"Yes, of course. I'll call you."
Remo replaced the phone as Chiun gave a disgusted sound, flicking off the TV and tossing the remote, which buried itself in the wall.
"No soaps?" Remo asked.
"None."
"My fault?"
"Of course."
Remo sighed. "I'm going for a walk."
Chapter 31
Dawn Summens didn't move. Her face was blank, as if her emotions had been erased.
"I had to do it," Greg Grom apologized. She just stood there.
"I had no choice," Grom insisted.
"Christ, Greg," Dawn said, turning away from the small barred window in the steel door. "It's horrible."
"They'll snap out of it. I'm sure they'll snap out of it," Greg Grom said worriedly, his own alarm growing. Dawn had been too shocked to react at first, but now her face was pale and she looked frightened. She leaned against the bare concrete wall.
"I had to do it," he whined. "The Feds were there. Those special agents I told you about? They were right there! The only way to get away was to cause such a big mess I could get lost in it. So I dosed everybody on the bus."
She looked at him with a stark eye. "Then what happened?"
"They went crazy. Just like all the others. They went on a rampage. It was just, just insanity."
"Rampaging?" she asked.
Greg nodded vigorously. "Yes. Not like they are now. This didn't happen until a few hours ago. They were still full of energy when we locked them up. Then this morning-this."
Dawn didn't want to look again, but she was drawn to the steel door. Through the bars she saw a large, low-ceilinged room containing fully half the administrative staff of the island government, maybe forty people in all, and not a word was spoken. Most of them simply stood in one spot, eyes wide, looking slowly around with bloodshot eyes. Several were pacing the cell slowly. One woman was putting her hand to the cold concrete wall again and again, and Dawn realized she was trying to flatten a spider. It wasn't fast, but the woman moved as if in slow motion and she kept missing it.
"Are they dying or what?" Grom whined.
"I don't know," Dawn Summens said slowly, although her thoughts were beginning to race. Schemes and strategies began to construct and collapse rapidly as she considered how she might use this development to her own advantage.
"What about the others on the mainland?"
"Some are normal and don't remember a thing," she said. "Some of them, if they weren't killed, are just like this."
Grom's jowls and baggy eyes drooped. He was worried. Dawn was delighted. Grom had intended to turn the tables against her, but the tables had lurched a little back in her direction.
"Greg, I'm scared," she said, putting a vulnerable lilt in her voice. "None of the ones on the mainland turned this fast. It took days and days. But it hasn't even been twenty-four hours since you dosed our people. What if they all die? We won't be able to cover it up. Not without GUTX."
"Yeah," he admitted, nodding and avoiding eye contact.
"What about Amelia?" she asked, and was satisfied to see him stiffen.
"What about her?"
"She's the only one missing from the lockup. Don't tell me she was killed?" Dawn pleaded.
"No. She was the only one who didn't get a dose. She's fine."
"Oh, thank God. How's she dealing with all of this?"
"She's fine," Grom said quickly. "Dawn, they're here."
"The agents. The two who've been after me. They were on the morning flight out of Miami. That's where I really need your help now."
"What can I do?"
Grom gave her a sick smirk. "You're Dawn Summens. You know what to do."
THE BEACH WAS rocky and dirty. The ocean wasn't so much turquoise blue as it was sea-slime green. The clientele were less attractive. Around the swimming pool, lounge chair after lounge chair strained under the massive pasty skin-sacks of American vacationers. Not one of them was flattered by the tiny straps and G-strings that were standard swimming attire.
The waiters, all local islanders, strolled among the vacationers and looked tiny by comparison.
Remo went the long way around the pool, but he could feel the eyes on him. There were a few catcalls and three drink offers. One woman jumped off her lounge chair-quite agile, considering her age-and started toward him with a gleam in her cataracts. Remo sped up.
"Not so fast, sweetums! Let's get to know each other over foreplay."
Remo often had problems with overamorous admirers, a side effect of Sinanju training. It had been fun for a week or two, but that was a long time ago. These days, his control over this animal magnetism was inconsistent. Right now he seemed to have lost his edge. He zipped around the side of one of the resort wings and leaped skyward, slipping over the rail of a second-story balcony. He sat there listening as his pursuer came around the corner and stopped below him, wheezing. "Oh, shit," she said.
Somebody else was coming up behind her and making a lot of noise doing it. Through the narrow gaps in the balcony floor he saw a steel walker appear, followed by its owner, who made a deep frown out of her wrinkles. "Where's the kid?"
"Got away. Sorry, Sally."
"Shit!" Sally thumped the walker in frustration. "We still have Duncan and Buck in the suite across the hall. They're eager to please."
"I suppose, but they're so second rate," Sally complained. "The kid with the big wrists, now that was prime beefcake."
Remo was on a private balcony, and now he heard the faint swipe of a keycard and the door opened in the room behind him. The bleached blonde who entered could have been any over-the-hill waitress from any truck stop in the U.S.A. Her sunburned face brightened with happy surprise.
"Hiya, sweetie!" she called to Remo through the glass. She peeled off her I Came To Union Island T-shirt as she headed his way.
Beneath him Remo heard Sally and her friend turning back to the pool.
The bleached blonde had a one-piece bathing suit, and two steps later the bathing suit was wadded up in the corner.
Remo preferred not to make a miraculous disappearance that might get people talking, but Sally wasn't exactly moving at lightning speed and she'd see him if he just jumped down to the ground. If he escaped via the roof, the blonde might start asking around about the flying skinny guy. He was stuck between a skank and a wrinkly place....
The peroxide waitress unlatched her door and at that moment Sally and her companion were gone around the corner. Remo jumped off the balcony-fast enough to escape the blonde but slow enough to look normal.
"Come back!" wailed the blonde, her voice muted behind the glass of the balcony door. "Look what I have!"
Remo tried not to look. He tried hard. But then he looked.
The blonde had pressed up against the patio glass, flattening and expanding her impressively large breasts into pale white circles of flesh that were big as dinner plates and, with a little mashing, getting bigger.
On the beach he marveled at the variety of skin shades. Some vacationers were pale as death. Several of the great quivering mounds of flab were pink turning to scarlet with nicely progressing burns.
Alice Aberwicz, however, was in a class by herself. "Hello, Remo!"
The Reigning Master of Sinanju looked this way and that. There was nobody else in his vicinity who might possibly be named Remo.
"I'm talking to you, silly boy!" Alice Aberwicz waved and smiled from her beach chair. Remo approached cautiously and gazed down at a vast, glimmering, bronzed body.
"Do I know you?"
"I saw you check in last night and asked the front desk for your name. I'm Alice Aberwicz."
Alice Aberwicz wasn't pale or pink. She had a beautiful, bronze tone to her skin. Many hours of careful sunning, turning and basting had to have gone into achieving her perfect overall doneness. Her coating of coconut oil was so thick that it dripped from her elbow when she shielded her eyes from the sun. Being topless, the gesture also hoisted one massive breast off her lap and it, too, dripped oil.