Warren Murphy: The Final Death

By this errand of mercy, for no one else had the strength or the will to raise hand against the leader, so was the Master degraded before all the village. For it was written that no Master of Sinanju would ever hurt another from the village. And his father had killed a leader, a man who required death but did not deserve it.

So, humiliated in the eyes of his people, the Master took himself from those eyes, leaving his family who was still of the village, and went off to die in the hills.

Thus it came to pass that Chiun was the new Master.

Chiun remembered and Chiun hurt.

Chiun hurt.

Chiun opened his eyes.

So deep into meditation had he been that he had not attended to the soft padding of four feet to the outside of his door or the small scratching of a rubber tube being pushed under the door or the small creak of a spigot being turned.

But now, before his mind could sort out these impressions, his eyes saw a shimmering white cloud moving across the room at him.

"The mist, the mist," Chiun cried.

He rose, to face the demon cloud. His hands were at his sides, his legs were loose and prepared, but there was nothing to kick at, no living matter to slice through.

His face was twisted in fear but Chiun did not retreat or move back from the oncoming death. If this was to be his end, he would face it as a Master.

The cloud came upon him. It hung about his body, wetting his face and seeping in through his pores. The Master stopped his breathing but still the mist clung. The Master pulled his body in around himself for protection but still the mist infiltrated.

The mist coursed through his very being until it reached the Master's stomach and intestines. There it joined with the remnants of the duck he had the night before and became a deadly nerve-shattering poison.

The Master felt his stomach knot. It was as he always suspected. The stomach was the center of all life and death. It would follow that the soul dwelled there.

Chiun felt heat within his skull and numbness creep up his limbs. Moisture escaped his skin throughout his body. It was his soul trying to escape. His stomach knotted more. His hands became fists. His teeth clenched. The pain. The incredible, unbelievable pain. Pain unknown, unexperienced, amazing.

But Chiun did not cry out. He would not run, gibbering and killing, like the leader of his village. He would die here. He would die at peace because he knew that Remo lived. That the undead had claimed his soul instead of his son's.

Chiun bent double and fell to the carpet beneath the cloud. The mist settled around his fallen body, spread, then dissipated.

Chiun lay on the floor, the pain bending his knees, curling his arms. He did not fight it. He let it come. Through his closing eyes he saw the door to the suite slowly open.

"Worked like a charm," said Gluck. "The new condensed mixture really works fast."

"Yeah, well, let's get it over with," said Yat-Sen, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.

The two moved into the hotel room to finish off the pathetic, cringing old man.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Mary Beriberi Greenscab did not want him to move. Neither did Charlie Ko, Sheng Wa, Eddie Cantlie, or Steinberg.

They did not want him to move so badly that two of them were aiming Russian assault rifles at him while a third held an Israeli Uzi submachine gun on him.

"If I knew you were planning to kill me I wouldn't have come," Remo said.

The two holding the Russian rifles laughed at this and Charlie told them to shut up.

Remo was standing in a large metal steer bin 12 feet from the platform where Mary stood, an electronic prod in her hand. Charlie stood by her, playing with a large plastic thing with a metal tip that looked like a pointed dildo.

The other three were positioned to the sides and back of Remo, holding their weapons low and tight.

Remo had arrived in Vine Square after three different sets of directions.

The bell captain had said: "Go straight through on the interstate until you get to exit 27, then take route 664 south until you come to a fork in the road. Then just follow the signs and you can't miss it."

When Remo got off exit 277 and there was no route 664, he received the following:

"Well, a-course not. You go due no-arth here until ya git to Malpaso Road. You go Raht they-uh and go strite on until ya reach Vahn Squay-uh. Ya cain't miss it."

And when Malpaso Road was a dead end to the right, "Take a left, then another left, go down two blocks, take a right. Then ask directions. You can't miss it."

Remo found it on the way to asking directions. He had expected a steaming factory full of fat cows but when he arrived, the yards and corrals were empty. An ominous silence hung over the white factory swirling in the hot Texas mists.

Remo jumped a fence into the muddy yard. By the time he had gotten 10 feet however, his shoes were unrecognizable blocks of mud. So he took them off, hopped up onto a fence, and walked along that until he reached an entrance normally used for the delivery of grain.

He noticed the clear, sparkling eye of a closed-circuit camera following him from the top of the high truck portal, but he did not look at it.

Remo entered and the glass lens hummed after him.

Mary Beriberi and Charlie Ko were in the control room watching Remo's progress on tv. It was a small room, totally encircled by video screens and the controls for the cameras that picked up almost everything in the slaughterhouse.

Mary had looked carefully at the "east-side-outdoors" screen when Remo had hopped onto the fence.

"We take no chances," she said. "We get him where we want him first."

Charlie Ko had nodded, pulling a map of the entire factory from under his jacket.

Remo began to whistle "Anything Goes." As he walked through the truck entrance Charlie had said: "Positions everybody. Sector eight. We've got the fucker."

Remo moved through the grain room, climbed up a conveyor belt, and went through a small hole in the roof.

"Make that sector six," yelled Charlie Ko. "He's not taking the stairs."

Remo got out of the hole to skip across several feeding bins.

"Uh…" Charlie checked the map. "We still have him in sector six. He's got to take the door."

But Remo did not take the door. Instead, he suddenly jumped against the wall, put his hands over his head, and dropped down a feed chute.

"Sector four! Down below! Hell, did you see that?"

Mary had to switch on the lower-level video cameras to tune Remo in again.

He was swinging from water pipe to water pipe. He swung until he was directly in front of a camera.

"This is a lot of fun," came his voice from the speaker below the screen. "But I don't have all day. What's my choice? The curtain or what's behind the box?"

Mary grinned wickedly. "Damn sure of yourself, aren't you, fucker?" She stabbed the microphone button on the console desk and said, "Keep going until you get to the door on the other side of the room. Go up one flight of stairs. We'll meet you there. Any more showing off and the girl dies."

The little red light atop all the video-tape cameras winked out.

"You're not nice," Remo had said, moving toward the stairwell on the other side of the room.

"Don't move," Mary said. "One little, tiny gesture and we blast you. Nothing. Don't even scratch."

"I'm not even itchy," said Remo. "Mary. What's the Third World going to think? What happened to helping the helpless, defending the poor, protecting the downtrodden, and fighting for rights?"

"The Third World doesn't pay as good."

Someone behind Remo giggled. Charlie Ko told him to shut up.

"So you're the head of all this?" said Remo.

"No," said Mary Beriberi Greenscab. "I'm not, Mister Wise Guy Showoff. But I soon will be. By the time this nation recovers from the meat-eaters holocaust, I will be."