  All at once, Chiun stopped. Remo halted beside him.

  The woods around them hummed with animal life. Remo could feel the heartbeats closing in.

  Chiun ignored the forest and the creatures within it. In his unwavering gaze, his entire world seemed to compress until all that remained was the man standing before him. His hazel eyes were fixed on his pupil, burning deep.

  "Do not gather false security from our past successes against these creatures," the old Korean hissed. "Whatever happens, remember well the prophecy."

  Remo's attention was torn between his teacher and the woods. Through the trees he saw a shadow, then two. Moving stealthily, they came ever closer to the road.

  "I remember," Remo promised. "'Even Shiva must walk with care when he passes the jungle where lurk other night tigers.' Don't worry, I got it."

  A bony hand gripped his forearm. In the early days of training, it would have been a slap or some other inflicted pain to impress on his pupil the importance of what was being said. Another of the many things that had changed over the years. But Remo's fundamental nature had not changed.

  "It is not enough to speak the words," Chiun insisted harshly. "You must understand their importance. You are in a difficult time now, Remo. In the book of Sinanju are the names of many good Masters who failed but once and paid with their lives, for such is the price of failure even for those from Sinanju. Yet you are more fortunate than Master Pak, who lost his life to the drinkers of blood. Or the second Lesser Wang, who was the first Master of Sinanju to encounter the dreaded succubi of the Nile. Or Master Tup-Tup, who was defeated on his first day as Reigning Master-yes, his first day-by the unholy magics of a Dravidian conjurer. You are blessed because you have their lessons, often learned in blood, to guide you. And, praise the Great Wang, you have prophecies like this one. Listen to them, learn from them.

  But do not think yourself invulnerable because you benefit from the wisdom of the ages. You are not the end of history. It will take but one time, Remo-one fatal moment-for you to become an eternal lesson for all the Masters who follow you."

  With that, he released his grip on Remo's arm. Turning, his eyes slivered as he scanned the woods to his left.

  Remo felt the heavy sense of dread that came like waves from the frail form of his te
acher. When he spoke, his own words were filled with soft reassurance.

  "I'll remember, Little Father," he vowed.

  Chiun didn't take his eyes from the nearby trees at the side of the road.

  "Good. Do not forget it when some new daydream flits through your wandering mind. Prepare."

  And the creatures appeared from the forest.

  They came up all around. As if possessed of a single mind, they passed out of the thorny underbrush on either side. Low to the ground, they came onto the road.

  "Stay alert," Chiun cautioned. Spinning, he pressed his back to Remo's and raised his hands. Ivory nails like shards of sharpened bone were directed at their stalkers.

  Remo matched his teacher's pose. Senses stretched far out around them, he watched the creatures exit the woods.

  Growling and hissing they came. They came and came until the road was clogged forward and back, blocking advance and retreat. Even though there were more males than females, the females seemed dominant. In each of the small groups the males stayed close to a single female.

  As they circled, Remo searched the sea of faces for Judith White.

  She might look different. He was prepared for that. The same formula that had made her the monster that she was could be used to alter appearance. Remo had seen it before. But Judith White was more than just a face. She wouldn't need to look the same for him to sort her from the pack.

  In the sea of movement he detected not a single female that carried itself in quite the same way as Judith White.

  Despite his disappointment, one woman caught his eye.

  She was off to one side, watching intently. A hint of malicious glee brushed her beautiful face.

  "Hey, Chiun, isn't that the chick from New York?" Remo asked, directing his chin toward Elizabeth Tiflis.

  The questioning confusion in his voice was matched by the puzzlement on the face of the Master of Sinanju.

  "It is," Chiun said, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

  "How would she know to come here?" Remo asked.

  ELIZABETH TIFLIS SENSED that she had drawn the attention of both men. She found her way to the head of the massive pack. Feline eyes settling on Remo, she extended a lazy finger his way. And the words she spoke surprised both Masters of Sinanju. "You," Elizabeth announced. "It's about time you got here. You're wanted inside."