Deadly Genes td-117 Read online

  "Where is she?" the trooper shouted, crouched and alert as they soared across the street. His gun swept left, then right. Still nothing visible.

  "Where'd that scream come from?" Remo demanded, skidding to an abrupt stop next to the trooper. Alert eyes raked the immediate area.

  "Scream?" the trooper asked, confused. "What scream?"

  Remo ignored MacGuire. "It was over here somewhere," he said to Chiun.

  "What scream?" MacGuire repeated. He lowered his gun as he glanced from Remo to Chiun. "There," Chiun decided, pointing to a large warehouse.

  "Could be that one," Remo replied, indicating the next building over.

  "Yes," Chiun agreed, "but this one is closer." Dan MacGuire's head bounced back and forth between each man as they spoke.

  "Somebody screamed?" the trooper asked.

  "Okay." Remo nodded. "Big one first. You take the front-I'll take the back."

  Chiun hesitated a fraction of a second. Given what had happened during his pupil's first encounter with Judith White, he didn't want to abandon Remo now.

  Remo sensed his teacher's unease. "Look, I'll be fine, Chiun. Really."

  The hesitation passed. Nodding, the Master of Sinanju set his frail shoulders firmly. "Remember, my son," he intoned. "Man holds dominion over all beasts. And you are far greater than any mere man. You are Sinanju."

  Remo smiled tightly. "I'll do you proud, Little Father," he assured his teacher,

  "Aim for an attainable goal," Chiun retorted. "I will be satisfied if you do not get yourself killed."

  With a sharp nod they separated, each tearing off to an opposite end of the warehouse.

  Trooper MacGuire could only stand by his car and watch as the two men flew away from him at impossible speed. Not a single puff of dust rose in their wake.

  "Who screamed?" MacGuire yelled helplessly after them.

  SHE HAD TO WORK QUICKLY.

  Judith White gathered up a few more test tubes from the one case she'd carried to the warehouse. She slipped them into the front pockets of her slacks, careful to keep the old-fashioned corks in place.

  There wasn't a lot of the formula to go around. And what she had was inferior to the solution she'd used on herself. This was only the original mixture. A poor substitute for her refined blend. But while it didn't have the same long-lasting effects as the formula she'd taken, it would be good enough.

  She had almost dumped the older stuff out after her breakthrough with the newer formula. Lucky for her, she hadn't. Right now, she was glad to have it.

  Bent low at the waist, she ran through the empty rooms at the back of the warehouse. Light streamed in through the dust-smeared windows, filtering down through the thick canopy of green-turning-to-orange autumn leaves.

  The woods that grew up around the small tributary that fed into the larger Chelsea Creek had been her refuge for much of the time during her change. It was through them that she'd carried the many bodies buried in the basement.

  As with all animals, the jungle had a powerful draw on Judith White. It was a haven. The thick cover meant safety.

  But there were things to do first.

  She needed to create more like her. Needed to give herself more of an edge.

  Though her heart pounded madly, it was no longer from fear. It was the thrill of action that impelled her.

  Judith leaped over a few old crates, landing softly in the interior of an old office. She paused, sniffing the air.

  She was about to move on when she heard a noise. A footfall sounded through the thin wall to her left. A branch cracked beneath the tread. Someone was coming through the woods.

  Another victim.

  The window in the office was partially open. Judith White hopped lightly to the sill. Careful to not break the glass tubes in her pockets, she eased herself to the moist ground outside.

  The figure she saw creeping through the woods surprised her. He was familiar. She'd watched him arrive from her rafter in the attic.

  He was oblivious to her presence. Too easy. Slipping one of the vials from her pocket, she palmed it. On confident, gliding paws, she stole quickly up on the newest unsuspecting member of her superior species.

  THE MASTER OF SINANJU HAD waited long enough for Remo to reach the rear of the building. He was stretching one hand to the door of the warehouse when he saw a flash of movement in the woods at the back of the neighboring building.

  It was a fleeting glimpse. But it was enough. Whoever it was moved much faster than a normal human being. So quickly, in fact, Chiun's well-trained eyes almost didn't detect the motion.

  The figure had darted out of sight in an instant. He paused, considering for a moment if he should not go back and collect Remo.

  This whole affair had been a strain on his pupil. The attack by Judith White would not ordinarily have been enough in isolation to cause Remo concern. But Chiun knew that he had dredged up long buried memories of his last encounter with one of these tiger creatures. Remo's old fears could blind him to the current problem. A single distraction at the wrong moment could prove fatal.

  And something else had apparently not occurred to Remo during this time of crisis. For years, Chiun had tried to convince Remo that he was the fulfillment of a prophesy that asserted that a Master of Sinanju would one day train the avatar of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. This dead night tiger would be brought to fullness in Sinanju.

  To Chiun, Remo was fulfillment of the legend. However, for most of their association, Remo-in his typical white, Western, lunkheaded way-had deemed the legend "a big, fat, smelly load of doohickey." Nonetheless, Chiun persisted. Certain factors in recent years had caused Remo to argue less strenuously against the prophesy. In a very small way, he had allowed the glimmer of a possibility that the legend might actually be true. It was a step in the right direction, as well as a step to fulfilling the legend.

  But there was another aspect to the ancient story. As the dead night tiger trained in Sinanju, it was said that Shiva could only be sent to death again by his own kind.

  "Shiva must walk with care when he passes the jungle where lurk the other night tigers," were the words Chiun had intoned to Remo years before when first they had encountered the tiger creatures. Hand in hand with the Shiva prophesy, it was one of the most ancient legends of the House of Sinanju.

  Perhaps Remo had thought of this and hadn't mentioned it for fear of worrying Chiun. However, given Remo's monkeylike attention span, it was more likely he hadn't been paying attention when the Master of Sinanju was relating the tale. To someone who knew the truth of the legends, Chiun alone appreciated the danger his pupil now faced.

  Poised to enter the dusty old warehouse, Chiun thought of all these things in a fraction of a millisecond.

  The decision was made in an instant. Remo's life was too important to risk. The legend did not affect Chiun. And the Master of Sinanju didn't carry the same emotional baggage as his pupil. Chiun would deal with Judith White on his own.

  Spinning abruptly, the old Asian left the front of the first warehouse. Kimono skirts billowing, he raced across the barren space to the next building.

  REMO CREPT STEALTHILY through the thick underbrush at the rear of the first warehouse.

  As he stepped carefully over the moss-slick stones that lined the trickling brook behind the building, he scanned the high wall, looking for the best route of entry.

  There were high windows all along the back. A lot had been broken, but not as many as at the front. Vandals didn't have as easy a time getting back here and so left the rear largely untouched.

  Graffiti artists had decorated the brick foundation, as well as the clapboards that encased what appeared to be the old office wing.

  Remo wasn't surprised to find that the sprayed words were illegible. In a state where most teachers spent half the year filing phony grievances and the other half complaining about the latest basic-competency test they'd all just failed, simple things like teaching spelling and penmanship had a tendency to get
lost in the classroom shuffle.

  A few yards along the rear wall, Remo found an open door set into the foundation. It was coated with moss and propped against a jagged rock. As he approached the doorway, Remo's heart skipped a beat. Tracks in the mud. Hundreds of them.

  They were identical to those he'd seen in the cornfield back in Concord. Judith White had apparently been using the rear warehouse door to come and go unseen. For months, if the dried prints at the edge of the muddy path were any indication.

  The path she regularly took carried her out into the center of the stream. Judith was evidently trying to mask her scent in the water. A distinctly human act.

  Remo glanced into the dark interior of the warehouse.

  The ground angled down along the rear of the structure. This was the basement. Chiun would be entering on the first-floor level.

  For a moment, Remo contemplated going back for Chiun. The Master of Sinanju expected to meet up with Remo on the ground floor, not the basement. And Remo had no great desire to stumble on Judith on his own.

  And in that instant of hesitation, Remo was ashamed of his own apprehension.

  No. To go back for Chiun now would be a surrender to fear. Not only that, but he would also be abandoning Judith White's probable escape route. Remo steeled himself.

  "I am not cleaning out her litter box," he muttered under his breath.

  Without a backward glance, he plunged into the darkness...

  And the figure that had been trailing him stealthily along the rear of the building followed swiftly behind.

  CHIUN DIDN'T SEE Judith White anywhere.

  The woods near the small stream were overgrown, making visibility poor. In the distance, he heard the sound of lumbering hunters. Closer still was the sound of the roaring river into which the small tributary fed.

  Surely his eyes had not deceived him. She was here. Somewhere.

  The figure he had seen moved with the grace and speed of a big cat. It had slipped into the late-afternoon shadows somewhere nearby.

  A filthy mattress lay on the ground in a small clearing near the brook. Around it, shattered beer bottles mixed with rotting leaves from years gone by. Chiun stepped past these, glancing first to woods then to building.

  And in that sliver of time when his eyes were trained on the warehouse, a figure emerged from out of the thicket.

  So soft were his footfalls, Chiun hadn't heard him moving in the woods. He wheeled on the sudden sound.

  When he spied Trooper Dan MacGuire, the old man's alert features relaxed to annoyance.

  "Why are you not at your carriage?" Chiun demanded.

  "You said someone screamed," MacGuire replied, his voice a harsh whisper. He was slipping quietly and confidently away from the tree cover, gun clutched in his hand. "I can't let that psycho doctor escape, with or without backup."

  "Put that noisemaker away," Chiun commanded, nodding to the trooper's gun.

  "Sorry, Pops," MacGuire said, shaking his head. "You do what you want, but I'm not getting killed."

  Chiun's brow creased. "The Magyars were grasping, but at least they had sense to guard their coaches from bands of roving drunkards."

  "Hey, cruiser gets trashed, they give me another one." MacGuire smiled tightly.

  Chiun had no time to deal with foolish taxi drivers. Frowning, the Master of Sinanju turned away from the trooper.

  Judith White could only have come this way, Chiun reasoned. But a rapid scan revealed no doors on the rear of the building. The only windows were too high for her to reach. That left the woods. But as he listened, he heard no sounds coming from the nearby copse of trees.

  As he contemplated this riddle, Chiun was distracted by the soft sound of the Massachusetts state trooper gliding in behind him.

  MacGuire moved gracefully. Almost as effortlessly as Chiun himself. It was strange for a man as beefy as MacGuire to be so light on his feet. It was almost as if...

  And in a flash, Chiun finally understood.

  He wheeled in place. Just in time to see MacGuire make his final animal lunge. His gun had been dropped. The trooper's teeth were bared, head ripped as it thrust forward at Chiun's exposed throat.

  And a single powerful hand-curled like a tiger's paw-swept down in a furious killing blow at the shocked upturned face of the Master of Sinanju.

  THE REAR DOOR LED into a dank corridor. The wet concrete walls were covered with moss. The floor was earthen, packed firmly into a level path. Even so, the paw prints of Judith White were clear to Remo as he walked carefully into the bowels of the warehouse.

  His eyes pulled in ambient light. Enough so that the dark corridor appeared as bright as midday. The corridor broke into a vast interior chamber, so wide it seemed to encompass most of the area beneath the main warehouse. Wooden columns spaced evenly throughout the cellar kept the ceiling from collapsing.

  Most of the ceiling. As he stepped inside, Remo saw that a good-sized chunk of the first floor had crashed into the basement. Recently, judging by the level of disturbed dust that was swirling through the fetid air.

  He caught the stench of rotting human flesh the moment he walked into the large cellar room.

  A body was impaled on a board near the debris. Even from this distance, sharp eyes saw evidence of more corpses.

  A breeze pushed in from the long corridor behind him. It carried a hint of fresh air into the foul-smelling basement. The clean air made the smell in the cellar seem all the worse.

  As Remo stepped farther into the room, his senses detected something more in the cool wind on his back.

  A stronger pressure of air. Something pushing through the natural breeze. Something fast.

  And in that moment of realization, the thing became airborne.

  Remo flung himself to the dirt floor. Parallel to the earth, he tucked his shoulder sharply in, executing a tight roll. He ignored the fresh stabs of pain in his scars.

  Flipping to a crouching position, he was just in time to see the startled face of Ted Holstein soar overhead.

  Ted had thrown himself at Remo's back with such ferocity that he flew several yards into the dank cellar. He dropped to all fours, springing to his feet the instant he'd landed. He wheeled around, snarling angrily.

  "You're fast," Ted commented.

  The hunter's face was smeared with dirt. His eyes were wide, staring blind hatred at Remo.

  Behind him, another creature dropped through the ceiling hole. Evan Cleaver skulked rapidly forward. "You were supposed to lead him over to me," Evan growled, flashing fangs.

  "He moved too fast," Ted replied, voice low. Evan kept coming, moving out around Remo. He was trying to get their prey between them.

  Remo noted the effortless movements of the two tiger creatures. But though they had grace, they were not artful. It was all pure instinct with them. And in that moment, Remo knew that this was not like before.

  When Sheila Feinberg had created her army of tiger people years ago, Remo had been injured. His Sinanju abilities had already deserted him. He had stood helplessly by as Chiun fought the battle that he could not join. But these creatures were nothing special. He saw that now. With their snarling and snapping, they were little more than wild beasts. Certainly nothing to be feared.

  And as the dawning knowledge that all his worries had been for naught began to set firmly in, Remo Williams did something the beasts before him did not expect. He laughed. Long and loud. "What's so funny?" Ted Holstein demanded, confused.

  "You, snagglepuss," Remo sniffed, tears of mirth in his eyes. "You're already dead and you don't even know it."

  "He's bluffing," Evan hissed. He was between Remo and the rear door. Blocking escape.

  Remo took a deep breath, feeling the power that was his Sinanju training flood every corpuscle of his being.

  The pain in his shoulder had fled. He was alert, infinitely aware. Every movement they took-every soft pad that dropped to the floor-he heard.

  His senses were alive in Sinanju.

 
Remo kept his arms away from his body, hands open. He watched Ted, but kept his body attuned to Evan, still moving behind him. He smiled.

  "Try me, puddytats," Remo challenged. And as one, the two tiger creatures lunged.

  CHIUN BOUNDED BACK from the swinging paw. MacGuire's hand swept viciously past, throwing a wild gust of air into the Master of Sinanju's face. Thin beard fluttering in the wind, Chiun's eyes grew wide.

  "You are in league with the fiend!" he cried.

  "I am now," MacGuire snarled. "I just met Dr. White. Nice woman. Don't much like her taste in beverages." He made a show of tasting the vile potion, the aftertaste of which still coated his tongue. "But I think I found a chew toy to cleanse my palate."

  He sent another hand toward Chiun, fingers curved in a move as old as the jungle itself. Splayed claws were meant to rip open the flesh of prey. But unfortunately for Trooper MacGuire, Massachusetts did not yet allow its state troopers to grow claws.

  Chiun snagged the hand as it swung toward him, arresting its motion. Bony fingers encircling the trooper's hand, he applied pressure with his own clenching fist.

  Bones crunched audibly.

  Yelping in pain, MacGuire flung out his free hand.

  Chiun's countermovement was invisible to the beast before him. But its effect was obvious.

  A sharp tug. Trailed by a horrid, wrenching pain. MacGuire was left staring dumbly at the bloody stump where his hand had been. The severed hand dropped to the bed of rotting leaves at his feet, fingers still curled in attack.

  The trooper let out a shriek of agony that ended with the sharp point of a single long fingernail in the center of his broad forehead.

  Animal scream dying in his lungs, MacGuire crumpled in a heap to the moss-coated ground. The Master of Sinanju let the body drop. MacGuire had been changed since their arrival.

  Judith White was not only close by, but she also had a fast-working version of her formula. And Chiun had allowed himself to be lured away from Remo.

  The old man left the state trooper to be reclaimed by the earth. Hands clenched in knots of furious ivory, the Master of Sinanju raced from the rear of the crumbling warehouse.

  REMO DUCKED BELOW the two springing hunters, rolling to the right.