Deadly Genes td-117

by Warren Murphy

  The CURE director was bone tired. The only sleep he'd gotten in the past forty-eight hours came during unplanned catnaps. The only real relief from the tedium had been a single trip home earlier that day for a shower and a change of clothes.

  His suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. Bleary eyes studied his submerged monitor. Smith was helpless to act. All of the sophisticated technology at his fingertips could not be employed to track something that operated on instinct. If Judith White continued on her current course of behavior, he had as much of a chance of finding her as he had of tracking a wild bird in flight.

  That Dr. White had carried through on Sheila Feinberg's original experiments was no longer in question. After he had hung up from Remo, Smith had surreptitiously ordered agents from Boston's FBI office into BostonBio. Computer experts for the federal agency had collected all available evidence from Judith White's office.

  There hadn't been much left.

  She had magnetized the floppy disks Remo had found on the floor. It would take weeks to piece together the small scraps of information that had not been destroyed utterly. But it turned out the disks offered a painstaking piece of electronic detective work that, in the end, was unnecessary. Unbeknownst to Dr. White, they had gotten most of what they needed without the floppies.

  Although the files in her computer itself had been largely erased, she had failed to destroy her hard drive. The genius of BostonBio's top scientist apparently didn't extend to computers. All she would have had to do to wreck the internal system of the device would have been to engage the drive and then-while it was running--drop the whole machine on the floor. Her failure to do so had given Smith the information he needed. And did not want to hear. Many of the files she had tried to erase had already been undeleted. The story as it unfolded was horrific.

  Judith White had made a deliberate effort to discover the old BGSBS files that dealt with the Feinberg Method. She had taken the original formula and had improved greatly on it. According to one of the nation's leading geneticists, who had been called in as a consultant by the FBI, Judith White had piled layers of genetic material from more than a dozen species onto her own DNA.

  If her notes were any indication, she had started primarily with tiger genes, so they held the most powerful influence on this new creature. But she hadn't been satisfied to stop there. Other genetic material was thrown into the DNA cocktail at later dates. And this abomination was skulking with impunity around the streets and backyards of Massachusetts.

  The thought chilled Smith.

  There had been nothing new since the last body, which had been discovered more than fourteen hours ago.

  According to the earlier body count, the creature that Judith White had become fed frequently. But that number had dwindled. The seemingly low death toll of the past two days likely meant that she was somehow disposing of the newest bodies in order to avoid capture.

  Waltham and Lexington. One body in each town. There was nothing to go on from there. Smith couldn't hope to establish any kind of pattern with only two corpses.

  Smith felt ghoulish thinking that more bodies would help the search. But it was a gruesome fact. More would steer a course directly to her. An arrow painted in blood across a map of eastern Massachusetts would point the way.

  It was a horrible thought. Even so, it wasn't one the CURE director could easily dismiss.

  Judith White represented a threat to mankind. Perhaps one more dangerous than the species Homo sapiens had ever before encountered.

  A thinking animal. A threat in and of itself. But if Dr. White had only the physical characteristics of an ordinary animal, she could still be avoided or captured.

  She did not. Unlike the rest of the lesser creatures in the animal kingdom, she possessed the perfect camouflage. A vicious remorseless killer wrapped in a human face.

  Judith White could blend in with humanity. Disappear.

  Until it was time to feed.

  And if the Feinberg incident was anything by which to judge this new case, Judith White would want more than mere survival. Like all animals, she would want her species to thrive. She would want to create more of her own kind.

  Weary from lack of sleep, Smith pulled up a file on his computer. It was a file that he had read and reread many times over the past twenty-four hours.

  He had used the available time since Judith White's disappearance to order an autopsy on one of the two BBQs that had been returned to BostonBio. Smith had found the preliminary results disturbing, to say the least.

  It was a matter of fact; Judith White would want more than mere survival. Much more. She wouldn't rest until her species dominated the world. And one of the two men who represented the last, best hope for humanity had already fallen victim to her.

  In a phone conversation earlier in the evening, Chiun had assured the CURE director that Remo's physical wounds were healing. But there were deeper cuts than these. The topic of Remo's potential psychological wounds was left undiscussed by both Smith and the Master of Sinanju.

  Smith turned abruptly away from his desk-away from the technology that had failed him. He spun to the picture window. As he stared out across the endless black waters of Long Island Sound, he saw no lights above the waves. Only the blackness of eternity-Mankind was alone.

  And in the claustrophobic darkness of his lonely, spartan office, Harold W. Smith prayed that Remo was up to the challenge that lay ahead. For humanity's sake.

  Chapter 25

  "I feel fine," Remo groused, for what seemed like the millionth time in the past forty-eight hours. "You look pale," Chiun told him.

  "I'm not sick," Remo insisted.

  "I was commenting on the ghostly pigmentation natural to white skin, and not on your state of health," the Master of Sinanju droned. "Honestly, Remo, I did not notice until the last two days how amazingly white you are. Is it possible you are the whitest white man on Earth?"

  "Last I checked, it was still Pat Boone," Remo grumbled.

  The insults had started dribbling out slowly that morning. By noon, they were a flood.

  At first, he had welcomed the normalcy. For Chiun to stop doting and start insulting proved that Remo was well on the road to full recovery. But that was hours ago. Right around now, the Master of Sinanju's abuse was beginning to grate on him.

  As they drove slowly through the streets of Lexington, Remo tried to ignore the tenderness in his shoulder. His Sinanju-trained body healed much faster than that of a normal man, but the wounds Judith White inflicted had been deep.

  When they returned home after leaving BostonBio two days before, Chiun had stripped the cotton gauze away from Remo's lacerations. For the first time, Remo noticed the white bone of his clavicle peeking out through the deepest center gouges. The bone was coated with a watery pink film.

  The dressing Chiun had applied to the brutal gashes smelled worse than a used diaper, but had obviously done the trick.

  Flexing the muscle, Remo felt a tightness to his skin around the area where Judith's claws had raked. The tightness became more noticeable every time he turned the steering wheel on their aimless ride through the dark streets of Lexington.

  Beside Remo, the Master of Sinanju gazed into the dull yellow glow cast by a streetlamp. Insects that did not yet know summer was over fluttered lazily around the light.

  "What are we doing?" Chiun queried abruptly. Remo was staring at the shadows beyond the windshield. "Twenty, twenty-five," he replied absently.

  Chiun turned from the window, allowing the streetlight to slip into their wake. "I was not asking our speed," he said with bland irritation.

  His tone shook Remo from his thoughts. He glanced at Chiun. "You know what we're doing," he said tightly.

  "Pretend I do not."

  Remo allowed a perturbed exhale to escape his thin lips. "We're looking for her."

  "Ah." Chiun nodded. The ensuing silence lasted but a moment. "Her who?"

  "Judith White, " Remo snapped. "We're looking f
or Judith White, okay? Jeez." The tension made his shoulder ache.

  "I see," Chiun said, as if finally realizing the point of their quest. "Forgive me for pressing, Remo, but I thought briefly that you might be on yet another futile search for your dream female. You can understand why I would not want to be in this vehicle while you violate local harlotry ordinances." Alert eyes locked on empty shadows. "What makes you believe this creature is nearby?"

  "Smith said the last body turned up here. Some college kid going to work this morning."

  "But did not Smith also say the previous victim of this iniquitous thing was found miles from here?" "Waltham." Remo nodded. "It's the next town over."

  "Then why are we looking here and not there? Or for that matter, in another hamlet altogether?"

  "I don't know," Remo replied, gripping the wheel in frustration. "But it beats sitting around doing nothing."

  "You are sitting now," Chiun pointed out. When he turned to the Master of Sinanju, the shadows cast on Remo's cruel face were ominous.

  "If you want to go home, I can flag down the next cab," he warned.

  In his kimono sleeves, Chiun's hands sought opposing wrists. His tone softened. "You know as well as I, my son, that this creature will not spring from the night to chase after your automobile like an angry dog. It is clever. It will bide its time until it thinks that it is safe."

  "And in the meantime, more people die. No way," Remo said firmly. "I'm not going to have that on my conscience."

  Chiun examined Remo's dimly lit profile. The younger Master of Sinanju's face was resolute. "If there is ever a prize for self-flagellation, you will surely win it, Remo Williams," the old man muttered.

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "You feel that because of your encounter with the other tiger creature years ago that you alone should have seen what others did not."

  "Shouldn't I have?" Remo demanded, frown lines deepening around his tense jaw. "I got more up close and personal with Sheila Feinberg than anyone. Of all people in the world, I should have seen what Judith White was."

  They drove down Bedford Street, taking a left onto Burlington.

  Chiun's parchment face was serious. "Do not let the memory of another dark time cloud your present judgment, Remo," he said quietly. "You are not what you were back then. Then you were but a child in Sinanju. Now you are Apprentice Reigning Master, destined to succeed Chiun the Great Teacher." Hazel eyes sparked with a father's pride.

  Remo smiled wanly. "She ripped me up pretty good, Little Father," he said softly. "Just like the last time."

  Chiun shook his head. Wisps of cotton-candy hair became angry thunderclouds. "For this thing we seek, there was no last time," he spit. "It is a new mongrel creation."

  Remo couldn't let it go. He flexed his shoulder. "Sure feels like old times," he mumbled.

  Chiun's folded arms dug deeper into his sleeves. "I do not know why I waste my breath," the old man hissed. "If you cannot snap out of this for your own sake, do it for me. I am far too old to train another pupil. Our village will suffer if you waltz off to an encounter with this thing and get yourself killed."

  "You're all heart."

  "And stomach and liver and kidneys. And I intend to keep them all where they are. Take care that you do the same." He settled into perturbed silence.

  Across the front seat from the Master of Sinanju, Remo bit the inside of his cheek in concentration. Logically, he knew Chiun was right. But logic had no place in what he was now feeling. A small, tweaking pang of unaccustomed fear tugged at his belly. And in that fear, Remo knew, there nestled the possibility of failure. Even for an Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju.

  They spent the rest of that night wordlessly prowling the empty streets.

  Chapter 26

  Ted Holstein was a hunter who had never once fired his shotgun at a living thing.

  "Unless you count trees," he'd once complained to his next-door neighbor. "Or shrubs. Wind takes hold of a-what's that one called?"

  "A rhododendron," his neighbor replied tightly.

  "Yeah, rotordentine. Anyway, wind grabs one of those suckers and you look at it the wrong way? Man, you'd swear those branch things were antlers. Know what I mean?"

  "You shot my shrub," his irate neighbor pressed. He held two large branches in his hands, severed by a blast from Ted's bedroom window. The rest of the plant was scattered across his neighbor's front yard.

  "Yeah. Gee. I did, didn't I?" Ted was standing in his pajamas near the fence that separated their properties. Weaving, he glanced down at the smoking shotgun in his hand. He glanced back up, suddenly inspired. "Hey, you want a beer?"

  If hunting was Ted's avocation, drinking was his vocation. He was one of the lucky few people for whom work and hobby melded seamlessly.

  Ted had been drinking since he was sixteen and hunting since his seventeenth birthday. Since the drinking had come first, he had worked it so that he couldn't clearly remember a single hunting trip.

  As a result of his excessive tippling, aside from some unfortunate flora, Ted had never shot anything living.

  Birds could have landed on his shotgun barrel without fear. Bunnies and squirrels pranced through his backyard and dreams with impunity.

  He had bagged a deer once. Driving home drunk from an annual family Fourth of July party, he'd inadvertently taken the scenic route. Weaving through the woods, Ted managed to plow smack into an eight-point buck.

  Unfortunately, since it was the off season, Ted couldn't mount his prize to the crumpled hood and drive back and forth through town. Instead, he rolled the huge animal down a nearby ravine, covered it with pine needles and took off in his smoking Chevy pickup before some nosy game warden slapped him with a fine.

  That was ten years ago and it was beginning to look like the last chance he'd ever have of bagging something big. At least, until two nights ago.

  Alone in his dingy living room, Ted flipped on the TV. He'd hoped to see the sports segment on the late news. Instead, he was dropped smack into the midst of the hysterical, wall-to-wall local coverage of the rampaging BostonBio killer BBQs.

  From what he could glean from the news, there was some kind of vicious monster loose in Boston. Police were looking the other way as thousands of hunters descended on the city, hoping to bag the trophy of a lifetime.

  In his boozy haze, Ted Holstein had decided right then and there that this prize and all its attendant glory would be his.

  Pawing through his mountain of empty beer cans, he'd found his phone. He and his two closest drinking buddies soon settled on a simple plan. The three of them loaded up on beer and shotgun shells. As fast as Ted's battered truck would take them, they set off for Boston.

  It was only a day into their expedition and the rules of the game had already changed. Their target was no longer the BBQs, but a female scientist named Dr. Judith White. The grainy black-and-white Boston Blade BBQ photograph that Ted had fastened to the dashboard with masking tape had been replaced by an equally grainy picture of Dr. White. The stunning good looks of the BostonBio geneticist stared out at him as he drove up Route 117 in Concord.

  "What are we doing here?" asked Evan Cleaver, one of the other two men crammed in the cab of Ted's truck.

  "We're looking for her, stupid," Ted said, tapping a finger against Judith White's reproduced face. The man between them belched. His bleary eyes were at half-mast as he looked out at the cornfields that lined the road.

  "This Boston?" he grumbled. Ted had known Bob for fifteen years and only had a vague memory of his surname. The ability to remember such trivialities as the last names of good friends had been lost a decade's worth of Coors ago.

  "Bob's up," Evan commented.

  "Not for long," Bob slurred. He rummaged around in the cooler wedged at their feet. The ice had long since melted. The can he extracted was dripping wet. Bob popped the top on his warm beer and began sucking greedily at the can.

  "Get me one of those," Ted ordered.

/>   "Get it yourself," Bob replied.

  "I'm driving," Ted complained.

  Mumbling, Bob reached for another drenched can. He handed it over to Ted.

  Ted tried to pop the top but couldn't. He was already at least a sheet and a half to the wind and had a difficult time manipulating both steering wheel and can. After a moment of awkward fumbling, he turned to the others.

  "Open it for me, will you?" he asked.

  "Screw you," Bob said, slurping at his beer.

  "Give it here," Evan offered.

  Ted passed the can over.

  Apparently, while attempting to open it, Ted had shaken the can more than he thought. When Evan pulled the tab, beer began spraying up through the opening.

  "Shit!" Evan yelled, holding the can away from his khaki hide-in-the-woods shirt.

  "Shit!" Bob echoed, spitting out his own beer. "You're dumping it all over me!" Beer dribbled down his chin. He mopped at it with his sleeve.

  "Gimme that," Ted insisted urgently. He hadn't had a beer in twenty minutes and, as a result, his driving skills were suffering.

  Evan dutifully handed the can over, still overflowing.

  "Get that frigging thing away from me!" Bob screamed as more beer fizzed out onto his lap.

  "Calm down," Ted told Bob as he took the offered can.

  "You calm down," Bob griped. He sniffed the tail of his untucked shirt. "Great. Now I stink like beer."

  "No more than always," Evan commented.

  Ted spit beer out his nose. Choking on his drink, he began laughing hysterically. He laughed so hard Evan joined in. They howled and guffawed in delight as they turned off 117 onto a long side road.

  "That wasn't funny," Bob said morosely.

  Evan wiped tears from his eyes. Behind the wheel, Ted sniffled happily.

  "Guess you had to be there," Ted said.

  "It wasn't funny," Bob insisted, angrier. A furious hand wiped the damp spot on his lap.

  While Bob continued to groom himself, Ted stopped the truck. He took a few rapid gulps on his beer, emptying the can. Belching loudly, he tossed it through the sliding window at the rear of the cab. It joined the growing pile of empties.