Warren Murphy: Last Drop

Remo was climbing the ladder.

"Don't!" Smith shouted.

The jolt of electricity from the opening sent Remo flying backward into the room, the skin of his hand blackened. His face was contorted in pain.

"My bad hand," he growled.

Remo felt the pain emanating like waves from his injured hand. First a bullet, then electricity. Of the two, he far preferred the bullet. Nothing hurt like electric shock, because it brought fear along with the pain. Every nerve ending in his sensitive system seemed to be screaming. Not electricity! Fire, bullets, knives, but not electricity.

He had once been sentenced to die in an electric chair...

"She's reset the charge through the computer," Smith said, opening his leather tool kit. "Maybe I can dismantle this." He turned a couple of screws, rearranged some wires. "Unfortunately, I don't know this machine. It could take hours, and she's probably got the explosive, wherever that is, on some kind of timer to allow her a few minutes to get away."

"Can we dig our way out?" Remo asked.

"Too slow," Chiun said.

Remo regarded the walls. They were all underground, surrounded by earth. It would be no use breaking through them. There wasn't enough time to tunnel themselves out.

The ceiling? Remo thought. Possible. "Smitty, is the whole area up there electrified?"

"No. Just the opening. If I could only dismantle that from here..." He probed deeper into the machine. "Would you test this?"

Remo took a piece of paper, spat on it, and rolled it into a ball. He tossed it through the opening. Sparks flew.

"All right," Smith said. "How's this?"

The same reaction.

Chiun was looking up toward the opening thoughtfully. "Let me see your hand," the old man said.

Remo showed him. The flesh was entirely charred. He couldn't make a fist. "Little Father, could we—"

"No," Chiun said, looking at the electrified entranceway. "Burning could not be avoided. Or death. Even for such as us. We will wait for the Emperor." He moved to a spot in the center of the floor and sat down in full lotus position.

Smith was drenched with sweat. "Did that do it?"

Remo tossed his paper ball again. "No."

Outside, the big engine of Darcy's Cadillac roared. Remo felt-afraid.

Nothing would be worse than dying by electric shock, he thought. The burns, a thousand times worse than fire... It would be better to die in the explosion.

And then again, maybe they wouldn't die. Smith might make it in time.

"Try that."

Sparks encircled the paper ball.

Chiun waited patiently to die. Smith would go, too, Remo thought. Poor Smitty. He was already so battered, and scared out of his pants. They'd all be gone in a minute. There probably wouldn't even be any pain. Just a lot of pressure, and then... Not like electricity. Agony for endless minutes while you fried, burned to death.

"Now?" Smith asked.

"No, Smitty," Remo said.

There was no time left.

Burned to death...

He crouched on the ladder, focusing his entire mind on the opening above him.

"What are you doing?" Smith called, but in Remo's mind his voice was already receding into another plane, an existence Remo was leaving far behind. He was entering the sphere of the possibility, the dimension in which there were no rules.

There is no fear. Conquer the fear and you will conquer the pain. No fear. No fear. I am whole. I am unafraid. I am ready.

He shot upward, his arms encircling his head, his legs lifting effortlessly, flying through time and space, illuminated by the light of burning stars, touched by the essence of the universe. In that moment, he saw all, felt all, experienced all, suffered all. Pain and beauty, ecstasy and despair. All of the strings connecting him to life vibrated with great music before they snapped and sent him floating into a void of unspeakable peace.

He was free.

And then he was descending, snatched back, yanked by one string that was stronger than the others. It was unpleasant. He tried to rid himself of the thread, wound round him like a steel bond, but it was infused into his very soul, and it dragged him back, back through ages of darkness, out of the peace of eternity, into a place of terrible pain, so terrible that he screamed aloud, and the shock of the scream brought him further down... No... to the depths of suffering, so bad he wanted to weep with it. Oh earth! Can't resist... oh, fragile life. Chiun, why have you brought me back?

The music and light were gone. He lay in the narrow landing between the floorboards of the house and the ceiling of the basement. And somehow his legs moved hard enough to kick out a section of the flooring, and then Smith's face appeared through the splintered wood and Chiun was behind pushing Smitty out.

Chiun carried Remo outside. It was so pretty out there in the open air that he forgot all about flying through space, and if anyone would have told him about it, he'd have said they had a screw loose.

Only he did remember the music for a few minutes afterward, and that was what he listened to as he watched Chiun catch a big black Caddie on foot and drag some woman who was wailing like a banshee out of it and then toss her like a football into this empty house where she must have exploded, because the house went up like a stick of dynamite, the way trees do in war movies, eaten up by a ball of fire, all to the tune of this magic music that he had to listen to with all his might because even in his memory it was fading so fast.

It was beautiful.

He couldn't understand why Smitty looked so sad.

?Epilogue

Remo woke up in a sunny room in Folcroft Sanitarium. He was covered with bandages from his scalp downward. On another bed in the same room lay Harold Smith, a bottle of plasma dripping slowly into his arm.

"Where's Chiun?" Remo mumbled through the narrow mouth slit in his bandages.

"Outside. He's terrorizing the staff."

"How bad are we?"

"You're worse than I am," Smith said. "How much do you remember?"

"Everything up to going through that hole in the house in Indiana."

"That's good," Smith said weakly.

"All I can see is light and dark. Am I blind?"

"I don't think so. The doctors say the bandages will come off in a few days."

Remo slept. It was dark when he awoke again. "Are you working?" he asked when he came to.

"I have a temporary secretary come in twice a day," Smith said.

"What'd you do about Peruvina?"

"Coded message to the CIA. The poppies have been burned to the ground, and Arnold's laboratory has been destroyed."

"Is the girl from Hassam's dead?"

"The dancer? No, she's recovering, surprisingly."

"Send her some flowers for me, okay?"

"She's a witness," Smith said.

"Wasn't it you who said you can't kill off everybody who knows anything?"

"That was different."

"Hey—"

"All right," Smith grumbled. "Just get some rest. And let me."

"You've got to do something else," Remo whispered before he slipped out of consciousness.

It was light again when he awoke.

"What do you want?" Smith asked.

"A pilot named Thompson," Remo said. "He was arrested in a military hospital on Malagua Island."

"Enlisted?"

"Civilian. Get him out of jail."

There was a long pause. It may have been days. "Why?" Smith asked.

"He's innocent. Sort of."

"Sort of? I can't—"

"Get him out of the slammer and send him to the Caribbean."

"What?"

"And give him a plane. A DC-3."

"You're delirious."

"Smitty. Do it for me. Because you're a friend."

"Don't be absurd."

"Then do it for me because I'll break your face when I get out of here if you don't," Remo said sleepily.

Smith grunted.

"She wasn't right, was she?"

"Who?"

"Darcy Devoe. She said you were two of a kind. Are you?"