Infected

by Andrea Speed

  “This is insane. You can’t—” Whatever Chai was going to say, he stopped himself and tried again. “This isn’t the Wild West; this isn’t even Baltimore. This isn’t the way to fight for change. You could wind up locked up or dead. Or both.”

  “And how is that different from the previous trajectory of my life?”

  Chai’s eyes widened so dramatically Holden was afraid for a moment they might pop out of his skull. “What the fuck…? You can’t mean that, Holden. You were always the smartest of us. You could be amazing if you just put your energy in the right direction.”

  Holden smirked. “I’m not amazing now?”

  “You know what I fucking mean. You don’t have to do this. You can have a real life. You can be someone. You’re dooming yourself to a dead end you don’t need to embrace.”

  Holden had to look out the window so Chai didn’t see him sneer. It wasn’t aimed at him. It was a reaction to his words. “And what led you to believe that was ever something I wanted? To be normal is to aim low. To me, it sounds like death.”

  Chai scoffed, a sort of breathless noise that was halfway between a bleak laugh and a dry cough. “Fine, be the next John Waters, then. Don’t go out and hurt people.”

  “I’ve never hurt anyone that didn’t deserve a thousand times worse than what I gave them.”

  For a moment, Holden and Chai stared at each other, as if silently daring the other to break first. Holden knew Chai was disturbed by this, but he hadn’t lost him yet. Maybe he still trusted him.

  It was Chai who broke first. He sighed and shook his head. “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Yes I can. I’m not Roan, but I can investigate people. In fact, reading people is kind of my specialty. Or did you forget?”

  “No, of course not. But… I don’t feel good about this.”

  “Why do you think I didn’t tell you?”

  Chai frowned again, but Holden already understood that Chai wasn’t breaking up their partnership, or at least not yet. “I’m not sure you should keep doing this. Or at least not alone. Do you know what could happen if something goes wrong?”

  “You mean like get a concussion, get stabbed, or get the shit beaten out of me by cops? Been there, done that, have the medical bills to prove it.”

  Chai’s eyes widened again. “What? You were stabbed? Where? How? What happened?”

  “Let’s just say that whoever doesn’t kill me soon regrets not having finished the job and leave it at that.” Of course, in the case of the cops and the asshole that stabbed him, Roan got there first, and even though he didn’t kill them, that was probably so much worse. They were nearly killed, and yet whenever they tried to explain what happened—most likely variations of “He started turning into a lion. I know infection doesn’t work like that! But he did!”—they were dismissed as crazy. Not only did they get the shit beaten out of them and looked into the animalistic eyes of death, not a single person believed their version of the story. It was glorious insult to ruinous injury.

  Chai didn’t look impressed; he looked anxious. “Holden, you’re wrong. Okay? If you do something else, you’re not going to end up dead or in prison. You can’t give up on yourself like that.”

  “I’m not giving up on myself. I’ve made my choice.” Holden started the car, giving him a legitimate excuse to avoid his eyes.

  “How can a guy as confident as you have such low self-regard?” Chai asked.

  Holden shook his head. “My self-regard is fine. I just know what I’m good at.”

  “Why you? Why does it have to be you?”

  Holden shrugged. “Because it does.” Did he have an answer for that? He wasn’t sure.

  Holden idly wondered if he was lying to himself, then decided he’d rather not know. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. And maybe sometimes lying to yourself wasn’t so bad.

  13—Goals in Slow Motion

  THIS WAS the point where Chai had to do some soul searching, and goddammit, was there anything worse than that?

  Well, okay, there were several things worse than that, and he had experienced many of them. The thing was, so had Holden. Where did this leave them?

  Once they got back into the city, they both retreated to their separate apartments, Holden to call Dahlia and break the news to her, and Chai to wonder if he should give up this whole private detective gig. It was fun while it lasted, right? And he discovered he had a knack for investigation, which he wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t followed Holden into this. But….

  Now he knew for certain Holden was a vigilante. Could he really look the other way from now on, aware that Holden was risking his own neck and undoubtedly hurting people? Could he be complicit in that?

  Although his furniture was here, and he had unpacked a few things, he still had full boxes against the wall and nearly tripped on one as he went to the kitchen. Unlike most everyone he knew, Chai had never quite gotten the hang of strong alcohol. He’d tried, especially when he was a teenager, but in general alcohol tasted bad, and if he could somehow get it down, it never seemed worth it. He found he liked Baileys, though, so he had some of that. He couldn’t drink too much at once because it was really sweet—despite a slight afterburn—and it could make him feel sick if he overindulged. So he got one of his shot glasses down from the cupboard before retrieving the bottle of Baileys from the fridge. He poured himself a shot and sipped it before putting the rest of the bottle back. Sure it was girly, but it was also fucking delicious. He didn’t know why everyone didn’t always have a bottle of this stuff.

  He collapsed on his second-hand sofa and chewed over his dilemma in his mind while also enjoying the Baileys. When his phone hummed in his pocket, he almost ignored it, but he checked to see who was calling. It was Dee, and he barely had to think about it. “Hey there,” Chai said upon answering.

  “Hi yourself. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight. I have the night off.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be good company. It’s been a hell of a day.”

  “That’s okay. There’s no pressure. You can come over, I’ll order some Chinese food, and we can watch a movie. Or we can play a game. How are you on Uncharted?”

  “Um, I’m aware it’s a video game. I’ve never played it. I’m behind the times.”

  “If you wanna learn, I can show you the ropes.”

  Chai smiled, gulping down the rest of his Baileys. There was something very kind about Dee that he instantly liked. It probably didn’t hurt that he vaguely reminded him of a handsome nurse in the hospital where he did the majority of his recovery after the car accident. He was in his ward, but most of the time he was working when Chai was sleeping. Sometimes he stayed up so he could catch a glimpse of him. That was probably his only fond memory of being cooped up in the hospital. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Please do.” Dee paused, and Chai felt something was coming. He hoped it wasn’t terrible. “So, uh, I googled you, which is a thing I do with guys sometimes.”

  “Let me guess, you found my old porn work?”

  “Uh, yeah, but also… you live in the same building as this guy I know, and considering your old job, I was wondering… you’re not friends with Holden Krause, are you?”

  Chai groaned. “Yeah, he’s the investigative partner I mentioned. So I take it you know him?”

  The way Dee sighed, heavily and long, Chai was ready for bad news. “Yeah. I really thought the city couldn’t be that small, but apparently it is.”

  “How do you know him?” He wondered if he’d tell the truth.

  “I’m an ex of Roan’s. I assume he told you about him.”

  “Yeah, he did. Not that it matters, but… are you infected?”

  “No. But I’m not exactly Holden’s biggest fan.”

  Chai almost asked if he knew about Holden’s vigilante thing but held back. If he didn’t know, he certainly didn’t want to tell him. “He’s my best friend.”

  Dee groaned. “Well fuck.”

  “So, should we e
nd this? Is this a deal breaker?”

  Dee let out a breath like he’d gotten a mild but noticeable punch in the stomach. “What kind of dick would I be if I refused to see you just ’cause your best friend’s… strange. I thought we had a pretty good time last night.”

  “Me too.” Chai paused for a second. It only seemed polite. “So you gonna tell me why you dislike Holden?”

  “It’s not anything specific in particular. I mean, it sounds stupid when I lay it out in my own head. But I thought he was a bad influence on Roan and helped lead him into places he probably shouldn’t have gone. And yet, I dated that stubborn prick for a bit, and I know you can’t lead Roan where he wasn’t goin’ in the first place. He’s a grownass man, and he makes his own choices.”

  Chai couldn’t help but smile. Did he care that much about any of his exes? He didn’t think so. Not even Paul, whom he’d imagined as his husband someday. But that was before the accident. Now thoughts of Paul left a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn’t even know where the hell he was anymore: if he was still in California, moved back to Georgia, or was somewhere else entirely. He could probably search Google or Facebook and find him, but that felt like the last thing he ever wanted to do. “That’s sweet.”

  “Stop.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I’m sure you do, but Roan is such a frustrating asshole, I don’t know why I care about him at all. We were a terrible pair when we were dating. Our personalities didn’t mesh at all.”

  Chai wondered what it was about the guy that so many people seemed loyal to him, even when he wasn’t there. Maybe being the world’s first genuine superhero had that effect. “It’s starting to sound like you’re protesting too much.”

  Dee clicked his tongue. “I know, right? You probably wouldn’t believe how many times I just wanted to smack the shit out of him. But I didn’t wanna pull back a bloody stump, so I lived with it.”

  “He can’t be all bad.”

  Dee sighed. “That’s the thing. He’s a mess, and his life is beyond fucked-up, and yet, he’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. He genuinely wants to help people. I mean, if I was him, I’d tell the whole human race to suck my dick. Fuck them. They treated him miserably. But that’s not him. It takes a kind of strength I don’t have. I haven’t come across it a lot. It always surprises me when I do.”

  Chai found himself wondering if he could do that. Could he ever forgive the driver that caused that pileup that killed his friend and cost him his leg and ultimately his fiancé, his career, his everything? Dee was right—that was a special kind of strength. Chai couldn’t even pretend to entertain the thought for a few seconds. Honestly, Chai had never quite understood “turn the other cheek” people. It was nice and sounded like the noble thing, but he knew he couldn’t do it. He often didn’t understand those who managed it.

  And he presumed to judge Holden? Shit. Maybe if he still had both his legs and was as jacked and physically confident as Holden, he’d be doing the whole vigilante trip too. On the one hand, it sounded horrible. On the other, it sounded kind of thrilling. To get back at fuckheads who went out of their way to ruin other people’s lives? To abuse an abuser? To go medieval on their asses? It sounded like the American dream. “Is that why everybody’s so crazy about him?”

  Dee laughed breathlessly. “Oh yeah. He’ll drive you crazy. But his epitaph is going to be He Gave Until He Could Give No More. I’d rather have a longer, more selfish life.”

  “But you’re an EMT. That’s not a selfish job.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m not lioning out until I cause a fatal aneurysm or until I go full lion and never come back.”

  Chai chewed over that for a moment but realized it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “Uh, what? What does go full lion mean?”

  “Did Holden not tell you about him?”

  “He did, but I have to admit it doesn’t make a ton of sense. He can half transform? How is that possible?”

  “You want the full speculation or a quick and dirty in layman’s terms?”

  That was no choice at all. “The latter, please.”

  Dee took a drink of something before he responded, possibly for courage. “He was born weird. He was born with the virus, and it seemed to mesh with his DNA in an unexpected and strange way.”

  “Isn’t that true of all virus children?”

  “Yes and no. Usually the virus incorporation is destructive and harmful and deforms or kills the child pretty quickly. In Roan’s case, the incorporation was total and seemed to hit a balance it doesn’t in most others. No one knows why or exactly how. What we do know is he doesn’t follow a viral cycle anymore and can seemingly force the change himself. Also, maybe as a side effect, the lion can come out when he doesn’t want it to. That’s what I meant by lioning out.”

  Chai was trying to picture this in his head and was failing. He’d seen some of those YouTube clips, and most were poorly filmed enough that you could kind of excuse the weirdness Roan displayed in them, if it was even real. That news footage of him was too confusingly filmed, although it was clear he was a surprisingly strong and fast bastard. “Uh-huh. This sounds kind of scary.”

  “It is. But little did we know it got scarier. Turns out, near the end there, the lion could come out and Roan wouldn’t really change at all.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, I know, right? I wanna see The Lancet explain that one.”

  “No, I mean… how did you know? If the lion came out and he didn’t change?”

  Dee scoffed. “Believe me, you know. It’s all in the eyes.”

  “His eyes change?”

  “Not physically. But the intelligence is gone. The only thing there is rage and hunger, far beyond anything a human is capable of. Believe me, when you see it, you know it. It haunts your nightmares.”

  “How does he live with it? I mean, I can’t imagine what that’s like.” Even as he said it, Chai remembered people saying that to him about his missing leg and winced. He didn’t mean it in a bad way; it was just something so beyond his experience and understanding of the world. How did such a thing happen, outside a terrible science-fiction B movie?

  “Yeah, you’re not alone. By all metrics, he shouldn’t still be alive. But as I said, he’s a really stubborn bastard.”

  “How is this not front page news, though? You’d think there’d be a million clickbait articles about it.”

  “Us Cult of Roan people, we work hard to keep it from public knowledge. Although if anyone put the pieces together, they’d figure it out. Thankfully, no one’s bothered.”

  Chai smiled. Even though Dee was only kidding about the “Cult of Roan,” it kind of felt that way. Then again, the fact that he had the loyalty of cops, hookers, EMTs, and hockey players spoke well of him. Clearly he didn’t discriminate. “You know, you could all be playing an elaborate practical joke, and I would never know.”

  “Dammit, you figured it out.” He paused briefly. “So, are we cool?”

  “If you’re cool, I’m cool. Holden’s my friend, not yours.”

  “Great. Seven thirty?”

  “See you then,” Chai agreed.

  Yes, he and Holden might be good friends, but no one said they couldn’t also have other friends all their own.

  14—The Limits of Battleships

  HOLDEN ENDED up meeting Hel at a used bookstore about half a mile from the Jungle. The likelihood of anyone from the Jungle being there was super slim, even though it might do some of them good. They’d be more likely to be at EMP than at a bookstore, which was a shame.

  The store cat, Poe, a black cat with a kinked tail, ended up following him around, and Holden ended up petting it as it came to sit on a shelf at about his hand level. Funny thing. He felt like asking Poe if she knew he knew Roan, but didn’t as that was fucking crazy. Still, she was very soft and nice to pet. Holden found himself wondering why he didn’t own an animal. After he got a place, he was too worried about keeping it to even think about pets, and th
en… it just wasn’t important. His mother was a neat freak, so he never got to keep pets as a kid, although he had vague memories of a failed trial with a goldfish. That hardly counted, though, did it? Maybe his lack of animals as a kid explained why he couldn’t do relationships now. Probably not, but it sounded good, didn’t it?

  He met Hel in the mystery section, because he couldn’t pass up the irony. She was wearing the same clothes as the day before, although the watch cap she was wearing today was a muddy brown color. There was an old armchair tucked away in the back of the mystery section, where the paperback stacks got more than a little haphazard, and he let her have the chair and gave her the paper bag with the breakfast sandwich and the doughnut in it. Technically you weren’t supposed to have food in here, but Holden had been in here enough he felt he was owed a free pass. Besides, it wasn’t like Hel was going to spill anything; she didn’t waste a crumb.

  As if to prove that, she devoured the sandwich in four bites, and he was pretty sure not a speck made it past the gravity of her mouth. She reached in the bag for the doughnut but finally started talking first, keeping her voice low, as if they were in the library. “So I’ve been staying with a friend in the woods part of the Jungle, but I’ve been creeping around, seeing what I could find near the Caves,” she said, giving Holden a sidelong glance. Possibly because he was petting the cat, which was still perched on the shelves beside a stack of Agatha Christie paperbacks. The Caves was what the part of the Jungle beneath the freeway was called, although there were no caves. “Last night, I caught pieces of this argument by the viaduct part of the Jungle. Couple of men were arguing. I saw one leave, but I didn’t recognize him. Just another white guy.”

  It occurred to Holden that would be a great name for a restaurant or a band. “What were they arguing about?”

  “That’s the thing. It took me a couple of minutes ’cause there was lots of traffic noise, and it’s always weird trying to pick up a conversation in the middle. But I think they were arguing about the cop who got shot.”