Bloody Tourists

She had underestimated Greg Grom. The depths of his sadism and bitterness were far beyond what she had ever imagined. In the main bedroom of the presidential beach house, with Amelia Powlik cheering on the sidelines, Greg Grom took out months of pent-up anger and frustration on his minister of tourism in the most humiliating and painful methods he could engineer.

He suggested that she beg for more. She begged for more.

Her mouth made the words and her body acquiesced to his abuse, but inside she was fighting with every ounce of will. Some niggling sense told her that the chemical hold on her was weakening. Maybe her precautions had been somewhat effective. Maybe with a little more time...

Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Greg Grom halted his entertainment and left her battered and bruised on the bed. He dressed, taking several plastic vials from the bedside table.

"I'm off! There are breakfast buffets to be spiced up!" So he had enough supply of the good new GUTX synthesis to start dosing the tourists again. There was nothing to stop him now.

"We'll be waiting!" Amelia Powlik giggled.

"Amelia, feel free to entertain yourself while I'm gone."

"Thanks, Mr. President!"

"Just don't do any severe damage to the poor creature. That's my job."

"NOW IT'S JUST You and me!" Amelia Powlik exclaimed with a bark of joy. "Here, have a drink." Dawn Summons, her head half-hanging over the edge of the bed, saw a bottle of tequila thrust in front of her. She hated tequila. But she took it and brought it to her lips.

"Take a nice big swig," Amelia said.

Dawn put it to her lips and then concentrated, with all her mental energies, on the act of closing her lips. As she upended the bottle, her lips did close. She felt the tequila burning against her mouth, but only a trickle got inside.

"That's right, honey!" Amelia said. "That'll get you going!"

Dawn sat up and held the bottle out to Amelia.

"No, you go ahead and take another."

"Yes, Amelia," Dawn said, and she pretended to take another big swig. Hope flared up inside of her-she was fighting it! She was disobeying!

Was she ready to take it to the next level, to try something really rebellious?

"We're gonna have fun while the prez is out on the town!" Amelia said. "Well, I'm gonna have fun. What'll we do for starters?"

"How about this?" Dawn asked as she held the tequila bottle by the neck and brought it down hard on Amelia Powlik's skull.

The bottle broke. Amelia grunted and staggered and sputtered to get the glass pieces and alcohol out of her mouth. She grabbed her eyes but forced glass splinters into her flesh. When she tried to blink her eyes open, the tequila burned her eyeballs.

Dawn gave Amelia a shove. Amelia staggered across the room. Another shove sent her onto the balcony. When Amelia's hip collided with the iron railing, she knew what was in store for her and she forced her eyes open. They were bloodred and burning. She managed to hold them open just long enough to see Dawn Summens coming at her again. Amelia tried to slap Dawn away and failed. Dawn grabbed her by the shins and lifted.

Amelia, with a bark of fear, flipped off the balcony and thumped against the beach twelve feet below. Something snapped. It was her ankle. Despite the agony, she began a miserable turtle crawl.

"I found another bottle of tequila, Amelia," Dawn called down. Amelia felt the liquid spattering on her back and buttocks.

"How about we heat this party up?" Summens asked. Amelia once again forced her eyes open. Dawn was on the balcony with a tubular box of fireplace matches. She lit one and sent the slender flaming stick arching off the balcony. It landed in the sand and went out.

"Oops. Better try that again," Summens said. Amelia whimpered. She watched another match arc through the air and land in the sand just a foot from her body. She tried to crawl away, backward, but her body was shaking and her leg was limp. The third match was on target. Amelia tried to dodge, but she simply could not move fast enough.

Then there was fire, a stench and contortions of agony.

IT DIDN'T LAST long enough, but burning Amelia Powlik was the most deeply satisfying thing Dawn Summens had ever done in her life. She even enjoyed the aroma. "Smells like victory!" she told the steaming human ruin happily.

She was getting more of her own will back every moment. She had to avoid people for a while. She had to get out of here, get things done. Not that Grom would be back anytime soon if he was really going on a full round of stops at all the resorts.

It was how he had done it for the past two years. He would go out one or two nights a week and sprinkle GUTX powder in the breakfast fare. He had tried coffee, eggs, pancake mix, whatever, before finding he had the best results with the breakfast potatoes, of all things.

Almost everybody ate them. The staff at the hotels had received the suggestion that it was perfectly normal and acceptable for him to sprinkle stuff on the breakfast food. It was also standard operating procedure to broadcast Greg Grom's message to Union Island visitors over the loudspeakers during breakfasts following his midnight visits. The tourists invariably complained when the racket started, but soon they would be agreeing with every suggestion Grom made.

It would take him a couple of hours to hit all the resorts. The longer the better, as far as Dawn Summens was concerned.

Chapter 38

"Yech," Remo Williams said. "Get a whiff of that."

"No, thank you," Chiun answered as he crinkled his nose into a hundred extra wrinkles and put his hands in his kimono sleeves as if to protect all possible flesh from exposure to the air in this place, which had to be toxic.

"Sex. Blood. Sweat. Somebody had a hell of an orgy, and it wasn't one of those nice orgies where everybody smiles. Looks like there was some beating and whipping involved."

"And burning," Chiun said, moving to the open doors of the balcony. Remo joined him a moment later and they gazed down at the horrid burned thing in the sand. "These people like it pretty rough," Remo said.

Chiun glanced down at what Remo was holding. It was a small wooden drawer, empty.

"It's from the bedside table." Remo held it up and took a cautious sniff. His eyes widened.

"It is the poison."

"It is, but Grom is gone and he must have taken it with him."

"We must find him."

Remo looked down at the black thing. "Maybe she knows."

OUT OF THE DARKNESS came a souring song of agony. Her body flared to life with pain that burned and burned-

Until a hand touched her, on the neck, and the pain became as nothing.

"I was on fire," she said.

"Your skin is very burned," said a kind voice, a voice like someone old and young at once.

"Am I going to live?"

"Doubtful," said the kind, high voice.

"We need your help," said the voice of a younger man, deep and attractive.

"I'm going to die?"

"Where is Greg Grom?" the younger man's voice asked.

"President Grom is gone," she said, and she tried to smile.

HER EYES STARED into the heavens dreamily. Remo looked at Chiun, who was manipulating the woman's charred flesh, looking for the nerves underneath. "She is badly damaged and very heavily intoxicated with the poison," Chiun said. "Her body is fighting for life and fighting with itself."

"Can't you snap her out of it?"

"She is already much too snapped."

Remo wasn't sure what to think about the poor blackened thing on the sand. She was a victim. They were all victims. Even the pair at the restaurant who tried to poison their dinner. None acted with a will of their own. The list of responsible parties was really extremely small.

"We gotta find Grom," Remo said. Chiun looked at him expectantly.

"I don't know how," Remo answered the unasked question. "I just know we have to."

"Why?" Chiun asked.

Remo made an exaggerated gesture at the sizzling woman. "Hello? Bad man up to no good?"

"Do not speak to me in that way, please. What kind of no good do you think he is up to?"

Remo fretted. "Who knows? Probably doing what he does-you know, poisoning all the tourists. Dosing them up."

"And he would do it in what way?"

"Same way they did us, I guess-put it in the pasta Puttanesca." Remo looked at the moon over the water. He looked suddenly at Chiun. "Or the scrambled eggs. What if he goes at night to the hotels and sprinkles his special seasoning in the food for the morning breakfast buffets? He'd get pretty good coverage."

"That would be effective," Chiun agreed.

"So we make the rounds of the hotels until we find him."

Amelia Powlik sat up. "Where you going?"

"Maybe you should keep from moving around too much," Remo said as he watched part of her upper-arm skin slough off in a black crust.

"Wait, you. You sound kinda good-looking. Stay with me and let's get to know each other."

"You gotta be kidding me," Remo said to no one in particular.

"WE GOT A CALL for a paramedic backup," the dispatcher said.

"Take a message!" answered Chief of Police Checker Spence as another huge boom shook the police station, like a subterranean explosion. "Where's Weil and Lambert?"

"On their way," the dispatcher said.

There was another boom. This time it sounded different. Less resonant. The Coke on a nearby desk sloshed inside its bottle. "What about Fornes? Is he coming?"

"Fornes is dead, Chief," the dispatcher reminded him. Spence stiffened, then nodded. Fornes had been killed by Alan from the tourism department, who bit a chunk out of his neck. The wound was huge. Fornes bled to death. And then Agnes, that nice old lady, had tried to do the same thing to Chief Spence.

The floor shook with another boom from below. That would be Alan from the tourism department. And dear old Agnes. And the rest of the insane maniacs they had transported from the aircraft to the police lockup down below. They had been prone to violence, but at least they had quieted down eventually. Chief Checker Spence liked his maniacs quiet and cooperative.

So he became perturbed when the maniacs in the lockup started getting excited again an hour ago. Soon they were pounding the walls. Now they were pounding the doors. And Checker Spence had a sinking feeling...

Another boom, this time accompanied by a crunch. The steel door hadn't failed, but the concrete that held the bolts had crumbled.

Spence rushed to the top of the stairs. "Simone!"

"They're breaking through, Chief!" Officer Simone called up.

"Get the hell out of-"

Another boom and then a creaking sound, followed by a powerful crash.

"They're out!" shouted Officer Jacot from somewhere out of sight.

Spence shouted. "Simone! Jacot! Get out of there now!"

Simone came into view at the bottom of the stairs, but he was looking back the way he'd come. His handgun was drawn.

Spence hurried down the stairs. "Do not fire your weapons!"

He was almost drowned out by the thunderous gunfire and shouting. It wasn't Simone. Simone was just standing there.

Chief Checker Spence reached the bottom just in time to watch Officer Jacot die. The man was triggering his gun in every direction, shouting at the mob of bloody, battered, silent figures who encircled him. They moved ponderously, without speaking, ignoring those among them who fell from gunshot wounds. Jacot ran out of bullets and the mob closed in. They grabbed his arms and legs. They grabbed his head. They sank their fingers in the flesh of his torso. Jacot was lifted off the ground.

Jacot realized his fate then. He made an ungodly sound. Then the eerily silent mob pulled his body apart.

"CALL THE MAINLAND!" Chief Spence barked at the dispatcher as he dragged Simone out and slammed the door, locking it with a dead bolt. "Call the army!" The dispatcher ignored him and looking around worriedly. "Where's Jacot?"

Officer Simone giggled. "He's all over the place." One glance told Captain Spence that Simone had gone out for lunch and might never come back.

"Oh, great," he said. Then he heard the sodden clomp of heavy feet on the stairs.

"Are you calling for help?" he asked the dispatcher.

"Who you want me to call exactly?" she asked, getting worried now.

There was a crash against the door to the basement. They were throwing their whole bodies against it. The dead bolt was already buckling.

"Forget it," Chief Spence said. "It's too late. Let's go."

THE UNION ISLAND MUSEUM of Natural History had a sophisticated security system, but Dawn Summens had an override code. She punched in the code, commanding the alarm system to maintain a silent but active state. She didn't want the museum curator to notice that his little green LEDs had blinked off.

Curator Matthew Builder was just a nosy old busybody two years ago when he retired from the University of Florida at Miami. Greg Grom had been on his way to the top, laying the groundwork for his wild popularity spree, and had already moved into the Union Island Tourism Promotions Department. Grom rarely made intelligent decisions-it was sheer stupid luck that got him everything he had-but latching on to the old codger from Florida State had been a rare smart move.

When Professor Builder told Grom his dig sites on the island were of marginal value in terms of the greater archaeological research record, Greg Grom had suggested otherwise. Grom suggested, in fact, that it was the most important Native American site in the Caribbean islands.

"Why would I think that?" Professor Builder had asked as the GUTX laid his self-determination in Greg Grom's lap.

"You'll think of a reason," Grom told the prof. And sure enough, Builder did. He claimed discovery of a series of hieroglyphics that showed the little-known Miytec of pre-Columbian Union Island had been rulers of far-reaching power, maybe for centuries. Newly translated Miytec hieroglyphics told how Miytec priests claimed to wield power over "all the kings of the earth." How the Miytec priests would receive the kings of all the lands. All rulers of power and influence were invited to drink the Miytec priests' sacred brew. The great secret was that, once the brew had been consumed, these men invariably became pliant to the suggestion of the Miytec priests.

Greg Grom had almost panicked when he heard the tale. It was too close for comfort. But even Professor Builder did not believe that the priests had ever had this power-he only claimed that this was what the priests themselves believed.

Professor Builder's reputation was rock solid. That's why Grom chose him. Despite a lack of archaeological verification, his theory was widely accepted. Even those who thought he was wrong still considered his claims worth investigating. Union Island became the subject of serious scientific inquiry, which boosted its prestige. Greg Grom got all the credit for it.

Professor Builder, at Grom's suggestion, returned to Union Island to serve as director of research for the Union Island Museum of Natural History, where a well-paid management staff took care of the day-to-day operations and Builder spent his days immersed in his research while the grant money, thanks to a few more well-placed suggestions, poured in too fast for the museum to spend it all.

Builder was always at the museum late into the evening. This was well-known among the Union Islanders. His car was also well-known-an electric golf cart with orange curling hot-rod flames painted on the doors. The cart was invariably parked in Builder's reserved spot at the private entrance in the rear of the museum. It was there now. From the third-floor research labs a single office blazed with light.

Dawn Summens knew the old professor would be buried in his research. She was pretty sure she could get in and out of the museum without attracting his attention.

But just in case... Well, she had brought a little something from President Grom's presidential beach house. It was a dagger of black obsidian, almost five hundred years old, and it had been one of Grom's first finds when he was a student intern on the island. It was incredible that something so fragile could have survived so many centuries, but it was intact.

If Professor Builder gave Dawn any trouble, she was going to see what kind of real damage it could do. She found herself hoping she'd get the chance.

Chapter 39

The phone beeped just as President Grom was pulling into the employee parking lot at the Turquoise Seas Beach Resort.

"Mr. President? It's Gaiman at the Miytec."

Grom switched off the engine and killed the stereo. Art Gaiman was the night manager at the Miytec Moon Village Resort. The old resort had recently been renovated and expanded with the addition of a new wing of three hundred hotel rooms. That made it one of the largest resorts on the island in terms of the sheer numbers of vacationers it could host. The Miytec was also the closest big resort to the town center, and it had been Grom's very first stop on his evening rounds.

"What's the problem, Art?"

"Well, Mr. President, it's about the hash brown potatoes."

Greg Grom felt his stomach tighten into a hard, knotted ball. "What about the hash brown potatoes?" he asked.

"Two men just came and stole 'em, Mr. President. All of them. Took every one of the tubs that you was working on tonight."

"Took them where?" Grom demanded.

"Down to the beach. That's the funny thing. They just heaved them out into the ocean. Never would have thought a man could send a plastic tub of hash browns that far. Splashed into the water so far out I couldn't see it and I could barely hear it."

"A white guy? With dead-man eyes? And a little Chinese grandpa?"

"Yeah! That's them!" Art exclaimed. "Asked for directions to the nearest resort and I told them because I wasn't going to say no to those two. Those two are crazy. I think they're gonna do the same fool thing over at Monte Carlo. What do those two have against perfectly good hash brown potatoes?"

Grom wasn't listening. His high spirits had fled like the breeze, when just a minute ago he thought everything was finally going his way, for once.

How come that pair of oddball agents wasn't dead? Grom had made sure that wherever those two showed up for dinner tonight they would get dosed with GUTX. A lot of it. Enough to send them into the deepest sleep of all.

That hadn't happened. The agents were alive, and they knew what Grom was doing. Which meant they knew why he was doing it. So they knew he had been using GUTX dosing to get him to where he was now.

Which meant they just might be able to bring it all to a screeching halt.

Unless, Grom thought determinedly, he screeching halted them first.

REMO HAD STOPPED explaining himself. At each resort they came to he simply barged in, headed for the kitchens and began looking for the tubs of thawing hash brown potatoes.

It was always the same. Big plastic ten-gallon or twenty-gallon tubs in the walk-in coolers filled with the same brand of spiced, shredded breakfast potatoes. The empty plastic bags would be in the trash can.

"You can't take the potatoes!" the night manager at the first resort had cried. "The visitors love our potatoes!" Apparently Greg Grom knew that. He had a system in place that so far seemed to include every hotel and resort on the island. In the evening the food-service crew would start thawing as many bags of hash brown potatoes as would be needed for the morning breakfast crowd. Grom would stop by and stir in a little poison. Next morning the thawed spuds were served to the tourists.

"The president come often to inspect your hash brown potatoes?" he asked the night manager at the first resort.

"Coupla times a week. Why shouldn't he?"

That was the really weird thing about it-the resort staff went along with it all as if it were perfectly normal. After Remo confiscated the tubs of spuds he would head for the ocean and shot-put them into it. Meanwhile, Chiun would be nosing around the kitchen looking for any other poisoned foodstuffs. But so far the poison was always in the hash browns.

The routine changed on their sixth stop, the Turquoise Seas Beach Resort. Remo wheeled the borrowed taxicab into the palm-lined front drive and found a throng of well-dressed vacationers in the lobby veranda.

"A reception line," Remo observed. "'Think it's for us?"

"I think it's for you," Chiun said.

The crowd came down to greet them. Some still had drinks in their hands.

"Grom must've heard we were after him and he suggested the late-night partyers come welcome us."

"I can smell the stink of intoxicants already," Chiun agreed.

Remo pulled the car away just before it came within reach of the crowd. Driving on the grass, he took the shortcut to the service entrance, hidden behind some decorative tropical topiary.

"They have a lot of staff on the late-night shift at this place," Remo noted. There were about twenty of them. Cooks and cleanup crew, bellhops and janitors. Every one of them had a big knife of some kind.

"They must do their butchering overnight," Chiun remarked.

"Well, let's try not to do any ourselves, okay?" Remo said. "These people aren't murderers."

Chiun waved imperiously. "Then you take care of the problem."

Remo didn't have time to argue. Besides, it was probably the best option. He stepped from the cab and found the gang of staff bearing down on him. More of them were streaming out of the kitchen doors.

These weren't skilled fighters. And their hearts weren't in it. "Sorry about this, buddy," said the chef in a white paper hat as he swung a cleaver at Remo's neck.

"Sorry? Sorry isn't good enough." Remo stepped around the cleaver and pinched the chef's neck. He had to smack away the blade of a kitchen assistant who was aiming for Remo and would have chopped the throat of the slumping chef in the process. Then he put the kitchen assistant to sleep, too. For the next few seconds he became a whirlwind of motion among the confused, drugged night staff, who slumped to the ground one after another until only Remo remained standing, surrounded by unconscious bodies strewed around the service bay.

He jogged inside, grabbed the poison-smelling breakfast potatoes in the walk-in cooler and headed for the beachside dock. Here the resort tied up a boat used to take snorkelers to the nearby reef. Remo stopped at the end of the dock and sent the tubs flying hundreds of yards out into the night. He turned and sped off the dock before the last of them had even splashed into the water.

Chiun had vacated the cab and was standing by the darkened swimming pool.

"I assumed you wanted the rest of the rabble to remain unassassinated," he commented. Behind him approached the party crowd.

"You let them take the taxi?" Remo asked.

"And the knives from the sleeping staff," Chiun said. "It was either that or kill them all."

"You know, it's not like it was one extreme or the other."

The mob, armed with knives confiscated from the unconscious kitchen crew, fanned out to create a half circle around its prey. Remo and Chiun were trapped with the swimming pool to their backs.

"Let's finish this up! I wanna go dance!" complained a young woman in a pink halter top and a short pink skirt, accessorized with a gold navel ring and a stainless-steel boning blade.

"Can we assassinate them now?" Chiun asked.

"No. Forget it," Remo said. He nodded over his shoulder. "We'll go this way and hope we can find another car."

"We run like cowards?" Chiun squeaked.

"Annihilating this lot would be the courageous thing to do?" Remo demanded.

Chiun sniffed. It was his "I concede the point" sniff. The first of many blades came slashing at the Masters of Sinanju, but the Masters of Sinanju were no longer there. They were speeding across the surface of the swimming-pool water in a blur of leather shoes and sandals, and then they had vanished into the blackness. The party crowd looked at one another, silent and very, very confused.

"Can we go dance now?" demanded the woman in the pink halter top.

As a group, they decided that was the only alternative.

Chapter 40

"Your shoes are wet," Chiun said accusingly when they reached the front of the hotel.

"They are not."

"They are."

Remo almost allowed himself to get dragged into the argument, but a distant sound distracted him. "Saved by the siren."

A moment later it had grown to a piercing wail. "A fast siren," Remo noted.

"Not as fast as your powers of deduction," Chiun remarked.

"Don't suppose the prez has got the cops out looking for us?" But Remo knew that wasn't the case when he caught the look in the eyes of the cop who was driving. A fraction of a second later the car was past them.

"I'm going to check this out," Remo said.

"Why?" Chiun demanded.

"Just because!" Remo said over his shoulder as he started running.

"CHIEF!" said Candice the dispatcher. "What?"

Candice nodded at the chief's window.

The squad car was going about forty miles per hour. The guy running alongside it was making a circular motion with his hand to tell the driver to roll down his window.

Chief of Union Island Police Checker Spence had seen some crazy-ass shit today. He chose to ignore the absurdity of what he was seeing now. After all, if he admitted there was a guy running alongside his car at forty miles per hour, then he might as well resign himself to the same sort of insanity afflicting Officer Simone, who giggled in the back seat.

"Where's the fire?" the running man asked.

"No fire. Murder."

"Where's the murder?"

"Coming your way, son," Spence said. "There's a mob of vicious killers on the loose in the heart of Union Island City, and they're headed this way. Our civil control team is about five minutes behind me, sounding the alarm."

"So where are you hightailing to?" Remo demanded. The chief barely slowed the squad car as he maneuvered through a curve in the road. The running man never fell behind. Not an inch.

"I got a crazy man and an innocent woman to protect, and I'm obliged to get our island president out of harm's way. I'm going to pick him up at the Seven Seas."

"You're putting Greg Grom's safety ahead of the safety of hundreds of sleeping tourists?" the running man demanded.

"Of course I am, fool! In times of danger the president's safety is always the top priority," the chief recited. "Under no circumstances will I allow harm to befall the Island president, regardless of the circumstances."

REMO WILLIAMS STOPPED running and watched the squad car disappear into the night.

"Well?" Chiun asked, arriving a moment later at his side.

"That son-of-a-bitch president has got everybody brainwashed. Every one of them. They've got some sort of murders happening in town, and the first thing the chief of police does is drive out to secure Greg Grom's safety."

"Why are we not going after the president, as well?" Chiun asked.

Remo shook his head. "He said something about a mob of murderers. I have a feeling the bunch from the tour bus broke out of their cage."

Chiun put his hands in his sleeves. "Are you insinuating we should once again chase that band of miscreants? I think one time is sufficient."

"I could use a hand. There's a lot of them."

"Why would they let them go free?" Chiun demanded.

"How should I know!" Remo exclaimed. "Why'd they go nuts in the first place? I don't have any answers here. Everybody on the freaking island is crazy. That's your answer. Any more questions you have, that's the answer. Now there's crazy people that way and there's crazy people this way, but the ones that are this way may or may not be committing murder, depending on how much stock you put in the carload of crazy people who just went from that way to that way! Any more questions?"

Chiun, who had his mouth in a tight, pale little knot, said, "Yes, I do-"

"Stuff it! I'm going that way. You go wherever the hell you want."

And with that, Remo started running again.

"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY," boomed the PA system on top of the squad car. "Do not panic. Walk quickly to the street and proceed due east, away from the town. I repeat, proceed away from town."

The word had already gone out. Fire alarms were blaring in the hotels. Sleepy tourists were milling about, looking for an explanation.

"Proceed away from the town," the PA on the squad car blared as Remo jogged toward it. "No, no, away from the town!"

Remo stepped onto the hood and walked onto the roof, where he knelt and poked his head into the open window.

"Need your car."

"What?" the driver asked, and the word screeched out of the twin public-address horns mounted on the roof. Remo kicked off one horn and removed the other one with a twist, then handed it to the officer behind the wheel.

"Guess you're out of commission in the civil control department anyway," Remo observed. He opened the door and dragged out the driver, rolling him into the manicured grass on the roadside. Remo slipped into the driver's seat and grabbed the wheel before the car even swerved.

The cop in the passenger seat dropped his mouth open, then closed again. "Hey, you can't-"

Remo never learned what he couldn't do. The surprised-looking cop in the passenger seat was gone, replaced by a very old Korean man half his weight. Remo gave him a grin.

Chiun didn't smile, but there was a little something at the corner of his lips as he pointed a thumb over his shoulder, back in the direction of town, and said, "That way."

Chapter 41

With a quick tap on the security pad, Dawn Summens disabled all the exhibit alarms in the great hall of Union Island's Museum of Natural History.

The great hall was lit only by the glow of the floor-mounted aisle lights and the exit sign. That was all the light she needed. She crossed to the wood-and-glass case labeled Union Island Blue Ring Octopus.

There it was, carefully settled on a rubber-coated stand. It was an ugly, dried husk of gray matter no larger than a cat. It didn't look much like an octopus. The tentacles had adhered to its body during the drying process, which it had undergone some six hundred years ago.

As the sign explained, this was the one and only surviving specimen of the Union Island Blue Ring Octopus. That had been a lie up until very recently. But now, with Greg Grom's cache depleted, this really was the last one.

Dawn opened the case and took the exhibit. It weighed no more than a couple of pounds. She shoved it into her shoulder purse, pounding it and crushing it until it fit inside. Not that it mattered-she was just going to grind it up anyway.

As she closed the case, behind her she heard the buzz of a telephone, then the scrape of chair legs. It was old Professor Builder two floors up. For a moment Dawn wondered if somehow the phone call had alerted him to her presence.

But it was something else getting him all worked up. "Oh, my God!" she heard him exclaim as he ran from here to there. "I see them!" he told his caller. "They're everywhere! Killing? Killing who? I don't understand."

What was that all about?

She went to the window to see for herself.

It took her just a moment to understand the slow-moving figures on the street. The drugged ones from the tour bus had escaped from police lockup. They were on a rampage, but it wasn't the same sort of rampage perpetrated on the mainland tourist town of Pigeon Fudge. There hadn't been time for much wholesale slaughter in Pigeon Fudge.

But there was now. The maniacs were carrying body parts like war trophies. The scattered, slow-moving, dull-witted mob was wandering through town and heading right for the museum.

It was time to go.

"Who's there?" came an urgent demand from the darkness. The rotund shape of Professor Builder was at the bottom of the stairs. Dawn hadn't even heard him coming down. Builder moved to the wall.

"Don't turn the lights on, idiot," Summens said sharply. "You'll attract them like bugs."

"Who are you? Show yourself."

"Professor, it's me. Dawn."

"Minister Summens?"

"Yes, Prof. Have you got your keys? We need to get away from here fast."

"Yes. But how did you get in?"

"There's no time, Professor! They're coming!" Builder did a fast walk across the great hall, slowing just slightly to gape at the empty glass case where the last desiccated Union Island Blue Ring had been on display.

"Minister Summens, what is going on?" the old professor wheezed.

Dawn ignored him, opening the private entrance door. There were clomping figures wandering onto the museum parking lot. "We'll have to make a run for it."

"I can't run, Minister Summens," Builder panted. He wasn't a healthy man.

She nodded. "Give me the keys. I'll get the cart and we'll meet up at the bottom of the stairs."

"Yes. Yes," he panted. "I can get that far." He put the key ring in her hand. "The key with the black plastic handle."

"Thanks, Professor," Dawn Summens said, and she bolted out the door, attracting the attention of several dead-eyed figures in the vicinity. One young man in a very soiled shirt and tie was just twenty paces away. He came for her without a word, dangling a severed forearm from one hand.

She moved fast, feeling strangely calm but also oddly vibrant, and reached Builder's golf cart in seconds. She started the cart and stomped on the gas, yanking the wheel tight to the right and speeding across the lot to the young man with the extra limb. He was one of the PR logisticians brought to the mainland to help coordinate the president's busy tour schedule.

Dawn Summens sideswiped him with the golf cart, and he landed hard. As she pulled the cart into a tight U-turn, she saw the old professor laboriously reaching the bottom step as two dead figures lumbered toward him from either side.

"Hurry, Minister!" he wheezed.

"Sorry, Professor. This thing can't carry us both."

"Minister, please!"

It was true. The little cart barely reached ten miles per hour when she floored it. Just think how slow she'd go with that flabby old man weighing it down. She swerved around a blank-faced woman with bloodsmeared hands and pulled onto the street. The last she saw of Professor Builder he was in the grips of his two attackers, one on each arm and pulling in opposite directions. They were going to yank him apart.

She wondered how long that would take.

Chapter 42

Jimmy and Ellen Sandiro had planned their vacation to paradise for eighteen months. They wanted it to be perfect. And everything had been perfect for the first few days. Sunshine, relaxing on the beach, delicious gourmet buffets and endless rum punch at the poolside.

Now this. The one night they decided to go out on the town, they got mugged, right in front of the piano bar. "Jimmy!" Ellen shrieked and tackled the man who was holding Jimmy's ankle while four or five crazy people yanked on his skull. The man with the ankle refused to drop. Ellen refused to give up. She locked her arms around the attacker's neck and heaved, trying to muscle him away from her husband.

The attacker staggered and dropped the ankle, then sort of shrugged Ellen right off him. She collapsed hard on the sidewalk and found herself staring at a face. A face on a head. A head on the sidewalk.

Jimmy.

Her scream was cut short as she was lifted by her ponytail and she felt the horrific stretching of her vertebrae. Christ almighty, she didn't want to be a head on a sidewalk!

Her ponytail was released and she cracked her head on the sidewalk, mercifully blotting out her consciousness.

REMO'S STIFFENED FINGERS shot into the man's throat with enough force to crush it. The man wordlessly released the woman's hair and staggered away, grabbing at his throat in an attempt to take a deep breath again. He was doomed to failure.

Remo grabbed a pair of attackers by the shoulders and mashed them together. The next one got backed into the wall-backed in hard.

Chiun had taken care of the others. He was standing calmly with a pile of bodies on one side, a pile of the freshly harvested arms and legs on the other.

"Giving them a taste of their own medicine?" Remo asked.

"Yes, but I fear they did not appreciate the poetry of my justice."

ANOTHER KNOT of mute, plodding figures had gathered around a palm tree just off the main street. Two vacationing couples had somehow managed to shimmy up the arched tree trunk and crowd together on top. Remo and Chiun arrived just in time to see one of the men slip halfway off the trunk. From there it was an easy job for his attackers to grab him by the ankles and haul him down.

"I'll take that," Remo said, whisking the man bodily out of the clutching, stained fingers of the attackers, who turned on Remo with bloodshot, yellowing eyes and ghastly faces devoid of expression.

Remo put the surprised man on his feet and penetrated the knot of attackers in a blur of stiff fingers and kicking feet. He crushed a quartet of skulls in under four seconds.

Ignoring their dead companions, two more of them plodded toward Chiun, who stood waiting impassively until they were on top of him. Then he penetrated both foreheads with a finger, moving so fast the victims in the tree and the man on the sidewalk couldn't follow the movement. Their attackers had gone from dangerous to dead so quickly they were having trouble coming to terms with it.

Remo and Chiun left them still trying to figure it out and went on with their janitorial duties. The last of the mess that needed cleaning up was conveniently gathered all in one place.

There was a splash of blood and a torso on the steps on the side of the Union Island Museum of Natural History. The head and limbs that had once been attached to it were inside, dropped carelessly on the floor. The lights were on, and a silent crowd was inside admiring one of the exhibits.

"Real movie zombies never go to museums," Remo noted. "Of course, real movie zombies also eat people."

"Do not give them any ideas," Chiun cautioned. Some of the figures gathered at the exhibit lolled their heads and rolled their eyes at Remo and Chiun, but turned back to the case.

"What's so damn interesting?" Remo asked. He stepped up onto the greeter's desk and got a glimpse of the legend on the case.

"Union Island Blue Ring Octopus. All right, now I'm totally confused."

"It is the source of the poison," Chiun said. "Not the laboratory fakery that we smelled on the tour bus, but the original, natural poison. These victims of the poison must sense its vapors."

"Yeah. Can't stop eating Union Island octopuses. The sign says it is now extinct. This was supposed to be the last known specimen," Remo related. "But the weird thing is the case is empty."

As that moment the crowd snapped the case off its base and threw it to the floor with a thud. The crowd began sniffing the display and the inside of the glass. "Will you please finish this," Chiun directed.

"Yes, yes, yes." Remo lashed into them. It passed through his mind that these people didn't ask for this to happen to them. But he also knew, they were irreparably damaged. Their humanity was erased. Their metabolism was crashing. They were mindless, dangerous hulks, and the poison was killing them fast. It was a mercy to end it now. Remo did so, quickly, then stood in the silence as the last body collapsed.

He bent and peered into the display case, giving a shallow sniff. He nudged a corpse and uncovered gray powder on the floor.

"Somebody took the octopus recently. Like today."

"Do not touch it," Chiun warned.

"Don't plan to," Remo said. "Whoever took it, I hope they were wearing rubber gloves."

Chapter 43

Dawn Summens felt strange. Her cheeks and mouth were getting numb. She kept rubbing her face to stimulate circulation. Her lips were dried out and felt cracked, and she wetted them again and again. Something on her face. Gritty.

Even at just ten miles per hour, she was having difficulty controling the golf cart. She drove out of town, swerving through bands of fleeing tourists. Everybody was headed for the docks where the cruise ships landed their tour groups. Grom would be there, and she had plans for Grom. Reassuringly she nudged the purse with her arm again, just to make sure it was still there.

A curve in the road became a major problem when she found her hands weren't responding to her brain's instructions. She gripped the steering wheel, but it refused to budge until she leaned her entire body. The cart swerved through the curve, but now the road curved back the other way. Dawn fought to steer through it. Her hands wouldn't work. She tried to lift her foot from the accelerator pedal but found it stuck there.

The golf cart puttered off the road and into a clump of weeds, where a thicket nudged it to a stop. Dawn fell on her side across the front seats. She tried to sit up, but her body wouldn't listen to her.

"Hello? I need help." She wanted to shout, but it came out a thin croak. "Hello?"

She could still move her hands a little and she extended her arm with great effort, only to find that the horn on the steering wheel was beyond her reach. Minutes later she could no longer move a muscle, and her mouth would no longer vocalize. She stared at the dashboard and the weeds above her and tried to think. She was lucid, but she was paralyzed. What was wrong?

Of course. The Union Island Blue. She had touched it. That was a big no-no. She had licked crumbs off her lips. And her body was still burdened with her earlier dose of GUTX synthesis. The charcoal would have passed through her system, and the counteractives she injected wore off hours ago.

A guaneurotetrodotoxin overdose meant a descent into living death, in which she would see, hear and feel even while her body ceased functioning. Finally the lungs would go slack. Unconsciousness would come as her brain starved for oxygen, and finally it would shut down.

Unable to thrash or scream or fight, she could do nothing except lie there and wait for it to happen. Her only consolation was that death should come quickly. But it didn't.

Chapter 44

Chief Spence jogged to the president, his clothes flapping in the wash of the helicopter rotor blades. "It's over!"

"What's over?" Greg Grom shouted above the roar as the big transport chopper settled on the helipad. "The crisis! My men are combing the town. The mob has been wiped out."

"Wiped out? Who wiped them out?"

"I guess it was the citizens," Chief Spence said vaguely. He avoided telling the president the truth about the dead-eyed man who had run alongside his squad car and matched the description of one of the two said to have wiped out the mob.

"I'm going anyway," Grom declared.

"Don't you think you should stick around?" the chief asked. "The news will be all over this place in an hour."

"I don't care," Grom said nervously. "I have to go!" Chief Spence picked up a megaphone and began telling the tourists to turn around and go back to their hotels. The danger was past. Evacuation was unnecessary. The vacationers were complaining but relieved. Greg Grom didn't feel relief. Not yet.

Finally the emergency transport chopper swayed and lifted off of the helipad. The lights of the cruise ship dock fell away and the blackness of the nighttime Caribbean Sea cushioned them. They'd be in St. Thomas in no time.

Somebody knocked. "Hello? Can I come in?"

It was him. The one with the dead eyes was standing on the landing skid with his face pressed against the glass. "Fine. I'll let myself in."

The rush of air filled the cabin and the dead-eyed man didn't close the door behind him.

"Who are you?" Greg Grom demanded.

"Remo...somebody. I forget exactly. Why do you care?"

"Are you going to assassinate me?"

"Oh, for sure. But first-" Remo grabbed the small carry-on that was Grom's only luggage "-is this all of it? The poison?"

"Yes. Take it. It's all yours. It'll make you rich and powerful!"

"Like you?" Remo asked with a chuckle. "No, thanks." He hoisted the bag out the open door, and it tumbled three thousand feet into the sea.

"No!"

"Don't fret about it, Prez. You're going with it."

Remo grabbed Grom by the back of the neck and walked him to the open door.

"No!" Grom shouted again. This time it was a long, long "no" that ended with a splash.

The copilot burst into the passenger compartment. "What the hell is going on?"

"My friend," Remo said, "I'm just figuring it all out myself."

With a little persuasion, the pilot and copilot agreed to turn the helicopter around.

REMO FOUND the suite empty when he awoke in the morning. He lifted Chiun's trunks and wandered downstairs, past the all-you-can-eat breakfast where the sleep-deprived vacationers were having it out with the staff.

A woman in a floral swimsuit under a souvenir T-shirt was leading the resistance movement. "What do you mean no hash browns! How can you not have hash browns?"

The staff was confused about this, too, and tried to explain what they thought had happened.

"Stolen?" the woman cried. "Your hash browns were stolen? Nobody steals hash browns."

"Well, those were awfully good hash browns," an elderly woman in the crowd spoke up, and she was met with fervent agreement from the others.

"Was it you who stole them?" the outspoken lady demanded of the old woman.

"No. I was just saying they were worth stealing."

"It was you!"

The outspoken lady had to be restrained.

Remo found Chiun in the lobby, talking to the big blue parrot.

"It was Master Lu who actually decided to try to eat parrots. Lu made several bad decisions. For some reason he thought the parrot flesh might be suitable fare, comparable to duck."

The macaw shifted uneasily on its branch.

"Of course," Chiun continued, "those were ugly little gray parrots. The Romans imported them from Africa. You look like a much meatier specimen."

The macaw gave a small squawk and hopped several branches away.

"Finally found somebody you can win an argument with?" Remo asked.

"I wondered if you would be sleeping until noon. May we leave now?"

"The sooner the better. Say goodbye to your buddy."

"Perhaps I should bring it along."

"I am not going to eat parrot," Remo insisted.

"I did not intend to share it with you," Chiun replied. "But I think not. Farewell, ugly bird."

The macaw hopped forward again and cocked its great head with its big yellow eye patches. Chiun stopped. Remo watched the two of them regarding each other.

"Hello?" Remo asked.

Chiun held up a hand for silence, which lasted a full minute. Remo stood there impatiently with the trunks balanced on his shoulders.

"Ah, well, goodbye," Chiun said finally.

The parrot squawked. "Bye-bye! See you soon!" They strolled out of the open air lobby, and Remo began loading the trunks into the first taxi in the lineup. All the while he heard the raucous voice of the bird drifting out. "Bye-bye! See you soon! Bye-bye! See you soon!"

"Hey, you weren't thinking of bringing it home as a pet were you?" Remo demanded.

"Of course not," Chiun said from inside the cab.

"Bye-bye! See you soon! Bye-bye! See you, Chiun! Bye-bye! See you soon!"

Remo got in. "Well, you sure seem friendly with the thing. It even knows your name."

"I did not tell it my name."

"It just said goodbye to you personally."

Chiun looked straight ahead. "I do not believe so." The cab pulled onto the road and began driving in the direction of the Union Island International Airport. A few miles later Remo poked his head out the window and looked up.

With its great wings spread wide against the crystal morning sky, the blue macaw was an elegant creature. It greeted Remo with a squawk.

"No pet parrot!" Remo insisted, pulling his head in again.

"Of course not," Chiun answered stoically.

Remo saw the bird one more time, riding the updrafts a half mile from the airport. "See you, Chiun! See you soon!"

"Hear that?" Remo demanded as he hoisted the trunks from the cab.

Chiun went through the airport doors, ignoring him completely.

Chapter 45

The white sheet they draped over Dawn Summens was translucent. She saw it all as it happened.

They put her on a stretcher and placed her in an ambulance. The drive into town was surreal. She could hear the engine sound and the whine of the tires on the pavement. The dappled sunlight of daybreak made the inside of the ambulance look almost cheery. The paramedics were discussing her and she heard every word.

"She sure was a hottie," one of them said. "It's too damn bad."

"Yeah. What a bod. What an ass."

"And not a bad rack."

"I always wanted to see them puppies."

"What's stopping you?"

They parked and wheeled out the gurney. Wheeled her up a ramp. It was the front entrance to the museum of natural history. The great hall had become a temporary morgue. Bodies were lined up, sheeted and tagged, in neat rows. They laid her at a place of honor, in the front row, and because her head was locked in a slight turn to the right she could see, through her thin sheet, that a cadaver was laid out next to her. The sheet was oddly distended, as if the remains underneath were somehow malformed.

"Well?" said one of the paramedics.

"Nobody else here," the other one whispered. "Now's our chance."

Dawn Summens should have been repulsed, but instead she was relieved when the paramedics pulled off her sheet. Now was her chance. She fought with all her will to move. A twitch. A blink. Anything to show them she was still alive.

"Aw, her eyes are open!" one of the paramedics complained.

"I told you. I couldn't close them," the other one said. She saw them clearly. Could she move her eyeballs? "Cover her face at least."

"All right."

The sheet was draped across her face while the paramedics took a quick gander under her shirt.

"Mighty fine."

"She sure was a hottie."

There! Her finger! She had moved her finger! Hadn't she?

The sheet was draped over her entire body again and the paramedics left. Dawn Summens heard only silence. Through the veil of her cover she saw the sheet next to her move. From beneath it emerged a hideous black burned thing. Amelia Powlik grinned, which cracked more of the crust that had once been her face. She reached over and gently lifted the sheet from Dawn Summens's face.

"Hello, hello," Amelia sang quietly. "I know you're in there."

Paralyzed, unblinking, Dawn wanted to retch against the stench of scorched flesh and hair.

"Shouldn't have done that to me, Minister Summens," Amelia said. "Now I feel disinclined to be nice to you." The sheet dropped back over her face, and Amelia Powlik recovered herself.

Dawn's mind whirled. An hour passed, and the sheet next to hers didn't move again, and her confusion turned to doubt. Had she imagined it? Had Amelia really moved? Was it even Amelia under there?

The door opened and the police chief, Spence, came in carrying Dawn's handbag. He had a couple of his officers with him.

"There she is," one of them said, pointing right at her. "What were you thinking?" Spence asked her, then he went to the display case. He dragged on rubber gloves, then gingerly extracted the crumbling, battered Union Island Blue Ring Octopus out of her purse. He put it back on the rubber stand, where it belonged.

"It's all beat up," one of the officers said sadly. "Help me put the case back on," Spence said.

The three men muscled the heavy case up and over the display stand, then latched it down. All the while Dawn Summens was shouting at them, thrashing her limbs, blinking her eyes. But it was all in her head.

As the cops headed for the door they heard a moan. The three of them rocketed straight into the air.

"Holy shit!"

"Look!"

Chief Spence spoke sharply. "Get the doctor over here! Tell him we have a live one! Oh Christ, look who it is!"

The doctor arrived in minutes. The paramedics followed him in.

"Water. Drink of water."

"Doc, can I give her some damn water?" Spence asked. "She's been asking and asking."

"Yes, just a little." The doctor began working over her while Chief Spence dribbled water on her blackened lips. Soon they had Amelia Powlik stabilized and on the gurney. Dawn's efforts grew weaker, but she kept willing herself to make a sound. Take me, too! Take me, too!

They never heard a thing, and all of them left to accompany Amelia Powlik to the hospital.

Dawn Summens was alone again, with all those dead people and one dead, dried-up octopus. The Union Island Blue Ring stared at her through the glass with its shriveled black eye. The great hall was utterly silent.