Land of the Blind, Part 15
15 – Everything Always Goes Wrong
Leaning over, Roan whispered, “Do you want to go?” A hotel was sounding great right now.
It took Dylan a moment to answer, but finally he said, “No.” Roan heard the unspoken “not yet”.
As they came inside, Kevin, who was in the kitchen, stirring something inside a large pot on the stove, looked back at them and smiled. He gestured Parker over, and handed him a wooden spoon, telling him, “Keep stirring, don’t let them stick to the pot.” Parker nodded and did what he was told, as Kevin wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and came into the living room to join them. “Good to have you here. Wish it could have been under better circumstances.”
“Um, can I talk to you for a moment, Kev? In private?’
“Sure. Why don’t I show you to your room first?”
Kevin led them upstairs to the second floor, and they had a guest bedroom off the right of the staircase. It was small but quaint, with pistachio colored walls and a homey multicolored quilt that looked like it might have been sewn by someone’s grandmother. Roan thought there were two closets, but the second door Kevin opened was actually a small bathroom. “It’s tiny, but I thought you guys might like your own space,” he said.
“That’s kind of you,” Dylan said, the tension obvious in his voice.
Roan closed the bedroom’s main door, even though the odds that Parker would hear them in the kitchen was quite small. “Why is Parker Davis here?”
“Oh, he needed a place to stay as part of his probation, and as he didn’t have any place to go, I figured he could stay here. I have lots of room.”
Roan rubbed his eyes, which felt warm and dry due to all the painkillers in his system. This wasn’t going to be good.
“No, what’s he doing here with us?” Dylan asked, his voice betraying the slightest edge of frostiness. “Or, more to the point, me?”
“What do you mean?” Kevin looked briefly puzzled, then a slow horror seemed to bloom on his face. “Oh shit! You were the witness on the case, weren’t you? Jesus, Dylan, I completely forgot.”
“How?”
In brief, the story was this: Parker was set up as a patsy by Gavin Lorimer, who paid Parker to take his “friend” Eric home and show him a good time. He was supposed to slip him an overdose of Ecstasy and kill him, but Parker, a major junkie, took some of the E himself and only left Eric drugged. Gavin checked up on Eric – the witness Gavin wanted to go away – and finding him still alive, killed him himself. Parker was supposed to go down for the killing, but there was no evidence tying him to the murder weapon, and Parker only went down for a drug related charge. As for Gavin, he seemed to disappear entirely after his step-father, Clifford Braben, ended up in prison on insider trading and various corruption charges, but since Roan had basically handed Gavin over to the monstrously vindictive and most assuredly evil Jay Bishop, he wasn’t surprised. He was only surprised that Gavin’s body hadn’t turned up in the desert, crucified on a telephone pole.
Not that anyone knew this. Jay knew, he knew, maybe Gavin suspected at the end, but it was one of his first forays into vigilantism, even though he outsourced it to Jay. And all because Paris was dying and he didn’t know if he wanted to deal with the case anymore. He felt a hollow ache open up in his chest, dull and deep, something pills couldn’t numb. Shame, remorse, grief.
Dylan had been the last person (besides Parker) to see Eric alive that night. He saw Parker pick up Eric and leave together. Dylan described the man he saw with Eric at the station, and it was Kevin who recognized the guy as Parker. Looking back on it, there were two odd things that night: Roan got the sinking feeling that Kevin knew Parker better than he should, and it was the first time he met Dylan. He remembered his first impression of Dylan as pretty but just more of that Panic specific beefcake, background erotic wallpaper. He was surprised by the flash of strong resolve from him, but otherwise he was just another shirtless bartender. He wondered what Dylan’s first impression of him was, and wondered if he’d ever be brave enough to ask.
Kevin shrugged helplessly, and looked genuinely abashed by it all. “I – I don’t know. I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to make this awkward -”
“We passed that marker a while ago,” Roan said, then decided to hell with it, and asked, “Is he your boyfriend?”
Kevin gave him a deer in the headlights stare, as if he just slapped him. “What?”
“Is that why he’s here? You’re taking a hell of a risk -”
“He needed a place to stay!” Kevin snapped, an unaccustomed flash of anger making his expression darken. “I was lending a hand to a man who needed help.”
“A man you’ve employed before.”
“Roan -” Dylan interjected warningly. He didn’t know everything that was going on, but he knew this was bad.
Kevin’s sleepy brown eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything; I’m saying. Look, it’s not a moral thing, I really don’t give a fuck, you’re lonely and I get that -”
Kevin lunged and grabbed him by the collar of his t-shirt, balling up the fabric in his fist, his face mere inches from him. He’d been drinking something with grapefruit in it. “You judgmental little fuck. You think -”
“Stop it!” Dylan said, pushing them apart. “Knock it off right now! We’re supposed to be friends, not fifth graders, for Christ’s sake!” He sighed angrily and rubbed his forehead like they were giving him a headache. “I think this is a mistake. Thank you for your kindness, Kevin, but we should probably go to a motel.”
“No. I don’t want to put you guys at risk just ’cause Roan is being a butthead. I’ll – I’ll tell Parker he’s got to stay at a friend’s house tonight, okay? We’ll try to work out something tomorrow.”
“No. We’ll find another way,” Roan said, not sure how, but he’d figure that. “Sorry to bother you, Kev. We’ll -”
“You think you’re leaving in a huff?” Kevin replied. “No, no way. I don’t know what you think my relationship with Parker is, but you’re wrong. Just ’cause he used to be a male prostitute doesn’t mean I fucked him. He’s straight, for god’s sake!”
“That’s debatable.”
He scowled. “You know a male prostitute too. Does that mean you fucked him?”
“Okay. Separate corners,” Dylan insisted, and gestured towards the door. “Could you give me a minute alone with Roan?” It sounded like a request, but it wasn’t. Kevin got that, and with a terse nod, he left the room. Roan expected him to slam the door, but he didn’t. Maybe because it was his house.
Dylan turned on him immediately and asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m arguing with Kevin. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I can take care of myself, you know. I don’t need you jumping to my defense.”
He stared at him blankly. What? “I wasn’t. We were having our own argument.”
“Which you started because I was upset.”
“No.” He didn’t, did he? Honestly he didn’t know; Dylan was a bit more perceptive with this stuff than he was, and sometimes he just didn’t know what motivated him to do a damn thing. “I was always suspicious of his relationship with Parker. I was willing to let it go, pretend it was nothing, but now he’s back and living in his house. Kevin’s better than that, I can’t ignore -”
“A separate discussion. You just want to fight.”
He felt like denying it, but that seemed pointless. He always liked to fight, and Dylan knew that as much as he did. “Actually, I want to know what the hell he’s thinking. He could be risking his career by letting Parker stay here.”
“Fine, I accept that. But why don’t you tell me what’s really going on with you. You’ve got your macho shield up, which tells me how upset you are. It was the incident at the college, wasn’t it?”
Again, denial was his first response, but then he had to turn away as that lacuna of shame seemed to widen in his chest, and suddenly the drugs weren’t enough to numb it. “I’m killing my own kind,” he admitted, his back to Dylan, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “I agreed to work with the cops so the cat squad wouldn’t just kill transformed infecteds. But now I’m doing it.”
Dylan wrapped his arms around him, pressing up against his back, and tears burned in Roan’s eyes. His throat felt clogged, choked up with solid sorrow. “Oh honey, it’s not your fault,” Dylan said softly, resting his head in the crook of his neck.
He didn’t want to cry, but maybe the drugs or the weariness had weakened his resolve, because a sob escaped him anyways, and his struggle to stop it, to hold it back, was futile. He knew they were dead; ingesting the tainted burn and triggering a premature transformation was only the first act of a staggered, messy death. But he kept remembering the feel of that panther’s skull just bursting beneath his fist, his hand plunging into warm, gelatinous brain matter. That was the point, wasn’t it? That was the point when he realized he was more virus than Human, that the downslide of his humanity had begun in earnest.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed before, because of course he had, but this was for some reason the last straw.
He loathed himself for the self-pity, for crying so hard it felt like he was being punched in the stomach from the inside out, but he couldn’t stop, and felt like he was going to collapse. Dylan held him, murmuring comforting things that could never be real.
He was a monster, more now than ever, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
****
Dylan was no stranger to breakdowns. He’d had one – well, more or less – and his brother Tom was sadly schizophrenic, a mental illness far beyond his control and beyond a one time breakdown but often exacerbated by his refusal to take his medication. But his experience with them were measured somehow, inevitable, not quiet but relatively bloodless, something you could see coming long before the explosion.
This was horrible. Roan was cracking, and part of it was simply the current crisis, the tainted burn and the cats freaking out almost as much as people and the authorities were. But it was only part, and maybe that was the worst part of it. Eventually the use of burn would go down, the infected would catch on and stop. But would it happen before Roan cracked under the strain? He didn’t know.
Dylan left Roan sleeping fitfully under the quilt he’d hastily pulled over him. Finally exhaustion and the sheer ton of drugs he must have taken weighed him down, and Roan had fallen asleep between pained sobs. Dylan had to change his shirt, since it was soaked with tears and snot, but oddly enough he felt numb. What could he do? Nothing. Just sit back and watch as Roan crumbled from the strain. He was angry, but also defeated. There was nothing he could do; nothing he could do would help. He felt impotent and useless. He couldn’t stop the world from hurting Roan more than he could stop Roan from hurting himself. What was he doing here if he was such a nothing?
Roan’s phone buzzed like an angry hornet, and he retrieved it from his coat pocket to let whoever was calling him know that Roan was fucking out for the day and wouldn’t be available for a while. But it wasn’t the cops or the media, so that was a sort of relief. Even though it was another chore, at least it gave him something to do beyond feeling superfluous.
He grabbed his coat and the car keys and headed out, quietly shutting the door behind him. Kevin met him at the top of the stairs.
“Look,” he began nervously. “I’m sorry. I really did forget.”
“That’s okay.” It wasn’t – Eric was his friend, and yes, maybe Parker was set up and never intended him harm, but Eric was still dead, still another murder statistic, and there was never any way he was feeling good about that – but he was also too tired to argue the point. “Roan’s asleep right now, he’s exhausted, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t disturb him.”
Kevin nodded almost spasmodically. “Sure, yeah. Umm, dinner’s done, if you wanna join us. Homemade cheese ravioli. Give me some credit for remembering you’re a vegetarian.”
He tried to smile, but it probably didn’t work. “Thanks. Maybe you could save some for me? Holden called, he needs someone to pick him up from the hospital.”
“Holden? You mean Fox? Why’s he at the hospital?”
“You don’t know? Some guys jumped him, beat the shit out of him.”
“What? No! I thought he was a tough bastard.”
Dylan could only shrug. “Even tough guys have a limit.” He was talking about Roan as well, and he thought Kevin, big bear of a vice cop that he was, got that.
Kevin moved out of the way and headed down the stairs, but Kevin said hesitantly, “Umm, about my relationship with Parker -”
He turned, shaking his head emphatically. “It’s none of my business, Kevin, and I honestly don’t care one way or another. But the thing Roan hates more than anything is someone lying to him, so just be honest, and he won’t get on your case about it.”
He might as well have taken a poke him. Kevin flinched, backing up a step. “What? What are you implying?”
“Nothing. You’ve known Roan longer than I have, so you know even better than I do his hunches have a tendency to pan out more than average. And he’s worried about you, not anything else. Keep that in mind.” He left Kevin to figure out what he was going to say to Roan, if anything at all. He knew better than to get between Roan and his friends.
Speaking of which, he drove to the hospital to pick up Holden, numb to his fingertips, turning the radio up loud just to fill his head with noise. It was better than thinking right now.
Holden was loitering outside the hospital, and he seemed surprised to see him. “Roan isn’t with you?” Dylan had told him, somewhat disingenuously, that he’d pass on the message to Roan. He didn’t add that he’d pass it on when he woke up, which could be sometime late tomorrow.
“He’s asleep. He had a hard day.”
He was still bruised, he still had all the hallmarks of a badly beaten person, with a purplish-red discolored eye, red lines of scars and scrapes giving a roughness to his face, a bit of a knot still visible near the hinge of his jaw. It was weird, but it made Holden look almost more dangerous, his eyes bright and sly beneath the bruises. “There was supposedly some infected attack somewhere. Roan was in that, wasn’t he?”
“Who else do they turn to when there’s big cats running around?”
He nodded, as if he should have known better. “Is he okay?”
“Depends on your version of okay.” He walked back to the car so he didn’t have to explain further.
As it was, he didn’t have to. Holden got into the passenger seat, and waited until he shut the door before asking, “Hospital hospital or psychiatric hospital?”
“Neither, for the moment. But I think I should probably notify Western State and get them to save him a bed.”
He sighed sympathetically. “Should it be so hard to be a superhero? I thought it was all spandex and endorsement deals.”
“Maybe that only applies to straight guys. And for the record, Roan seems to have some moral objection to spandex.”
“I don’t blame him. Vinyl is sexier.”
He looked at him, wondering if he was serious, and wondering if it should bother him if he was, but Dylan decided to let it go. Holden was a bizarre creature he would never pretend to understand, like reality show contestants or Glenn Beck, but not as dedicated to evil as either of those. Dylan simply started the car and made his way out of the hospital lot, double checking Holden’s address, as he didn’t really know it.
After an awkward pause, Holden asked, “How you holding up?”
“I want to hit something. I’m no good to him, I might as well not be here. He’s in so much pain, and I can mouth platitudes all I want, but they do fuck all.”
“Well, just -”
“And please don’t say just being there for him is enough, because no, it isn’t.” It was starting to rain, a mist like drizzle starting to spit tiny beads of moisture on the windshield, not enough to trigger the wipers. Traffic was iffy, but right now he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much at the moment.
No one ever had to tell him life wasn’t fair. Being both mixed race and gay gave him a marvelous ringside seat on how fucking unfair life was. But sometimes it seemed like life was more unfair to certain people than others. He was unable to determine if it was more unfair to Roan, to him, or to both of them.
Holden thought for a long moment, scratching the stitches on his scalp. “Then let’s do something.”
“What?”
“He’s told you of the leads he has on the whole tainted burn thing, right? Let’s follow them. Take some of the burden off him by looking at things for ourselves.”
Here was Holden surprising him again. “We’re not detectives.”
“Well, I’m an assistant investigator. And if there’s anything Roan’s taught me, it’s that being a detective isn’t really that hard, it just takes lots of patience. You have to find the pieces, and try to put them all together. We’re capable of finding pieces.”
“Are we?”
“Oh ye of little faith. Yes, I think so. Now where do we start? Being hospitalized, I’m sure I’m behind the narrative.”
When they reached a stoplight, Dylan looked over at him with a skeptical glare. “You want to start now?”
“Absolutely. I hated being cooped up, I need some action. I need to stop feeling like a victim of something.”
Which brought up a point that Dylan had wondered about. “You know, whoever did this to you, Roan got them.”
Holden betrayed no surprise, which was pretty much a confirmation. “Why do you say that?”
‘Cause he’d be obsessed with finding the guys who jumped you. He hasn’t been; he hasn’t mentioned it once. Meaning it’s because he got them already.”
He made a “hmm” noise, and finally said, “Interesting. See, you have the makings of a detective and you never realized it.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
He gave him an innocent look that fit too well on his face to be genuine. “How would I know? I’ve been in the hospital all this time.”
Dylan frowned at him, giving him the evil eye, but he knew even as he was doing it it wouldn’t work. You couldn’t shame the shameless. “Did you learn how to lie so smoothly, or was it inborn?”
Much like he suspected, Holden wasn’t offended. Again, shaming the shameless was damn near impossible. “Bit of both. My father was a preacher, after all, so you could argue nature versus nurture ’til the cows come home.” He paused briefly. “So where did Roan leave the investigation?”
Should he tell him? This was insane. They weren’t investigators; they were a male prostitute and an artist. It sounded like the set up to a really horrible comedy or porn film. But the idea of doing something, anything, rather than worrying about Roan was seductively appealing. “There was a message on Roan’s phone,” he began reluctantly. “A guy from the Church. Apparently he was returning a call that Roan must have made, saying he might have what he needs, but he needs him to meet him first. He seemed to be implying some kind of drug deal without ever saying it.”
“Are you sure that it isn’t Roan picking up some Vicodin?”
He shot him a weary glance. “He has different sources for that. When we – he talked to that dealer that called himself Hardy, he said there was someone dealing burn out of the Church. I think Roan found the guy.”
“The guy who returned the call.”
He nodded. “It would seem.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s stop by my place so I can change into some clothes that are less wrinkled, and we’ll go.”
“Are you serious? He’ll know we’re not Roan.”
Holden just shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “He may, he may not. Just let me do the talking.”
Oh, he intended to. Maybe he was nuts enough to try this, but he wasn’t crazy enough to think it would work.
