Aftershock & Others

by F. Paul Wilson

  I also noticed that he wasn’t one to make contact with his good eye, and that his taxi didn’t look to be in the best shape. A warning bell sounded in my head—not a full-scale alarm, just a troubled chime—but I knew if I went looking now for another taxi, we’d almost certainly miss the plane.

  If only I’d heeded my instincts.

  Beth and I sat together in the narrow, low-ceilinged cabin amidships as the driver wound his way into the wider, better-lit Grand Canal where we were the only craft moving. We followed that for a while, then turned off into a narrower passage. After numerous twists and turns I was completely disoriented. Somewhere along the way the canal-front homes had been replaced by warehouses. My apprehension was rising, and when the engine began to sputter, it soared.

  As the taxi bumped against the side of the canal, the driver stuck his head into the cabin and managed to convey that he was having motor trouble and needed us to come up front so he could open the engine hatch.

  I emerged to find him standing in front of me with his arm raised. I saw something flash dimly in his hand as he swung it at me, and I managed to get my left arm up in time to deflect it. I felt a blade slice deep into my forearm and I cried out with the pain as I fell to the side. Beth started screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” but that was all she managed before her voice died in a choking gurgle. I didn’t know what he’d done to Beth, I just knew he’d hurt her and no way in hell was he going to hurt her again. Bloody arm and all, I launched myself at him with an animal roar. He was light and thin, and not in good shape. I took him by surprise and drove him back against the boat’s console. Hard. He grunted and I swear I heard ribs crack. In blind fury I pinned him there and kept ramming my right forearm against his face and neck and kneeing him in the groin until he went limp, then I threw him to the deck and jumped on him a few times, driving my heels into his back to make sure he wouldn’t be getting up.

  Then I leaped to Beth and found her drenched in blood and just about gone. He’d slit her throat! Oh Lord, oh God, to keep her from screaming he’d cut my little girl open, severing one of her carotid arteries in the process. The wound gaped dark and wet, blood was everywhere. Whimpering like a lost, frightened child, I felt around in the wound and found the feebly pumping carotid stump, tried to squeeze it shut but it was too late, too late. Her mouth was slack, her eyes wide and staring. I was losing her, my Beth was dying and I couldn’t do a thing to save her. I started shouting for help, I screamed until my throat was raw and my voice reduced to a ragged hiss, but the only replies were my own cries echoing off the warehouse walls.

  And then the blood stopped pulsing against my fingers and I knew her little heart had stopped. CPR was no use because she had no blood left inside, it was all out here, soaking the deck and the two of us.

  I held her and wept, rocking her back and forth, pleading with God to give her back to me. But instead of Beth stirring, the driver moved, groaning in pain from his broken bones. In a haze of rage as red as the sun just beginning to crawl over the horizon, I rose and began kicking and stomping him, reveling in the wonderful crunch of his bones beneath my soles. I shattered his limbs and hands and feet, crushed his rib cage, pulped the back of his skull, and I relished every blow. When I was satisfied he was dead, I returned to Beth. I cradled her in my arms and sobbed until the first warehouse workers arrived and found us.

  Kim clutched both my hands; tears streamed down her cheeks. Her mouth moved as she tried to speak, but she made no sound.

  “The rest is something of a blur. An official inquiry into the incident—two people were dead, so I couldn’t blame the Venice authorities for that—revealed that the killer had overheard the hotel arranging our water-taxi ride. He borrowed a friend’s boat and beat the scheduled taxi to the pickup spot. The court determined that he was going to kill us, steal whatever valuables we’d bought or brought, and dump our bodies in the Adriatic. They suspected that we weren’t his first victims.

  “I was released, but then came the nightmare of red tape trying to return Beth’s body to the States. Finally we brought her home and buried her, but my life was changed forever by then. The world was never the same without Beth. Neither was my marriage. Angela never said so, but I know she secretly blamed me for Beth’s death. So did I. Angela and I split a year later. She couldn’t live with me. Who could blame her? I could barely live with myself. Still can’t.”

  “But you’re not to blame.”

  “I had a chance to back off before we stepped onto that water taxi, but I didn’t take it. And Beth paid for it.”

  We sat in silence then, each mired in our pools of private guilt. Gradually I realized that the flashes outside were less frequent, the thunder not quite so loud.

  “I think it’s passed us by,” I said.

  Kim glanced around, frowning in disappointment. “Damn. We’ll have to wait for another storm. That could be next week or next month around here.” She pointed to the steel pole. “Oh, look. It’s wet.”

  Fine rivulets of water were coursing down the surface of the steel.

  “So much for my caulking skills. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”

  Kim got on her knees and leaned forward to touch the wet surface and—

  —the tower seemed to explode. I had an instant’s impression of a deafening buzz accompanied by a rainbow shower of sparks within a wall of blazing light; boiling water exploded from the galvanized bucket as multiple arcs of blue-white energy converged from the pole onto Kim’s outstretched arm. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream while her body arched like a bow and shuddered violently, and then a searing bolt flashed from her opposite shoulder into me…

  …the whiteout fades, as do the walls of the tower, leaving ghostly translucent afterimages, and I know which way to turn. I spot the tiny figure immediately, still in her yellow dress, standing so far away, suspended above the treetops. Beth! I call her name but there is no sound in this place. I try to move toward her but I’m frozen in space. I need to be closer, I need to see her throat…and then her hand goes to her mouth, and her eyes widen as she points to me. What? What’s the matter?

  I realize she’s pointing behind me. I turn and see Kim’s ghostly figure on the floor…so still…too still…

  I came to and crawled to Kim. Her right arm was a smoking ruin, charred to the elbow, and she wasn’t breathing. Panicked, I struggled upright and kneeled over her. I forced my rubbery arms to pound my fists on her chest to jolt her heart back to life—once, twice—then I started CPR, compressing her sternum and blowing into her mouth, five thrusts, one breath…five thrusts, one breath…

  “Come on, Kim!” I shouted. I was so slick with sweat that my hands kept slipping off her chest. “Breathe! You can do it! Breathe, damn it!”

  I saw her eyelids flutter. Her blue irises had lost their luster, but I sensed an exquisite joy in their depths as they fixed on me for a beseeching instant…the tiniest shake of her head, and then she was gone again.

  I realized what she’d just tried to tell me: Don’t…please don’t.

  But it wasn’t in me to kneel here and watch the life seep out of her. I lurched again into CPR but she resisted my best efforts to bring her back. Finally, I stopped. Her skin was cooling beneath my palms. Kim was gone.

  I stared at her pale, peaceful face. What was happening in that other place? Had she found her Timmy and the forgiveness she craved? Was she with him now and preferring to stay there?

  I felt an explosive pressure building in my chest, mostly grief, but part envy. I let out an agonized groan and gathered her into my arms. I ached for her bright eyes, her crooked-toothed smile.

  “Poor lost Kim,” I whispered, stroking her limp hair. “I hope to God you found what you were looking for.”

  Just as with Beth, I held Kim until her body was cold.

  Finally, I let her go. I dressed her as best I could, and stretched her out on the cushions. I called the emergency squad, then drove my car to the corner and waited until I saw them wheel
her body out to the ambulance. Then I headed for the airport.

  I hated abandoning her to the medical examiner, but I knew the police would want to question me. They’d want to know what the hell we were doing up in that tower during a storm. They might even take me into custody. I couldn’t allow that.

  I had someplace to go.

  I arrived in Marco Polo Airport without luggage. The terminal snuggles up to the water, and the boats wait right outside the arrival terminal. I bought a ticket for the waterbus—I could barely look at the smaller, speedier water taxis—and spent the two-and-a-half mile trip across the Laguna Véneta fighting off the past.

  I did pretty well leaving the dock and walking into the Piazza San Marco. I hurried through the teeming crowds, past the flooded basilica on the right—a Byzantine toad squatting in a tiny pond—and the campanile towering to my left. I almost lost it when I saw a little girl feeding the pigeons, but I managed to hold on.

  I found a hotel in the San Polo district, bought a change of clothes, and holed up in my room, watching the TV, waiting for news of a storm.

  And now the storm is here. From my perch atop the Campanile di San Marco I see it boiling across the Laguna Véneta, spearing the Lido with bolts of blue-white energy, and taking dead aim for my position. The piazza below is empty now, the gawkers chased by the thunder, rain, and lightning—especially the lightning. Even the brave young Carabinieri has discovered the proper relationship between discretion and valor and ducked back inside.

  And me: I’ve cut the ground wire from the lightning rod above me. I’m roped to the tower to keep from falling. And I’m drenched with rain.

  I’m ready.

  Physically, at least. Mentally, I’m still not completely sure. I’ve seen Beth twice now. I should believe, I want to believe…but do I want it so desperately that I’ve tapped into Kim’s delusion system and made it my own?

  I’m hoping this will be my last time. If I can see Beth up close, see her throat, know that her wound has healed in this place where she waits, it will go a long way toward healing a wound of my own.

  Suddenly I feel it—the tingle in my skin as the charge builds in the air around me—and then a deafening ZZZT! as the bolt strikes the ungrounded rod above the statue of St. Mark. Millions of volts slam into me, violently jerking my body…

  …and then I’m in that other place, that other state…I look around frantically for a splotch of yellow and I almost cry out when I see Beth floating next to me. She’s here, smiling, radiant, and so close I can almost touch her. I choke with relief as I see her throat—it’s healed, the terrible grinning wound gone without a trace, as if it never happened.

  I smile at her but she responds with a look of terror. She points down and I turn to see my body tumbling from the tower. The safety rope has broken and I’m drifting earthward like a feather.

  I’m going to die.

  Strangely, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should. Not in this place.

  Then in the distance I see two other figures approaching, and as they near I recognize Kim, and she’s leading a beaming towheaded boy toward Beth and me.

  A burst of unimaginable joy engulfs me. This is so wonderful…almost too wonderful to be real. And there lies my greatest fear. Are they all—Beth, Kim, Timmy—really here? Or merely manifestations of my consuming need for this to be real?

  I look down and see my slowly falling body nearing the pavement.

  Very soon I will know.

  1999

  The Year of the Almost-Good Script.

  I started off by jumping into a fourth Repairman Jack novel. Legacies…Conspiracies…let’s call this one Tendencies. (Yes, I know—a truly awful title.)

  On March 18, after months of back and forth with the hosting service and the Web designer, www.repairmanjack.com went live. One of the best things I’ve ever done. Somehow, people found it—Jack fans, SF fans, Adversary Cycle fans began to trickle in, hanging out at the forum’s message board, getting to know one another and forming a close-knit community. I participated almost daily and still do. A year later, when I published the URL on the last page of Conspiracies, the membership swelled. It’s still growing, averaging over two million hits per month.

  Sometime around midyear Richard Chizmar asked me to do a story for the novella series Cemetery Dance had been publishing. I’d seen this article in the New York Times that had mentioned how chimps and humans share 98.4 percent of their DNA. It had occurred to me: What if someone increased the share to, say, 99.3 percent? What would you have?

  So I began outlining this story about transgenic chimps called sims. But the more I worked on it the larger it grew, until I told him no way I could squeeze it into 40,000 words. And I couldn’t commit to a major novel because of other books contracted. We talked about it and Rich suggested I do a series of novellas on the theme and he’d publish them as they were written—no deadlines. I loved the idea.

  So I doodled with Sims while working on the RJ novel. When I finished a draft of Tendencies, I sent it to Steve Spruill for his input (he sees every novel first), with the added plea for a title. I couldn’t come up with anything I liked. After reading it Steve suggested All the Rage. Perfect.

  But I couldn’t start Sims right away. In order to do it justice I had to go back and give myself a course in genetics. During my medical school days in the early seventies we knew a tiny fraction of what we do now. What we’ve learned in thirty years blew me away and opened up worlds of fiction possibilities. Trouble is, science is moving so fast you’ve got to keep running to prevent the work from being obsolete by the time it’s published.

  Later in the year I flew to Bermuda for some wreck diving—the island is ringed with them. I wanted to center a novel around a wreck but the story was taking its time coming.

  On the film front, Beacon renewed its option on The Tomb for another year. I was in fairly regular e-mail contact with Craig Spector as he was working through the script. In September Barry Rosenbush sent me the latest iteration and I liked it a lot. Jack was a bit more avuncular than I’d depicted him, characters had been dropped, and a spear-carrier had been expanded to a major supporting role, but all in all it was faithful to the spirit of Jack and the novel.

  Beacon’s distribution deal was with Universal at that time. Universal was enthusiastic about the script, but thought it needed a polish. They wanted a certain writer to do the work, Beacon wanted someone else. Negotiations began.

  This rewrite/polish process would screw up a perfectly good script and push it further and further from the source novel. But I didn’t know that at the time.

  “ANNA”

  Alan Clark’s Imagination Fully Dilated anthology (containing “Lysing Toward Bethlehem”) had been a success, so he decided to self-publish volume two. The same scenario: Pick one of his paintings and write a story around it. I chose “I Become My Resting Place.” It’s one of a series of bucolic landscapes focused on twisted pieces of wood that look like people or almost-people.

  I looked at that painting and saw a wooden corpse. (Google the title if you want a peek.) I asked myself how that could come to be. The answer was “Anna,” a traditional horror story that draws on one of my favorite locales.

  Anna

  The bushy-haired young man with long sideburns arrives on deck with two cups of coffee—one black for himself, the other laced with half-and-half and two sugars, the way his wife always takes it. Rows of blue plastic seats, half of them filled with tourists heading back to the mainland, sit bolted to the steel deck. He stops by a row under the awning. His wife’s navy blue sweatshirt is draped over the back of one of the seats but she’s not there. He looks around and doesn’t see her. He asks a nearby couple, strangers, if they saw where his wife went but they say they didn’t notice.

  The man strolls through the ferry’s crowded aft deck but doesn’t see his wife. Still carrying the coffee, he ambles forward but she’s not there either. He wanders the starboard side, checking out the t
ourists leaning on the rails, then does the same on the port side. No sign of her.

  The man places the coffee on the seat with her sweatshirt and searches through the inner compartments and the snack bar. He begins to ask people if they’ve seen a blond woman in her mid-twenties wearing a flowered top and bell-bottom jeans. Sure, people say. Dozens of them. And they’re right. The ferry carries numerous women fitting that description.

  The man finds a member of the crew and tells him that his wife is missing. He is taken to the ferry’s security officer who assures him that his wife is surely somewhere aboard—perhaps she’s seasick and in one of the rest rooms.

  The man waits outside the women’s rooms, asking at each if someone could check inside for his wife. When that yields nothing, he again wanders the various decks, going so far as to search the vehicle level where supply trucks and passengers’ cars make the trip.

  When the ferry reaches Hyannis, the man stands on the dock and watches every debarking passenger, but his wife is not among them.

  He calls his father-in-law who lives outside Boston. He explains that they were on their way over for a surprise visit but now his daughter is missing. The father-in-law arrives in his chauffeur-driven Bentley and joins the young man in storming the offices of the Massachusetts Steamship Authority, demanding a thorough, stem-to-stern search of the ferry and too damned bad if that will delay its departure. The father-in-law is a rich man, influential in Massachusetts politics. The ferry is detained.

  The state police are called to aid in the search. The Coast Guard sends out a helicopter to trace and retrace the ferry’s route. But the wife is not to be found. No one sees her again. Ever.