“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.
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!
No, it was a volcano. He’d never heard of a volcano in the southwestern deserts of the U.S., but what did he know?
