"Well, it sure isn't you I'm going to see on next month's GQ," said somebody just behind Virgin Killer Miller. Miller could have sworn there was nobody there a second ago.
Then a hand with unnaturally thick wrists came from behind him and clamped onto Miller's forearm. Miller released his hold on the pretty boy because he couldn't help it. Over his shoulder he saw that the thick wrists belonged to a skinny guy with dark eyes.
Miller put all his considerable body mass into an explosive roundhouse punch with his free fist, but somehow he missed. Miller's weight carried him in a circle, and he found himself facing the same direction he had started in. His head gyrated wildly, but now he was alone. Could he have possibly hallucinated abut a skinny guy with thick wrists?
Something blurred at him from very nearby. Miller's last thought was, Oh, there's the skinny guy now.
DON "FORK" BORK, leader of the Nashville Road Sharks, couldn't believe what he was seeing when the shrimpy little guy did some sort of a judo jab that sent Virgil into a sudden spin. Virgin Killer Miller was a massive slab of meat that should have taken hydraulics and diesel power to manipulate.
Then the shrimpy guy who did the judo trick vanished, reappeared out of nowhere and poked Virgin Killer in the face. Not a two-finger Moe-poke to the eyeballs, but a one-finger stab at the forehead. A red blossom appeared an Virgil's forehead. Virgil rolled his eyes up at the gaping hole, then collapsed without a sound.
Fork wouldn't have thought it possible to get more angry than he already was. The Road Sharks had been so filled with their righteous indignation that Fork postponed their plans for the night. That liquor store and its gook owner would be there for the taking tomorrow. The Rock Hard was an insult that needed to be avenged now. Every man and woman in the place was an enemy of every Road Shark.
And now one of those men had just killed Fork's blood brother.
"You'll pay for that, sonny," he growled.
Remo Williams found himself on the receiving end of a real-estate broker who had been reduced to a mess of wild limbs in a thousand-dollar suit. The real-estate broker made a noise like a siren, which ended in a question mark when he was intercepted with amazing gentleness.
Remo put the guy in the expensive suit on his feet. "Well, don't just stand there," Remo said, waving at the door.
The man sped off. Fork Bork bellowed and came at Remo, and Remo moved to intercept. Fork never saw him coming.
What Fork saw was his own arms leaving, one in either direction. The blood was leaving his body, too, in gushes. That couldn't be good.
As sneering bikers closed in on Remo from all directions, he grabbed Fork about the beer belly and twisted the armless one into a spin. His impromptu sprinkler sent blood splattering in a perfect circle in all directions. Bikers slipped and slid until they collided in a messy jumble around the legs of their friend without the upper extremities, who collapsed atop the pile, his eyes fixed and open.
Amid the confusion and shouts, one of the bikers rose out of the tangle of bodies. And he just kept rising and rising until he stood at seven feet six inches.
"Cripes," Remo observed, now standing outside the mess. "The beer-and-cigarettes lifestyle agrees with you."
"You. You will die."
"Not before he trains his replacement," Chiun announced, emerging from the darkness with a pair of bodies skidding across the floor before him. His nimble feet seemed to reach out here and there to nudge the bodies and guide them in the direction he wished them to go.
"Souvenirs?" Remo asked.
"Did you not say we need to get information from the rabble before they are rendered into rubble?" Chiun bent over the battered bodies and asked in his most polite singsong, "Which is the leader?"
The bodies stirred. One of them raised a quivering finger at the armless corpse. "Him. Fork."
"And Virgin Killer." The dying man pointed at the one with the head puncture.
"Fork and Virgin Killer?" Remo asked incredulously.
"Good work, Remo." Chiun sighed. "I see you've managed to kill just two hoodlums thus far and one of them happens to be the one we needed to keep alive."
"Give me a break," Remo answered. "Hey, you." He snapped his fingers over Chiun's bodies. "Who's next in the line of command?"
One of the bikers who still clung to life raised his eyes to the giant. Then he raised his eyes to heaven and said a strange word, which ended in a final hiss of breath. "What did he say, Belltower?" Remo asked.
"He said Belfagore," intoned the seven-plus-footer. "I am Belfagore."
"What kind of name is that?"
"It is one of the names of Satan," the giant thundered.
"Oh, brother."
"And I will dispatch you straight to hell, little man!" By this time the surviving ranks of the Road Sharks biker gang were on their feet, and Remo saw deranged vitality in their eyes. He'd seen it the day before in a certain crack house.
Belfagore raised one long arm and stabbed the air, shouting, "Kill them!"
The Road Sharks struck fast, overpowering the throbbing music with banshee battle cries. Their movements were adrenalized out of human proportions as they tore into the two Masters.
The two Masters were gone, though. The small mob stumbled to a halt, shouts dying in their throats until the shouters started dying themselves. Remo pushed a pair of skulls against each other and removed his hands fast before the gore splashed them. He leaped around their collapsing remains and reached wide with both hands, inserting a finger deep into the ear of one Shark and the chest of another.
Chiun stood watching Remo as the heart-puncture victim flopped to the ground. The old Master was the picture of peaceful composure, hands tucked in his kimono sleeves, as if he were unaware of the three Road Sharks sprawled dead at his feet, let alone claimed responsibility for them.
"What was that 'Kill them' all about?" Remo demanded of the Road Sharks' new leader. "You trying to do a whole Batman TV show thing on us? Were you expecting some CRAACKK!s and KERPLOW!s? Notice that the real world doesn't work that way?"
Belfagore was astonished at the nearly instant annihilation of his gang.
"So?" Remo demanded. "What's the deal? Why are you doing this? What's your problem?"
The Shark closed his mouth and began to quiver.
"He is mad," Chiun declared resignedly.
"No kidding. Belfagore's got serious bats in his belfry."
"No. I mean he is angry."
Belfagore made a sound like a komodo dragon whose goat haunch has been taken by another komodo dragon.
"Ya think?" Remo asked Chiun, then stepped aside and nudged the charging giant, who tumbled with tremendous momentum across the bloody floor and crashed through the last few upright lounge tables. Then he leaped to his feet, shouting incoherently and charging again.
Charging fast.
Belfagore launched himself at Remo but Remo stepped out of the way, so Belfagore was sliding again, head-first this time. A wall stopped him hard.
"Ah, crap," Remo said.
But Belfagore wasn't dead or even unconscious. He used the wall for support as he rose to his feet, and his eyes seemed incapable of focusing.
"I'm surprised you don't make accordion sounds when you breathe, Belf. I think you're three inches shorter. Don't you think, Little Father?"
"Four inches," Chiun said.
Belfagore staggered at the Reigning Master of Sinanju, grunting and croaking.
"Oh, just give it up, would you?" Remo stepped aside and tripped the giant. Belfagore fell down, and it was a long way down.
"That was for your own good." Remo crouched beside the biker. "You'd have killed yourself running around like a maniac, which would rob me of the pleasure."
Belfagore made agonized sounds when he was flipped onto his back. He coughed blood and didn't have the strength to grab Remo by the throat.