Warren Murphy: Bloody Tourists

"Why?" Chiun demanded.

"Just because!" Remo said over his shoulder as he started running.

"CHIEF!" said Candice the dispatcher. "What?"

Candice nodded at the chief's window.

The squad car was going about forty miles per hour. The guy running alongside it was making a circular motion with his hand to tell the driver to roll down his window.

Chief of Union Island Police Checker Spence had seen some crazy-ass shit today. He chose to ignore the absurdity of what he was seeing now. After all, if he admitted there was a guy running alongside his car at forty miles per hour, then he might as well resign himself to the same sort of insanity afflicting Officer Simone, who giggled in the back seat.

"Where's the fire?" the running man asked.

"No fire. Murder."

"Where's the murder?"

"Coming your way, son," Spence said. "There's a mob of vicious killers on the loose in the heart of Union Island City, and they're headed this way. Our civil control team is about five minutes behind me, sounding the alarm."

"So where are you hightailing to?" Remo demanded. The chief barely slowed the squad car as he maneuvered through a curve in the road. The running man never fell behind. Not an inch.

"I got a crazy man and an innocent woman to protect, and I'm obliged to get our island president out of harm's way. I'm going to pick him up at the Seven Seas."

"You're putting Greg Grom's safety ahead of the safety of hundreds of sleeping tourists?" the running man demanded.

"Of course I am, fool! In times of danger the president's safety is always the top priority," the chief recited. "Under no circumstances will I allow harm to befall the Island president, regardless of the circumstances."

REMO WILLIAMS STOPPED running and watched the squad car disappear into the night.

"Well?" Chiun asked, arriving a moment later at his side.

"That son-of-a-bitch president has got everybody brainwashed. Every one of them. They've got some sort of murders happening in town, and the first thing the chief of police does is drive out to secure Greg Grom's safety."

"Why are we not going after the president, as well?" Chiun asked.

Remo shook his head. "He said something about a mob of murderers. I have a feeling the bunch from the tour bus broke out of their cage."

Chiun put his hands in his sleeves. "Are you insinuating we should once again chase that band of miscreants? I think one time is sufficient."

"I could use a hand. There's a lot of them."

"Why would they let them go free?" Chiun demanded.

"How should I know!" Remo exclaimed. "Why'd they go nuts in the first place? I don't have any answers here. Everybody on the freaking island is crazy. That's your answer. Any more questions you have, that's the answer. Now there's crazy people that way and there's crazy people this way, but the ones that are this way may or may not be committing murder, depending on how much stock you put in the carload of crazy people who just went from that way to that way! Any more questions?"

Chiun, who had his mouth in a tight, pale little knot, said, "Yes, I do-"

"Stuff it! I'm going that way. You go wherever the hell you want."

And with that, Remo started running again.

"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY," boomed the PA system on top of the squad car. "Do not panic. Walk quickly to the street and proceed due east, away from the town. I repeat, proceed away from town."

The word had already gone out. Fire alarms were blaring in the hotels. Sleepy tourists were milling about, looking for an explanation.

"Proceed away from the town," the PA on the squad car blared as Remo jogged toward it. "No, no, away from the town!"

Remo stepped onto the hood and walked onto the roof, where he knelt and poked his head into the open window.

"Need your car."

"What?" the driver asked, and the word screeched out of the twin public-address horns mounted on the roof. Remo kicked off one horn and removed the other one with a twist, then handed it to the officer behind the wheel.

"Guess you're out of commission in the civil control department anyway," Remo observed. He opened the door and dragged out the driver, rolling him into the manicured grass on the roadside. Remo slipped into the driver's seat and grabbed the wheel before the car even swerved.

The cop in the passenger seat dropped his mouth open, then closed again. "Hey, you can't-"

Remo never learned what he couldn't do. The surprised-looking cop in the passenger seat was gone, replaced by a very old Korean man half his weight. Remo gave him a grin.

Chiun didn't smile, but there was a little something at the corner of his lips as he pointed a thumb over his shoulder, back in the direction of town, and said, "That way."

Chapter 41

With a quick tap on the security pad, Dawn Summens disabled all the exhibit alarms in the great hall of Union Island's Museum of Natural History.

The great hall was lit only by the glow of the floor-mounted aisle lights and the exit sign. That was all the light she needed. She crossed to the wood-and-glass case labeled Union Island Blue Ring Octopus.

There it was, carefully settled on a rubber-coated stand. It was an ugly, dried husk of gray matter no larger than a cat. It didn't look much like an octopus. The tentacles had adhered to its body during the drying process, which it had undergone some six hundred years ago.

As the sign explained, this was the one and only surviving specimen of the Union Island Blue Ring Octopus. That had been a lie up until very recently. But now, with Greg Grom's cache depleted, this really was the last one.

Dawn opened the case and took the exhibit. It weighed no more than a couple of pounds. She shoved it into her shoulder purse, pounding it and crushing it until it fit inside. Not that it mattered-she was just going to grind it up anyway.

As she closed the case, behind her she heard the buzz of a telephone, then the scrape of chair legs. It was old Professor Builder two floors up. For a moment Dawn wondered if somehow the phone call had alerted him to her presence.

But it was something else getting him all worked up. "Oh, my God!" she heard him exclaim as he ran from here to there. "I see them!" he told his caller. "They're everywhere! Killing? Killing who? I don't understand."

What was that all about?

She went to the window to see for herself.

It took her just a moment to understand the slow-moving figures on the street. The drugged ones from the tour bus had escaped from police lockup. They were on a rampage, but it wasn't the same sort of rampage perpetrated on the mainland tourist town of Pigeon Fudge. There hadn't been time for much wholesale slaughter in Pigeon Fudge.

But there was now. The maniacs were carrying body parts like war trophies. The scattered, slow-moving, dull-witted mob was wandering through town and heading right for the museum.

It was time to go.

"Who's there?" came an urgent demand from the darkness. The rotund shape of Professor Builder was at the bottom of the stairs. Dawn hadn't even heard him coming down. Builder moved to the wall.

"Don't turn the lights on, idiot," Summens said sharply. "You'll attract them like bugs."

"Who are you? Show yourself."

"Professor, it's me. Dawn."

"Minister Summens?"

"Yes, Prof. Have you got your keys? We need to get away from here fast."

"Yes. But how did you get in?"

"There's no time, Professor! They're coming!" Builder did a fast walk across the great hall, slowing just slightly to gape at the empty glass case where the last desiccated Union Island Blue Ring had been on display.

"Minister Summens, what is going on?" the old professor wheezed.

Dawn ignored him, opening the private entrance door. There were clomping figures wandering onto the museum parking lot. "We'll have to make a run for it."