Deadly Genes td-117

by Warren Murphy

  "Where are they?" Remo asked.

  "They wouldn't be out in the open," Billy said, rolling his eyes, as if Remo knew nothing of covert operations. "They want to do this in secret. There's an access road at the edge of the woods beyond the field. The trucks will be there."

  Remo looked at the nearest field. It was thick with early-autumn corn. The stalks grew high above his head.

  "Okay, east or west woods?" Remo asked.

  Billy scratched his grimy head. "Um..."

  Remo closed his eyes. "Great," he muttered with a deep sigh. "Okay, here's what we do. I'll take east you take west. If you even think you've found your little buddies, come back to the car. I'll meet you back here in twenty minutes. And in case you have any ideas about bolting..."

  Remo reached out and tweaked Billy's ear. The pain was so horrific and engulfing, the animal-rights terrorist didn't have time to scream. When Remo pulled his hand away, Billy sucked in a deep breath. He nodded his understanding.

  Standing in the middle of the road, Billy began scratching his head again. "Er... just one question," he began sheepishly.

  Once Remo had aimed him west, Billy started out across the road. He vanished amid the corn a few seconds later. Remo heard him crunching and stomping and swearing his way through the stalks. "Give me strength," Remo groaned. Turning, he headed into the nearer stalks of tall corn on the opposite side of the road from the animal-rights activist.

  A moment later, the field swallowed him up.

  CLYDE SIMMONS HAD PARKED the rental truck at the end of the access road twenty minutes before. He and Ron DePew were standing outside the truck now. Waiting.

  A small brook trickled off into the distance. The constant, nearby noise of running water coming from the intense darkness tensed Clyde's already jangled nerves. He checked the luminescent face of his watch. It glowed eerily green.

  "They're late," he said.

  "Just so long as they get here before Zit-Face," Ron replied. He was gingerly touching the sticky, coagulated mess beneath his nose where he had reglued his false mustache. He'd accidentally put it on upside down. The bristles had stuck up his nostrils and made him sneeze for much of the trip from Medford until he'd snipped most of them off with a pair of key-chain fingernail clippers.

  "He's late, too," Clyde noted.

  "Mmm," said Ron. He scratched at one end of the mustache. His face contorted in pain. "Ouch!" he yelped.

  Clyde glanced at him. "Leave it alone," he said, annoyed.

  "I can't," Ron complained. "It itches."

  "Take it off, then."

  "Mona told us to leave them on."

  "Mona isn't here," Clyde said, a cold edge in his voice. "And even if she was, she doesn't know everything."

  "You wouldn't say that if she was here."

  "Yeah, well ... maybe," Clyde admitted, perturbed. He stared off into the night.

  There was no sign of the second truck anywhere. Just the endless babbling brook. Occasionally, the sound of a car would echo across the gently bowing cornfield. Clyde sighed loudly, looking back to the rear of the truck.

  He and Ron were standing near the grille. Together they had managed to get the BBQ out of the back. It was tethered at the rear of the vehicle, out of sight. Every few minutes, the creature would low plaintively. It was almost like a cross between a cow's moo and a sheep's bleat, without being fully either.

  Ron stroked the mustache as if trying to massage the itch away. "You don't like Mona much, do you?" he asked.

  "Yeah, right," Clyde mocked. "We get the grunt work and she gets the glory."

  "There hasn't been much glory yet," Ron pointed out.

  Clyde smirked derisively. "Are you kidding me? With what we've got tied back there?" He jerked his head to the rear of the truck. "She's about to go national. Without either of us."

  Ron continued to toy with his mustache. "Still, it's worse for Huey. He's married to her."

  Clyde looked at his partner as Ron played with his mustache. He had been doing it since they'd left Medford. Something in Clyde finally snapped. "Enough is enough," he growled.

  Clyde grabbed one soggy end of sagging horsehair. With a mighty wrench, he ripped the mustache from Ron's face.

  Ron DePew's shriek of pain was muffled beneath a pair of horrified, snatching hands. Ron's palms clamped firmly over the injured area as his body reacted to the blinding shock of sudden, intense pain.

  "Shh," Clyde admonished. He dangled the false mustache between two disgusted fingers. Ron's discomfort had the instant effect of lightening Clyde's mood.

  "That hurt," Ron's muted voice whimpered. "It's better to get it over with fast. Like a BandAid. Here." Clyde shoved the mustache back at Ron.

  "Get that away from me," Ron complained. Removing his palms from his face, he felt at the raw flesh on his lip. His fingertips came away wet. Blood. "You ripped half my frigging face off!" he cried.

  "Quiet," Clyde ordered. He cocked an ear to the cornfield. "Did you hear something?"

  "No," Ron whined. He wasn't paying attention to anything beyond his injured upper lip. He continued prodding at his face.

  After a moment, Clyde relaxed. "Nerves," he said, shaking his head.

  "Who cares about your nerves?" Ron said, his lips twisted. He mumbled from the corner of his mouth. "Can you see teeth through this?" He pointed at the biggest lip hole.

  THE FAINT AROMA of Ron DePew's blood carried back on the chill autumn breeze. Somewhere at the rear of the truck, unseen by the HETA activists, a pair of nostrils pulled in the heady scent of fresh blood. A primitive hunger stirred.

  And as the two men stood, unwitting in the dead of night, confident, stalking feet began to slip silently through the darkness toward the cab.

  REMO FOLLOWED the narrow path between the rows of corn. Crickets chirped loudly all around him. The aroma from the field was intoxicating. Remo had to concentrate to keep his mouth from watering. As a Master of Sinanju, Remo's diet was severely limited. But he'd been delighted to learn after more than twenty years of little more than rice, fish and duck that corn was an acceptable alternative to his customary staples. Acceptable to everyone, that is, save the Reigning Master of Sinanju. To appease Chiun, Remo had promised to strike corn from his diet forever. He only wished he could banish the desire.

  Burying the urge to gorge himself, Remo plowed forward.

  At the edge of the woods far away, a lone cicada screeched at the night. It was followed by a second, then a third. The symphony reached a crescendo before cutting off entirely. The short lull was broken as the first cicada took up its whine once again.

  There were no signs of human life yet. The wind was blowing north to south, so no softer sounds or subtle smells were brought to Remo from either field. If the HETA trucks were at the edge of the dark woods that loomed ominously ahead of him, he wouldn't know it until he was nearly upon them.

  Because of the direction of the wind and the limitations of his own senses, Billy Pierce had dropped off Remo's personal radar once they were an acre or so apart. The animal-rights activist's cursing, stumbling trip through the cornfield had faded into other background noise.

  Nearby, Remo sensed a single, small heartbeat. Probably a raccoon or skunk. The creature waddled awkwardly through the rows of swaying corn a few yards away.

  The wind shifted briefly once, doubling up on itself before switching southward once more. Skunk, Remo noted. Definitely a skunk.

  But up ahead was still a blank slate. Even so, if the trucks were there, he'd know soon enough.

  As silent as the very air itself, Remo pressed forward.

  THE GROUND RACED UP to meet Billy Pierce. Muttering unhappily, he pushed himself to his feet.

  His palms stung where he fell. Putting them up to his face, he examined them carefully in the moonlight.

  They were bleeding. The scraping wounds he'd gotten while trying to escape from his bulkhead earlier that day had reopened. The right palm was worse than the left. He must have landed on a
jagged rock.

  He wiped the thin smear of blood and grime on his ragged bell-bottoms. It wasn't clear whether this helped to clean the dirt from his hands, but it seemed to satisfy Billy. He stumbled forward.

  He wasn't aware how far he had actually traveled across the field until he was all the way through it. Billy tumbled over a raised lip of earth and fell with a heavy thud through the last row of corn. The stalks crunched loudly beneath his great girth.

  "Damn," he griped, as his massive belly oozed in both directions, settling out on either side of his prone body.

  He floundered for a moment, grabbing at the ground before him with his still stinging, bleeding hands.

  Somewhere nearby, he heard the sound of a small river gurgling off into the night.

  His hands sank into the earth. It was muddy to the touch.

  "Great," he groused. "I fell in water." Although he was ordinarily averse to the thought of washing any part of his anatomy, the pain in his hands was so great as he pushed himself laboriously to his knees that, for a moment, he considered actually dipping his hands in the stream and swishing them around a little to cool the stinging sensation. But as he leaned his hands against his large thighs, Billy realized that the water sound was too far away for him to have landed in the river.

  That was odd.

  Kneeling at the edge of the cornfield and puzzling over the strange, unexplained wetness on his hands, Billy was surprised anew. As luck would have it, he had plopped out of the woods at the precise spot he had been looking for. No more than three yards away was the HETA rental truck.

  It sat quiet and unmoving on the narrow access road. The rear door was open wide. The weak cab dome light was turned on.

  Billy wasn't sure what to do.

  There was no sign of his HETA confederates nor of the animal they were supposed to be moving. He was supposed to go meet Remo at the car, but there didn't appear to be anything to show him. And the last thing Billy wanted to do was to inspire Remo's anger yet again. Frowning, he decided to investigate a little before going off for his rendezvous.

  Billy struggled to his feet.

  He wiped the strange slick fluid from his hands as he stepped carefully over to the truck. Whatever it was, it felt sticky on his pant legs. Not like mud.

  At the rear of the truck, he found the leash that had been used to tie the BBQ to the vehicle. It was snapped in half. Standing on tiptoes and leaning inside the rear of the truck, Billy saw none of the animals.

  Frowning in confusion, he walked around to the cab.

  He noted the ghastly stench as he approached the front of the truck. Far worse than the odor people claimed he made. This was like rotting roadkill.

  Below the open cab window, Billy suddenly remembered the strange fluid on his hands. The dome light was weak, but good enough to see by.

  He examined his hands. They were slick and red. Red?

  Experimentally, he sniffed the substance. As he did so, he glanced over to the edge of the cornfield. And froze.

  It was there. Near the edge of the field. He had fallen right next to it and hadn't seen it.

  The body had been ripped to shreds. The face was ghastly white, the dead mouth open wide in shock. Billy recognized the man. Ron DePew.

  It was blood on his hands. Ron's blood. Billy staggered back, falling against the cab. Away from the body. Get away!

  Billy stumbled around the front of the cab. Another body. Flat on its back. Stomach open wide.

  Blood. Blood everywhere.

  On the ground, on the body. On the face.

  Eyes looking up at him. Feral, angry. The creature had been feasting on the second corpse. It lifted its head out of the stomach cavity, entrails dripping from its slathering, crimson-smeared mouth.

  Hideous, blood soaked. And familiar. Panic gripped his thudding chest. Billy twisted, tried to run. Too late.

  The creature bounded toward him. A single leap and it was upon him. One curled paw lashed down toward his neck, talons curled in violent rage.

  Blood exploded from his throat, spattering across the grille and windshield of the silent truck.

  And in his last moments of life, Billy Pierce reacted to fear and brutal death with the same blind instinct used by the first ancestors of humanity to scamper down from the trees.

  Billy screamed.

  REMO HEARD the terrified shriek from the distant edge of the opposite field.

  He had just given up his futile search at the edge of the woods and was turning back in Billy's direction.

  The sound shocked him to action.

  Rather than follow the paths through the high corn, Remo threw himself into the nearest stalks. While he ran, he slashed his hands left and right.

  Corn stalks toppled and crumpled, falling back in his wake. He moved through the first field like a determined thresher, reaching the road's edge in less than fifteen seconds.

  He broke into the open near his rental car. There was another vehicle parked up the road. Remo had no time to see who it might be. He bounded across the desolate street and plowed into the opposite field of corn.

  His hands were slicing blurs as he hacked a beeline passageway through the tall corn to the point where Billy's scream had originated.

  He exploded through the second field and onto the narrow access road.

  The stench of blood was powerful, mixed in with the odor of digestive fluids and exposed bowels. Remo saw the gutted body of Ron DePew first. Eyes keenly trained in Sinanju followed the bloody path Billy Pierce had unwittingly left from the edge of the cornfield to the front of the rented truck.

  Remo found Billy. What was left of him.

  The body had been mutilated. The face and neck were ripped to shreds. The large chest was open. White ribs shone like orderly piano keys through the split casing of frail human flesh.

  In spite of the gruesomeness of the attack, Billy had fared better than Clyde Simmons.

  The other HETA member had been the main course in a grisly buffet. His stomach cavity had been split open wide. The spine was visible on the opposite side of the large hollow. There were no organs left.

  Blood washed the area, turning the earth to sticky mud.

  Remo tuned his senses to their limit. Obviously, an animal was responsible. And the HETA people were supposed to be exchanging the BBQs tonight.

  The cicadas and crickets continued their nightly serenade. In the distance, a car engine coughed to life. But in all the night sounds, Remo could not locate those of even a single large predator.

  Settling for the next-best thing, Remo went to the edge of the area soaked with blood. As expected, he found a set of tracks leading away from the bodies.

  They were odd. A ball-shaped indentation preceded by a strange clawing hook. The imprint was nothing he was familiar with. A BBQ.

  The path led back into the cornfield.

  Loping, Remo followed the trail through the acres of soughing corn. The path ran parallel to the one he had made, though it was much clumsier than his own. He followed it out to the road.

  By the time he reached the blacktop street, the dirt of the field had cleared the blood from the animal's foot pads. Once Remo reached the road, he was unable to determine where the creature had gone.

  He looked up to where the road disappeared in the darkness. Nothing. Back in the other direction, he saw a lone car turning onto the main route toward the prison.

  He'd lost it. The BBQ was gone.

  RETURNING TO THE BODIES of the HETA men, Remo crouched down to examine the carnage.

  It was a grim sight.

  Now that he knew what kind of footprints the BBQs made, he could see the animal's imprints all around the body of Clyde Simmons. They were everywhere-one atop the other.

  Remo traced them back to the original set. The last ones made before the initial attack. These ones ran up along side the truck.

  At the rear, he found the snapped leash. The animal must have been left there. It had broken free before going on its violen
t rampage.

  Remo's eyes narrowed as he examined the ground.

  "What the dingdong?" he said, brow furrowed. Hands on his knees, he examined the ground carefully.

  The imprints back here weren't the same ones as at the front of the truck. These were heavy, clumsy hoofprints. Not the cautious, delicate ones that had been made around the HETA bodies.

  Remo bit the inside of his cheek in concentration. Try as he might, he couldn't come up with a suitable explanation.

  He went around to the truck's cab. Leaning in, he pulled on the headlights.

  The wooded area in front of the truck was immediately bathed in a wide yellow glow.

  He went back to the bodies.

  The tracks were still the same as before. And still different from the ones in the back.

  Staring at the problem wouldn't bring a solution. There was nothing more he could do here. Let Smith try to sort out the mystery.

  As he was turning to go, he noticed something odd about the body of Billy Pierce.

  "What the hell?" Remo said, puzzled.

  He squatted down next to the body. With careful fingers, he reached to the edge of the raking wound in Billy's chest.

  An object clung to the flesh. It was hard and thin and shaped like a waxing moon.

  Remo plucked the object free. He examined it in the glow of the headlights.

  Going back to the cab, Remo found a few white envelopes with the HETA address embossed in the upper left-hand corners lying on the dashboard.

  He took one and stuffed the unfamiliar object inside. A souvenir for Smith. Something else to confound the CURE director.

  Shutting off the cab lights, he jumped down to the ground. Envelope in hand, Remo stole off into the night.

  Chapter 9

  As the first bleary streaks of dawn began to rake the gray-tinged sky over Long Island Sound, the light of the new day found Harold W. Smith already at work.

  Smith had taken care of the day's sanitarium business in the predawn darkness. It was the work of CURE to which he now devoted himself.

  After a scant ten minutes perusing the digests culled by CURE's basement mainframes during their sleepless night patrolling the electronic netherworld of the World Wide Web, Smith had determined that there was nothing that would require calling Remo off his BostonBio assignment.