Careless, unthinking, propelled by hatred, she flew at Remo, face twisted with vicious passion. Hands flew up with blinding ferocity. She was no longer rational. She was a beast, lashing out in hate and fear and rage.
Remo stood his ground, allowing her to fly to him. When she was close enough, he simply reached out and grabbed hold of one of her mauling raised arms.
One foot shot into the air, bracing against her sternum. With a horrible twist and wrench, Remo ripped the arm from its socket. It tore free like an overcooked turkey leg.
Judith shrieked in pain. Shoulder bleeding, she swept the other hand toward him.
Although Remo could have stopped the blow easily, he never got the chance.
All at once, the floor buckled beneath them. The room suddenly listed like a boat caught in a gale. Remo kept his footing, but Judith was thrown from her feet. She fell to the angled floor, rolling down toward the far wall. When she struck the wall, dozens of bricks broke loose and tumbled out into wideopen space.
She pulled herself awkwardly to her feet. It was difficult to stand. Judith turned back to him.
Remo realized what had happened. The ground floor had collapsed around the wooden columns that supported this section of the building. This wing of the warehouse was preparing to fall into the river.
The heat from the fire grew in wicked intensity. Remo ignored it.
Mindless of all but the creature before him, he began to advance on Judith White.
The room around him creaked in pain. The entire building seemed on the verge of collapse. Flames erupted in wild bursts through holes along floor and walls.
"Remo!"
The voice came from above. Louder than the symphony of noise all around him. When he looked up, he saw the frantic face of the Master of Sinanju peering down through a wide hole in the ceiling. Flames curled around his tufts of smoke-tossed hair. Chiun waved them away.
"Hurry," Chiun called. He beckoned urgently. The flames were everywhere now. Wafting clouds of smoke partially blocked his view of the old Korean.
"In a minute," Remo called back.
"This building is collapsing!" Chiun pleaded. "We must flee! Now!"
Remo hesitated. He knew Chiun was right. But he also wished to finish off Judith White once and for all. There would be no satisfaction in letting the fire do the work for him.
She was watching him with her big cat's eyes. A whimper of fear rose from her throat as she hugged her knees close to her chest with her one good arm. Blood poured from the vacant socket of her other shoulder.
In the end, good sense won out. Remo spun from the mad scientist. He left her cowering against the distant wall. With a leap, he made it up to the hole. Chiun grabbed hold of him. Firm hands dragged him onto the roof.
The coolness of the air outside shocked him. His body had compensated for the heat of the flames. The room had been like an inferno. Sweat beads evaporated from his skin.
Remo paused at the top of the brick wall. When he looked back through the hole, he saw the rear of the building give way. The entire row of windows, the bricks and Dr. Judith White tumbled out together. Moments later, they crashed into the rocks of the Chelsea Creek rapids.
"This is no time for sight-seeing," Chiun snapped. "If you get injured again, you may tend to your own wounds."
Whirling, the old Asian bounded along the length of the brick wall, unmindful of the sheer drop to the woods below. Fire erupted through holes in the broad flat roof.
Remo raced after him to the main warehouse. As he sprang over to the largest part of the building, the rest of the office wing behind him collapsed onto the floating figure of Dr. Judith White. Her battered carcass vanished beneath a ton of bricks and burning wood.
Chapter 32
Dr. Judith White's body turned up five days later. "It washed up on Deer Island," Smith explained to Remo over the phone. "Her name tag from BostonBio was in her pocket, as well as a few credit cards."
"They're sure it's her?" Remo asked. He was sitting on the floor in his living room.
The Master of Sinanju sat on a simple reed mat across from him. Chiun's parchments were laid out carefully at his knees. A quill danced in his bony hand as he sketched Korean characters.
"The coroner says that her arm was wrenched off with what they are terming 'inhuman strength,'" Smith said dryly. "I doubt it is necessary to go much further than that."
"What about the other hand? Did you check fingerprints?" Remo asked suspiciously.
"Unfortunately, Dr. White never had prints taken," Smith said slowly.
"At a high-tech joint like BostonBio?" Remo asked.
"It is not part of their normal procedure," Smith explained. "And anyway, they did not regard her as a security risk."
Remo snorted derisively at this. "What about dental records?" he asked.
Smith was growing concerned now, as well. "Her face was mangled in the fall. The teeth were shattered. What are you getting at, Remo?" he asked. "You do not believe she could have escaped?"
"I guess not, Smitty," he admitted reluctantly. "It's just she was awfully resilient."
"Not this resilient," Smith stated firmly. "The genetic formulas of BostonBio died with her. The BGSBS material confiscated from BostonBio that detailed the so-called Feinberg Method has been destroyed. No one will be able to duplicate the formula. Nor, I suspect, will anyone want to."
"Amen to that," Remo echoed. "What I can't figure out is why she was so fired up to help out humanity."
"What do you mean?" Smith asked.
"That was the point of the whole BBQ project," Remo reminded him.
"I didn't tell you?" Smith said, surprised.
"Tell me what?"
"An autopsy was performed on one of the animals Dr. White brought back to BostonBio. There was a deliberate destructive code buried in the DNA of the animals."
Remo blinked. "Are you saying the BBQs really would have killed people?"
Across the room, Chiun's head snapped up. Remo shot a glance at his teacher.
"Worse," Smith intoned gravely. "She heralded them as the cure for world hunger. However, that was not their only purpose. Dr. White's cure would have turned mankind into creatures like her. The genetic code contained in the animals was a variant of the old Feinberg bacteria formula. If consumed, the meat of the Bos camelus-whitus would have transformed people into things like her. If enough meat was eaten, the change over time would have been permanent."
"So we saved the human race one giant step back down the evolutionary ladder," Remo said. One eye was trained on the Master of Sinanju.
Finding nothing of interest in Smith's explanation, the old man had returned to his writing.
"I had the remaining creature at BostonBio destroyed," the CURE director said. "Since you eliminated the ones in the possession of HETA, every loose end should be tied up."