As he ran, Chiun beseeched his ancestors to prepare a seat of honor for the last pure-blooded Master of Sinanju.
Remo woke up suddenly. He bolted up in the seat, realized where he was, and looked around the careening car.
"Where's Chiun?" he demanded savagely.
Sky bit her lip. "Back there."
Remo looked back.
"How long?" he croaked.
"Any minute now," Sky Bluel whispered, tears rolling down her face.
Remo flung open the car door, mentally calculating the speed of the car versus the counterforce he would have to apply if he was to alight in one piece.
One foot went out. It scraped the road like sandpaper.
Then Remo's eyes widened into dark explosions of fear.
The noise was not loud. Its muffled quality made it all the more heart-stopping. It was like something deep and important erupting in the bowels of the earth.
Remo looked back. They all looked back, except Sky, who was sobbing uncontrollably as her eyes shifted between the road ahead and the sight in the rearview mirror.
It was not a mushroom cloud. Not in the classic sense. It was more of a violent upflinging of sand and smoke. A boiling fist spewed up amid the climbing sand like ball lightning and then spent itself like a flash paper dragon.
"Are we far enough from it?" Remo demanded, sick-eyed.
"I think so," Sky said chokingly.
The shock wave was short and violent and hot. It sent the car skidding sideways into the sand. It stopped, rear wheels spinning uselessly. Remo got out. He looked back at the smoky cloud, his eyes stricken.
Sky clung to his side. The others emerged too. But only to crawl under the car, where they thought it was safe.
"I don't see him," Remo said thickly. "Do you?"
Sky shook her head so hard hot tears splashed on Remo's arms. "No way he could have escaped that," she sobbed. "No way."
Remo turned on Sky Bluel. "I don't believe you!" He grabbed her by the arms, shaking her. "Tell me the truth!"
"Look. I don't know how he was able to run with that thing in the first place, but for him to escape the neutron bombardment, he'd have had to be outside the kill zone. On this side. And I don't see him. Anywhere."
Remo's eyes scoured the surrounding terrain. There was no sign of Chiun on the undulant dunes.
"I'm going in," Remo said.
In desperation Sky grabbed his shirt. "You'll be killed. We should be getting further away. The neutrons are coming this way. You can't see them or feel them, but they'll slam into your cells like microscopic bullets. Slow, agonizing death."
Remo tore free. "You go if you want to," he spat. He started off into the desert.
Remo ran at a steady clip, sticking to the road until it changed direction away from the smoky cloud on the horizon.
"Come on, Chiun," he whispered. "Show your face. I know you're out there. Come on."
Remo covered a good quarter-mile without spotting any life. Then he began to feel something in the air.
It was like a little pinprick on his bare right arm. Just a pinprick, but it stung like a red-hot needle. Remo pressed on. Another pinprick struck his chest. And another.
He had felt a similar sensation before. Once, while standing too close to a leaky microwave oven.
Remo knew then he was running into the leading edge of neutron bombardment, which his finely tuned body met and absorbed. It was like running into an acid spray. He knew the spray would swell to a deadly storm at any moment.
"Chiun!" Remo cried, shifting direction. He tried running in a widening circle, keeping just outside and ahead of the spreading radiation field.
No answer came from the kill zone.
Then, because he knew to go on was to die, Remo Williams abruptly reversed direction.
He fought to hold down the hot choking lump that struggled to climb out of his throat.
Remo caught up with the car as it approached the Palm Springs city limits. Running alongside, he signaled Sky to pull over.
Not quite believing her eyes, Sky did.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
Remo said nothing. He went to the rear door and pulled it off its hinges. That got the attention of the passengers in back.
Connors Swindell fought to get away from the hand that reached in for his throat.
"This is all your fault, isn't it?" Remo raged, yanking him to his feet.
Swindell pointed at Barry Kranish, cowering in the car, saying, "No, it's his fault. You, tell him."
Remo reached in for Barry Kranish. He pulled him out by his microwaved hair.
"If he'd left the poor scorpions alone," Kranish snapped, "none of this would have happened."
"No more lies!" Remo shouted. "No more bullshit! What was this all about?"
Connors Swindell and Barry Kranish looked into the deadly dark eyes of Remo Williams and decided to tell the truth. Unfortunately, they tried to tell it simultaneously.
Remo shook them in his strong hands.
"In one word, what was this all about?" he repeated.
"Property," said Connors Swindell.
"The environment," said Barry Kranish.
Remo looked at them coldly for a long time.
"The most important person in my life just died because of you. Tell me he died for something more than a real-estate scam and saving the weasels."
"Look," Swindell said, grinning sickly, "I can see that you're hurtin'. But you gotta put this into perspective. He was old, an empty nester. If they don't go when they get ripe, property would never change hands. And then where would the world be?"
Remo Williams looked at Connors Swindell's sweating face as if not believing the evidence of his ears.
"You know what you are?" he asked evenly.
"Under arrest?" Swindell ventured weakly.
"No, landfill," Remo replied, giving Connors Swindell's neck a sudden squeeze. His head shot up twenty feet in the air. It landed at the base of a palm like a ripe coconut. Remo threw the body on top with a savagely careless fling.
Then he turned his attention to Barry Kranish.
"You love trees?" he asked in a too-even tone.
"I love life even more," Kranish said, sick-voiced.
"Fine, let's feed a few trees."
"I didn't bring any tree food."
"You are the tree food," Remo explained.
Remo escorted Barry Kranish behind a stately date palm and carefully converted him into mulch. When he returned a moment later, he was washing the blood off his hands with sand.
Sky Bluel didn't stick around to find out what had happened to the late Barry Kranish. She jumped behind the wheel and drove into town without a backward glance.
Remo let her go. She wasn't important anymore.
He turned to face the desert. The smoke cloud now hung low against the horizon. A hot wind tore at it like fingers plucking at an old rag.
Remo sat down on the edge of the road and with sunken eyes watched the too-hot wind tear the clouds to shreds and carry the faint fragments away.
He refused to move until the sun came up to turn its accusing red eye on him.
Chapter 23
Three months later, the high corn was tasseling outside of La Plomo, Missouri.
Heirs had been arriving all summer in a steady stream to reclaim the homes of their dead relatives. Farms were taken over. Plans were made to plow under the Lewisite-tainted crops. It was a sad event. But next year there would be another, better crop.
La Plomo was coming back to life.
By this time the sun had entered Leo, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had declared a blasted area of desert four miles outside of Palm Springs, California, to be radiation-free. FEMA also promised to release a two-million-dollar study by Christmas explaining how a nuclear accident had occurred in an area where nuclear tests were not authorized.