Warren Murphy - Killer Watts

An intense silence gripped the desert beyond the bar's clapboard walls. He thought he'd heard the distant sound of a helicopter more than an hour before, but it had been swallowed up in the desert wind. No matter. Even though they hadn't found him yet, they were still looking.

Only a matter of time... Recharge. Had to recharge. Sniffling, Roote lifted his head from his hands.

Only then did he see the reflection in the bottles behind the bar.

Stomach knotting, Roote whirled on his stool. He wasn't alone.

The stranger had somehow gotten inside the saloon without the creak of a single floorboard or the squeak of the half-rusted door hinges.

The intruder had a look of death in his dark eyes. Roote had seen the same expression countless times in the past. Virtually every time he looked in the mirror.

"You're Roote, I assume?" the stranger asked.

"Yes, sir," Roote replied. He wore his eyes at half-mast. His Southern drawl was slurred.

His charge was still low.

Dang! He shouldn't have let it drain so far. It was easy enough to recharge. It was only a matter of finding the nearest electrical source. The outlet behind the bar would have been sufficient. But he had sat morosely at the bar for hours, not even caring that they were looking for him. Now he regretted his apathy.

As the stranger closed in, Roote hoped the limited energy stored in his capacitors would be enough.

Bracing his back against the bar, Roote rubbed his thumbs against his fingertips. Weak blue sparks began to pop inside his palms.

He wouldn't take any chances. He couldn't afford to miss. Roote would let this latest intruder get in close. Then he'd fry him like an egg.

ACROSS THE BIG BAR FLOOR, Remo was trying to figure out what Elizu Roote thought he was doing with his hands.

As he watched the pale man raise his hands up beside his shoulders, images of the old Mexican man's impersonation of the Army private popped unbeckoned into his mind.

And strangest of all, it appeared as if Roote's conjuring was working. There was a sporadic blue flash coming from between his curled fingers. It illuminated the bones in his hands like some weird, palm-size X-ray.

Probably palming a couple of joy buzzers. His unique serial killer's stamp.

That Roote was insane, Remo had little doubt. The bodies of two of the men he had killed still lay on the floor, charred beyond any hope of identification short of dental records. The private must have soaked them in gasoline and burned them alive.

Remo wondered why he would have brought them inside afterward. Obviously they hadn't been killed in the bar. The saloon's bone-dry wood would have gone up like a struck matchstick if he had done it in here.

The two pairs of boot marks were the only evidence Remo did see of any kind of fire residue.

The boot prints were burned into the wood floor. As he walked toward them, the prints seemed almost like a brief map to some macabre dance step.

When he looked up, he saw that Roote was smiling proudly. He nodded to the footprints.

"They died with their boots on," he said. He was still leaning against the bar, rubbing his fingertips on his palms.

Remo kept coming.

There was a strange tingle of electricity in the air. It seemed to be coming from Roote's direction, though Remo couldn't determine the source.

"It ain't really my fault," Roote speculated. "The Army's what made me a monster."

That was enough for Remo. Roote was just another kook who wanted to blame his training for everything wrong in his life. Not my fault. The Army told me to kill. The devil made me do it. An old argument.

"You-all are here to arrest me, I suppose," Roote said as Remo closed in.

Eyes flat, Remo shook his head. "We're way beyond that. Just for the record, how many people have you killed?"

"Today or all told?" Roote asked with a proud smile.

Remo's dead expression didn't change. "Does the term 'you just sealed your fate' have any meaning to you?"

Roote began slapping his fingertips in unison against his palms. The soft clapping sound was accompanied by an increased sparking.

"You don't have no gun," Elizu Roote said. He sounded a little disappointed. "How about handcuffs?"

Remo was past the bodies now. Nearly upon Roote. "Don't use either. Don't need either."

"That's a cryin' shame. Metal conducts best." It was a puzzling thing to say. And between the kid at the airport and General Chesterfield, Remo had already wasted enough time on nutcases today. It was justice time. He let the remark pass, reaching out a thick-wristed hand to Roote.

He'd do it quick and easy and be on the first flight out of town before the body was even found. Or so he thought.

His hand was a foot away from Roote's throat when the private's palms opened like desert blooms.

Remo caught a brief glimpse of what appeared to be thimbles. But for some reason, they looked as if they were buried at the end of Elizu Roote's fingers. It was also obvious that they were the source of the mysterious sparking.

"Surprise," Roote announced. He grinned maniacally.

There was a pop of light like a flashbulb going off.

The sudden brightness took Remo by surprise. Even as the light was registering on his retinas, Remo felt the shock of electricity grab him in the chest.

The short power surge lifted him off the floor, flinging him back toward the end of the bar. Stools toppled out of his path, spilling over, crashing and rolling against tables.

Pain gripped his chest like fingers of flame. His heart began racing, pounding in spastic bursts. Lying on his back on the floor, Remo had no idea what had just happened. Whatever it was, it had stopped. He rolled over weakly, looking up at Roote. His heart still thudded angrily in his chest. Roote seemed disappointed. He was leaning against the bar with one hand as he looked at the recessed metal pads of the other.

"Charge is lower than I thought," he complained. "Sorry, cowboy. There ain't enough for the full treatment."

Roote lowered only one hand this time. And this time, Remo clearly saw the arcs of electrical energy shoot from the private's five fingertips.

His system had been practically overloaded the first time. When the second burst came, Remo wasn't even strong enough to roll out of its deadly path.

The next blast caught him in the chest. His heart immediately began to fibrillate wildly. The electricity surged through his body, flying up his finely tuned spinal cord and racing out to his overloaded extremities. Every nerve in his body screamed in pain.

As the power flowed, Roote stepped forward, eyes gleeful.

Not even a body trained to the perfection that was Sinanju could withstand such a direct assault against its nervous system. Remo had seconds to live.

Flailing on the floor, he grabbed out blindly, desperately seizing something cool and cylindrical at his side. The brass footrest that ran the length of the bar.

The pain that racked his body was unbearable. Yet some distant, lucid part of Remo's mind told him to clutch on to the footrest. To fight for life.

He grasped the metal tube with one shaking hand. The electricity instantly coursed through his body and out into the long brass pipe. Dissipating its force. Throwing it from his own ravaged body.

He didn't know if he'd grabbed the rail soon enough. His body had already taken a beating. Still, he held on for dear life, feeling the current disperse along the footrest even as a cloak of darkness began to pull across the sparking field of blazing synapses that was his mind.

As Remo lost consciousness, the last vision he beheld was that of Elizu Roote standing above him-eyes crazed, death pouring like hellfire from his fingertips.

For a moment locked in time, Remo hoped more than anything that a demented Army private with supernatural powers would not be the last thing he would see in life. And then he ceased to care at all.