Dragon Virus (5 page)

“Do it,” Rob said, and all Jordan could hear was the scream,
a wild howl of pain that went into his too-sensitive ears and filled his head
until he thought he would never hear anything ever again. And then a sudden ‘whooof’
of air escaping, and Jordan looked up to see Rob bent over, arms cupping his
balls, and Max knocking Jack off his feet, sending the knife skittering across
the sidewalk. Its blade didn’t reflect the sun any more, covered in something
dark and sticky.

The sight of it released Jordan from his frozen stance, and
he was moving before he could think of what to do, coming out of the shadow of
the signpost to tackle Jack. They both went to the ground in a tangle of limbs,
then Jack was scrambling up, backing away. “Jesus, another of the little
freaks.”

On his knees, Jordan sucked in a deep breath, feeling where
his ribs were probably cracked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ian curled
on the ground next to him, jeans down around his knees, his shoulders shaking.
Jordan strained his ears, but all he could hear were wet, harsh gasps coming from
Ian’s mouth, like the trout Sen caught last summer, when he held it up out of
the water too long. A shadow fell over both of them and Jordan looked up to see
Rob standing there, a look of disgust on his face.

“Freaks,” he said. “I think we got our point across. Let’s
go.”

And just like that, they were gone. Jordan could hear them
walking away. Not running, not even hurrying, but walking like they owned the
street.

“Ian?” He was afraid to say anything, more afraid not to
know. “Ian, you okay?”

Carly had crawled next to them by then, her broken arm
hanging by her side, the other hand on Ian’s shoulder, as though willing him to
stop shaking. Jordan moved to them, curling up next to Ian as though that would
help, as though he could erase it just by being near, that their presence could
make the world rewind half an hour and make it all go away.

“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

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.