And as he spoke, the thing behind him lunged. Remo caught the flicker of movement, felt the pressure waves as it flew for his throat.
Without looking, he reached out and plucked the creature from the air. Forward momentum brought it up and around. Its spine cracked loud against the toe of Remo's loafer.
The creature exhaled like a punctured air mattress. "Chalk one up for Homo sapiens," Remo said, tossing the carcass aside.
A thrill of fear and confusion rippled through the frozen ranks. It culminated in the full-throated roar that rose from deep in the belly of Elizabeth Tiflis.
As one, the pack charged. Remo and Chiun became swirling blurs in their midst.
Long claws tried to rake Remo's throat. He redirected the talons into the soft belly of a charging male. The television housekeeping expert tried to lash Chiun with her gloveless hand. Animal rage became incomprehension when her arm came back, minus the hand.
She howled in pain at her bloody wrist stump, which, as far as she was concerned, was the very worst of bad things. The cry of terror and animal fury lasted only as long as it took Chiun's long nails to pierce her forehead.
More creatures flooded in. Dozens upon dozens crushed toward the two men in the center of the maelstrom, all fangs and claws and hissing evil.
A male vaulted over the rest in a dizzying leap, paws extended, mouth eager to tear out Chiun's throat.
Chiun's flashing nails-more sturdy and lethal than any mere hunting blades-speared the creature in midflight. Ivory talons opened skin and muscle.
When the male flipped in midair, landing on feet and knuckles, the soft impact of its body caused his exposed organs to flop to the road. He joined them an instant later.
At the Master of Sinanju's side, Remo caught the nearest with a spinning toe to the chin. Vertebrae cracked like snapping twigs.
A thrum of uncertainty washed through the pack. The leaders had already begun to fall back. With them was Elizabeth Tiflis, fear wide on her ashen face.
This should not have been happening. She had been too busy making her escape back in New York. She hadn't seen enough. She had assumed that sheer numbers would overwhelm these two. Yet here they were, darting left and right. More bodies fell before their flashing hands.
Elizabeth was ready to concede defeat, ready to run for the safety of the woods. But to her great relief just as she was about to make a dash for the underbrush, there came from the forest a terrible, ungodly roar.
It was like thunder from the depths of Hell, echoing through the Maine woods. At the frightful sound, birds in treetops took terrified flight, scattering to the heavens.
On the road, Remo and Chiun felt a new fear wash over the dozens of gathered creatures. It was terror mixed with reverence. Heads lowering to sniff the ground, the beasts ceased their attack. One by one they fell away, passing to the sides of the road.
The underbrush deep in the woods cracked and snapped as something made its way toward the road. Whatever it was wasn't small. The ground shook with pounding footfalls. For a moment Remo wondered if Judith White had found a petri dish of Tyrannosaurus DNA. And as the thought flitted through his mind, the trees finally parted and the unseen behemoth stomped out onto the road.
An awed, frightened hush fell over the other creatures.
Remo glanced from the monster on the road to the Master of Sinanju and back again. He put his hands on his hips.
"You gotta be greasing my pan," he said at last, shaking his head in disbelief at the sight of the world-famous boxer.
The Weiss and Associates client had abandoned the rest of the creatures. He had been stalking the woods for the past day, only to be drawn out by the sounds of fighting.
"This is a terrible situation that you have unwantingly rendered upon my quietude," admonished the boxer loudly, in a voice far too delicate and highpitched for his three-hundred-pound frame. "I will remedy the ignomoronious conflagration by bitin' your noise-making head off."
And with a roar that could be heard from Bangor to Portland, he charged. The earth trembled. Shivering trees rained fragile leaves. The other creatures watched in anticipation.
Remo yawned, checked his fingernails and-when the lumbering behemoth was within striking distance-reached out and snagged the charging boxer by the chin. As the dangling man thrashed, snarled, bit and kicked, Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju.
"See, this is what I'm talking about," he insisted. "I know I'm supposed to be careful and all that, but look." He waggled the snapping boxer in Chiun's face.
The old Korean's expression grew irritated. "Do not point that thing at me. Hurry up and finish it off." Remo remembered a rhyme from childhood that used to work with dandelions.
"Momma had a baby and its head popped off," he recited.
And with a thumb under the chin he proceeded to pop the boxer's head off his shoulders. He bowled it up the road where it got stuck under the front tire of a Dodge.
He held out the body of the boxer, shaking it like a headless Kewpie doll for all the others to see. "Where's Judith White?" Remo demanded.
For an instant, three dozen sets of eyes darted toward the bottling plant. And in the next moment, three dozen sets of legs flew off in every direction.
There was a mass stampede for the woods. Elizabeth and the other pack leaders were first to vanish. Brush crunched under running feet as the creatures rushed to put distance between themselves and the two terrifying humans.
Back near the bottling plant, a lone creature turned tail and ran back for the building.
In a matter of seconds there was only one left on the road. He stood near the Master of Sinanju, shaking fearfully in his clam diggers and Hawaiian shirt.
"Holy guacamole," Bobby Bugget muttered. When Bugget saw Chiun's leathery death mask turn his way, he let out a terrified yelp. Like an Olympic diver who had misplaced his pool, he dove headfirst into the thorny bushes at the side of the road.
"What about that one?" Remo snapped, pointing to the nearby bushes where Bugget's bloodshot eyes stared out in panic.
"Leave it. Come! One has fled to her lair!" Spinning on a black sandal, the old man bounded up the road toward the low concrete building that was the Lubec Springs bottling plant. Remo flew after him.
Behind, Bugget's frightened eyes watched them go. He scanned back from the two fleeing figures to the dead scattered across the road. Howls of fear filled the woods.
"Sweet shit-in-a-shoebox," he gasped.
With a whimper, he began desperately trying to extricate himself from the brambles. Before the two men who were scarier than any old run-of-the-mill half-human tiger returned.
Chapter 22
Moments before Remo and Chiun began racing toward the bottling plant, the object of their wrath slipped through the shadows of the Lubec Springs warehouse.
Dr. Judith White had been drawn from her office by the scent of blood. One silent foot dropped assuredly before the other as she crept across the drafty room.
Her acute sense of smell was focused on the familiar metallic tang that clung, rich and heavy, to the clean Maine air, guiding her to the place of slaughter. Judith padded up to the pool of dark, coagulating blood.
The truck driver's face was wax. Glassy eyes stared at the iron rafters. His chest was an empty red husk. Huge toothy tears shredded the meat of biceps and thighs.
She knew the man. He had come to the plant twice to pick up loads of tainted water. With an angry glare, she noted the wedding ring on the man's left hand.
The ring meant family, meant this human would be missed.
A soft growl formed at the back of her throat. "Idiots," she said to the silent walls.
As if in response to her growl of complaint, the side door of the warehouse suddenly burst open. Owen Grude bounded inside, eyes wide and frightened.