No Contest

By the time Remo rejoined Chiun in the bushes, the confused marathon runners had started running again—less out of dedication to finish the race and more from fear of staying where they were.

“I hope you don’t want accolades for your performance,” Chiun declared.

“I don’t even want a thank-you,” Remo snapped and kept moving. Just three miles separated the handful of survivors from the finish line.

“What is your hurry?” Chiun asked.

“There’s more in store for these schmucks. I want to see what happens next.” Remo took up a position on the watery shore as the land bridge turned into a jumble of rocks alongside a deep pond. Crossing it was a fallen tree trunk, at least a hundred feet long and dotted with orange flags.

“What makes you believe the challenges are not over?” Chiun demanded.

“Let’s just watch.”

The runners stepped onto the log, slowing to a quick trot. There was no room for passing, and they went single file.

The last runner went slower than the others. He made a show of trying to keep his balance. That was for the sake of the camera. Remo and Chiun saw the lie in his behavior. The runner was scanning the wide tree trunk beneath his feet. He slowed momentarily to step on something, and a nearly invisible mist jetted out of the log a few paces in front of him. The runner entered the mist and pretended to lose his balance, turning a complete circle as he windmilled his arms.

The mist smelled deadly, but the runner was unaffected. After coating himself thoroughly he continued jogging. The mist petered out.

“Bug spray,” Remo said, just as the first of the runners stepped off the log and into a swarm of insects that came out of the trees like a wall of tiny pain machines.

“This is a total and complete surprise! I have never seen Australian cicada killer wasps act like this, not ever!” A hundred feet away, the snake wrangler was talking into a camera that he had perched on a rock. He didn’t need a cameraman or a sound engineer or his blithering idiot wife. He could produce his own field reports. “These gorgeous big buzzers make a nasty sting they do. Not too poisonous, but one sting by itself is rilly painful, and these guys are going to be in super agony. I’d be quite surprised if any of ’em gets to the finish line now

The runners smacked at the wasps, maddening the swarms.

“Those poor chaps are just getting those grand girls all riled up. If they were smart, they’d stay perfectly still, not make a move and just let the wasps come. You might get stung a few times, yeah, but mostly it’s nothing but the sweet, soft tickle of their perfect little feet on your skin. Gaw, that bloke’s in fer it!”

The last-place runner got his second wind and ran like the wind, leaping off the end of the log. The swarms of stinging bugs seemed to flow off him like water, and he just kept on going. Other runners broke from the swarm and loped after him, still slapping at themselves.

“Funny how the bugs didn’t seem to bother that guy too much,” Remo said from his vantage point.

“Yes, humorous, which is why I laugh so heartily,” Chiun said.

The race was as good as over. The competitors who struggled back up again were staggering from the pain, the dehydration, the exhaustion. One man lost consciousness on his feet. Those who managed to push on were slowed to a stiff-legged gait.

The man who had been in last place pretended to be afflicted, but all that was really bothering him was a few minor wasp stings and his clenched bowels. He even let himself collapse once, but then picked himself up and fought for the lead, crossing the finish line with a lead of just a few paces. A hundred people were in the bleachers at the finish line, and they cheered madly at the dramatic finish, only to be drowned out by the roar of a recorded audience from the loudspeakers.

“Do you hear that? The crowd here is going wild!” The announcer wore an ESN blazer, reporting from a newly constructed announcing booth near the finish line. “What a finish! This has turned out to be the most extreme and deadly event in the history of extreme sports! The official count is not yet in, but we have at least ten fatalities! What a spectacle! We’re still trying to make sense of the unbelievable savagery of all the attacks that took place today, but one thing is clear. This was no ordinary marathon. This was competition taken to the extreme!”

Remo and Chiun emerged from the bush, stepping up the steep embankment and onto the junction’s waterfront without being noticed.

“Crikey, I can’t stand listening to another TV announcer,” Remo said.

“He will now interview the winner,” Chiun said. “We will observe their interchange.”

Remo didn’t bother arguing. He knew it was a waste of time.

“He stayed at the back of the pack to conserve energy,” Remo said accusingly as he and Chiun watched from the crowd.

“And to avoid the worst of the challenges,” Chiun added. “Except for the crocodiles.”