They combed the site, looking for clues the Air Force team might have missed, but found nothing until they approached the crater of loose earth where the earth drill submerged. The crater was surrounded with yellow plastic tape, and there were no footprints on the sands. Remo walked away from it over the path the earth drill might have taken. At twenty paces he stamped his foot hard and felt the vibrations. He walked another twenty paces and stamped again. It felt different.
“Only the entrance to the tunnel was sealed off,” Remo observed. “There’s still hollow space down there.”
“What did you just do?” Mark Howard demanded on the telephone.
Remo knew he shouldn’t have agreed to bring the camera. He hated being micromanaged, but his curiosity was piqued. “I dunno. What did I do?”
“The security on the site was just triggered by the seismographic monitors. Did you push over something big?”
Remo explained his foot stamping. “If you want us to go exploring down there, you had better acquisition a bunch of convicts with shovels. I guarantee you Chiun won’t help dig out a hundred feet of loose dirt.”’
“Remo, forget it and get out of there. The Air Force guard detail is moving in on you.”
They slipped past the converging guards, who saw nothing and no one until they crossed the perimeter of the dig site and found the swollen corpse of Jesus Merienez. It was quite obvious that the dead man had exhumed himself. What other possible explanation was there?
If you’re visiting Topeka and have a craving for sauerbraten, you’re in luck. Alten Haus on Piedmont Avenue is world-famous for serving the best sauerbraten outside of Germany, and the chef responsible is— was—Heinrich von Essen, who began learning to cook when he was just tall enough to reach his mother’s plump knees. When he emigrated to the United States he brought her recipes with him and became the famous Sultan of Sauerbraten. He was credited with single-handedly jump-starting the first American sauerbraten craze of the twenty-first century.
Von Essen’s salary climbed with every new restaurant he defected to, until he found himself in the unlikely metropolis of Topeka, where a wealthy restaurateur was determined to establish the premier German eatery in Kansas. He succeeded.
Alten Haus was booked months in advance. Heinrich von Essen was getting a salary plus a percentage, and he never dreamed he could be so rich. He was on top of the world.
But not for long.
The rear doors flew open and slammed into a garbage can and the cleanup staff started shouting. A sleepy Heinrich von Essen looked up from the legal pad, on which he was jotting down needed supplies. Another five minutes and he would have been on his way home to bed.
His desk was in a private end of the kitchen, and he couldn’t see the cause of the commotion, but he could hear the terror in the voices of his staffers. Then, to his horror, he saw blood splatter across the far end of the kitchen.
Somebody had just been murdered.
Von Essen got to his feet and ran, but someone stomped after him. He didn’t get halfway through the dining room before a tremendous blow cracked the back of his head. He was semiconscious when he saw his attacker.
The deathly pale creature had no eyes. Its face was smeared with blood, which came from the joint of flesh it was feeding on. The joint was a human shin and foot, with a bloody black sock still on it. It was one of von Essen’s kitchen staff.
He thankfully passed out before he saw any more.
When he awoke, he was being dragged across wet grass by his collar. There were hordes of pale humans converging and bringing other captives. Von Essen saw a sign for Paradise Caverns, which rang a bell as a local tourist attraction.
None of it made sense. What was happening?
The blind captors dragged von Essen and the other prisoners through the shattered doors of the ticket building and entrance to the caverns. They crowded into the cave entrance, at the back of the building, and von Essen glimpsed the starry sky one last time through the distant doors before the earth swallowed him up.
They plodded along the paved tour walkways and reached a splashing waterfall. The dim security lights showed von Essen his horrible fate. One after another the blind men plunged into the water, dragging their prisoners behind them. Von Essen didn’t have the strength to struggle.
He was dragged under the water, and the light showed him that the crowd of blind men were pushing and shoving one another as they forced their way through a tiny gash under a rock ledge. One by one the blind men and their prisoners wriggled through it. Von Essen’s lungs were already exploding, and he became lost in the chaos as he was shoved and kicked through the small hole. Just when he thought his life was over, his head broke the surface. He choked and heaved and breathed, and was dragged under the water again.
