Unnatural Selection td-131

by Warren Murphy

  If he could turn the barrel just a little. Get one clear shot.

  Judith squeezed his wrist. Mark's hand popped open and the gun fell with a heavy thud to the glass-strewn floor.

  A hand too fast to follow snatched Mark by the throat.

  Mark grabbed at her arm with both hands, trying to tear it away. It was too tight. It wouldn't budge. His oxygen was going. He was becoming light-headed. He saw Judith White reach out with her free hand. She grabbed up the vial Mark had left on the desk.

  Popping the top with her thumb, she dipped the tip of her tongue into the thick liquid. Swishing saliva, Judith brought her mouth close to his. Her breath was vile.

  "How about a kiss, darling?" Judith purred.

  Her free hand pried open his mouth. It was easy now. The fight was gone. Even as his lips formed an O she was already spitting the sickly warm goo onto Mark's tongue.

  She slammed his mouth shut and massaged his throat.

  He knew he should resist. But the urge to swallow came anyway. She eased up the pressure just a little, and Mark felt the thick liquid slide down his constricting throat.

  The world began to spin. She whispered a few quick words in his ear before letting him go.

  As he fell against the desk, he caught a final glimpse of Judith White. She was crouching on the windowsill, the heavy BostonBio lab case dangling lightly from her hand.

  She flashed a toothy smile.

  "Be seeing you, precious," she growled. And then she was gone.

  Mark reeled. Somewhere deep within him, he felt a terrible, primal stirring. His stomach clenched. He pressed both hands to his gut, trying to hold back the pain, desperately trying to hold on to himself.

  His head whirled. The room danced a kaleidoscope across his double vision. Through it all, one thought passed over and over through his mind.

  One arm. Remo said she had one arm. This Judith White had two.

  They don't know. I have to tell them. Have to warn them.

  But it was too much. Mark Howard felt all that made him human slip gently away. He fell. On the way to the floor, his temple cracked hard against the corner of the desk.

  And a darkness greater than the cold, collapsed center of a dead universe washed over him.

  Chapter 28

  Remo and Chiun felt the draft of forest air the instant they burst into the Lubec Springs offices.

  They raced up the hall to the open office door. The picture window was gone-shattered in a million pieces across the floor. A few shards stuck from the window frame like crooked teeth.

  Afraid Mark Howard had been kidnapped, Remo bounded across the floor to the window. He nearly tripped over the young man. Howard was sprawled on the floor behind the desk.

  Because Remo had not detected him the instant he entered the room, he was certain Howard was dead. But all at once, the younger man came back to life.

  Howard sucked in a pained gasp of breath. Like a newborn testing its first gulp of air. His heartbeat seemed to reset. Like tumblers in a safe, the muscle fell click-click into a new pattern.

  Remo had heard the pattern before. "Christ," he hissed.

  On the floor, the assistant CURE director stirred. Remo glanced worriedly at Chiun. Standing somberly beside the desk, the Master of Sinanju looked down on Howard, his face gathered in a mask of wrinkled worry.

  Remo had hoped he was wrong. But with the look on his teacher's face, his worst fear was confirmed. "Watch him," Remo snapped.

  In a shot, he was up on the windowsill. Loafer soles disturbed not a single fragment of glass as he launched himself outside.

  He hit the backyard at a sprint.

  It was mostly rotting leaves on scraggly weeds. Howard's attacker would have been easier to track through fresh grass, but there was no back lawn to speak of.

  Here some leaves had been recently overturned. Over there something had kicked a stone.

  Judith White was good. Judith White would not leave big, blundering tracks.

  By the time Remo reached the tree line, he knew it was hopeless.

  There were tracks in and out of the woods. Some a few days old, some as new as that day. White's creatures probably used the woods as cover for their nightly forays to the local dairy farms. He found a path that looked as if it could have been broken recently.

  No, not her. Too old. Too clumsily formed. Maybe with Chiun they could each go in a different direction. Expand their range by fifty percent.

  But Chiun had his hands full. Remo was forced to admit defeat.

  Running back to the building, he bounded back through the broken window.

  Chiun was kneeling on the floor beside Mark Howard. The cushion had been removed from Owen Grude's office chair. The Master of Sinanju had tucked it gently under Howard's head. A nasty red welt was rising on the young man's temple.

  "She got away," Remo said, slipping up beside Chiun. He crouched beside his teacher.

  "We must hie to Fortress Folcroft at once," the old Korean intoned solemnly.

  "You put him under?"

  Chiun shook his head. "There was no need. The Regent sleeps for now. But he is gravely afflicted." As if to offer proof, a withered finger brushed Mark Howard's right eyelid. Folding back the thin flesh, the old man exposed an orb of twitching brown. All the green in the young man's iris was gone. When Chiun looked up once more, his mouth was a razor slit of worry.

  On the floor, a soft sound came from the back of Mark Howard's throat. It was a contented purr.

  Chapter 29

  Dr. Lance Drew had seen much that was strange during his tenure at Folcroft Sanitarium.

  There had been the time many years before when the old Asian-who was either an acquaintance of Director Smith or a former patient; Dr. Drew could never figure out which-had succumbed to a hitherto unknown viral infection. Somehow he had been miraculously cured by a simple electric shock.

  That was one for the medical books.

  Then there were those dark days ten years back during a highly stressful IRS raid when mass hallucination had caused people within Folcroft's ivy-covered walls to see purple pterodactyls and pink bunnies. Dr. Aldace Gerling, head of psychiatric medicine at Folcroft, had wanted more than anything to present that episode at a national conference. His request had been denied. Folcroft's privacy policy.

  Then there was the comatose girl whose brain showed no signs of synaptic activity whatsoever. Even so, the night she was brought in, Dr. Drew swore he heard her muttering in a voice that sounded like that of a thousand-year-old man. Not only that, her body reeked of a sulfur stench that would not wash away. And to compound the strangeness of that case, for a time the girl's body had released clouds of noxious yellow smoke. That had long since stopped, but the girl was still on the premises. Clearly she was a candidate for the supermarket tabloids. Any one of them would have made her their cover story.

  In that as in each case, Dr. Smith would hear none of it. The families of Folcroft's patients, Smith maintained, had not entrusted the care of their loved ones to Folcroft so that their tragedies could be exploited or sensationalized.

  There were times in the past when this stubbornness of Dr. Smith had almost driven Dr. Drew to resign. Nowhere else in medicine were healers forced to sign a draconian gag order like was required of the medical staff at Folcroft. At any other institution, he would be able to talk and write freely. But, unfortunately for a man as intellectually curious as Dr. Lance Drew, there was no other place he knew of on the planet that offered such fascinating cases as Folcroft Sanitarium.

  And the best benefit of all, for the most part when he left work at the end of the day, he could put it all behind him. The sanitarium ran with such efficiency, thanks to its priggish director, that rarely was Dr. Drew bothered by work at home.

  Folcroft Sanitarium was far from his mind as picked up the jangling kitchen phone in his Milford, Connecticut, home.

  "Hello," he said absently. With the tip of his tongue he stabbed at the tiny bits of steak and corn that
were stuck between his front teeth.

  Dr. Drew had just picked up a new Barbecue King 3000 at the local hardware store. He had been enjoying a late supper with his wife, burned with his own two doctor hands.

  He had assumed it was one of his grown children. Drew was surprised by the voice on the other end of the line.

  "Dr. Drew, there is an emergency at Folcroft," the tart voice of Harold Smith said. "I need you here immediately."

  Lance Drew could not remember Director Smith ever calling him at home before. Drew had been helping his wife do the dishes. When he glanced at her, she saw the look of concern on his fleshy face. "What's wrong?" Drew asked into the phone.

  "I'll tell you when you arrive. Please hurry." The phone clicked in Drew's ear.

  Lance Drew felt a tingle in his ample gut. Another odd case. Had to be. It was the only explanation for Smith's troubled tone and the fact that the Folcroft director was personally calling him back to work.

  "Sorry, hon," Drew said, tossing the wet dishrag in his hand to the counter. "Duty calls."

  Grabbing up his jacket from the hallway coat rack, he hurried out the front door.

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, Dr. Drew was on the sprawling side lawn of Folcroft, Director Smith at his side. Smith's rimless glasses were trained on the southern midnight sky.

  It had gotten much cooler since Drew had left work at five. Long Island Sound churned cold and foamy white at the shore. Drew could just see the old boat dock behind the building. It rose and fell with the waves.

  Wind whipped across the water and up the back lawn of the sanitarium to where the two men stood. Dr. Drew's hands were shoved deep in his pockets. He was wiggling his cold fingertips when the rumble finally sounded in the distance.

  The wind almost covered it. When the Navy helicopter appeared over the dancing trees, it did so in a shock of sound. Claws of yellow searchlights raked the grass.

  As soon as the lights found Director Smith and Lance Drew on the side lawn-a pair of orderlies waiting with a stretcher behind them-it lowered quickly to the ground.

  Even as the aircraft settled to its wheels, Dr. Smith was running toward it. The howling downdraft from the rotors blew his thinning hair wildly.

  Dr. Drew and the others hurried in behind him. Before any of them could reach the helicopter, the side door slid open. Two men Drew recognized from his years at Folcroft jumped to the ground. One was a young Caucasian; the other was the ancient Asian who had suffered the mysterious viral infection years before.

  "It looks bad, Smitty," the younger one said. Although he didn't seem to shout, his voice was crystal clear over the helicopter noise.

  The sanitarium director barely acknowledged the presence of the two men.

  "Stand back," Smith demanded, straining to be heard over the roar of the blades. He waved for the orderlies to hurry.

  The patient was lying inside the helicopter. Scampering inside, the two Folcroft attendants strapped him to the collapsible stretcher. Only when the man was brought out onto the lawn did Dr. Drew get a good look at him.

  His jaw dropped. "It's Mr. Howard," he gasped. Folcroft's assistant director was unconscious. A large purple welt colored one temple. His wide face twitched with spastic tics.

  Smith's steel-gray eyes fixed on Drew's. "Treat him," he commanded.

  Drew quickly recovered from his initial surprise. He spun to the orderlies. "Get him inside!"

  Dr. Drew ran alongside the two men as they crossed back to the sanitarium.

  "Smitty, I-" Remo began.

  "Later," the CURE director snapped. Without a backward glance at his enforcement arm, he ran after the others.

  As the Navy helicopter was lifting off, Dr. Lance Drew was flinging open the side door of the facility. Running up behind, Smith grabbed the door from him, ushering the doctor and the others hastily inside. He ducked in behind them.

  There was nothing more Remo and Chiun could do.

  Faces as cold as the wind from the Sound, the two men glided across the lawn and slipped inside the big building.

  Chapter 30

  The examination took more than half an hour. Harold W. Smith watched every second of it, face drawn in lines of paternal concern.

  Even before Dr. Lance Drew finished the exam, he knew his original assumption had been correct. This was an unusual case. But while unusual, it wasn't unique. Dr. Drew was certain this was connected to the still unexplained incidences in New York and elsewhere.

  When he was through, the doctor instructed an attending Folcroft nurse to draw additional blood for testing. As the woman did as she was instructed, Drew was pulling off his latex gloves. He stepped across the small examination room to his anxious employer.

  "This man should be in a hospital," Dr. Drew insisted in a hushed tone.

  Smith shook his head firmly. "Folcroft is adequately equipped for his needs, Doctor."

  "I don't even know what his needs are." Drew shot a troubled glance at Mark Howard. "There's been a rash of cases like this in the past few days."

  A thought occurred to him. "I assume you've read about them?"

  Dr. Drew didn't mean to insult, but Director Smith gave the impression of a man not fully in touch with the events of the everyday world. Drew wanted to be certain that Dr. Smith knew what they were dealing with here.

  "I am aware of what is going on," Smith said icily.

  "Oh. Well, then you must know that this is more than we can handle here."

  "I know nothing of the sort," Smith replied tartly. "Folcroft certainly has enough room for one more patient. And as I understand it, none of those other cases have been cured. Those afflicted like Assistant Director Howard have been sedated and warehoused in other hospitals pending a cure."

  "That's true," Drew agreed slowly, "but if there is a breakthrough-"

  "Then and only then will we send Mr. Howard for treatment if need be," Smith interrupted. "Until that time, Folcroft takes care of its own."

  Dr. Drew could see there would be no arguing. "Very well, Dr. Smith," he sighed. "But given what we know of those other cases, I insist we keep him under heavy sedation."

  Dr. Drew nodded to the sleeping form of Mark Howard. He raised a bushy white eyebrow when he saw that the crazed twitches that had afflicted the young man since his arrival had stopped. A nurse continued to fuss over the unconscious young man.

  "I not only agree, I insist," Smith said. "Do it. And report back to me hourly on his condition."

  With that the Folcroft director left the room.

  As the big examination room door sighed softly shut, Dr. Drew watched through the window as the gaunt, gray man hurried up the sterile hallway of Folcroft's security wing.

  The creases of Dr. Drew's pronounced frown lines deepened. His employer had an unerring ability to make the greatest physician feel like a lowly janitor. Drew dismissed the thought the moment it passed through his mind.

  "That's not true," Lance Drew muttered. "He treats the janitors around here like he cares whether or not they quit."

  Grunting unhappily, he turned to the nurse.

  "I need a walk. I'll be back with the patient's sedatives in a minute."

  "Yes, Doctor."

  Drew pushed open the door and stepped out in the hall.

  Across the room, unseen by either Dr. Lance Drew or the Folcroft nurse, a pair of yellow predator's eyes peered at them both through razor slits.

  Chapter 31

  Eileen Mikulka's thumbnail was bitten nearly down to the quick. Nerves, she thought as she chewed the ragged end. All nerves. All because of the terrible news.

  Smith's secretary had been a nervous wreck ever since she'd found out that poor Assistant Director Howard had been brought back to Folcroft by some sort of emergency life-flight helicopter.

  Mrs. Mikulka normally went home at five. But two long-term Folcroft patients had recently passed on and, as was her custom, Smith's secretary had dutifully retired their files to the storage room in the basement.

  While
downstairs earlier that week she had unhappily noted the condition of the rest of the patient records. It had been years since she'd given them a good going-over. She had gotten permission from Dr. Smith to stay on after normal business hours a few days that week to clean up the basement files.

  She had been coming up from downstairs when she heard the frightful ruckus out on the lawn. There was a helicopter and flashing lights and a stretcher being hurried inside.

  A night-duty nurse had told Mrs. Mikulka that the patient was that nice young Mr. Howard.

  Fraught with concern, Mrs. Mikulka had returned to her own office. But she had been in such a distracted state she couldn't seem to keep her mind on work.

  Now, forty-five minutes later, the plump, middle-aged woman puttered from desk to corner filing cabinet, not sure what she was even doing.

  This was the state she was in-beside herself with worry, seemingly lost in her own office-when Dr. Smith came hurrying in from the hallway, his face drawn.

  Smith seemed surprised to see his secretary still at work so late after five.

  "Oh, Dr. Smith, how is Mr. Howard?" Mrs. Mikulka asked.

  "Mark is fine," Smith said brusquely. "At the moment he is resting comfortably."

  He tried to sidestep her, but the distraught woman wouldn't let him to his office.

  "The poor dear. He hasn't had much luck since he started working here, has he? Someone said he has that awful thing on the news. The thing that made those people do those terrible things earlier today. It isn't that, is it?"

  Smith's lips thinned in irritation.

  It was apparent Dr. Lance Drew or the attending nurse had mentioned Mark's condition to others on staff. Smith made a mental note to reprimand the Folcroft staff members for their lack of discretion.

  "You do not have to stay, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said.

  "Oh," she said, noting his sharp tone. "Yes, sir. I just have to make copies of these and put them downstairs with the rest." She held up a file of papers in her hand.

  Smith nodded crisply. He stepped around her, heading for his closed office door.

  "It's just awful about Mr. Howard," Mrs. Mikulka said. She was chewing on her thumbnail once more.