Land of the Blind, Part 17
17 – Blood
Roan woke up, stuffed up, headachy, and feeling like a complete dick. Did anyone know how to make an ass of himself like he did? He wished they gave a medal for that, as he’d have a shelf full of them, which at least he could melt down for scrap.
The room he was in didn’t look or smell familiar, but Dylan was sleeping beside him, so he wasn’t too worried. He was unlikely to transform and go on a rampage and bring Dylan with him.
He remembered everything as he walked to the bathroom. Kevin’s place, right. Did they ever settle that? No, probably no
t. Hard to settle things when you’re out cold. He took way too many fucking pills. But the worst part? He needed more. His head really hurt.
He washed his face in the hottest water he could stand, until his entire face was the same uniform color of red, so no one could tell he’d been crying. He was starving too, his stomach one solid knot of need, although the rest of him felt strangely hollow, save for a residual ache in all his joints. He flexed his fingers and wondered if he could feel the bone spur claws. He thought he could, he thought he could feel their points beneath the thin skin of his hand, but it could have just been his knuckles. He could have been feeling what he wanted or expected to feel.
He needed pills, and dug a couple of Percocet out of his bag, but he knew if he didn’t eat something first he’d just vomit it back up. He changed into sweatpants and a tank top and padded downstairs, being as quiet as possible.
It was impossible to say what time it was, as it was light grey outside (could be very early in the morning, could be mid-afternoon; you had to love murky Western Washington weather). But once he was downstairs he saw Kevin’s goofy living room clock (it was one of those that looked like Felix the Cat, with moving eyes and a “wagging” tail as a pendulum), he saw it was just shy of six thirty in the morning, and heard someone moving around in the kitchen. There was a smell of coffee and toasted bread, which was enough to make his stomach growl. Somehow he knew it was just Kevin in the kitchen, so he decided to bite the bullet, swallow his pride, or whatever euphemism, metaphor, or saying was applicable here.
He appeared in the kitchen archway as Kevin was pouring himself a mug of coffee from a classic glass coffee pot. “Hey Roan. Want some coffee?”
“I don’t know if my stomach can take raw caffeine right now.”
“Well, help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. I don’t think we have any orange juice, but we have assortment of random crap. You’re free to have whatever you want.”
“Hot sauce?”
“You’re free to drink it, but only if I can film it for YouTube.”
Kevin was dressed in a dark but semi-casual suit and a dark navy tie, which would have told him he was getting ready for court if the time hadn’t. “Testifying today?” Roan guessed, as he searched the fridge. Kevin had some blueberry pomegranate juice, which he figured was good enough, and he saw on the second shelf a huge ceramic bowl full of pasta and red sauce. He could smell it vaguely – Parmesan and Romano cheese, garlic, tomatoes, peppers – and it made his stomach grumble.
“Yeah. All about a minor drug bust. Nothing very exciting.” While paperwork was the worst part of being a cop, having to testify in court was probably second, as long as you didn’t count some of the general Human misery. A lot of testifying in court wasn’t as interesting as many procedural cops shows would have you believe. It was boring most times, lots of waiting to testify, and your testimony was often just reciting whatever you wrote on your initial report. It was a way to kill an entire day and hardly do anything at all, which could be good or bad, depending on various circumstances. Roan still had to testify occasionally, due to cases or stuff he did for the cat squad or Dennis Caldera, and it was never anything but dull and anti-climactic.
Roan held up the bowl of homemade ravioli. “Can I have some?”
“Sure. But are you sure you don’t want some toast or eggs or something?”
He shook his head as he searched Kevin’s cupboards for microwavable dishware. He found it, and wondered how come he was making himself so at home in another man’s house. Especially since he was such a dick to the guy. “No, this smells good. Umm, about yesterday -”
“Look, don’t sweat it. It was … I dunno. I’m sorry I forgot about Dylan being the main witness on the case. I don’t know how I did that.”
“Yeah, well … it could’ve escaped your mind. It’s not like we talk about it a lot. And, umm, about Parker -”
“Yeah, about him.” Kevin sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh, almost covered up by the thunk of his coffee mug. His back was to him, but Roan picked up the tension. He just ladled ravioli into the microwave safe bowl and waited for him to say whatever he was working up the courage to say. Finally, he said, “You were right. But since I have the feeling you always think that, you’re probably not surprised.”
He put the bowl in the microwave, and put a paper towel over it so the sauce didn’t splatter. “Right about what?”
“I, um … you’re going to make me say it, aren’t you? I hired him once.”
Roan felt his stomach twist in a nauseated way, even though he hadn’t popped his pills yet. “Oh Jesus, Kev …”
“Save me the speech, okay? It was years ago. I went up to Everett, way out of my jurisdiction, and I never told him I was a cop. I never expected to see him again, okay? That was the whole point. But then a couple months later he moved down to Seattle, and coincidentally into my beat area. Luckily he’s been cool about it all, he never threatened to expose me or anything. He didn’t care.”
Roan sat in a chair across the table from him, but Kevin was looking down at his coffee cup and wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Is he blackmailing you?”
Finally Kevin looked up at him, scowling in annoyance. ”No! Of course he isn’t! I just said he wasn’t like that.”
“But you’re taking a huge risk in letting him stay here.”
“I know. But he’s really trying to go straight – pun absolutely not intended – and he needed a place to go where he wouldn’t be tempted by his old lifestyle. Could you get more square than my house?”
“No. But … do you hire a lot of hookers?”
He gave him a hard stare. “Don’t you give me shit.”
“I’m not. I just want to understand what’s going on with you.”
“What’s going on with me?” He snorted derisively. “What I wanna know is, where’s all this anonymous gay sex going on? If the fundies have taught me anything, besides gays being the biggest threat to democracy the world has ever known, it’s that gay men are always having tons of anonymous, meaningless sex, usually in public restrooms and Boy Scout meetings. So why can’t I ever find any of this action? I’m lonely, okay? And I’m a chunky black cop. I’m not a big hit at clubs, which are usually twinkville anyways, and I can’t stand the vanity and posing. Ugh. I just wanna meet a guy, you know? A nice guy. They don’t have to be stunning, like your men, just someone who doesn’t mind having a cop boyfriend who likes quiet nights at home. Why is that so hard to find?”
Roan didn’t even know where to start. God, he really needed to take his pills. “So you’re hiring prostitutes to meet a guy? Have you tried e-dating?”
“No, I know I’m not gonna meet a guy hiring hookers, okay? I don’t do it that much, and I always feel shitty when I do. But I’m lonely, Roan. Yeah, I’ve tried dating services, but the ones that cater to us are usually concerned with just hooking up. Which, again, I wouldn’t mind, but guys aren’t exactly beating a path to my door.”
He scratched his head. “What was that comment about my men being stunning? You think I require that?”
“No, but it’d be weird if you didn’t get good looking men. You’re a hunk magnet. Prob’ly ’cause you ain’t exactly hard on the eyes, and you got that whole macho man thing goin’ on.”
“If you start singing the Village People, I will kick you.”
He smirked, idly stirring his coffee. The microwave beeped, letting Roan know he had a valid excuse to get up. “Come on, you know you have the macho thing. It’s half tortured action hero, half bad boy. And who doesn’t love either of those? C’mon.”
“I am not a bad boy! How am I a bad boy?”
“Wow, take your pick. But I’m gonna go with the fact that you are just incredibly fucking dangerous. You are a SWAT team all by yourself.”
“I’m not that bad,” he complained, aware he had made an accidental pun.
“I wouldn’t fuck with you.”
“My whole life has been an attempt to get people to stop with fucking with me.”
“Okay then, mission accomplished.”
“No, not really.” Roan got the steaming bowl of pasta from the microwave and after digging a fork out of a drawer, sat back down at the table. It smelled great, and the pomegranate blueberry juice didn’t taste that bad.
He was taking his first bite of ravioli when Kevin added, “Oh yeah, Dylan went and picked up Fox from the hospital last night, and when he came back, he asked me if I could do a records check on a guy named Pierce Hockney. He said he’s connected to this tainted burn thing.”
He mulled that over as he chewed. He’d told Dylan about Pierce, but he hadn’t said that much about him.”Was he gone a while?”
Kev had to think about that for a moment. “I guess so. Parker and I watched a couple of Breaking Bad episodes before he came back.”
“So, a couple of hours? Traffic couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Not at that time of night, no.”
Suddenly it struck him. “You were watching Breaking Bad with a meth addict?”
“Former meth addict. He’s been clean for two months.”
“Still, is that wise?”
“It’s a good show.”
“I know it’s a good show, I’m just saying it’s weird.”
“It is weird, I guess. But no, he’s not tempted by scenes of people using rock. Is that what you were wondering?”
“Kinda.”
Kevin shrugged. “It’s fiction. He can handle it.”
He nodded, not sure what to say. It did seem like the kind of irony that was either funny or sad. “This is really good,” he said, gesturing to the pasta.
Kev smiled faintly. “I’m a great cook. Look at what those guys are missing.” After a moment where he sipped his coffee, and Roan enjoyed another bite of pasta, Kev asked, “So what do you think Fox and Dylan were up to?”
“Knowing Holden? Investigating. He doesn’t like to be sidelined for too long, and I’m sure Dylan is worried about me.” Yeah, he only cried like a hysterical teenager at a Jonas Brothers concert, and took half a bottle of heavy duty painkillers – why would that make him worry? Jesus, he was a piece of work sometimes. He’d kick his own ass if he could.
“So you’re not worried that they have a thing?”
He laughed, and briefly choked on a piece of ravioli. As soon as he was able to swallow it and stop snickering, he said, “Oh hell no. Dyl is civil to Holden, but I know he doesn’t like him very much.”
“Why not?”
“Hard to say. I think mainly ’cause he really doesn’t get him, which I can understand. I think Holden likes being difficult to fathom.”
“All I know about Fox is he’s one of those clever bastards that you don’t want to turn your back on.”
“Yeah, that’s him.” He paused, long enough to consider whether or not he should ask, and figured what the fuck. “You and Parker aren’t involved, right?”
“No. I’m just helping him, that’s all.”
“Okay, just making sure.”
Kevin had to leave for a brief stop at work before court, so Roan was able to eat the rest of his inappropriate breakfast in general silence. Did it strike either of them as hypocritical that a vice cop was known to consort with prostitutes, or that he was allowing a notorious pill popper (Roan) into his house? Sure, but you’d be hard pressed to find a cop who was as pure as driven snow. Ideally, the sins were minor – and Roan couldn’t help but think theirs were (but he would, wouldn’t he?) – and you weren’t as corrupt as a politician, but that happened too.
Not that there weren’t honest, pure cops. There were tons of them. But Roan didn’t trust most of them. Everyone fucked up; everyone was a hypocrite to a certain degree. Those that insisted most vehemently that they weren’t and never were were usually the biggest liars of them all.
After eating and taking his pills, he wandered back upstairs, still sleepy. It was only hunger and an overwhelming need to piss that got him up in the first place. That and nagging feelings of guilt.
Dylan was sleeping on his stomach, the blankets only covering him to his shoulder blades, one arm hanging down the side of the bed. It was funny to say someone had a good looking back, but damn, Dylan had a good looking back.
Roan took off his shirt and crawled back into bed, trying not to wake him up, but he then leaned over and kissed his shoulder blade. How could he help it? He was gorgeous, and far more than he deserved.
He snuggled up against him, Dylan muttering in his sleep and nestling against him too, and fell back asleep, trying not to think about how he crushed a skull.
He was dreaming of mud and blood, of running through a jungle of buildings and trees, when his cell phone ringing woke him up. He’d taken it out to check his messages, but lost his nerve. He wasn’t going to answer it, but he didn’t want to wake up Dylan, so he snatched it from the nightstand, and muttered a semi-intelligible, “What?”
“Well, ain’t you a ray of sunshine?” Doctor Rosenberg rasped.
With a sigh, he rolled over onto his back and rubbed his eyes. “I’ve had a bad week. What’s gone wrong now?”
“Nothing that I know of. I just wanted to know if you’d made any headway on finding the asshole who created the fake lepidysine.”
“I’d call you if I had. All I’ve got are breadcrumbs. I don’t know if any of these things will lead anywhere. Is that it?”
She snorted bitterly. “You are a prickly bastard today. Well, maybe this’ll distract you. Your blood reacts differently to the fake lepidysine.”
He pondered that a moment, not sure what to say. “Um, how? What does that mean?”
“The first dose, it’ll react like any normal virus. Second dose, it barely reacts at all. It’s figured out it’s false, a hormone analog, and attacks it.”
He stared up at the stuccoed ceiling, which looked like dried cottage cheese. “What does that mean exactly?”
“Well, a couple things. You know this drug ain’t gonna kill you, right?”
“Of course,” he lied. No, he didn’t know that, but in retrospect, of course it wouldn’t. Most of the people died of rapid transformation induced shock (called, according to Dee, RTS), while the secondary cause of death was the drug basically turning brains to mush. He had such a drug immunity if his brains weren’t mush by now, they were never going to be mush, and if he was susceptible to RTS, he’d have been dead after his first partial change.
“Okay. The thing is, no other infected blood that we’ve tested reacts this way. If we dose a sample, and give a second dose, it reacts with the same intensity.”
“So my virus is smarter?”
“A simplistic way to put it, but yeah. It has an adaptive immune response, basically. Part of what makes you unique is the symbiotic nature of the virus and you.”
“Symbiotic?”
“It gives you things, and you give it things. In this case, it’s learned to mimic an immune response.”
Was that even possible? He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to hear “It is for you, freak-o”. “Does this help us at all, or did you just want to clue me in on my freakishness?”
“It opens the door for finding an antidote.”
He felt a brief acid burn in his stomach. “An antidote to what?”
“The weapon, the fake lepidysine. If your virus can tell the difference, the others should be able to with proper tuning. We just need to isolate what your virus creates to negate the pseudo-hormone, and synthesize it for mass production.”
“That’ll take years.”
“Probably. But at least we know we have the option. And that you don’t have to worry about getting exposed to the drug.”
“I wasn’t worried.” He wasn’t; he didn’t know why. Maybe because he loved drugs too much to be afraid of them. “Do you think … do you think there’s a cure? Maybe somewhere in my blood?”
“You mean a cure for the virus?”
“Yeah.”
She was silent for a long time. He could hear static on the line, some kind of electrical interference that was probably in the lab itself. Finally, she said, “It’s doubtful, but now you have me curious. I wonder what would happen if your virus met the standard lion virus.”
“Are we hoping for Thunderdome here? Two virus enter, one virus leave?”
That made her snicker. “I don’t think so, although that’d be cool. I think the most we could hope for is full integration.”
“What, you mean like I have?”
“Yes. Rather than a destructive relationship between body and virus, people could live with the virus more harmoniously.”
He considered that, and tasted metal in his mouth, his heart starting to race. “And have a bunch of people who could shatter skulls with one punch? Fuck no. Forget I ever asked.”
“What? What in the sam hell are you talking about? You shattered someone’s skull?”
“Let’s just say there’s probably a good reason I’m one in six million and leave it at that, okay? Thanks for the call.”
“Don’t you dare hang -” she said, but he hung up the phone before she could finish the sentence.
So he was the potential savior of the cats. Was he equally the slaughterer of the Human race? He would be if somehow Rosenberg could work out how to fully integrate the virus for everyone. Normal Humans would have no chance against people like him.
Did it matter? Where were his loyalties? He’d never actually been purely Human, he’d always been a half breed. So why did he feel any tug of nostalgia towards the normals? They were the lucky ones. Or were they?
More sleep was impossible, so he got up and started looking through Dylan’s coat pockets, seeking any information he and Holden may have gathered on Hockney.
He was sure it was Holden’s idea, and he should be mad at him, but Holden was smart enough to know that potentially endangering Dylan would earn his wrath, so he’d look out for Dyl. Roan found a slip of paper with an address hastily scrawled on it, and the initials PH. Who else but Pierce Hockney? He lived in Federal Way, so it was a drive, but not as bad as it could have been. He changed into more appropriate clothes and took off, leaving Dylan a note on the nightstand, simply telling him “Thanks”. He’d have to decide what he was thanking him for.
It was a grey and miserable day, and a grey and miserable drive. KEXP wasn’t even playing anything good. He should have known then what he was in for.
Hockney’s house was an unassuming manufactured home at the end of a cul de sac, full of similar looking homes. The only reason his stood out at all was due to the fact that there weren’t many flowers, and there was no sign of kids. Others had a big wheel in the front yard, a basketball hoop off to one side, a wading pool, riots of azaleas or rhododendrons, but he had nothing except the few mugo pines and junipers that the original landscapers must have put in. Not much of a homebody. Being single made things easier, as he didn’t have to worry about dealing with someone’s wife or kids.
He was half way up the muddy lawn when he caught the scent of blood. “No,” he muttered under his breath. The door was shut, so he had to open it, but it was unlocked, and he used the sleeve of his coat to cover his hand so he didn’t leave fingerprints.
The idiot chatter of the television greeted him, stuck on a college basketball game (presumably a repeat, as he didn’t think anyone was playing a game right now). The man he presumed to be Hockney was sitting on his couch in a torn University of South Carolina t-shirt and stained underwear, his legs splayed and his head back as if he’d fallen asleep while watching the tube. Except he had a neat little red hole in the center of his forehead, like an empty third eye, and Roan could see the chunky reddish-brown splatter of blood and brain matter that had soaked into the carpet behind the sofa.
If this was Pierce, he’d been dead for hours, and had been killed in what appeared to be cold blooded execution style, by someone Pierce obviously wasn’t afraid of, or at least wasn’t when he should have been.
As he took out his phone to call 911, he was willing to bet he’d hit another dead end. No pun intended.
