Infected Freefall

by Andrea Speed

  That was a huge mistake. Roan jerked his arm away violently and backed away from him. “Don’t touch me unless you want to pull back a bloody stump.”

  “Okay. I understand that—”

  “You don’t understand shit! You don’t know me at all.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed reasonably. Dylan didn’t know it, or at least wasn’t consciously aware of it, but he had his own version of the cop voice. “I don’t know you, not really. None of us can completely know another person. We can’t inhabit their skin, see from behind their eyes. We can only guess, project, do the best we can. I love you, Roan, and I want to be a part of your life if you’d let me. But you’re in so much pain—”

  “Fuck you! I don’t need this bullshit,” he snapped, turning to go, stalking toward the door. “Do whatever you fucking want with your painting—it’s your painting. But don’t expect me to be around to see it.”

  “Roan, please don’t go away angry.”

  “Too late,” he said, opening the door and storming out like a big old drama queen. He was absolutely furious with himself, with Dylan, and he wasn’t sure why. The painting upset him, but why? He wanted to rip it off the easel and put his fist through it, then tear the remains into confetti. And he wasn’t sure why. The hell of it was he was absolutely enraged, and he didn’t know why.

  Was it Dylan’s know-it-all attitude? His sense of unearned wisdom? His implication that he didn’t fight the lion but fought himself? How would he fucking know? The stupid bastard wasn’t even infected, didn’t live with this goddamn thing hijacking his DNA and turning his body inside out for the sheer fucking fun of it, making him a freak who actually had to worry about ripping out his stupid boyfriend’s fucking throat when the virus took over, or worry about ripping a robber’s head off his shoulders like a bottle cap even when the virus was dormant. He was starting to become something else, and Dylan had no fucking right to imply it was just him, that it was all his hang-ups or his “shadow” or whatever the fuck swamping him, and that he just thought of it as the lion because it made it easier to excuse, easier to blame, freeing himself from any responsibility.

  It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Nothing was that simple. Nothing.

  Except this was exactly what was necessary, wasn’t it? It was time to break away from Dylan, let him go. If he was smart, he’d call him to meet for coffee tonight, somewhere public and neutral, and tell him he couldn’t be in this relationship. Roan stood on the sidewalk outside The Elysian and wondered if Connor had ever thought that, that Roan should break away for his own good, just grab his shit and run for the hills. Could you be self-destructive and not be aware of it on some level, even if only for a single fleeting moment?

  This was bullshit. He wasn’t Connor, he didn’t have a fucking death wish, and he wasn’t his own worst enemy, or whatever it was Dylan was implying. Being a Buddhist didn’t make him the fucking Buddha; he couldn’t see into Roan’s mind, and he had no enlightenment to offer him.

  Roan headed for his car, only wanting to crank up These Arms Are Snakes, bury himself in the sonic wash of their chaos, and pop a couple of codeine, if only to take the edge off his anger. He really needed to go home and work the heavy bag, although that wasn’t what he really wanted to do; he wanted to get into a fight, a big one, burn some of this adrenaline off. But for the life of him, he had no idea why he was so mad.

  He noticed there was a buzzing against his side and realized it was his cell phone, set on vibrate, going off in his coat pocket. He pulled it out and answered with a sharp, “What?”

  “Whoa, who pissed on your Wheaties?” Murphy replied.

  He sighed through his nose and rubbed his eyes. “What is it, Dropkick?”

  “Are you actually being pissed at me? Really? Considering you stood me up?”

  He suddenly remembered he’d agreed to meet her at the office and give her copies of the photos he took last night, trailing Dallas Faraday. “Oh shit, is it three-thirty already?” Even as he asked, he looked at his watch and indeed confirmed it was a quarter to four. “God, I’m sorry, Murph. I got… caught up in something.”

  “It sounds like you’re gonna bust a nut. What the hell’s going on with you? Those church assholes still threatening you?”

  “Oh, yeah, but they’re gnats. Who gives a fuck about them? Look, I’m not far from the office. You still there?”

  “Sitting in the parking lot, feeling like an ass,” she confirmed.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, heading down the sidewalk and reaching into his pocket for his keys. “I’m really sorry, Murph. Today’s been kinda shitty.”

  As if to confirm that, a young man suddenly veered into his path on the sidewalk. Roan stopped short of a collision, but he knew instantly something was wrong. For one thing, he was infected and hadn’t showered in maybe a day, so the scent of his strain—cougar—was strong on him. But not strong enough to conceal the scent of gun oil.

  He had a hand in his coat pocket and the flat, dead-eyed look of a suicide bomber. Roan instantly knew who he was and why he was there even before he said, “We warned you.”

  Roan grabbed for the man’s weapon as the concealed gun went off.

  5

  Bad Sects

  ROAN had grabbed the gun barrel hidden in the man’s windbreaker pocket just as the guy pulled the trigger, but the odd thing was he didn’t realize it. It was an unconscious reflex, one that had reacted to the danger faster than he ever could have consciously.

  Roan had shoved the barrel aside as the gun went off, and he felt a deep pain in his hand—like a wasp sting, hot and sharp—while he heard the sound of glass breaking somehow over the ringing in his ears, as well as the sound of someone’s startled yelp on the sidewalk behind him.

  He was within kissing distance of this guy now, and noted he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, his short black hair greasy, as if he hadn’t washed it in a week, his face cratered and pockmarked with old acne scars and angry red bursts of more recent acne still blooming on his cheeks. His eyes were an uncomplicated blue and as empty as a bar after three in the morning. He was quite plain, and even with some photoshopping, he’d never be a handsome man. Or a sane one.

  The man pulled the trigger again, but by this time Roan had the gun aimed away, and he was vaguely aware of a dull metallic noise as the bullet slammed into a parked car by the curb. Roan had dropped his phone, dimly aware that Murphy was still talking, and drove a fist into the kid’s stomach, so hard he doubled over and all the air seemed to leave him in a rush. He grabbed the kid’s greasy head and drove a knee hard into his face. Roan heard something crack and then felt warm blood gush down his leg.

  He threw the kid on the sidewalk and ripped his hand out of his pocket, pulling out the gun as well. The kid started to move, but Roan kicked him in the stomach, making him gag. “Don’t even think about moving, motherfucker, or I’ll stomp you into a fucking stain.” Roan retrieved his phone, which somehow hadn’t shattered and was still working, and as he brought it up to his ear, Murphy was still talking. “—ere? Roan?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Did I just hear gunshots?”

  “Yeah. One of the cat cultists just tried to kill me.”

  “What?”

  “Traitor!” the kid screamed hoarsely from the sidewalk. He was still curled up in fetal position, looking up at him with accusing eyes, but his eyes were fixed on his piece-of-shit Saturday night special, which Roan was now holding on him. “You will die in agony just like your faggot boyf—” That was as far as he got before Roan kicked him in the face. He didn’t know if it knocked him unconscious or just stunned him, but he shut the fuck up.

  “Holy shit, I’m calling it in,” Murphy said. “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  He reeled off the address and only then noticed that his right hand—the one holding the Saturday night special—was bleeding like a stuck pig, splattering his blood all over the sidewalk. Now that he was thi
nking about it, he realized it was numb, but he could move all his fingers and still had a hold of the gun, so he must have been kind of okay. “He needs an ambulance more than me, but I think he nicked my hand.”

  “Nicked it? As in with a bullet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Roan, oh my god, were those gunshots?” Dylan asked, exploding out of the apartment building. He was still barefoot but had shrugged on a gray sweatshirt. He just stared at the tableau in front of him for a moment—the guy curled up on the sidewalk in a small puddle of blood, the blood gushing from Roan’s hand and the gun in it—and seemed to understand that yes, he had indeed heard gunshots. “Fuck. Were you shot? Is he shot?”

  “No one’s shot,” he assured him. “Except a car. Which doesn’t count.”

  A slender, bald black woman wearing worn jeans and a paint-splattered T-shirt advertising a “Dykes With Bikes” rally came out of the apartment building and asked, “Dylan, what the hell was that noise?”

  Dylan jerked his head toward him, and Roan smiled at her. “Hi. Sorry, this guy just tried to kill me.”

  She stared at him with wide brown eyes. “Are you shitting me?” She glanced at Dylan, and he shook his head no, he wasn’t shitting anyone. Dylan then said, “De’Andra, this is my boyfriend, Roan. Roan, De’Andra.”

  Roan nodded to her, keeping his phony smile pasted on. “Nice to meet you. I’m not usually beating down a punk-ass bitch.”

  His would-be assassin spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth and ground out in a raspy voice, “Traitor. Fucking race traitor.”

  “Race traitor?” De’Andra repeated.

  “We’re both infected,” Roan explained. “Only he’s a religious nut bag.”

  They could all hear police sirens approaching, and presumably an ambulance as well. “This isn’t over,” the kid gurgled, staring up at him balefully with one eye. The other was facing the sidewalk.

  “You’re right, it’s not,” Roan agreed.

  “You’re gonna die, you arrogant fuckhead—”

  “Shut the fuck up, pendejo!” Dylan exclaimed angrily, walking over and kicking him in the back. Of course he was still barefoot, so it didn’t have a great deal of impact, but it was more symbolic than anything else. They exchanged a glance over the kid’s body, Dylan’s eyes sad, apologetic, asking for forgiveness. Roan felt bad, not sure why he was angry at him. Oh yeah, that painting. Why did it piss him off so much again? Damn, he still didn’t have a hold of it. Rather than give Dylan much of anything, he crouched down and asked the kid, “Who do you work for? Heather or David?” Those were the two still fighting for the leadership of the Church of the Divine Transformation: Heather Dow, Eli’s last girlfriend, and David Harvey, a former assistant of Eli’s.

  The kid spit blood at him. It mostly missed. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Finally a police car screamed up to the curb, just behind the car that had got shot (the bullet had taken out the passenger-side window), and a couple of cops got out. One of them, a young guy whose brush-cut hair was almost totally hidden beneath his cop cap, pulled out his gun and shouted, “Drop the weapon!”

  “Holster it, Tim, this is McKichan,” the other cop, Stephen Kwan, snapped. Kwan was a fairly tall, broad-shouldered Asian man with a raw-boned face and a cynical attitude he wore like a lead cloak. Unlike his young partner, “Tim,” he was wearing his bulletproof vest.

  Tim seemed reluctant to do it, but had to comply as Kwan wandered into his line of fire. “I take it this is the guy who attacked you?” Kwan asked, although it almost wasn’t a question.

  “This is him. This is also his gun. You might want to put on your gloves before you take it from me.”

  Kwan looked at his bleeding hand carefully, pulling out latex gloves from a pocket and snapping them on. “Yeah, I see that. He bite you or somethin’?”

  “Nicked it.”

  Kwan raised an eyebrow as thick and black as a permanent marker line. “Another slug? Wow, Roan, you swallow a magnet?”

  “It’s starting to feel like it.”

  “Don’t touch me, you fucking pigs!” the kid shouted hoarsely, as Kwan took the gun from Roan’s hand. Kwan snickered. “That’s right, guy, butter us up. That’ll look good on your record.”

  “Be careful,” Roan warned them. “He’s infected.”

  “Well, shit,” Kwan sighed. “Tim, read him his rights, but first… Roan, can you…?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Roan stepped over the kid and turned him over so he was facedown on the sidewalk. Roan knelt on him, putting his knee on the small of his back and pinning him down, dropping his cell phone back in his pocket. He struggled, but Roan grabbed his arms as he cursed and spat and held them so Tim could slip the plastic ties on him as he mechanically recited the kid’s Miranda rights.

  An ambulance pulled up, screaming, to the curb, and it looked familiar. Indeed, Shep, Dee’s EMT partner, hopped out of the back as the doors opened, but Dee didn’t come out after him. No, this time he was accompanied by a reasonably muscular Latina with her hair cut in an unflattering bob. Her face was too round to carry it off.

  “I knew it,” Shep drawled, his voice still carrying a trace of a Southern accent. “Shooting in broad daylight, you’re involved. I must be psychic.”

  As the woman started toward him and the kid, Roan said warningly, “We’re infected.”

  She paused, then shrugged, continuing onward. “That’s what the gloves are for.”

  “You make any aggressive moves, I’ll Taser your ass,” Kwan threatened the kid, pulling out his Taser and showing it to him. “In fact, I might just do it for fun. Call me a pig again.”

  The kid sunk into a sulky silence. Kwan wasn’t bluffing, and they all knew it.

  Shep motioned Roan over to the ambulance rig, and he went, dimly aware that Dylan was following him. Roan sat on the back bumper as Shep cleaned off his hand with bottled water to look at the wound. It turned out it wasn’t a nick—there was a hole in the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, about the size and shape of a pencil hole, the flesh around it flash burned by the powder. Dylan, who sat on the bumper beside him, out of Shep’s working area, gasped upon seeing it. “Holy shit! That must hurt.”

  He shook his head. “It’s numb.”

  “Shock,” Shep said, carefully examining the wound, judging what it needed. “Sometimes after bodily trauma you feel nothing. For up to an hour. Then it starts hurtin’ like a motherfucker.”

  “Where’s Dee? You two not working together anymore?”

  Shep looked at him from beneath his bushy blond eyebrows. He was a rangy guy but solid, not too skinny, and reasonably good-looking, with brownish-blond hair and gray-blue eyes, good-looking enough that Dee often remarked it was a tragedy he was straight and married. For his part, Shep thought that was funny, which is probably why they’d been able to work together. “You don’t know? He’s on sick leave. Lupe’s filling in for him.”

  “Sick leave? I didn’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while, though. Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “Naw, just the flu. We got exposed to it a couple weeks back when we picked up this lady that collapsed in her home. I didn’t get it, but he did. Them’s the breaks, I guess. I think I’m gonna wanna take you in for this, Roan. It’s too small technically for stitches, but there’s no way it’ll close on its own in anything less than a few months. They can use some surgical glue to shut it.”

  Taking him in meant taking him to the hospital, but Roan was already shaking his head. “Just pack it with gauze. I’ll be okay.”

  Shep raised an eyebrow at this, and Dylan said, “Hon, now’s not the time to be macho. You were shot in the hand.”

  “I have surgical glue at home in one of the emergency kits,” he said, and Dylan gave him a look like he knew he was lying. “It’s gonna save me a couple hundred dollars in medical bills if I do it myself. Believe me, I know how to do it. I’ve been infected all my life, and under siege for about half of it.”

  Dyla
n seemed to concede the point, although again it seemed he knew Roan was lying. Maybe this was his way of asking forgiveness, by forgiving him for being such an asshole. It was a very Buddhist way of thinking… well, as far as Roan understood it. Maybe it was just Dylan being generous.

  Shep snorted in disbelief. “I’m gonna hafta record you as leaving against advice. You know that, right?”

  “I know.”

  “You know what Dee’s gonna do to you when he hears about this?”

  Roan sighed and nodded. “I’ll batten down my hatches.”

  Dylan slipped his hand inside his good hand, fingers entwining with his and giving him an encouraging squeeze. Why was he mad at him again?

  “I think this guy needs a dentist more than a hospital,” Lupe, the fill-in paramedic, reported. She’d shoved a small twist of gauze up inside each of the boy’s nostrils, and they were already turning red. “Looks like he took a puck in the face.”

  “He attacked me,” the boy shouted, blood drooling down his chin.

  Shep scoffed. “Sonny Jim, he has a hand wound. Any numb nut who’s seen an episode of CSI knows hand wounds are generally defensive wounds. Try that again.” Shep prepped a needle and injected him in the palm of his hand. Roan knew it was a painkiller and was secretly thrilled, but he also knew it was probably just a localized one, akin to Novocain, nothing he’d feel beyond the wrist. Shep then attached sterile cotton balls on both ends of the wound (blood made them stick), and started wrapping his hand with sterile gauze. Blood was starting to seep through already.

  Kwan hauled the boy up to his feet by his plastic-tie cuffs and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “I wanna lawyer,” the kid replied, still sullen. Kwan was patting down his coat, reaching into his jeans pocket, and the kid tried to squirm away, exclaiming in disgust, “Fuck, you’re a butt pirate too?”

  “I’m lookin’ for your wallet, asshole. Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I patted him down,” Tim said nervously. “I didn’t feel a wallet.”