The Ultimate Death td-88

by Warren Murphy

  Nuihc laughed. A low, heartfelt rumble that started in his bleeding belly and burst out from his pocked moon of a face. "Is this the excuse for your rudeness?" he asked. "Let me assure you then, Uncle, that I am as real as you are at this very moment. I am as real as this place of your devising, and the demons you now must face."

  Chiun became slightly more interested. "You know of this place?"

  Nuihc nodded. "As do you, Uncle. Here you are neither alive nor dead. Here is the 'undiscovered country' that the Englishman Shakespeare spoke of. This is the Ultimate Death. Here, your worst fears are realized." Nuihc bowed. "And I am honored to be one of your worst fears, O great Master Chiun." The arrogance of Nuihc had finally asserted itself. His face became angry. The personality change was jarring. "You murdered me!"

  "You would have murdered my son," Chiun countered harshly, "cur of an ingrate!"

  "Your 'son'!" he scoffed. "A white! Not even of the village!"

  "He is more of our village than you, wicked son of my good brother!" Chiun spat.

  "And is this why you killed me? For if he is truly the reason, you sullied your line for naught. He is doomed to share your fate, gyonshi thrall."

  Chiun drew himself up haughtily, saying, "Remo will survive. He is the dead white tiger of legend. The Shiva avatar. I have seen this with my own eyes." But Nuihc had struck a nerve. There was concern in Chiun's voice. The evil Chinese bloodsuckers had decimated the House of Sinanju in times past.

  Nuihc's expression became sly. "If the Master of Sinanju can be beaten by the gyonshi, so too can his heir," he said flatly. "As your father was bested, you were as well."

  "Do not mention my father, betrayer of Sinanju!" Chiun flared. "My ears bleed, that your false tongue invokes his noble spirit."

  Nuihc smiled thinly. "You accuse me of betrayal. So be it. But my treachery, as you call it, at least was known to all. Yours is far more insidious. You broke one of the most sacred tenets of the House of Sinanju to banish me here, uncle." He placed his hands on his hips. "I accuse you of treachery, Master Chiun. Your father accepted his responsibility for slaying the village elder, while you have not." Nuihc took one step back into the mist. Chiun saw that the wound in his stomach had miraculously healed. "I demand atonement for my murder!"

  Chiun shook his aged head. "I will not be dictated to by a dog of your color," he hurled back. "You, who had every advantage and squandered it. You, who would take the wisdom of your ancestors and twist it to your nefarious ends. You, who scoff at every tradition you should hold most dear." But even as he spoke the words, doubts began to gather in Chiun's mind.

  Nuihc's grin broadened. "I am most sorry, uncle. It is, as the French say, a fait accompli." He waved his hand, and the black mist seemed to appear at Chiun's feet-only this time it was not a mist but a yawning maw of a hole. And as Chiun slipped down into this funnel of inky blackness, all he could hear echoing off the endless slick walls was Nuihc's fading, taunting laughter.

  The sun was setting in a dazzling reflection of orange and yellow as Remo entered the Three-G, Inc., building through a shattered window. The place seemed to be falling into disrepair.

  As twilight approached, weird shadows cascaded along the gleaming hallways, sending spears of darkness along walls and into corners.

  Remo wasn't sure what to expect. He didn't care.

  He had only one purpose. To destroy the Leader. He was the reason all this had happened. He had engineered this entire scenario for one purpose and one purpose alone. Revenge. He had baited the trap, and Remo had willingly stepped in.

  The dying sun was expending its last shred of fiery orange brilliance as Remo entered a wide reception area. A sign posted near a horseshoe-shaped desk at the center of the room read TOUR BEGINS HERE. Beyond the sign was a long hallway, off of which were dozens of closed doors.

  Remo concentrated every fiber of his being on the doors in the hallway beyond. He stood stock still, his hands at his sides, as he let his mind and senses sweep down the darkening hall more effectively than any electronic sensing device.

  Nothing. No movement. No breathing. There was no one in any of the offices.

  Remo was about to move down the hall when he heard the first pre-attack warning noises.

  And he knew he had made a cardinal mistake for someone in his profession. He had overthought his adversary. While concentrating his senses on the offices up the hallway, he had allowed his opponent to get the drop on him. Literally.

  Section upon section of styrofoam ceiling panels caved in above him, showering the entrance area with a blanket of manufactured snow. Six gyonshi dropped from the newly made openings with surprising agility, bent at the knees, and sprang up at him. A flurry of long-nailed fingers groped for his throat.

  Twisting, Remo evaded the outstretched hands and sent a fist up into the groin of the nearest man. He was rewarded with the satisfying crack of a pelvis. The man howled in pain and dropped to the floor, grabbing at his injury and accidentally stabbing himself in the thigh with his own guillotine fingernail. He howled.

  On the recovering step Remo executed a backward somersault, inches ahead of the glittering ring of poisoned claws, to land on one knee on the marble-topped reception desk. He scooped up a silver letter opener and hopped lightly to the floor.

  "Mail call," he told the gathering swarm.

  As one, the five remaining vampires lunged. Arms slashing, teeth bared, they closed in on Remo.

  "Reject meat. . . ." they chorused.

  "Say no to blood," Remo shot back.

  When they were an arm's length away, Remo took the blade in his teeth and grabbed the wrists of the two on the leading edge. He yanked them toward him.

  Momentum carried them across the reception area.

  The pair crashed through one of the huge panes of glass that made up the outer wall of the room, sending an explosion of glass out onto the well-tended front lawn of Three-G, Inc. Remo flicked a third after them. He saw with a cruel grin that one of the bodies had been impaled grotesquely on a triangular shard of glass. The point jutted through the neck of the lifeless gyonshi, and a film of orange smoke rose into the chilly night air. The others were already getting unsteadily to their feet, like zombies burdened with osteoporosis.

  The remaining pair thrashed and lunged, desperately trying to infect Remo with their guillotine nails.

  Darting under their attacks, Remo caught up their wrists and, with a jerking movement, forced their sharpened nails into one another's throats. They fell apart, going in opposite directions and surrendering a haze of orange smoke.

  Remo spat the letter opener back into his hand as the two survivors he had hurled through the window clambered and stumbled back into the fray.

  One was a man, the other a woman. The woman seemed unharmed, but the man, about fifty and portly, was bleeding profusely from an open head wound. He was pale and weaved unsteadily. Remo guessed he was in shock from blood loss. Assuming vampires can experience shock, that is.

  The man nearly fell into Remo's arms. He tried to claw at him with his gyonshi fingernail, but seemed winded.

  "Reject meat.. . ." he gasped. "Accept the Final Death."

  "Sorry, pal," Remo said softly. "Sister Mary Margaret would never understand." With blinding swiftness, he sliced the man's throat cleanly.

  The final gyonshi woman, in a torn black Moody Blues concert T-shirt, lunged for him. Remo simply swatted her hand down, as one might scold an angry child, and drew the letter opener across her neck.

  With a shriek she floundered away, even as her gurgling throat dribbled vile orange smoke.

  Six down, Remo thought. But how many more to go?

  The first man Remo had felled still writhed in agony on the floor. As Remo squatted down beside him the man attempted to scratch him with his sharpened nail, while cradling his mangled lower body with his free hand.

  Remo felt pity for him. Not rage, not anger. Only pity. These health-food fanatics were all pawns in a twisted demon's game of
revenge. Now that Chiun was lost, it was Remo the Leader was after. And the Leader would send anyone and anything into the fray rather than face Remo himself.

  After Remo had sliced the man's throat, he didn't even watch the silent plume of orange smoke. He was already walking deeper inside the Three-G building, ready for whatever horrors Sinanju's old adversary had concocted as part of his sick game of revenge.

  He was back in Sinanju.

  The main square of the village was crowded. The villagers shouted cheers of encouragement. The buildings were newly whitewashed. Every nail was shiny and new. The village had never been so neat. Even the mud flats had become a golden beach.

  Nuihc stood before him, arms crossed absently across his chest. He wore a two-piece black fighting outfit.

  "Why have you brought me here?" Chiun asked. He did not look at the people of Sinanju. Their shouts were for Nuihc, not Chiun.

  "It is not my doing, Uncle," Nuihc said, "but yours."

  Chiun shook his head and inhaled deeply. "It is not I," he said.

  "You," Nuihc said, smiling evilly. "And you alone. The poison coursing through your system has ripped away layers of your pretentious inhibitions, Uncle. Is there some ghost you have yet to exorcise?" Chiun did not respond. Nuihc's eyes opened wide, as if suddenly alighting on a stark truth. "Perhaps we have discovered the one thing the infallible Chiun fears: his own unsavory past."

  Chiun brought his eyes level with Nuihc's. His nephew's orbs burned with undisguised hatred. Their gazes locked.

  "The ignorant dog barks at its own stink," he said, his voice dripping with contempt.

  Nuihc, once Master of Sinanju, struck up a fighting stance.

  "Defend yourself, decrepit one!" he shouted.

  Chiun stood his ground. "I will not fight you, shamed one."

  Nuihc's eyes became angry steel slits. "Ah, I understand. Only when your opponent is unsuspecting, unprepared, do you strike. Here, where there are eyes to witness your treachery, you hold back. Time has addled your withered mind, uncle. You have forgotten that I do not share your compunctions. If you do not defend yourself, I will slay you like a dog in the street."

  Chiun lowered his head. "So be it," he said quietly. And he turned his back in contempt.

  Nuihc's eyes went wild. "I will have my revenge!"

  Nuihc flew at Chiun, his index finger extended in a forward thrust-the identical stroke Chiun had landed against him years before.

  Chiun would not react. He would not move to defend himself. If his physical fate was somehow sealed with his fate in this internal world of his fevered devising, then he would leave the outcome to destiny.

  But he did not have the chance.

  Against his will, he felt his body move. Nuihc's blow encountered vacant air as Chiun whirled, his arm swooping in a deadly arc, an out-thrust fingernail sweeping for his nephew's open chest.

  At the instant the stroke should have registered, Nuihc was no longer there. In his place, several paces removed, was a man much older. He was looking at a young boy nearby. Neither had been there a moment before, Chiun was certain of that.

  There was something about the older man in Nuihc's place that Chiun should have recognized, but there was no time to think. The man was stalking the boy. And his hand was streaking across the vacant space between them in molasses-slow milliseconds.

  The boy! Something about the boy was familiar! The Master of Sinanju's hand moved with the speed of a thunderbolt and the grace of a swan. He intercepted the blow. Stopped the hand. Saved the boy.

  The attacking man dropped to the dust of the ground, crumpled, becoming dust himself. Chiun looked to the boy.

  The boy stared back at him. He seemed fearful. Shocked. And sad. Very, very sad.

  He looked up at Chiun with hauntingly familiar eyes that tore at Chiun's heart and rended his soul.

  Chiun knew who the boy was. It was the young Chiun. And he had somehow become his own father.

  The villagers gathered around the village elder, whom Chiun had felled. He heard their curses, felt their angry, frightened glances.

  He was at once father and son. Unable to avoid destiny. Unable to evade his past.

  "Murderer!" they cried.

  "Betrayer!"

  "You killed your own nephew, one of us!"

  "Who will be next? For none of us is safe!"

  And in the prison that was his mind, Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, dropped to his knees and let the suppressed anguish of nearly six decades pour out onto the dusty main square of his native village.

  Chapter 23

  The elderly Chinese known only as the Leader sat on his rude wooden throne in the security surveillance room of Three-G, Incorporated. The thick metal door was double-locked, and virtually impossible to break down with anything less than a point-blank Stinger missile strike.

  A line of Sony closed-circuit television screens displayed in static-filled images the drama being played out in the complex around him.

  The Leader was oblivious to the pictures on the screens. Mary Melissa Mercy was not. She continued her running narration.

  "He has gotten through the first wave, Leader," she said, a twinge of nervousness in her voice.

  The Leader smiled, exposing snaggly rows of stained teeth.

  For this great moment, the Leader had donned a scarlet-and-gold gown over leggings and boots. A rising phoenix, its wings wide, was a stitchery of flame on his chest.

  "The surprise attack failed because surprise was not on our side," he explained. "The gweilo knew of us. But we have not failed. We will never fail. Ours is the true faith."

  Mary Melissa Mercy stared down at a TV screen. On it, the gweilo Remo could be seen gliding stealthily down a corridor, away from the reception area and toward the atrium. "Will the second phase succeed?" she asked.

  The Leader's smile widened until Mary Melissa could see the pits of his blackened back teeth. "With a certainty," he said. "Sinanju can be defeated by sheer numbers. This, I know. This, I know. As in Shanghai, so in this place."

  His head continued to sway from side to side, as if to deny his own pronouncement.

  Remo found himself in the darkened garden at the center of the Three-G complex. It was not exactly the Eden its designers had intended.

  He saw dismembered bodies swinging lazily from the thickest tree branches, suspended by wire and rope. The putrid smell of rotted flesh assaulted his nostrils. The air was thick with swarms of buzzing flies.

  And there were others there, as well. Hiding among the dead, pretending to be dead when they were only the undead. They had smeared one another with the blood of their victims to disguise themselves, but Remo knew they were there before they'd made their first move.

  They roused, like sleepy pink bats stretching emaciated wings.

  Remo deliberately had walked to the center of the garden in an attempt to appear unprepared, allowing them to surround him.

  At his approach, two gyonshi dropped from the blackened branches of a dead oak tree like ugly fruit. One leapt over a heavy stone bench positioned at the edge of the path. A second was about to follow suit when the first rocketed backward, scooping his companion up in mid jump.

  Both slammed into the tree from which they had climbed seconds before. They became intertwined with the tree trunk. Branches fell and clattered like brittle bones.

  Remo slapped imaginary dirt from his hands as a dozen more vampires closed in.

  By now the moon was high above, and the approaching mob advanced with movements that suggested wolves more than men.

  Their faces were pale in the reflected moonlight. Their lean shadows spread and melted together, blurring their numbers and masking their features in an on-again, off-again flicker of silvery light. A cemetery whose graves had disgorged its residents might create such a picture.

  Their hands were raised in the air before them, zombie-like, as they approached with a detached animal intensity. Their eyes held the same devoid-of-thought malice displayed by Sal
Mondello and the other gyonshi. "Reject meat. . . ." they pleaded.

  "Tennis, anyone?" Remo asked coolly.

  He received a chorus of hisses in reply.

  "All this because my elbow was bent," Remo growled, moving into action.

  He dropped back and rolled, feeling his T-shirt dampen as he encountered one of the cool, blood-seeping mounds of buried organs. He came back to his feet just beyond the reach of the vampires.

  The concrete bench over which his first attackers had clambered was cool to his touch as Remo stooped and hefted it into the air, leaving twin mud furrows in the ground where it had rested.

  Remo lifted the two-hundred-pound bench with no more effort than if it had been constructed of papier-mache. He held its curved legs firmly in both hands and extended it impossibly far out in front of him, using it as a shield to ward off the blows of the deadly herd.

  A twig snapped. Movement behind. There were more skulking in through the underbrush, eyes dull and feral.

  A gyonshi nail hissed past his ear. Remo stabbed the right side of the bench outward in a sharp parry that caught the assailant in the forehead. There was a satisfying crunch of bone, and the vampire fell.

  Another on his left. Two more. Both had almost landed simultaneous blows.

  He stabbed out the opposite corner of the bench in rapid consecutive thrusts and the gyonshi fell. The rough-textured concrete was by now matted with bits of gristle and blood.

  The attackers emerged from the brush. Another eight.

  They merged with the original throng, venting a sort of primitive rumble of pleasure.

  Remo backed against the trunk of the oak for protection.

  Suddenly, a slapping hand groped from the other side. Another joined it. And another.

  Balancing the bench in one hand and continuing to use it to ward off the advancing gyonshi, Remo shot his elbow back sharply, careful to avoid lacerating his own arm on the wicked fingernails. The unseen vampires shrieked as the bones in their hands were crushed between Remo's hammering elbow and the tree. As the collapsed appendages withdrew, three clearly defined handprints could be seen gouged in the pulpy wood.

  "That's for the poisoned duck," Remo spat.