Land of the Blind, Part 24

24 – Time To Pretend

Roan felt an odd sensation, like warmth and pressure on his mouth (and a taste not unlike mint toothpaste), and opened his eyes to find Holden looking down at him. “Oh look, sleeping beauty’s awake. Or is that sleeping scary? Which do you prefer?”

Roan stared up at his slightly unsettling, smiling face for a moment, trying to process what he thought he felt. “Did you kiss me?”

“What? Why would you think that?” His smirking face seemed to give nothing away.

“You bastard! Who cops a feel on an unconscious man?”

“Not me. I like my feelies conscious.” He sat in the plastic chair beside his bed, still smiling suspiciously, while Roan found himself wondering if he was just having an odd moment. He didn’t seem to dream like normal people – he dreamed in color, he could taste, smell, and feel, and sometimes they were even more vivid than reality itself. It was possible he hadn’t done anything. Did he trust it? No, but he couldn’t prove it either. It didn’t seem to be worth arguing about, though, he was too tired, too cold, and his leg still hurt. He was aware he was on heavy duty painkillers, but he didn’t feel them much, either the downside of being an infected, or an infected who popped painkillers like Skittles.

He rubbed his eyes, feeling groggy and frostbitten, and finally said, “Fine, whatever. Where’s Dylan?”

“Kevin took him home a couple of hours ago. Did you know there are hospital regs against people being alone in a room with an infected patient for a certain amount of time? I had no idea.”

“So how are you in here?”

“Well, flirt with the right nurse, let him cop a feel, and hey, you get the run of the floor.” He grinned wickedly, slumping back comfortably in the chair.

Roan just stared at him for a moment. He didn’t need to ask if he was serious. “You’re actually Satan, aren’t you?”

“Oh, if only I was. Things would be different around here.” He mimed primping his hair into a pompadour, and then got down to business. “So, I read your notes, and I asked Spider what he knows about DSM. Turns out we’re probably all kinds of screwed if they’re the ones peddling  the drugs tainted with the fake hormones.”

It was nice how unreal everything felt. Must have been the drugs, or lingering sense of shock. “Hold it a second. Spider?”

“Biker I know. He runs with a whiter gang, really macho women hating assholes, but he’s on the downlow for obvious reasons. He’s a former client, he could probably afford me now – running meth and drugs pays better than Mikey D’s – but they’re based in Eastern Washington and he doesn’t come over too often. Still, he says any time I need someone whacked, call him. All he needs is a name and a general location, and they’ll be scattered in pieces all along the I-5 corridor.”

“You’re making this up.”

“Not at all. He picked me up when I was just a pup of a hustler. Oh sure, the sleeve tattoos and satanic goatee made me think serial killer, as did that unnerving glow in his eyes, but he’s actually surprisingly shy when it comes to being with another man. He knew almost nothing except what he picked up in prison; I had to teach him a few things.” After a brief pause, he asked, “Ever seen Oz?”

He assumed he meant the TV show. “Yeah,” he replied tentatively, afraid this was going to lead to a prison rape story.

“Well, Spider’s sort of the Christopher Meloni character, only not as hot, and he doesn’t kill gay guys for a sexual thrill. Spider’s just a super psycho. I mean, I’m sure he has a few bodies buried in his past, but he doesn’t kill for a sexual jump. He probably kills ’cause that’s what he does. He doesn’t have a lot of skills beyond bike repair. I’m pretty sure he’s semi-literate; I once helped him read a television menu.”

Now Roan was really staring at him. “He’s a murderer?”

Holden shrugged a single shoulder, which seemed exceedingly casual. “I’ve never seen him kill anyone. But he has claimed the X tattoos on his calf are a body count, and who am I to call him on it? It could be macho bullshit, necessary for him to survive as a closet homo in the most viciously homophobic subculture you could imagine. Or he’s a truly damaged man who’s found acceptance amongst men who rarely bathe or brush their teeth. I’m a hooker; it’s not my place to judge. Unless you pay me to.”

“But you think he has killed people. You wouldn’t have mentioned it if you didn’t.”

“Well, it’s a vibe. He has this very cold side to his personality, a very empty side. Of course with the shit he went through as a kid, who wouldn’t be? I mean, his old man was a biker, he was drunk all the time, abusive, he apparently murdered his mom in front of him and made him help bury her in the desert.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I thought he was, I thought maybe he picked that up from a Lifetime movie, but it turns out it was true. His dad got arrested for killing her, it was in the paper, as was the allegation that he made his eleven year old son help bury her.”

“Eleven? Holy shit. So why the hell did he become a biker too?”

“He didn’t seem to know, really. It was just a lifestyle he knew, was familiar with, and apparently he was given lots of props for not ratting out his dad.”

This sounded outrageous and preposterous, but honestly, the biker subculture was just as bloodthirsty as any other gang culture, maybe more so now that they had lost a certain relevancy. They seemed like a silly time warp now, but those in the guns and drugs business were still incredibly lethal. And once again he was sort of thrown by Holden’s compassion, which might have just been playing an angle – after all, get in good with a biker, keep him sweet, not only do you not have to worry about him turning on you, but you have your own weapon of mass destruction, a guy willing to pull the trigger for you at your say so, if you could live with that on your conscience. As long as he didn’t snap and kill him, it was a big gamble that could pay off, and obviously that would appeal to Holden. He found himself wondering how much of it was genuine compassion on his part, and how much of it was pure calculation. With Holden, it could be impossible to tell.

He shook his head, dealt with the resulting wooziness, and said, “You play with fire.”

“Life’s dangerous. Play big or go home.”

“You read that on a t-shirt.”

“Billboard, but close enough.”

He nodded. If Holden was bucking for the “strangest man I’ve ever known” position, he was an easy winner. “So, anyways, Spider knows the DSM.”

“Of course he does, they’re rivals in the drug trade, it behooves them to know their enemies. Anyways, south of the border, the DSM are also rans, third on the list of drug gangs you need to watch out for. Still, they’re well connected to many a corrupt official, and are pretty much the bitches of Fernando Avila – Hernandez, a drug lord based in Oaxaca region.”

Sometimes all he could honestly do was stare at Holden in disbelief. “Has the DEA been informed?”

Holden shrugged. “You’d hope they’d know as much as a biker gang, but who knows? Anyways, according to Spider, some of those guys – the drug lords – pay scientists in Central and South America to help develop their product, make it more addictive or whatever. Supposedly Hernandez is paying a scientist in Columbia for help with his product, so whoever made this synthetic hormone is probably a Columbian in the pocket of a drug lord. If you know anybody in the FBI or DEA who actually gives a shit about infecteds, you might want to pass on the message to them.”

He sighed wearily. “I’m not sure anyone fits that description. It’s too late anyways, isn’t it?”

“Do you mean for the drug spreading? Most assuredly, yes. It couldn’t have only been made for here. But you may have been the first to attribute it. After all, most normals would ascribe the freak outs to simple infected irresponsibility, and you’re the only Human with court approved bloodhound level smelling, as well as a direct line to one of the most pre-eminent experts on the virus.”

The most irritating thing was, he was correct. That’s exactly how it could have happened. He might have simply been the first to connect the dots. “Could you do me a favor and stop being so smart? You’re starting to piss me off.”

“Now see, it’s just Darwinism in action. I’m not as strong or as fast as you and your jock friends, so I have to rely on my brains to survive. Oh, and my overwhelming beauty.” He assumed a mock smug expression, tipping his chin up just so, trying hard not to laugh.

“Everybody I know is a smart ass.”

“Like attracts like. It’s your fault.”

“Isn’t everything?”

“None of that. Don’t start your pity parade with me in the room. I didn’t pack my truncheon, so I’ll have to beat you with an IV stand.”

As weird – and snarky – as his friends were, Roan was aware he was very lucky. They probably weren’t anyone’s first choice for anything, but they always came through for him.  Then again, he had never been anyone’s first choice for anything either. Misfits just gravitated towards one another, like attention whores to reality shows.

“I haven’t been out for days, have I?” He wondered mainly because Holden’s bruises looked less livid than before, more lived in. Somehow they were almost a visual afterthought on his face, although he didn’t smell or see make up. Still, Holden used to be a street kid – beatings probably weren’t new to him. He probably knew how to handle it.

“No, just one. Although there was some discussion about inducing a coma. Did you know they do that sometimes for people who lose a lot of blood? But apparently you started rallying pretty good, so the idea was shelved.”

He nodded, not wanting to point out inducing a coma wasn’t new to him.

Holden caught him up on everything he had missed while out, including Grey’s riot stopping mauling of a guy with one punch (Grey was simply a boxer on skates, a heavyweight even though his weight class was probably middleweight), and the fact that there had already been genuine riots involving infecteds and church supporters, although small for riots initially, they were made worse by counter-protesters carrying signs such as ‘Cats belong in zoos’. “My favorites were the ones that were misspelled,” Holden reported, smiling. Roan wondered if it was too late to ask for an induced coma. Was it too much to ask that things got better while he was out?

He asked Holden to call Dylan and let him know he was awake, and he agreed to do so, which meant he had to leave, as the hospital had pretty stiff regulations about not using cells on most floors (because of the potential of interfering with electrical equipment). Holden also left him with a Snickers, as he thought he might be hungry for something besides hospital food and totally forgot to bring something, but Roan appreciated it. He happily ate it, wondering when he could leave, or if it would be better to hide in here as long as humanly possible. Although the most cowardly optional, it sounded damn good.

What could he do? What was going to stop this madness? That was the worst part. There was nothing; he had ceased to matter, if he had ever mattered at all. This fire was burning, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. All he could do was stoke it. What did you do when your very existence was an affront to people you’d never met and probably would never meet, who’d be happy if you simply stopped existing? You’d think he’d have gotten used to it by now, being gay, but things had gotten better on that front (well, in some parts of the country – certainly Seattle was gay enough to make you feel like you were in a safe bubble most of the time), but hate towards infecteds seemed to get worse every year as the disease continued to spread and the body count kept rising.

He knew he’d probably be okay. He knew people, had connections, and could always flee to Canada if it got really bad. (Although he hadn’t spoken to them since the memorial service, he knew Paris’s family would welcome him in. They were good people, nice, and they had loved Paris, which showed in his personality.) But what about his people – the infected? Who spoke for them? He may have been their best chance, which was a sad commentary on the state of infecteds in this society. But what could he possibly do?

The doctor came in, a petite but all business Chinese woman named Doctor Chiang. She informed him he would probably be on a crutch for a couple weeks, and might need physical therapy, because there was some damage to his hamstring. Roan nodded, accepting all of this, fairly certain he’d be fine without all of it; the only good thing about transforming was his muscles could spring back from tears like they were made of putty. There were some upsides to being a freak.

Dylan showed up shortly after she left, hugging him fiercely, allowing him to settle his face in his hair and inhale the scent of his apple-ginger scented conditioner. They just held each other for a long time, taking comfort from each other’s physical presence alone. The fact that Dylan was wearing linen pants and a loose grey sweatshirt indicated he’d just come from yoga, as did the excess heat coming from his body.

Roan took his face in his hands, feeling unshaven stubble scrape his palms, and started kissing his face, whispering, “I’m sorry,” between each one. Dylan placed one hand on the back of his neck, another on his chest, and he let him kiss him for almost a minute before gently pushing him back. “You’re going to make me cry, so stop.”

“I am sorry.”

“You oughta be, you bastard,” he said, sniffing and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “When are they gonna release you?”

“No idea. Hot doctor didn’t say.”

“Hot?”

“Don’t worry, she was female. I only noticed she was hot from a clinical perspective.”

Dylan stroked his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead, looking at him like he was trying to memorize his face. “How are you feeling?”

He shrugged, really not sure what to say. “Okay, considering. Leg hurts a bit, but I guess that’d be expected.”

“Your chest doesn’t hurt?”

“No. Why would it?”

“You were shot there too.”

He stared at him a moment. “I was?” He pulled the neck of his paper gown out and looked down. There was a tiny gauze square taped to his chest (oh god, attached to his chest hair – that was going to hurt when it was ripped off). Now he had vague memories of taking a shot to the chest, but just barely; it was a half remembered dream. Also, he couldn’t help but notice it was a direct hit center mass shot, just like they taught you to make at the academy. A good cop shot that should have made more of an impact than a single gauze square. “What the hell? How is this not worse?”

“Doctor Rosenberg came by this morning and found the answer. When you were shot, you had an odd, dense muscle precisely in the area where you were shot, and it seemed to stop the bullet from doing any serious damage. But Humans don’t have that muscle, and she’s not convinced lions do either. She managed to convince the staff here that it was one of those weird, random genetic defects that virus children can have, but she seems to think that as soon as she can get you back to the university and scan you, the muscle won’t be there.”

He considered this, and then gave up. She was probably right, and he had no reason to doubt her. “So it’s something that happens while I’m in transition.”

“I guess. That’s what she thinks. What do you think?”

“She’s probably right. I just wonder what the muscle was for.”

“Maybe you have a new superpower. Maybe you can spontaneously generate shields out of muscles or something.”

“Eww. Don’t even joke. Besides, if that was true, why didn’t one appear in my leg?”

“Maybe it doesn’t work in your extremities. Maybe it only works in your chest and back.”

Roan stared at him a moment. “You’ve thought about this way too much.”

“I had time. I couldn’t sleep.”

He kissed him on the forehead, and Dylan smiled faintly, stroking the back of his neck with his fingers and causing goosebumps to spring up along his spine. This was the good part of what Holden derisively called “boring familiarity”, as Dylan knew everything he liked. He closed his eyes, enjoying his touch, and admitted, “I wanted to die.”

“I know. But next time you want to be a selfish bastard, you just remember you have a family that loves you.”

That made him open his eyes. “Family?”

“Yes. Us, all your friends. You should have seen the waiting room downstairs, full of people worried about you. So if you won’t think of me – the man who loves you, you motherfucking bitch – then you think of them.”

He deserved that. He deserved worse, honestly, but from a peace loving Buddhist like Dylan, this was the equivalent of angry rant. “What a family, huh? Who all was there? Dominatrix, hooker, gay cops, EMTs, hockey players … who am I missing?”

“Besides me? Foul mouthed elderly doctor.”

He took Dylan’s hand and kissed it. “I took you as a given, hon. But how could I forget Rosenberg?”

“I don’t know. She’s pretty unforgettable.” There was a brief pause. “We sure she’s not a lesbian?”

Roan shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. “I know nothing about her sexuality. But to get to her status and position, especially as a female expert in a field where, at the time, there were few females, you have to assume she’s a super driven, focused person, regardless of sexuality.”

“Is that supposed to explain the foul mouth?”

“No. I just assume she hangs out with truckers in her off hours.” Dylan smiled faintly at him, so he figured now was as good a time as any to broach the subject. “Look, hon, I have a feeling things are going to get very bad, and I don’t know when they’re going to get better. You’re not infected, you don’t -”

Dylan put a finger on his lips to silence him. “You finish that sentence, and I swear to Buddha I will punch you. I don’t care how bad things get, I’m with you. Get that through your fat head and live with it.”

He nodded, not about to argue with him. He knew he was lucky to have him, and he supposed he should start acting like it.

****

One Week Later

“Hey Doctor House, how’s it shaking,” Fiona said cheerfully, as he came in the office door.

Roan grimaced at the reference – like it was the first time he’d heard that – and said, “You should ask your mother. I think she has photos.”

“A your momma joke! You must be feeling better.”

“I feel like I could beat a neo-con to death with my cane.”

“So normal then?”

“Yep.” He went with a cane over a crutch, because crutches made your armpits hurt and were kind of pathetic, whereas canes had a kind of elegance, and could also double as a weapon. But because he was a grumpy cuss under the best of circumstances, everyone who knew him was now calling him House. But Hugh Laurie wasn’t a bad looking guy, so he supposed he could live with it.

Doctor Rosenberg pretty much made him promise to heal “normally”, not force a change, but he suspected he may have accidentally triggered more of a partial change yesterday working the heavy bag. (Okay, yes, he wasn’t supposed to engage in a strenuous workout, but sometimes it felt good to throw punches and not think, just lose yourself in the heavy thunk of fist against leather. But he let himself go too far, which he knew the instant the chain broke once again. He was getting good at fixing and replacing it.) His leg didn’t hurt so much, and if anyone looked, the smallest hint of a limp he had was gone, but he used the cane today because he figured fuck it, he could milk it for one more day. Then he’d deal with the lectures from Rosenberg. But hopefully Dylan wouldn’t stop with the thigh massage that was supposed to increase blood circulation to the muscle, but did oh so much more.

Yes, okay, he was a letch. But who wouldn’t be?

For his first day back at the office since what they euphemistically called “the incident”, Fiona had worn her biker mama outfit, completely with a black leather vest worn as a shirt (nice), and put bright yellow tulips in a vase on her desk, unaware that he associated flowers with death and didn’t really like them around. But he wasn’t going to mention it – she liked flowers, they made her happy, and he wasn’t going to take that away from her.

“Any clients coming by today?”

“Umm, yep.” She tapped a couple of keys on her keyboard, glanced at her screen. “Got a woman with a cheating fiancée – or so she thinks – at one, and an evasive guy who seems to want you to find someone for him coming by at two thirty. Also, two reporters left numbers for you, hoping you’d call them back. The one named Ehud sounded hot.”

“You told ‘em to fuck off, right?”

“No, I told them I’d pass on the message. I have. What you do with that message is up to you.”

“Ah, the passive-aggressive fuck you.”

“Makes my job easier.”

He had to give her that.

Bolt came in while he was still sifting through his mail, throwing half of it in Fi’s garbage can. This time, his grim faced bodyguards stayed outside. “You’re a hard man to find,” Bolt said.

Roan shrugged, continuing to sift through the mail. “That’s the point.”

Roan had made periodic trips back home, mainly to check the locks, the security camera footage (actually a cheap webcam, but you could hide it nicely, and he could access it from his laptop for realtime feeds), and work the heavy bag. He’d already rented a storage place where he stored away most of his books, all of his Paris stuff, things he couldn’t bear to lose if some lunatic burnt down his house. He knew about the FCC fucktards, he knew he should move, but this was his house – his first house in every sort of sense. He was a foster kid, he was constantly bouncing around between homes and parents and hospitals and group homes, and this was his first real settled place (apartments just didn’t count). It was also where he lived with Paris, where Paris died, and he couldn’t give that up, as much as he should have.

They had been staying at Kevin’s, but as of the last few days they’d been housesitting for a friend of Dylan’s, a sculptor named Caden (really?), who happened to be partnered up with a very successful interior designer named Marco, who was twelve years his senior. Caden and Marco were off on a trip to Europe, which would take about two months. They had an exceedingly decorated two story pseudo-Victorian house in the Magnolia district of Seattle, an expensive house that seemed way too nice for them (well, him at any rate – Dylan probably deserved that level of stuff). The truly disturbing thing was the evidence of Caden’s art everywhere. He was a sculptor of “traditional masculine power elements and symbols in a contemporary context” – in other words, he made ceramic dildos. Dylan insisted they weren’t dildos, just phallic symbols, but they looked like ceramic dildos to him, and he was so thrilled when Caden gave them one as a “partnership present” he didn’t know whether to throw up or beat him to death with it. Dylan promised him they’d accidentally forget it when they moved out.

Oh, and Caden and Marco had a hot tub, which was the first time Roan had honestly been exposed to one in person (not at a crime scene or a call, that was). Dylan, to his surprise, hadn’t been in one either. Oh, he’d seen them in other people’s homes, and often at parties, but they were usually at “mixed” parties, and the straight people manipulated them. (“What was I gonna do, watch them make out? Ick.”) They hadn’t used it yet, but it was a matter of time.

As for the office, the cops now used his parking lot as a short cut, bypassing the usual congestion on the main road, saving them time and giving the suggestion of a constant but unpredictable police presence that would discourage all but the stupidest religious zealot.  Still, Dylan was worried about him coming back. Roan wasn’t worried, not at all – he wanted at least one shot at one of these bastards. That’s probably what Dyl was afraid of.

“Can I speak with you, in private?”

He sighed, finished sifting through his mail. Email had pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of the good old death threat letter. “You have two minutes, no more.”

Bolt had tried to call when he was in the hospital, and after his release, although Roan never answered his calls. Dylan eventually got sick of it and did, telling him point blank, “He will call you when he wants to talk to you,” and hung up. Bolt hadn’t called him since.

Once inside his office, the door closed to keep out the prying ears of the normal in the front room, Roan said, “If this is about the McCain-Steen bill, I’ve had enough rage for one day.” That bill was currently being debated in congress and on the many infuriating “news” channels, and it called for an infected “registry”, like a sex offender registry. Despite charges that it was a violation of the constitution, that it would lead to more harassment and violence against infecteds, and the fact that the ACLU was already preparing court action, it looked like it was going to pass. Roan had already decided that if they bent the constitution enough to make it legal – and they might; if they could legally treat gays as second class citizens, why not infecteds too? – he wouldn’t register. He would let them arrest him, and he already informed Dennis of his plans. Dennis was thrilled, and promised, as his lawyer, he’d be happy to take this act of civil disobedience all the way to the Supreme Court if at all possible. He didn’t care that he was already known as an infected by almost everyone – he’d rather go to prison than put up with regulated discrimination that would allow some normals to feel safe with absolutely no safety imparted. He could catch up on his reading.

“No, but in a way, it is,” Bolt told him. “We have to pool our energy and join forces.”

Roan sighed again as he lowered himself into his chair. No, his leg didn’t hurt anymore, and it had nothing to do with the codeine he took after breakfast. “To what end? No one cares, Bolt – we’re not normal, and they hate our fucking guts. Case closed.”

“Which is why we have to circle the wagons. We’ll have more impact together rather than apart.” His face was almost flushed with excitement – he was serious and really worked up about it all.

“What impact? All we can do is preach to the choir.”

“Not necessarily. There are people out there, whose families have been touched by this virus, who know we’re not monsters. They’re getting drowned out by the intolerant.”

“Be that as it may, scared people do stupid things. Remember the McCarthy hearings, the Japanese internment camps, the Patriot Act? None of this stuff ever would have happened if people weren’t so scared they lost their goddamn minds. That’s where we’re at now. People are so scared they don’t care that they’re violating people’s civil rights for no good goddamn reason. It makes them feel like they’re doing something. There’s no counter to that.”

“Knowledge?”

Roan snorted derisively. “In this day and age? No one cares about truth. They care about whoever can shout the loudest and press the ugliest buttons. Why do you think Fox News sets the tone? Facts don’t come into it; opinion is all that matters. And our fact – that we are mostly harmless, that we generally die young and ugly – is irrelevant to the common opinion that we are essentially werewolves and must be locked up before we eat their children and spread our disease.”

Bolt scowled, not because he disagreed with his words, but because he was as frustrated with it as he was. “We can’t just lay back and let it happen. If the registry’s passed, will you sign up?”

“Fuck no.”

“Neither will we. We should stand together, a united front. Think how bad it would be if they arrested all of us.”

“You think I don’t know why you actually want me to head your church? I’ve finally figured it out.” He was a lightning rod for controversy, and with the FCC putting an active hit on him, it was more trouble that Divine Transformation didn’t need. Yet, as much trouble as he brought with him, he also brought protection, as he did have cop friends who saw him getting hurt as  a dig against the police department itself. So Bolt was playing the odds that the turmoil would be balanced out by more protection.

Bolt, to his credit, didn’t lie or get defensive. He simply said, “It’s as good a deal for you as for us. We can help protect you, protect your partner – you will have access to our resources, and they are not unsubstantial.” He leaned down, propping his hands on his desk, letting Roan see how genuinely passionate he was about this. “We need to stick together and work together. Being at odd helps them.”

“I’m an atheist.”

“I don’t care. This isn’t about theology or  ideology – this is about our survival as a people. What do you say?”

What did he say? That was a very good question.

*****

The End (for now)