He broke into the open near his rental car. There was another vehicle parked up the road. Remo had no time to see who it might be. He bounded across the desolate street and plowed into the opposite field of corn.
His hands were slicing blurs as he hacked a beeline passageway through the tall corn to the point where Billy's scream had originated.
He exploded through the second field and onto the narrow access road.
The stench of blood was powerful, mixed in with the odor of digestive fluids and exposed bowels. Remo saw the gutted body of Ron DePew first. Eyes keenly trained in Sinanju followed the bloody path Billy Pierce had unwittingly left from the edge of the cornfield to the front of the rented truck.
Remo found Billy. What was left of him.
The body had been mutilated. The face and neck were ripped to shreds. The large chest was open. White ribs shone like orderly piano keys through the split casing of frail human flesh.
In spite of the gruesomeness of the attack, Billy had fared better than Clyde Simmons.
The other HETA member had been the main course in a grisly buffet. His stomach cavity had been split open wide. The spine was visible on the opposite side of the large hollow. There were no organs left.
Blood washed the area, turning the earth to sticky mud.
Remo tuned his senses to their limit. Obviously, an animal was responsible. And the HETA people were supposed to be exchanging the BBQs tonight.
The cicadas and crickets continued their nightly serenade. In the distance, a car engine coughed to life. But in all the night sounds, Remo could not locate those of even a single large predator.
Settling for the next-best thing, Remo went to the edge of the area soaked with blood. As expected, he found a set of tracks leading away from the bodies.
They were odd. A ball-shaped indentation preceded by a strange clawing hook. The imprint was nothing he was familiar with. A BBQ.
The path led back into the cornfield.
Loping, Remo followed the trail through the acres of soughing corn. The path ran parallel to the one he had made, though it was much clumsier than his own. He followed it out to the road.
By the time he reached the blacktop street, the dirt of the field had cleared the blood from the animal's foot pads. Once Remo reached the road, he was unable to determine where the creature had gone.
He looked up to where the road disappeared in the darkness. Nothing. Back in the other direction, he saw a lone car turning onto the main route toward the prison.
He'd lost it. The BBQ was gone.
RETURNING TO THE BODIES of the HETA men, Remo crouched down to examine the carnage.
It was a grim sight.
Now that he knew what kind of footprints the BBQs made, he could see the animal's imprints all around the body of Clyde Simmons. They were everywhere-one atop the other.
Remo traced them back to the original set. The last ones made before the initial attack. These ones ran up along side the truck.
At the rear, he found the snapped leash. The animal must have been left there. It had broken free before going on its violent rampage.
Remo's eyes narrowed as he examined the ground.
"What the dingdong?" he said, brow furrowed. Hands on his knees, he examined the ground carefully.
The imprints back here weren't the same ones as at the front of the truck. These were heavy, clumsy hoofprints. Not the cautious, delicate ones that had been made around the HETA bodies.
Remo bit the inside of his cheek in concentration. Try as he might, he couldn't come up with a suitable explanation.
He went around to the truck's cab. Leaning in, he pulled on the headlights.
The wooded area in front of the truck was immediately bathed in a wide yellow glow.
He went back to the bodies.
The tracks were still the same as before. And still different from the ones in the back.
Staring at the problem wouldn't bring a solution. There was nothing more he could do here. Let Smith try to sort out the mystery.
As he was turning to go, he noticed something odd about the body of Billy Pierce.
"What the hell?" Remo said, puzzled.
He squatted down next to the body. With careful fingers, he reached to the edge of the raking wound in Billy's chest.
An object clung to the flesh. It was hard and thin and shaped like a waxing moon.
Remo plucked the object free. He examined it in the glow of the headlights.
Going back to the cab, Remo found a few white envelopes with the HETA address embossed in the upper left-hand corners lying on the dashboard.
He took one and stuffed the unfamiliar object inside. A souvenir for Smith. Something else to confound the CURE director.
Shutting off the cab lights, he jumped down to the ground. Envelope in hand, Remo stole off into the night.
Chapter 9
As the first bleary streaks of dawn began to rake the gray-tinged sky over Long Island Sound, the light of the new day found Harold W. Smith already at work.
Smith had taken care of the day's sanitarium business in the predawn darkness. It was the work of CURE to which he now devoted himself.
After a scant ten minutes perusing the digests culled by CURE's basement mainframes during their sleepless night patrolling the electronic netherworld of the World Wide Web, Smith had determined that there was nothing that would require calling Remo off his BostonBio assignment.
Things were quiet in the world. What Smith saw now were the usual mundane, day-to-day affairs that the Folcroft Four-his name for the quartet of mainframes-collected from a wide variety of sources.
A crooked judge in Fresno.
A seeming new drug pipeline from South America.
Rival Mafia factions involved in a turf dispute at a New England fishing port.
Nothing worthy of Remo's particular talents. Smith accessed the latest information on the BBQ situation. As he expected, there was nothing new. It was early yet. If Remo had already found the creatures, it might not be reported to the press for several hours.