Most of them were drugged out, which disappointed Remo. He wanted action.
"Hello?" he called, ducking his head into a promising room. "Anyone sentient?"
"Who you?" a sleepy voice asked.
"I answered that already," Remo told the muscular man who quickly pulled a silk sheet over his naked legs. The nude woman beside him lifted a rust-red head off a ridiculously large pillow.
"I ax you a question," the black man snarled, taking a chrome-plated revolver from under his own fluffy pillow.
"And I ax you back," Remo returned, relieving the man of his threatening weapon with a chop of his knifelike hand.
Chuk! Bunngg!
The pistol bounced off the floor, where the attached hand finally shook loose. The man used his remaining hand to grab his bloodied stump of a wrist. He looked from it to Remo with a horror-struck "Why me?" expression.
The expression was so piteous that Remo erased it with the heel of his hand. The gunman fell back on his pillow, his face turning into a massive bruise like a concave prune.
The redheaded woman jerked her head up, saw the blood, and asked a shrill question.
"You don't do womens, do you?"
"You sell drugs?" Remo asked.
"Sell, snort, and swallow," she said eagerly.
"I do women," Remo said, driving her nose flat and riddling her brain with splinters of nose bone. Her head was swallowed by the pillow.
Whistling "Whistle While You Work," Remo moved on to the next room.
It looked empty. But his highly attuned senses detected a heartbeat on the other side of the open door. Remo silently took the doorknob in hand.
"Well, nobody in this room," he said aloud.
He stepped back, pulling the door closed. A man inhaled sharply. A preattack inhalation. Grinning, Remo reversed the door on its hinges.
He used only the strength of his bare right arm, but the door struck the inner wall so hard that the plaster cracked on both sides, fissuring the wallpaper.
Putting a contrite expression on his face, Remo pulled the door back and peered around it.
"Oh, sorry," he said in a small voice as the lumpy body slid to the floor with the muffled gritty sound of pulverized bone.
In the next room, Remo simply lunged in and started picking up people. They were very obliging. Wherever he flung them, they would go. Quickly. And with hardly a complaint. Through walls. Out windows. And into one another.
Oh, there were a few rattling groans coming from heaps of broken limbs, but Remo took them as praise.
"Only doing my job," he said modestly.
The sound of commotion drew his attention to the remaining rooms. The noise the last bodies had made as they went through the windows had awoken even the most stupefied inhabitant of the house.
The house shook with the rattle of feet pounding on stairs.
Remo rushed out to intercept the escapees. A few made attempts to shoot him down. A weapon burped here. An automatic snapped there.
Remo dodged each bullet as he had been taught so long ago, with lightning ease. The bullets came so fast they cut shock waves in the air ahead of them. Sensing the approaching turbulence, Remo simply shifted out of the way. Even when they came from behind. His body automatically retreated from the warning pressure. He was like a paper kite that gave before the slightest wind. Except Remo wasn't at the mercy of those breezes. He gave before them, only then cutting away from the deadly bullets he could not always see coming.
Chuk! Chuk! Chuk! Chuk!
Holes chopped through wallboard where he had been. Remo kept moving.
Four men were pounding down the stairs. Remo went to the top runner and, bending at waist and knees, drove straight fingers into the wood. The staircase collapsed like a linchpin had been removed.
The quartet found themselves groaning and squirming in an astonishingly abrupt pile of splinters, like victims of a bombing.
"Did I mention the termite problem on this street?" Remo asked.
Someone tried sneaking up behind him. The sound of a clip driving home gave him away. Remo whirled, taking hold of the would-be assailant's gun arm with both hands.
Naturally, the man opened up with his automatic weapon.
Remo let him empty the clip, first making sure the muzzle was pointing down the nonexistent steps where four men groaned. Bone and meat spattered the walls. The groaning in the broken runners trailed off into dying gurgles.
The gunman added a stricken "What'd I do?" to the cacophony.
"I think you got the termites," Remo told him, brightvoiced.
The gunman spat an unintelligible curse. Remo showed him how deadly even an empty pistol can be when it strikes one's own belly muscles with pile-driver force. Whump! Behind his ridged abdomen, the gunman's stomach burst like a balloon.
With a careless toss, Remo sent him into the pile.
Crasshh!
He was number eighteen.
Remo Williams made a final sweep of the rooms. They were empty. But warm beds and a chair seat told him there were more unaccounted-for occupants. The closet gave up only one. A fat ball of blubber with a ring on every finger and one through each nostril.
Crouching on the floor, he tried diving out between Remo's legs. Remo faded back and used his head for a walnut. The slamming door and jamb were the nutcracker.
Cruunch!
Remo put his head out into the hallway.
"Come out, come out, whereever you are," he invited. His voice was cheerful.
Stealthy movement came from over his head.
"Ah-hah!" Remo said softly. "Naughty little children. They're hiding in the attic."