Deadly Genes td-117

by Warren Murphy

  "You look a little green," Bob commented as they walked through the bombed-out parking lot. "Wanna beer?"

  He reached a hand around to the emergency sixpack he'd slung from the back of his belt.

  "Hell, no," Ted insisted.

  "Don't tell me you got religion on us," Bob said. His tone was vaguely disgusted.

  "No way," Ted declared. "It's just I don't feel like it. Not after this morning."

  "I've been drinking more because of this morning," Evan boasted. In fact, he hadn't had a drop, either.

  "That's 'cause you're not a faggot like Ted," Bob said with a smirk.

  "Shut up," Ted complained.

  "Yeah, Bob," Evan echoed. "Why don't you shut up?"

  They'd nearly reached the first warehouse. The big brick building was four stories tall and looked as if it had been built somewhere in the earliest days of the twentieth century. The facade was crumbling. Chunks of mortar and redbrick fragments were spread all around the lot before it.

  Bob stopped near the closed warehouse door.

  "Are you two queer for each other?" Bob asked, turning on the others. "You sound like you're married or something."

  "Just lighten up," Evan insisted.

  "You lighten up," Bob snapped back.

  "Maybe we should keep it down," Ted offered warily. The morning's events had begun playing anew in his frightened mind. He felt woozy. His stomach fluttered in fear as added adrenaline pumped frantically through his system.

  "I'm sick of you two always ganging up on me," Bob groused. "You think you're so much better than me. Well, I got news for you. At least I got a real live deer once, Teddy boy. And it wasn't with the front of my car." He glanced over his shoulder. Woods crept out around the side of the building. "I'm going to see what's going on back there," he announced, a sneer stretching his lip. "If I find her this time, maybe I can keep from pissing my pants and actually shoot her."

  Grumbling to himself, Bob stormed off. After he'd disappeared around the side of the building, Evan shrugged.

  "He'll be okay," Evan assured Ted. "It's just the beer talking."

  "Yeah," Ted nodded. Getting yelled at by Bob had only increased his apprehension level. He felt the powerful tingling of pure terror in his groin. He wanted to pee, but dared not suggest it. Not after what Bob had just said.

  Evan crept to the front of the building. With the flat of his hand, he tested the door. It was unlocked. He turned back around. "You want to flip for who goes in first?" he asked, lips twisted into a devilish smile.

  "Hurry up," Ted urged.

  And before his faked courage fled him completely, Ted used the broad side of his shotgun to bully his friend into the warehouse. He followed close behind.

  The door creaked shut with eerie finality.

  WHEN REMO AND CHIUN ROUNDED the corner, they found the rear parking lot of the old warehouse teeming with hunters. Men with shotguns scurried all around them, like ants fleeing a dropped shoe. The hunters paid the two Masters of Sinanju little heed, so busy were they stalking sand and stones.

  "I will never understand this nation," the Master of Sinanju commented as they waded through the armed throng. His wrinkled face was puckered in disgust. "There has never been a land as rich in food as America. Your markets are even given the boasting prefix super." His voice dropped. "It is amazing to me, Remo, that the American ego extends even to something as trivial as your grocery stores."

  Remo's eyes were trained ahead, his senses strained to their maximum. "And?" he asked, distracted.

  "Why do these simpletons dress up like clowns and clomp around in the woods with their boomsticks when they need only stop at the nearest supermarket?"

  Chiun indicated some hunters who were trying to hide in the thin brush at the edge of the parking lot. The woods might have been enough to conceal two or three. There were eighteen of them.

  "Gives them something to do," Remo explained. "You know, l went hunting a couple of times years ago."

  "That does not surprise me," Chiun said, nodding sadly. "After all, you were a barbarian when I met you. However, I had hoped that you had not sunk so low into depravity that you would shoot Bambi's mother."

  "I never actually shot anything," Remo pointed out.

  "Not only did you use firearms-you were untalented with them. The pride I feel at this moment is underwhelming."

  It was as if Remo didn't hear. The two of them traced a path around the perimeter of the parking lot. Remo had already described to Chiun the tracks he'd seen in the Concord field and in the alley behind the HETA office. So far, there was no sign of Judith White's distinctive paw prints in the film of dirt and sand.

  "I see nothing here," Chiun announced once they'd completed their circuit around the parking lot's edge.

  "Me, neither," Remo said, disappointed. "These boot marks all over the place don't help."

  He waved a hand at the kicks and scuffs that dozens of hunters' heels had made in the soft sand. The fence along the side of the lot nearest them had collapsed. It opened into another, larger parking area.

  "Guess we move on," Remo said glumly. Chiun nodded agreement.

  The two men clambered across the toppled chain link and into the adjacent lot. Moving ever farther away from their quarry.

  "DO YOU HEAR THAT?" Evan whispered urgently.

  "Hear what?" Ted asked.

  Evan's voice was a hoarse rasp. "Sounded like digging."

  The air was thick with dust. Tiny particles danced in the few beams of light that penetrated the spaces in the boarded-up first-floor windows. The smell of decay hung heavy in the wooden interior of the big brick building.

  As they stepped gingerly through the large rooms of the old warehouse, both men found it difficult to breathe. They pulled air into their lungs in shallow, nervous spurts, exhaling almost as soon as they had inhaled.

  Ted was an anxious wreck. The cavernous warehouse was spooky, like something out of a Saturday-afternoon horror movie. His head swirled as much from blood loss as from fear. They'd drained too much at the hospital. What little was left thundered in his ears.

  Evan had taken point. A few yards ahead, he stepped cautiously over a rotted beam that had fallen to the floor. Years of settling dust and cobwebs formed a thick coat on its decayed surface.

  As Evan's toes brushed the floor on the far side of the beam, there came a gentle creak beneath him. Evan froze. Behind him, Ted stopped, too. "What?" Ted whispered anxiously.

  "Shh," Evan stressed. He started to pick his foot up. The floorboards creaked greater protest. Worried, Evan stood stock-still.

  "Go," Ted insisted, pressing the length of his gun barrel against Evan's tense shoulder blades. Hesitantly, Evan brought his foot down flat on the old warehouse floor. The creak from the wood came sharp and quick, stopping abruptly. Hoping the noise hadn't been loud enough to scare off their prey, Evan dropped his other foot next to the first.

  A muted sound came from beneath. Not a creak this time. More like a tired groan. It flashed to a roar.

  The creaky old floor vanished from beneath them. Helpless as the world collapsed around them, Evan and Ted felt an instant of weightlessness followed by the remorseless tug of gravity.

  The blackness of eternity swallowed them. Boards bounced around and off them as they plunged into the basement. Guns were dropped; frightened hands grabbed instinctively for faces and heads.

  A jarring stop. Crashing all around.

  They hit the dirt floor hard. Rotting wood rained down, bouncing off their heads and shoulders. Ted did a belly flop onto the musty earthen floor. Striking ground, Evan tried to scramble to his knees. Heavy timber smashed his back, knocking him face first into the dirt.

  It was over as quickly as it had begun.

  Dust settled around them as the two men lay groaning on the basement floor. A lone nail clattered loudly down the length of a long, angled board, smacking lightly into the soft dirt floor.

  After a long moment, Evan pushed himself up through
the pile of debris. Dust fell as thick as flour from his hair.

  "Ted?" he panted, voice small. He felt around his back where the beam had struck. Wincing, he hoped he hadn't broken anything.

  Evan stumbled to his feet. Floorboards clattered away, settling on other sections of rotting wood. He looked up at the hole through which they'd fallen. It seemed a mile away.

  "Man, we're lucky ...we're lucky we weren't killed," he breathed.

  Evan glanced around for his gun. He didn't see it anywhere. Probably buried under the avalanche of junk.

  "You lose your gun, too, Ted?" he asked. No answer.

  "Ted?" he called again, the first hint of concern creeping into his voice. He suddenly felt very alone. It was dark in the basement. There was no sign of a door anywhere nearby. The only light spilled down from the hole through which they'd fallen.

  As he tripped anxiously through the awkward piles of wood, Evan spied Ted. He was kneeling a few feet from the pile of rubble.

  Ted's back was to Evan. Unmoving, he appeared to be engrossed in a spot on the floor.

  "You scared the shit out of me, Ted," Evan exhaled, relieved. "Hey, have you seen my gun anywhere?"

  One floorboard was jammed into the soft dirt floor, angled up over another. When Evan tried to climb over it, he tripped, slamming down onto the angled wood. The far end rose out of the dirt, dragging something into the air behind it.

  Sprawled over one end of the long board, Evan glanced up at the thing that had risen from the soil... And felt his heart freeze.

  The board had impaled the corpse in its hollowed stomach cavity. The body hung from the rotten board-a gruesome playmate on the far end of a macabre teeter-totter.

  And as the first brush of shock and horror pummeled Evan's reeling mind, he realized he knew the man.

  Bob. His friend's head hung slack over his dirt-smeared chest.

  In panic, Evan scurried off the board. The bloodied body collapsed with a horrible, meaty sigh to the dusty floor.

  "Ted!" Evan gasped, backing away on palms and feet. His hand sank into something slimy.

  With sick eyes, he looked down. A face stared up at him through the earth. Rictus-tight lips curled away from yellowed teeth. Mottled hair dragged across gray flesh.

  There were more. Hands here. Legs there. All exposed by the collapsed ceiling.

  They had fallen into a graveyard.

  Fear overpowering horror, Evan stumbled over to Ted. He found his friend still kneeling in the same spot. Ted's gun rested on the floor near his boots.

  Beside him now, Evan finally saw the thing that had turned Ted into a terrified statue.

  A tiny hand poked up from the floor. The face and torso of a young child had been exposed by a falling rafter. The stomach had been ripped open. Dirt filled the hollow cavity.

  Ted was clearly in shock. Frightened, Evan was trying to figure out how to get him out of there when he heard a soft footfall behind them.

  On his knees, Evan wheeled. And felt the world drop out from beneath him again.

  Judith White had crept stealthily from the shadows at the periphery of the basement. She stood a breath away from both hunters, teeth bared. In the wan light, her green eyes glowed red.

  "Nice of you boys to drop in," she growled softly.

  Evan dove for Ted's shotgun.

  Clawing hands were snatching for the stock when he felt a blinding pressure at the side of his head. He was too slow. She'd clubbed him over his left ear. And as the blackness of eternity collapsed around him, Evan Cleaver prayed for swift death. He did not wish to awaken on Judith White's buffet table.

  The hunter crumpled to the wood-strewn cellar floor without so much as a sigh.

  Abandoning the unconscious Evan, Judith padded up to the kneeling shape of Ted Holstein. "Remember me?" she taunted, stealing around from behind.

  His glazed eyes gained focus. Something seemed to spark far back in their shocked depths. He blinked, as if awakening from a long sleep. It was as if he were seeing Judith White for the first time.

  Ted's expression instantly switched from one of shock to one of horrid fear. His next reaction was instinctive.

  Ted screamed. His voice was loud and piercing, carrying out beyond the confines of the basement mausoleum.

  Judith leaped forward. Unfolding fingers revealed something in her hand. A test tube. Thin light from upstairs reflected yellow off its glass surface. While Ted continued screaming, Judith dumped the thick brown liquid from the test tube down the hunter's throat.

  Quickly, she clapped her hands over his nose and mouth, forcing him to swallow the sick-tasting fluid. "You've sobered up since this morning," she hissed approvingly in his ear. Her breath was hot and vile. "That'll make this that much easier."

  Ted heard the words as if they were coming at him down a long tunnel. The liquid had hit his stomach. The reaction was instantaneous. His rapidly beating heart spread the brackish fluid throughout his body.

  He shivered uncontrollably. His head felt as if it were being whipped around the confines of the cellar-a lead weight swung on a long rope. It spun away, coiled, then whipped back in. In all, it took no more than ten seconds.

  When it was over, a menacing calmness overtook Ted. A low rumble rose from the primitive depths of his empty belly. A growl.

  Judith released her grip. She smiled a gleaming row of white teeth. Human flesh filled the spaces between.

  "Doesn't that feel a whole lot better?" she purred.

  Ted nodded, arching his back. He began sniffing the air experimentally. A tantalizing smell filled the musty basement. It was human blood.

  As Ted padded over to the corpse of Bob, Judith hopped on all fours over to the unconscious form of Evan Cleaver. While Ted began gnawing at the belly of his dead friend, she pulled another test tube from the pocket of her tight slacks.

  "Don't get too settled over there," she warned Ted. He looked up, a sheet of dirt-smeared flesh hanging from his mouth. "You have work to do," Judith directed.

  Picking Evan's head off the floor, Judith dumped some of the brown liquid into his mouth. She massaged his throat as he slept, forcing the syrupy fluid down into his stomach.

  As she worked, Judith raised her nose, sniffing carefully. The hunters were getting far too close. Including Remo and Chiun.

  "High time I evened these odds," she purred. With an open paw, she slapped awake the creature that had been Evan Cleaver.

  THE GROUND around the muddy pothole yielded nothing but hunters' boot marks. Near Remo and Chiun, water seeped up into a fresh Survivor sole imprint. A crushed Budweiser can lay next to it.

  "Dammit, why don't these rummies take their clog-dancing chorus line to the nearest bar?" Remo complained.

  He had grown more irritated as their search wore on.

  "These lummoxes do not drop their clumsy hooves everywhere," Chiun said. "I see no evidence of the tracks you describe."

  "Me, either," Remo relented. "But it'd sure as hell be easier to look if Bob and Doug McKenzie weren't here."

  As they turned from the puddle, Remo rubbed his shoulder absently. It was a habit he'd developed after the attack and one that caused him irritation whenever he caught himself doing it. When he suddenly realized he was rubbing his shoulder yet again, he pulled his hand away, dropping it abruptly to his side.

  A few yards away, four hunters sloshed through a puddle. They ducked inside an old boiler room that was attached to one of the bigger buildings.

  Remo stopped dead. "This is ridiculous," he announced angrily. "Where are the cops? They should be rounding these rum hounds into paddy wagons."

  Beside him, the Master of Sinanju cocked a sudden ear.

  "Silence!" the old man hissed. A raised hand halted all objections.

  The Master of Sinanju's head was tipped to one side. He seemed to be listening intently.

  Remo trained an ear in the same direction. It took him a moment to filter out all the extraneous sounds, but once he'd cleared everything else away
, he heard it, too.

  A scream.

  The glance they exchanged was swift and knowing.

  Their feet did not disturb a single particle of dirt, so swiftly did they move. Without a word, the two men flew off in the direction of the terrified sound.

  Chapter 30

  Trooper Dan MacGuire couldn't believe what he'd just been told. There was no backup coming. Eyewitnesses had confirmed the initial reports. Killer scientist Dr. Judith White-who had murdered a fellow Massachusetts state trooper no less-was suspected to be at large in this very area. And there were no other police units being sent in.

  The place should have been swarming with cops by now. But the only people here were civilians. Even news people were being kept out of the area. Although some police had been deployed to Chelsea, it had been to cordon off the area. They were sitting this one out.

  This lunacy was all because of some crazy, mysterious order out of Washington. No one even seemed to know where the command had originated.

  And while the brass tried to figure out what the hell was going on up the chain of command, Dan MacGuire was left hanging. A lone sitting duck for the deranged, gene-sucking tiger woman of BostonBio.

  Well, not entirely alone. There was always the skinny guy from the Department of Agriculture and his two-thousand-year-old assistant. If push came to shove, they'd be a big help, Dan thought sarcastically.

  His negative opinion of the two agriculture men wasn't altered by their sudden appearance around the side of the warehouse across the street from MacGuire's unmarked car.

  The trooper had been sitting in his sedan, door open, black-booted feet planted on the road. He rose from the vehicle when he saw the two men appear.

  They came at him much faster than men should have been able to travel on foot. They were both flying along as if Dr. White were hot on their heels.

  MacGuire quickly pulled his side arm as they approached, half-expecting to see a loping Judith White racing in for the kill behind them.

  Remo and Chiun flew out of the parking lot and across the street, racing up to the parked state police car.

  MacGuire had his gun leveled at a point behind them. But there was nothing there.