He knew he was running because his legs screamed, but it seemed they had made no progress. The air was so thick with the bugs it clouded the vision. How far to the ocean’s edge?
His skin felt raw, his legs heavy, but amazingly his breathing became invigorated. He was recuperating from his weakness even as that weakness allowed him to succumb to the bugs.
Then Chiun was gone from his side. Remo stopped, retreated, waving furiously at the swarms and his returning breath gave him the strength to wipe them away long enough to spot the fallen figure of Chiun.
Remo blundered to him, grabbed the small body and turned back to the ocean.
“Breathe, Chiun,” Remo said.
The dragonflies seemed to form a solid wall in front of him. He would never see it when he reached the edge, and now his flesh was screaming. He was being skinned alive. He felt one foot come down on nothing and he drew back.
“Breathe, Chiun.”
He felt nothing, not even a breath, from the small figure in his arms.
“We’re going in,” Remo said. He launched himself and Chiun out into space, and dropped. Sixty feet of emptiness separated the edge of the land and the Mediterranean waters, with a thin beach at the bottom.
Remo inhaled, knowing his lungs weren’t right. The dragonflies fell away suddenly and for a moment the world was clean and bright Then Remo saw how much blood there was on Chiun, on himself. Every exposed inch of flesh was flayed, and here he was putting them in salt water.
“This,” he said to himself, “is gonna hurt.”
He hit the water and realized just how correct he was.
Chapter 15
Mark Howard knew he was doing the wrong thing, but he did it anyway, driving across the lawn of the Cote estate just as soon as the clouds of—whatever were they?—drifted away and vanished. He knew they might come back at any second, and if they had effectively forced Remo and Chiun to run for their lives, they would surely kill Mark Howard.
He had a Beretta handgun, and he could use it, but he knew that cloud of stuff wouldn’t be slowed down by a few 9 mm rounds.
He jumped out of the rental car and ran to the wooden stairs, glancing down briefly when he felt something crunching under his feet.
Dragonflies?
Dead ones were everywhere. Remo and Chiun had been attacked by dragonflies? He stooped and snatched one off the ground as he ran, examined it for a moment, then stuffed it in his pocket.
Automatons. Aerogel construction with some sort of oscillators for wing movement. Somebody had constructed thousands of them.
He practically fell down the wooden stairs to the small beach. He was looking at the cliff edge to the right, looking for corpses adrift in the surf, and his attention was so focused he almost didn’t see the man sitting in the sand.
He had his back to Mark and water was still dripping from his hair, but his clothes were steaming slightly.
“Remo? It’s me.”
“I know.”
Mark Howard felt a curious coldness in his stomach as he walked around Remo and stopped dead.
“Jesus!”
Remo’s face and arms wore a sheen of raw blood, making his eyes into a wildman’s white eyes. His T-shirt was tattered and soaked with blood. Caked to him, virtually every square inch, was gritty sand.
Chiun looked worse. Flat on his back, mouth slightly open, he was a mask of thick blood that oozed and dripped into the sand.
Mark looked at him. Remo touched the old man’s blood-painted skull and dropped his hand as if lifting it was an effort Mark didn’t even want to speak. “Remo, are you okay?”
Remo winced. “My face hurts.”
“It pains all who look upon it.”
Mark grinned. “Chiun! You’re okay!”
“Chiun is not okay.” Chiun crawled painfully to his knees, then to his feet. “Chiun is distantly removed from ‘okay’ or any word bearing a resemblance to ‘okay.’ I have been sent running about like a schoolboy on a scavenger hunt subjected to dangerous radiation, then pecked nearly to death by insects, and at the moment of my greatest discomfort from this terrific torture, I have had salt rubbed literally in my wounds.”
“You’re welcome,” Remo said.
“And as I was drowning and suffering the most enormous pain from this series of events, as my life is fading into the oblivious, with what am I assaulted? The most vile profanity!”
“It hurt like hell,” Remo said.
“You did not hear me cursing.”
“You were drowning, remember?”
“The sea life fled en masse. This coast will likely be barren for years.”
“You calling me an environmental catastrophe?”
“Environmental is but one of the many types of catastrophe you embody.”
“Enough!” Mark Howard blurted. “Stop bickering. We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
“He’ll live,” Remo said.
“His wounds are superficial,” Chiun added. “Several layers of bandages wrapped around his head and face will help, but it is vital that they be tied tightly and left on for a minimum of ten days.”
“Har-dee-har-har.”
“And the worst thing is…” Chiun pursed his lips into a white line on his blood-smeared face. “The worst thing, you broke my iBlogger.”
“How can you break an eye booger?” Remo asked.
“No,” Chiun said. “This!”
He removed his hands from his sleeves and thrust a small white electronic box at Remo. There was a multicolored piece of fruit inlaid in the plastic and a miniature keyboard beneath a dark screen.
“What is it?”
“Read it!”
“iBlogger.”
“See?”
“Oh, now I understand.”
Mark Howard’s joy at finding them alive was replaced with almost instant annoyance. He trudged up the stairs without them. Remo started up after him.
“It is an internet device,” Chiun said. “It is a way for people to share their diaries with others.”
“Huh?”
“Huh! What is huh, Remo? What word have I used that escapes your understanding?”
“I understood all the words, I just couldn’t make sense of the way you put them all together,” Remo said. He called up, “Hey, Junior, what’s an iBlogger?”
“internet gizmo for teeny-boppers. Why?”
“Not just for tiny-boobers,” Chiun insisted. “The blog has become a mass medium for the sharing of one’s lives.” He waved his plastic box for emphasis and Mark took it curiously when Chiun materialized at his side with the device.
“Yep, that’s an iBlogger. See, people all-over the world use the internet to post their personal journals. This thing shows them.”
“Why?” Remo asked.
“Well, it started out as a gimmick for teenage girls, you know, like the electronic equivalent of passing notes in class. But Chiun’s right—other people are doing it now.”
“It allows the average man or woman to tell his or her story to the world,” Chiun explained. “It allows one to share one’s life with the entire world, everything from mundane day-to-day events to great moments of joy and sorrow.”
As they reached the car, Remo understood. “Like a soap opera.”
“Yes, but real,” Chiun said as they entered the rental car. “These are genuine human lives, genuine human personalities. Some are unlikable, some are vain, some are petty, some are sad.”
“All real winners, huh? Aren’t any of them just boring?”
“Of course, but those blogs I do not visit. I only go to sites written by truly interesting personalities. One of my favorites is a woman in Wyoming, an attorney by the name of Caroline Trough, who takes three new lovers each week.”