12 - Drinking From The Necks Of The Ones You Love

On his way back home, Roan stopped by the all vegetarian Indian restaurant that was a favorite of Dylan’s, and got him take out food of all of his favorites. He only ate some naan bread, and stopped by a fast food place to get his red meat fix. Dylan didn’t make him feel bad about it, he wasn’t an obnoxious vegetarian, but Roan wasn’t crazy about eating it in front of him.

Once home, he put all of Dylan’s food in the fridge, and checked his messages, none of which were important. With time to wait until Dylan was off shift, he started doing some research on the computer, and watching some of the episodes of Lost on his DVR that he had saved but he hadn’t seen yet. He didn’t know if it was the food or the drugs, but he started fighting to keep his eyes open. He thought he’d done a decent job, until the scream of the phone jolted him awake.

He grabbed the handset, still half asleep, and muttered, “What?”

“Roan?” It took him a moment to place the voice, but the Southern drawl should have been a dead giveaway. It was Shep. “Man, I’m sorry to call you about this.”

He could hear the anguish in his voice, and it made Roan sit up. “What? Did something happen to Dee?”

He sighed heavily into the phone, a rush of air like static. “No, not him. They just … man, Skiba and Lombardi just brought Dylan in.”

Was he awake? He wasn’t dreaming, was he? No, Roan was pretty sure he was awake, even though he felt a bit muzzy. Images flashed by on the TV, but right now they seemed disconnected and made no sense at all. Coldness took root in his gut and started spreading outward. “Brought him in? For what?”

“He was attacked in the parking lot of the club where he works, a coupla guys. The bouncer interrupted the attack, I guess, got one of the guys -”

“Attack?” There were no good images in his head right now. Closing his eyes was an invitation to enter the nightmare factory. Something in his chest constricted, made it momentarily hard to breathe. “How badly is he hurt?”

“Considering, not too bad for the moment. He’s stable. They took him for x-rays, but Lombardi told me he didn’t think he had a skull fracture -”

Skull fracture. Christ. “Where are you?”

“County General. Listen -”

“I’ll be right there.” Shep was saying something else, but Roan had already hung up the phone and launched himself off the couch, the nightmares flickering in his head as he grabbed his shoes and headed out. Why would someone attack Dylan? It was senseless. He had no enemies!

But Roan did. Roan knew he had a lot, and suddenly wondered if the connection had been made, if someone had gone after Dylan because they couldn’t get to him.

Two possibilities asserted themselves: random gay bashing, which was known to occasionally happen in that area. Or someone trying to send a message to Roan by hurting his boyfriend.

He drove to the hospital with nothing in his head but pure white noise, the sound of a rage so great that Roan knew he had little hope of containing it.

****

There were times when Shep wondered why he left Georgia.

Oh sure, he knew exactly why he left - the humidity drove him fucking nuts, and so did his parents and their William Faulkner-esque batshit family - but it was a safer question to ask than why he ended up here. He had no real plans to. He was originally heading to California, but he heard from another paramedic that there were some good jobs farther up the coast, and he figured as long as it was a coast, well hell, why not? It was pretty here, the people generally laid back, the women hot, and the humidity was manageable. It was also nearly an entire continent away from his Aunt Claudine and Uncle Merle, so it was all good.

Except, of course, no one mentioned the cat culture that had sprung up here. The church was the eye of the hurricane, of course, and once it was established all the infected started drifting in. Fairly liberal social policies - at least when compared with most of the rest of the country - also contributed, and the rules began to shift a bit. He didn’t mind dealing with the infected - it was a disease; that’s all it was - but some of the nutty cultists were something else. According to them, it wasn’t a disease; it was a blessing, a divine birthright, some shit like that. And hey, his Great Uncle Walt was a fucking snake handler, so far be it from him to disparage or make fun of anyone’s religious choices. But worshipping a disease that put you in horrible pain before killing you very young seemed bizarre.

Maybe it was a defense mechanism. Maybe, when you contracted something this inexplicable and this horrible, you had to come up with a reason for it beyond dumb luck. After all, this was the closest thing there had ever been to genuine lycanthropy, and God knew the Goths were in ecstasy over it. Until the reality of it set in.

His Great Uncle Walt said the virus was god’s punishment on the wicked. Maybe the cat cult was a response to his and his kind. By asserting the divinity of it all, they were really just taking the piss out of the self-righteous, holier-than-thou assholes who claimed they brought it on themselves. If that was the case, Shep couldn’t blame them; he might have done the same thing.

He was thinking of all of this while looking over a brochure he found in the hospital’s waiting room. It looked slick, professional, but was recruiting material for the cat cult. It wasn’t sanctioned by the hospital, so obviously it had been planted there by true believers hoping to get their claws (no pun intended) in the newly diagnosed or simply the curious. He felt he should alert someone, let them know they should scour their waiting rooms to remove this kind of thing, but why? Was it any worse than the shit the Catholic League left behind, or the evangelicals and their pro-life or ex-gay conversion pamphlets? It was all aimed to take advantage of the confused and vulnerable; it all capitalized on weak moments and sudden doubts. Who was to say one was more harmful than another?

The funny thing was he knew when Roan had arrived before he even saw him. He wasn’t sure how exactly, except he got a feeling somewhere between his shoulder blades, and he turned to see that he had just come through the emergency entrance. Maybe that was just his weird magnetism at work.

Now this was something his Grandmother Helly would have had a field day with. She was considered the family oddball (in his family? Ha!), and made her living telling fortunes. She wasn’t a con artist, or at least not a deliberate one; she honestly believed she had a gift. Whether she did or not was up for debate, but Shep always felt that she had helped expand his mind and learn to accept the eccentric and the different in life. According to Helly, some people had what she called “pull”. These were people with strong “auras”, people with possibly supernatural energy, and even if they didn’t know it themselves, she said that other people, especially “sensitives”, always knew who they were. She said you knew who they were the second they entered a room, and you couldn’t ignore them, no matter how hard you tried. They may seem ordinary in every respect, but around them you could feel something like power.

She would have said that about Roan. Shep would have pointed out he was just one of those people with a strong personality and a forceful physical presence. No, he wasn’t built like a brick shithouse, like that bouncer who had stopped the attack and worked over one of the guys (that guy was a wall with legs), but he carried himself like a boxer, grace and lean muscle just waiting for the right moment to strike. You got the sense that if he wanted to hurt you, he could, and Shep knew that was true. He was a bit of a local legend by now, and some of the guys jokingly referred to him as “the pain fairy”, because when he got in a fight, it was usually the other guy you were scraping off the pavement. Maria told him they used to bet on how badly the other guy would be hurt. It wasn’t that he just whaled on them, he was all about surgical strikes, targeting weaknesses and putting people down with a minimum of effort: kidney punches, throat strikes, broken noses, broken kneecaps. It seemed like a cop thing, but after having dealt with victims of police brutality and simply sloppy police dust ups, Shep knew that wasn’t true; it was just a Roan thing. He was a guided missile of trouble, and woe betide the stupid dickhead who decided to take him on. He had learned most of his fighting techniques before he ever joined the force.

He was as straight as a gate, but Shep could see why guys (or girls, or cats or dogs, whatever) could be attracted to him. He had a strangely intense energy about him, and yet a sort of regal gravitas, casual but still ever-present. Dee once joked that being with Roan was really like being in the presence of a genuine lion … and you know, it kind of was. Compacted power, and an awareness that one wrong move could wake the slumbering beast.

Stalking across the waiting room entrance towards him, it looked like he had indeed woken the beast - or just Roan - up. His deep reddish brown hair (it was almost the color of old blood, which was strange since it didn‘t come from a bottle) was mussed, and he was wearing worn jeans that probably needed a belt to fit properly, and a rumpled black t-shirt that inexplicably had the words “These Arms Are Snakes” printed on it. What was that supposed to mean? Well, this was probably just an example of what Dee had described as Roan’s large collection of strange t-shirts. Dee had claimed it was Roan’s penchant for t-shirts that made most people think he was straight. Roan’s usual magnetism had a dark air about it now, which was reflected in the shiny metal glimmer of his eyes. It was partially the emptiness of a shock victim, and partially the squirming black shadows of someone restraining a volcanic rage. “Where is he?” Roan asked, his voice pitched low. His jaw was taut with the effort of speaking through clenched teeth.

“I’m not sure you can see h -”

“Where the fuck is he?” Roan repeated, storming past him. Shep grabbed his arm, and Roan yanked out of his grasp with excessive violence, making Shep stumble. He could almost swear he felt muscles twitching like snakes beneath the skin of Roan’s arm, something sentient and impatient under tender flesh. Did he have muscle spasms? It was possible; infecteds had lots of secondary conditions.

“I’m not the enemy,” Shep snapped, and his tone of voice made Roan stop and look at him. Roan’s look was flinty and yet slightly distant; he was somewhere in his own head, his mind gnawing the hell out of something. There were a few people in the waiting room, a few nurses coming and going, but it was funny how everyone deliberately avoid them. Roan’s “fuck you” vibe was filling the corridor and scaring everyone back.

A crack appeared in Roan’s armor. It was brief, but it was there, something Human flashing through eyes like green glass. “I know. I just need to see him.”

The anger was hiding pain; Shep had seen it enough to know it. Lots of people cried or broke down, but some retreated to anger because it was easier, safer. It wasn’t a surprise a scrapper like Roan would lash out first and foremost. Shep glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them, then jerked his head, a tacit invitation for Roan to follow him. He did, without comment.

Dylan was currently alone in a treatment room off the main ER, because shortly before Roan arrived there was a flurry of activity that pulled just about all the doctors and nurses away. First was a car crash victim who’d had the bad luck of having a steering column almost completely collapse their sternum, and the second was a teenage gangbanger with a GSW to the abdomen. They were fighting hard to keep the accident victim breathing, and to keep the boy from bleeding out or having his guts slosh out the gaping hole. (Shep had actually seen that happen; he hoped he never had to see that again.)

Dylan was alone on a gurney in the small, cool room, although he wouldn’t be alone for very much longer. Still, he was in much better shape than the two patients currently enjoying the lion’s share - no pun intended - of the attention. Although it wasn’t good for the victim of a potential head injury to be unconscious, his vitals as reflected on the monitor were good, stable and steady, and that was always a positive sign. Still, if he did have a head injury, they could be slow to build, and yet very sudden in their effects. It was why they were such bitches to deal with, and why Dylan was going to be here for a while.

He wanted to give him the upbeat diagnosis, focus on the positive, but he seemed to understand that he needed to be quiet for a moment. He stood by the doorway as Roan ventured in, moving slowly towards the gurney as if sleepwalking. Dylan didn’t look great; the right side of his face was swollen and bruised, with butterfly bandages temporarily holding a gash on the side of his scalp closed (later, it would be properly mended), while there was a tiny bloody line where the corner of his mouth was torn. A blanket had been thrown over him, covering the bruises on his arms and chest, but it didn’t matter too much; it didn’t look like there were any broken bones, save for one finger (and possibly a cheekbone, and maybe a hairline skull fracture). Soft tissue injuries never killed anyone, they just looked and felt bad.

Roan lowered his voice to a whisper, and all the tension seemed to sag from his frame as he stroked his boyfriend’s hair. “Dylan, can you hear me?” His voice didn’t crack, but Shep picked up the sorrow beneath regardless. “I’m so sorry.” He kissed him softly on the forehead, which was touching and sad. No, he didn’t get the whole gay thing, but love was love, and he had no problem with that. There wasn’t enough of it in the world.

Suddenly Roan’s muscles seemed to tense again, and Shep could feel himself respond, tense in kind. What was it? Roan looked at the far wall, or at least glanced in its direction; he didn’t seem to be focused on anything. “He was attacked by an infected.”

That caught him completely off guard. Roan had a terrible way of doing that. “Umm, what? I -”

Roan spun and faced him, anger surging through his frame, putting him back in that defensive posture once more. “I can smell his blood. Where is he?”

Okay, rewind. Shep considered his words a moment, and how deeply strange they were. He smelled the blood of the infected guy on Dylan? The bouncer had worked one of the attackers over a bit, but the blood splatter on Dylan must have been minimal, because most of the blood on him appeared to be his own. And, hey, wait a fucking second - since when did one kind of blood smell different from another kind of blood? Blood was pretty much blood. “What the hell do you mean you can smell his blood?”

Roan approached him, shoulders up and head low, a look in his eye just a few degrees shy of murder. “Where is he, Shep? Is he still here?” His voice was low, silky, reasonable, coldly dispassionate - a warning sign if there ever was one. This was a man who was comfortable with what he was going to do next, even though he was fully aware it was bad. His brother Jonny sounded the same way before he off and broke Bobby Tanhauser’s arm.

“His injuries were bloody but superficial. He was treated at the scene and taken to the police station. He was never brought here.” It was the truth, but he expected Roan to accuse him of lying.

It didn’t happen. He cocked his head, nostrils flaring, and then he nodded faintly, looking straight through him. “Doesn’t matter. I want the ringleader.” He stalked towards him, and Shep stepped aside, wondering if he was going to shove him or hit him. But no, Roan would have just ran over him; he stormed out as though Shep had never been in his way at all.

Couple of things: he muttered a word that sounded like “Hurry” (Harvey?) under his breath, but it was hard to tell, as he was growling. It was the kind of growling that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It reminded him a bit of the Benson’s dog, a big ass Rhodesian ridgeback that was perhaps the nastiest beast he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. It wasn’t a Human noise, and he couldn’t help but shudder a bit as he followed Roan out. “What are you gonna do? Man, don’t do anything rash …” he reached out and touched his arm, but he didn’t grab him, as he knew that wouldn’t end well.

Roan spun around so fast that Shep jumped back, afraid there might be a fist coming his way. There wasn’t, but he kind of wished there had been. “Stay out of this,” he snarled, his growl never ceasing even as he spoke. The words were syllables lost in the rumble. And -

- holy shit.

Shep just stood there gaping as Roan stalked out of the hospital, everyone scrambling to get out of his way. Had he actually seen that?

He must have. Roan’s eyes changed. From one moment he’d gone from having Human eyes to having cat’s eyes. It even looked like his canine teeth were longer, thicker; fangs. But that couldn’t be true.

Infecteds changed differently, depending on the viral type, but some things remained pretty constant. For instance, the eyes usually were the first thing to change, but it wasn’t instantaneous. Like most of the transformation, it occurred in stages, and while it was quicker than the bones breaking and restructuring themselves, it still took about ten minutes for the pupils to change shape, for the irises to bloat and the cornea to alter. Usually one eye changed before the other, although pieces of both could alter more or less in synch. And like everything about transformation, it hurt like fuck.

But just like that, Roan’s eyes had altered. One moment he was talking to a Human being, and then next he was looking into the eyes of an overgrown predator who still retained a Human ability to hate. Pupils had gone from circles to ovals, and his irises seemed too big, his eyes too glazed and yet too sharp. The Human was falling away, being shed like an old skin.

Virus children were different; he knew that. He remembered during one of his classes on the “special needs of infected individuals” his professor admitted that virus children were pretty much terra incognita, as most were born so damaged and died so young it was impossible to say both how and why they were so different than post-utero infectees. His opinion was that if the fetus was able to survive the total integration of the viral strands into their DNA, then they were in essence a different species: neither Human nor Human infected, but something other. It was a controversial stance to be sure, and some suggested crazy as well as racist (specist), but in his favor, it couldn’t be proven or disproven; it was a hypothesis in a vacuum, because there weren’t enough surviving viral children to say. Roan was actually one of three Shep had encountered in total in life, and the only one not in an incubator or developmentally disabled; he was the only one he’d ever actually had a conversation with, and the only one not visibly deformed.

He felt like calling Professor Bell and telling him he had found his example. He found a virus child that just might fit in the “other” category. Was that a good thing really?

An orderly he vaguely knew, a big Samoan guy everyone called “Bean” (he had no idea why, and never asked, mainly because he didn’t want to look like an idiot), came up to him, and asked, “What the fuck was that guy’s problem?”

“Someone attacked his boyfriend,” he reported numbly, amazed at how those words didn’t even begin to cover what had happened here.

He had to do something. Whether Roan transformed fully and was caught out unrestrained or Roan found who he was looking for first, Shep was convinced that somebody was going to die tonight.