Warren Murphy: The Ultimate Death

Then Remo fell upon the fear-struck Leader, crushing him to nothingness and disappearing into the pool of blackness that endlessly spilled from the heavens.

For a moment Chiun stood alone in eternity, his breathing difficult, his chest aching.

"I'm not going to wait all day, Little Father," Remo's voice whispered in his ear.

A sensation of warmth spread up from the pit of the Master of Sinanju's stomach. It radiated outward across his torso, seeking his heart. The pit of the Oriental soul met and joined forces with the Occidental seat of love.

For an instant Chiun was a young man again-standing at the edge of his village with the voices of celebration behind him, his father's back vanishing into the mountains before him.

But he no longer felt the same isolation. The same feeling of loss.

The Master of Sinanju looked up at the heavens, put his feet together, and took a small hop. He disappeared into the inky blackness.

Chapter 27

Chiun's old, old eyes fluttered open.

Remo stood beside his bed, two strange paddles in his hands. He hooked the paddles into two slots on the side of an upright wheeled cart.

"How are you feeling?" Remo asked. His voice was filled with concern, but his face beamed with joy.

Chiun saw the ghostly image of the orange gyonshi mist thinning and spreading along the ceiling. "The bad air is no more?" he said wonderingly.

Smith lay on the bed across the room. He had turned so as to look at Remo and Chiun. His eyes were rimmed in black, his skin a paler gray than normal. Most would have smiled at Chiun in encouragement, but Smith managed only a formal bow of the head. "Master of Sinanju," he croaked.

"Emperor Smith," Chiun said, returning Smith's gesture with a barely visible nod. "I trust you are well."

"I seem to have suffered a heart attack," Smith returned weakly. "But I am on the mend, the doctor says, thanks to a timely electrical restimulation of the muscle."

"You have the heart of a lion," Chiun said loud enough for all to hear. "Let no one doubt this." Then, beckoning for Remo to come closer, he lifted his head slightly.

Remo leaned over the bed, tipping his ear close to Chiun's mouth. "Yes, Little Father?" he asked.

"Be a good boy, and see that I get a private room."

Two weeks passed before Remo and Chiun were able to return to the Catskill Mountains.

The press had long since departed, explaining away the deaths at Poulette Farms as an unusually severe political statement by some concerned but nutritionally unbalanced vegetarians, out to avenge the food-poisoning epidemic that the USDA had officially traced to Poulette Farms and only Poulette Farms.

Henry Cackleberry Poulette had been officially blamed for the epidemic. His personal psychiatrist had held a press conference, explaining his late patient's pathological hatred of chickens.

Within the hour, he was fielding multimillion dollar offers for transcripts of his private sessions with the Chicken King.

Smith had had the gyonshi victims at Three-G carted away in secret. Remo didn't ask how. He didn't care. Smith had told him that so many bloodless, butchered bodies would be difficult to explain away. Let the world simply think the vengeful Vegans had closed up shop after visiting justice on Henry Poulette.

Remo and Chiun climbed the mountain above Poulette Farms, and it was several minutes before they exchanged a word. They moved in harmonious unison, letting the warmth of the spring afternoon wash over them in cleansing waves.

It was a gorgeous day. The sun shone brightly through the swaying branches and broad green leaves. Fragrant blossoms mingled their scents in the air.

"How did you know that the gyonshi virus could be purged by electricity?" Chiun finally asked.

"A cat told me," Remo said nonchalantly.

Chiun nodded in satisfaction. "Cats are very wise, my son," he said. "Although sons are wiser at times." His eyes shone as they gazed upon his pupil.

Remo offered a small bow of his head.

They were silent yet again.

That was all Chiun had needed, during his titanic struggle with the Leader, to tip the odds in his favor. The knowledge that Remo was there for him when he needed him most. He had manifested Remo into a physical presence in his mind, allowing him to defeat the forces that trapped him. Those forces being his own poisoned neural system.

"The gyonshi?" He had not asked about them during the two weeks of recuperation at Folcroft. Even now the question seemed superfluous.

"A sham," said Remo. "Whatever they once were was long gone. The only thing they had left was the virus. Everything else was a pale plagiarism of their ancestors' legends. The mist. The blood-drinking. Everything."

They climbed the hill parallel to each other, walking some ten feet apart. The grass sprang immediately back to life after they had passed, as if only wind, not human feet, had pressed it down.

The ultramodern Three-G building leaped into view as they passed through a thicket of shrubs at the top of the mountain.

They had finally reached the summit, and now stood where the luxurious garden at the center of the building stretched out into the surrounding countryside.

Turning, they looked down on the valley below, neither bothering to squint in the glorious sunlight which bathed them.

"And the Leader?" Chiun asked, not looking at Remo.

Remo seemed disinterested. He raised his head a centimeter.

Chiun did not have to look up, but he did. In the tallest part of the rotted oak tree which squatted at the center of the garden, hung a skeleton. Its flesh had been completely shorn from muscles. Its muscles and tendons were completely ripped from its bones. Its bones were white and gleaming, as if they had been shined to a perfect luster. Its eyes rested, unstalked, inside its open eye sockets. Every other tooth had been surgically removed.

It smiled a checkerboard smile, its pupils cockeyed.

Remo entered the grove. Chiun followed in silence.

The bodies of the vampires were gone. Everything was as it had been the first time Chiun had entered the large garden, save for one detail.

With his toe, Chiun touched the earth by the base of the oak tree. It was soggy with blood. Beneath a thin cover of dirt the internal organs rested-crushed to plasmic puddles, then wrapped and knotted inside the Chinese's own pale purple skin.

Remo had been very busy during Chiun's recuperation. Even now he seemed preoccupied. Remo reached inside a large, open knothole in the side of the tree and removed a whole, perfectly preserved brain. He placed it at his teacher's sandaled feet.

"This time," the future Master of Sinanju said, straightening. "I positively, definitely, absolutely, without a doubt, did not bend my elbow."

The present Master of Sinanju smiled with pride upon his student, then brought his foot down in the exact center of the dead, gray mass.