Warren Murphy: The Ultimate Death

Gregory G. Gideon smiled. His mouth muscles could hardly sustain it, and his lips moved like weak rubber bands, but he smiled. He couldn't help it. The whistling was somehow relaxing. He felt every muscle in his being relax as it continued inexhaustibly. He had never felt anything like it before.

Gregory Green Gideon never knew it was the sound of his life's breath escaping through the paper-thin slice in his throat, before the blood erupted through.

All he knew was that suddenly the whistling was gone, and all his troubles were over. The swirl of scarlet he had been looking for was coursing down the side of the tureen and making a lovely ribbon of red in his Bran-licious Chunk Bar.

After they had skinned the meat from the raw bones, and drank of his blood, the purple-skinned Asian turned his sightless eyes in the direction of the wind. He sniffed the air. Revulsion twisted his corpse-like features.

"Missy," he asked, "what do your eyes see?"

The redhead looked down into a verdant valley, her green eyes narrowing to grow hateful as a cat's. Her lips were now too red.

"I see, Leader, a valley desecrated by a terrible place."

"What kind of a place?"

"It is a place of torment, of slaughter, where people wallow in outrage. Where men profit from unbridled inhumanity."

The old Asian nodded. "And what is the name of this unholy abode?"

"It proclaims itself 'Poulette Farms.' "

The old Asian addressed as "Leader" nodded. "It is there that we will begin," he said, his piglike nostrils dilating before the scent on the wind, his blank eyes unwinking as a serpent's gaze. "And if our ancestors are with us, it is there that the House of Sinanju will end."

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and all he wanted was the popcorn.

"Butter?" asked the bored youth behind the counter.

"That's not butter," said Remo. No one paid any attention to him, since he was wearing black slacks and a black T-shirt. It was warm even at night now, so everybody was wearing T-shirts, jeans, and athletic shoes.

No one paid any attention to his deep-set dark eyes above pronounced cheekbones, or his unusually thick wrists either. Any white man in this neighborhood had better be pumping iron-for his own good.

Of course no one noticed that it was only his wrists which were "ripped"-as if Remo had been doing wrist curls eight hours a day for the last twenty years and no other exercise. Everybody in the theater lobby was an expert in the art of avoiding eye contact.

The bored youth returned to the streaked, cracked-glass counter, and plopped down a cup the size of a small snare drum filled to overflowing with yellow-white kernels, completely coated in a shiny liquid.

"Three dollars," the bored boy said in a bored voice.

The sickly odor of the stuff attacked Remo's nostrils, making him grimace. "No butter," he said.

The boy ignored him, until he realized that his outstretched hand was covered by neither bill nor coin. "Huh?"

"I said, no butter," Remo repeated.

The boy blinked. "Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't. What I said was, 'That's not butter.' "

The boy blinked again. "You said butter," he repeated stubbornly. " 'Butter' was in the sentence," Remo agreed, "but it was not used in the affirmative."

The boy finally looked directly at him. "Huh?"

"Hey, man!" barked a teenager behind him. "Get your friggin' popcorn and get outta the way!"

Remo looked over his shoulder. A latino teenager in a leather cap with no bill, a baseball jacket, no shirt, plenty of gold chains, ripped denims, and oversized basketball shoes with loose laces stood there, exuding defiance. Remo's even gaze, high cheekbones, and thin lips didn't impress him. His expression of hostile sullenness seemed to have been cast in iron at birth.

"I am trying to purchase popcorn," Remo said. "And it isn't easy."

"He said butter," the counter boy added, as if they were on a TV court show and the tough in the leather cap was the judge.

"That's not butter," Remo said more loudly. "It's flavored soy oil, and has the same effect as coating your stomach with 10W40." He pushed the huge cup back at the boy. "I want no-accent on the no-butter."

The counter boy looked like he was going to complain again, but he saw no pity in Remo's eyes, and no patience in the tough's. "Okay, okay," he said, dumping the soiled kernels into a plastic garbage can. The only thing that cost money was the cup anyway. He went to scoop out another wad of popcorn.

"No," said Remo. His tone stopped the boy in mid-movement. He looked up in annoyance.

"Not that stuff," Remo said casually. "That's got a monosodium glutamate and salt mixture on it." The boy looked down at the popcorn as if it were poisoned. "The yellow stuff," Remo explained.

"Yellow stuff?"

Remo turned to keep the tough informed. "They pour the stuff onto the kernels while it's popping," he said. "It's supposed to keep it fresh, but all it actually does is make you thirsty, so you'll buy carbonated fructose water, which will make you hungry all over again."

The hood in the leather hat looked him straight in the eye, his jaw jutting out. "You loco, man?"

"No," said Remo. "I used to work in a movie theater when I was a boy. I know this stuff."

What he wasn't telling them was that it had been this very theater where he had worked. As his employer might say: "That wouldn't be prudent." Even if a deep check of employment records couldn't possibly reveal the name Remo Williams. They had been pulled and burned long, long ago. After Remo Williams' death.

The Rialto Theater in Newark, New Jersey, had fallen on hard times since Remo left to become a Newark policeman. It had been shut down the last time Remo had been on lower Broad Street, but some brave businessman had refurbished it just within the last three years.

In that time the tile floors had cracked, the curtains had been ripped, the ceilings had grown dirty, and the lobby video games locked down with more chains than in an Alabama prison, but the remnants of its glory days were still there. No matter how many walls and increasingly smaller screens they installed to make ends meet, the Rialto still held memories.

Remo remembered seeing Dr. No, The Three Stooges in Orbit, Psycho, and Gorgo here. He remembered his high school dates clutching at his arm, and how he had clutched at their shoulders, waists, and chests in response. He remembered the cuddling and kisses. But most of all he remembered the huge heroes on the big screen, taking on every kind of villainy and blasting it into eternity without ever losing their hats.

"Take your damn popcorn and get the hell outta my way, man!" snarled the hood.

Remo looked into the teenager's dead, defiant eyes. The tough was practically begging him to try something. He wanted any excuse to blow off the steam of the streets.

It reminded Remo of his other life. He saw it behind his own eyes, as if it were one of the Rialto's movies. He remembered his trial for killing a pusher. He remembered the guilty verdict. He remembered the last meal, the long walk, and the cold strapping-in ritual at the electric chair, as if he had just come from it.

And he remembered the switch being pulled.

He remembered waking up in Rye, New York, at a sanitarium that looked like a cross between a computer factory and a high school. He remembered a tiny old man with wispy white hair and beard who could dodge bullets. He remembered the old Korean teaching him how to do it.

Remo saw in the teenager's eyes the reflection of what he had become. "Here," he said, grabbing the popcorn tub from the counter boy's hands and giving it to the hood. "On me."

The teen stared at him; first in surprise, then in distrust, but finally in grudging acceptance. "Needs butter," he grumbled, thrusting it back across the counter.