A million corpses. Lay them out and they'd reach halfway across the country.
Remo heard a motor, the tinny sound of a four-cylinder engine, then doors closing, then voices. He slumped down in his chair.
"The lying, thieving government. They must have had somebody follow Wyatt and steal the money." That would be Jill. "Well, now they'll pay for it."
"I don't think so." That was Jacki. "I think the big pig tried to keep the money for himself."
There was a giggle, then Jacki said, "Did you see the look on his face when we let him have the water-laser? Poor bastard. He didn't even get a chance to dip his wick." She giggled again.
They were standing now outside the trailer. "But I'd feel better if we had gotten a chance to use it on Remo. What did he do to us anyway?" Jill asked.
"I don't know," Jacki answered. "That never happened before. But I think that stupid deputy will take care of Remo. Particularly since we called him and told him that we saw Blomberg leaving Wyatt's house. When he finds Wyatt dead, he'll take care of Remo."
"Maybe," Jill said. "C'mon. We're going to set this equipment and then get out of here before the state blows. Pig government."
Remo heard footsteps walking away from the trailer, crunching twigs and leaves underfoot. He rose and peered through a window. Under the bright light of the California moon, he saw the two girls, each carrying a water-laser, walking away from the trailer, up along the edge of the fault, toward the spot where Remo knew the two drill shafts stuck up from the ground. "Let's go, Chum," he whispered.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I think it will be beneficial to wait. You go."
Remo shrugged and stepped lightly down from the trailer. What was on Chiun's inscrutable mind now? There was something.
Then Remo, still clad in black, slid silently through the night, following the twins,
They were twenty feet ahead of him. When they came to a large clearing, they stopped. They got to work immediately, beginning to hook the water-lasers together, to double their power. Then they lugged them over to the shaft that jutted up from the ground, and began to fasten the coupling to the shaft.
Remo stepped out into the clearing.
"Hi, girls," he said cheerily.
They froze in position, squatting over the equipment.
"Remo," they hissed in unison.
"Yup. It was so good today, I thought I'd come back for more."
One of the girls stood up. In profile, he could tell it was Jill.
She walked slowly toward Remo, her arms extended as if in greeting. "We've thought of nothing else," she said. She licked her lips and in the moonlight, they glistened black and white. Now she was at Remo; she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts up close into him.
"You know what I think?" Remo said softly.
"What?" her tongue asked his ear.
"You would have made a great bull dyke."
He pushed her back and she fell to the ground. Jacki was still bent over the water-lasers and Remo headed for her. Then an explosion ripped the air. Remo was knocked off his feet. He felt a searing pain burn into his shoulder.
A voice roared over a portable bullhorn.
"Remo Blomberg! I know you're down there. This is acting Sheriff Brace Cole. You're under arrest for the murder of Sheriff Wade Wyatt. Now come on up from there or the next grenade'll land right in your lap."
Remo was stunned. The grenade had barely missed him, and he could feel a trickle of blood running down his left arm from a fragment in his shoulder.
He shook his head to clear it, then saw Jacki stand up and away from the water-lasers. The familiar thumping had started.
"Too late, pig," she said. "This whole state is going."
The water-lasers were thumping now, churning. Remo could almost feel the energy building up inside them.
"Come on, Jacki," Jill said from behind Remo. "Let's get out of here."
"Sheriff," she called. "We're coming out. Don't shoot. He's been holding us prisoner. Don't shoot."
"Come ahead," boomed the voice of Brace Cole. "I'll cover. . . ." And then his voice stopped, in mid-sentence.
Remo got to his feet. Another voice came over the loudspeaker, speaking English in a precise sing-song. "The sheriff has decided to take a nap." It was Chiun.
"Sony, girls," Remo said.
They attacked him. Nails, fingers, feet and breasts clawed and hammered at him. They all missed. Then Remo had the girls from behind, an arm around each, holding them by the boobs and he dragged them past the water-lasers, to the gash in the earth that was the fault line.
He tossed them in. They hit with a thud, eight feet below him, and lay there, stunned. Remo turned back to the two water-lasers. They were screaming now, building up pressure, ready in moments to start pouring their gallons of water down into the shaft, a concentrated spurt of force that could tear a state apart.
Remo looked for switches. The machines still thumped. He couldn't find out how to turn them off.
He put his hands on the coupling which joined the machines to the shaft and wrenched. The coupling snapped loose and just at that instant, the water started to pour out of the end of the tubes.
The jarring force of the pressure paralyzed Remo's arms. He spun. The water poured out in a powerful cohesive stream. With all his strength, Remo aimed it down toward the ground, into the fault.
The water was barrelling now into the crack in the earth. Then the earth groaned, and as Remo watched in fascination, the earth began to close up. The girls screamed, then the sound stopped as the earth closed over them, then the lasers ran dry.
Remo looked down at where the gouge in the earth had been.
"That's the biz, sweethearts," he said. Two lives against maybe a million. Still, they had had great tits.
The ground shook again and Remo was knocked off his feet. He fell heavily on his bleeding shoulder. Another grenade, he thought.
But it was no grenade. The ground rocked and vibrated.
A quake, Remo realized in horror. But how? The water-lasers had been disconnected. He laboured his way to his feet, unsteady on the ground. He took a step in one direction. No, the force was coming from the other direction.
Had they set another device, timed to go off? Why then had they been working on this one?
Remo took off, over the shaking ground, racing along the rocky ledge, trying to find the source of the power. He ran heavily and he realized he was losing blood from the shrapnel wound. Then a tiny figure in black flashed by him, passing Remo as if he were standing still, out-distancing him, racing far ahead. It was Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, running across the shifting, sliding earth as if it were a cinder track.
Remo ran full sprint but Chiun pulled ahead. While Remo's legs pumped, pushing him forward against the shifting thrusting ground, Chiun seemed to glide motionless, moving through an inner momentum, the legs just keeping pace. Chiun pulled farther ahead into darkness.
Birds called, shrill caws of danger from their aerial safety. Remo saw a fear-crazed collie ,run at him and stumble into a somersault, its hind legs pumping furiously as though running uphill. The earth churned and the air was thin.
Into the brush Remo ran, cutting himself on brambles that came lurching at his face. Then he was in a clearing, and there, rising on long aluminium stilts like the shell of an unfinished steeple, was a giant water laser, twenty times larger than the ones Remo had seen before. And in this clearing, a half-football field wide, was stillness, a stillness surrounded by earth amok. It was as though a still hand suspended from an aloof moon held it placid in a sea of chaos. The earth smelled of ozone, the calls of the birds were muffled as though the vibrations of their sounds sucked from the air.
Dr. Quake was on his knees as if in prayer. He was in pain, and this Remo knew because the black robed figure of Chiun stood over Dr. Quake, one hand on the neck as if squeezing a collared pigeon.
Remo almost fell because of the sudden quiet o
f the earth. His reflexes were attuned to the previous vibrations and still reacting to them. This upset was only momentary; he moved to the pair quickly.
Remo heard Dr. Quake groan:
"It can't be stopped. No one can stop it. It feeds on its own progression. It generates itself."
"That which is started can be stopped." Chiun's voice was even and as distant as the moon.
"They wouldn't listen to me. If they had listened I wouldn't have done this," said Dr. Quake.
Chiun released the hold on the neck.
"He has told all he knows," Chiun said.
"Where are Jacki and Jill, my daughters?" sobbed Dr. Quake looking at Remo. "They were supposed to meet me here."
"They're where they belong," said Remo. "How do you stop this machine?"
"It can't be stopped," sobbed Dr. Quake.
"He tells the truth," said Chiun. "He surrendered to the pain and has told all he knows." Chiun looked up the aluminium stilts of the water laser. "Is this the machine with no vibrations?"
"Yes," said Dr. Quake.
"It's going to blast water into the lock at tremendous pressure," Remo said to Chiun. "The state is going to snap along the fault." He had to yell just so his voice sounded normal.
"Is this space here free of vibrations because the machine has harnessed them?" asked Chiun.
"Yes," said Dr. Quake.
"You are wrong," said Chiun, "Everything that moves has vibrations. Life is vibrations."
"That's your philosophy, not science," said Dr. Quake. Then he cried for his daughters and called them his poor innocent babies.
Chiun looked at Remo.
"If this is your science and this is what it has brought you, then I say your science is false. Life is vibration, movement is vibration, being is vibration. The universe is a vibration. Your science has created a machine that appears to have forgotten vibrations. I will have to remind it."
"Chiun?" said Remo. He wanted to warn but knew not how.
"You believe that science is one thing and the spirits of man another."
"Chiun, this is a machine. If it were a thousand men, little father, I would not doubt you."
"It is all one," said Chiun, and he briefly surveyed the long stilts and the giant metal nozzle pointing into the belly of the earth. "I will remind this insolent machine of its vibrations."
"We're all doomed," yelled Dr. Quake with laughter that was despair, a final not-caring before the end.
"Fool," said Chiun to the kneeling figure. And his black robe disappeared up the stilts. Remo could discern only an edge of the robe outlined against the moon at the pinnacle of the steeple.
The robe fluttered once and then the earth seemed to explode. The muffling silence became a shriek as if someone had clanged cymbals in Remo's ears. The stillness became a giant snap as if someone had pulled strings on Remo's legs; he was suddenly somersaulting, his legs flying wildly. Then a tremendous vibration slapped Remo's finely tuned body
Blood filled his mouth. He could not focus his eyes.
He was rolled over, and he saw the moon as a fuzzy yellow bulb above him. He groaned and then breathed. Something blocked the moon. He heard Chiun's voice. Chiun was standing over him.
"It broke. Heh. Heh. Nothing works in America except me."
"Ooh," said Remo. "What happened?"
"I taught this little device to remember its vibrations."
"Don't let Dr. Quake escape," said Remo. He felt wet coolness envelop his back.
"Escape? He was in even worse condition than you. He is dead, his body unable to accept a little-buffeting."
"A little buffeting? I almost died."
"Last year you ate a hamburger with ketchup and said that would not harm you. Two years ago it was a steak. And even at your Christmas time you consumed a bubbling drink laden with sugar, yet now you complain of a little buffeting."
"Will I make it?"
"Not if you kill your body with your mouth."
"I mean will I be able to walk again? Have I bought the package?"
"You mean will you return to your former standards of shoddy performances, gross eating habits and disrespect?"
"You like to take advantage of the helpless, don't you?"
"When I tell you to consume only healthy foods, I am helping you. But you do not wish to be helped. When I tell you proper mental attitudes, you forget them and do not wish to be helped. Now you ask for help. How do I know you will take it?"
"Disrespect, you learn well."
"Please."
"Breathe to fullness," Chiun commanded, as though Remo were back in the first days of training, when he heard the elderly Oriental explain that all force came first from breathing.
The breathing was painful and then Remo felt another shock and he was on his feet. Water puddled around his ankles. Dr. Quake's body was folded in two, his chin resting on his groin, his spinal column snapped. Behind him the aluminium spire had also snapped, and water gushed harmless undirected from two large pipes.
The moon played golden on the sloshy wet ground. The birds no longer called in hysterical shrieks. The California night air tasted fresh and good and rich.
"When the machine remembered its vibrations, it died," said Chiun.
"That explains it," said Remo. "How are you with electric toasters?"
"Better than you young white man," said Chiun, using what Remo knew was Chiun's ultimate insult.
"You wouldn't happen to know the geological result of all this, would you?" asked Remo.
"The earth is wounded and it will one day shriek in pain. I would not wish to be here when it yells."
"I guess that says it all."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The mini-report over the telephone was a pleasure in its delivery. Smith was truly shocked that Dr. Quake had been behind the scheme. And suddenly Remo realized why.
"He was on our payroll. Admit it. One of ours. That's why you didn't think he was involved. Admit it."
"I don't know everyone who's on our payroll," Smith said dryly. Remo cradled the receiver in the crook of his neck. He had shut the door of the pay phone booth, apparently trapping a full third of California's insect population.
"Wow," Remo said. "That's something. You put a guy on the payroll who nearly destroys half of California."
"Don't forget the million and a half," Smith said.
"What a loser you turned out to be," Remo said.
But the click of the phone across the continent interrupted his gloating. The pleasure disappeared like the coin in the phone box.
Remo cracked open the box with a snap of his forefinger, shattering the lock. He opened the change vessel with a crush of his right hand and scooped up nickels, dimes and quarters. Then he threw them at the California moon. He missed.
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