“Now, these perfect little pretties…
At that moment the spider vaulted off his palm and zeroed in on the snake wrangler’s wife, who took a deep breath in preparation for a scream. The spider’s aim was precise. It entered the gaping mouth headfirst, but was too big to fit completely inside.
“Gaw!” the snake wrangler exclaimed as his wife clawed her face and expelled the spider. The snake wrangler scooped it up before it hit the ground, examining it as his wife became noisily sick.
“I never saw one of these sheilas fly before,” the snake wrangler said. “Aw, babe, you killed her!”
The wife was gagging and snatching spider hairs off her tongue, but she stopped long enough to screech at him.
“Poor little girl,” the snake wrangler said sadly—to the dead spider, not his wife.
“I saw you fling a pebble at the spider,” Chiun accused as he stepped out of the brush at Remo’s elbow, not ten paces from the production team. “Such pranks are not helpful.”
“I wasn’t pulling a prank. I was trying to make him shut his bug yap.”
“You only encouraged him.”
The snake wrangler was bobbing in front of the camera and waving his arms wildly. “I don’t know what we just saw, but it was stupendous and amazing! In all my years I never saw one of these luscious little girls jump like that! And to think we got it on tape!”
Chiun gave Remo a smug roll of the eyes. Remo answered by scooping up a handful of tiny pebbles. He flicked them in rapid succession at the flock of whitetailed spiders. The rocks smashed into the spiders and propelled them through the air. As if attacking, the creatures homed in on the cameraman, the sound engineer, the wife and the snake wrangler himself. The crew fled in terror, the wife collapsed and the snake wrangler broke down in tears.
“All of them are dead! Oh, my sweet beauties!” He didn’t even notice the marathon runners as they hopped and skipped through the undergrowth, now devoid of spiders.
Chiun slipped away, leaving Remo with a skewering look. Remo took up the pace again with his stragglers.
“Gotta do something for fun around here,” he said to himself.
The grasslands spilled down a slight hill into heavier low trees and shrubs. Remo could see the leaders far ahead. Chiun was out there somewhere. Eventually the trail’s twists and turns straightened, and the runners in the front were dashing across it, trying to make up time. There was no danger evident.
But Remo smelled sickness in the air. Animal sickness. Mammal sickness.
The runners in the front pack never hesitated when they saw the kangaroos. After all, they were kangaroos. Only Remo sensed danger.
“You kidding me?” he asked nobody.
The kangaroos began to bounce heavily in the direction of the runners, who noticed their foaming mouths for the first time. There were cries of alarm as the kangaroos closed in.
“What’s happening down there?” one of the nearby stragglers asked breathlessly. “Oh, my God, they’re attacking.”
More animals closed in from the sides, attracted by the noise, bursting into the open as the group of stragglers put on the brakes—and the vision of more kangaroos coming up from the rear started them going again.
“More of them!” one straggler gasped.
“They’re rabid!” another shouted.
Remo didn’t know if it was rabies or the black marsupial plague or what, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. A large beast, demented by disease, spotted him and came in his direction. Remo stepped high at the last moment, sailing easily into the upper branches of a small tree. The kangaroo swerved to a delirious stop, trying to find its prey.
“What would you do with me if you got me, anyway?” Remo asked it.
The creature leaped and slapped at him, but found Remo was out of its reach. Remo watched, fascinated as more sick beasts fell on the marathon runners, pounding them, kicking them powerfully, but mostly just delivering body slams. Luckily the creatures were dizzy and weakened by sickness and began collapsing from their efforts. The beast under Remo’s tree fell on its stomach and breathed one last time, blowing foam for yards.
The runners, all but two of them, picked themselves up and continued the marathon.
Remo had spotted the cameras when they entered the valley. They had filmed every glorious second of the exercise. He had a feeling the producers of the show would fail to inform the audience that the kangaroos had been deliberately infected just for today’s special event, but Remo knew it had not occurred by chance.
“This is sick,” he said, as he paced along with the stragglers. TV was sick. Now he was a part of the whole sick television industry.
Well, not really, he told himself. Right?
There was a whine of a Jeep engine coming to intersect the marathon runners’ trail, and the snake wrangler stepped out before the vehicle even came to a halt. His cameraman stumbled out and started taping. Even a thousand yards back, Remo could hear him gushing about the next phase of the marathon.
The race was entering its most dangerous phase: the crocodile habitat.
Chiun was unseen. If he had been visible, he would have looked like a very odd spirit who seemed to float above the ground and drift with an unfelt, swift air current.
He found these proceedings unpleasant and ghastly, and he wished to be done with them as soon as possible. He was also much preoccupied by the behavior of his adopted son.
Remo was often a headstrong oaf. He had been so from the very beginning, and his head strength and oafishness waxed and waned with the passage of the years. But what was he up to now? Was this television foolishness really what it seemed to be?
Chiun knew Remo was making a cry for attention, however wrongheaded his methods. But was he sincerely planning to carry on with this unthinkable, shameful display? Chiun had thought so until today.
Chiun found an observation point along the shore of a thick stew of water. In the middle of the swamp was a narrow shelf of land decorated with orange flags. The ridiculous runners emerged and loped down the trail, eyes peeled for the famous meat eaters. Chiun knew enough of crocodiles. A crocodile would not attack a group of humans.
And yet a crocodile did. The vicious beast with a dark crust lunged from the water, bolted across the bridge and twisted its head to clamp down on the nearest leg it could find before propelling itself into the opposite waterway.
More crocodiles gathered under the surface of the water. Chiun was curious. Crocodiles didn’t attack in large groups unless they were starving. And yet, with a burst of noise and water, the animals loped out of the lake and chased down the runners. There was chaos. Crocodiles plunged into the water with their victims and returned seconds later for another. Soon not a single runner in the lead pack remained. Some of them doubtless still lived, but were likely being tucked away into crocodile meat lockers for a later meal.
This was all interesting and atypical. Chiun made a note to describe the behavior to Emperor Smith the Insane. He would assure the Emperor that the crocodiles in question were quite plump enough.
Remo claimed he was repulsed by this television silliness, but he was without chagrin. Even Remo was not so inane—they were observing the wallowing of the hogs and yet Remo did not see himself as lolling in the same mud?
One of the crocodiles discovered Chiun and homed in on his shadowy place on the shore. It was the big one who had made the first kill. The giant brute slithered below the water, as silent as a ripple on a pond, until he rocketed to the earthen bank and closed his mighty jaws on the gaunt and ancient ankle of a weak and helpless old man.
But the great rows of teeth clacked unexpectedly together. No bony ankle. The giant croc didn’t have time to be surprised before something else happened that was even further beyond the grasp of its crocodilian intellect.