Infected: Lesser Evils Read online

  The office door opened, and while Roan took in the physical features of the tall, skinny guy in the tattered overcoat, his cat senses had kicked into overdrive. He was already moving when he pinpointed the thing that set it all off: gun oil. The kid smelled like gun oil, gunpowder, and hate.

  Roan’s intention was to land a kick in his solar plexus, sending him flying out into the parking lot, but that’s not what happened. The gunman had withdrawn the gun just in time for Roan’s feet to impact his chest, like he was jumping off it, and in fact he was. Roan managed to wrench the gun from his hand and pushed off with his feet, as the guy was already falling backward, doubling his speed as gravity pulled him down. The gunman hit the outside asphalt with bone-crunching force, his head bouncing off the pavement like a basketball, as Roan managed to turn in midair, feet scraping the ceiling, and landed in a crouch inside his own waiting room, the gun clutched to his chest. “Holy fuck!” Fi exclaimed, more surprised than anything else. “How the fuck did you do that?”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant, just like he wasn’t completely sure what he’d done. It was all instinct, the cat just under the surface and taking over with the sudden adrenaline rush. It didn’t know what was impossible, not for him, and didn’t obey too many rules in any case.

  Roan gulped air and ran out into the parking lot. The guy was lying flat out, wheezing like he was drowning on dry land, and yet he was still trying to pull himself across the lot, trying to move. Roan heard the screech of tires as a car, some ugly-ass Toyota in a shade of primer gray, sped out of the lot like its ass was on fire. The guy’s compatriots, abandoning him as soon as it was a dead cert he had lost. Roan walked over to the kid, and just listening to his labored breathing and the lumpy look of his chest, he figured he had busted his ribs, perhaps collapsed his entire fucking torso. Roan had hit him like a human missile, and there was no counter for that.

  A fear stench was coming off the kid in waves, and Roan wasn’t sure why until he realized he was growling, and he forced himself to stop. The guy was trying to say something, but he couldn’t get enough air to do it. A quick glance confirmed a spider web tattoo on the back of his hand, the kind with the hidden SS symbol in it, a prison special. “FCC?” Roan asked, but it wasn’t really a question. He already knew.

  He heard police sirens, loud but fading, and figured cops had already picked up the speeding Toyota. Another prowler turned into the lot, briefly blaring its siren before the black and white pulled parallel to them. He didn’t recognize the cops who got out, a stocky Hispanic guy built like a fireplug and a doughier, taller white guy, but apparently they knew him. “What happened here?” the stocky guy, named Morales according to his badge, asked.

  “This idiot pulled a gun on me.”

  The white officer, with a badge named Fisher, snorted derisively. “Oh my god, you attacked Batman? Jesus Christ, you gotta death wish or somethin’?”

  “He needs an ambulance.”

  “He’s gonna need a fuckin’ mortuary once I’m through with him,” Fiona exclaimed, stomping out into the parking lot. It looked like she was going to kick him, but his obvious physical distress and the cops made her pause. “What was this fucking fuckface asshole thinking?!”

  While Fisher radioed in for an ambulance, Morales told her, “I’m assuming he was gonna shoot your boss.” He patted down the legs and chest of the guy on the ground, searching for hidden weapons. Morales found a wicked-looking hunting knife with a serrated blade that would actually be very clumsy to use in a fight. Morales must have known that, because as he pulled it out of the sheath on the man’s leg, he held it up and asked, “Really?”

  The gunman’s eyes were glass bright and shiny with panic. He couldn’t breathe, or at least he was having such a hard time breathing his brain was kicking into full-on animal mode, where nothing mattered but the pure basics of existing.

  Roan handed Morales the guys’ gun butt first, and said, “He was gonna assassinate me with this.”

  He looked at it dubiously. Morales was wearing latex gloves, so he wasn’t going to worry about contaminating the evidence. “A .45?”

  “I know. If I didn’t collapse his entire chest, I’d feel insulted.”

  “How did that happen, by the way?”

  “I drop-kicked him.” Well, that was essentially what he’d done. It was a bit fancier than that. Morales just stared at him like he didn’t quite believe him.

  “With what, a battering ram?”

  Roan figured, with his luck, the ambulance would be Dee’s, but no, it was a crew he’d never met before (and he was kind of relieved). As they were loading the guy onto the stretcher and shooting Roan slightly dirty looks (he hadn’t meant to crush his chest—he didn’t know he could kick someone that hard, although really he should have known), his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He checked the readout, saw it was Doctor Rosenberg, and decided to answer. She’d done a scan of his chest the other day, just to see if the phantom muscle that had blocked the bullet was still there or not. She must have had an answer by now.

  “Hey there, Doctor Nick,” Roan said, figuring she’d get the reference.

  “Drop whatever you’re doing and get to my office now,” she said, her voice all steel. “I mean it, none of your bullshit, just do it.”

  “Why—”

  “Do it, or I’ll send one of my interns to come get you. Do you understand me?”

  He was completely baffled by her hostility. “What—”

  “Now. When I call back, you better be on the road.” And with that, she hung up. He stared at the cell for a moment, wondering what he had done to piss her off. Well, there were so many possibilities to choose from, he didn’t know which to select.

  Roan had already given his statement to Fisher, so he was okay to leave the scene, and since Fi was fine and knew they were done for the day (certainly now, if not before), he went ahead and took off. He wanted to go to the Eagle, but later—he knew Rosenberg well enough to know she actually would send an intern after him if he didn’t do what she said.

  It wasn’t a long drive to the university, although when she called back he was stuck in traffic. She barely believed that.

  She all but shoved Roan into her office, and as soon as she’d walked to her desk, she started her spiel. “Couldn’t find the muscle on the scan, but I know it’s there. What I did find… shit, kid, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “Kid?” he chuckled, taking the chair in front of her desk. “You know I’m pushing forty.”

  “Young compared to me. But so is Methuselah, so don’t be too flattered.” She sat behind her desk with a sigh, and brought out a color scan of a torso, presumably his. “I want you to check into the university hospital, right now. Have you been having visual auras lately, migraines, random head pains, loss of consciousness? And please, be honest here.”

  “What? What the hell is this about?”

  She handed him the scan. He looked at it, seeing the outline of a chest and arms in bluish light, with organs highlighted by various colors, and muscles like traces holding the sketch together. There were also some odd, tiny dark spots scattered around, like a handful of pepper spilled on the image. “What the hell are these specks?”

  “They’re not specks, they’re about the size of a pea.”

  “Okay, what are the peas?”

  Rosenberg scowled, emphasizing the thin lines gathered around her mouth. He suddenly realized she wasn’t angry, just upset. “They’re tumors. We went through all the digital views of the scans available in the database, and we’ve counted fourteen. There appears to be one in your stomach too, which I really don’t like. I want to check you in right away and get a biopsy of some of these. My hope is this is just a form of hyperplasia and nothing to worry about, but it’s best we make sure, especially considering how fast it’s come on, and I want to do a brain scan right away to make sure that area’s clean.”

  Maybe it was the fact that he’d crushed a man’s chest less t
han an hour earlier, or all the pain pills, but this seemed unreal somehow. “I thought tumors didn’t spread.”

  “They don’t.”

  “But I have more than a baker’s dozen of them? How?”

  “What do you think I’ve been asking myself?” She sighed and rubbed her eyes, temporarily moving her glasses up to her forehead. “Look, you are a hybrid organism, and your physical adaptation to your unique condition has been miraculous. But there are problems that come with being a hybrid organism, and this is terra incognita. We don’t know what could plague you, we don’t know the full life cycle of the virus, we can only take educated guesses at certain weaknesses. This surprises me as much as you. But we need to work fast to make sure this is contained, that this is not as bad as it looks. Please work with me here, Roan.”

  Suddenly things started falling into place, in a very weird way. Roan wasn’t surprised by any of this, nor was he at all afraid. He knew he should have been, but again, it was all from a remove, from a distance, as if this was happening to someone else. “Brain scan. You think I have a brain tumor.”

  Not a question, but she took it as such. “You have a history of migraines and aneurysms, and it’s better safe than sorry. If these tumors have spread everywhere, it’s best to cover all the bases. None of these tumors are especially serious, although we do have to remove the one on your stomach wall and one on your left kidney. But if you have one in your brain, you know how damn serious that is.”

  That was the diplomatic answer. He chuckled, suddenly finding this all very funny. “This ain’t gonna kill me. This isn’t how I go down.”

  Her glasses settled on the end of her nose, and she stared at him again. “You know this for a fact? You know how you die?”

  “For a certain fact? No. But violently seems to be the obvious conclusion. Somebody tried to kill me before I got here.”

  “And what happened to them?”

  “Crushed sternum, punctured lung.”

  She looked alarmed. “Seriously? You fucked them up that much?”

  “I didn’t mean to. It got a little out of control on me.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing. It could explain it.”

  “Explain what?”

  “A tumor. A small one, in a very specific area of your brain, could be part of the reason you’ve been losing control of your shifts.”

  It was Roan’s turn to stare at her for a very long moment. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. It’s only started happening recently, yeah?”

  He had to consider that, and even then, he wasn’t sure. “I guess. But….” He didn’t know what he was going to say.

  A wave of relief washed over him, so intense it almost brought him to tears. Maybe it wasn’t all his fault; maybe he wasn’t completely insane. Maybe all wasn’t lost.

  Maybe he wasn’t lost.

  28

  Abracadabra

  ROSENBERG objected to the idea of an outpatient biopsy, although didn’t HMOs do shit like that all the time? Besides, Roan being who he was, being opened up wouldn’t hurt him; he’d heal faster than a normal, get on with his life. But she still objected.

  So they set aside the biopsy for another day. He did agree to get the brain scan though, if only to appease her, and he hoped she knew what a sacrifice that was.

  There was something awful about being squashed in a narrow metal tube, which echoed with strange noises (clanks, hums, sinister science fiction-type sounds), and made you feel like you had been shoved into a torpedo and were about to be fired at an enemy vessel. That wouldn’t have been a bad way to die, come to think of it—flung at the enemy like a biological weapon, which was in essence what Roan was. Rosenberg sometimes talked to him, and since he was a captive audience inside the big scanning machine, she told him about all the assholes out there (fellow virologists) who make various claims about the virus and infecteds, while she was sitting on him (in a figurative sense, of course), and could blow all those putzes away with hard truths that didn’t conform to their “jerk ass” speculation. Did she want him to give consent to release information on him? Too bad, she wasn’t going to get it.

  Roan wondered if he was going stir-crazy in the tube. He felt like he’d been in the scanner for most of the day, but it was only about an hour. Even though he’d done nothing but remain motionless in the damn tube, he felt both jittery and exhausted. She wanted to talk some more, schedule him for a biopsy, but he was in no mood for a talk and told her he’d schedule it later, on his way out the door. He believed she called him a very nasty name, but maybe she was talking to someone else.

  He sat in the car, wondering what he was going to do. His head hurt from the noises and the lights in the scanner—was she trying to trigger a migraine? He could believe it—and struggled to open a bottle of Percocet. His hands were shaking, and he wasn’t sure why. There were so many reasons for him to fall to pieces right now. Not that he was planning to, but it was nice to know he had a pass if he couldn’t hold his shit together.

  Roan swallowed a couple of pills with lukewarm bottled water that tasted more like plastic than anything else, and pondered his next move. He should tell Dylan; it was only fair that he knew his freak husband had a freak problem. He couldn’t show up at work and tell him, that was cruel, and right now Dylan was doing his usual weekly charity work for the temple, and there was no way in hell Roan was going to track him down and tell him now. He could make dinner tonight, break it to him then… except no, that seemed awful too. He was going to have to think of a better way to break it to him.

  “So what now, genius?” he asked himself. He wished he knew.

  Did the thought he might die actually bother him? Or was it the method? He wouldn’t mind death if it was fast; the thought of a slow death made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Not like that; any way but that.

  The best thing for it was distraction. And who better to pursue a hopeless case than a man who was a hopeless case himself? Roan started the car and headed out toward the Eagle, hoping the rest of the day was better from here on out.

  It could be worse, but he was seriously hoping the universe was done fucking him for now.

  HOLDEN was just trying to decide if he wanted to throw frozen blueberries into his smoothie when there was a knock at his door.

  That was weird, mainly because he rarely if ever had unannounced visitors. Oh, sometimes Roan came over with little warning, usually when there was a situation, but it didn’t sound like Roan. When he knocked, he usually shook the door in its frame. His little segues into Hulkdom sometimes made themselves known in the oddest places.

  Curious, Holden approached, wondering if he should grab his gun first. Oh sure, he wasn’t an infected, and he wasn’t sure any of those fundie haters even knew who he was (he made damn sure he was a difficult man to know and find—he even paid his rent under a fake identity), but these days you couldn’t be too sure. He knew the “kill the cats” bastards were just trying to scare people into submission, but they were just making him angrier by the second. Maybe it was being a preacher’s son and knowing exactly what kind of hypocritical, nasty bastards they actually were, and how little they genuinely thought of their loyal followers, but perhaps he was just projecting. Holden supposed there were some good God boys out there, but any who preached hate and homicide were instantly ruled out.

  He glanced out his peephole, approaching it from the side so anyone waiting for a light shift would just be shooting through the door, but he was surprised by whom he saw. If this was an FCC member, he’d undergone a serious brainwashing.

  Holden unlocked the door and opened it wide enough to lean against the door frame. “Hey little boy, you lost?”

  Scott Murray, the way-too-cute hockey player, seemed a little thrown off by the statement. Good Canadian boy, was he? He’d witnessed hockey fights and heard a couple of things to the contrary. Scott chuckled nervously and scratched his forehead before saying, “Sorry to just drop by like this, I
was hoping to talk to you. Is this a bad time?”

  “No, I guess not. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”

  He stopped staring at Holden’s chest—until he’d opened the door and felt the cool air, Holden forgot he was wearing nothing but the sweatpants he’d stepped into after his shower (well, it wasn’t like nudity was uncommon for him…)—and gave him a curious, almost wary look. “Huh?”

  Holden opened the door wide and made a sweeping arm gesture toward the interior of his apartment. “My casa is your casa.”

  For a moment he looked like he might turn and run away. But Scott gathered his courage like a good little macho man and came in. Holden had to swallow a laugh. Oh, it was too easy playing with the nervous and shy, and too damn fun too. As soon as he shut the door, he asked, “Who told you where I lived?” He tried not to sound hostile, but he was curious.

  “Oh, um, Dee, that paramedic? I kinda lied to him, I said Roan wanted us to work on something together, but I didn’t know where you were, and Roan wasn’t answering his phone.”

  “I’ll give you credit for plausibility. That sounds like Roan.”

  “I thought so.”

  He walked back to the kitchenette, wondering if Scott was watching his ass. Well, did it look any good in these sweatpants? He couldn’t remember. “Can I offer you a drink? I’m making a smoothie, I’m sure there’ll be extra.”

  “Um, no thanks. Can I, uh, sit down?”

  “What, you don’t sit in your own home? Of course you can sit down. Just don’t put your feet up on my couch or I’ll cut you.”

  Scott laughed nervously, and whatever he said after that was lost in the whir of the blender. When it stopped, and Holden was pouring the smoothie into a glass, Scott tried again. “So, um, I was wondering… um….”

  “If I’m a prostitute? Yes. What else can I help you with?” He turned around to see Scott just staring at him from his couch with a look somewhere between surprise and disbelief. Holden sipped from his smoothie to keep from laughing.