Dream Thing

“You have gained great wisdom,” Chiun said, and he stepped forward, striking out in both directions. His hands seemed to reach three times their length, and his fingernails plunged into living flesh and bone like dipping into a bowl of tepid water. He rotated his wrists with a flick and was back standing where he had been.

Two Mad Scots lost perfectly circular sections of bone, heart muscle and meat, as if the cavity had been formed with the sharp end of a sawed-off beer can. Blood flooded out and their bodies collapsed into it.

Remo moved into the attackers with deft, efficient movements. Some he touched lightly on the chest and neck, and they dropped hard. Others he pushed and shoved with finesse, sending the Mad Scots flying into garbage cans, walls and each other. They hit with such tremendous force they were crushed or broken beyond repair. In seconds there was nothing left living in this small corner of London except for a few cowering riot police.

The Masters of Sinanju strolled along the street, intercepting pockets of fighting that amounted to nothing more than one-sided cop beatings. Remo’s ire was rising with every murdered policeman he counted.

“You know what?” he announced. “I changed my mind again. I do care.”

He was talking to a Mad Scot whose tartan was sodden with blood. Blood oozed from his sash. Blood trickled from his skirt. It dripped from his farm boots to the ground, which was a long way down. Remo had one hand flattened against the gangbanger’s massive stomach with such force it kept him firmly pinned against the wall of a clothing store.

“Can’t breathe,” the fat Scot gasped.

“Neither can that guy. Or that guy. Or those guys in the gutter. Answer the question.”

Chiun waited in repose.

“Don’t know what yer talking—”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s a simple question and I want a simple answer. Why?”

“Why what?” the fat man gagged.

“Hands off, Yankee fucker,” ordered one of the fat Scot’s friends.

Remo wondered if the Mad Scots accepted only chronically obese members.

“Fine,” Remo snapped, and took his hands off the four-hundred-pounder, but not before giving him a little extra bit of a shove—which smashed his abdomen with force akin to being rolled over by a big truck. The four-hundred-pounder made a grotesque noise, then his body fell heavily and permanently.

“You fu—”

Remo snatched the leader of the Fat Pack by the face and held it tight—so tight the others heard the cracking of skull plates. The leader swung his crowbar and his handgun at Remo’s arm, but Remo shook him by the head with enough force to render him semiconscious. He hung, suspended by his face.

“Are any of you not as stupid as you are fat?” Remo demanded.

“Fuck—”

Another foulmouthed fatty was on the verge of triggering his 12-gauge at Remo from ten paces away. Remo crossed the distance, flipped the gun, nudged the man’s trigger finger and returned to the fat leader before the leader fell six inches. The shotgun blast disemboweled the gunner.

“I want an answer and I don’t want to hear the word ‘fuck’ again. Got it? Now answer.” He aimed one deadly finger at the closest Fat Scot.

“What’s the question?” the gangbanger stuttered.

“Why. The question is why.”

“Why what?”

The stuttering Scot was backhanded with such ferocity he never saw it coming and he never felt it hit. The others saw it. They saw the crushed head detach messily and arch into the night.

The rest of them ran but they didn’t run far. Something pummeled into them and sent them sprawling onto the bloody streets. It was the body of their huge leader.

“You. Answer,” Remo ordered the fallen leader.

Dimly aware of what was going on around him, the leader of the Fat Pack said, “We’ve been wronged. The British enslave us.”

“Not good enough.” Remo pulled him to his feet by his head and twisted it 180 degrees. “See those cops? They’re dead. You murdered them. I used to be a cop. I don’t like it when people murder cops. I especially don’t like it when they murder cops without even having a good reason. Now I want to know why.”

The leader had lost his ability to speak—or breathe or think—when his spine was twisted out of its socket. He was dumped and Remo went to the others, who were now lying paralyzed among heaps of the dead police.

“Well? Got an answer? You give me a good answer and I’ll let you live. How ’bout you? No?” Remo snapped his palm into a skull and broke it. “Next! You?”

“Uh—uh—uh—”

“If I had a dime for every time I heard that answer from a politician and/or murderer,” Remo replied acidly, and then he snapped out the killer’s lights.

“By reason of insanity!” the next man shouted.

“That I believe,” Remo answered.

“So you won’t kill us?”

“Not kill you? Crazy or not, you’re a piece-of-shit cop-killer. Bye.”

He grabbed the man off the ground and dropped him on his last surviving buddy. Dropped him hard. Dropped him with such force that the bodies could never be separated.