Warren Murphy - Bloody Tourists

"We'll be waiting!" Amelia Powlik giggled.

"Amelia, feel free to entertain yourself while I'm gone."

"Thanks, Mr. President!"

"Just don't do any severe damage to the poor creature. That's my job."

"NOW IT'S JUST You and me!" Amelia Powlik exclaimed with a bark of joy. "Here, have a drink." Dawn Summons, her head half-hanging over the edge of the bed, saw a bottle of tequila thrust in front of her. She hated tequila. But she took it and brought it to her lips.

"Take a nice big swig," Amelia said.

Dawn put it to her lips and then concentrated, with all her mental energies, on the act of closing her lips. As she upended the bottle, her lips did close. She felt the tequila burning against her mouth, but only a trickle got inside.

"That's right, honey!" Amelia said. "That'll get you going!"

Dawn sat up and held the bottle out to Amelia.

"No, you go ahead and take another."

"Yes, Amelia," Dawn said, and she pretended to take another big swig. Hope flared up inside of her-she was fighting it! She was disobeying!

Was she ready to take it to the next level, to try something really rebellious?

"We're gonna have fun while the prez is out on the town!" Amelia said. "Well, I'm gonna have fun. What'll we do for starters?"

"How about this?" Dawn asked as she held the tequila bottle by the neck and brought it down hard on Amelia Powlik's skull.

The bottle broke. Amelia grunted and staggered and sputtered to get the glass pieces and alcohol out of her mouth. She grabbed her eyes but forced glass splinters into her flesh. When she tried to blink her eyes open, the tequila burned her eyeballs.

Dawn gave Amelia a shove. Amelia staggered across the room. Another shove sent her onto the balcony. When Amelia's hip collided with the iron railing, she knew what was in store for her and she forced her eyes open. They were bloodred and burning. She managed to hold them open just long enough to see Dawn Summens coming at her again. Amelia tried to slap Dawn away and failed. Dawn grabbed her by the shins and lifted.

Amelia, with a bark of fear, flipped off the balcony and thumped against the beach twelve feet below. Something snapped. It was her ankle. Despite the agony, she began a miserable turtle crawl.

"I found another bottle of tequila, Amelia," Dawn called down. Amelia felt the liquid spattering on her back and buttocks.

"How about we heat this party up?" Summens asked. Amelia once again forced her eyes open. Dawn was on the balcony with a tubular box of fireplace matches. She lit one and sent the slender flaming stick arching off the balcony. It landed in the sand and went out.

"Oops. Better try that again," Summens said. Amelia whimpered. She watched another match arc through the air and land in the sand just a foot from her body. She tried to crawl away, backward, but her body was shaking and her leg was limp. The third match was on target. Amelia tried to dodge, but she simply could not move fast enough.

Then there was fire, a stench and contortions of agony.

IT DIDN'T LAST long enough, but burning Amelia Powlik was the most deeply satisfying thing Dawn Summens had ever done in her life. She even enjoyed the aroma. "Smells like victory!" she told the steaming human ruin happily.

She was getting more of her own will back every moment. She had to avoid people for a while. She had to get out of here, get things done. Not that Grom would be back anytime soon if he was really going on a full round of stops at all the resorts.

It was how he had done it for the past two years. He would go out one or two nights a week and sprinkle GUTX powder in the breakfast fare. He had tried coffee, eggs, pancake mix, whatever, before finding he had the best results with the breakfast potatoes, of all things.

Almost everybody ate them. The staff at the hotels had received the suggestion that it was perfectly normal and acceptable for him to sprinkle stuff on the breakfast food. It was also standard operating procedure to broadcast Greg Grom's message to Union Island visitors over the loudspeakers during breakfasts following his midnight visits. The tourists invariably complained when the racket started, but soon they would be agreeing with every suggestion Grom made.

It would take him a couple of hours to hit all the resorts. The longer the better, as far as Dawn Summens was concerned.

Chapter 38

"Yech," Remo Williams said. "Get a whiff of that."

"No, thank you," Chiun answered as he crinkled his nose into a hundred extra wrinkles and put his hands in his kimono sleeves as if to protect all possible flesh from exposure to the air in this place, which had to be toxic.

"Sex. Blood. Sweat. Somebody had a hell of an orgy, and it wasn't one of those nice orgies where everybody smiles. Looks like there was some beating and whipping involved."

"And burning," Chiun said, moving to the open doors of the balcony. Remo joined him a moment later and they gazed down at the horrid burned thing in the sand. "These people like it pretty rough," Remo said.

Chiun glanced down at what Remo was holding. It was a small wooden drawer, empty.

"It's from the bedside table." Remo held it up and took a cautious sniff. His eyes widened.

"It is the poison."

"It is, but Grom is gone and he must have taken it with him."

"We must find him."

Remo looked down at the black thing. "Maybe she knows."

OUT OF THE DARKNESS came a souring song of agony. Her body flared to life with pain that burned and burned-

Until a hand touched her, on the neck, and the pain became as nothing.

"I was on fire," she said.

"Your skin is very burned," said a kind voice, a voice like someone old and young at once.

"Am I going to live?"

"Doubtful," said the kind, high voice.

"We need your help," said the voice of a younger man, deep and attractive.

"I'm going to die?"

"Where is Greg Grom?" the younger man's voice asked.

"President Grom is gone," she said, and she tried to smile.

HER EYES STARED into the heavens dreamily. Remo looked at Chiun, who was manipulating the woman's charred flesh, looking for the nerves underneath. "She is badly damaged and very heavily intoxicated with the poison," Chiun said. "Her body is fighting for life and fighting with itself."

"Can't you snap her out of it?"

"She is already much too snapped."

Remo wasn't sure what to think about the poor blackened thing on the sand. She was a victim. They were all victims. Even the pair at the restaurant who tried to poison their dinner. None acted with a will of their own. The list of responsible parties was really extremely small.

"We gotta find Grom," Remo said. Chiun looked at him expectantly.

"I don't know how," Remo answered the unasked question. "I just know we have to."

"Why?" Chiun asked.

Remo made an exaggerated gesture at the sizzling woman. "Hello? Bad man up to no good?"

"Do not speak to me in that way, please. What kind of no good do you think he is up to?"

Remo fretted. "Who knows? Probably doing what he does-you know, poisoning all the tourists. Dosing them up."

"And he would do it in what way?"

"Same way they did us, I guess-put it in the pasta Puttanesca." Remo looked at the moon over the water. He looked suddenly at Chiun. "Or the scrambled eggs. What if he goes at night to the hotels and sprinkles his special seasoning in the food for the morning breakfast buffets? He'd get pretty good coverage."

"That would be effective," Chiun agreed.

"So we make the rounds of the hotels until we find him."

Amelia Powlik sat up. "Where you going?"

"Maybe you should keep from moving around too much," Remo said as he watched part of her upper-arm skin slough off in a black crust.

"Wait, you. You sound kinda good-looking. Stay with me and let's get to know each other."