The band came to a nervous halt just outside the grotto, making rasping noises that might have been speech.
Remo turned on the flashlight and wedged it in a crack in the wall, filling the grotto with a dismal yellow fight.
Chiun did not object. They had both ascertained that these creatures were blind. Otherwise, why would they travel in the black earth without a fight of some kind?
So the glow stick Remo had tossed up the hall as a lure would be unseen, but if the creatures had enhanced sense of smell, which was almost a necessity, then they would return to the grotto soon enough.
They did, dropping their wordless jabbering to snakelike whispers. One of them ventured through the entrance into the grotto, sniffing with his head hung low, then following the scent, raising his head toward Remo and Chiun and growling hungrily.
Remo saw something that was almost a human being, with the bloodless white flesh of an albino. His hair was white where it wasn’t matted with mud, and a few wisps of white beard showed where they were not sticky with filth.
“Yuck,” Remo observed.
The albino dropped into a crouch, growling viciously, “Food!”
“What do you know, it talks,” Remo observed.
“And climbs,” Chiun added.
The albino’s fingers spidered on the rocks and quickly found strong handholds, carrying the creature up the wall as the others streamed up after him, joining the attack. Remo waited until it was within reach, then snatched the first attacker by the hair. The albino clawed Remo’s arms until Remo gave him a shake so hard his teeth chomped together and broke off in chips and shards. One of the other albinos came within arm’s reach, and Remo used the body of his companion to pound him. The figure toppled off his perch and landed on the rocky floor twenty feet below, motionless.
“Who are you?” Remo asked his captive. The thing growled and hissed. “C’mon, I know you speak English.”
Remo held his hand out experimentally, tantalizingly close to the attacker, whisking it away just before the jaws snapped down on his fingers. The clack of the teeth was tremendous. These were not warning bites; they were take-off-a-mouthful-and-eat bites. The attacker became angrier, like a terrier teased with a dangling hot dog.
“Come on, talk to me.”
“How long will you toy with him?” Chiun asked. One of the attackers came near enough to lunge at the old Korean, and Chiun’s hand sliced through the air, his scythelike fingernails passing without effort through the exposed throat of the animal creature.
Remo’s attacker was startled when he sensed the sudden eruption of blood smell and the crunch of the severed head, then the toppling body reached the rocky floor below. Immediately there was a riot of noise as the albinos descended upon their slain companion.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Remo grabbed his attacker by the wrist and held him out over the grotto, where the creature struggled in vain and slobbered.
“Look at him. All he cares about is getting in on the free lunch,” Remo said. “I have a feeling these guys aren’t going to be offering up a lot of good hard information.”
“And I for one have no desire to witness their feeding orgy,” Chiun added. He stepped off his perch and landed amid the frenzy of cannibalism, robe flapping and hands striking before his sandals were even in contact with the blood-spattered rock. Remo sighed and jumped down with him, lashing out with one hand here and there. In seconds the band of albinos was extinct, save for the sobbing, drooling survivor in Remo’s other hand.
“Boy, he really wants his lunch.”
“Like all whites, his behavior is dominated by his gluttony. Put this one inside a restaurant where fried cattle is served and he will arouse no special notice.”
“Yeah, well, this one might serve some other purposes, too,” Remo said. He released the albino’s wrist and pointed at the rear entrance to the grotto.
“Home, boy!”
The albino went in the wrong direction, making a dive past Remo at the strewed and bloodied corpses, only to find himself somehow back on his feet exactly where he had started. Remo snatched for the creature’s large earlobe and gave it a pinch.
The albino shrieked in pain.
“No din-din. Go home.”
The albino lunged again.
“Who would have thought your eloquent argument would fail to persuade him?” Chiun asked.
“C’mon, dude, I don’t have all day.” Remo gave the albino increasingly painful lessons. The banshee wails became deafening.
Chiun yawned loudly.
“You think you can do better?” Remo demanded. Chiun marched forward and snatched the creature by the neck, paralyzing him instantly. As the wide-eyed, O-mouthed albino toppled, Chiun snatched at its long and filthy mass of hair, twisted it into a rope and grabbed hold of it before the body cracked against the stone floor, then he marched off into the rear tunnel.
“What’s going on?” Remo demanded, following.
Chiun tossed the twisted rope of hair into Remo’s palm, then whisked his own hands together to fling off the detritus. “If there was a shark in a lagoon filled with chum, you would not get him to follow the inlet to the open sea, regardless of how many times you poked him with a stick.”
“Huh?
“But if you tie a rope to his tail and drag him away from the blood smell, he will be more cooperative.”
“Cooperative how?”
“It does not matter how. What matters is that he will no longer be inflamed with blood lust.”
“I don’t see why I would ever want cooperation from a shark.”
“Are you being deliberately dense?”
“Deliberately dense like a fox,” Remo retorted. “Okay, I get it. Whitey’s feeding drive is stronger than all his other instincts, even survival and the need to escape pain.”
“Yes.”
They followed the clear trail left by the band when they had come up, and when they were a mile from the grotto the smell of the blood was erased by the distance and the upwind airflow. Chiun released the albino from his paralysis with another pinch of the neck nerves, then pushed the groggy creature to its feet.
“Home, Whitey,” Remo said.
The albino lunged with two hands and his chomping jaws, brought up short when Remo ghosted out of the way and flicked him in the ear.
The dismayed albino dropped into a crouch, cranked his head back and forth, then sprang wildly at Chiun, who stepped out of the target zone at the last possible instant. The albino’s senses told him his prey was still where it should be until the moment he crashed into the rock floor. Then he was on his feet, howling in frustration.
Remo moved in and tapped him on the shoulder. “Here, Whitey.”
The albino attacked, and grabbed empty air. Remo tapped him again and again until the albino was a frantic dervish lunging in all directions. The dismayed creature finally collapsed blubbering.
Chapter 16
Interstate 10, passing south through New Mexico just before crossing into Texas near El Paso, was lined on either side with barbed wire and warning signs. Some were faded beyond legibility, but the newer signs read something along the lines of:
DANGER
UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE.
WHITE SANDS MISSILE TESTING RANGE.
DO NOT LEAVE HIGHWAY.
The message was then repeated in Spanish for the benefit of illegal aliens traveling from Ciudad Juarez.
Jesus Merienez had never actually seen any live ordnance during his fourteen trips on this route. This time it was no different.
In fact, at night, far from the interstate, with the sun down and the air cool, the missile testing grounds were delightfully secluded and peaceful.
Then, just as he was tossing away his last Tecate can and preparing to crawl into his bedroll, the earth started shaking under his feet. He screamed. He tried to run. Some American bomb was exploding right under his feet! Exploding very slowly!