Free Dragon Virus by Laura Anne Gilman Page A

glow.
    “Hello there.”
    The baby lay in the crib, pale pink fists clenched over the
blanket. Three months old.
    Her face was scrunched, her scalp covered by a faint dusting
of pale brown hair. Steven touched one fist, watching in astonishment as the
perfect little fingers uncurled and curled again. His hand looked so rough next
to hers, the hard, weathered skin making her seem even more delicate.
    He had trimmed his nails close before coming in, and he
still moved carefully, afraid of scratching her pinkness.
    “Hello, Bethy. Remember me?”
    One scrunched up eye opened, pale blue staring up at him as
though he could actually see and recognize him. She was perfect. Utterly,
astonishingly perfect. She could be the poster child for the old Pure Gene Law,
from her tiny toes to her sweetly rounded ears.
    Steven picked her up, carefully cradling his sister’s head
in the crook of his arm, and rocked her gently.
    “Five farmers went to market, to market to market. Five
farmers went to market, o, with a pig under their arms...” He had sung that
song to her while she was in the womb. Blue eyes blinked sleepily, and he could
almost swear that he saw her smile at him.
    Walking around the room, he kept singing. “The pig went to
table, to table to table. The pig went to table and the farmers had none.” They
were standing by the changing table when he finished, and his gaze lifted
almost against his will to the mirror on the wall.
    “The troll and the princess” he said softly. His strain was
called the Rock Change. Tough enough that the army would add a pay grade if he’d
enlist when he graduated.
    “Troll” was his nickname in grade school, where he was the
only Rock in his year.
    At the hospital, when they put Bethany in her bassinet,
behind glass for everyone to watch but not touch, Steven saw four Rock Change
babies in the rows next to her.
    Thumpers said he was damned, said they were all damned, all
the Changed.
    Maybe the Thumpers were right, and this world was already
hell, humanity descended into wolfpacks, fur smelling of brimstone, ready to
tear at each other for one small patch of land, some small claim to being top
dogs, the only real dogs….
    “And now it is upon us, the cost of our inactivity, the
wages of our damnation, that our children must suffer it, and we shall suffer
for our inaction at their hands!”
    He put his sister down and risked touching her perfect pink
forehead with his lips. “I love you, Bethy. Remember that. Always remember
that.”
    Wolves took care of their own, the old and the sick, the
weak and the doomed.
    Wolflings should do the same. So he picked up the tiny
pillow, and did what had to be done.
    o0o
    …it was summer when they closed the beaches the
final time, the contamination too widespread to contain. We could only sit and
watch while the others went into the water, splashing and calling out. The
children cried, not understanding why they were being punished, when their
friends, the changed ones, could go in.
    Some old-style tried, anyway. Surely it couldn’t
be so bad? But it was. The illness swept through communities like a plague,
their mucus dripping red and thick from raw nostrils, their skin drying and
cracking no matter what we did. Some podcasteer asshole called it the Dragon
Virus, and it stuck.
    Mid-summer, people who knew better started to
listen to the cults, say the dragons had done it. The dragons were killing us.
That was when I took everyone out of there, packed up the entire house, and
headed for the woods.
    It got hotter, and hotter, and pools and hydrants
weren’t enough to cool the cities down.
—from a letter found in the remains of a Settlement House,
just south of Orchard Beach, ME, year 7 (Anno Horriblis).

Six
    When we found the body stuck up on the signpost, we
figured for sure the Howlers were back. I mean, who else would leave all that
meat there to burn?
    Jody wanted to leave him there. Once Howlers have their paws
on meat, who knows what’s