Dragon Virus

by Gilman, Laura Anne

  “Oh man, oh man, Ian, damn it, Ian I’m so sorry, so sorry...” Max, on his knees, his face covered with tears, his eyes wild-looking, like a dog that’s gotten kicked and can’t figure out why. Ian reacted to Max’s voice, uttering a wail and shrinking back into Jordan’s space, Carly’s touch.

  Max, hurt, sat back on his heels, unsure what to do.

  That was wrong, Jordan thought. It wasn’t Max. Max hadn’t done anything. Jordan tried to get up, to reach out to Max. His hand went down to support himself, and it squelched in something sticky.

  He looked down. Raised his hand. Stared at it, as though he couldn’t process what he was seeing, even while the blood dripped down his palm and down his wrist. Like paint, he thought. Like ketchup. Like anything but what it was.

  “I’m sorry,” Max said again, like it was his fault. Jordan wanted to tell him to shut up already, but he couldn’t do anything except stare at the blood on his hand. Carly put her head down on Ian’s shoulder, and he moaned; the sound half-muffled by her hair.

  o0o

  “Over here!” Jordan heard Marta’s voice as though it were coming from very far away, like through the drain tunnel they used to run through, down by the creek. Hollow, and very very far away.

  “Mary, mother of God, it’s the freaks.” A girl, standing over them, like it was the circus come to town.

  “Get an ambulance.” A man’s voice, and Jordan flinched away as hands came down to move him. An adult, now, when it was too late.

  “Easy now, son,” another man said, an unfamiliar voice, and Jordan opened his eyes again to see a man in a police uniform kneeling over Ian. “Where are you hurt, son? What did they do to you?”

  “Don’t touch him,” Max snarled, but he was ignored. The cop tried to shift Ian, tugging at his jeans to get them back up over his hips, and Ian let out a piercing scream as the stub where his tail had been touched the pavement.

  The cop got him back onto his side, careful not to touch where all the blood was coming from. “Damn.” Then in a louder, forced-kind-of-cheerful voice, “Come on, boy, we’ll get you stitched up and you’ll be fine. Nothing to cry over, everything’s going to be just fine once we get you to the hospital.”

  The bell that jangled when you went in or out of Dackey’s sounded, and there were more voices, adults muttering. Jordan didn’t want to hear, tried to block them out.

  “I didn’t see anything, I was in the storeroom.”

  “You left a candy store untended?” Mr. Peterson. He was the custodian at school. He didn’t sound like he believed Mr. D at all.

  “I had to restock the counter, and my afternoon help didn’t show up.”

  Mr. Peterson didn’t say anything.

  “You think I would have just let a couple of kids get jumped in front of my store if I’d seen anything?” Mr. D’s voice rose, like Max’s had. But nothing at all like Max’s. Max had been scared for Ian, not himself. Jordan had to remind himself of that — Max had tried to help.

  Max had fought, had knocked the knife away...

  Afterward, a little voice said. He didn’t do anything until it was too late.

  Neither did I, the first voice countered. I didn’t do anything until Max did. Max is a friend. But somehow the thought didn’t sound as convincing as it had even five minutes ago.

  A siren; the cop must’ve called for an ambulance. Under the wail Jordan could hear Marta crying, could hear Max talking to Mr. Peterson, and Mr. Dackey trying to get a word in edgewise. Now. When it was all too late.

  Jordan looked up, squinting, and saw Carly’s face as she stared back at him over the kneeling cop’s shoulder. She was standing now, holding in her good hand what looked like a limp brown sock, if socks were made of pink skin covered with soft, short fur. Her face was pale under the bruises already forming, and her eyes were terrible.

  You can’t trust them, he thought to her as though she would hear. You can’t ever trust them. Not any of them. Not freaks like us.

  Her terrible eyes burned a little brighter as she seemed to nod in agreement.

  o0o

  From the comments section of the OceansFirst digiforum, 7 January 2075

  The rising incidence of die-off after two decades of the red tide in areas beyond that affected by the Gulf Disaster may be, as claimed, coincidental, but it boggles my mind that anyone can look at the evidence and claim that there is nothing to be concerned about. These are the same idiots who insisted that Climate Change was a socialist plot, aren’t they? —dr. zoe

  Repent, sinners. The ocean runs red and the blood of the innocents rises up to strangle you...the end of times is upon us. —dog of god

  the oceans run red because we’ve destroyed them, you moron. Everything’s dying because we poisoned them. It’s a sin but god has nothing to do with it. —joan

  We were warned. The dragon rose in the sky and we did not heed it, now the leviathan consumes the ocean and we do not heed it. The enemy is within and only the righteous who refuse the dragon will be saved! You cannot repent, for it is too late. The enemy is within. —preacher

  Who the hell let the crackpots in? —richard

  Dragons r the future. Old world had its chance, now iz theirs. Not end of times, just end of us. Good riddance, I say. —anon

  The devil wore a dragon’s skin, and fell upon sinful women, who now bear evil into the world, one monster-spawn at a time. It is the holy work to burn the dragons from this earth, and scour our bodies in preparation. Repent, but there will be no saving. —preacher

  MODERATOR has closed this thread

  Four

  It’s a question without an answer, I suppose. Something to meditate on when you have everything else to do. Does the moment of change come in the instant of event, or the instant you realize it?

  o0o

  “We’re out of peanut butter.”

  Jody was muttering in the kitchen again. I folded the paper back and finished reading the local news, keeping half an ear on her in case the muttering turned into something worse. The usual chaos in the cities, with the High Holies screaming about the willful and evil mutation of the species as they picket in front of labs that have nothing at all to do with gene splicing, and firebomb the ones that do. The Oregon legislature is trying to pass a Pure Gene law; California’s right behind them.

  “Who keeps eating the peanut butter?” It’s an exasperated yell, not expecting an answer.

  I looked down at my feet, and Dolt looked back at me innocently. “Nice try, pal. But I don’t think the cats have been scooping it out by the pawful.”

  Dolt put his head down on his forelegs and let out a miffed whumfing sigh. It’s probably just as well so many people put up a fight about modifying felines: give our cats hands — worse yet, opposable thumbs — and they wouldn’t have been content to simply eat our food, they would have kicked us out of our homes and changed the locks. Dolt just eats all the crunchy Jiff.

  But I’m not going to squeal on him. Loyalty goes both ways. Hearing nothing further from the kitchen except the slamming and opening of cupboards, I return to my newspaper. It’s not all bad news in the world, though. Little girl, barely seven, saved her brother from drowning, untangled him from an abandoned fishing net and pulled him to the surface. She was underwater for almost fifteen minutes. Her brother, who didn’t have gills, was shown hugging her from his hospital bed.

  “See, Toto? There is kindness in this world.”

  Dolt ignored me this time, not even twitching an ear. He hates it when I call him names.

  The photo of the kids was cute; you could barely see the gill-marks on the girl’s neck. I wondered if the discoloration around them was normal, or if her parents had tried surgery. I wondered if Jody and I would, when our daughter was born.

  Jody came out into the living room, a spoon in her hand. She looked at both of us accusingly. I blinked, secure in my innocence. Dolt’s ears went limp, and his tail thumped once. He never could lie worth a damn.

  “I swear; we
should have gotten a purebred. Something cuddly. And dumb.”

  “You were the one who wanted a partnerbreed,” I reminded her, ignoring the fact that I had been the one to bring home the brochures in the first place.

  “Next time I come up with a stupid idea, tell me it’s a stupid idea, okay?”

  Not a chance in hell. I loved Jodes more than life, but let’s have a reality break, okay? She’s five foot nothing of short fuse held back by enforced Buddhism-trained calm. And Buddha has nothing on an empty peanut butter jar when you’ve got a fetus in your gut craving something crunchy and salty and creamy all at once.

  That was why we had gotten a partnerbreed, really. There had been another increase in kid snatchings the year before we conceived, and modified dogs were touted as the best possible security for your child. Canine loyalty, amplified intelligence, and the ability to literally hold your kid’s hand when they crossed the street.

  Dolt, unfortunately, had decided during his trial run with us that he was mine, not some unborn baby’s. We were already down on the waiting list for another one; when a partnerdog decides they’d rather be a cop than a babysitter, nobody argues. The publicity is astonishing for the breeders — “trusted with public safety; how much more secure can your child be?”

  “You want us to go get you some more?”

  “That would be nice.”

  I kicked Dolt gently in the ribs. He looked at me with his mournful brown eyes and stood, stretching his hind legs out. If you didn’t know, he’d look like your basic mutt; a lot of bloodhound, some German shepherd, a smidge of maybe-terrier around the ears and muzzle. That’s if you didn’t look at his front paws, with their elongated, jointed finger-toes, and didn’t notice the bright orange tag in his left ear.

  “Come on, pal. Mommy’s grumpy.”

  He sneezed, walked over to Jody and put his cold muzzle into her free hand. As much of an apology as she was going to get.

  “Yeah, I love you too, you overgrown lab experiment. Go get me my peanut butter.”

  Shoes, jacket, pistol for me, webbing and shock-harness for Dolt. There’s no such thing as off-duty any more, not with the crazies who call themselves good citizens. Especially not if you’re walking with a Created, what the extremists call anyone that doesn’t have the original genetic blueprint. Doesn’t seem to matter to them if it was lab work, bred to order, or random swing of the mutation wheel. Different was bad. Different was scary. Different seemed to be anything that wasn’t in the large print edition of A Child’s First Bible. They’re the same people who’re snatching kids, we think. We being the law enforcement arm. Taking babies and young children who’re born old-style, without the Change. Replacing the children within their own community who’re marked, or just saving “human” children from sinful families, I don’t know.

  One thing I do know, they’d rather Dolt never existed, him and all the other Createds, if they could manage it. Send science back to the abacus age, forget everything we’ve learned, and the planet will be a garden of something again. The thought always makes me snort. Fat chance. The serpent predated humanity, something everyone always seems to forget.

  Our street’s quiet; it’s a nice neighborhood, old houses set right up on the street and deep lawns behind. Dolt struts down the sidewalk like he owns it.

  “Heya, Dolt!” Mrs. Thacker’s grandchildren wave to him. “Hi, miz Taylor” is an afterthought.

  “All right, so maybe you do own the place,” I told him. His body language is a virtual snicker. They’re not supposed to, but I’d swear they used cat genes in him somewhere.

  “Morning, Miss Megan.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Griese. You’re up early.”

  He grinned, hunching his body to a slow halt as he nears us. Mr. Griese is ancient, ninety at least, and as bent and gnarled as a crabapple tree. His skin is blacker than fresh-poured tar, and his eyes are a shocking blue. No genetic tampering, or if so it’s the old-fashioned kind; rumor has it his father was Irish, and not of the Black Irish kind. When Jodes and I moved into the neighborhood he showed up on our front step the first afternoon with a bottle of barrel-aged whiskey and a fruitcake he swore was no less than thirty years old.

  “Damned kids woke me, so I figured I might as well get out and get some fresh air. May be the last chance I get.”

  He had said the same thing that first day, too. He may well say it every day. It’s not a bad way to live, I suppose.

  “We’re going down the market, if you want some company while you walk.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  His legs were longer than mine, once, but age slowed him to a casual lope. Dolt trots ahead of us, looking over his shoulder every now and again to make sure everything’s copasetic.

  Mahil’s is the strangest bodega I’ve ever been in. You can get anything there, from pet food to small tins of black caviar to kerosene for emergency lamps and lord knows what else.

  They also have the clearest reception of anyone in town, every channel you can imagine and a few you can’t, and every Sunday you can count on a group of teenagers and old men sitting around watching soccer being broadcast from some tiny little outlaw station, with announcers with lousy English and gloriously tacky commercials in high-speed Spanish. I never ask Mahil where his receptor is, and he never offers to tell me. I’m Homicide, not Larceny.

  Half a dozen kids were slouched around the set when we got there. Two of them wore the crimsons of the Waves, three were Lifers, and one, a scrawny Black kid, was unaffiliated.

  The hair on the back of my neck and tops of my arms prickled, but Dolt stayed cool, so I relaxed.

  If the kids had been spoiling for a fight, he would have known.

  Waves and Lifers were the more casual of the problems around here, anyway. Waves were the last remnant of the grungy street toughs from when I was a kid, rumble-scruff and bravado. Lifers were scarier, a little weirder; they’d found God, and paid Him back by trying to save every soul that wasn’t nailed down and stealing anything else they could find. Today, though, they were preoccupied with the game, and besides, Mahil’s was neutral ground. If any of them had been sporting the gold embroidered cross of the GodCore on their denim, I would have called for backup, neutrality be damned.

  Christ, what they do in your name...

  “Megan!” Mahil’s daughter was the cutest thing. She had a crush on all three of us, but reserved her overt affection for Dolt.

  “Heya, Leanni.” A player scored, and two of the kids let out happy sports-fan noises.

  The unaffiliated kid swore like he had money on the game.

  “Mamma-to-be have a craving?” She was down on the floor giving Dolt a belly-scritch. Slut that he was, he’d fallen onto his back and was kneading her arm with his pawlets, panting in a dopey canine grin.

  “Your buddy there ate all the peanut butter,” I told her, heading for the shelf I knew the jars were stored on.

  “Oh, bad puppy,” she scolded him. “You know better.”

  A whine let me know that he was taking her scolding far worse than Jody’s. Figures. Nobody ever listens to mom. Peanut butter, peanut butter, where’s the peanut — ah. Creamy, roasted honey nut, crunchy... I spotted a plastic container of freshly-ground and picked it up.

  Off the budget, but the stuff was good...

  “Mutant freak.”

  The tone got to me more than the words, barely heard over the noise of the tv, and Mr. Griese and Leanni talking. My skin tightened, drawing me upright. Left hand on the butt of my gun, resting lightly, finger on the latch, weight on the heel of one foot, ball of the other, ready to pivot, duck, dive into the fire. I put the peanut putter down, raised my head like Dolt scenting the air.

  “Go back to the game, Randy.”

  Leanni was only fourteen. She shouldn’t sound that tight-wound. I stepped out from the shelter of the aisle, gaze flitting, taking in the scene. A Lifer was standing, staring at the two of them. No, at Dolt, who had rolled onto his stomach, shoulder
s down, head up, forelegs out in front of him. Ready-pose; not attack mode, but not calm, either. The basic pose was submission, but the ears and eyes were alert. They taught him that in academy; give calming signals but let them know you’re aware, not subservient.

  “It’s a freak.”

  The other Lifers looked; one went back to the game, the other stood. He was a well-built kid, maybe eighteen, maybe sixteen.

  “Leave it alone, Randy.”

  Randy’s transition to puberty hadn’t been kind. His face was pock-marked, and his shoulders caved in on themselves, too tall for the flesh he carried. His jefe jerked a finger, expecting to be obeyed. Not that any Lifer had love for a Created, but generally they left the four-legged alone. Something to do with them being dumb creatures, victim of mankind’s hubris in playing god.

  “I don’t like it. I don’t want it in front of me.”

  “It’s harnessed, Randy.” A harness showed that the partnerbreed was in service. Even without the shield embossed in gold powder on the leather, it should be enough to give any bigot with a violent streak pause. Last partnerbreed killed under harness got the killer twenty-five years hard time, no chance of parole. We serve and protect our own, too.

  “Don’t make me call my dad,” Leanni warned them both. “You know he’ll kick you out, all of you.”

  Shut up, I urged her silently, remaining very still myself. This was a gang matter; Randy was challenging his jefe, and one of them was going to lose. All we could do was stay the hell out of it. I gave a low-down sign to Dolt, and he ducked his head, ears remaining alert.

  “It’s a dog. Just a dog.” Jefe was good, I gave him that. I thought he was going to make it. Then Randy went for his hip pocket, a swivel-patch that gangers use to carry concealed when they didn’t care who knew it. Fuck.

  “Is there a problem, boys?”

  I’m not imposing, not like Mahil can be, but I know how to pitch my voice, make an entrance. They both swung my way. Leanni dropped to the floor, quiet and boneless-like, her arms around Dolt as if she’s going to protect him. He licked her check, got to his feet. Mr. Griese had faded like a pro; I didn’t have to worry about him.