The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

by Paul Malmont

  “Then he started the SFL, the Science Fiction League, and sold club charters through the magazine. He made money off the stationery and stamps and pins and membership dues. So he’s building something akin to the Boy Scouts, y’know? A nationwide network of fans who communicate with each other through his magazine and take their marching orders from him.

  “Now the thing you gotta realize about the fans is that there are two types. There’s the group that’ll read science fiction and other stuff as well, but then there’s this core group that takes it so seriously they won’t read anything else. And you better get the science part right or you’re going to be hearing it. And the core members in different cities start communicating with each other through the letters column and they’re complaining that the mag isn’t publishing their kind of stories, don’t feel like they’re being taken seriously enough, don’t have enough of a voice in the rules or the charter of this club, and they revolt!

  “Some of the core fans in Brooklyn announce the formation of the International Scientific Association, the ISA, a completely fan-run organization. Now old Hugo should have just let them have their moment in the sun and it would have faded away, probably. But instead he treated them as if they were important and he announced, in print, that they were officially expelled from the SFL. This turns them into revolutionary heroes in the eyes of the other core fans, right?

  “Well, in protest, all these clubs start rejecting the SFL and Wonder Stories. This means money out of Hugo’s pocket. So he has to sell the magazine to keep the club going. But what he doesn’t realize is that without the mag he’s got no way to talk to its members. He got shut out and the fans took over.”

  “Amen, brother!”

  “Hear me out! Science fiction magazines are the only mags on the newsstands today where the sales numbers go up every month! So when I say there’s big money to be made in this science fiction writing game, I mean there’s big money there, Otis. It’s virgin territory. That’s what John Campbell believes. And I do too. I have high hopes of using science fiction to smash my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form. I am going to write science fiction stories until my fingers drop off. And I tell you what. It’s gonna make me rich.”

  “From writing?” Otis sipped his beer. “How many rich writers do you know? I guess a fella could do all right peddling hokum, but I don’t know about rich. And speaking of hokum and malarkey, do you think he’s full of crap?”

  The Flash was confused. “Campbell?”

  “No. Gibson.”

  “About what?”

  “About the night watchman. Was that some bullshit?”

  “Well, it does seem a little pulp.”

  “A little? I don’t know, brother. Chinese murderers, and poison gas, and monsters?”

  The Flash hesitated. He felt he had to defend Gibson. This guy, this stranger, had no idea what Gibson was really about. Not the way The Flash did. Who was this Otis Driftwood, anyway, to doubt a great pulp writer like Walter Gibson? If Gibson said there had been a chemical incident at the Providence Medical Lab, then a fella had to believe him, right?

  “Well,” he replied, drawing his words out in a hesitant manner, “real or pulp, I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s a hell of a story and I wish I had dibs on it.”

  “Sure, but…”

  “I’m going to get the next round,” The Flash interrupted, because obviously Driftwood wasn’t going to and he didn’t want to keep arguing about Gibson. He shook the kinks out of his legs and strolled over to the bar. Was it possible that Gibson was still tweaking him the way he had tweaked him with that Sweet Flower story? He leaned against the bar and ordered.

  While he waited for the bartender to draw his beers, he looked over the shoulder of the two teens going through their portfolio.

  “Funny pages?” he asked them.

  “Kind of,” said one. It came out kaand uf.

  “Sort of,” said the other. It came out sert ef.

  “You boys are from Chicago, right?”

  They nodded.

  “We’re trying to sell a comic book story,” one of them said. He had jet-black hair. “Comic books are the next big thing. We came all the way in for a meeting with some publishers.”

  “We got turned down,” the other one said.

  “We got another meeting tomorrow,” the first one said, none too optimistically.

  The Flash looked over their shoulders. As far as he could tell it was a comic strip, even though there were a lot more panels on the page. The crude drawings seemed to show a muscular strongman in circus tights chasing some crooks. “Is he actually wearing a cape?”

  The boys nodded.

  The Flash shrugged and paid for the beers. “Seems to me as long as people can buy a book full of words and stories by real writers they ain’t gonna want to pay the same price for a book of pictures,” he said. “People like to read, boys. It’s the most popular form of entertainment there is! If the movies and radio haven’t got people to stop reading books, then nothing will. And by the way, at least Alex Raymond’s stuff looks good.”

  Feeling pleased with himself for defending his chosen profession so vigilantly (but aware that he had just taken out his anxiety about Gibson and Driftwood on these two poor saps), he left them there and sauntered back to the table. He plunked Driftwood’s beer down in front of him.

  He was just settling back into his seat when the old drunk from across the room lurched up to their table.

  “Aw, come on!” The Flash said. “What are you drinking? You smell like ammonia!”

  “Hey, bub!” Driftwood asked the man. “You all right?”

  The man wasn’t as old as The Flash had thought he was at first. But if it were possible for a man to be a human shipwreck, then The Flash was looking at one. He was thin, thinner even than Driftwood. His skin was waxy and jaundiced, and The Flash was nearly certain that he could see the veins underneath.

  “I used to be a writer,” the man said. His jaw seemed locked in an unsettling position while his lips continued to move. This made it appear as if his voice was not cooperating with the movements of his mouth. The Flash had never seen anything quite like it before. Certainly not from any rummy. “I’m a writer.”

  “Of course you are. Everybody is,” Driftwood said. “Have a seat here, brother, I’m gonna buy you a drink and you’re gonna tell us a story.” The Flash wished that Driftwood wouldn’t encourage the stranger; he was getting an unsettling feeling about him. But Driftwood seemed to really enjoy the whole my-down-and-out-comrade routine, and The Flash could tell that he was getting earnest about speaking with the drunk. The bar was empty at the moment. The two boys from Chicago had packed up and left as soon as The Flash had finished speaking with them. The bartender was outside arguing with a shopkeeper from next door about a truck which had been blocking his store for two days. The bartender was maintaining that he’d had no delivery scheduled.

  The man eased himself slowly into a chair. “Hot in here,” he said. “Too hot.”

  “Because of the fireplace,” The Flash pointed out sarcastically, really hoping now that the man would move along.

  Driftwood shot him a look he wouldn’t have expected from a man who owed him as many beers as he did. Then Driftwood looked back at the rummy and said, “You all right, friend?” His tone was genuine; he was concerned. But there was no response except the man’s slow breathing. After a moment Driftwood shrugged, stood, and said, “I’m going to hit the head. When I come back we’ll get this guy to the hospital.”

  The man seemed to be catching Driftwood’s comment on an echo, lifting his head to watch him depart after a long moment of distracted thought. Hubbard smelled ammonia again. And something else. What was that other scent? Then it suddenly hit The Flash where he had smelled this before, this combination of ammonia and lavender.

  “Christ in a handcar!” The Flash would have leapt out of his chair if the man’s hand hadn’t reached out and curled tightly aro
und his wrist. His clutch was ice-cold. “You’re a Christ almighty dead man!”

  The thin gray man attempted to smile; at least the skin around his lips folded back to reveal some teeth. “Almost,” he whispered.

  “How? How? How?” The Flash’s heart was pounding.

  “Cool air. Ammonia. Certain elements, military elements, which help maintain the viability of life without life. It came to me, lurking in the shadows of my dreams. It’s my own new science. Bionecrology. What do you think? I’m thinking of endowing a chair at Providence College. If I had left any money.” He tried to laugh; it sounded like a cat retching.

  “This is impossible. We buried you,” The Flash said.

  “You came to my house. You talked with my aunt. I heard one of you say you came here. So I’ve been waiting.” His head drooped to his chest momentarily and when, with great effort, it rose back up, it hung to his right and stayed there, awkwardly. “It’s too hot,” he said almost apologetically. “Watched you all at my aunt’s house but couldn’t talk. Wasn’t sufficiently reanimated.”

  The Flash looked on in disgust as a thin black fluid dribbled down the back of the hand still gripping his arm. He clapped his hand over the bony wrist. He instantly realized there was no pulse. And yet he could not remove himself from the clasp. When he pulled his hand away there were bits of flesh clinging to it. The Flash asked in horrified amazement, “Are you rotting?”

  The man’s body jerked with a spasm. He put his hands with their long spidery fingers on the table to steady himself. “Is Walter Gibson coming? I wanted to see him. I tried to call him.” He looked up at them with a pathetically desperate and haunted look in his eyes. A piece of flesh tore free of his cheek, and an eyeball began to sink into its socket. The Flash could see the revealed muscle contracting. It began to turn gray even as he looked. The Flash shook his head and the other man managed an expression that resembled sadness.

  “What happened?” Hubbard asked. “Tell me about the lab. Tell me what happened. Tell me about the gas.”

  “The gas. That’s why I’m here.” He seemed to draw some energy from rediscovering his mission. “In its day it was so new that it wasn’t even given a name. It was just known as ‘the gas,’ or sometimes ‘that shit.’ It’s only effective as a gas for a very short time. It’s extremely volatile in its liquid form, which makes it doubly effective as a gas and an explosive, so even though it dissipates quickly, it covers a lot of ground before. Reaches a lot of troops. In its gaseous state you definitely have to inhale it for it to kill you. It might burn your skin a little, but the gas won’t kill you if you don’t breathe it in. If you do get a full lungful, it kills you fast. So fast you end up looking like you froze where you were. That’s the best death you can hope for.

  “Say you’re a little farther back from the gas when it’s released and don’t inhale it at full strength. It will still kill you, but instead of fast and painful, it’s slow and even more painful. It’ll make you wish you had just taken a deeper breath. Days, or even weeks. All the liquid is slowly drawn out of your organs as you dehydrate from within. Your skin turns transparent and you can practically see the muscles and veins beneath. Through it all, you never lose your mental acuities. Your mind stays as sharp as ever, which is how you want it as your body melts like a candle from the inside out. That’s what happened to me.

  “But it’s while it’s in the liquid state that it is particularly horrifying. It seems that there is something about its nature, when it’s concentrated into that form, that really lets it get into a person in a horrible way. Only a small amount coming in contact with the skin seems to drive directly toward the central nervous system. Your mind goes before your body does. Imagine the worst case of rabies madness you’ve ever seen in a dog transferred to a man. There was a watchman at the lab; I fear for his soul.”

  “Where did the gas come from?”

  The man nodded in his dreamlike way. “Colonel Towers came to us one evening just after the new year with a discovery he had made in some old army files. A record of a weapon lost and forgotten over twenty years ago.”

  “Who’s Colonel Towers?”

  “A frightening man, Colonel Towers. There must be men like him in every army throughout history—the kind of soldier the army can’t do without but fears one day will turn against it. The kind of officer who leads a coup. A Caesar. A Cromwell. Extremely erudite and well traveled. I know he speaks a dozen languages and there hasn’t been a war on this globe in the past thirty years, no matter how far-flung, that he hasn’t observed on behalf of his masters. He journeys wherever the winds of war are blowing. He’s an instigator and a meddler. He doesn’t really have a command, but neither does he seem to be commanded. He’s a man to be regarded with respect, even though he may be of the most villainous nature. A man like Towers needs to be at war, needs a war of his own. I believe that is what he has sought all these years. That’s what led him to discover the gas. And its whereabouts.

  “Harmony Isle. A little outcropping of Perdition on earth. Towers and Jeffords hired the Zephyr and went. I think Towers must have already known the power that was within his grasp and he began to erase his tracks even at that moment, for when they returned, the crew, good local men I had grown up with and worked with, had been left behind. Jeffords insisted there had been an accident. But I think they were abandoned there. It was left to us—the few researchers at the lab, myself, Towers, Jeffords, and the night watchman—to bring the deadly cargo into the lab. Into our lives. Back into the world.

  “Jeffords and his crew worked diligently around the clock. Towers wanted a neutralizing agent, an antidote. Some key which would allow him to open his demon box safely. Meanwhile, he would leave for long stretches at a time. Finally, several weeks ago, I transcribed the fruitful results of the research. A formula. We had discovered Towers’s key.

  “I’ve seen that at the moments of greatest triumph in life, the moments of greatest disaster are not far behind. The metal drum that the chemical was transported in was old and had been rusted by its exposure to salt air. The researchers had taken great care to remove only the amount they needed to work with, so that it needed to be touched only when absolutely necessary. But still, as they say, accidents happen. And then I saw why Towers wanted this abomination. I saw firsthand, in an instant, what it could do.”

  He coughed, unable to clear the rattle from his throat. “Afterward, when I realized I had time to live, I destroyed every bit of our work. I thought that would be enough to stop Towers. That without the neutralizing agent he would be unable to use it. I thought it was enough and I thought I could do more. But I should have known better. And I was so afraid. Of dying.” He tried to laugh and it turned into a seizure which convulsed his body, and he doubled over, his head hitting the table. He brought himself upright, the skin peeling away from his skull where it had impacted upon the wood. The black fluid streamed down his face.

  “What can I do?” Hubbard asked.

  The man slid The Flash’s magazine around to him. “Never got published here,” he wheezed. “Barely ever got published. Not leaving much behind.” He picked up a pen and scribbled something on its cover. He set the pen down. “My last story,” he said. “Get this to Walter Gibson. He’ll get it to someone who can stop Towers before he uses more of the gas. I know he will.”

  He collapsed on the table with a moist thud.

  “Holy hell! What happened?” Driftwood was back. The Flash felt barely able to breathe. One by one he lifted the dead man’s fingers from his arm until he was finally able to remove the hand.

  “Is he dead?” Driftwood asked. Driftwood reached out and gave the bony shoulder a shove. He nodded at The Flash.

  “Goddammit!” exclaimed the bartender, bursting into the room. “Some ass drove an ice truck all the way down here from Providence and then just abandoned it in front for two friggin’ days.” He looked at them. “What the hell’s going on here? Is that guy dying in here? People can’t die in here. We’
ll get a reputation!”

  “Relax, Pete,” said The Flash to the bartender. He picked up the magazine, looking for meaning in the last words the man had written. But all he could see scrawled was cockeyed gibberish. “If it means anything to you, he didn’t really die here.”

  Episode Thirty-Three

  THE URGENT pounding at the door startled her.

  She had been reading a letter to Kenneth Robeson from a little boy in Beavercreek, Ohio, who was nine years old. He had just read his first issue of Doc Savage and had fallen in love with it. This little boy wanted to be a writer when he grew up, just like Kenneth. Norma answered all of Lester’s fan mail. She had a stack to her left and they were all similar to the one she had been reading. As she had reread the letter she heard the young boy’s voice speaking of his hopes and dreams for a meaningful life of excitement and adventure as embodied by Doc Savage. These were Lester’s boys. She had wondered if he ever really knew what an important part of these lives he had become. But she knew when it came down to it that no one understood better than he.

  When she opened the door, there stood two young men she didn’t recognize. One of them was short and stocky and had a loose mop of curly red hair on the top of his head. The other was tall and slender and handsome with deep, dark eyes. The redhead was wild-eyed, as if he had just come from an exciting ball game. The other man kept his eyes down and seemed uncomfortable.

  “Lester,” she called, and the sound of typing stopped. “You have company.”

  “Well. That is some story, fellas,” Lester said at last, looking up from his coffee and giving Norma a sly uplifted eyebrow. “It ends like it should, with the cops taking a body away.”