They didn't see Remo's and Chiun's feet fly out. They only knew that one moment they had been charging; the next they were airborne.
Howling in rage, the last pair soared inside the cell, knocking over the first four, who were still in the process of scampering to their feet. Outside, Remo slammed the cage door shut. A paw tried to snatch at him through the bars.
"See?" Remo said, hopping clear of the swiping hand. "Only pantywaists use whips and chairs." Chiun was already moving swiftly away from Remo.
"Hurry up, Great White Lunkhead," the old Asian snapped.
He bounded from cell to cell, yanking doors shut. Remo raced along the other side of the block. Until then most of the creatures had remained in their cells, feeding hungrily on the unfortunate junkies, rapists and run-of-the mill murderers who'd had the misfortune of being arrested that day. None had been concerned with the two strangers, assuming they could be picked off easily at their leisure. But the clanging cage doors brought sudden realization. Roaring in anger, the beasts in human form abandoned gutted corpses, bounding across cells.
Too late. As the last of the creatures skidded to a frustrated stop, Remo and Chiun slammed the final two doors.
Snarls and howls of rage filled the cell block. Remo scanned the last few cells for one face in particular. As he feared, Elizabeth Tiflis was nowhere to be seen.
"Where'd the one with the keys go?" he asked. As he spoke, panicked shouting suddenly erupted from the far end of the lockup. Gunfire rattled through the station house.
"This way," Chiun insisted.
The two men flew toward the disturbance.
A second door was around a sharp corner at the far end of a row of empty cages. When they turned the corner, Remo found that he and Chiun had not been entirely successful.
The door had been wrenched open. While the keys worked for the cells, the doors to the outside could only be opened from without. While Remo and Chiun had fought the rest, others had apparently been jimmying open the lockup door.
When Remo and Chiun exploded through the cellblock door, a dozen guns aimed their way.
Sergeant Simon stood with a SWAT team. He was panting and red-faced from his sprint through the precinct house.
"Are they after you?" Simon yelled.
"They're locked up," Remo snapped. "How many escaped?"
Simon didn't hear him. By the look on his face, Sergeant Simon was certain Remo and Chiun wouldn't be alone. Anxious eyes awaited the creatures that had to be chasing down the two FBI men. But no one appeared behind them.
"Where are they?" Simon asked.
"I told you, locked up. How many- Hey, Gunther Toody, will you knock it off and listen?"
Sergeant Simon was listening. Angry howls came from inside the cell block. But they sounded far back. The SWAT team was already streaming past Remo, Chiun and Simon. They darted into the dank cell block.
"How many got out?" Remo pressed.
"Five," Simon panted. Numbly he holstered his gun.
The police had sustained casualties. Two men lay dead. A third was sprawled on the stairs, a row of vicious raking gashes across his chest. He groaned in pain as others tended his wounds, awaiting the arrival of paramedics.
"They could be anywhere by now," Remo said. "I guess we'll have to let the cops track them down again."
Beside him, the old Korean frowned somberly. "Perhaps," he said, stroking his thread of beard. "Do you not find it odd, Remo, that some chose to fill their bellies while others schemed to flee?"
"What am I now, the frigging Crocodile Hunter? Some eat, some run. It's what animals do. What?" He could see his teacher was giving him that look. The "Remo, you're an idiot" look. But try as he might, Remo could not see what he'd said to deserve that look. And the fact that he couldn't see why he was an idiot, and the fact that Chiun could plainly see that Remo couldn't see why he was an idiot, only acted to further cement the expression of irritation on the wizened Asian's face.
"Animals flee as one and eat as one," the old Korean droned.
"And mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy," Remo said. "So what? Hey, where are you going?"
The Master of Sinanju had turned away. Shaking his head in annoyance, he padded up the stairs. "What did I not get?" Remo demanded of Sergeant Simon.
Jimmy Simon was staring down through the open cell-block door. Jungle roars echoed from out the darkness.
"Huh?" the police officer asked.
"Forget it," Remo sighed. "I need a phone." Feet heavy, he climbed the stairs after the Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 9
Mankind was destined for extinction.
No matter what bad human poets said, the end for mankind would not come with either fire or ice. There would be no deep comet impacts or continent-sized holocausts. No massive gravitational or tectonic shifts to alter the geography of the planet over which he lorded his supremacy. Man's Earth would not be swallowed by a massive solar flare or turned inside out by cosmic collision with a spiraling black hole.
The ecologists who perpetuated the pollution myth would be proved wrong.
The climatologists would be mistaken about the bogeyman of global warming.
Even the entomologists and botanists who were predicting lower and lower crop yields with resultant mass starvation due to a dwindling population of pollinating insects would be proved wrong.
In the end, the thing that would doom mankind was something so small it couldn't be perceived by the naked eye. Mankind would be undone by his own vaunted technology.
The ultimate irony for a species that more and more valued science over nature.
The species that was Man would die out because the first female of the species that would supersede mankind as lord of the Earth wished it to be so.
While thinking thoughts of the end of human history, Dr. Judith White used her sharp white teeth to tug the stopper from the mouth of the test tube.
The open end exposed a textured black rubber ball. With long fingernails, she delicately withdrew the eyedropper, careful not to lose a single drop of the brownish liquid that hung from its glass tip. With her middle finger, she tapped the hanging droplets back into the tube.
A charcoal filter rested in a shallow pan of water on the desk before her. With great care, she brought the dropper over the pan and gently squeezed the plunger.
Ten fat droplets of the brown solution plopped into the clear liquid in the pan. The pure Lubec Spring water darkened a deep brown.
Judith quickly replaced the dropper in the test tube, clamping the stopper back in place. Slipping the tube in her jacket pocket, she lifted the pan by the edges. With gentle movements, she swished the dark water around.
When she was satisfied that the compound had dissipated, she placed the pan back on the desk. She stood.
"Let it sit for an hour, then reinstall it," she ordered.
Standing before the desk, Owen Grude nodded understanding. "I think I can handle this now," he offered. "I've seen you do it dozens of times."