Feast or Famine td-107

by Warren Murphy

  From that tumultuous collision, it spread out in all directions like a cold wrath of the Almighty coming to clear off the earth.

  That night, Mearl sat on high ground in his red Dodge pickup and listened to Mark from Minnesota proclaim God's honest truth.

  "This so-called flood was no act of God. God don't flood the farms of God-fearing people. This was Washington. They are experimenting with their weather-control devices and figure the best people to try it on are farmers. What do farmers know? They get rained on, droughted on and hailed on all the time. They'll get over it. Well, listen my brothers out there in the heartland. Don't get over it. Get even. You who are organized into militia, get ready. Those who aren't, what are you waiting for?"

  "By damn, what am I waiting for?" Mearl asked himself over the relentless hammering of raindrops on his truck roof.

  Thus was born the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, led by Commander Mearl Streep.

  At first, no one wanted to join. There were no militia in Iowa. It was a peaceful state and folks were too busy cleaning up the black mud and trying to get back to normal to join anything but the unemployment line.

  When the first unemployment checks ran out, Mearl started doing business. First, all he had was a squad but before long, he had himself an honest-to-God unit.

  They trained in the deserted cornfields taken over by the banks. If they happened upon a banker, sometimes they used him for target practice. It was only fair. An eye for an eye. An ear for an ear. And Mearl wasn't talking about corn.

  For three years, Mearl had drilled his men, and trained them to prepare for the black helicopters that were certain to fill the skies when zero hour came.

  No one knew when zero hour was, but he was all but certain it would take place on April 19.

  "Why April 19?" a new recruit asked, as they invariably did.

  "That was the hallowed date of the shot heard round the world, in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1775. That's when the First American Revolution started. In 1991, another shot was taken against tyranny at a place called Ruby Ridge on the same date. Two years later, also on April 19, the battleground was called Waco. These events turned the tide against the new tyrants so bad that on April 19, 1995, they created a diversionary tactic, blowing up that federal building in Oklahoma City.

  That was the turning point. Everything after that is what we called AO-After Oklahoma. We are now at war with our own unlawful government. And we gotta drill for the next April 19 or bend our proud backs under the iron boot of Washington."

  Two entire April 19s passed without incident.

  Then they came. Exactly on time.

  First it was the Garret cornfields. Stripped by what was described as a wind that wasn't a wind.

  "What was it?" Streep demanded after rushing to the scene in his camouflage uniform on the latest April 19.

  "It sounded like a cross between a tiny twister and a locust swarm," Gordon Garret himself had told him.

  "Sounds like Washington to me."

  "I don't know what it was, but it bankrupted me," Garret said dejectedly.

  "Then you might want to take a gander at this," said Mearl, pulling an IDSM membership form and introductory booklet from the cargo pocket of his cammies.

  Garret read right along.

  "That'll be thirty dollars, your first quarter's dues," Mearl added.

  "I'm flat busted."

  "No man is busted who marches with the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia," promised Mearl Streep.

  The twister from hell had hit other farms, too. Not all of them in a straight line. A number were skipped.

  "Collaborators," muttered Mearl. "That proves Washington's behind this. No storm or swarm picks its targets. Look at this."

  They looked. Everyone saw it plain. It was as if some supernatural thing had taken random bites out of the waving green prairies and fields. But the bites weren't random. Any farm that was hit was completely destroyed. Those that were spared were absolutely untouched, not an ear as much as nibbled on. In his mind, Mearl saw them as collaborationist farms. And there were more of them than there were of the downtrodden. A whole lot more.

  "We gotta take the fight to the enemy now," Mearl exhorted.

  "To Washington?"

  "We are gonna take Washington back for the Godfearing people," promised Mearl Streep. "First we gotta put the fear of God into Washington."

  Chapter 26

  When Remo returned home with the dawn, Grandma Mulberry met him with a disapproving expression and a short, pungent oath.

  "Slut."

  "You're pushing it, you old bag of bones. Nothing happened."

  "Not mean redhead, but you. Out all night. Shame on you. Tomcat slut."

  Remo inched closer. "You know I can break your neck like a twig?" he said in a low growl.

  The old woman sneered back. "Master Chiun bounce your butt over moon if you do."

  Remo's teeth met with a click. His hands floated up as if they had lives of their own. They hovered at choking height.

  Catching himself, Remo dropped them to his sides.

  "Give me a second," he told Jean, who observed the entire exchange in silent bemusement.

  The Master of Sinanju was already up. He was transcending with the sun in his white muslin morning kimono.

  "Hey, Little Father. I need to know some Korean."

  "'I love you' is Song-kyo Hapshida."

  "Thanks. But I already know that. How do you say 'F you'?"

  Horror froze Chiun's wrinkles. "You have broken up with the most wonderful woman you have ever met or will ever meet?"

  "No, I want to tell that rusty battleax off once and for all in language she'll understand."

  "I forbid you to do this."

  Remo's face fell. "Thanks a lot, Little Father."

  Remo ran down the stairs and found an old Korean-English dictionary. It didn't have the correct phrase. Not even a reasonable facsimile.

  Remo decided he had only one person to turn to.

  HAROLD SMITH ARRIVED for work with the rising sun. He greeted his secretary, nodded to her routine "No messages" and brought up the system linked to the Folcroft Four in the basement of the complex.

  He was not long at this when he heard a click behind him. He ignored it. The click came again.

  This time, he turned around in his swivel chair.

  There, on the other side of the picture window, hovered a common bumblebee. It bumped into the window.

  "Impossible," said Smith.

  Then the blue contact phone rang.

  Not taking his eye off the bee, Smith scooped up the phone.

  "Smitty, I need your help" came Remo's voice.

  "Not as much as I may need yours," Smith said, his voice drained of all emotion.

  "How's that?"

  "There is a bee on the other side of my office window. It is trying to get in."

  "The two-way window? How can a bee see through it?"

  "I suspect he cannot. But as you know, the window faces the Sound. It is not visible except to boaters. Yet this bee appears fascinated by it."

  "Maybe it's trying to head-butt his reflection."

  "Perhaps. But it seems very determined to enter my office."

  "Got any bug killer?"

  "I'll get back to you," said Smith.

  "When you do, look up the Korean translation for 'F you.'"

  "I am not going to ask why you need that information," Smith said thinly.

  "Good. Because I'm not going to tell you."

  Smith hung up and buzzed his secretary.

  "Yes, Dr. Smith?"

  "Have maintenance bring me an insecticide fatal to bees."

  "Yes, Dr. Smith."

  It wasn't long before the maintenance man set the can of Deet on Smith's desk, and Smith dismissed him.

  Then Smith went up to the Folcroft roof and, getting down on his stomach after doffing his gray jacket and vest, looked down over the roof combing.

  The bee was still h
overing at the window not four feet below. Smith could see its back clearly. It was brownish black, except for the fuzzy yellow-and-black midbody, where the wings were rooted. The fuzzy thorax was marked with a distinct skull whose tiny black hollows stared sightlessly upward.

  Smith aimed the can, steadying himself, and released a jet of noxious spray.

  The stuff spurted down, enveloping the bee. It bobbed off to one side. Smith redirected the spray at it. It dropped, came level and continued to buzz the window.

  The can ran empty before the bee got annoyed. Then, like a tiny helicopter, it abruptly shot up to Smith's eye level.

  Smith gave it a last shot and the bee, its multifaceted eyes turning white, retreated a dozen feet, blinded.

  Discarding the useless can, Smith dashed back to the roof trapdoor and dropped it after him on his way down the ladder.

  When he returned to his office, he was shaking.

  And the bee was still there. Its tiny face was dripping foamy insecticide now. Otherwise, it was unbothered. The eyes were clearing.

  "No normal bee could survive what I just subjected you to," Smith said in a low voice.

  He lifted the blue contact receiver and decided that this was a crisis that required the intervention of his enforcement arm ....

  Chapter 27

  Tammy Terrill expected a big rambling Victorian out of The Addams Family. Or a long white lab building. Maybe even a rustic ranch or adobe fort.

  She didn't expect a mud hut.

  Actually, it wasn't a hut. It was too big. It was more like a wasp's nest, but it was made from dried mud. Not piled mud, but sculpted and smoothed mud. Its flowing skin was blistered with strangely shaped windows like bug eyes made of glass. If not for the fact that it was the same color and texture as a Mississippi riverbank, it might have been beautiful in a weirdly futuristic way.

  "Can you believe this place?" she whispered to her new cameraman, whose name was Bill. Or maybe Phil. He had come down from the Baltimore affiliate.

  "Takes all kinds," said the cameraman.

  "Okay. Let's see what we can see."

  They circled the hive. It was dotted with glass blisters. There was a front door and a back. In back, there was some kind of shed made of steel. From the shed was coming a strange humming.

  "Sounds like bees," whispered Tammy.

  "Sounds like sick bees."

  "Or killer bees who haven't been able to kill as much as they like," suggested Tammy.

  "Better leave it alone, then."

  "I'm more interested in what's inside this big hive thing."

  "I want no part of any break-in."

  "No law against shoving a camera up against somebody's window and taping away," Tammy argued.

  Bill-or Phil-shrugged. "I'll go along with that."

  They picked a window at random. Creeping up to it, they pressed their faces against the chicken-wire-reinforced pane.

  What they saw inside made their eyes grow round as saucers and their jaws fall open.

  "Damn! Frankenstein's lab wasn't this weird," the Fox cameraman mumbled.

  "If this isn't the story of the century, I'll eat shit and like it. Now, get to taping before Wurmlinger shows up ...."

  Chapter 28

  The bumblebee had moved to the main entrance of Folcroft Sanitarium by the time Remo drove the rental car through the stone gates with their foreboding lion heads on either side.

  Folcroft was in a state of lock-down. No one could get in or out. And through the car telephone, Harold Smith was sounding nervous.

  "Find that thing and crush it!" Smith was saying. "We cannot afford to call attention to the organization."

  "Relax, Smitty. You run a sanitarium and you have an extermination problem. The exterminators are here. We'll take care of it."

  "Hurry," said Smith.

  Remo drove up to the main door, and the hovering bee seemed to take almost instant notice of Remo and Chiun.

  It was completely white now, carrying a coat of drying insecticide as if it had just emerged from a happy bubble bath.

  It flitted before their windshield, regarding them with what looked like cataract-gazed eyes.

  "Okay," said Remo, "let's take this guy."

  Chiun lifted a calming hand. "Wait. Let us observe it for a time."

  "What's to observe? It's another of those superbees. Our job is to kill it and turn the body over to Smith."

  "No, our task is to survive our encounter with this devil in the form of a bee."

  "That, too," Remo agreed. Turning off the engine, he settled back in his seat.

  They watched as the bee grew increasingly curious, zipping to Remo's side window, around the back, then to Chiun. It butted its head against the glass at several points.

  "It wants in," Remo muttered.

  "No, it desires us to step out."

  "Just say when."

  Chiun was stroking his wispy beard. "We must foil its evil intentions, Remo."

  "Hard to believe a bee has any intentions, evil or whatever."

  The Master of Sinanju said nothing. His eyes were intent upon the hovering bee. They studied one another for several moments, then gradually, imperceptibly, Chiun slipped his fingers up to the small wing window on his side of the car.

  "Remo," he undertoned, not moving his lips.

  "Yeah?" said Remo, equally stiff lipped.

  Chiun wrapped ivory fingers around the window latch. "When I say jump, you will jump from the vehicle as quickly as you can, taking care to slam the door behind you, also as quickly as you can."

  "And what are you going to do?"

  Instead of answering, Chiun flipped open the wing window and squeaked, "Jump!"

  Three things happened in very quick succession. Remo jumped from the car. The bee slipped through the open window, and the Master of Sinanju simultaneously shut the window behind it and exited the vehicle.

  So perfect was their timing that both doors clunked shut with one dull sound, and the bumblebee found itself trapped in the vehicle with no escape. It went into a frenzy of aerial acrobatics and glass-butting.

  Harold Smith came down to see it for himself.

  "Behold the fruits of your power, O Emperor," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju in a lofty voice. "The assassin that sought your life awaits your tender mercies."

  Smith frowned with all his lemony intensity. "It should be dead."

  "This can be arranged," said Chiun.

  "Yeah," added Remo. "We'll just push the car into the water and drown it."

  Smith shook his head. "No. I need to examine it."

  "That's going to be a trick," said Remo. "It was a trick getting it in there. Getting it out safely, I don't know about."

  "There must be a way."

  "There is," said Chiun.

  Remo and Smith looked at the Master of Sinanju with studied interest.

  "But I do not know what that way is-as yet," Chiun admitted thinly.

  All three men gave it considerable thought.

  Smith said, "Insects breathe by diffusion, which means air comes in through their bodies. It is not possible to suffocate it in the normal sense."

  "Insecticide is out," added Remo. "You tried that."

  "Ah," said Chiun.

  "Ah?"

  The old Korean flitted into the building and returned moments later carrying the separate parts of a Pyrex cake holder in his long-nailed hands, undoubtedly scavenged from the Folcroft cafeteria.

  "I don't think that's going to work, Little Father," Remo cautioned.

  "Ordinarily, what I have in mind would never work," Chiun allowed. "But you are not undertaking the task at hand, but me. I will make it work."

  Addressing Smith, he said, "Emperor, seek a place of shelter from which you may enjoy this display of the power you control so artfully."

  Smith retreated to a position behind the glass door and watched intently.

  "Remo, when I say open the door, you will open the door," Chiun said, eyeing the agitated bee.
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  "What about shutting it again?" Remo asked.

  "It will not be necessary."

  And the Master of Sinanju stationed himself at the side door where the bee was most active. Remo grabbed the door handle and set himself.

  Chiun lifted the cake holder and its Pyrex bell in either hand like a musician about to clash together a pair of cymbals.

  "Now!"

  Remo yanked open the door.

  The bee obligingly bumbled out. And was captured.

  It was a near thing. The cake-holder sections came together with an unmusical crack. But when Chiun uprighted the cake holder, the bee was buzzing around the interior in angry, frustrated orbits.

  Smith came running back down, and Chiun presented the cake holder to him. Smith took it gingerly in both hands.

  "Thank you, Master Chiun. Now come inside."

  They took the elevator to the administration floor, and Smith informed his secretary to inform the guard staff that all was well.

  "The killer bee has been captured," he said, rather unnecessarily inasmuch as Mrs. Mikulka's wide eyes followed the Pyrex-protected bee until the point it disappeared into Smith's office.

  Inside, behind closed doors, Smith set the cake holder on his desk.

  The still-dripping bee orbited a few more moments, then settled down to stand tensely on its multiple legs.

  "It looks like an ordinary bumblebee," Smith was saying as he took a red plastic object from his desk. He flipped it, and a red-ringed magnifying glass slipped out. Holding it by the combination lens protector and handle, Smith trained it on the quiescent bee.

  As if equally curious, the bee obligingly stepped closer- giving Smith a better view. Its foamy feelers quivered and dripped.

  "This is a bumblebee," Smith said.

  "Wurmlinger said it was a drone," said Remo.

  The bee turned around once and mooned Smith. The gesture of disrespect was entirely lost on Smith.

  "I see a stinger," he breathed. "Drone bees do not possess stingers."

  "That one does," Remo declared.

  "Clearly," said Smith, returning the magnifying glass to his desk drawer and shutting it.

  Dropping into his ancient, cracked leather executive's chair, Harold Smith addressed Remo and Chiun while not taking his eye off the bee, which had turned around to regard him with tiny blind-looking orbs.