Infected: Lesser Evils

by Andrea Speed

After a toilet flush and water running in the sink, Dyl opened the door and said, “‘Dominion’. Why?”

  He tossed the magazine onto the opposite end of the bed, really wanting to tear it up, but he figured Dylan wanted to keep it for some perverse reason. “I knew you were a goth.” The song lyric had just popped into his head for some reason, but he felt admitting that might let on how crazy he was.

  “Well, duh. I was a tormented, angsty, artistic teen. If emo existed then, I would have been that.” He held up his wrist and pointed at it, even though it was currently covered by a watch. “I have the scars to prove it.”

  See, they had that in common, except Roan didn’t have scars on his wrists. Everywhere else, sure.

  It was like old home week at Panic. Mighty Mouse was working as bouncer on the door, and after giving them bone-crushing bear hugs waved them through. Once inside the very loud club, they were greeted with a very enthused reception as soon as the bartender and regulars recognized Dylan. They got drinks on the house as Dylan leaned over the bar and asked Jeremy if Hardy was around. He wasn’t, he’d been and gone, but one of the guys at the bar, a tall Japanese kid with long emo-styled hair (speak of the devil) dyed a pale brown and streaked with blue, said he could show them where Hardy lived. It was only a couple of blocks away.

  There were introductions all around, and the kid, named Darby (really?), led them out, chatting the whole time. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-three, and he seemed wired, but drinking vodka and Red Bull could do that to you, especially if you combined it with something. Roan could smell chemicals coming from him, and asked what he took. “Adderall. Want some?” He told him he was more of a downer guy and declined. Darby went on to say he was only into “safe” drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall (safe to whom?), and he didn’t count booze or pot, ’cause they were harmless. (What the fuck…?! Obviously he’d never been called to a drunken domestic disturbance.) He said he’d heard about burn, that it took all pain away (which would explain its attraction to the infected), but he wasn’t curious enough to try it. The kid jabbered and twitched, but he seemed nice enough. Still, had Roan been this much of an idiot when he was his age? Maybe. He was dating Connor then, wasn’t he? So yeah, he was.

  Hardy lived in a slightly run-down apartment complex called the Rochester, on the street where the gay part of the city joined the poor side of the city. A group of youths in baggy clothing with gang colors were huddled near the base of the stairs, smoking cigarettes laced with something chemical, and the young men eyed them warily as they went up the stairs, but didn’t do or say anything. Roan found himself wishing they would, just so he could burn off some energy.

  Hardy’s apartment was on the top floor, and they could hear the stereo (and Roan could smell the drugs) in the stairwell about two levels down. Of course Hardy was having a party (it kind of rhymed—was that where the name Hardy came from?) and Darby didn’t bother knocking, he just walked in. A repetitive, simplistic bass line rolled over them, something rap, but the stereo was so loud the high tones had fuzzed out and he couldn’t figure out for the life of him who it was, and they had to shoulder their way through a crowd of half-dressed kids. Some looked no older than fifteen, and some of the women were already down to their bras, dancing to the wolf whistles of drunken, stoned men. There were a couple of girls on the couch kissing, faux lesbians who were being cheered on and urged by even more men. The place smelled like beer and sweat and testosterone, the light fogged by a miasma of pot and crank smoke, and much to his surprise, a girl in a crop top who couldn’t have been eighteen grabbed Dylan from behind and asked loudly if he wanted to do a body shot, while the jailbait in the bra who grabbed Roan wasn’t so subtle, she grabbed his crotch. He ripped her hand off and shoved her away—perhaps a little too violently—while Dylan just peeled the hands of his admirer off and said he didn’t drink.

  Darby knew exactly where he was going, which was disturbing. As he led them to the bedroom, Roan noticed that one of the faux lesbians looked strangely familiar—a hooker? Yes. How many of these girls were working girls? Oh shit, the room was filled with women willing to fuck for drugs. Jesus.

  The bedroom was pathetic. Just a mattress and box spring wedged against the far wall, an overturned crate serving as a table for a thrift shop lamp, and a pile of dirty clothes lumped next to a slightly deflated beanbag. Sitting slumped on the mattress in a pile of flat, stained pillows was a scrawny white guy with a dragon tattoo on his neck and a naked woman tattoo on his left pec. He had a shaggy mullet that looked like it hadn’t been cut or combed in a year, and while he had a bit of a beer gut, the fact that he was wearing nothing but a pair of low-riding board shorts revealed that he didn’t have a single scrap of muscle tone. Roan could smell his body odor from the doorway.

  Sitting on the mattress with him were two girls—hookers? Or just junkies?—both exceptionally scrawny women, the white one down to her bra and panties, the Hispanic one wearing a miniskirt that could have been made out of a napkin and a tube top that was just barely covering her breasts. The white girl had track marks and a cesarean scar on her belly, while the Hispanic one had a tattoo of a heart on her calf. So was he bisexual? Must have been, if he’d dedicated himself to getting into Dylan’s pants. The guy—Hardy—had a glass crack pipe in his hands. “Fu Manchu, how ya been? ’Sup, Toby? You look awesome.” His eyes lingered on Dylan in a way that suggested obvious lust. Yep, bisexual, or just gay for Dylan. (Possible. He was that good looking.) “Who’s the dude?”

  Roan volunteered, “Gob.” Dylan looked at him askance. What, he couldn’t make an Arrested Development reference?

  Nobody got it. Darby said, “They wanted some burn.”

  Hardy shifted on the mattress, idly scratched his ass. “Burn, huh? You guys don’t look like the type.”

  “I’m infected,” Roan volunteered.

  “Me too,” Dylan lied.

  This seemed to change the dynamic in the room. Both girls moved back on the mattress, like they might get it from proximity, while Darby looked at Dylan in wide-eyed shock. “You’re infected? Wow, when?”

  “Recently.”

  “I’m outta burn,” Hardy admitted. “Want somethin’ else? Got some oxy.”

  “Out?” Roan repeated in disbelief. “How can you be out?”

  “Ever’body’s been wantin’ it tonight. Fuck if I know why.” He paused to fire up the crack pipe and take a hit. The smell was so astringent to Roan’s sinuses it made his eyes water, even from this distance. After exhaling the smoke with an almost orgasmic sigh, he added, “Try the church.”

  “The church?” Dylan repeated.

  “Divine Transformation?” Roan guessed.

  Hardy nodded, passing the pipe to the white girl. “There’s some guys that have been selling to the kitty fuckers—’scuse my French—and they usually show up for whatever shit they’re doing. I shoulda thought of it, it’s a lucrative market, but it’s too late for me to branch out now. It’s Spaz’s territory.”

  “Spaz?” Often dealers went by nicknames. For some reason, Hardy and Spaz just seemed like very white, suburban nicknames to him. “Who the hell is he?”

  Roan had no idea if Hardy was going to tell him or not. He opened his mouth to say something, but there was a loud noise followed almost instantly by screams and an animalistic roar in the front room.

  “What the fuck…?” Hardy exclaimed, jumping to his feet, as all of them turned to look at the bedroom door.

  Roan felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he instinctively growled and his hands curled into fists. There was a noise, a little crackle, and if anyone had been looking at him they might have noticed the skin on his arms boiling as the muscles twitched and shifted shape. But no one was looking at him.

  The screams continued, there was a firecracker pop of gunshots, but that just made the roaring and screaming worse. It was a leopard, and he heard from behind him the click of a gun’s safety being toggled off. “No guns,” Roan said, not bother
ing to turn around. He was now growling loud enough that Darby gave him an alarmed look and retreated to the back of the room. Dylan didn’t; he stayed right beside Roan as he stalked toward the door. “If you can’t get a decent head shot you’re just pissing it off. Whatever happens, stay behind me.” That last bit was for Dylan alone, but he didn’t mind if the others stuck to it. He didn’t know if it would help or not.

  He didn’t really know if he could hold the lion back enough to keep himself from attacking the people. But he supposed he had to try.

  10

  Cosmonaut

  IF ROAN’S adrenaline wasn’t surging before, it was now as he plunged into the front room, a beehive of panicked activity as people ran, hid, fought, or just desperately tried to escape. The place smelled of fear and blood, and the lion was dying to burst out of his skin and join the party.

  The leopard was long but scrawny, suggesting he’d been a thin male, but not so thin that he couldn’t throw around two-hundred-pound men like beanbags. Roan had to fight his way through the throng and roared, as much a challenge as the cat version of Get out of the fucking way, and he made some women scream while the panic ratcheted upwards. He was aware the bathroom door was hanging by a single hinge, and right in front of it the leopard was munching on one of the frat boy types who had been cheering on the faux lesbians. One guy grabbed a kitchen knife from a drawer, and before Roan could say anything (could he speak? He felt he was losing the ability already) he plunged it into the leopard’s side. It looked like he was going to yank it out and stab it again, but the leopard turned with a roar of pain and sunk its teeth into his arm. Now the man screamed and punched the leopard in the head, as if that would make it let go of him, but the leopard just shook its head like a dog, making the man stumble as he screamed/sobbed in pain.

  Roan jumped, tackling the cat and wrenching it away from the man as they rolled on the floor and he slammed the leopard bodily into the wall. The man still had most of his arm, but not much; blood was gushing to the floor, and his arm appeared to be three-fourths off, held on only by a few strands of sinew and a fragment of bone. He took a sidestep stumble away, then passed out. Someone almost immediately stepped on him in a rush for the door.

  The leopard was trying to wrench itself away from Roan, its claws dug into his leg like they were trying to dig through it, and he punched it, not once but twice in rapid succession, hard enough to crush a Human skull like a raw egg. It only stunned it slightly, made it shake its head and stop digging. It was pure effort of will to find his voice, it was fucking painful, but he managed it. “Get out of here!” Roan shouted, and it became a roar at the end. Hey, he was glad he was intelligibly Human for that long.

  It hurt to stay even slightly Human, but he tried, if only because he had to remain mostly Human until Dylan could get out. He wasn’t going to risk accidentally killing him, even if it was the path of least resistance.

  Pain was a hum in his head, a low-voltage electrical thrum, and with it was the bloodlust, the urge to feel blood in his mouth and flesh between his teeth. When the leopard sunk its teeth into his arm, trying to get away, Roan sunk his teeth into its neck, biting through fur and meat to hot, coppery blood. He could taste the tainted chemicals in it, though, and tore himself away to spit it out, taking a chunk of flesh with him.

  The cat roared and squalled, hurt enough that it twisted free of him and darted for the other side of the room, jumping up on the edge of the overturned couch and causing those behind it to scream. Roan jumped on the cat, and they both tipped the couch over even more as people scuttled away. The leopard tried to claw free, shredding his chest, and he kicked it into the wall, feeling the initial double kick of his feet shatter ribs.

  “Out, everybody out!” Dylan was shouting, trying to push the final stragglers out the door. Darby almost tripped over the man with the half-severed arm, and then when he saw him, he vomited up all that Red Bull and vodka. Hardy, with no delicacy at all, shoved Darby out the door, and Dylan followed, but not before grabbing the guy with the semi-severed arm by his shoulders and pulling him out the door. That slowed him down, and the leopard tried to scramble for him (and presumably the open door behind him) but Roan lunged and grabbed the cat, slamming them both into the stove hard enough that the oven door handle came off. The cat was starting to panic now; its glazed eyes rolled in its head, and there was actual foam dripping from its mouth, like it was rabid. Its breath smelled liked fertilizer and chlorine.

  It dug claws into his legs, midsection, chest, and arms, tearing skin, ripping at muscles, and attempting to bite his throat, but it bit his face instead, its teeth sinking into his cheek until it popped through the skin. Roan could taste its fang in his mouth, and it made him furious. Pain was nothing now; he hurt too much to feel anything specifically. It was all one hot ache, from head to toe, and almost all of it was internalized as he fought to keep the lion from taking over completely.

  He grabbed the cat’s lower jaw, and pulled until he heard a noise like cellophane crinkling, only louder and wetter. It screamed, an odd noise between a roar and a shriek, and its claws were frantically scratching away his skin as it yanked its head away (and its teeth out of his face). It managed to twist out of his grasp. But the door was closed, and the cat almost ran head first into it, its claws scratching against the blood-slicked floor as it slipped. With nowhere else to go, the leopard turned on him, growling, but now blood had joined the foam dripping from its lopsided jaw.

  This whole time Roan had been snarling, tasting blood in his mouth (the poison was like a plastic coating on his tongue), feeling cold air coming through the hole in his cheek, and he wanted to tell it not to do it, that he’d kill it if it kept this up, but he’d lost the ability to speak for the time being. Not that the cat would even care—it was mad with drugs and pain (it still had the knife sticking in its side), and wouldn’t understand him anyways. He thought he heard sirens, far beyond the thin walls of the apartment, and he wondered what would happen then. This cat was too far gone to save, and he was certain no one would even try.

  There was a noise, a kind of whimper, and the leopard looked across the room, somewhere beyond the overturned sofa, and Roan smelled new fear among the old. Oh shit, someone was still alive in the room.

  The leopard lunged, but so did Roan, and he caught it halfway across the room. They both went slamming into the wall, literally into it; Roan felt his skull break through the drywall and plaster, and dust salted down on him and the squirming cat. He was vaguely aware that the one who was still alive was a woman in a bra top and miniskirt, who was so covered in blood it looked like a red cape covered half her body. She was half dragging herself toward the opposite corner of the room, but she wasn’t going very fast.

  The leopard tried to bite him in spite of its broken jaw, its claws raking up his flesh, trying to crawl over him to get to the woman. It couldn’t bite her, couldn’t rip her throat out, but its claws were sharp and it could rip the shit out of her like it had him, only she wasn’t as likely to survive it. He tried to hold it, but despite the broken bones he could feel beneath its flesh, he knew it was beyond pain and just wouldn’t stop. The drugs had made it batshit insane.

  Beyond the walls Roan heard the thudding of boots on the stairs, the cat squad responding to the threat, and he knew they’d just kill it. What else could they do? Drugs didn’t put these cats down, only bullets did, and since there was at least one person still alive in the room, flying lead wasn’t conducive to safety. He knew what he had to do, and he really didn’t want to do it. And yet he did want to do it, very much so. The Human part of him was conflicting with the lion part, but he didn’t know who wanted what. Maybe they both wanted the same thing but in different ways—in spite of the bad taste of its blood, the lion wanted to rip into its neck for seconds.

  He had enough of his humanity to feel horrible as he grabbed the leopard’s narrow head and wrenched it sharply, with a sound like a rifle shot. Its body jerked and it went limp with a
smell like death. He was still smelling fear, sharp and acidic, and saw that the girl was still staring at him in wide-eyed fear, trying to make herself as small as possible in the far corner. It took him a moment to realize he was still growling, and he forced himself to stop.

  He dug his hands in the cat’s still warm fur, and muttered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The lion wasn’t sorry. The leopard had been weak, sick, diseased—it had to die.

  The door exploded open, followed almost instantly by a macho shit cop (Garcia, of course), shouting, “Where’s the cat?!” Roan was sure he must be imagining it, but he could swear he felt a gun pointed at his back.

  “It’s dead.” In fact, he had his hands still on it. Couldn’t Garcia see it? Did he think there were two?

  “Search it,” Garcia snapped curtly, and Roan heard two of his squad come into the apartment and check out the bathroom and bedroom. It didn’t take long before gruff male voices—always macho; everybody on the cat squads was so aggressively macho they all seemed to be overcompensating for something—reported, “Clear!”

  “Hands on your head, McKichan,” Garcia barked, as Roan stood. He ignored him, and that clearly pissed Garcia off. “I said hands on your fucking head!”

  Roan turned to glare at him. “Fuck you, I just did your job for you.” Garcia was just a black-clad nothing, a generic soldier, a man dressed in high-impact riot gear (with stab vest, which was almost completely ineffective against claws or teeth), with a large caliber handgun out and aimed at him. All the cat squad looked the same, they were all dressed the same and had roughly the same body shape, generally mesomorphs to the last man (and woman—there was one woman, perhaps their bid for diversity), and while their faces were different, there was something about them all that made them blur together in Roan’s eyes. Garcia may have been the only one over thirty. Interestingly, Garcia was also the only one who had his gun aimed directly at him, although the other members of the squad were eying him warily. He knew he was probably covered in blood, and he had no idea if his face was completely back to Human or not—when he was in this state, so full of adrenaline he would swear he was humming with energy, he couldn’t feel pain, and therefore couldn’t feel anything. It was Novocain for mind, body, and soul, and he wished he could feel this way all the time. “Got a hurt person in here. Bring in the EMTs.” He gestured to the woman in the corner, who still looked like she was trying to merge with the wall.