Infected: Lesser Evils (3 page)

Who got woken up by feelings? That was just stupid.

It was early morning, full of drizzle and birdsong, and Dylan was sleeping so peacefully Roan didn’t want to wake him up. So he used the downstairs bathroom to shower, shave, and check his pill stash. He briefly wondered what would happen if he took all his Percocets and Vicodins at once—would it kill him? No, how could it? Elephant tranqs didn’t kill him. It wouldn’t be fair to Dylan anyways.

Roan had a piece of toast, gulped down a couple Vicodin with his morning orange juice, and set out for the office. Since he was so early, he stopped by a doughnut shop and picked up a few to bribe Fiona with, as well as give the office a pleasant smell. It smelled kind of dusty and stale, since he so rarely opened the office nowadays; he was getting to the point where he was thinking he should close it up. He didn’t want to sack Fi, though, and he hated to let the space go since he had so many memories of Paris here. Sometimes, on days like these, he expected to unlock the door and see Paris sitting behind the desk, giving him a smartass grin, and he was always so disappointed to find him gone.

He put the doughnuts on Fi’s desk and got down to the paperwork he’d been putting off, half expecting Seb to show up with his temporary new partner and ask him about last night. It never happened.

His mind wandered, and he typed out an e-mail to Dylan, in preparation for the day when he transformed into a lion and didn’t turn back. He may have told him about the secondary tendons last night, but he hadn’t told him about how his aorta walls had thickened, not in a heart disease way but a puzzling way, one that Rosenberg deduced was to shore them up, keep them from spontaneously rupturing when his blood pressure skyrocketed during a change. He hadn’t told him about the fact that it looked like he now had cartilage in his jaw, presumably to help the shift; that he had two teeth that had apparently, at some point, grown back (one had been pulled as a child; the other had been knocked out in a fight), and they were a different density than the other teeth in his mouth. (Why was a bit of a puzzler, but Rosenberg figured they were constants, the same in Human and lion form.) He had what initially looked like bone spurs in his hands and wrists, but what she figured were extra bone and cartilage that became his claws in lion form. Almost all his joints were oddly shaped internally now (luckily you couldn’t really see it on the outside), for what she figured was flexibility. The muscle density in his legs and arms had changed, and she assumed that’s what gave him his astounding long jump and occasional superstrength. There was more, something about his blood vessels changing shape, something about him requiring more protein and iron, but at that point he was too overwhelmed to pay much attention. He kept seeing his X-rays on the light screen, with their weird, almost ghostly bones buried within the normal bones of his hands. Internally, he was transforming—how long until it moved to the outside? How long did he have until he stopped looking like a human being? What would he do then? All he knew was he’d kill himself before he ended up in a fucking zoo, or vivisected in some doctor’s lab. Even Rosenberg looked at him in a strangely avaricious way, like she couldn’t wait to show off his abnormalities to the medical community and make her bones as the greatest infected researcher of all time. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but he didn’t know what to think or feel anymore.

She said the virus was accelerating; she said it was altering more of his genes, and she couldn’t say why. She said it might be part of its life cycle, it’s just that no infected had lived long enough to experience this kind of acceleration. “Maybe the end result of the virus is—or is supposed to be—total transformation.”

Now he remembered. He’d dreamed those words this morning; they had woken him up. He noticed his hands were shaking and he saved a draft, stopped typing, and took another Vicodin. Eventually, the shaking stopped. It occurred to him he had no memory of forcing a change to fix the bone in his hand, but it no longer felt broken.

Fi came in, and they both enjoyed a doughnut while he told her about the resolution of the Rubin case. She didn’t think he should feel bad about breaking his skull since he was a wife-beating bastard, but he didn’t tell her that wasn’t really what he felt bad about. He was terrified that he could no longer control anything—his own strength, his own musculature, the change. He was losing control in increments. One of these days, he wouldn’t have any left at all.

He was about to tell her he was going to close up shop early today, he was in no mood to work, when the door opened and two infecteds walked in. He could smell them before they were all the way through—one lion, one leopard.

One was average height, a bit pudgy, with a figure like a salt shaker, his overly moussed brown hair helmet acting as the round top. He wore dark slacks with a navy blue sports coat that didn’t quite match but was probably supposed to, paired with a pale pink button-down shirt he left open at the collar, like they’d all just time traveled to the seventies. Except for his anchorman hair, he was unremarkable, a whey-faced schlub who wore an expression like he thought he was pretty damn cool, suggesting a level of self-delusion that was awe inspiring. The man behind him wore a matching black suit, like a funeral director, and was nearly an entire foot taller, his body as long and lean as a surfboard, his thinning hair shaved down to a few translucent wisps. He wore black sunglasses and a matching black skinny tie, like an old member of a ska band who refused to change with the times. He was supposed to be muscle, and maybe he was; he could have had wiry, lanky strength, but Roan couldn’t fear a leopard on his worst day. Or any other infected for that matter. Maybe a tiger strain. They smelled more like annoyance than trouble. Salt-shaker man held out his hand and pasted on a creepy smile that didn’t quite reach his incurious brown eyes. “Roan McKichan, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Roan deliberately looked down at his hand like he didn’t know what it was, and then looked at him with the faintest of scowls. “Who the fuck are you?”

The man didn’t let it faze him. He lowered his hand like he’d never offered it and said, “I’m David Bolt.” He said it like Roan was supposed to know it. He didn’t, but he took a wild guess.

“You the new nacho grande over at the Church?”

He smirked. “That’s an amusing way to put it. I was told you were funny.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Now there’s no need to be hostile—”

“There’s every need. Get the fuck out.”

The muscle took a step toward him, and Roan took a step toward him in return, glaring at the lenses of his sunglasses, which he was tempted to slap off his long horsey face. He would be damned if he’d ever be intimidated in his own office. “You wanna try something, Lurch? Really?”

“Hey, now, I didn’t come to fight,” Bolt claimed, waving his hands ineffectually. What was he trying to do, flag down a cab? “I have a proposition for you, Mr. McKichan.”

“And I got one for you. There’s the door—use it.”

Bolt seemed to be deliberately ignoring him. “I know your history with the Church has been a bad one, but we’d like to make amends.”

“By catching the first bus outta town?”

Bolt almost smirked, but stopped himself when he heard the growl coming from the base of Roan’s throat. He couldn’t stop it, and he didn’t even try. Bolt pressed on, although now nervousness was evident, a smell like kelp going bad. “No. Things have been in disarray since Elijah died, and the tragic shooting only brought home the fact that we must be a united front against the prejudice faced by our people. We need a leader who can unite us, take us into battle against the normals who would kill us all.”

“You starting a jihad?”

“Hardly. We just need you.”

Roan wasn’t sure he heard him correctly over his own growling. “What?”

“We need you to lead us, Roan,” Bolt said, and he was dead serious.

It was a good thing he was completely medicated, otherwise he might have dropped dead from shock.

Camera Shy

I
F
THIS
jackass wasn’t yanking his chain—and it really seemed like he wasn’t—then the world had gone from simply insane to bugfuck insane. “You are aware I loathe everything you stand for?”

“I’m aware there’s been a problem in communication,” Bolt replied blandly.

“Are you also aware I’m an atheist?”

“Our Church is open to all of our infected brethren, no matter their belief system. Or lack thereof.”

Roan shook his head. He knew he was incredibly drugged up, so he looked at Fiona, who seemed just as startled as he was, and asked, “Is this actually happening, or am I hallucinating?”

“If you’re hallucinating, so am I,” she replied.

Okay, that settled that. “I’ll give you credit for thinking outside the box, but you’re out of your fucking mind,” he told Bolt.

Bolt shook his head, but Roan could read nothing in his expression. “Am I? You are respected in the infected community, feared by some, and even some of the normals know who you are. It can be argued you’re one of the most famous infecteds existing today.”

“Famous?”

“On a regional level.”

“Umm, no. But thanks for playing.”

Bolt shook his head. “Are you actually playing dumb?”

“You’re blowing sunshine up my ass and I have no idea why. Flattery doesn’t work even for guys trying to get into my pants.” He was hoping the reminder of his extremely gay lifestyle would make Bolt hesitate, and there was an obvious blanching, but it only threw Bolt off his spiel for a moment.

“I’m not sure it’s flattery. Yelling your name in a crowded police station will get you some dirty looks.”

“Yeah, but that’s probably not related to my infected status.”

“You garner a certain respect few other infecteds can claim.”

“If hostility can be interpreted as respect, I’ll give you that.”

He shook his head again, impatience finally showing. “You’re not going to take this seriously, are you?”

“Look, I give you lots of credit for balls, but there’s just no way in hell I’m joining your Church.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Are you seriously asking that? Where do I start? How about your predilection for suckering in Goth kids and other awkward teens and getting them infected?”

He spread his hands out as if offering something. “If you don’t like something, change it. We understand this is a two-way street.”

Actually, that was a tempting offer, and he might have even taken Bolt up on it if he thought he was at all serious. “What if I told you the only thing that would make me happy would be me killing the whole lot of you and burning your Church to cinders?”

Bolt looked utterly bewildered and slightly scared. Fiona cut the tension by interjecting, “Excellent
Simpsons
reference.”

“Thank you. At least someone knows the classics.” Roan threw up his hand dismissively and said, “You made your offer. Please go now.”

“I didn’t expect an answer right away. Please think about it, don’t dismiss it out of hand,” Bolt said, almost pleading. “Call me when you’ve made up your mind.”

“I’ve made it up now,” Roan pointed out, but Bolt and Lurch were already on their way out the door.

As soon as they were gone, he asked Fiona, “Would it have made any difference if I’d said it in a Groundskeeper Willie accent?”

“Probably not. It was totally over their heads.” She paused briefly, clearly thinking something over. “You know, maybe you should do it.”

He stared at her. “Pardon?”

“Come on! There’s no better way to destroy a system than from the inside.”

“So you think I should join them just to bring them down?”

“There’s no better reason. Eli would die a second time if he knew you were heading up his church. It sounds like fun.”

Wow. Vengeance, thy name is dominatrix.

“What, I just join something I know nothing about to run it straight into the ground?”

“Why not? George Bush did it, why can’t you?”

That was an excellent point.

He told Fiona he was closing down early for the day since he’d already had his quota of crazy, which was fine with her since she had a lunch date with Tank anyways (wow, they’d been together almost three weeks—that seemed semi-serious), and while she invited him along, he declined. As it was, he called Dylan to see if he could meet him for lunch. They arranged to meet at Pho Pacific, a Vietnamese restaurant that both was good and had a decent selection of vegetarian food, and was also almost perfectly situated between his office and where Dylan was currently job hunting.

Lunch was good, they talked about everything but his new physical reality as some kind of freakazoid Human/lion creature. Dylan was astonished at Bolt’s offer, but being Buddhist, didn’t think joining just to destroy them would be a good idea. (He’d make a shitty dominatrix.)

After lunch, Dylan went off to a bar that was hiring, and Roan was going to go home and sleep, except it was then the cops called and asked him to come in and make an official statement. He hoped they weren’t going to quietly arrest him, but it might have been a mercy.

It turned out to be an hour and a half of sheer boredom as he repeated his story three different times, and it didn’t change one iota from the night of the incident. As the poor son of a bitch cop took his statement (so new he pretty much squeaked), he found himself wondering if anything Bolt said was true. Did they actually respect him? They didn’t much when he was a cop. But that was before they knew he had superpowers. Perhaps respect varied depending on how much you could do for—and to—a person. In fact, that made perfect sense.

He was able to discover that it looked like Oliver was going to live, and pressing charges would be unlikely, because Nadia’s official statement backed up his (what a shock) and it appeared to be self-defense, and Oliver was violating a restraining order anyways. As for the skull fracture, it seemed to be written off as a “freak accident.” Roan wanted to say
Emphasis on freak
, but kept it to himself.