Infected: Shift (67 page)
“Don’t turn into a pussy on me, Lambert,” he said, smirking at his own pun. “What do you want me to say? That if I wanted to, I could break every bone in your body without working up a sweat? That I could fight everyone in the cafe right now and win? That in lion form shooting me probably wouldn’t be enough? That I could lion out at will?”
“Well, that’s a little extreme. What I’ve heard is—”
“I don’t care. I deny it all and will deny it all, no matter how true it is or isn’t. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m Republican all of a sudden. It means I know what’s best for me and the people around me.”
“Meaning …?”
“Meaning superhumans are fun from a movie and comic perspective, but think about it. What that makes you is superabnormal. And people sure are accepting of the abnormal, aren’t they? Do you need me to tell you how many websites are devoted to killing all infecteds? They’re not super anything, they’re just diseased, but people get all NIMBY on us all the time. Because we’re unclean, we’re freaks, we’re no longer Human. Add another level to that in your mind, Aidan. Add an infected who’s faster than you, stronger, better. They gonna get flowers thrown at them, endorsement deals? No. The Humanity Firsters will fall all over themselves trying to kill you and make themselves a savior or martyr for their cause. Look at this white supremacist idiot who shot into my house and tried to light it up. My partner was in there. He could have been hurt or killed. I really don’t give a shit about me anymore. I can take care of myself—or should I say the lion can take care of me—but I’m not endangering my loved ones. I am not super anything. I’m diseased, like all other infecteds are diseased. My virus just expresses itself differently, that’s all. And I advise you to drop this line of questioning right now.”
His owlish eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses, and after a moment, he asked, “Could you fight everyone in the cafe?”
Roan shrugged. “Give me a challenge, why don’t you? These pasty-faced English majors could be taken by a hyperactive sixth grader.”
“I’d put up a fight,” he pointed out, turning on the recorder again.
“I’m still betting on the sixth grader. They’re small, but they’ll crawl ya.”
About the time the interview was wrapping up, the photographer arrived, a young woman with stringy blonde hair who was so mannish in her slender frame and way of dress (canvas jacket, hiking boots, flannel shirt) that he would have thought she was a male if he couldn’t smell the estrogen on her. She didn’t wear makeup either, had a slight overbite, and almost startlingly clear blue eyes. Her accent when she spoke was very faintly German. She crouched down and took a few photos of him with the cafe window as the background and said very little, except near the end when she was taking the last of her shots. “The camera loves you,” she told him. “You look haunted.” Was that a compliment? He had no idea, but didn’t care enough to ask.
Aidan thanked him, paid for the drinks, and told him he’d make sure he got a copy of the magazine when it came out. He hesitated by the table as Gerta (or at least that’s what he called the photographer) led the way out. “I understand, you know. But I’m a little surprised someone like you would play it safe.”
Someone like him? Rather than ask, he simply replied, “Lose someone you loved more than life itself and get back to me. Becoming the world’s most famous freak isn’t worth what little I have left.”
He didn’t know if he’d ever understand, or indeed if he understood it himself.
Only
one day later, he checked into Willow Creek so Rosenberg could scan the shit out of him.
He stayed off pills for the drawing of his blood (and they seemed to take a pint, the bastards), but as soon as that was done he went back to his room and popped a few codeine. It was weird being here, because the last time he'd been here was when he checked Paris out of the place. He remembered dropping off books for him, sneaking in sandwiches, getting to know the only tiger strain he’d ever met. It wasn’t bittersweet to be here, more like melancholy. He would dream about him tonight, wouldn’t he?
And he did. They were sitting on a hospital bed, and Paris was shuffling a deck of cards. Right. Paris had tried to teach Roan how to play gin rummy one day, because Roan didn’t know. “How can you be so smart and yet not know how to play a kid’s card game?” Paris asked as he shuffled like a cardsharp. His hair was shorter, as once he was hospitalized here he got rid of his shaggy, overgrown “homeless guy hair” (as he called it).
“’Cause I was a foster kid and I missed out on a lot of things. They do what they can for you at some of the group homes, but mostly you learn shit from the other kids. None were interested in card games beyond the three card variety.”
“Shall I start playing my violin?”
“Quiet, you middle class suburban bastard,” he snapped, and that only made Paris grin at him.
As he dealt the cards, he said, “Congrats, by the way. Good of you to make an honest man out of Dylan. Like the ring too.”
Once again, Roan had to point out he wasn’t for traditional rings, and once again he’d ended up with a guy who was of the same opinion. So their commitment rings—or whatever the fuck you called it; the “not marriage, ’cause that’s icky and gross” rings—were silver bands with a tiny black silhouette of a cat on it. Roan wanted to go with the skull, but Dylan refused. The cat seemed like an ironic compromise. “It’s not a snake eating its tail, but it will do.” He picked up his cards, looked at them, and knew he was dreaming, since the cards made no sense: all face cards, Kings, Jacks, and Jokers (what, no Queens?), some in suits that were unheard of, such as clover, tree, frying pan, and lion. He put the cards down and admitted, “I still miss you.”
“Well, you’d better.”
“I think I’ve fucked up very badly.”
“Not with Dylan?”
“No, with everything else. I don’t think I like what I’m becoming.”
“And what’s that?”
Looking at Paris’s sweet face was so hard it brought tears to his eyes. God, he was so beautiful. It was the tragic kind of beauty too, the kind you knew was doomed from the start. A face that launched a thousand ships and dug a million graves. “I don’t know. I’m so fucking scared I hate myself for it.”
“You hate yourself anyways,” Paris told him, then enfolded him in a hug that Roan realized he was desperate for as soon as he felt his arms around him. He leaned into Paris and breathed him in, aware he was dreaming and not really caring. “Change is inevitable. Just let it come.”
“And let it wash me away?” Actually, come to think of it, that wasn’t a bad idea. To reach total oblivion, an inner space where he just didn’t care anymore.
He always thought happy endings were for dead people. Maybe one of these days, he’d find out for himself.
Andrea Speed
writes way too much. She is the Editor In Chief of CxPulp.com, where she reviews comics as well as movies and occasionally interviews comic creators. She also has a serial fiction blog where she writes even more, and she occasionally reviews books for Joe Bob Briggs’s site. She might be willing to review you, if you ask nicely enough, but really she should knock it off while she’s ahead.
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