Warren Murphy: Lords of the Earth

"Little Father?" Remo said.

"What, talkative one?"

"Keep running."

The road curved around a small hillock and then passed through a dry dusty clearing.

Remo and Chiun stood in the clearing as Perriweather's jeep spun around the corner from the hill. The man screeched on his brakes and stopped the car with a skid.

Even in the bright African sun, Perriweather looked cool and dignified. His hair was unmussed. He wore a tailored khaki bush suit, but even at the distance of twenty feet, Remo could see that the man's fingernails were dirty.

"Mr. Perriweather, I presume," Remo said.

"Drs. Remo and Chiun. How nice to see you here," Perriweather called out.

Remo took a step forward toward the jeep but stopped as Perriweather raised something in his hand. It was a small crystalline cube. Inside it, Remo could see a black dot. And the dot was moving. And it had red wings.

"Is this what you're looking for?" Perriweather asked.

"You got it, buddy," Remo said. "Is that your only one?"

"As you say, you've got it, buddy. The only one," Perriweather said.

"Then I want it," Remo said.

"Good. Here. You can have it. Take it."

He tossed the cube high into the air toward Remo. As Remo and Chiun looked skyward toward the descending crystal object, he gunned the jeep forward.

"Many more," he yelled. "Many more." And then his voice broke into a wild laugh.

"I've got it, Little Father," Remo said as the cube dropped toward him.

He reached up and caught the object gently in his hands. But it was not glass or plastic. He felt the spunsugar cube shatter in his hands even as he caught it, and then he felt another sensation. A brief sting in the palm of his right hand.

He opened his hand and looked at it. The welt on his palm grew before his eyes.

"Chiun, I'm bitten," he gasped.

Chiun did not speak. He backed away from Remo, his eyes filled with sorrow.

Fifty feet away, on the other side of the clearing, Perriweather had stopped the jeep and was now standing on the seat, looking back toward them, laughing.

"Isn't life wonderful when you're having fun?" he called.

Remo tried to answer but no sound came from his lips. Then the first spasm hit him.

He had been in pain before. There had been times when he had felt himself dying. But he had never before known the agony of being utterly, unthinkably out of physical control.

As the first seizures engulfed him, he reached automatically for his stomach, where his insides seemed to be riding a roller coaster. His breath came short and shallow, rasping out of his lungs.

The muscle spasms moved to his legs. His thighs twitched and his feet shook. Then his arms, the muscles straining and bulging out of their sheaths as his back knotted in agony. He moved his helpless eyes toward Chiun. The old man made no move toward him, but stood like a statue, his eyes locked into Remo's.

"Chiun," he wanted to say. "Little Father, help me." He opened his mouth but no words came out. Instead, he emitted the sound of a wild beast, a low groan that hissed from his body like an alien thing escaping. The sound frightened Remo. It did not belong to him, just as this body no longer belonged to him. It was a stranger's body. A killer's body.

As he watched the old Korean, he began to drool. The small figure that stood so porcelain perfect before him became an unreal thing, a toy, a focus for the inexplicable rage that was bursting from within every fiber of his new, unfamiliar body.

For a moment, Chiun, Master of Sinanju, teacher and friend, ceased to exist for him. He had been replaced by the frail little creature standing before him.

Remo dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl across the clearing. In the background, Waldron Perriweather's laugh still boomed through the heavy humid air.

Remo tried to speak. He forced his mouth into the proper shape, then expelled the air from his lungs.

"Go," he managed. He swatted at the air. The next sound that came from him was a roar.

"No," Chiun said simply, over the roar. "I will not run from you. You must turn from me and from the creature that inhabits you."

Remo moved closer, fighting himself every inch, but unable to stop. Froth bubbled from his mouth. The pupils of his eyes were tinged with red.

The eyes again met Chiun's, closer now, almost within reach.

"You are a Master of Sinanju," Chiun said. "Fight this thing with your mind. Your mind must know that you are master of your body. Fight it."

Remo rolled onto his side to stop his forward motion toward Chiun. He clutched himself in torment. "Can't fight," he managed to gasp.

"Then kill me, Remo," Chiun said. He spread his arms and lifted his neck. "I wait."

Remo rolled back onto his knees, then lunged at Chiun. The old man made no move to step out of his way.

You are a Master of Sinanju.

The words echoed somewhere deep inside him. And in the deepest spot of himself, he knew that he was a man, not some laboratory experiment with no will. He was a man, and more than a man, for Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, had taught him to be more, to see the wind and taste the air and move with the vibrations of the universe. Chiun had trained Remo to be a Master, and a Master did not run, not even from himself.

With a colossal effort of will, Remo swerved from his path. He had come so close to the old man that the silk of Chiun's kimono brushed his bare arm. Tears streamed down his cheeks as the part of him that was Rerno struggled and clawed and fought with the beast that surrounded him. Shrieking, he threw himself on a boulder and wrapped his arms around it.

"I ... will ... not ... kill ... Chiun," he groaned, squeezing the rock with every particle of his strength. He felt the lifeless mass in his arms warm, then tremble. Then, with an outrush of air, expelling the poison from his lungs with a final, terrible effort, he clutched the boulder with his convulsive bleeding hands and pressed himself against it one last time.

The rock snapped, exploding in a spray. Pebbles and sand shot high into the air over him.

When the dust had settled, Remo stood. Like a man.

Chiun did not speak. His head nodded once in acknowledgment and it was enough.

Remo ran across the clearing. Perriweather's laugh stopped short and Remo heard the metal protest as the jeep was forced into gear and started to drive away.

Remo ran, feeling the perfect synchronization of his body as it responded to the subtle commands of his mind.

The jeep puttered ahead of him at a distance, moving easily over the dirt road.

And then it stopped.

Perriweather pressed down on the gas pedal. The wheels whirred and spun but the vehicle did not move. As Perriweather turned and saw Remo's hand holding the back of the vehicle, his jaw dropped open. He tried to speak.

"Fly got your tongue?" Remo said and then the jeep's rear end was rising into the air, and then it spun over and plummeted off the side of the road, down a hill, turning in the air, bursting into flames.

It stopped, flaming, as it crashed into an outcropping of rock.

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said coldly. He felt Chiun standing alongside him.

"He is dead?" Chiun said.

"He should already be in fly heaven," Remo said. They watched the flames for a moment; and then Remo felt Chiun's body next to his tense and stiffen. Remo himself groaned as he saw what had captured Chiun's attention.

A small swirl of insects rose in the air from the burning jeep. In the harsh sunlight, their wings glinted a blood red.

"Oh, no," Remo said. "There's more. And they've escaped." He looked at Chiun. "What can we do?"

"We can stand here," Chiun said. "They will find us."

"And then what? Let ourselves get eaten up by flies?"