Warren Murphy: The Final Death

"O.K., fine, I'll buy that," said Remo. "So what are you waiting for? Shoot me and take over the country."

"Oh, no," said Mary, smiling. "First you are going to tell us how much you know and then you are going to die from a swine-flu shot reaction."

"All right," said Remo, sitting down in the big metal bin as if he were warming up to a Boy Scout fire. "You can find out how much I know from what I don't know. For instance, you are the ones putting the poison in the meat."

"Yes."

"The Pennsylvania convention?"

"Yes."

"The skeletons in the trees?"

"Yes."

"Why?" asked Remo.

"I'm sorry?"

"Why so much fooling around? The convention, then the skeletons, skinning bodies. What's the matter? You get bored easy? Why not just go ahead and poison the country?"

"Tests," said Mary simply, "At first our poison didn't work fast enough. So we tried it out on that convention and studied its effects."

"While we were working on a better mixture, a couple of people were getting close, like Angus and you. So we killed them according to traditional ritual. Now the poison is fast and 100% percent effective. We're going to start killing meat eaters by the millions."

Sheng Wa laughed. Charlie Ko told him to shut up.

"Traditional ritual?" asked Remo.

"Yes, Mr. Nichols. Didn't you know? We're honorary Chinese vampires. It is our creed to do away with all who desecrate the sacred stomach."

Now everyone started to laugh. Except Remo. He remembered what Chiun had said and felt a chill. He didn't think it was very funny. His voice cut off the levity.

"I don't understand this and I don't care." He got up. "You're all about to become just so much more meat." Remo heard the tone of his voice and was surprised that he sounded angry. Screw it. Screw his anger, and screw Chiun's fears, and screw Smith's detective work.

Remo was preparing his ankles and toes to send him up 12 feet into the air when the floor dropped out. He had been so angry that he didn't fully register Charlie's movement. Ko had pressed the pointed tube against the metal of the bin which had sent an electronic impulse to an automatic switch which opened the trapdoor floor.

Remo's toes curled, his legs twanged, but there was no longer anything to react against. He dropped like a stone.

Remo turned his muscles limp so no bones would be broken if he hit anything. He felt a gently sloping wall press into his side and he realized that he was now sliding along a chute.

A split second before he went through it, he saw a rectangular hole appear before him. Suddenly he was lying on the floor of a massive freezer.

A thick sheet of concrete reinforced steel slid down over the entrance. Just before it locked Remo thought he heard hysterical laughter from above.

Remo looked around, bringing his body temperature down closer to that of the air around him. He estimated it at five degrees below zero. The walls were white-and-gray frozen slabs stretching down for 50 feet. The room was 20 feet wide, big enough to hold several dozen men working on the large carcasses of meat that were even now hung on hooks that lined the ceiling along the center of the freezer.

Remo walked down the line of dead cows to find the door. Then he heard a hissing sound. He looked down the row of carcasses to see a white cloud billowing out of a freezer unit, filling the other end of the room.

A smoke? A mist? Chiun's fears? It couldn't be. No, it couldn't be. But still, Remo began to move back, away from the gathering fog.

Remo started peering between sides of beef as he went, wondering why you could never find a cross when you needed one. And how to ward off a Chinese vampire? A cross made of chopsticks? A ring of wonton around your neck? Sprinkle soy sauce on their graves? Impale them on a fortune cookie?

Remo suddenly realized that the hunk of meat on his right looked different out the corner of his eye. It was a different color. It was a different shape. It was smaller.

And it had legs.

Remo turned. Viki Angus was on a meat hook. Her brown eyes were open and icicles had formed on her lower eyelids where her tears had frozen. Her mouth was open and her tongue had become a solid block of ice. Her head did not loll back because her neck was stiff and cold.

The hook protruded out the middle of her chest, just to the left of her silver Star Trek insignia. It was big and sharp and rounded and its slick black color clashed with the blue of her uniform. The other hooks were metal gray but this one was black because a thin layer of her blood had frozen on it before it had a chance to drip off.

Her body did not sway, her legs did not dangle. Her boots were on but her pantyhose was missing. They must have had fun with her before she died.

Remo stood before her silent corpse. He reached up to take her down and her frozen arm broke off in his hand.

Then the mist was upon him.

Mary Beriberi Greenscab was sitting with her feet up in the control room.

"It's too bad they don't have a camera in the freezer," said Charlie Ko, wistfully, playing with his fingernail. He was slicing pieces of paper in half that he threw into the air.

"The lens would freeze up, maybe break," said Mary, pulling her jeans-enclosed legs off the counter. She stood up and straightened her green checked shirt.

"So what's the gab, Greenscab?" said Sheng Wa.

"Yeah, what's hairy, Beriberi?" said Eddie Cantlie.

Everybody laughed until Mary flared, "Don't call me that. I don't need that cover anymore. My name is Broffman. Ms. Mary Broffman. But soon you can call me Ms. President." Mary smiled, sticking her thumbs under her lapels, and everyone in the control room hooted.

"Alright," she said. "This is it. Yat-Sen and Gluck should be back any minute. You guys go get Nichols and Angus. Thaw them both out. Drop Nichols anywhere and stick the girl with the old chink in a tree." Mary moved toward the exit door.

"Hey," said Charlie Ko. "What are you going to do?"

Mary turned back. "I? I? I am going to report "mission accomplished" to the leader. Then I'm going to the airport."

Charlie's eyes widened. "You're going to drop the stuff?"

Mary smiled. "By tonight, the meat eaters will be dropping like flies. By next week, we'll have this government on its knees."

Mary left. The boys howled and hooted.

"All right," said Charlie, taking over. "Let's get this place cleaned up. I'll call Texas Solly and tell him he can open up again tomorrow. If he's still around tomorrow."

The group moved down into the slaughterhouse disassembly line. They moved across a metal balcony which led onto a spiral staircase that moved down into the huge room proper. The chutes, machinery, and monorail-like harness for the steers were clean and unmoving. The chutes and trap doors where the dead cows appeared lined one wall. A battery of opaque windows lined another. Benches and work tables were underneath the second-story balcony and the huge door to the freezer occupied the fourth and facing wall.

Sheng Wa and Steinberg moved in front of the cold-storage entrance as Eddie Cantlie came down the stairs. Charlie Ko moved across the edge of the railed balcony overlooking the entire floor.

Steinberg turned back from the door and looked up at Charlie.

"How do you open this damn thing anyway?"

They didn't have to.

There was a cracking whump and suddenly the entire freezer door broke off from the wall and went flying across the room. Sheng Wa and Steinberg were in its path so they were smacked forward to smash against the wall and drop onto the work tables like rag dolls before the still-flying door crushed them into powder.

Charlie Ko saw the huge door disappear under him before he heard the sickening crash. Then he looked back to the now-open entrance as a huge cloud of cold air and white mist billowed into the room.