Infected: Lesser Evils (17 page)

By the time Roan had turned and headed for the door, he heard what sounded like shouting and return fire. “What kind of guns are your security packing?”

Bolt peered cautiously over his desk, just the top of his head appearing over the edge.” I don’t know. Guns. Aren’t you scared?”

“No.” He opened the door and looked out into the corridor, and he couldn’t actually see anything, but he could hear voices outside, and from the sound of it, the shooting was over. Good. “How many men do you have?”

“It depends. Today I think we have six out there.”

“Probably a good idea. You might want to set up patrols.”

“Yeah, we’re on that.” Apparently deciding the threat was over, and that he was done feeling foolish, Bolt sat up in his plush desk chair and straightened out his shirt, even though he didn’t need to and it didn’t help. But it was some attempt to reclaim a dignity he’d never really had.

“If you’re serious about me some day taking over this place, you’ll hand over all the info I need on the guy supervising these dances, mixers, whatever the hell you call the get-togethers where the infected meet the willing. And you’ll do it now.”

Again he was treated to Bolt’s fish impersonation: mouth opening and closing, eyes stark with the need to argue and the need to give in. After a moment’s mental debate, he turned to his computer and tapped out something on the keyboard. His printer clattered to life and hummed as it printed out something. When it was done, Bolt took the piece of paper out of the tray and held it out over the desk wordlessly. It was an odd white flag of surrender, but he looked broken, handing it over.

“Thanks,” Roan said, taking the paper and looking at it. “I’ll show myself out.” He left without waiting for acknowledgment.

The man’s name was Pierce Hockney, which somehow seemed just about right, full of unpleasant syllables. Outside, the protesters had pretty much cleared up, while the Church’s security staff was surrounding a car with the driver’s side window shattered and bullet holes marring its door. There was a man on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back, cursing at the security staff, who were surrounding him with their guns drawn. It sounded like sirens were on their way, but Roan wanted no part of it. He’d witnessed nothing and couldn’t help. Besides, it was just a drive-by that did superficial damage to the Church; the lack of a fresh blood smell seemed to indicate no one was actually hurt.

Once inside his car, he double-checked the address. The guy lived near University Place, which would take Roan out of his way. There was a phone number, which he tried, but he got shunted to voice mail. He almost hung up, but at the last moment he decided to just brazen it out. “Hey, yeah, I was told you were the guy to come to for some burn? I heard it at the Church….” he deliberately hesitated, trying to sound as uncomfortable and nervous as possible. “I just need somethin’, and pills don’t cut it anymore. So, yeah, I’ll call back.” He hung up, wondering if he was a decent actor. He lied well, and that was pretty much the same thing.

He wondered idly if burn really did make you painless.

His phone rang, and he thought it might be Hockney calling him back. “Yeah?”

“Roan, get your ass to the Templeton College campus now,” Seb exclaimed angrily.

He was about to tell him to ask nicely when he heard gunfire in the background, and Seb cursed. Suddenly Roan was no longer in a joking mood. “Fucking hell, what’s going on?”

“Some kids had a party at one of the frat houses, and it musta been full of burn and full of infecteds who either didn’t know it or were trying to score some college tail, ’cause we got at least three, maybe four, cats runnin’ around campus going fucking nuts. I don’t know how many we got dead, we got a lotta injured, we have at least one inside one of the main buildings—fuck!” There was another fusillade of bullets, and he heard a member of the cat squad shouting orders to someone else. After that passed, he said, “It’s taking a lot of bullets to put these fuckers down, and we haven’t gotten the campus fully evacuated. We need your supercat powers now—move it!”

“I don’t have supercat powers,” he replied, but he said it to silence. Shit. How lovely it was to have everything go wrong at once.

Roan wasn’t far from the campus and traffic wasn’t bad, but he was still afraid he’d taken too long. He illegally parked, figuring if any cop was anal enough to give him a ticket in the middle of a massacre he was more than welcome to, and ran toward the nearest cluster of armor-clad cat squad members on the perimeter of the front quad. As they turned toward him, he shouted, “Roan McKichan, let me through!”

They parted, obviously recognizing him, as he shucked off his jacket and let it fall as he ran past, headed toward the main building (and the gunshots). One of them yelled, “You need a gun!”

“Bullshit!” Roan shouted back, slamming into the glass door so hard he was a little surprised he didn’t shatter it. But the pneumatic hinge on the door made a funny noise opening as he paused and took a deep breath, trying to parse the smells.

There were too many, and now the abrasive sting of gunpowder was overwhelming the other scents, but he still picked up the faint trail of another cat, and followed it.

In the back of his mind, Roan was aware this was a nice college, that the building he was in had a vaulted roof and skylights, that it had a pleasantly sunny color scheme and an open floor plan. But he really didn’t pay any direct attention to it at all; his mind had already shifted to battle mode, and the lion was sliding into the driver’s seat, ready to take on any cat that dared to cross its territory. Never mind that it actually wasn’t its territory—it would lay claim to whatever it wanted. He was aware of screams, of gunshots, of shouts and fear, but everything was falling away as his senses narrowed, his reason splintered, and the beast started taking over. The crackle of bones shifting and breaking was a calming fireside crackle in the background, his adrenaline too high to feel anything in the way of pain.

He smelled blood, rich and intoxicating, and found himself in a wide corridor, its marble tiled floor slick with hot red blood. It was one of the cat squad, his face shield up as he yelped in pain, trying not to scream as a couple of his buddies dragged him across the floor, his right leg useless and spewing blood, a chunk of flesh and muscle and useless body armor torn away. His first response to this scene was hunger, an urge to finish off the wounded animal, but he wasn’t completely lion yet.

One of the uninjured cat squad looked at Roan and suddenly raised his sidearm, but Seb was there, and he pointed down the hall toward some broad double doors. “It went through there. It’s wounded, but it won’t go down.”

Yes, he could smell its blood even above the Human blood. Roan was beyond speech, so he simply nodded and ran for the doors. He heard one of the cat squad say, “What the hell was up with his face?”

He burst through the wide doors into what he knew by smell was a library: old paper and dust, a smell as comforting as home to him. In fact, it was home to him, he had his own “library,” although could you call a bunch of haphazardly assembled books, many of them paperbacks and even more used, a library? It wasn’t like this place, with its cheerful skylights letting in a honeyed glow, vaulted ceiling, and bookcases about as tall as your average mobile home.

He let out a deep, pit of the diaphragm roar, a scream that tore up his throat and echoed beautifully off the walls and high ceiling, sending out a challenge to all cats in hearing range. It was the “Mine!” roar, the one that told all cats that this place was his and death would be the penalty for trespass. Best-case scenario, all the cats in the area ran. But here, dealing with drug- and pain-crazed cats, there was only one response possible: they would mob him, attack en masse, attack each other even in their frenzy to kill him. And that was the response Roan was counting on.

Roan tried to hang on to his humanity, not fully transform, as he knew he might get himself shot if he completely let go (and he might bite some big chunks out of the cat squad as well). He wasn’t sure how to keep even the slightest Human part of himself—and it hurt; it was a dull knife buried deep in his brain, being twisted slowly, and he knew the monster would take its claws out of his gray matter if he just gave in—but he couldn’t, if only because he wouldn’t let it win. He tried to focus on Dylan—pretend he was here, make himself believe he was here.

The lion in the library roared a challenge and came charging after Roan, its huge mane shot through with peroxide white; a male, big, young, but given to bad hair. Roan roared back and met it halfway. They lunged and collided in midair, crashing down and through a long table as the lion sunk its teeth into Roan’s shoulder and its claws into his back, as Roan sunk his teeth into its neck and slammed a palm hard into its rib cage.

He felt the cat tearing muscles with its teeth as its ribs shattered beneath his hand, and it squalled in pain as he ripped through its throat, taking out a chunk of flesh that Roan spit out, with its sour blood. He wanted the blood, but this was poisoned, tainted, sour as paint thinner. He was vaguely aware of wooden splinters digging into his back and side, but it was little more than background noise. As soon as the lion twisted its head away, teeth out of his flesh, Roan threw it across the room. The lion hit a bookcase spine first, hard enough to send books avalanching down to the carpet.

It landed on its feet, of course, but shook itself as if it could shake away the pain. Now it had not only minor bullet wounds in its flank and side and broken ribs, but a huge chunk of flesh out of its neck, where it was now losing blood in copious amounts. But that didn’t mean it was done.

Roan felt a burning sensation in his shoulder; the lion had done some damage, but the fresh new pain made him angry, and the beast threatened to overwhelm him as he roared, his hands balling into fists full of broken bones that felt like they were twitching. The lion roared back and charged, and Roan caught it, its momentum making him fall backward into the aisle.

The beast was overwhelming him, trying to make him go to all fours, make him go to claws, but he grabbed the lion’s wound, sinking fingers into warm flesh, and tore, pulling away sinew like ribbons. It screamed, fetid breath washing over him as it squirmed, and suddenly there was a responding roar, and a dark brown blur pounced on them, joining the fight. A female lion this time, not as big, but just as angry and deadly. She sunk her teeth into Roan’s arm and dug her claws into his legs, groin, and chest. He reflexively sank his teeth into her soft pad of a nose, and as her bite loosened he flung his arm out and sent her flying. She hit a shelf so hard it collapsed, and he heard the splinter of wood as she punched through the bookcase like a missile.

The male had recovered and launched itself at Roan, but at half strength now. It was still enraged, but had lost too much blood to do much about it. Roan was up on all fours when it charged in, and he had enough humanity left in him to throw an ad hoc uppercut that sent the lion stumbling back before it fell down. He didn’t think it would be getting up again.

The lioness had recovered, and this time she was joined, with a roar, by a leopard so dark he almost thought it was a panther. He was on his feet and kicked the lioness away, slamming her hard into another shelf, books raining down like dust, but the leopard latched onto his leg, teeth sinking into his calf muscle.

Roan roared in rage and pain, and acted without thought, without a shred of humanity, which might have been why Roan was so surprised, almost shocked back to his human self entirely when he saw he’d put his fist through the cat’s head.

Through its head.
Like it was made of papier-mâché and not the blood and brain matter currently dripping from his fist, still embedded in the leopard’s shattered skull.

The lion in him felt triumphant, but Roan felt a little sick.

The lioness jumped back at him with a roar, and he ducked the initial jump, shaking the dead cat off the end of his arm, and when it came in again Roan caught the female cat by her throat and simply threw her as far as he could. Like he imagined, that was pretty far. She impacted a back shelf, so hard the towering bookcase rocked before finally coming down, and then the big cases began to fall like dominoes. He hoped they would all fall down and he would be crushed, but it didn’t happen, as the cases stopped toppling as soon as they hit a retaining wall.

Roan heard the thud of boots on tiled floor, and suddenly the room was full of uninjured cat squad members pointing guns and supercharged Tasers like they expected an attack from all sides. Roan turned away, so they couldn’t see his bloody face or torn clothes. “Dude, it sounded like the world was ending in here,” Seb explained. “You okay?”

He just nodded, trying to force his humanity back into the driver’s seat. The problem was the viciousness of what he’d done to the leopard had made it come to the forefront anyways, and now the pain was hitting him square on, without any of the gradual peaking he was used to. Roan felt like he had a broken hand, a broken jaw, torn muscles in his shoulder, in his leg, and it felt basically like he had been stabbed in the balls, all of which was more or less true. He held the keening noise to the back of his throat, and he felt like collapsing, but remained on his feet. He closed his eyes and concentrated on swallowing the pain, holding it back, just until he could get to his car.

With a pained, watery growl, the lioness crawled out from beneath the pile of books and broken wood, and a member of the cat squad opened fire, getting a head shot with the second bullet. She went down in a heap, and there was no doubt she wouldn’t be getting up again.

Roan felt he had it, the fragile equilibrium that would allow him to keep from screaming, and was aware that someone was staring at him. He opened his eyes and turned to see a member of the cat squad with his face shield up, a real square-jawed Captain America type, who asked, “How the hell are you not dead yet?”

“I’m a monster,” he said, his voice so gravelly and raw it might as well have been a growl. Roan stared at him because it even hurt to move his damn eyes, and he watched the guy blanch, all blood draining from his face as he realized that Roan was serious. Sometimes fear smelled like metal.