Epitaph, Part 11

11 – Division Day

Holden was only aware he’d been sleeping when he woke up, hearing voices in the next room.

They were too close to be his neighbors, and he knew he was no longer asleep because he really had to piss, so Holden groped for his gun before recognizing Scott’s laugh. Had Scott brought a guy over? Why?

He paid a visit to the bathroom before stepping into a pair of sweatpants he found on the floor and going out into the living room. There he found Scott and a large statue sitting on the couch, chuckling over beer. No, strike that, not a large statue, Grey.

He looked much the same as he had the last time he’d seen him, like the son of Frankenstein’s monster and a Samoan linebacker, far too big and muscular to believe he could skate with any grace or speed at all. But Holden had seen him play and knew Grey was hard to pigeonhole in so many respects that you shouldn’t even try.

Grey looked at him, and Holden figured his hair must have given him away. “Wow, sorry man. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Holden waved it away, heading for the fridge and caffeine salvation. “Doesn’t matter. When did you get back in town?”

“About an hour or so ago. Figured I’d come back and rub my pro career all over Murray’s face.”

Scott grimaced, a look that combined both playful anger and genuine embarrassment. “Yeah, well, Tank’s comin’ back too, to rub his ring in both our faces.”

Holden ran a hand through his hair, wondering if he should even bother to try and neaten up at this point. “Is this some kinda straight boy sex thing I’m unaware of?”

That made Grey laugh, although Scott just shook his head and sighed at his stupid joke. “We’re talking about Tank’s Stanley Cup ring.”

“They give those out for hockey? I thought that was just for football.”

“No, they give ‘em out for most sports, I think,” Scott said, before scratching his head and looking suddenly doubtful.

“That was just no fair at all,” Grey said. “We always knew Tank was the best player on the Falcons. He didn’t need to go and prove that on a national scale.”

Tank apparently won the Stanley Cup with his team his first official year in the NHL, and this led to much joking animosity from his former teammates. Well, it was partially joking, and partially naked jealousy. Everybody liked Tank, so they didn’t really hate him, but they did hate him just a little bit. Couldn’t be helped.

Holden opened up a can of diet soda and gulped down about half of it, wondering why he felt so logy. According to the clock on the microwave, he had probably been asleep for like an hour, he shouldn’t have felt this way. Maybe he was getting a cold. It’d been a while since he last had one.

“We were gonna hit up some fancy ass place downtown, have dinner on me,” Grey volunteered. “Wanna go? We could invite Roan and Dylan too.”

Holden scoffed. “You can only invite Roan if you have a signal flare. He’s off saving the city or the world or some such shit. Doin’ the hero thing.”

Grey shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta, might as well be him.”

For some reason, Grey being so sanguine about it pissed him off, but why? Holden felt like he was losing his mind. None of his own reactions made any sense to him.

He heard a distant ringing, and realized it was his cell, left in the bedroom. Holden was actually glad, as it gave him an excuse to leave the room and hopefully pull his shit together. What was wrong with him?

He sat down on the edge of the bed and answered his phone. He was hoping it was Roan, but to his surprise, it was Dylan. “Do you know where Roan is?” he asked, as soon as Holden said hello.

He sighed. “Not really. Last time I saw him was on the news.”

“He was on the news?” Dylan exclaimed, and then gasped in horror. “Oh shit, he didn’t chase down another cat, did he?”

“No, this time it seemed to be people.”

Dylan let out a frustrated sigh, and Holden, while irritated that he called him to find his goddamn husband, realized he felt kind of bad for him. He did have to live with him, and how much of a pisser did that have to be? Yeah, he was sexy, but mopey and erratic and constantly fighting ghosts. He thought it was bad enough that he was a sidekick, but being a superhero’s “wife”? Horrible. He’d dodged a bullet there. “He didn’t get hurt, did he? I’ve tried calling Dee, but I’m just getting his voice mail too.”

“If something happened to Roan, Dee would have called you by now.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“If it’s any consolation, he’ll probably call you before he calls me.”

“No offense, but he better.”

Holden couldn’t help but wonder what the hell Roan was doing right now, and why he was on radio silence.

If he was laying dead in a ditch somewhere, he was going to fucking kill him.

****

Roan had to press his face right into the grass, but he finally got it.

The lioness had managed to hurt the tiger. Not much, you could even qualify it as barely, but Roan finally isolated the scent, lost amongst the blood of the killed and the random outdoor smells. Now he had the scent of the tiger.

He sat back on his haunches, wondering if the cops back in the house would ever stop arguing about superheroes, or laughing about whatever the fuck he was doing. Only Seb was quiet, because Seb knew what he was doing.

Now that the scent was in his mind, something like synesthesia hit him, and he could see the thread of it, a neon orange filament that went over the back of the fence, slightly muddled by other scents.

Roan was aware he should quit now. He was split in half down the middle, with the human part – maybe; he actually didn’t know what part of him it was – weary down to the bone. He wanted to take Seb’s advice and go lay down for a while. But the other half, the part he assumed was the lion, wanted to see this through. That was perhaps the sole gift of the lion, the extreme tunnel vision, that ability to lock on to prey and not stop for anything short of a nuclear war. It allowed him to chase Chad and his friend down without ever noticing how close he’d come to being run down by several cars. Even though his body wanted to stop, it would press him on for one more mile. It would always find one more mile.

Although the wind wasn’t working with him, he knew the footsteps coming up behind him were Seb’s. For a man his size he walked with great delicacy. “I think I can find it,” Roan said.

“You look exhausted,” Seb replied.

“I always look exhausted. I’ll make it.”

Roan finally looked back at Seb, and he appeared dubious. Roan kind of suspected he’d look that way. “I’m not sure you should. I mean … haven’t you already had an aneurysm? You really shouldn’t push it. Look what happened to Gordo and his heart.”

“Your head doesn’t get weaker with every aneurysm,” he replied, and knew he was kind of splitting hairs. One aneurysm did leave you at increased risk for another, although he had yet to tell anyone beyond Rosenberg that he had a bleeding in  the brain that somehow stopped itself. There was still no explanation for it, beyond the virus working to keep itself alive. He’d stopped thinking about it until now, and he didn’t want to start again. Roan stood up, feeling his knees creak, and said, “The tiger’s still close, the kill was pretty fresh. I can catch up to it.”

“I got a buttload of guys with drug guns and live ammo. Leave it to us.”

“By the time you track it down, more people might be dead. There’s no point in this discussion.” He turned away and followed the thread of scent to the back fence, where he jumped up, grabbed the edge, and easily pulled himself over, landing on his feet on the other side.

“Very passive aggressive, Roan,” Seb shouted after him. But that was the last thing he heard as he took off running after the tiger.

It was obvious why the tiger came back here, as there was some scrubland, and an overgrown vacant lot, the closest thing to wilderness around here, although it soon spread out into a construction project that was half finished and on hold. That was a good thing right now, as that meant there was no one here for the tiger to snack on.

The lot was connected to another weedy field, this one belonging to the power company, eventually leading to fenced in transformers. Roan though he could feel the thrum of the electricity in his teeth, rattling around his head, but it might have been his own growling confusing him.

There was a small pond, but actually it was just a flooded part of the field, filled from the recent rains. A paw print glistened in the fresh mud at the fringes, and he knew the tiger had decided to go to ground somewhere near here, in spite of the grating static and hum of electricity.

There was a tangle of blackberry bushes near the chain link fence protecting the transformers , and while it wasn’t much in the way of cover, there was no other place the tiger could be if it avoided humans.

The sound of the electricity was louder, making the hair on his arms stand on end, the smell of ozone sharper, but that wasn’t the only thing triggering a response. Something was growling in response to his growl.

The tiger was small, but that didn’t make it any less impressive or dangerous. It seemed to uncoil as it came out of the shady hollow of the blackberry tangle, growling menacingly but still wary, as he confused it. He didn’t smell right, and he roared a challenge as it appeared. Not the best strategy, but it was reflex; he actually lost control for a second. The tiger roared back, and they both paced in opposite directions, eyes locked, waiting for the other to make the first move, growling and snarling threats and warnings.

Tigers were magnificent creatures, and this one was no different, orange and black striped with shocks of brown that indicated the human’s hair color. There was nothing human in the amber eyes though, which glared at him with the special kind of aimless rage that only frightened animals were capable of. Pain was ripping through Roan, making him almost as angry as the tiger, and he struggled to maintain control. He was at a tipping point, and anything could make him slide into disaster.

That guaranteed a disaster, and here it came, in the form of a cat squad member Seb had sent after him. He was athletic, apparently ripped even in spite of the bulky body armor he wore, and he quickly brought his tranquilizer gun up, hesitating as he shifted his aim from Roan to the tiger.

Time had slowed in that curious way that it only did when bad shit was happening. Roan had turned and snarled at the man as the tiger had, unable to rein himself in. The problem was the predator in him had quickly recognized the human as the weakest of the three of them, and the tiger did the same. But Roan still had a sliver of humanity left, enough to keep from attacking the man; the tiger didn’t. It bolted towards the cop as he fired his rifle, the dart hitting the tiger to no effect at all. Roan jumped, trying to tackle the tiger, but the second he did it was the exact moment he realized he wouldn’t make it, the tiger would slip past him.

Roan braced himself to hit the ground and charge, and he did, feeling the muddy ground squelch beneath him as he landed on all fours and looked towards the man as the tiger jumped on the cop and dragged him down into the tall grass.