"That's 'cause you're not a faggot like Ted," Bob said with a smirk.
"Shut up," Ted complained.
"Yeah, Bob," Evan echoed. "Why don't you shut up?"
They'd nearly reached the first warehouse. The big brick building was four stories tall and looked as if it had been built somewhere in the earliest days of the twentieth century. The facade was crumbling. Chunks of mortar and redbrick fragments were spread all around the lot before it.
Bob stopped near the closed warehouse door.
"Are you two queer for each other?" Bob asked, turning on the others. "You sound like you're married or something."
"Just lighten up," Evan insisted.
"You lighten up," Bob snapped back.
"Maybe we should keep it down," Ted offered warily. The morning's events had begun playing anew in his frightened mind. He felt woozy. His stomach fluttered in fear as added adrenaline pumped frantically through his system.
"I'm sick of you two always ganging up on me," Bob groused. "You think you're so much better than me. Well, I got news for you. At least I got a real live deer once, Teddy boy. And it wasn't with the front of my car." He glanced over his shoulder. Woods crept out around the side of the building. "I'm going to see what's going on back there," he announced, a sneer stretching his lip. "If I find her this time, maybe I can keep from pissing my pants and actually shoot her."
Grumbling to himself, Bob stormed off. After he'd disappeared around the side of the building, Evan shrugged.
"He'll be okay," Evan assured Ted. "It's just the beer talking."
"Yeah," Ted nodded. Getting yelled at by Bob had only increased his apprehension level. He felt the powerful tingling of pure terror in his groin. He wanted to pee, but dared not suggest it. Not after what Bob had just said.
Evan crept to the front of the building. With the flat of his hand, he tested the door. It was unlocked. He turned back around. "You want to flip for who goes in first?" he asked, lips twisted into a devilish smile.
"Hurry up," Ted urged.
And before his faked courage fled him completely, Ted used the broad side of his shotgun to bully his friend into the warehouse. He followed close behind.
The door creaked shut with eerie finality.
WHEN REMO AND CHIUN ROUNDED the corner, they found the rear parking lot of the old warehouse teeming with hunters. Men with shotguns scurried all around them, like ants fleeing a dropped shoe. The hunters paid the two Masters of Sinanju little heed, so busy were they stalking sand and stones.
"I will never understand this nation," the Master of Sinanju commented as they waded through the armed throng. His wrinkled face was puckered in disgust. "There has never been a land as rich in food as America. Your markets are even given the boasting prefix super." His voice dropped. "It is amazing to me, Remo, that the American ego extends even to something as trivial as your grocery stores."
Remo's eyes were trained ahead, his senses strained to their maximum. "And?" he asked, distracted.
"Why do these simpletons dress up like clowns and clomp around in the woods with their boomsticks when they need only stop at the nearest supermarket?"
Chiun indicated some hunters who were trying to hide in the thin brush at the edge of the parking lot. The woods might have been enough to conceal two or three. There were eighteen of them.
"Gives them something to do," Remo explained. "You know, l went hunting a couple of times years ago."
"That does not surprise me," Chiun said, nodding sadly. "After all, you were a barbarian when I met you. However, I had hoped that you had not sunk so low into depravity that you would shoot Bambi's mother."
"I never actually shot anything," Remo pointed out.
"Not only did you use firearms-you were untalented with them. The pride I feel at this moment is underwhelming."
It was as if Remo didn't hear. The two of them traced a path around the perimeter of the parking lot. Remo had already described to Chiun the tracks he'd seen in the Concord field and in the alley behind the HETA office. So far, there was no sign of Judith White's distinctive paw prints in the film of dirt and sand.
"I see nothing here," Chiun announced once they'd completed their circuit around the parking lot's edge.
"Me, neither," Remo said, disappointed. "These boot marks all over the place don't help."
He waved a hand at the kicks and scuffs that dozens of hunters' heels had made in the soft sand. The fence along the side of the lot nearest them had collapsed. It opened into another, larger parking area.
"Guess we move on," Remo said glumly. Chiun nodded agreement.
The two men clambered across the toppled chain link and into the adjacent lot. Moving ever farther away from their quarry.
"DO YOU HEAR THAT?" Evan whispered urgently.
"Hear what?" Ted asked.
Evan's voice was a hoarse rasp. "Sounded like digging."
The air was thick with dust. Tiny particles danced in the few beams of light that penetrated the spaces in the boarded-up first-floor windows. The smell of decay hung heavy in the wooden interior of the big brick building.
As they stepped gingerly through the large rooms of the old warehouse, both men found it difficult to breathe. They pulled air into their lungs in shallow, nervous spurts, exhaling almost as soon as they had inhaled.
Ted was an anxious wreck. The cavernous warehouse was spooky, like something out of a Saturday-afternoon horror movie. His head swirled as much from blood loss as from fear. They'd drained too much at the hospital. What little was left thundered in his ears.
Evan had taken point. A few yards ahead, he stepped cautiously over a rotted beam that had fallen to the floor. Years of settling dust and cobwebs formed a thick coat on its decayed surface.
As Evan's toes brushed the floor on the far side of the beam, there came a gentle creak beneath him. Evan froze. Behind him, Ted stopped, too. "What?" Ted whispered anxiously.
"Shh," Evan stressed. He started to pick his foot up. The floorboards creaked greater protest. Worried, Evan stood stock-still.
"Go," Ted insisted, pressing the length of his gun barrel against Evan's tense shoulder blades. Hesitantly, Evan brought his foot down flat on the old warehouse floor. The creak from the wood came sharp and quick, stopping abruptly. Hoping the noise hadn't been loud enough to scare off their prey, Evan dropped his other foot next to the first.
A muted sound came from beneath. Not a creak this time. More like a tired groan. It flashed to a roar.
The creaky old floor vanished from beneath them. Helpless as the world collapsed around them, Evan and Ted felt an instant of weightlessness followed by the remorseless tug of gravity.
The blackness of eternity swallowed them. Boards bounced around and off them as they plunged into the basement. Guns were dropped; frightened hands grabbed instinctively for faces and heads.
A jarring stop. Crashing all around.
They hit the dirt floor hard. Rotting wood rained down, bouncing off their heads and shoulders. Ted did a belly flop onto the musty earthen floor. Striking ground, Evan tried to scramble to his knees. Heavy timber smashed his back, knocking him face first into the dirt.
It was over as quickly as it had begun.
Dust settled around them as the two men lay groaning on the basement floor. A lone nail clattered loudly down the length of a long, angled board, smacking lightly into the soft dirt floor.