"It was her!" one of the men panted fearfully.
"Where?" Remo pressed.
"The stairs. She jumped us before we could stop her. I think the shots might have scared her off." They hurried past him, hauling their bleeding friend.
When they realized Remo wasn't with them, two of the men glanced back. They were just in time to see the old wooden stairway door sigh softly shut.
JUDITH WHITE MOUNTED the stairs five at a time.
Her heart thudded madly. It was the fear of a hunted animal.
She was the mouse, cornered by the cat. A fox chased by hounds. A gazelle stalked by a lion.
It was a horrible feeling. A complete loss of control. Utter, utter helplessness and abandonment. She had seen Remo in the basement. Unbeknownst to him, she had watched through a crack in the baseboard on the far side of the cellar as he went up against her two sacrificial lambs.
It hadn't been much of a fight. Ted was dispatched so quickly she didn't even see Remo move. Judith fled before he finished off Evan. She didn't need to stay. She knew what the eventual outcome would be.
Hit the landing running.
Up the next flight.
Six steps at a time now. Faster, faster. Next landing, next flight.
Barely slowing, barely breathing.
She had more of the original tiger solution but she now knew that it would do her no good. The old files of BGSBS stated very clearly that alcohol dulled or even killed the bacteria on which the new gene coding lived. Most of the men in the area had a blood-alcohol level high enough to blind a herd of bull elephants.
Judith had lucked out with the ones she did find. Ted Holstein had sobered up after her morning attack. Evan Cleaver appeared to have dried out a bit, as well. Trooper MacGuire had been unquestionably sober.
The rest?
Drunks. All drunks. Last landing.
Judith pounced forward, slapping a palm against the creaky old door. A plume of displaced dust flew up into the air as the door swung wildly open. She moved inside, quickly shutting the door behind her. Her attic room.
High above her, the tired wooden beams on which she had spent many a night sleeping off her ghoulish feedings stretched toward the distant wall.
Windows lined all but the wall directly behind her. To her left was the parking lot, to her right, woods.
Judith raced toward the last set of windows. During more prosperous times, the long dead business that had once occupied the warehouse had built a new wing out over Chelsea Creek. The four-story wood addition rested on huge pylons that had been constructed atop concrete platforms in the river far below.
At the grimy windows, Judith looked down at the river. Overflow from a dam farther upstream made this area of the waterway treacherous. It was a long drop into swift-moving rapids.
Judith spun from the window, looking desperately across the big empty attic. There was nowhere else she could go. She was trapped.
"Some plan," she muttered to herself.
Footfalls on the stairs. Light as air. Inaudible to a common human. She might have missed them herself if she hadn't been specifically listening for them.
Two fingers poked into her pocket and removed one of the slender tubes of tiger-gene formula. Her plan was bleak. No matter how she looked at it. But perhaps there was another way.
Wild-eyed, she waited for the door to open. And for her new species's final reckoning.
REMO SENSED THE MOVEMENTS coming from the attic room. From the way the animal carried itself, it was either Judith White or another of her tiger creatures.
At the moment, the animal that lurked before him wasn't his primary concern.
He had smelled the smoke before he'd even gotten to the staircase. The gunshots of the retreating hunters had drawn others. Huddled together in the parking lot far below, the men had apparently gotten the bright idea to smoke Judith White out. To this end, they'd set fire to the building.
The wood was catching quickly, too fast for Remo's liking. The stairwell was already filling with black smoke by the time he reached the closed attic door.
The first hints of flame at the bottom of the stairwell four stories below crackled into his peripheral vision as he pushed the old warped door open.
Inside, he found nothing but four empty walls. Judith White was nowhere to be seen. Ever cautious-sensitive to the flames licking up below him-Remo stepped into the vast, airy room. In his wake, smoke wafted into the chamber.
"Here, kitty-kitty-kitty," Remo called. A creak from above his head.
She'd been hiding on the rafter directly above him. Judith dropped, deadweight.
Remo bent double, catching her falling bulk on the meaty part of his back.
As her claws brushed the cotton cloth of his T-shirt, Remo flexed his back muscles and jerked left. Judith White flipped off his shoulders. Twisting, she landed solidly on both feet, facing Remo, her teeth bared viciously.
"You heal quickly," Judith commented, nodding to the spot where her claws had raked his shoulder and chest.
"Good genes," Remo explained thinly.
Her smile was feral. "Better genes," she replied. She dived at him again.
Remo had prepared for her. He was ready to stop her forward momentum as he had with the hunters in the cellar. But as his hand flew out from his side, Judith White did something unexpected.
At the last minute, she dropped low, beneath his rocketing fist.
The command had been sent. Remo's hand was already locked into an unstoppable motion. It flew forward, but with nothing to contact it struck only air. It was all he could do to keep his arm from tearing out of its socket.
He lurched forward as the force of the missed blow knocked him off balance.
Before Remo could regain his equilibrium, Judith sprang up at the inside of his outstretched arm. Both hands balled tightly, she shoved Remo's chest with a strength far greater than her slight form would have indicated. As he toppled backward to the floor, she leaped forward, collapsing on his prone form.
In her hand, Judith held a test tube filled with brown, brackish genetic formula. With a savage grin of victory, she tipped the thick liquid into Remo's open mouth.
CHIUN SPIED THE CROWD Of rowdy hunters the instant he broke from the wooded area behind the adjoining building. They surrounded the warehouse into which Remo had gone.
Much of the ground floor was already engulfed in flame. Acrid smoke hung heavy in the afternoon air. Arms pumping furiously, he raced across the vast space that separated the two warehouses. By the time he reached the building, the second story had already ignited. Flames were racing up to the third. Near the old loading dock, the hunters were enjoying a celebratory drink. Someone had retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel's. from one of the trucks. They were trying to figure out how to pour the liquor into their open beer cans without spilling a drop when Chiun raced up behind them.
"Where is my son?" the Master of Sinanju cried. The voice startled them. Jumping, the hunter with the bottle splashed some whiskey on his hand.
"Watch it, Grampa," the man threatened. He slurped the spilled liquid off his thumb.
"Hey, tha' counts ash your helping," another slurred.
Chiun had neither time nor patience. Plucking a shotgun from the concrete dock, he wrapped a hand around each barrel. He pulled.
With a pained wrench of metal, the two barrels tore up the length of the weapon.
The men were only just becoming aware of what was happening when Chiun's hands became sweeping blurs. The hunter with the bottle felt a tightness at his throat. He only realized that his shotgun had been knotted around his neck when he looked down and saw the stock jutting out beneath his chin. A single skeletal finger brushed the trigger.
"My son, grog-belly," Chiun repeated savagely.