Aftershock & Others (42 page)

Next day, one of
the green soft heels, a grade-one detective named Brannigan, stopped by to ask about Chinatown. He’d been assigned to look for a missing white girl last seen down there. He was asking about the Mandarin. Hank warned him away, even went so far as to show him the big, weeping ulcer on his shoulder.

Suddenly he was seized by a coughing fit, one that went on and on until he hacked up a big glob of bright red phlegm. The blood shocked him, but the sight of the little things wriggling in the gooey mass completely unnerved him.

“Oh, God!” he cried to Brannigan. “Call the doctor! Get the nurse in here! Hurry!”

The eggs had hatched and they were in his lungs! How had they gotten into his lungs?

Sick horror pushed a sob to his throat. He tried to hold it back until Brannigan was out the door. He didn’t think he made it.

Hank stared at the
stranger in the bathroom mirror.

“It’s not unprecedented,” Cranston had said. “Larva of the ascaris round worm, for instance, get into the circulation and migrate through the lung. But we’ve no experience with this species.”

He saw sunken cheeks; glassy, feverish eyes; sallow, sweaty skin as pale as the sink, and knew he was looking at a dead man.

Why hadn’t he just played it straight—or at least only a little bent—and taken a payoff here and there from the bigger gambling parlors? Why had he tried to go for the big score?

He was coughing up baby millipedes every day. That thing must have laid thousands, maybe tens of thousands of eggs in his shoulder. Her babies were sitting in his lungs, sucking off his blood as it passed through, eating him alive from the inside.

And nobody could do a damn thing about it.

He started to cry. He’d been doing that a lot lately. He couldn’t help it. He felt so damn helpless.

The phone started to ring. Probably Hanrahan. The chief had been down to see him once and had never returned. Hank didn’t blame him. Probably couldn’t stand looking at the near-empty shell he’d become.

Hank shuffled to the bedside and picked up the receiver.

“Yeah.”

“Ah, Detective Sorenson,” said a voice he immediately recognized. “So glad you are still with us.”

A curse leaped to his lips but he bit it back. He didn’t need any more bugs in his bed.

“No thanks to you.”

“Ah, so. A most regrettable turn of events, but also most inevitable, given such circumstances.”

“Did you call to gloat?”

“Ah, no. I call to offer you your wish.”

Hank froze as a tremor of hope ran through his ravaged body. He was almost afraid to ask.

“You can cure me?”

“Come again to Jade Moon at three o’clock this day and your wish shall be granted.”

The line went dead.

The cab stopped in
front of the Jade Moon. Hank needed just about every ounce of strength to haul himself out of the rear seat.

The nurses had wailed, Dr. Cranston had blustered, but they couldn’t keep him if he wanted to go. When they saw how serious he was, the nurses dug up a cane to help him walk.

He leaned on that cane now and looked around. The sidewalk in front of the restaurant was packed with chinks, and every one of them staring at him. Not just staring—pointing and whispering too.

Couldn’t blame them. He must be quite a sight in his wrinkled, oversize tux. Used to fit like tailor-made, but now it hung on him like a coat on a scarecrow. But he’d had no choice. This had been the only clothing in his hospital room closet.

He stepped up on the curb and stood swaying. For a few seconds he feared he might fall. The cane saved him.

He heard the singsong babble increase and noticed that the crowd was growing, with more chinks pouring in from all directions, so many that they blocked the street. All staring, pointing, whispering.

Obviously Jiang had put out the word to come see the bad joss that befell anyone who went against the Mandarin.

Well, Hank thought as he began his shuffle toward the restaurant door, enjoy the show, you yellow bastards.

The crowd parted for him and watched as he struggled to open the door. No one stepped up to help. Someone inside pushed it open and pointed to the rear of the restaurant.

Hank saw Jiang sitting at the same table where they’d first met. Only this time Jiang’s back was to the wall. He didn’t kowtow, didn’t even rise when Hank reached the table.

“Sit, Detective Sorenson,” he said, indicating the other chair.

He looked exactly the same as last time: same black pajamas, same skullcap, same braid, same expressionless face.

Hank, on the other hand…

“I’ll stand.”

“Ah so, you not looking well. I must tell you that if you fall this one not help you up.”

Hank knew if he went down he’d never be able to get up on his own. What then? Would all the chinks outside be paraded past him for another look?

He dropped into the chair. That was when he noticed something like an ebony cigar box sitting before Jiang.

“What’s that? Another bug?”

Jiang pushed it toward Hank.

“Ah no, very much opposite. This fight your infestation.”

Hank closed his eyes and bit back a sob. A cure…was he really offering a cure? But he knew there had to be a catch.

“What do I have to do for it?”

“Must take three time a day.”

Hank couldn’t believe it.

“That’s it? No strings?”

Jiang shook his head. “No, as you say, strings.” He opened the box to reveal dozens of cigarette-size red paper cylinders. “Merely break one open three time a day and breathe fine powder within.”

As much as Hank wanted to believe, his mind still balked at the possibility that this could be on the level.

“That’s it? Three times a day and I’ll be cured?”

“I not promise cure. I say it fight infestation.”

“What’s the difference? And what is this stuff?”

“Eggs of tiny parasite.”

“A parasite!” Hank pushed the box away. “Not on your life!”

“This is true. Not on my life—on
your
life.”

“I don’t get it.”

“There is order to universe, Detective Sorenson: Everything must feed. Something must die so that other may live. And it is so with these powdery parasite eggs. Humans do not interest them. They grow only in larvae that infest your lung. They devour host from inside and leave own eggs in carcass.”

“Take a parasite to kill a parasite? That’s crazy.”

“Not crazy. It is poetry.”

“How do I know it won’t just make me sicker?”

Jiang smiled, the first time he’d changed his expression. “Sicker? How much more sick can Detective Sorenson be?”

“I don’t get it. You half kill me, then you offer to cure me. What’s the deal? Your Mandarin wants a pet cop, is that it?”

“I know of no Mandarin. And once again, I not promise cure, only
chance
of cure.”

Hank’s hopes tripped but didn’t fall.

“You mean it might not work?”

“It matter of balance, Detective. Have larvae gone too far for parasite to kill all in time? Or does Detective Sorenson still have strength enough left to survive? That is where fun come in.”

“Fun? You call this
fun
?”

“Fun not for you or for this one. Fun for everyone else because my master decide grant wish you made.”

“Wish? What wish?”

“To be part of game—your very words. Remember?”

Hank remembered, but…

“I’m not following you.”

“All of Chinatown taking bet on you.”

“On me?”

“Yes. Even money on whether live or die. And among those who believe you soon join ancestors, a lottery on when.” Another smile. “You have your wish, Detective Sorenson. You now very much part of game. Ah so, you
are
game.”

Hank wanted to scream, wanted to bolt from his chair and wipe the smirk off Jiang’s rotten yellow face. But that was only a dream. The best he could do was sob and let the tears stream down his cheeks as he reached into the box for one of the paper cylinders.

Call this The Year of Hollywoodus Interruptus.

It started off well enough. The chairwoman of the 2005 World Horror Convention called to inform me that I’d been elected this year’s Grand Master. That meant joining the likes of Bloch, Bradbury, Matheson, King, and Straub. Cool. Very cool.

IDW (the company doing
The Keep
graphic novel) was planning a new anthology comic modeled on the old
Creepy
and
Eerie
magazines of yore (“yore” being the Hindi word for mid-1960s). They were calling it
Doomed
and asked me to adapt one of my short stories for it. I chose my nasty, bitter Hollywood horror, “Cuts.” They liked that so much they asked me to adapt three more. Over the next few months I scripted “Slasher,” “Pelts,” and “Faces.” After they appeared in
Doomed
, all four stories were to be combined into a graphic mini-collection.

On the Hollywood front, Beacon hired Joel Fields to rework the
Repairman Jack
script to accommodate the young star. I met with Joel in NYC and we talked character. He seemed to have a firm grasp on Jack and I had a good feeling about the work he’d do. After many meetings with the studio and the star, and a number of rewrites, he was able to deliver a new script by the end of the year.

Elsewhere in Hollywood, Lions Gate TV pitched the
Sims
miniseries to the SciFi Channel. After a four-week wait, they passed. Even so, I was told the project was still very much alive (everyone was still “very excited”—
excited
is a word you hear
ad nauseam
in Hollywood) but I wasn’t buying. The
Sims
miniseries died with a whimper.

I got busy on Repairman Jack number ten. The delivery date had been moved from December up to September. I had to start cranking. Once again, I was lost as to a title.

My agent contacted me about Amazon Shorts, a new feature at
Amazon.com
that would allow readers to download a short story for a nominal fee. Could I write something for them?

Let’s see…what’s on my plate? The tenth Jack novel, an RJ short story for International Thriller Writers’
Thriller
, scripting five issues of
The Keep
miniseries, adapting four short stories for
Doomed
, revising the text and writing a foreword to the Infrapress edition of
Wheels Within Wheels
, revising
Reprisal
for Borderlands Press, revising
The Tery
and “The Last Rakosh” for Overlook Connection Press.

No, I couldn’t do a short story.

But I did have a long-lost Repairman Jack piece called “The Long Way Home.” It appeared in Joe and Karen Lansdale’s four-hundred-copy
Dark at Heart
anthology in 1992 and hadn’t been seen since. Show them that.

On the morning of May 11, Amazon, adamant about no previously published material, rejected it. By afternoon they’d reversed themselves. I was told that Jeff Bezos himself had said to screw the technicality in this case.

So I revised the story to bring it into the twenty-first century and sent it in. Amazon Shorts launched in August. “The Long Way Home” became the second most downloaded story during the program’s first six months.

The deadline for Repairman Jack number ten was fast approaching. I was going to make the delivery date, but still had no title. I offered a few story points on the
repairmanjack.com
forum and asked for suggestions. Lisa Krause came up with
Harbingers
, which I thought was perfect. She was honored in the acknowledgments. (See, it pays to hang out at the forum.)

In September Hollywood came a-calling on two fronts.

First, an offer from Showtime’s
Masters of Horror
to adapt “Pelts” for its second season. A fellow named Matt Venne did a great script. Now all we needed was one of their stable of famous directors (the “Masters of Horror” of the title) to choose it for filming. This was not a guarantee:
MoH
commissioned more scripts than it could use.

Next, an offer from Twentieth Century Fox TV to develop
The Touch
into a TV series. Kevin Falls (writer-producer of shows like
Sports Night
,
Arliss
,
West Wing
) would be the show runner.

Kevin and I had a lot of contact—calls, e-mails, dinner—over the next few months. We discussed the changes necessary to turn the book into a series and they were all fine with me. ABC approved the outline for the pilot. The network was very “excited.” (The “e” word again.) He sent me the pilot script in December and I loved it. So did the development people at ABC. Now it went to the head honchos for the greenlight decision. We were competing against ninety pilot scripts, of which only twelve would be shot. We wouldn’t hear until sometime in January.

So the 2005 scorecard ran something like this: All writing obligations successfully completed; one TV miniseries shot down; a TV movie, a TV series, and a theatrical film still in the air.

And all I could do was wait.