Warren Murphy: Created, The Destroyer

The engines that Remo had heard groaned louder, and at the bottom of the concrete ramp, a steel door rose on hydraulic pistons. It opened a steel compartment that in the dim light Remo could see was big enough for several cars at once.

Remo released the emergency brake in the car, gave it a push, then sat on Jimmy's head and gently eased the car down the hill into the giant box.

As the car bumped to a halt against the end wall, Remo dashed for freedom. He almost stumbled as he heard the giant steel door slowly lowering with a hideous hiss.

Remo heard sounds from the other end of the giant concrete pillbox. He moved silently on the balls of his feet, like a phantom gliding over a padded graveyard.

Peering around the wall, he saw Felton, stripped to his white shirt, his coat and jacket lying on the ground, sweating over an instrument panel.

Felton yelled: "Everything all right, Jimmy? You got him set?"

Remo stepped around the building. "I'm all set, Felton. All set."

Felton went for the gun. With one swift motion, Remo snapped the revolver from his hand. He moved behind Felton, and spun him wildly around in a circle, moving him like a rolling barrel along the concrete sidewalk beside the concrete and steel crusher.

It was like dribbling a basketball. Felton's blows were wild and thrashing. He was too old for this business, too old.

By the time Remo got Felton to the other end, the steel door had closed. Felton spun around and swung. Remo caught the blow on his left arm and crumbled Felton with a soft chop to the temple.

Felton collapsed to the concrete. And Remo saw something sticking out beneath the steel door. It was a leg. Jimmy had tried to slide out. He hadn't made it. The steel door had sliced it like a hot wire going through cheese. The tip of the shoe seemed to be jerking, not from impulses which were severed, but like an organism, primeval without intellect.

Remo gave Felton another tap on the temple, then went back to the control panel. It was a simple panel but Remo didn't understand it.

There was a right lever with gradations, a forward lever, a top lever, an entrance lever, and an automatic control.

Remo grabbed the entrance lever. Then it hit him like a jolt of electricity. He began to laugh. He was still laughing as he heard the heavy steel door begin to hiss open.

He picked up Felton's pistol, then walked to the ramp at the other end of the concrete blockhouse. "Maxwell," he kept repeating. "Maxwell." Felton was where he had left him, his arms spread grotesquely wide over the concrete driveway.

Jimmy had rolled back down the incline after the door had severed his leg. But the hiss of the opening door drove him on. With his one leg and a stump and two hands, Jimmy was hopping and crawling like a horrible, crippled, crab up the incline, trying to escape. In the faint moonlight, Remo could see the terror etched deeply into his face.

Remo cocked Felton's pistol and fired a bullet calmly into Jimmy's one good leg. The bullet spun Jimmy around and Remo took a step into the driveway and kicked the big Texan back into the box over the leg that was no longer his.

Then Remo lifted Felton and heaved him down the concrete incline. Remo ran around to the controls and pushed back the entrance lever. The heavy steel door hissed shut again and a light went on inside the blockhouse. Through some sort of heavy plastic peephole, Remo could see inside. Felton was not moving. Nor was Jimmy.

Felton would come to soon enough. Remo reached into his shirt pocket and lit a cigarette. He glanced once more at the control panel, mumbled "Maxwell" again with a smile, and settled down to smoking his cigarette. So that was it.

On the fourth puff, he heard a scratching on the plastic shield. He took a deliberately long time turning around. When he did, there was Felton's face, pressed against the plastic window.

The old man's hair was wild. He was yelling something. Remo could not make it out.

Carefully, Remo formed the word with his lips: "Maxwell."

Felton's head shook.

"I know you don't know," Remo yelled.

Felton looked desperately puzzled.

"Here's another one," Remo yelled. "MacCleary?"

Felton shook his head.

"Don't know him either, huh?" Remo called. "I didn't think you would. He was just a guy with a hook. Think of him when you're being crushed to death. Think of him when you're a hood ornament on somebody's car. Think of him because he was my friend."

Remo turned from Felton who scratched frantically on the plastic window and examined the idiot panel. He shrugged his shoulders. He heard a muffled plea for mercy. But there had been no mercy for MacCleary or the other CURE agents or for America.

He had been created the destroyer and this was what he was meant to do. He pushed the lever marked automatic and the machine moaned into operations, its giant hydraulic presses forcing hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure into a moving wall. And Remo knew he was not just working at a job, he was living his role in life, fulfilling what he was born for.

It took no more than five minutes. First the front wall pressed in to crush the contents of the blockhouse, then a side wall moved in to crush from another direction, then the roof slowly lowered and it was over. When all the hydraulic walls had returned to their normal positions, Remo peered through the plastic window. All he saw was a cube of metal, four feet square. An automobile and two humans, now only a cube of scrap iron.

Remo looked around for an implement. He saw a rusted crowbar resting against one of the blockhouse's exterior walls.

He walked slowly over to the crowbar, picked it up, then went back to the panel. He didn't know how to turn off the lights, let alone the machine. Someone would find the cube in the morning. It would probably be shipped out with the rest of the scrap.

Remo pried a small metal badge from the top of the control panel. It was a trademark. It was as far as CURE'S one agent had been able to penetrate.

It read: "Maxwell Steel Reducer. Maxwell Industries, Lima, O."

Cynthia didn't mind too much that Daddy had decided to stay at the yard. She wanted to be alone with Remo anyway, and she was happy that they had finally gotten to understand each other.

She didn't even mind that Daddy didn't come home for breakfast. Remo made a personal phone call from Lamonica Towers to Dr. Smith at Folcroft. He made the call from Felton's bed while Cynthia slept beside him.

"A what?" Smith said.

"That's what Maxwell was," Remo repeated. "Felton was the boss."

"Impossible."

"All right, it's impossible," Remo said.

There was a long pause.

"How much could one of them cost?"

"How should I know, damn it?"

"Just wondering," Smith said.

"Look. I know where we can get one cheap."

"Oh, really?"

"A friend of mine now owns one. She'll sell it to me cheap. One hundred billion dollars," Remo yelled into the receiver, then hung up.

He was caressing his bedmate's fanny when the phone rang.

"This is Viaselli," said the man at the other end of the receiver. "I just wanted to thank Norman for releasing my brother-in-law, Tony."

"This is Carmine Viaselli, right?" Remo asked.

"That's right. Who is this?"

"I'm an employee of Mr. Felton's and I'm glad you called."

Remo continued: "Mr. Felton called me early this morning and said I should try to reach you. He wanted to see you tonight. Something or other about a Maxwell."

"Where should I meet him?"

"He has a junk yard on Route 440. It's the first right off Communipaw Avenue. He'll be there."

"What time?"

"About nine o'clock." Remo felt Cynthia roll into him, cuddling her face in his chest. She slept in the raw. "Better yet, Mr. Viaselli. better make it ten o'clock."