Warren Murphy - The Ultimate Death

The brunette started undoing the straps. The patient blinked several times, kicked her legs once, and clucked. The nurse stepped back as the specially bred fryer chicken tried to stand up.

Dr. Silverberg motioned the animal's guardian forward, while taking off his mask. Henry Cackleberry Poulette strode into the Henry Cackleberry Poulette Operating Room in the Henry Cackleberry Poulette Wing of the Woodstock, New York, Veterinary Hospital.

The man millions knew as "the Chicken King" from his series of award-winning commercials faced Dr. Saul Silverberg over a gurney. "Is she all right?" he asked. "Is my baby all right? Will they all be all right?"

The doctor shook his head slowly and sadly. "Serotype enteritidis," he said gravely. "S.E., for short. It is a very serious disease."

"You don't have to tell me!" Poulette exploded, his wattle neck stretching even longer. "I'm the one who introduced the legislation all but wiping out S.E. in our lifetime!" He looked at the confused chicken on the operating table, just beginning to stagger away from the tiny restraining straps.

"But how is it possible?" Poulette muttered. "I installed an in-plant chlorination system. I added the slow-release chlorine dioxide rinse . . . ." His tiny eyes began to tear, and his Adam's apple began bobbing in time to his half-swallowed sobbing.

The chicken swayed on one leg, executed a half-turn, and plopped onto her scruffy breast.

"My poor, poor baby!" moaned Henry Cackleberry Poulette. "May I take her now?"

The veterinarian nodded.

Tenderly, Henry-Hank, to the world-Poulette lifted the chicken in the prescribed manner, like a football. Weeping tearfully, he carried her from the diagnostic room as Dr. Silverberg and the nurse followed him with their eyes.

"He so loves his birds," whispered the nurse.

"You would too," said Dr. Silverberg, "if you looked like a Bantam rooster."

"It doesn't seem to bother him."

"That's because he doesn't see the resemblance," Dr. Silverberg said flatly.

"You're joking. He plays up the resemblance on all his commercials."

"Because the ad agency people tell him to. He fires anyone who calls attention to the resemblance," Dr. Silverberg fixed the nurse with a professional eye. "You're new here. Remember that."

"Yes, doctor," said the nurse, who had been hired fresh out of the New York State College of Agriculture in Ithaca, New York.

Henry Cackleberry Poulette carried the ailing fryer to his awaiting limousine and rode in silence back to Poulette Farms Poultry corporated. He entered the building alone, still carrying the sickly bird. He skirted the Kill Room and the Eviscerating Room and strutted quietly past his battery of secretaries like a man in mourning.

He closed the soundproof door to his office. Only then did he gently lay the chicken down on his immaculate desk.

He paused to dry his eyes with a breast-pocket handkerchief monogrammed, in lieu of initials, with the profile of a Brahma hen.

When his eyes were dry they went to the figure of the ailing fryer, standing on his desk blotter. It was shifting its head about to peer out the broad office window at the nearby Catskill Mountains.

While it was enjoying this view of the verdant New York countryside, Henry Cackleberry Poulette stole up behind it and, laying one hand over its beak to choke off any outcry, grasped the frightened fowl's neck with the other.

"Betrayer!" he snarled, then broke the neck with practiced skill and no more sound than a Number 2 pencil snapping. Then he turned the chicken's head completely around to finish her off. "You bumble-footed, egg-bound minx!"

The chicken kicked and flopped strenuously. Henry Poulette set her on the yolk-colored rug and watched her race blindly into the furniture, her dead, unseeing neck hanging like a deflated balloon.

When its legs started to jerk and hesitate, he gave it a savage kick, finishing it off.

"That's for Woodstock High School!" he spat, crushing the skull with the heel of one shoe. "And the senior prom! You and your kind made my childhood a hell on earth! To think that I fed you the best marigold petals money can buy!"

Chapter 6

The scene at Poulette Farms Poultry corporated, was reminiscent of Woodstock's most famous brush with history.

Several dozen placard-carrying protestors blocked the chain-link gate to the main office buildings, stopping visitors and hurling invective at Poulette employees. The protestors wore tie-dyed shirts, torn jeans, and brightly colored bandannas around their filthy, uncombed hair. Some were barefoot, and still more wore shabbylooking boots that appeared to be new yet were coming apart at the seams. Around their necks a few of the older protestors wore huge, gaudy peace symbols, which looked as if they had been fashioned in their junior-year metalworking class.

Remo parked his car in the lot marked for visitors, and he and Chiun cautiously approached the tangle of human jetsam.

Cries of "Poulette Farms is cruel to chickens!" were being directed toward the complex itself. Another faction was screaming "Reject Meat!" They seemed to be screaming at the animal rights contingent.

When the crowd was within breathing distance, Chiun's face twisted into a mask of disgust.

"Remo, did not your government outlaw these dippies years ago?" the Master of Sinanju asked, flapping a kimono sleeve in front of his nose like a fan.

"No," Remo replied, not bothering to correct Chiun. "I think they decided to let them go the way of the brontosaurus on their own-but the asteroid is late."

They floated through the outer ring of protestors.

"You know what they do to chickens in there, man?" a man demanded of them. He was potbellied, fortyish, and carried a sign that read REAL MEN DON'T EAT CHICKEN in his grubby hands.

"If it involves bathing, you should go to the head of the line," Remo suggested.

"Carnage!" cried a female protestor.

"Bloodletting!" shouted another.

"Torture!" screamed a third.

"Too bad there isn't more of that out here," Remo said.

He and Chiun tried to thread the line of circling men and women, but they were halted at nearly every turn. They easily could have forced their way through to the gate, but that would have involved actually touching the protestors. Neither of them had the urge to get that close.

"Make way or pay," Remo said finally. He danced around a woman with breath so thick it actually made puffs in the warm spring air.

"Meat-eater!" she snapped at Remo accusingly. She wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend AN ALL-NATURAL PRODUCT OF THREE-G, INC. Remo noticed that several of the protestors wore similar shirts. "Marrow-sucker!"

"Get plucked," Remo said.

"Do not talk to them, Remo," the Master of Sinanju hissed. "They are so ignorant that they think we consume the lowly chicken." He avoided the outstretched hand of another woman whose sign read MEAT IS MURDER.

"But you do eat some meat," the first woman accused.

"Some," Remo admitted. "Duck and fish."

"You feast on the flesh of our aquatic brethren?" she asked, shocked.

"Hey, I eat fish," said one of the younger men picketers. His placard read POLITICAL AMNESTY FOR FOWL.

The woman whirled. "Murderer!" she shrieked. "Anti-Vegan!"

The young man stepped back, stunned. "I thought fish was okay." He seemed on the verge of tears.

"Not if you're a fish!" the woman snapped.

"Aw, lay off the kid," inserted an older protestor. A few others voiced their support for the young man's diet.

"I saw you eating ice cream last week," someone accused the boy's defender. "You lactovo!"

"Ice cream ain't meat, man," the older man countered.

"But it comes from cows," another insisted. "A true Vegan refuses to ingest any animal product."