Dragon Virus by Laura Anne Gilman Page A

home-grown, they have to
bring it across state lines?
    “Something about dragons?” She isn’t going to go away. This
is more interesting than Wheelies usually get. We overlap shifts; first-source
story will get her an audience for the retelling, later on.
    “Teenager took the Rapture, middle of the 7-11 parking lot.
One of theirs, thank god.”
    Hell to pay when a local decided to go Wheeling. “Screaming
about dragons rending the flesh from his bones.”
    “Bleeding?” All the details, man. All the gory details. I
oblige her.
    “Oh, it was a bonafide Rapture, yeah.”
    o0o
    Raptures started way back before anyone knew what was up.
Before the air started souring, before the red tides and blue tides and whatnot
washed up on shore. Before the babies started being born wrong. Maybe Wheelies
and their ilk came up around them, maybe it was a case of like finding like,
and feeding on each other. Suddenly everyone knew someone who’d been in on a
Rapture. It was a fad. A passing insanity. Only it didn’t pass.
    o0o
    “I see them.”
    I know the signs: eyes wide, staring at something I don’t
want to see. Arms uplifted, twitching like a marionette, face scrubbed-clean
fresh, mouth slack jawed and smiling like it wants to scream. He’s fourteen
maybe, max. Carrot-topped, cut brush-short. Sharp nose, tanned skin, jeans and
a football jersey in blue and red, number 7. Lucky seven. He should be in school,
or ditching school, not riding the roads looking for some glorious ending
always over the next hill. A plastic bottle of pop lies at his feet, a dark
puddle staining the gray-white of his sneakers.
    “See them! See them!”
    Every Rapture’s different, I’m told. Some see angels
ravaging the world, others demons, others plain old fire and brimstone. It’s
all about cleansing, apparently. Only the means are different. I wonder,
sometimes, if they ever just see god pouring in some bleach and flushing us
down the drain.
    “Can you see them?”
    Across the parking lot his gaze targets in on me, enough to
make sweat jump out under my collar. I pull the dust mask down off my face,
wanting to make sure my words are clear. My gun feels heavier, somehow, and my
hand goes to it instinctively, one finger resting just below the strap, aching
to flick upwards, release it.
    Rapture makes us non-believers antsy.
    He dances in place, slow rising steps like those horses they
show in parades. His arms rise higher, white-fleshed forearms blinding in the
sunlight, palms up, beseeching something on behalf of humanity that can’t
follow him.
    “Can you see them?” he asks again, turning, directing the
question to me.
    “No, son, I don’t.” Never lie to a Rapture. Bad Things
happen. If you believe nothing else, believe that. “Now son, let’s get you
somewhere you’re not scaring the ladies.”
    No ladies here, just a tired-eyed clerk who could be
anywhere from eighty to dead for all the curiosity she shows, dragging on her
cigarette and not watching the show, two pre-pubescent females with the boy’s
red hair who were clearly enthralled with their brother’s contortions, and a
couple of the local girls slouching with what they thought was style with their
boys of the week against a rust-ridden Volvo wagon older than they were.
    “The sky,” he says, a conspiratorial whisper, as though he
expects me to do something about it, then looking upward with that same
slackjawed, slightly unhinged look. The one people get when reality tilts and
slides off the table. “The sky is full of dragons.”
    One of the kids leaning against the car snickers, but I risk
taking my attention from the Rapture long enough to check the sky. Blue, clear
— not even enough cloud to create a dragon-image.
    I look back, just a second, and he’s in my face, looking up
to stare me in the eye, his breath hot and rancid, like onions and mud. “The
sky is full of dragons... and the dragons are filled with stars. Fear them, oh
fear them, for they are no