Dr. Death by Nick Carter - [Killmaster 100] Page A

left."
    There were three of them at the door. In the dim, shadowy light, I could see grotesque, misshapen limbs, faces with features eaten away, empty eye-sockets, stumps of arms. I could also see the glint of two knives, and the deadly bulk of a length of lead pipe as they moved slowly toward me.
    But it was the figures on the left that sent a cold chill down my spine. There were five, six, maybe more, and they had all arisen from beds, to slide warily in my direction.
    They were lepers with contagious cases. And their half-naked bodies moved ever closer, scaled with white, ulcerous swellings protruding horribly from sick flesh.
    Li Chin had moved to my side.
    "One of your western philosophers once remarked," she said calmly, almost conversationally, "that my enemy's enemy is my friend. Do you agree?"
    "For the moment," I said, "absolutely."
    "Then let us defend ourselves," she said, and her body moved into a slight crouch, the hands sliding out in front of her in what I instantly recognized as the classic Kung Fu position of readiness.
    What happened next happened so fast that my eyes could barely follow it. There was a sudden movement in the group of lepers by the door, and the bright flash of a knife blade flickered through the air. I spun out of the way. Li Chin didn't move. One of her hands darted upward, twisted, made a swift parabola, and the knife was again in motion — toward the man who had thrown it. He gave a scream that ended in a choke as the blade skewered him through the neck.
    The next instant the room exploded in a chaotic blur of movement. The lepers moved forward in a group and hurled themselves at us. My right foot shot out to find its mark in the belly of one attacker as I stabbed forward with rigid fingers the solar plexus of another. The lead pipe whooshed past my shoulder. Hugo was in my hand, and the man with the lead pipe dropped it as the lethal blade sliced into his neck. Blood spurted from the carotid artery like a fountain. Beside me, Li Chin's body moved in a smooth, snaking motion, her arms twisting and dropping, and a body tumbled grotesquely through the air to fall crumpled, the head at an impossible angle.
    "It's no use, Carter," I heard the hoarse croak of Diaz' voice come from somewhere in the semi-dark. "The door is locked from the outside. You will never get out now. You will become a leper as we are."
    I sliced Hugo through the air in front of me, forcing back two half-naked lepers with reaching hands.
    "Your clothes," I snapped to Li Chin. "Don't let them rip your clothes and touch you. They're trying to infect us."
    "You are going to rot away as we have, Carter," came the hoarse croak again. "You and the little
chinita.
Your flesh will drop from…"
    The croak ended in a gasp as Li Chin crouched, spun, fell back with a grasping motion, and sent Diaz' body hurtling against the wall with the force of a catapult. His eyes went white, and then closed as he fell. At the same moment, I felt a hand clawing at my back, and heard a tearing sound. I whirled, straight-arming the leper back with one gloved hand as Hugo sliced in at an upward angle toward his solar plexus. He crumpled, blood running from his mouth. A piece of my sterile gown was still clutched in his hand. Turning, I caught sight of Li Chin twisting out of another catlike crouch, the body of a leper tumbling toward the wall. Her gown had been ripped, too. For a fraction of a second our eyes met, and the same thought must have occurred to us simultaneously.
    "The door," I said.
    She nodded slightly, and her body once again became that of a cat. I saw her leap onto the desk Jorge had been using, then perform an impossible flight over the heads of three attackers to land near the door. I was right behind her, using Hugo to clear the way. When we stood together at the door, we had barely seconds before the lepers would be on us again.
    "Together!" T snapped. "Now!"
    Our feet shot out simultaneously, like twin battering rams. There