Warren Murphy: The Last Dragon

Ralph Thorpe went right up to the edge of the great lake. There was no bank or shore. The trees just stopped and there was water and open sky.

And in the center of the pool, a vast shape loomed.

It was orange and black and glossy as a wet seal. But no seal ever grew so big. The neck was banded in black, and along the ridged back it was dappled in orange blotches as large as fry pans.

And as they stood looking at it, it swung its undersized serpent's head around like a crane and looked at them with goatlike eyes that were as big as their own heads.

The eyes were dull and incurious. the mouth was moving. Some leafy greenage was in its jaws and the jaws were working, lizard fashion, up and down.

The leafage quickly disappeared down its gullet and the black-and-orange bands of the neck began pulsing in time with the long bands of throat muscles.

King was shouting, "I hit it! I hit it dead center! Why is it still on its feet?"

"It doesn't even know it's hit," muttered Thorpe, the British nonchalance in his voice evaporating like the morning rain.

"Bring the cameras," Nancy whispered. "Hurry!"

Skip King stumbled back, his face flushed. He paled when he saw the great beast looking back at him, unfazed.

"What's with that thing?" he complained. "Doesn't it know enough to lie down when its been tranked."

"Evidently not," Thorpe said dryly.

"Well, I'll fix that!"

And before anyone could do anything to stop him, Skip King brought the rifle up to the leather-padded shoulder of his safari jacket and began pumping out rounds, deafening everyone around him.

"You unmitigated cretin!" Nancy screamed.

"It isn't going down!" King shouted. "More guns! We need more firepower!"

The beast in the jungle pool began to advance. The ground shook. Water sloshed on their boots.

And the Bantus began lining the pool.

Thorpe took command. "All right, lads. Make the best of a bad situation, now. Let's bag the brute!"

Rifle stocks dug into sweaty shoulders. Fingers crooked around triggers.

And the rifles began to spit thunder.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was explaining to the assorted rapists, cannibals, and serial killers on Utah State Prison's death row that he was from the American Civil Liberties Union.

"I already got me a lawyer," snorted Orvis Boggs, who had been scheduled to die of lethal injection on October 28, 1979 for eating a three-year-old girl raw because his refrigerator had broken down in a heat wave, spoiling three porterhouse steaks he had shoplifted from the local supermarket.

"I'm not a lawyer," Remo told him.

"You an advocate, then?" called DeWayne Tubble from the adjoining cell.

"You might call me that," Remo agreed. Agreeing would be faster. He would tell the quartet of human refuse anything they wanted to hear.

"Yeah? Well, advocate us out of this hellhole. My TV's been busted for a damn week. This is cruel."

"Reason I'm here," Remo said.

"Huh?" The huh was an explosive grunt. It exploded out of the mouth of Sonny Smoot, along with a yellowish red spittle, because when he felt uneasy Sonny liked to gnaw on the toilet bowl despite the fact that his tooth enamel always came out second best. Sonny had been educated in assorted juvenile detention centers, and somehow proper dental hygiene had not been inculcated in him.

"I'm with the ACLU's new Dynamic Extraction Unit," explained Remo with a straight face.

"You a dentist?" asked Sonny.

"No, I'm not a dentist."

"What's that in real talk? Dyna-"

"It means that in our infinite wisdom, we've decided that your complaints are not without merit," Remo said, choosing his words with Raymond Burr in mind.

"Not without merit. That means what?"

"That means, yes, the 247 appeals we've filed on your behalf claiming that 15 years on death row constitutes cruel and unusual punishment have been deemed sound, and we have decided to take emergency measures to remedy your plight."

"Plight? We got plights?"

"Situation. Or whatever Perry Mason would say."

"Our situation is that we're stuck in stir," Orvis grunted. "Hah!"

"And I'm the remedy," said Remo.

"What's that?"

"The CURE," said Remo.

"They letting us go?" wondered DeWayne.

"No, I'm pulling you out of here."

"ACLU can do that?"

"If the four of you will kindly keep your voices down long enough for me to get your cell doors open," Remo said.

Immediately everyone shut up. Except Sonny, who grunted like a pig and asked, "You got the key?"

Remo held up his index finger. "Right here."

"That's a finger. And this here's an electronic lock. You gotta have one of them magnetic credit card things."

"Pass cards," Remo corrected. "And I don't need one because I got a specially trained finger."

And Remo began tapping the lock housing. At first tentatively, then with increasing rhythm.

There was a red light on the lock. It winked out, and immediately below it a green light came on. Remo knew he had exactly five seconds to open the door, before the electronic mechanism automatically shut down.

Remo yanked open the door and said, "Hurry it up!"

Sonny Smoot came out in a cloud of body odor.

Remo went to the next door. Boggs's. Smoot crowded close, his eyes intent upon Remo's finger.

"You're in my light," Remo told him, breathing through his mouth so Smoot's microscopic scent particles would not enter his sensitive nostrils, to lodge there for the next seventy-two hours like petrified snot.

"Ain't no light. It's lights out."

"Don't argue with a trained professional," Remo said.

Sonny Smoot obligingly went around to Remo's opposite side and hovered there like an upright turd.

Remo worked the lock. He had the rhythm now, so the red light was replaced by green in jig time.

Orvis Boggs came out.

"I can't believe it! Free!"

"Not until we get past the guards," said Remo, attacking DeWayne Tubble's cell door now. It came open and Tubble came out.

Last to exit was Roy Short-sleeve, the last person on death row. He had been a participant in the lawsuit against the state of Utah, citing their lengthy sojourn on death row as cruel and unusual punishment, and contrary to the eighth amendment of the Constitution.

He had one question. "Is this legal?"

"Only if we don't get caught," Remo told him.

"Then I'm staying."

"You are?"

"Breaking jail won't clear my name. I'm innocent."

"Me, too!" said Sonny Smoot.

"Innocent, that's me."

"Likewise."

"But I'm really, really innocent," Roy Shortsleeve said quietly.

Remo looked into the man's soft eyes. They were dark and wide-pupiled as a cat's, and his long, haggard face was sincere.

"Okay," Remo said. "You get to stay. But only because you're innocent."

"Wait a minute," said Sonny Smoot. "ACLU will bust us out of stir, but not an innocent guy?"

"That's the ACLU way," Remo said. "Innocent guys aren't that much of a challenge. Besides, I thought you were innocent, too."

"We are," said Orvis Boggs. "We just ain't innocent the way Roy's innocent."

"Yeah," DeWayne added. "We were born innocent and got a little lost, is all. Roy stayed innocent clear through to today." He grinned in the gloom. "That's why he's gonna eat needle, and we're gonna sleep with whores tonight."

"Only if you follow me, and do exactly what I say," Remo said flatly.

"Can that finger get us past the guards?" Orvis asked.

"It got me in, didn't it?" Remo countered.

"Oh."

As Remo led them away, Sonny had a question.

"Where can I get a finger like that?"

"This is an ACLU-issue finger. You can't just go into a Walmart and buy it."

"Can a guy boost it, then?" No.

In the darkness, the faces of Orvis, DeWayne, and Sonny grew long with disappointment.