The Final Death td-29

by Warren Murphy

  She ordered a cold roast-beef sandwich on rye with both mustard and ketchup while thinking about the man Chiun called "Emperor." He was from Rye, New York.

  Viki thought about her father's death and Remo and Chiun. Then she went home and packed her things.

  Remo answered the door. Chiun was sitting in the center of their Fairfield, Connecticut, motel room fiddling with the parchment daytime drama as if nothing had happened that night.

  Remo was waiting for room service to bring up some rice when the knock had come. There was no reason not to think that it was room service, since Remo had called 45 minutes ago and the kitchen always seemed to get the order wrong.

  Either they cooked the rice with artificially preserved meat or they topped it with a sauce packed with monosodium glutamate or any number of other things that were poison to his system.

  But now there was no smell of food or sound of wheels on a rolling cart, so Remo opened the door with his left hand, holding his cut hand behind him.

  Viki Angus leaped into the room and threw her arms around him.

  "Remo, Remo. Thank God," she cried, crushing her ample bosom, hardly held back behind her braless chambray shirt, upon him. She sank her head onto his shoulder and wracked the room with sobs.

  Chiun watched, then began to scribble furiously on his parchment.

  "Easy now," Remo said, moving Viki over to the bed and sitting her down. "What happened?"

  Viki cried into her hands a bit more, then looked up toward the door.

  "I was home alone. And I was so frightened, and then I looked out the window and I thought I saw, I thought I saw… it was awful." She leaped up and grabbed Remo again. "I don't even want to think about it."

  "Easy," Remo repeated as she squirmed across his body again, rubbing her thigh across his front. "What was it? You've got to tell us if you want us to help."

  "Don't leave me," Viki sobbed. "Don't ever leave me." Her breasts bombarded his chest again.

  "Don't worry. You're all right now. Calm down and I'll get you some water."

  Viki's wracking sobs began to subside. "All right," she said meekly. She watched as Remo went into the bathroom and water began to run.

  Then she noticed Chiun at her side. She hastily frowned again, trying to bring on more tears.

  "When you entered," Chiun said, "did you say 'Remo, Remo, thank heavens' or 'Remo, Remo, thank God?' "

  Viki looked at him, trying for vulnerability, and said, "Thank God, I think."

  "Thank you," said Chiun, scratching something out on his parchment and then writing something else.

  Remo came out with a glass of water and sat on the bed next to Viki.

  She sipped slowly.

  "Now this thing in the yard," Remo said, "What was it? You saw people?"

  "That's right, Remo. People. People. In my yard."

  "Many of them? Were they Orientals? How many. Three? Four?"

  "Four, I think. But it was dark. And they looked like Orientals, I'm pretty sure. Oh, it was awful."

  Remo looked toward Chiun. "Looks like they're after Viki too," he said.

  Chiun shrugged.

  "We'll have to bring her to Houston with us."

  Chiun shrugged again.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Viki screamed. Remo looked toward the door. Chiun continued writing.

  "Room service," came a hesitant voice from outside.

  "Tell them to take back the rice," said Chiun without looking up. "I smell gravy."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The leader calmly explained what they had to do.

  The leader calmly explained that the attack had not failed, it had succeeded.

  The leader coughed three times, hacked once, and spit a hunk of phlegm into the garbage can of the eighteenth-floor suite of the Houston, Texas, Sheraton.

  "But we lost three of our best men," said a voice in Chinese.

  "We have gained knowledge," was the leader's reply. "We have gained understanding." The leader weighed the two in his mind. "It is regrettable," he said at last. "But it was necessary. Tell me, what have we learned?"

  The young Chinese voice told the old man about the attack at Meatamation and how the white man leveled three of the Creed's best fighters. Then the voice spoke of the yellow man who had been waiting outside Meatamation.

  "The yellow man," whispered the leader, raising his right hand toward his eye. His right forefinger stopped at his left breast but his eight-inch fingernail rested just below his left eye. "Were his eyes the color of steel?"

  "Yes," was the answer.

  "It is as I feared," said the leader. "He has come. He has finally come." The leader dropped his hand to his lap and bent his head in silent prayer. He remained that way for a minute and a half, then his ancient head rose.

  "Have you paid the others?"

  "The marchers? Yes."

  "Do they know of our creed?"

  "No."

  "Have you replenished our ranks?"

  "Hired some new men? Yes."

  "Call the others," said the leader. "The time approaches. We must do it. Now."

  After the young person had left the room, the leader raised himself from his chair. His rise was slow as were his movements and speech. He finally got to his standing height of four feet eleven, then shuffled across the nylon-pile hotel carpet to the drawn curtains.

  A shaking left hand gripped the heavy green material and wrenched it open. Hard, hot sunlight poured over the leader into the room. Houston hung in space, shiny gray, as if some hand had smeared Vaseline over it.

  Big cars, each looking newly painted, jockeyed with the dirty, tan hulks of the tractor trailer trucks for 10 clear yards of road space. Work crews were pulling off the red-and-green decorations from the streets, heralding the passing of the new year. Stores were ending their post-Christmas sales.

  And it was hot in Texas. It was always hot. That's why the leader liked it here better than Connecticut. It was hot. That was all the leader cared about. That was all he felt. That was all he saw.

  Because the leader's eyes were bright blue, but the pupils were dark, smoky white. The leader was completely blind.

  He heard the door open. The others had returned.

  "Sit down, please," said the leader in Chinese.

  "Sit down," said another, translating in English.

  The leader waited until he heard two bodies settle into the suite's chairs, then he closed the curtain, and shuffled back to his chair, secure in the knowledge that no outstretched leg or upright body would obstruct his path.

  The leader lowered himself into his blood-red seat with the green fanged dragons carved from wood resting beneath his arms.

  "Sinanju is here," he said. "Lo, after many millenia, we cross paths finally."

  "We have to kill a few more people," was the translation.

  "We will not attack," continued the leader. "Our history tells of many dead men who tried to attack the steel-eyed Koreans. And now he is doubly dangerous because of the white man with tiger's blood."

  "We will not attack," was the translation.

  "We will separate and destroy," said the leader.

  "We will separate and destroy," said the translator.

  The other body in the room shifted and said: "Same difference."

  The leader asked for a translation. He was asked, in Chinese, "Many pardons, wise one. But is that not the same thing as a two-sided attack?"

  "Idiot," the leader flared. "You can bang your head against a wall all day and it will not come down. But pull out the right brick and it will collapse in ruin."

  "Naw," was the translation. "It's not the same thing."

  The leader heard another shuffle of cloth against leather. A voice said, "Do we have to kill them in the same manner as before? The new men can't understand why we have to skin them and put them in trees."

  There was a translation.

  "Fools, fools, fools," said the leader. "It is tradition. It is legend. It is our
strength. For not only do we achieve death in our victims but fear in their survivors."

  The leader's right temple was throbbing. "We are the last of my kind. The black plague, it was us. The famine of 1904, it was us. And now, now we are about to embark on the great prophesy of my creed. The road must be kept pure for our followers."

  "The old man says keep doing it," said the translator.

  "That is all," said the leader, waving his hand. "Now, listen, and take this down."

  The translator pulled out a pad and pencil and wrote what the leader said for the next 10 minutes.

  "Prepare your people," said the leader.

  "Let's go," said the translator.

  The leader listened as two bodies moved slowly away, a door opened, then closed.

  The leader slumped down in his seat. The years, the strain had weakened him. He could not let them see it, but it had. His followers now had to be paid to take up the Creed. They no longer spoke the mother tongue. They could no longer change into other shapes or take on other forms. He was the last. Only he.

  His forces had shattered. This was his last chance. All that was left to follow was the legend. The legend of the Final Death.

  The leader moved slowly across the room to the bed. He eased his old and frail body down. He stared, unseeing, up to the plaster ceiling. His mind clouded and he was back. Back with his kind in Ti-Ping village.

  He remembered the rooms of gold, paid in tribute to the cult's power and the cult's God. The only true God, the ruler of the realm of the afterlife.

  He remembered his leader, his true father, telling him, teaching him the lesson of the Final Death.

  The leader lay on his gold and blue Sheraton bed cover in the warm Houston afternoon and mouthed the words as he remembered.

  The stomach is the center. The house of all life and death. Life begins and ends there. The soul dwells there. Destroy the stomach and destroy all life. When you die, you die the Final Death.

  No place in the afterlife. No place by God's side. We are the holy saviors of the stomach. We wander the earth as the undead, slaves to our God, punishers of all transgressors.

  The leader remembered the deaths.

  The cutting off of all lifeblood. The slitting of the throat.

  The release of the life force. The slicing down to the stomach.

  The destruction of the Holy House. The stripping of the carcass.

  The homage to our God. The skeleton in the tree, symbolizing our strength and power.

  The Final Death. The burial of the innards.

  Thus it had been for thousands of years. Before the cult moved out of China and up into Eumania, Russia, Lithuania, Transylvania, their legend had grown enormously. Tales of their ability to change into trees and nebulous forms ran amok through the villages.

  But the power had shifted outside mother China. The deaths continued, the creed grew, but the legend was lost. The white men saw them as farcical bloodsuckers. Men of swarthy complexion and burning eyes. They were remembered as hissing, caped servants of the Devil, flapping into bedrooms and sinking their teeth into the breasts of fleshy women.

  The deaths continued but the true purpose was lost. Their ranks dwindled as, one by one, the leader's companions were released. They had done their work well and so, they entered the afterlife.

  Until there was no one left but him. He had moved and planned and killed but it was not enough. His God wanted more. So he moved to America, the center of meat-eating, stomach-destroying madness. He had taken the age old secrets of the cult and planned the final, massive destruction of transgressors.

  But times had changed. He had grown old and weak and the blindness was sent down as punishment. So now he used the rooms of gold for pay. And now he gave the age old secrets to outsiders for implementation.

  The gold was beginning to run low, but the plan was near completion. Soon his God would be satisfied. Soon he would be released to join his companions.

  But first they had to deal with Sinanju. First they had to send the white man and the Korean to their Final Deaths. There had been a truce centuries ago but it was ended.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "Why are you wearing that ridiculous costume?"

  Viki Angus looked down at her blue mini-length dress with the gold braid on the sleeve, then back at Remo. "What's ridiculous? This is an official Star Trek lieutenant's uniform. I always wear it when I'm flying."

  "You're not one of them, are you?" Remo asked.

  "One of who?"

  "One of those Starkies," Remo said.

  "Trekkies," Viki corrected. "And I'd rather not be called that. Now, quiet while I get this ship into a holding orbit."

  She pressed her lunch tray several times, making bleeping noises.

  Across the aisle, a manufacturer of toilet seats looked up at the noise.

  "Landing coordinates locked in," Viki said.

  The overhead loudspeaker beeped, and the stewardess' voice insinuated out: "Please fasten your seat belts. We will be landing momentarily in Houston."

  Viki uncrossed her legs and fastened her safety belt, pulling up her dress another inch. The toilet-seat manufacturer lowered his magazine to watch more carefully.

  A few minutes later, the plane slapped onto the runway and moved toward the unloading docks. The loudspeaker hoped they had all enjoyed their flight.

  Viki bounced up in her seat and commended loudly the spaceship's navigational officer. The toilet-seat manufacturer rose slowly, mopping his brow.

  "How come the gorgeous ones are always nuts?" he muttered to no one in particular.

  Viki, oblivious, reached up over her seat to get her bag, the one with the United Federation of Planets stenciled in silver under a blue-and-silver insignia comprised of two silhouettes surrounding a star system.

  The male population of first class moved their heads in unison to chart the rise of Viki's hemline with the rise of her arm. A small disappointed sip of breath came when an Oriental in a flowing green kimono moved behind her, blocking the view.

  Remo, Chiun, and Viki moved toward the door of the plane where a stewardess invited them to come again.

  "Thank you," said Viki. "I'll beam down to the planet now."

  The thin, small-chested stewardess watched Viki's exit as she hopped down the stairs, making a bubbling sound. Chiun followed her.

  "Are those two together?" the stewardess asked the next man.

  "Yes," said Remo, the next man. "That's Captain Jerk and Mister Shmuck."

  "It figures," said the stewardess.

  Remo, Chiun, and Viki rode the commuter bus to town. They sat across from a fat white woman holding a child to her bosom, a Delaware Torrington Junior, known to his contemporaries as D.T. 2.

  D.T. 2 held a radio tape deck close to his ear. It was playing a new rock number at a decibel level that would have succeeded in banning the Concorde jet from the entire civilized world.

  Delaware Torrington Junior slumped down in his seat so he could look up Viki's dress. "Oooooh, mama," he groaned aloud.

  Viki caught his stare, pushed her knees tightly together, and sat closer to Remo. Remo was thinking about his seat. His feet were pressed against the bottom of his shoes. He moved his body off the bus seat as the driver came onto the bus and started the engine.

  Remo slowed his breathing, then lifted his feet off the floor. He pressed back hard against the seat, hard enough to cause a friction that held him in place, three inches over the seat.

  Chiun nodded as the bus started. Then Remo slowly released his breath and settled his body weight back onto the seat. No one but Chiun had noticed Remo do his exercise for the day.

  Viki pressed his arm. "That person is staring at me," she said.

  "Zap him with your phaser," Remo said.

  Delaware Torrington Junior rubbed his cap on his lap and leered at Viki while the screeching trumpets on the tape player woke the fat woman's sleeping child. The baby began to cry.

  D.T. 2 motioned to Viki and smile
d. Remo rose off his seat and leaned forward.

  "What do you want?" he said.

  "I don't want you," said D.T. 2, loudly over the crashing bongos throbbing against his head. "I want her."

  "I'm sorry, sir," said Remo. "Her heart belongs to Star Fleet Command."

  "I never heard of that group," said D.T. 2. "Whadda they play?"

  "Nothing that would interest you," said Remo. "Music mostly."

  "Don't give me no jive, Clive," said Delaware Torrington Junior. He smacked his sneakers on the floor and hissed hysterically at his own wit.

  The baby next to him howled even louder as the saxophones on the tape reached a climax. The fat woman asked D.T. 2 if he could turn down the music a bit.

  "I can't hear it if I turns it down, fatty," said Torrington.

  "Then let's turn it up," said Remo. "So you can hear it really well."

  Remo's arm moved out and pressed against the machine at the black man's head. Suddenly the woofer made way for an ear and the tweeter was displaced by a pimpled jaw line. Tubes and transistors were cracked, pushed aside and smashed out the other side of the tape player to make room for an Afro passing through. The back of the bus was suddenly silent except for the tinkling of glass in the aisle.

  Remo pulled the bus cord and the driver stopped at the next corner to let off a man with a radio between his ears. Delaware Torrington Junior later would marvel with all his friends about how the tape player retained a perfect outline of his head, even after it was pried loose. The whole experience really shook him. It was a week before he stole another tape player.

  The thankful fat woman soothed her child, looked apologetically at Remo and said, "Houston isn't what it used to be."

  "Nothing is," said Remo.

  "How did you do that?" asked Viki when Remo sat down again. She asked him when they got off the bus, when they registered at the Houston Hilton, and when Remo showed her to her adjoining room. "How did you do that?"

  "Find me a radio and I'll show you," said Remo, turning to go.

  "Don't you want to come in?" asked Viki seductively.

  Remo looked at her, put his hand on his chin, thought for a few seconds, then said, "No."

  "Remo," said Chiun from the doorway of the other room. "Come in. We must speak of your soul."