Remo followed Chiun through a gap between the rocks. They were positioned along the racecourse. The knee-high grasses were dotted with gnarled trees and shrubs, and all over it the meandering trail was marked with orange flags. Along the path came the runners.
As the rules stipulated, they wore standard summer marathon attire—shorts, sleeveless T-shirts, socks and shoes. This was designed to leave them unprotected from any hazard. Even sunblock was forbidden, and several of the runners were growing pink. The only nonstandard equipment was their headgear—lipstick-sized cameras and microphones. The famous ESN extreme cams fed their signals back to the ESN production base in Jaiboru Junction.
Remo could see their eyes darting nervously about the grasses, watching for dangerous creatures.
“These competitors have no idea what they’re in for!” It was the snake wrangler, who was recording voice-overs as he cut across the grass to intercept the race trail. “This is one of the first real danger zones. Look at this!” He swooped down and snatched a writhing serpent off the ground. “Isn’t she byoot-uh- full!”
The cameraman skidded to a halt and wrestled his camera to his eye to tape the angry snake.
“Hon, look at this lovely little girl!”
“Keep it away from me,” the blond woman warned, backing away in a hurry. The woman began brushing at her clothes.
“She’s a King Brown snake, and she’s about the most attractive snake in this part of the world, but also a vicious biter! A real femme fatale!”
The snake, with dramatic acumen, chose that instant to bury its fangs in the shiny apple cheek of the snake wrangler.
“Oh, gaw!” He pinched the base of the snake’s skull, forcing it to release. “She’s given me a kiss, she has, hain’t you, you pretty little sheila? Luckily, I’ve been bitten by the King Brown about two or three hundred times, thanks to spending my boyhood in the outback with my dear ol’ dad. This has made me almost totally immune to the venom, but gaw, you do not want to try this at home!”
The snake wrangler cut the take. “Give me a minute to get this out of my system, mates.” His eyes rolled into his skull and he collapsed on his back, convulsing. His wife didn’t appear to notice as she batted and slapped her own garments.
“You didn’t tape that, did you?” The snake wrangler was on his feet again in seconds, and he still held the hapless serpent.
“Course, not, Steve,” the cameraman said. “Here they come.”
The snake wrangler twirled his finger to get the camera rolling. “I can withstand a smooch from this darling girl, but the marathon runners don’t have the same resistance. Let’s see how they fare in the first major danger zone on the route!”
“I can’t tell if this is better or worse than Extreme Nude Luge,” Remo commented from their vantage point behind a nearby bush.
“Nothing could be worse than Extreme Nude Luge, save for The Ladies’ Man,” Chiun assured him.
The first-place runner spotted the production crew and ascertained correctly that he was closing in on a point where something dramatic might happen. He went into a series of skips and hops as he found the orange flags leading him over a warren of King Brown birthing nests. The fangs snapped at his shins and never quite connected, but the second-place runner wasn’t so lucky. King Browns latched on to both his calves. The runner screeched and collapsed, thrashing.
“Wow, look at that! There’s a bunch of beautiful young ladies who’re showing this bloke a thing or two! They’re lovely and sleek and really mad about having their nurseries disturbed, and who can blame ’em?” the snake wrangler asked the camera. “I sure can’t.”
“Neither can I,” Chiun added.
“Yeah, me either,” Remo said. “Little Father, does it make me a bad person for not caring about the morons in the marathon?”
“No. But plenty of other things make you a bad person. Would you like me to name them?”
“No, thank you.”
“It will be no trouble, but sadly it must wait,” Chiun said. “I will accompany the leaders. You monitor the stragglers.”
“Say please.” But Remo was talking to himself. Chiun was already slipping through the grasses, his kimono a brilliant shimmer in the sun, although he remained unseen by everyone else. The front-runners had moved past the nest of vipers, who were as a group attacking the fallen runner.
“Gaw, lookit all of those pretty babies. I guess that bloke’s been bitten at least thirty or forty times now!” The snake wrangler was so excited he was nearly doing jumping jacks. “And see that, how they keep bitin’ ’im! They’re just addin’ insult tah inj’ry now. Every one of them sexy serpents has injected all her precious venom already. My wife knows what can happen when you suffer that kind of attack, rot there, Patty?”
The camera cut and the sound engineer slammed a hypodermic into the shoulder of the trembling blonde. She breathed deep, felt the rush, got her nerve, patted her hair and stepped in front of the camera, smiling.
“That’s right, Steve. When I was an outback nurse we saw more than one case where a hiker fell into a King Brown snake nest and there’s nothing to be done.” She smiled pleasantly. “One bite is nonlethal. Two bites is usually treatable if we get to the victim in time. But in a situation like this, it’s not even worth opening the first-aid kit.”
Her husband bobbed appreciatively. “Gaw, yaw!”
“His entire circulatory system is swelling shut,” she said, waving at the runner, who was moving his arms and legs in slow motion. “Kind of like having a heart attack and stroke all at once. Even if he did survive, his arms and legs would all have to be amputated before, they became gangrenous. If he’s lucky, he’ll pass out in a minute.”
“Gaw, what’s lucky about that?”
“Saves him from suffering while he suffocates when his windpipe collapses. There he goes now.”
“Poor bugger!” The snake wrangler waved playfully at the gasping runner, who was reaching out one hand plaintively, begging for release from his misery. “Just a lovely little miracle what those slim little beauties can do, isn’t it?”
Remo heard the whisper of scales on grass and spotted one of the snakes nearby. It wasn’t a part of the attack, so it still had plenty of venom. He was tempted to send the snake flying down the cameraman’s bush slacks, but knew that it wouldn’t shut up the snake wrangler. Besides, the stragglers were now passing over the viper nest, and Remo had his chores to do. He slipped through the grass, pacing them.
They were a sorry-looking-bunch, all ropy muscle and jittery faces. Maybe they were only now realizing how much danger they were in.
In last place was a hollow-eyed, scrawny man who was suffering gastrointestinal distress. Remo kept an eye on him, but the runner was clearly terrified and preoccupied with watching the trail. He didn’t come across like a man about to perpetrate a big cheat.
None of them did. They followed the curves and loops of the trail until they caught up with the snake wrangler again. Remo slipped ahead, moving like a flash of sunlight across the grasslands. He, for one, had no fear of the dangers creeping and crawling in the grass. His major concern was for the remote-controlled cameras that were set up along the trail by the Extreme Sports Network. So far, they were aimed tight on the path and easy enough to avoid.
“Here’s a fresh bunch of beautiful beasties who won’t be too happy when a bunch of big ugly feet come pounding on top of them!” the snake wrangler gushed. “Look at this! Isn’t she a lovely specimen of the whitetailed spider!” His hand was nearly hidden by a big furry spider. “I love you, sweetheart!” He kissed her golf-ball-sized bottom.
His wife, off camera, shuddered and rubbed her arms as if freezing, face becoming ghastly pale.