And as the two men stood, unwitting in the dead of night, confident, stalking feet began to slip silently through the darkness toward the cab.
REMO FOLLOWED the narrow path between the rows of corn. Crickets chirped loudly all around him. The aroma from the field was intoxicating. Remo had to concentrate to keep his mouth from watering. As a Master of Sinanju, Remo's diet was severely limited. But he'd been delighted to learn after more than twenty years of little more than rice, fish and duck that corn was an acceptable alternative to his customary staples. Acceptable to everyone, that is, save the Reigning Master of Sinanju. To appease Chiun, Remo had promised to strike corn from his diet forever. He only wished he could banish the desire.
Burying the urge to gorge himself, Remo plowed forward.
At the edge of the woods far away, a lone cicada screeched at the night. It was followed by a second, then a third. The symphony reached a crescendo before cutting off entirely. The short lull was broken as the first cicada took up its whine once again.
There were no signs of human life yet. The wind was blowing north to south, so no softer sounds or subtle smells were brought to Remo from either field. If the HETA trucks were at the edge of the dark woods that loomed ominously ahead of him, he wouldn't know it until he was nearly upon them.
Because of the direction of the wind and the limitations of his own senses, Billy Pierce had dropped off Remo's personal radar once they were an acre or so apart. The animal-rights activist's cursing, stumbling trip through the cornfield had faded into other background noise.
Nearby, Remo sensed a single, small heartbeat. Probably a raccoon or skunk. The creature waddled awkwardly through the rows of swaying corn a few yards away.
The wind shifted briefly once, doubling up on itself before switching southward once more. Skunk, Remo noted. Definitely a skunk.
But up ahead was still a blank slate. Even so, if the trucks were there, he'd know soon enough.
As silent as the very air itself, Remo pressed forward.
THE GROUND RACED UP to meet Billy Pierce. Muttering unhappily, he pushed himself to his feet.
His palms stung where he fell. Putting them up to his face, he examined them carefully in the moonlight.
They were bleeding. The scraping wounds he'd gotten while trying to escape from his bulkhead earlier that day had reopened. The right palm was worse than the left. He must have landed on a jagged rock.
He wiped the thin smear of blood and grime on his ragged bell-bottoms. It wasn't clear whether this helped to clean the dirt from his hands, but it seemed to satisfy Billy. He stumbled forward.
He wasn't aware how far he had actually traveled across the field until he was all the way through it. Billy tumbled over a raised lip of earth and fell with a heavy thud through the last row of corn. The stalks crunched loudly beneath his great girth.
"Damn," he griped, as his massive belly oozed in both directions, settling out on either side of his prone body.
He floundered for a moment, grabbing at the ground before him with his still stinging, bleeding hands.
Somewhere nearby, he heard the sound of a small river gurgling off into the night.
His hands sank into the earth. It was muddy to the touch.
"Great," he groused. "I fell in water." Although he was ordinarily averse to the thought of washing any part of his anatomy, the pain in his hands was so great as he pushed himself laboriously to his knees that, for a moment, he considered actually dipping his hands in the stream and swishing them around a little to cool the stinging sensation. But as he leaned his hands against his large thighs, Billy realized that the water sound was too far away for him to have landed in the river.
That was odd.
Kneeling at the edge of the cornfield and puzzling over the strange, unexplained wetness on his hands, Billy was surprised anew. As luck would have it, he had plopped out of the woods at the precise spot he had been looking for. No more than three yards away was the HETA rental truck.
It sat quiet and unmoving on the narrow access road. The rear door was open wide. The weak cab dome light was turned on.
Billy wasn't sure what to do.
There was no sign of his HETA confederates nor of the animal they were supposed to be moving. He was supposed to go meet Remo at the car, but there didn't appear to be anything to show him. And the last thing Billy wanted to do was to inspire Remo's anger yet again. Frowning, he decided to investigate a little before going off for his rendezvous.
Billy struggled to his feet.
He wiped the strange slick fluid from his hands as he stepped carefully over to the truck. Whatever it was, it felt sticky on his pant legs. Not like mud.
At the rear of the truck, he found the leash that had been used to tie the BBQ to the vehicle. It was snapped in half. Standing on tiptoes and leaning inside the rear of the truck, Billy saw none of the animals.
Frowning in confusion, he walked around to the cab.
He noted the ghastly stench as he approached the front of the truck. Far worse than the odor people claimed he made. This was like rotting roadkill.
Below the open cab window, Billy suddenly remembered the strange fluid on his hands. The dome light was weak, but good enough to see by.
He examined his hands. They were slick and red. Red?
Experimentally, he sniffed the substance. As he did so, he glanced over to the edge of the cornfield. And froze.
It was there. Near the edge of the field. He had fallen right next to it and hadn't seen it.
The body had been ripped to shreds. The face was ghastly white, the dead mouth open wide in shock. Billy recognized the man. Ron DePew.
It was blood on his hands. Ron's blood. Billy staggered back, falling against the cab. Away from the body. Get away!
Billy stumbled around the front of the cab. Another body. Flat on its back. Stomach open wide.
Blood. Blood everywhere.
On the ground, on the body. On the face.
Eyes looking up at him. Feral, angry. The creature had been feasting on the second corpse. It lifted its head out of the stomach cavity, entrails dripping from its slathering, crimson-smeared mouth.
Hideous, blood soaked. And familiar. Panic gripped his thudding chest. Billy twisted, tried to run. Too late.
The creature bounded toward him. A single leap and it was upon him. One curled paw lashed down toward his neck, talons curled in violent rage.
Blood exploded from his throat, spattering across the grille and windshield of the silent truck.
And in his last moments of life, Billy Pierce reacted to fear and brutal death with the same blind instinct used by the first ancestors of humanity to scamper down from the trees.
Billy screamed.
REMO HEARD the terrified shriek from the distant edge of the opposite field.
He had just given up his futile search at the edge of the woods and was turning back in Billy's direction.
The sound shocked him to action.
Rather than follow the paths through the high corn, Remo threw himself into the nearest stalks. While he ran, he slashed his hands left and right.