Warren Murphy: Bloody Tourists

"I can't run, Minister Summens," Builder panted. He wasn't a healthy man.

She nodded. "Give me the keys. I'll get the cart and we'll meet up at the bottom of the stairs."

"Yes. Yes," he panted. "I can get that far." He put the key ring in her hand. "The key with the black plastic handle."

"Thanks, Professor," Dawn Summens said, and she bolted out the door, attracting the attention of several dead-eyed figures in the vicinity. One young man in a very soiled shirt and tie was just twenty paces away. He came for her without a word, dangling a severed forearm from one hand.

She moved fast, feeling strangely calm but also oddly vibrant, and reached Builder's golf cart in seconds. She started the cart and stomped on the gas, yanking the wheel tight to the right and speeding across the lot to the young man with the extra limb. He was one of the PR logisticians brought to the mainland to help coordinate the president's busy tour schedule.

Dawn Summens sideswiped him with the golf cart, and he landed hard. As she pulled the cart into a tight U-turn, she saw the old professor laboriously reaching the bottom step as two dead figures lumbered toward him from either side.

"Hurry, Minister!" he wheezed.

"Sorry, Professor. This thing can't carry us both."

"Minister, please!"

It was true. The little cart barely reached ten miles per hour when she floored it. Just think how slow she'd go with that flabby old man weighing it down. She swerved around a blank-faced woman with bloodsmeared hands and pulled onto the street. The last she saw of Professor Builder he was in the grips of his two attackers, one on each arm and pulling in opposite directions. They were going to yank him apart.

She wondered how long that would take.

Chapter 42

Jimmy and Ellen Sandiro had planned their vacation to paradise for eighteen months. They wanted it to be perfect. And everything had been perfect for the first few days. Sunshine, relaxing on the beach, delicious gourmet buffets and endless rum punch at the poolside.

Now this. The one night they decided to go out on the town, they got mugged, right in front of the piano bar. "Jimmy!" Ellen shrieked and tackled the man who was holding Jimmy's ankle while four or five crazy people yanked on his skull. The man with the ankle refused to drop. Ellen refused to give up. She locked her arms around the attacker's neck and heaved, trying to muscle him away from her husband.

The attacker staggered and dropped the ankle, then sort of shrugged Ellen right off him. She collapsed hard on the sidewalk and found herself staring at a face. A face on a head. A head on the sidewalk.

Jimmy.

Her scream was cut short as she was lifted by her ponytail and she felt the horrific stretching of her vertebrae. Christ almighty, she didn't want to be a head on a sidewalk!

Her ponytail was released and she cracked her head on the sidewalk, mercifully blotting out her consciousness.

REMO'S STIFFENED FINGERS shot into the man's throat with enough force to crush it. The man wordlessly released the woman's hair and staggered away, grabbing at his throat in an attempt to take a deep breath again. He was doomed to failure.

Remo grabbed a pair of attackers by the shoulders and mashed them together. The next one got backed into the wall-backed in hard.

Chiun had taken care of the others. He was standing calmly with a pile of bodies on one side, a pile of the freshly harvested arms and legs on the other.

"Giving them a taste of their own medicine?" Remo asked.

"Yes, but I fear they did not appreciate the poetry of my justice."

ANOTHER KNOT of mute, plodding figures had gathered around a palm tree just off the main street. Two vacationing couples had somehow managed to shimmy up the arched tree trunk and crowd together on top. Remo and Chiun arrived just in time to see one of the men slip halfway off the trunk. From there it was an easy job for his attackers to grab him by the ankles and haul him down.

"I'll take that," Remo said, whisking the man bodily out of the clutching, stained fingers of the attackers, who turned on Remo with bloodshot, yellowing eyes and ghastly faces devoid of expression.

Remo put the surprised man on his feet and penetrated the knot of attackers in a blur of stiff fingers and kicking feet. He crushed a quartet of skulls in under four seconds.

Ignoring their dead companions, two more of them plodded toward Chiun, who stood waiting impassively until they were on top of him. Then he penetrated both foreheads with a finger, moving so fast the victims in the tree and the man on the sidewalk couldn't follow the movement. Their attackers had gone from dangerous to dead so quickly they were having trouble coming to terms with it.

Remo and Chiun left them still trying to figure it out and went on with their janitorial duties. The last of the mess that needed cleaning up was conveniently gathered all in one place.

There was a splash of blood and a torso on the steps on the side of the Union Island Museum of Natural History. The head and limbs that had once been attached to it were inside, dropped carelessly on the floor. The lights were on, and a silent crowd was inside admiring one of the exhibits.

"Real movie zombies never go to museums," Remo noted. "Of course, real movie zombies also eat people."

"Do not give them any ideas," Chiun cautioned. Some of the figures gathered at the exhibit lolled their heads and rolled their eyes at Remo and Chiun, but turned back to the case.

"What's so damn interesting?" Remo asked. He stepped up onto the greeter's desk and got a glimpse of the legend on the case.

"Union Island Blue Ring Octopus. All right, now I'm totally confused."

"It is the source of the poison," Chiun said. "Not the laboratory fakery that we smelled on the tour bus, but the original, natural poison. These victims of the poison must sense its vapors."

"Yeah. Can't stop eating Union Island octopuses. The sign says it is now extinct. This was supposed to be the last known specimen," Remo related. "But the weird thing is the case is empty."

As that moment the crowd snapped the case off its base and threw it to the floor with a thud. The crowd began sniffing the display and the inside of the glass. "Will you please finish this," Chiun directed.

"Yes, yes, yes." Remo lashed into them. It passed through his mind that these people didn't ask for this to happen to them. But he also knew, they were irreparably damaged. Their humanity was erased. Their metabolism was crashing. They were mindless, dangerous hulks, and the poison was killing them fast. It was a mercy to end it now. Remo did so, quickly, then stood in the silence as the last body collapsed.

He bent and peered into the display case, giving a shallow sniff. He nudged a corpse and uncovered gray powder on the floor.

"Somebody took the octopus recently. Like today."

"Do not touch it," Chiun warned.

"Don't plan to," Remo said. "Whoever took it, I hope they were wearing rubber gloves."

Chapter 43

Dawn Summens felt strange. Her cheeks and mouth were getting numb. She kept rubbing her face to stimulate circulation. Her lips were dried out and felt cracked, and she wetted them again and again. Something on her face. Gritty.

Even at just ten miles per hour, she was having difficulty controling the golf cart. She drove out of town, swerving through bands of fleeing tourists. Everybody was headed for the docks where the cruise ships landed their tour groups. Grom would be there, and she had plans for Grom. Reassuringly she nudged the purse with her arm again, just to make sure it was still there.

A curve in the road became a major problem when she found her hands weren't responding to her brain's instructions. She gripped the steering wheel, but it refused to budge until she leaned her entire body. The cart swerved through the curve, but now the road curved back the other way. Dawn fought to steer through it. Her hands wouldn't work. She tried to lift her foot from the accelerator pedal but found it stuck there.