Infected: Lesser Evils Read online

  Now, the major problem. Roan was a hate target, a huge one. They couldn’t arrest everyone behind this, at least not right away, although she already knew the Feds were investigating the FCC for arms trafficking (supposedly they’d been selling and transporting dubious weapons across state lines, which was yet another comforting thing to know—heavily armed cults always came to good ends). With budget cuts there was no way they could keep a twenty-four-hour watch on his place, nor would it be practical. But she knew what Roan would say if she suggested he move: “No redneck assholes are chasing me out of my house.” Which she could understand, as she’d be much the same way, but it was self-destructive at best. He had a full fucking cult after him! But he was such a stubborn, macho asshole, he wouldn’t budge.

  Murphy decided she’d tell Dylan. Either he could convince Roan to do the smart thing, or at least he could protect himself. While these idiots hadn’t discovered Roan had a civil partner, it was only a matter of time, and they’d come after him as well. Maybe even more so, because he’d be an easier target, and a good assumption with hatemongers was they were total fucking cowards.

  Either Dylan would talk Roan into being sensible, or Roan would decide to be a suicidal asshole for both of them. At least it would be out of her hands either way.

  ONCE again, Grey proved it was good to have a hockey goon for a friend.

  Dylan was peripherally aware that there was a small riot going on in the lobby, but didn’t much care. There were a dozen cops out there, they could handle it, so he didn’t bother to pay any attention to it. But from what Dylan understood, while the cops were taking care of the troublemakers, one had actually snuck past and headed for the fire stairs. What the guy had missed, though, was that Grey had spotted him, and moved to intercept. When Grey grabbed the guy, he’d taken a swing at him, missed (of course he did—Grey probably saw it coming), and Grey threw a punch that apparently knocked the guy out the second it made contact, and sent three of his teeth flying down the hallway. This impressed many of the cops, but Grey just shrugged and said, “I’m a hockey player.” As if that explained how he could give a concussion and an urgent need for dental surgery to a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man with one punch, but who knows, maybe it did. He really didn’t know hockey well enough to tell.

  Anyways, with Grey done showing off his amateur surgery skills, trouble dissipated quickly (yeah, no shit), and the cops hustled those arrested off to jail. (The guy Grey hit was admitted immediately to the emergency room. At least he didn’t have far to go.) There were already rumors of trouble brewing outside Divine Transformation, but again, that was for other people to worry about. As much as Dylan knew he should have, he didn’t care about all infecteds—he cared about one specific one.

  Dee disappeared for several minutes, then he returned, coming over to him and whispering, “He’s out of surgery. Come on, I’ll sneak you to his room.”

  Why did he have to sneak him in? He didn’t know, but he didn’t much care either. He got up and followed, feeling as bereft as he had felt for a long time. Not since Jason had died had he ever felt so bad. At least he wasn’t crying, though—he was too tired to cry.

  In the elevator, Dylan slumped against the wall and studied the buttons, so he knew which floor Roan was on. He recalled that D’Andra’s friend Jayna was super into numerology, and wondered what she’d make of Roan being on the fifth floor.

  There was a cop outside Roan’s room, a dumpy guy who had the look of the nameless partner always killed within the first ten minutes of an action film, and he recognized Dee. Dee introduced Dylan, pointing out he was Roan’s partner, and he should be allowed into his room without a hassle. As the cop and Dee discussed this, with the cop asking if the “docs” said it was okay for him to have visitors, Dylan slipped inside.

  It was a hospital room, a place that stank of illness and disinfectant, but it seemed shadowy and almost medieval, mainly due to the bars on the window and the heavy, reinforced door that closed with a heavy, almost mausoleum-type finality. A special room for infected patients, in case they changed out of sequence or lied about their sequence, or came in in no shape to say. (Never mind that Roan was permanently out of viral sequence; they didn’t know that, and he probably wouldn’t want anyone to tell them.)

  Roan laid corpselike on a narrow bed, so pale he almost blended in with the starched, cream-colored sheets. He had what seemed to be an octopus’s worth of tentacles attached to his arm, giving him blood and fluids and monitoring his vital signs. His heartbeat was a digital graph, reduced to bright blue numbers that probably meant something to someone, but nothing to him.

  Dylan found a plastic chair tucked into the far corner and brought it to his bedside, wanting to say something, and yet afraid to crack the ice-like silence. He sat down in the uncomfortable, primary-colored chair, and held one of Roan’s hands within his. It was so cold it was almost shocking. Dylan still kissed his palm anyways, let the cold fingers rest against his cheek. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he admitted, closing his eyes against the few tears that suddenly sprang up and leaked out. It was selfish of him, wasn’t it? He felt like he’d been beaten up and run over and dragged down three miles of bad road, but it was Roan in this hospital bed, not him. Still, it felt like it might as well have been, and feeling like this terrified him. He couldn’t leave Roan, but he didn’t know if he’d survive staying with him either.

  Maybe that was the definition of love. He felt a cynic like Roan would appreciate that immensely.

  24

  Time to Pretend

  ROAN felt an odd sensation, like warmth and pressure on his mouth (and a taste not unlike mint toothpaste), and opened his eyes to find Holden looking down at him. “Oh look, Sleeping Beauty’s awake. Or is that Sleeping Scary? Which do you prefer?”

  Roan stared up at his slightly unsettling smiling face for a moment, trying to process what he thought he felt. “Did you kiss me?”

  “What? Why would you think that?” His smirking face seemed to give nothing away.

  “You bastard! Who cops a feel on an unconscious man?”

  “Not me. I like my feelees conscious.” Holden sat in the plastic chair beside his bed, still smiling suspiciously, while Roan found himself wondering if he was just having an odd moment. He didn’t seem to dream like normal people—he dreamed in color, he could taste, smell, and feel, and sometimes his dreams were even more vivid than reality itself. It was possible Holden hadn’t done anything. Did he trust it? No, but he couldn’t prove it either. It didn’t seem to be worth arguing about, though; he was too tired, too cold, and his leg still hurt. He was aware he was on heavy-duty painkillers, but he didn’t feel them much. Either the downside of being an infected, or being an infected who popped painkillers like Skittles.

  Roan rubbed his eyes, feeling groggy and frostbitten, and finally said, “Fine, whatever. Where’s Dylan?”

  “Kevin took him home a couple of hours ago. Did you know there are hospital regs against people being alone in a room with an infected patient for a certain amount of time? I had no idea.”

  “So how are you in here?”

  “Well, flirt with the right nurse, and hey, you get the run of the floor.” He grinned wickedly, slumping back comfortably in the chair.

  Roan just stared at him for a moment. He didn’t need to ask if he was serious. “You’re actually Satan, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, if only I was. Things would be different around here.” He mimed primping his hair into a pompadour, and then got down to business. “So, I read your notes, and I asked Spider what he knows about DSM. Turns out we’re probably all kinds of screwed if they’re the ones peddling the drugs tainted with the fake hormones.”

  It was nice how unreal everything felt. Must have been the drugs, or lingering sense of shock. “Hold it a second. Spider?”

  “Biker I know. He runs with a whiter gang, really macho women-hating assholes, but he’s on the downlow for obvious reasons. He’s a former cl
ient, he could probably afford me now—running meth and drugs pays better than Mickey D’s—but they’re based in Eastern Washington and he doesn’t come over too often. Still, he says any time I need someone whacked, call him. All he needs is a name and a general location, and they’ll be scattered in pieces all along the I-5 corridor.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “Not at all. He picked me up when I was just a pup of a hustler. Oh sure, the sleeve tattoos and satanic goatee made me think serial killer, as did that unnerving glow in his eyes, but he’s actually surprisingly shy when it comes to being with another man. He knew almost nothing except what he picked up in prison; I had to teach him a few things.” After a brief pause, Holden asked, “Ever seen Oz?”

  He assumed Holden meant the TV show. “Yeah,” he replied tentatively, afraid this was going to lead to a prison rape story.

  “Well, Spider’s sort of the Christopher Meloni character, only not as hot, and he doesn’t kill gay guys for a sexual thrill. Spider’s just a superpsycho. I mean, I’m sure he has a few bodies buried in his past, but he doesn’t kill for a sexual jump. He probably kills ’cause that’s what he does. He doesn’t have a lot of skills beyond bike repair. I’m pretty sure he’s semiliterate; I once helped him read a television menu.”

  Now Roan was really staring at him. “He’s a murderer?”

  Holden shrugged a single shoulder, which seemed exceedingly casual. “I’ve never seen him kill anyone. But he has claimed the X tattoos on his calf are a body count, and who am I to call him on it? It could be macho bullshit, necessary for him to survive as a closet homo in the most viciously homophobic subculture you could imagine. Or he’s a truly damaged man who’s found acceptance among men who rarely bathe or brush their teeth. I’m a hooker, it’s not my place to judge. Unless you pay me to.”

  “But you think he has killed people. You wouldn’t have mentioned it if you didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s a vibe. He has this very cold side to his personality, a very empty side. Of course, with the shit he went through as a kid, who wouldn’t be? I mean, his old man was a biker, he was drunk all the time, abusive, he apparently murdered his mom in front of Spider and made him help bury her in the desert.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “I thought he was, I thought maybe he picked that up from a Lifetime movie, but it turns out it was true. His dad got arrested for killing her, it was in the paper, as was the allegation that he made his eleven-year-old son help bury her.”

  “Eleven? Holy shit. So why the hell did he become a biker too?”

  “He didn’t seem to know, really. It was just a lifestyle he knew, was familiar with, and apparently he was given lots of props for not ratting out his dad.”

  This sounded outrageous and preposterous, but honestly, the biker subculture was just as bloodthirsty as any other gang culture, maybe more so now that they had lost a certain relevancy. They seemed like a silly time warp now, but those in the guns and drugs business were still incredibly lethal. And once again Roan was sort of thrown by Holden’s compassion, which might have just been playing an angle—after all, get in good with a biker, keep him sweet, not only do you not have to worry about him turning on you, but you have your own weapon of mass destruction, a guy willing to pull the trigger for you at your say-so, if you could live with that on your conscience. As long as Spider didn’t snap and kill him, it was a big gamble that could pay off, and obviously that would appeal to Holden. Roan found himself wondering how much of it was genuine compassion on his part, and how much of it was pure calculation. With Holden, it could be impossible to tell.

  He shook his head, dealt with the resulting wooziness, and said, “You play with fire.”

  “Life’s dangerous. Play big or go home.”

  “You read that on a T-shirt.”

  “Billboard, but close enough.”

  He nodded. If Holden was bucking for the “strangest man I’ve ever known” position, he was an easy winner. “So, anyways, Spider knows the DSM.”

  “Of course he does, they’re rivals in the drug trade, it behooves them to know their enemies. Anyways, south of the border, the DSM are also-rans, third on the list of drug gangs you need to watch out for. Still, they’re well connected to many a corrupt official, and are pretty much the bitches of Fernando Avila-Hernandez, a drug lord based in Oaxaca region.”

  Sometimes all Roan could honestly do was stare at Holden in disbelief. “Has the DEA been informed?”

  Holden shrugged. “You’d hope they’d know as much as a biker gang, but who knows? Anyways, according to Spider, some of those guys—the drug lords—pay scientists in Central and South America to help develop their product, make it more addictive or whatever. Supposedly Hernandez is paying a scientist in Columbia for help with his product, so whoever made this synthetic hormone is probably a Columbian in the pocket of a drug lord. If you know anybody in the FBI or DEA who actually gives a shit about infecteds, you might want to pass on the message to them.”

  He sighed wearily. “I’m not sure anyone fits that description. It’s too late anyways, isn’t it?”

  “Do you mean for the drug spreading? Most assuredly, yes. It couldn’t have only been made for here. But you may have been the first to attribute it. After all, most normals would ascribe the freak-outs to simple infected irresponsibility, and you’re the only Human with court-approved, bloodhound-level smelling, as well as a direct line to one of the most preeminent experts on the virus.”

  The most irritating thing was, Holden was correct. That’s exactly how it could have happened. Roan might have simply been the first to connect the dots. “Could you do me a favor and stop being so smart? You’re starting to piss me off.”

  “Now see, it’s just Darwinism in action. I’m not as strong or as fast as you and your jock friends, so I have to rely on my brains to survive. Oh, and my overwhelming beauty.” Holden assumed a mock-smug expression, tipping his chin up just so, trying hard not to laugh.

  “Everybody I know is a smartass.”

  “Like attracts like. It’s your fault.”

  “Isn’t everything?”

  “None of that. Don’t start your pity parade with me in the room. I didn’t pack my truncheon, so I’ll have to beat you with an IV stand.”

  As weird—and snarky—as his friends were, Roan was aware he was very lucky. They probably weren’t anyone’s first choice for anything, but they always came through for him. Then again, he had never been anyone’s first choice for anything either. Misfits just gravitated toward one another.

  “I haven’t been out for days, have I?” Roan wondered mainly because Holden’s bruises looked less livid than before, more lived in. Somehow they were almost a visual afterthought on his face, although he didn’t smell or see makeup. Still, Holden used to be a street kid—beatings probably weren’t new to him. He probably knew how to handle it.

  “No, just one. Although there was some discussion about inducing a coma. Did you know they do that sometimes for people who lose a lot of blood? But apparently you started rallying pretty good, so the idea was shelved.”

  Roan nodded, not wanting to point out inducing a coma wasn’t new to him.

  Holden caught him up on everything he had missed while out, including Grey’s riot-stopping mauling of a guy with one punch (Grey was simply a boxer on skates, a heavyweight even though his weight class was probably middleweight), and the fact that there had already been genuine riots involving infecteds and Church supporters. Although small for riots initially, they were made worse by counter-protesters carrying signs such as Cats belong in zoos. “My favorites were the ones that were misspelled,” Holden reported, smiling. Roan wondered if it was too late to ask for an induced coma. Was it too much to ask that things got better while he was out?

  He asked Holden to call Dylan and let him know he was awake, and he agreed to do so, which meant Holden had to leave, as the hospital had pretty stiff regulations about not using cells on most floo
rs (because of the potential of interfering with electrical equipment). Holden also left him with a Snickers, as he thought he might be hungry for something besides hospital food and had totally forgot to bring something, but Roan appreciated it. He happily ate it, wondering when he could leave, or if it would be better to hide in here as long as humanly possible. Although the most cowardly option, it sounded damn good.

  What could he do? What was going to stop this madness? That was the worst part. There was nothing; he had ceased to matter, if he had ever mattered at all. This fire was burning, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. All Roan could do was stoke it. What did you do when your very existence was an affront to people you’d never met and probably would never meet, who’d be happy if you simply stopped existing? You’d think he’d have gotten used to it by now, being gay, but things had gotten better on that front (well, in some parts of the country—certainly Seattle was gay enough to make you feel like you were in a safe bubble most of the time), but hate toward infecteds seemed to get worse every year as the disease continued to spread and the body count kept rising.

  Roan knew he’d probably be okay. He knew people, had connections, and could always flee to Canada if it got really bad. (Although he hadn’t spoken to them since the memorial service, he knew Paris’s family would welcome him in. They were good people, nice, and they had loved Paris, which showed in his personality.) But what about his people—the infected? Who spoke for them? He might be their best chance, which was a sad commentary on the state of infecteds in this society. But what could he possibly do?