Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

"Yellow's a nice color," Remo suggested. "Buttercups are yellow. And daisies."

"So's fire. This was a fiery, burning, horrible yellow." He tried to look up at his own forehead. "Is my brain on fire?"

"Does it feel like it's on fire?" Remo asked.

The man clutched his head as if afflicted with a migraine. "I can't get the yellow out of my brain. My brain feels yellow."

Captain Page was on his feet, examining his ripped chapeau forlornly. "Ah never thought Ah'd see a Yank with such a yella streak in him," he said in a disgusted voice. He addressed the Union man. "Suh, Ah would advise you to get a grip on yourself. You are babbling something fierce."

The Union soldier's nervous eyes moved wildly in their orbits. "The yellow got into my brain through my eyes. Are they okay?"

"They look scared," Remo told him.

"They are scared. I'm scared. My-my eyes aren't yellow, are they?"

"No. Why?"

"If they turned yellow, I think I'd have to gouge them out. Otherwise, I couldn't stand to look into a mirror ever again."

"Aren't you taking this antiyellow thing a little too far?" said Remo.

"Can I go now? I have a long walk back to Massachusetts."

"Why not fly home?"

"I would, but I'd have to ride to the airport in a taxi. It might be yellow."

"Have a nice stroll," said Remo, turning his attention elsewhere as the bluecoat ran off.

The puzzled Confederate soldiers were up on their feet now. Some had crawled gingerly to the edge of the Crater and were looking down into it.

The Master of Sinanju approached Remo cautiously. "You are unhurt?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

"You are very active for one who is on strike," Chiun said thinly.

"I got interested in things," Remo said distractedly. "So sue me."

"What was wrong with those men?" Chiun asked.

"They were yella," said Captain Page, spitting out his disgust.

"Get off it," said Remo. "They were just scared by the thing that landed in the Crater."

"It was a bomb," said Chiun. "As I warned you, Remo."

"A dud."

"A dud bomb."

"A miss is as good as a mile," said Remo carelessly. "Let's check the thing out." Remo motioned for Captain Page to accompany them and, when the good captain balked, Remo swept a hand out and took hold of him by the back of the neck and started off.

Captain Page told his brain to make his body resist. He knew his brain got the message because his mental thoughts were perfectly clear and understandable. Unfortunately, somewhere in the neural net of his brain a dendrite must have been down or something because his legs obligingly carried him along at the same pace as the civilian named Remo.

It was very strange. When Remo slowed, Page's legs slowed, too. When Remo topped a rise, Page's legs knew exactly what to do even though all during the hike to the Crater, Captain Page was firmly informing his brain that he did not want to go near the damn Crater.

Page felt exactly like a docile puppet. He wondered if it had something to do with the way Remo manipulated his spine during the walk, tapping vertebrae to hurry him up and squeezing when he wanted Page to slow down.

When they reached the Crater, the Confederates had gotten themselves organized. Seeing Captain Page a prisoner, they leveled their muskets. Others went to work with their ramrods.

"Anyone who wants to walk around for the next month with a ramrod shoved up his backside," Remo said casually, "has my permission to fire."

There were three takers. They let go and then used their hands to bat away the thick black-powder smoke to see how badly their target had been hit.

When the smoke thinned, there was no sign of the skinny man with the thick wrists and dead-looking eyes.

Reflexively they reached for their belted ramrods. And encountered emptiness.

"Oof! Oof! Oof!" the three said several seconds apart. Then a firm hand guided their hands to the missing ramrods.

They found that the missing implements were stubbornly stuck in something and, when they turned around to look, they saw that they were somehow stuck in the seats of their Confederate gray trousers.

The trio formed a daisy chain and tried to help one another out of their rectal predicaments.

After that, the Confederate troops decided it was high time for a long coffee break and set to boiling chicory in their battered tin field cups over open fires. One man surreptitiously began coaxing his camp coffee along with a Zippo lighter.

Meanwhile, Remo guided Captain Page to the lip of the Crater.

The object had landed off center, gouging a raw brown wound in the grassy gash before it had rolled down to the deepest part of the Crater. Most of the lenses had shattered, leaving dull yellow glass shards lying about.

And next to the object a Union reenactor sat sobbing uncontrollably.

"Looks like we got a casualty here," said Remo, starting into the Crater. Captain Page obligingly followed. Or at least his feet obliged. His face scowled in a very ungentlemanly manner.

"These Yanks are a sorry lot," mumbled Page when they reached the man.

"What do you expect?" said Remo. "It's not like they're professional soldiers."

Remo tapped the Union soldier's dusty boot with a toe. "Lose your musket?" he asked solicitously.

The man looked up, face warped and dust smeared. "It was awful."

"What was?"

"The color of the thing," the Union soldier sobbed.

"Let me guess, it was sunflower-colored. The worst, ugliest, most hideous yellow you ever saw. Right?"

"Yellow? It was blue. A searing, crushing, soulflattening blue. I just want to die."

"You said blue?"

"Yes."

"Not yellow?"

"No."

"You sure about that?"

"I know my colors," the man spat.

Remo let that go. "The blue make you afraid?"

"No, it made me depressed. I feel like the world's come to an end. First we get captured by the people who we come south to succor, then they drop some kind of depression bomb smack on us."

"The other guys ran away."

"I wish I could. I don't even feel equal to standing up."

"Let me give you a hand, soldier," said Remo, offering a thick wristed hand.

The Union soldier simply sat there dejectedly, his head hanging so low his chin was buried in his chest. His shoulders looked like a wire coat hanger that had been bent down at each wing.

"This is a very unhappy man," said Chiun.

"This is a guy who doesn't know his yellows from his blues," said Remo.

"I have never seen a more unhappy man."

"I'll give you that," said Remo.

"He is a disgrace to his uniform," declared Captain Royal Wooten Page.

Remo gave Page a scornful look. He was now wearing a plumed Confederate officer's bicorne hat that looked as if it had been taken off a dead French admiral circa 1853. "You should talk."

"Ah am a proud son of the South, suh"

"Who deserted his unit to join a bunch of weekend warriors playing at war."

"This is a right serious matter," Captain Page said stiffly. "The state treasury has been looted, the governor co-opted and the legislature is about to sell out the land of their fathers for mere gold."

"Gold is not mere," sniffed Chiun. "It is gold. Therefore, it is perfection."

"These guys probably have some excuses," Remo went on. "They're probably all 4-F's. But you're a real soldier. What got into you?"

"Virginia."

"Huh?"

"Virginia is in mah blood. Ah make no bones about it, suh. Ah would die for the soil that nurtured me." And throwing his head back, Captain Page burst into mournful song:

Take me back to the place where Ah first saw the light, To mah sweet sunny South, take me home. O'er the graves of mah loved ones Ah long for to weep, Oh, why was Ah tempted to roam?

Remo reached around for the back of the captain's neck, intending to deaden the man's speech centers when from somewhere inside the broken stainless-steel bomb, a siren began wailing.