Infected: Freefall (42 page)

“Wow, that chamomile tea really works. Can I have some more?” Grant asked, sagging back into the sofa. He was no longer crying, but his face was still streaked with tears. He was filthy. He was wearing clothes that clearly weren’t his—they were ill-fitting, the pants too baggy, the shirt too tight—and he smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in days. The cat scent was particularly rank on him.

That made him reflect on how Roan smelled after a transformation. After dosing himself with enough painkillers to kill an ox, he went and cleaned up, but Dylan thought it was remarkable he didn’t smell that bad. Maybe to himself; he wasn’t even going to try and imagine how nuanced Roan’s sense of smell was, except the fact that he could pick up an infected in a crowd was kind of scary. But Roan’s lion scent was not “cat enclosure at the zoo,” nor was it Grant’s smell now. It was lion, yes, or at least something feline, but it was tempered by a Human smell, something not unpleasant. Although Humans stunk, yeah, often worse than any cat, but still… he couldn’t explain it. Was it because he liked him? Dylan considered that, but no, that had never stopped him from disliking the smell of another man’s sweat before, so he didn’t know what was going on here. The pheromone overload? Ro said he shed a lot of them during transformation time, as was common with all infected. Or maybe it was just that Roan had such a unique smell it was hard to dislike. He didn’t know, but he knew enough not to tell him. Roan would probably see it as another way he wasn’t quite Human.

“Why don’t you clean up?” Dylan suggested. “There’s a shower in the bathroom, and I know we have some spare clothes you could wear.” Actually, he didn’t know that. Grant was kind of short, five five, and extremely scrawny right now, maybe a hundred pounds or at least in that neighborhood, and everything they had would probably be too big and baggy for him. But Roan had to have some skinnier clothes around. During his transformation period, his weight could drop precipitously, to a scary degree. Dylan, vegetarian that he was, would encourage him to eat meat at those times, if only for its protein and fat properties.

Grant looked at him with slightly owlish eyes, tempered by the drugs and the easing of his hysteria. “Then you’re gonna call the cops?”

“I have no idea what I’m gonna do,” he admitted. He didn’t. Yes, Grant had killed people, but Dylan also knew it wasn’t his fault. He should have got his stupid ass tested, but that was a moot point now.

Grant seemed to accept that—what choice did he have?—but as he struggled to his feet, he said, “I loved them, you know. Curt and Tiff. People wouldn’t understand, but we were a team, y’know?”

Why wouldn’t people understand you liked your roommates? That didn’t make any sense. Unless…. “Were you involved with both of them?”

Grant looked down at him as if he had just revealed a developmental disability. “Duh. We were a threesome.”

A threesome. They were all in a relationship together? Why not? He’d heard of stranger setups. But why was Grant out partying then? Was he the third wheel—the guy brought in for fun, but just an adjunct of the Curt-and-Tiffany relationship? It was possible. “Was Tiffany infected? No one seemed to know.”

“I don’t think so… but maybe now. If I was infected, she could be, I guess. I hope she’s okay. I never meant to hurt anyone, y’know.”

“I know. You can’t help the change.” But he could have helped before, he could have not—no, that was being morally superior and didn’t help anything. Grant shouldn’t have gotten so wasted, but if he was raped, it wasn’t his fault. No one deserved to get raped just because they were an idiot. That was doubly true about getting infected.

Grant wandered off to the bathroom, and Dylan was wondering if he should go get some Febreeze to get the scent out of the couch, when it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he should call Randi.

What would that accomplish? Yes, she’d know her brother was alive and momentarily safe, but then what? He couldn’t claim to know her as well as Ro did.

What would Ro do? He was asking himself that very question when the phone rang. Dylan picked it up almost offhandedly and didn’t even say hello before Holden said, “I know who the killer is.”

18

Lucifer

MRI
machines sucked. They really, honestly sucked.

You lay motionless inside a cramped metal tube that made you feel like a torpedo waiting for launch, and weird noises went off around you as you fought off claustrophobia you’d never had before for an hour that seemed to last approximately one thousand years. Roan asked to bring a book into the tube, but oh no, they wouldn’t allow that. He couldn’t bring in his MP3 player either. (Not that he had it, but it was the principle of the thing.) And the worst indignity of all, he had to continue to wear the stupid paper hospital gown. If they wanted to have a look at his ass, they just could have asked.

So Roan spent his time in the tube composing complaint letters in his head. He wrote one to the inventor of the MRI machine, to the technicians staffing it, to the head administrator of the hospital, to the local paper for not telling readers the real truth about the Illuminati conspiracy to cause brain damage using supersonic frequencies during
American Idol
(okay, this was when he started losing his mind). Worse yet, he swore the sounds were giving him a headache. At least he didn’t have the catheter stuck up his dick anymore.

Finally Roan was released from the captivity of the MRI machine, and the doctor in charge was right there, saying, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He was a needlessly enthusiastic Japanese man who looked exactly like that guy on
Heroes
if you aged him ten years and gave him a receding hairline. His name seemed to be Stuart Senzaki, which sounded like a Witness Protection name if he’d ever heard one.

Roan glared at him. “Yes, it was. And now you’ve given me a headache, so thanks a lot.”

“Really? When did it start? Where does it hurt?”

“Like I have any concept of time in a tube. And it hurts all over.”

Senzaki pulled out a penlight and shined it in his eyes, making him wince. “Jesus, are you trying to kill me?”

“Sorry, I’m just trying to—”

And this was when things got weird.

It was like time jumped, like a poor editor had suddenly been assigned to the film that was his life. Because next thing Roan knew, he was on his back, looking up at Senzaki, Velez, and a woman he didn’t recognize. His head pain wasn’t so bad anymore, but it felt like he had a cloud of something vaguely toxic still fogging up his neurons. “What the hell am I doing down here?”

All three exchanged a troubled glance as Velez looked down at him and said, “I think you had a bit of a seizure, dude.”

“No I didn’t,” Roan snapped, and tried sitting up. But Velez put a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back down, and the woman, who had brown-blonde hair so short it could only be called a buzz cut, produced a rather long-looking needle and said, “Please hold still.”

“You drugging me?”

Velez shook his head. “Trying to make you feel better. Your head still hurt?”

“Not really.”

“That’s not a no,” Velez replied, as the woman shot Roan in the hip. He didn’t really feel the needle, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“What the fuck’s wrong with me?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Doctor Enthusiasm told him, with—guess what?—a little too much enthusiasm.

Roan wondered if he was ever getting out of this bloody fucking hospital.

D
YLAN
rubbed his eyes and felt inexplicably tired. Oh, right, he hadn’t slept well last night. Still, that was no excuse; he was a night-shift worker, he was supposed to be used to odd hours. “How do you know, Holden?”

“’Cause I’ve been watching the DVD I got from Colt’s apartment on Ahmed’s laptop, and you won’t believe who the third part of the Newberry sandwich is.”

Dylan sighed and tried to sort all of it out in his mind. There was the dull “beep” of the call-messaging system telling him someone else was calling, but he decided to just let it go to message. Probably wasn’t important anyways. “Colt just gave you the DVD?”

“Um, no, he was… indisposed.”

“So you stole it?”

“Um, basically, yeah, but he’s not going to miss it.”

Oh crap. Did Holden want to get arrested? “Do you know what Roan’s gonna say?”

He clicked his tongue dismissively. “He’s used to me by now. Anyways, third person—wanna hear it or not?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. The guy looked kinda familiar but I couldn’t place him, so I started going through some recent pictures, and I found him: Jessie Newberry.”

Dylan thought perhaps he’d misheard something. “Who, exactly?”

“Jessie Newberry, John Newberry’s oldest son. It’s a digital file of Colt fucking not just Kyle but Jessie. Fucking cousins—how scandalous would that be? Not only gay, but incestuous. No wonder John wanted to kill every person who might know about it.”

That was pretty icky. But Dylan wasn’t sure he made the connection. “Why would John kill his own brother over that, though?”

“’Cause he probably blamed him. He had the detective follow him and figured out he was gay, right? Well, bi, but John sees no distinction because he’s a fucking philistine. I knew when I had John he was a fucking liar, but goddamn it, I had no idea of the scope. I had that fucking murderer and I let him get away! Not again.”

“I don’t know, Holden. I mean, I can see why someone might kill to keep that quiet, but I don’t see why he’d kill his own brother over it.”

“This is one fucked-up family.”

“I’m sure, but….” Dylan just shook his head. “I don’t know where I’m going with this. Just don’t do anything rash, okay? Wait.”

“Well, I’m still in Oregon, so it’s gonna hafta wait a bit, but I’m right about this bastard, Dyl. I’ll show you.”

“Okay,” he sighed and hung up. He wasn’t a detective, he wouldn’t claim to get this, but he wasn’t sure Holden’s supposition was the correct one. It felt off somehow. He really wanted to talk it over with Roan—he’d know what the flaw was, he’d figure it out.

There was something on call messaging, so he called in to their machine to hear it and just about hit himself when he heard the first syllable escape from the stranger’s voice. It was the hospital—Roan was awake.

His first impulse was to slam down the phone and race over there, but he could hear the hiss of the water in the shower, and he remembered he still had Grant to deal with. He could hardly leave him on his own here, could he?

Roan would probably tell him to stay here, to keep an eye on him, but there was no way in hell he was going to do that. Did he have a choice?

He hung up the phone and then quickly punched up a familiar number. “Randi? Tell me you’re not busy. Because there’s someone here you’re gonna want to see.”

D
YLAN
barely waited for Randi to come over before he took off. Randi still seemed stunned, but he just pointed back toward the house and got in the car. The urge to see Roan now was almost overwhelming. It probably didn’t help that the mysterious “something” was forefront in his mind. But Roan was stronger than him, right? Stronger than anyone. He would survive it, no matter what it was. He had to believe that, because up to this point, it had been true.

It was a crowded mess in the hospital lobby, so he was able to avoid everyone and duck up the fire stairs, taking them to Roan’s floor. He was aware this was a form of cheating, but he honestly didn’t give a shit.

Once he came out on the floor, Dylan only took a few steps before he heard, “Hey, the boyfriend.” Dylan turned and saw a nurse coming toward him, black with nice braids and a Puerto Rican accent.

“I do have a name.”

“I know. Sorry, man, forgot it. It’s not Bob, is it?”

“No, it’s Dylan.”

“Ah, so that’s why I was thinking of Bob Dylan.” He grinned, showing off impressive teeth. “It’s kinda against the rules, but I’m gonna go let you see Roan now. Just don’t be alarmed that he’s a little groggy.”

“Why’s he groggy?”

“We had to medicate him after an incident with the MRI. But my god, what a stubborn smart-ass, he’s fighting the meds.”

“He will fight anything, up to and including an angry, torch-wielding mob. What incident? He didn’t punch someone, did he?”

“No, but I’m sure he would have if given the chance.” The nurse paused briefly. “He had a small seizure.”

“What?” That was like saying a “small brain hemorrhage,” wasn’t it?

The nurse, whose security badge read Velez, made a “calm down” gesture with his hands, like a mime shoving an invisible creature into an invisible box. “It really isn’t that big of a deal. Getting an MRI can be very stressful, and he was in a weakened condition to begin with. We’ve had lots of seizures, panic attacks, even a tearful breakdown or two. It probably shouldn’t have been done this soon, but the doctor felt it was imperative.”

That in itself was bad news, and Dylan was torn between being angry and just being upset. He settled on splitting the difference. “What did you find? What’s wrong with him?”

The nurse shook his head. “Results aren’t in yet.” As Dylan let out a sigh of disgust, he added, “I need you to do me a favor. Convince him to stay put until the results come through, okay?”

“Is he free to leave?”

“No, he hasn’t been discharged, but I can’t help but note that’s never stopped him before. He’s a Houdini of a patient. Or should that be David Blaine now?”

“Roan doesn’t do stupid-ass stunts for publicity.”

“Houdini it is. If you could talk him into staying for now, it might prevent another incident. Please.”

“I’ll try,” Dylan said, aware he was probably only being allowed to see Roan for this very reason. But fuck it, he’d take it.

Velez led him to Roan’s room but only opened the door for him. He didn’t follow him in; he didn’t say anything else. He just gave him a somewhat apologetic look. Was he one of Dee’s friends? Dylan wondered, mainly because he was one of the more helpful nurses he’d encountered.