The Dragon’s Path

by Abraham Daniel

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever watch Misko and Marisko when you were a kid?”

  Miller frowned. “The kids’ show?” he asked.

  “The one with the five dinosaurs and the evil guy in the big pink hat,” Holden said, then starting humming a bright, boppy tune. Miller closed his eyes and then started singing along. The music had had words once. Now it was only a series of rises and falls, runs up and down a major scale, with every dissonance resolved in the note that followed.

  “Guess I must have,” Miller said when they reached the end.

  “I loved that show. I must have been eight or nine last time I saw it,” Holden said. “Funny how that stuff stays with you.”

  “Yeah,” Miller said. He coughed, turned his head, and spat out something red. “How are you holding together?”

  “I think I’m okay,” Holden said. Then, a moment later, he added, “As long as I don’t stand up.”

  “Nauseated?”

  “Yeah, some.”

  “Me too.”

  “What is this?” Holden asked. “I mean, what the hell is this all about? Why are they doing this?”

  It was a fair question. Slaughtering Eros—slaughtering any station in the Belt—was a pretty easy job. Anyone with first-year orbital mechanics skills could find a way to sling a rock big enough and fast enough to crack the station open. With the effort Protogen had put in, they could have killed the air supply or drugged it or whatever the hell they wanted to do. This wasn’t a murder. This wasn’t even a genocide.

  And then there was all the observation equipment. Cameras, communications arrays, air and water sensors. There were only two reasons for that kind of shit. Either the mad bastards at Protogen got off on watching people die, or…

  “They don’t know,” Miller said.

  “What?”

  He turned to look at Holden. The first Miller, the detective, the optimist, the one who needed to know, was driving now. His death-self didn’t fight, because of course it didn’t. It didn’t fight anything. Miller raised his hand, like he was giving a lecture to a rookie.

  “They don’t know what it’s about, or… you know, at least they don’t know what’s going to happen. This isn’t even built like a torture chamber. It’s all being watched, right? Water and air sensors. It’s a petri dish. They don’t know what that shit that killed Julie does, and this is how they’re finding out.”

  Holden frowned.

  “Don’t they have laboratories? Places where you could maybe put that crap on some animals or something? Because as experimental design goes, this seems a little messed up.”

  “Maybe they need a really big sample size,” Miller said. “Or maybe it’s not about the people. Maybe it’s about what happens to the station.”

  “There’s a cheery thought,” Holden said.

  The Julie Mao in Miller’s mind brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. She was frowning, looking thoughtful, interested, concerned. It all had to make sense. It was like one of those basic orbital mechanics problems where every hitch and veer seemed random until all the variables slipped into place. What had been inexplicable became inevitable. Julie smiled at him. Julie as she had been. As he imagined she had been. The Miller who hadn’t resigned himself to death smiled back. And then she was gone, his mind shifting to the noise from the pachinko machines and the low, demonic wailing of the crowds.

  Another group—twenty men hunkered low, like linebackers—made a rush toward the mercenaries guarding the opening to the port. The gunmen mowed them down.

  “If we had enough people,” Holden said after the sound of machine guns fell away, “we could make it. They couldn’t kill all of us.”

  “That’s what the patrol goons are for,” Miller said. “Make sure no one can organize a big enough push. Keep stirring the pot.”

  “But if it was a mob, I mean a really big mob, it could… ”

  “Maybe,” Miller agreed. Something in his chest clicked in a way it hadn’t a minute before. He took a slow, deep breath, and the click happened again. He could feel it deep in his left lung.

  “At least Naomi got away,” Holden said.

  “That is good.”

  “She’s amazing. She’d never put Amos and Alex in danger if she could help it. I mean, she’s serious. Professional. Strong, you know? I mean, she’s really, really… ”

  “Pretty, too,” Miller said. “Great hair. Love the eyes.”

  “No, that wasn’t what I meant,” Holden said.

  “You don’t think she’s a good-looking woman?”

  “She’s my XO,” Holden said. “She’s… you know… ”

  “Off-limits.”

  Holden sighed.

  “She got away, didn’t she?” Holden asked.

  “Almost for sure.”

  They were silent. One of the linebackers coughed, stood up, and limped back into the casino, trailing blood from a hole in his ribs. The bhangra gave way to an afropop medley with a low, sultry voice singing in languages Miller didn’t know.

  “She’d wait for us,” Holden said. “Don’t you think she’d wait for us?”

  “Almost for sure,” Miller’s death-self said, not particularly caring if it was a lie. He thought about it for a long moment, then turned to face Holden again. “Hey. Just so you know it? I’m not exactly at my best right now.”

  “Okay.”

  “All right.”

  The glowing orange lockdown lights on the tube station across the level clicked to green. Miller sat forward, interested. His back felt sticky, but it was probably just sweat. Other people had noticed the change too. Like a current in a water tank, the attention of the nearby crowds shifted from the mercenaries blocking the way to the port to the brushed-steel doors of the tube station.

  The doors opened, and the first zombies appeared. Men and women, their eyes glassy and their muscles slack, stumbled out through the open doors. Miller had seen a documentary feed about hemorrhagic fevers as part of his training on Ceres Station. Their movements were the same: listless, driven, autonomic. Like rabid dogs whose minds had already been given over to their disease.

  “Hey,” Miller said, his hand on Holden’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s happening.”

  An older man in a pair of emergency services scrubs approached the shambling newcomers. His hands were out before him, as if he could corral them by simple force of will. The first zombie in the pack turned empty eyes toward him and vomited up a spray of very familiar brown goo.

  “Look,” Holden said.

  “I saw.”

  “No, look!”

  All down the casino level, tube station lights were going off lockdown. Doors were opening. The people were pulsing toward the open tubes and the implicit, empty promise of escape, and away from the dead men and women walking out from them.

  “Vomit zombies,” Miller said.

  “From the rad shelters,” Holden said. “The thing, the organism. It goes faster in radiation, right? That’s why what’s-her-name was so freaky about the lights and the vac suit.”

  “Her name’s Julie. And yeah. Those incubators were for this. Right here,” Miller said, and sighed. He thought about standing up. “Well. We may not die of radiation poisoning after all.”

  “Why not just pump that shit into the air?” Holden asked.

  “Anaerobic, remember?” Miller said. “Too much oxygen kills ’em.”

  The vomit-covered emergency medicine guy was still trying to treat the shambling zombies like they were patients. Like they were still humans. There were smears of the brown goo on people’s clothes, on the walls. The tube doors opened again, and Miller saw half a dozen people dodge into a tube car coated in brown. The mob churned, unsure what to do, the group mind stretched past its breaking point.

  A riot cop jumped forward and started spraying down the zombies with gunfire. The entrance and exit wounds spilled out fine loops of black filament, and the zombies went down. Miller chuckled even before he knew what was funny. Holden loo
ked at him.

  “They didn’t know,” Miller said. “The bully boys in riot gear? They aren’t gonna get pulled out. Meat for the machine, just like the rest of us.”

  Holden made a small approving sound. Miller nodded, but something was niggling at the back of his mind. The thugs from Ceres in their stolen armor were being sacrificed. That didn’t mean everyone was. He leaned forward.

  The archway leading to the port was still manned. Mercenary fighters in formation, guns at the ready. If anything, they looked more disciplined now than they had before. Miller watched as the guy in the back with extra insignia on his armor barked into a mic.

  Miller had thought hope was dead. He’d thought all his chances had been played, and then, like a bitch, it all hauled itself up out of the grave.

  “Get up,” Miller said.

  “What?”

  “Get up. They’re going to pull back.”

  “Who?”

  Miller nodded at the mercenaries.

  “They knew,” he said. “Look at them. They aren’t freaking out. They aren’t confused. They were waiting for this.”

  “And you think that means they’ll fall back?”

  “They aren’t going to be hanging out. Stand up.”

  Almost as if he’d been giving the order to himself, Miller groaned and creaked to his feet. His knees and spine ached badly. The click in his lung was getting worse. His belly made a soft, complicated noise that would have been concerning under different circumstances. As soon as he started moving, he could feel how far the damage had gone, his skin not yet in pain but in the soft presentiment of it, like the gap between a serious burn and the blisters that followed. If he lived, it was going to hurt.

  If he lived, everything was going to hurt.

  His death-self tugged at him. The sense of release, of relief, of rest felt like something precious being lost. Even while the chattering, busy, machinelike mind kept grinding, grinding, grinding forward, the soft, bruised center of Miller’s soul urged him to pause, sit back down, let the problems go away.

  “What are we looking for?” Holden said. He’d stood up. A blood vessel in the man’s left eye had given way, the white of the sclera turning a bright, meaty red.

  What are we looking for? the death-self echoed.

  “They’re going to fall back,” Miller said, answering the first question. “We follow. Just outside the range so whoever’s going last doesn’t feel like he has to shoot us.”

  “Isn’t everyone going to do the same thing? I mean, once they’re gone, isn’t everyone in this place going to head in for the port?”

  “I expect so,” Miller said. “So let’s try to slip in ahead of the rush. Look. There.”

  It wasn’t much. Just a change in the mercenaries’ stance, a shift in their collective center of gravity. Miller coughed. It hurt more than it should have.

  What are we looking for? his death-self asked again, its voice more insistent. An answer? Justice? Another chance for the universe to kick us in the balls? What is through that archway that there isn’t a faster, cleaner, less painful version of in the barrel of our gun?

  The mercenary captain took a casual step back and strode down the exterior corridor and out of sight. Where he had been, Julie Mao sat, watching him go. She looked at Miller. She waved him on.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “When?” Holden said, his voice surprising Miller. Julie in his head flickered out, and he was back in the real world.

  “It’s coming,” Miller said.

  He should warn the guy. It was only fair. You got into a bad place, and at the very least, you owed your partner the courtesy of letting him know. Miller cleared his throat. That hurt too.

  It’s possible I may start hallucinating or become suicidal. You might have to shoot me.

  Holden glanced over at him. The pachinko machines lit them blue and green and shrieked in artificial delight.

  “What?” Holden said.

  “Nothing. Getting my balance,” Miller said.

  Behind them, a woman shouted. Miller glanced back to see her pushing a vomit zombie away, a slick of brown goo already covering the live woman. At the archway, the mercenaries quietly stepped back and started down the corridor.

  “Come on,” Miller said.

  He and Holden walked toward the archway, Miller pulling his hat on. Loud voices, screams, the low, liquid sound of people being violently ill. The air scrubbers were failing, the air taking on a deep, pungent odor like beef broth and acid. Miller felt like there was a stone in his shoe, but he was almost certain if he looked, there would be only a point of redness where his skin was starting break down.

  No one shot at them. No one told them to stop.

  At the archway, Miller led Holden against the wall, then ducked his head around the corner. A quarter second was all it took to know the long, wide corridor was empty. The mercs were done here and leaving Eros to its fate. The window was open. The way was clear.

  Last chance, he thought, and he meant both the last chance to live and the last one to die.

  “Miller?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It looks good. Come on. Before everyone gets the idea.”

  Chapter Thirty-One: Holden

  Something was moving in Holden’s gut. He ignored it and kept his eyes on Miller’s back. The lanky detective barreled down the corridor toward the port, stopping occasionally at junctions to peek around the corner and look for trouble. Miller had become a machine. All Holden could do was try to keep up.

  Always the same distance ahead were the mercenaries who’d been guarding the exit from the casino. When they moved, Miller moved. When they slowed down, he slowed. They were clearing a path to the port, but if they thought that any of the citizens were getting too close, they’d probably open fire. They were definitely shooting anyone they ran into along the way. They’d already shot two people who’d run at them. Both had been vomiting brown goo. Where the hell did those vomit zombies come from so fast?

  “Where the hell did those vomit zombies come from so fast?” he said to Miller’s back.

  The detective shrugged with his left hand, his right still clutching his pistol.

  “I don’t think enough of that crap came out of Julie to infect the whole station,” he replied without slowing down. “I’m guessing they were the first batch. The ones they incubated to get enough goo to infect the shelters with.”

  That made sense. And when the controlled portion of the experiment went to shit, you just turned them loose on the populace. By the time people figured out what was going on, half of them were infected already. Then it was just a matter of time.

  They paused briefly at a corridor intersection, watching as the leader of the merc group stopped a hundred meters ahead and talked on his radio for a minute. Holden was gasping and trying to catch his breath when the group started up again, and Miller moved to follow. He reached out and grabbed the detective’s belt and let Miller drag him along. Where did the skinny Belter keep this reserve of energy?

  The detective stopped. His expression was blank.

  “They’re arguing,” Miller said.

  “Huh?”

  “The leader of that group and some of the men. Arguing about something,” Miller replied.

  “So?” Holden asked, then coughed something wet into his hand. He wiped it off on the back of his pants, not looking to see if it was blood. Please don’t let it be blood.

  Miller shrugged with his hand again.

  “I don’t think everyone’s on the same team here,” he said.

  The merc group turned down another corridor, and Miller followed, yanking Holden along behind him. These were the outer levels, filled with warehouse space and ship repair and resupply depots. They didn’t see a lot of foot traffic at the best of times. Now the corridor echoed like a mausoleum with their footsteps. Up ahead, the merc group turned again, and before Miller and Holden could reach the junction, a lone figure wandered into view.

  He didn’t a
ppear to be armed, so Miller moved toward him cautiously, impatiently reaching behind himself and pulling Holden’s hand off his belt. Once he was free, Miller held up his left hand in an unmistakably cop-like gesture.

  “This is a dangerous place to be wandering around, sir,” he said.

  The man was now less than fifteen meters ahead of them and began moving toward them at a lurch. He was dressed for a party in a cheap tuxedo with a frilly shirt and sparkly red bow tie. He was wearing one shiny black shoe, the other foot covered with only a red sock. Brown vomit trickled from the corners of his mouth and stained the front of his white shirt.

  “Shit,” Miller said, and brought up his gun.

  Holden grabbed his arm and yanked it back down.

  “He’s innocent in this,” Holden said, the sight of the injured and infected man making his eyes burn. “He’s innocent.”

  “He’s still coming,” Miller said.

  “So walk faster,” Holden said. “And if you shoot anyone else and I haven’t given you permission to, you don’t get a ride on my ship. Got me?”

  “Trust me,” Miller said. “Dying is the best thing that could happen to that guy today. You’re not doing him any favors.”

  “You don’t get to decide that,” Holden replied, his tone edging into real anger.

  Miller started to reply, but Holden held up one hand and cut him off.

  “You want on the Roci? I’m the boss, then. No questions, no bullshit.”

  Miller’s smirk turned into a smile. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Our mercs are getting ahead of us.” He pointed down the corridor.

  Miller nodded and moved off again at his steady, machinelike pace. Holden didn’t turn around, but he could hear the man Miller had almost shot crying in the corridor behind him for a long time. To cover up the sound, which probably existed only in his head once they’d made a couple more turns in the corridor, he began humming the theme to Misko and Marisko again.

  Mother Elise, who’d been the one to stay home with him when he was very young, had always brought him something to eat while he watched, and then sat by him with her hand on his head, playing with his hair. She’d laughed at the dinosaur antics even harder than he had. One Halloween she’d made him a big pink hat to wear so that he could be the evil Count Mungo. Why had that guy been trying to capture the dinosaurs, anyway? It had never really been clear. Maybe he just liked dinosaurs. One time he’d used a shrink ray and—