Infected: Lesser Evils (33 page)

“Maybe it doesn’t work in your extremities. Maybe it only works in your chest and back.”

Roan stared at him a moment. “You’ve thought about this way too much.”

“I had time. I couldn’t sleep.”

Roan kissed him on the forehead, and Dylan smiled faintly, stroking the back of his neck with his fingers and causing goose bumps to spring up along his spine. This was the good part of what Holden derisively called “boring familiarity,” as Dylan knew everything he liked. He closed his eyes, enjoying his touch, and admitted, “I wanted to die.”

“I know. But next time you want to be a selfish bastard, you just remember you have a family that loves you.”

That made him open his eyes. “Family?”

“Yes. Us, all your friends. You should have seen the waiting room downstairs, full of people worried about you. So if you won’t think of me—the man who loves you, you motherfucking bitch—then you think of them.”

He deserved that. He deserved worse, honestly, but from a peace-loving Buddhist like Dylan, this was the equivalent of angry rant. “What a family, huh? Who all was there? Dominatrix, hooker, gay cops, EMTs, hockey players… who am I missing?”

“Besides me? Foul-mouthed elderly doctor.”

He took Dylan’s hand and kissed it. “I took you as a given, hon. But how could I forget Rosenberg?”

“I don’t know. She’s pretty unforgettable.” There was a brief pause. “We sure she’s not a lesbian?”

Roan shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. “I know nothing about her sexuality. But to get to her status and position, especially as a female expert in a field where, at the time, there were few females, you have to assume she’s a superdriven, focused person, regardless of sexuality.”

“Is that supposed to explain the foul mouth?”

“No. I just assume she hangs out with truckers in her off hours.”

Dylan smiled faintly at him, so Roan figured now was as good a time as any to broach the subject. “Look, hon, I have a feeling things are going to get very bad, and I don’t know when they’re going to get better. You’re not infected, you don’t—”

Dylan put a finger on his lips to silence him. “You finish that sentence, and I swear to Buddha I will punch you. I don’t care how bad things get, I’m with you. Get that through your fat head and live with it.” Roan nodded, not about to argue with him. He knew he was lucky to have him, and he supposed he should start acting like it.

One Week Later

“
H
EY
,
Doctor House, how’s it shaking,” Fiona said cheerfully as he came in the office door.

Roan grimaced at the reference—like it was the first time he’d heard that—and said, “You should ask your mother. I think she has photos.”

“A ‛your momma’ joke! You must be feeling better.”

“I feel like I could beat a neocon to death with my cane.”

“So normal then?”

“Yep.” Roan went with a cane over a crutch, because crutches made your armpits hurt and were kind of pathetic, whereas canes had a kind of elegance, and could also double as a weapon. But because he was a grumpy cuss under the best of circumstances, everyone who knew him was now calling him House. But Hugh Laurie wasn’t a bad-looking guy, so he supposed he could live with it.

Doctor Rosenberg pretty much made him promise to heal “normally,” not force a change, but he suspected he may have accidentally triggered more of a partial change yesterday, working the heavy bag. (Okay, yes, he wasn’t supposed to engage in a strenuous workout, but sometimes it felt good to throw punches and not think, just lose yourself in the heavy thunk of fist against leather. But he let himself go too far, which he knew the instant the chain broke once again. He was getting good at fixing and replacing it.) His leg didn’t hurt so much, and if anyone looked, the smallest hint of a limp he’d had was gone, but he used the cane today because he figured fuck it, he could milk it for one more day. Then he’d deal with the lectures from Rosenberg. But hopefully Dylan wouldn’t stop with the thigh massage that was supposed to increase blood circulation to the muscle, but did oh so much more.

Yes, okay, he was a lech. But who wouldn’t be?

For Roan’s first day back at the office since what they euphemistically called “the incident,” Fiona had worn her biker-mama outfit, complete with a black leather vest worn as a shirt (nice), and had put bright yellow tulips in a vase on her desk, unaware that he associated flowers with death and didn’t really like them around. But he wasn’t going to mention it—she liked flowers, they made her happy, and he wasn’t going to take that away from her.

“Any clients coming by today?”

“Umm, yep.” She tapped a couple of keys on her keyboard, glanced at her screen. “Got a woman with a cheating fiancé—or so she thinks—at one, and an evasive guy who seems to want you to find someone for him coming by at two thirty. Also, two reporters left numbers for you, hoping you’d call them back. The one named Ehud sounded hot.”

“You told ’em to fuck off, right?”

“No, I told them I’d pass on the message. I have. What you do with that message is up to you.”

“Ah, the passive-aggressive fuck you.”

“Makes my job easier.”

He had to give her that.

Bolt came in while Roan was still sifting through his mail, throwing half of it in Fi’s garbage can. This time, his grim-faced bodyguards stayed outside. “You’re a hard man to find,” Bolt said.

Roan shrugged, continuing to sift through the mail. “That’s the point.”

Roan had made periodic trips back home, mainly to check the locks, the security camera footage (actually a cheap webcam, but you could hide it nicely, and he could access it from his laptop for real-time feeds), and work the heavy bag. He’d already rented a storage place where he’d stored away most of his books, all of his Paris stuff, things he couldn’t bear to lose if some lunatic burnt down his house. He knew about the FCC fucktards, he knew he should move, but this was his house—his first house in every sort of sense. He was a foster kid, he’d been constantly bounced around between homes and parents and hospitals and group homes, and this was his first real settled place (apartments just didn’t count). It was also where he’d lived with Paris, where Paris had died, and he couldn’t give that up, as much as he should have.

They had been staying at Kevin’s, but as of the last few days they’d been house-sitting for a friend of Dylan’s, a sculptor named Caden (really?), who happened to be partnered up with a very successful interior designer named Marco, who was twelve years his senior. Caden and Marco were off on a trip to Europe, which would take about two months. They had an exceedingly decorated two-story pseudo-Victorian house in the Magnolia district of Seattle, an expensive house that seemed way too nice for them (well, Roan at any rate—Dylan probably deserved that level of stuff). The truly disturbing thing was the evidence of Caden’s art everywhere. He was a sculptor of “traditional masculine power elements and symbols in a contemporary context”—in other words, he made ceramic dildos. Dylan insisted they weren’t dildos, just phallic symbols, but they looked like ceramic dildos to Roan, and he was so thrilled when Caden gave them one as a “partnership present” he didn’t know whether to throw up or beat him to death with it. Dylan promised him they’d accidentally forget it when they moved out.

Oh, and Caden and Marco had a hot tub, which was the first time Roan had honestly been exposed to one in person (not at a crime scene or a call, that was). Dylan, to his surprise, hadn’t been in one either. He’d seen them in other people’s homes, and often at parties, but they were usually at “mixed” parties, and the straight people monopolized them. (“What was I gonna do, watch them make out? Ick.”) They hadn’t used it yet, but it was a matter of time.

As for the office, the cops now used his parking lot as a shortcut, bypassing the usual congestion on the main road, saving them time and giving the suggestion of a constant but unpredictable police presence that would discourage all but the stupidest religious zealot. Still, Dylan was worried about him coming back. Roan wasn’t worried, not at all—he wanted at least one shot at one of these bastards. That’s probably what Dyl was afraid of.

“Can I speak with you, in private?”

Roan sighed, finished sifting through his mail. E-mail had pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of the good old death-threat letter. “You have two minutes, no more.”

Bolt had tried to call when he was in the hospital, and after his release, although Roan never answered his calls. Dylan eventually got sick of it and did, telling him point-blank, “He will call you when he wants to talk to you,” and hung up. Bolt hadn’t called him since.

Once inside his office, the door closed to keep out the prying ears of the icky “normal” in the front room, Roan said, “If this is about the McCall-Steen bill, I’ve had enough rage for one day.” That bill was currently being debated in Congress and on the many infuriating “news” channels, and it called for an infected “registry,” like a sex offender registry. Despite charges that it was a violation of the Constitution, that it would lead to more harassment and violence against infecteds, and the fact that the ACLU was already preparing court action, it looked like it was going to pass. Roan had already decided that if they bent the Constitution enough to make it legal—and they might; if they could legally treat gays as second-class citizens, why not infecteds too?—he wouldn’t register. He would let them arrest him, and he’d already informed Dennis of his plans. Dennis was thrilled, and promised, as his lawyer, he’d be happy to take this act of civil disobedience all the way to the Supreme Court, if at all possible. Roan didn’t care that he was already known as an infected by almost everyone—he’d rather go to prison than put up with regulated discrimination that would allow some normals to feel safe even though there was absolutely no safety imparted. He could catch up on his reading.

“No, but in a way, it is,” Bolt told him. “We have to pool our energy and join forces.”

Roan sighed again as he lowered himself into his chair. No, his leg didn’t hurt anymore, and it had nothing to do with the codeine he’d taken after breakfast. “To what end? No one cares, Bolt—we’re not normal, and they hate our fucking guts. Case closed.”

“Which is why we have to circle the wagons. We’ll have more impact together rather than apart.” His face was almost flushed with excitement—Bolt was serious and really worked up about it all.

“What impact? All we can do is preach to the choir.”

“Not necessarily. There are people out there, whose families have been touched by this virus, who know we’re not monsters. They’re getting drowned out by the intolerant.”

“Be that as it may, scared people do stupid things. Remember the McCarthy hearings, the Japanese internment camps, the Patriot Act? None of this stuff ever would have happened if people weren’t so scared they lost their goddamn minds. That’s where we’re at now. People are so scared they don’t care that they’re violating people’s civil rights for no good goddamn reason. It makes them feel like they’re doing something. There’s no counter to that.”

“Knowledge?”

Roan snorted derisively. “In this day and age? No one cares about truth. They care about whoever can shout the loudest and press the ugliest buttons. Why do you think Fox News sets the tone? Facts don’t come into it; opinion is all that matters. And our fact—that we are mostly harmless, that we generally die young and ugly—is irrelevant to the common opinion that we are essentially werewolves and must be locked up before we eat their children and spread our disease.”

Bolt scowled, not because he disagreed with his words, but because he was as frustrated with it as Roan was. “We can’t just lay back and let it happen. If the registry’s passed, will you sign up?”

“Fuck no.”

“Neither will we. We should stand together, a united front. Think how bad it would be if they arrested all of us.”

“You think I don’t know why you actually want me to head your Church? I’ve finally figured it out.” He was a lightning rod for controversy, and with the FCC putting an active hit on him, it was more trouble that Divine Transformation didn’t need. Yet, as much trouble as Roan brought with him, he also brought protection, as he did have cop friends who saw him getting hurt as a dig against the police department itself. So Bolt was playing the odds that the turmoil would be balanced out by more protection.

Bolt, to his credit, didn’t lie or get defensive. He simply said, “It’s as good a deal for you as for us. We can help protect you, protect your partner—you will have access to our resources, and they are not unsubstantial.” He leaned down, propping his hands on Roan’s desk, letting him see how genuinely passionate he was about this. “We need to stick together and work together. Being at odds helps them.”

“I don’t believe in your God.”

“I don’t care. This isn’t about theology or ideology—this is about our survival as a people. What do you say?”

What did he say? That was a very good question.

Trix

R
OAN
wondered if there was any way not to feel like a total dick in this situation.

Since he had nothing but time to think, he contemplated this for a while, and finally decided no, there was no way not to feel like a dick. The fruity drinks probably helped.

Roan didn’t like fruity drinks as a rule, but the art gallery’s bar only served drinks in primary colors, with shaved ice in them. Whatever it was he was currently sipping, it tasted of alcohol and a berry juice that might as well have been cough syrup the unnatural color of Windex, and was probably something he shouldn’t have been mixing with Percocets. But did he care? No. He was out of his environment, and felt every centimeter of that pressure.

But he had to be here. This was Dylan’s show, and while Roan had found a nice bench made of clear acrylic that resembled a block of ice, it was tucked in the far corner of one of the back rooms. But he could look down the wide hallway from where he was and see Dylan at the center of a circle of hipsters, entertaining them with stories of artistic folly. Some of those laughs sounded genuine.