And in the Baltimore Fox affiliate, a news director watched tensely as the feed came in. Clearly visible through the chicken-wire-reinforced window was a dragonfly whose body and legs were studded with dozens of unwinking compound ruby eyes.
It looked for a reassuring moment like a weird model of a dragonfly from another dimension.
That illusion was broken with startling suddenness when the dragonfly's wings came to life and it floated away, leaving the unnerving impression that it had been staring at them with its narrow rear end.
Chapter 30
Mearl Streep watched the Fox broadcast from the comfort of his RV barreling along Interstate 80 to Washington, D.C.
He had purchased the RV with the monthly dues from his loyal Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, christening it the IDSM Mobile Guerrilla Command HQ and Recreational Center, and installed a close aide to drive it.
He was leading a convoy of pickup trucks, sport utilities and off-road vehicles-all made in the USA-to Washington. They were taking the long way around, because Mearl understood that taking the capital of the greatest nation in the world required more manpower than his thirty or so militia members, none of whom had actually served in a peacetime army or national guard, much less fought in an actual war.
After all, they were corn farmers mostly.
Their war fever was pretty high by the time they rolled out of the Corn State with its mysteriously precise checkerboard of desolation.
"When we get back, we're taking over the surviving farms," Mearl boasted. "Taking 'em back from the collaborators."
"We'll run 'em off," his aide-de-camp, Gordon Garret, called from behind the wheel.
"Naw. You can't merely run collaborators off. That's why I'm calling it Rope Day."
"You're going to hang farmers, Mearl?" Gordon asked in horror.
"No. But I am bound and determined to hang any collaborators and traitors to the Constitution of the United States that I find, agricultural affiliations notwithstanding."
"Oh, that's different."
Along the way, they kept watch out for the much-dreaded black rotary-winged aircraft of the New World Order, but no mysterious helicopters came into view.
They checked for bar codes on the back of highway signs, and when found, spray-painted them black because these were the guide posts by which the combined forces of the Trilateral Commission, the UN peacekeepers and ethnic irregulars pulled from the nation's worst ghettos, would use to find their targets on zero hour of H Day. They also defaced various billboards advertising the latest Meryl Streep film.
Along the way, they took in some mighty fine countryside, and Mearl got to swig a refreshing assortment of locally brewed beers. It was the good life in its way, and sure beat shucking corn.
When the Fox special entitled "The Death's-Head Superbee Report" came on, he immediately took notice.
A blond reporter with the suspiciously foreign name of Tamara Terrill started off the broadcast by asking some fascinating questions.
"Has a new species of killer bee been unleashed upon the United States of America? How many have died, and how has the United States Department of Agriculture covered up the growing threat?"
At the mention of the USDA, Mearl sat up straight. He never trusted the Agriculture Department, or any branch of the federal government except where it came to farm subsidies that he figured were his due. And the word cover-up was one of the most active in his vocabulary.
"More importantly," Tamara Terrill was saying, "has the federal government itself created this death bee in hidden USDA laboratories? And for what sinister purpose? Are these merely superbees or the vanguard of a new kind of bee destined to ravage the globe?
"For the answer to these questions, we begin with the strangely underreported death of insect geneticist Doyal T. Rand in Times Square several days ago."
At that, Mearl Streep hollered for his driver to pull over. Behind him, the Convoy to Freedom likewise pulled over.
"Hey, you men gather around. You gotta see this."
They clambered into the RV, hunkering down on the floor and open seats. Those who didn't fit, crowded around the outside, listening from the open windows.
There by the dusty dirt of the road in Pennsylvania, they watched in growing fascination as an unassailable chain of logic was woven from rumor, facts, innuendo and sloppy reportage. But to Mearl Streep and his Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, it not only rang with truth, but it fit perfectly with everything they believed.
The clincher came when footage from Iowa was shown-footage of the bizarre hours-old ravaging of previously sacrosanct corn country.
"Is this, too, the work of the superbee of doom?" Tamara was asking.
Mearl brought a fist down on his padded armrest, crushing an empty can of Sam Adams. "As sure as the CIA has a surveillance microchip in my left butt cheek," he said, "it's gotta be. I can feel it in my bones."
The program grasshoppered from Iowa to Los Angeles and the successive deaths of two county coroners and "a brave but nameless Fox cameraman who dared to investigate the truth," according to Tamara Terrill.
Then came the portion of the program that made their blood run cold. The program had been hinting at USDA involvement and denials and was leading up to some incredible revelation. When it hit, it left Mearl Streep and his men sitting slack jawed in their seats.
The program cut to a weird mud hive of a building in God alone knew where. And it showed a long drink of weird with the alien name of Helwig X. Wurmlinger denying all manner of schemes and horrors.
The capper came when the TV screen filled with the image of a big dragonfly with red eyes everywhere except on his head. When it took off, showing it was alive, the assembled militiamen jumped in place and began scratching themselves as if feeling vermin on their patriotic hides.
There were other things glimpsed through the window of the "laboratory from Hell," as Fox was calling it.
Roaches with prosthetic limbs. Two-headed spiders. And other things God never meant to be.
And over these accusations came the disembodied voice of Helwig X. Wurmlinger protesting his innocence over and over again, as the evidence of his ungodly tampering with nature filled TV screens all over America.
After the program ended with the promise of further reports from Fox, Mearl Streep sat in his cammies, oblivious to the spilled can of Sam Adams in his lap, and said, "You freedom fighters listen up now."
They perked up.
"Washington can wait. That tall glass of bug juice is responsible for the plague that descended upon God-fearing Iowa. And we as the lawful Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia are duty bound to find, interrogate and squash him and his traitorous works flat."
They locked and loaded, piled into their respective vehicles and right-turned toward Maryland and righteous revenge.
Chapter 31
An Iowa National Guard helicopter ferried Remo and Chiun from the Des Moines airport to the affected area. They were not the only helicopter in the sky. News choppers were everywhere, like noisy crows.
The Guard pilot was ordering them to keep the airspace clear. He wasn't being ignored. Not at all. In fact, a lot of the news teams flew in tandem pointing their glassy-eyed cameras his way and tried to interview him by radio.
The pilot ignored all entreaties to offer a semiofficial opinion of the blight that had descended upon central Iowa.
In back, the Master of Sinanju looked down at the wavy rows of growing corn and made a disgusted face. "Corn. It is a pestilence."
"Get off it, Chiun," Remo said.
"You have tasted its forbidden grains. You are prejudiced."