"My baby!" the mother screeched. But when she saw the miracle of a seemingly frail old Oriental catching her tiny son in his arms and offering him up for inspection, she was relieved.
"The girl next," said Remo.
And Remo lowered a girl in pigtails, dropping her into Chiun's upraised arms.
"You're next," Remo told the mother.
"Thank God. Who are you?" the mother sobbed.
"I'm going to lower you as far as possible," Remo said, ignoring the question, "then drop you. Okay?" The flames had crept down the hallway, eating the wallpaper like a voracious animal, and were licking at the doorjamb. "Don't worry."
Remo hoisted the woman out by her arms. Chiun caught her easily, lightly.
"Now you," Remo told the father.
"I'll jump, thanks." And he jumped. Chiun caught him too.
Remo stuck his head out the window. "That's everyone?"
"You forgot Dudley," the girl in pigtails cried. Tears were cutting rivers down her soot-streaked cheeks.
"Right. Hang on."
"Wait!" the father called up. But Remo didn't hear him.
Remo recharged his lungs, but the smoke had already touched them. His eyes were tearing. He shut them.
In the corridor, Remo danced past the flames, focusing beyond their angry crackle and snap, listening for a sound. Any sound. He zeroed in on a tiny, racing heartbeat. Remo followed the sound to the end of the corridor, where the smoke was thick. He pushed past a half-open door. The sound was low. On the floor.
Remo hit the floor and crawled. He knew that children instinctively hid under or behind furniture when frightened. He felt a dresser, but it was flush to the wall. He knocked over a chair. Then he found a small bed. A child's bed. The heartbeat was coming from under it.
Remo reached in, touched something warm. He grabbed it. It was small and warm and struggled like a newborn, and Remo ran with it. He found a window, shattered the glass to harmless powder with a fast tattoo of his fingers that upset its crystalline structure on the molecular level.
Remo stuck his head out the window. He smelled air. He sucked it in gratefully. Then he looked in his hand. He saw a brown-and-white tabby cat.
"Damn," Remo said. And he tossed the cat, which landed safely in the backyard and scampered off.
Remo went back into the smoke and flames. But he heard nothing.
"Hey! Anyone here? Anyone!" he cried. He had visions of a child, maybe a baby in a bassinet, overcome by smoke and not breathing.
Remo went through the rooms of the upper floor like a frantic tornado. He used his hands and his ears. His eyes were useless, but in his concern he opened them anyway, seeking, searching. And found nothing.
Finally, the flames were too much. He found himself cut off from the stairs. He couldn't get to a window, either.
Remo jumped from a standing start and tore holes in the plaster ceiling. He pulled himself up, and got to the flat roof.
There, Remo took in a recharging breath. Half of it was smoke. He coughed. Tears streamed from his eyes, but not all of them were from the smoke.
The roof was hot. Remo got to the front side. He could see the upturned faces below. A larger crowd was there. Fire engines pulled up. Hoses were being dragged out and attached to fire hydrants by yellow-slickered firemen.
"I couldn't find him," Remo cried. "Just a cat."
"That's Dudley!" the girl in the pigtails yelled back.
"We tried to tell you," the father called up. "I'm sorry."
But Remo didn't feel sorry. He felt immense relief. "I'm coming down," he said.
"Hurry, Remo," said Chiun, his face anxious as a grandmother's.
But Remo didn't come down. The house came down. Eaten by flames to its very shore timbers, it gave way with a great rending creak of wood and seemed to snuff out the fires in the first floor. The roof collapsed in a mass of beautiful sparks and Remo was lost from sight.
The crowd stepped back in stunned horror. They were too shocked to speak or react. Only when the smoke suddenly surged up again to obliterate all the pretty sparks did they react.
The crowd gave a low mourning groan. Except one person. Chiun. The Master of Sinanju let out a cry like a lost soul.
"Remo!" he wailed. "My son!"
Only the spiteful snap of consuming fire answered him.
Chapter 3
Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, last of the line of Masters of Sinanju, trainer of the white American Remo in the art of Sinanju, saw the five-thousand-year history of his art disappear into a boiling mass of crashing timbers and the horror of it shocked him to his very soul.
But only for mere seconds. Chiun bounded into the ruins.
There was no longer a door as such. Just a twisted frame that had been a doorjamb. Chiun went through it, eyes closed, breath held deep within his lungs, willing his body temperature to rise. It was the way of Sinanju when dealing with fire.
The implosion seemed to have knocked out the inferno. Wood burned and smoldered, but not as before. Soon, Chiun knew, oxygen would recirculate back into the ruins and what now smoldered would soon again burn. And burn furiously. The half-collapsed house would become an inferno once more. Chiun had only minutes.
"Remo!" he called.
When there came no answer, the Master of Sinanju knew fear.
Chiun knew that there were stairs near him. He had heard Remo's soft footsteps climb them but minutes before. Chiun went up those stairs, but he found the way blocked.
The Master of Sinanju dug into fallen timber and plaster, clearing the way. If Remo had been a tornado when he had moved through the second floor, Chiun was a typhoon, mighty, raging, implacable.
"Remo!" he called again. Then, in an anguished voice, "My son! My son!"
Chiun found Remo entangled in a pile of burning supports. Remo hung, head down, like a discarded puppet in a junkyard. His eyes were closed in his ash-smeared face. Flames were eating his ragged T-shirt. And worst of all, his head hung at a peculiar angle, his throat pinned between two blackened joists.
"Remo," Chiun said faintly, a deep cold took his mighty heart.
The Master of Sinanju attacked the pile swiftly. He slashed Remo's burning shirt from his body with quick swipes of his long nails. Throwing it away, he next separated the wood that clamped Remo's neck, catching Remo's head tenderly in his hands.