The Dragon Plague

Chapter 8

The reinforcements arrived a few minutes later, but it was too late to get the rebels: they had disappeared.

Erik was taken to hospital for the routine checks which were mandatory after a contact with an infected, and to have his arm treated. It was no big deal: the wound was superficial – he didn't even need a bandage - and his bloodwork came out fine.

At the very least, the afternoon spent at the medical centre of the police headquarters spared him from having to fill the massive amount of paperwork reporting that day's events. His partner took care of that.

When he arrived in the office, Hernandez was visibly exhausted.

"You know, I almost would have preferred to be stabbed," she commented, yawning.

Erik just grinned. In retrospect the chase should have seemed terrifying, but at the time he wasn't afraid. He had felt nothing but anger and the rush of adrenaline.

It had always been like that for him... maybe that was the reason why, despite his age, he was still considered fit for on-field missions. He didn't think he would have liked to sit behind a desk all day.

His partner was still staring at the screen on her desk, and appeared lost in thought.

"What's going on? Need help to finish the report?" Erik offered.

Not that he had any particular inclination to do that, but it seemed right to offer his help, as poor Zoe had shouldered most of the paperwork.

"No, it's not that.... It's just..." Hernandez bit her lip. She seemed uncertain whether to go on.

"What?"

"Well, do you remember the two missing people?"

Erik nodded "The assistant and the patient. What about them?"

"I was expecting to get a big scolding for not finding them. You know, usually the failure to curb a potential infected is... like... the worst possible thing... "

"And what happened instead?"

"Nothing!" she exclaimed. "Nothing at all! That's so strange. I delivered the file and reported the problem, but Hoffman didn't so much as bat an eyelid."

Hoffman was the head of their division, a dapper guy more interested in politics than in the daily work of the police.

"That's not typical of him," Erik admitted.

"No, indeed. But wait, there's more. I said that I would proceed with the standard containment measures to be used in an emergency, you know, mugshots, patrols, the usual thing, but he said," Zoe mimed quotation marks with her fingers, "'Don't worry too much about it.' Hoffman! The one who is always bending over backwards to show his superiors that he's making every possible effort! This whole story makes no sense."

Erik frowned: "So what did you do?"

Hernandez seemed embarrassed: "Well, to tell the truth, I put out the ‘Wanted' posters all the same. Hoffman didn't give me permission to set up additional patrols, though, so I alerted those already on the field."

Erik was confused. What could such lack of action by their boss mean?

"I have a theory," Zoe Hernandez said.

"What theory?"

She looked around, making sure no one was listening.

When she spoke her voice was barely more than a whisper: "I think there is a rebel mole here in the police headquarters."

Erik felt dazed when he took the train home that night.

He couldn't get the words of his partner about a possible spy within the police out of his mind. It could even be someone in their division.

He probably knew the spy... but who was it?

He thought about his colleagues, but apart from Zoe Hernandez, they were all people he had known for many years.

Laurent had entered the medical police with him: he knew him very well, had spent whole evenings listening to his football obsession... he couldn't possibly be the mole.

Could it be Meyer, the beautiful officer who worked for the legal department? Erik had a kind of crush on her when she arrived in the department, almost fifteen years before. She was witty and brilliant, but a spy? That is absurd.

He went through a mental list of all his colleagues, but none seemed a suspect.

Unless... could Hoffman, the very head of the division, be an infiltrate? After all, he was the one who had given those inadequate orders to Zoe.

But this hypothesis was even less believable: over the years, their division was the most successful of all others in stopping the virus. Why would a rebel act so efficiently against his own cause? Sure, it might have been a clever strategy to put himself above all suspicion...

Erik realized that his thoughts regarding Hoffman were based more on gut sense than logic: as the director of the division, Hoffman held an administrative job, not an operational one. He was the only person in the division Erik had never worked side by side with, and therefore he did not trust Hoffman as much as the colleagues of his own rank.

In the meantime Erik reached his station within the third ring. It was a beautiful, quiet residential area: the buildings were not as high and impersonal as those in the outer rings. There were even some that barely reached ten floors.

The building where he lived had twenty floors, and his apartment was on the top.

He also possessed, as a privilege belonging to the officers of the medical police, a large balcony, big enough for a couple of chairs and a table.

Thea, his wife, was a psychologist who had worked with the police for some time.

That was how they met: Erik had to see her for a series of routine meetings following the clashes with the infected. Many policemen became very anxious, constantly worried about contracting the infection. Erik actually reacted quite well – he never lost sleep over fear of being infected - but the counselling was mandatory.

He had showed up at the counselling session with something less than enthusiasm, annoyed by the idea of ??having to waste his time. He had, however, found that Thea Kron, the psychologist whom he had been assigned, was a nice, interesting girl, with a beautiful smile and a smattering of freckles on her nose that enchanted him.

On the first day they spoke with little interest about the encounters with the infected; on the second day they mostly chatted throughout the whole time they should have devoted to the therapy; on the third, they decided to go on a date.

That had happened more than twenty years before.

Erik entered the house and discovered that Thea and Peter were already in.

Peter was seventeen, and the following year he would have to decide what to do with his life.

Erik secretly wished that at least one of his children would follow in his footsteps and join the police, and Maja had already decided to study computer science – which left only Peter.

Until that point, however, the boy had shown very little inclination to become a policeman. It was not too late, however, Erik thought: Peter was young, and a lot could change in a year.

"Erik!" Thea welcomed him "You left in such a hurry this morning. What happened?"

That morning, while they were eating breakfast, he had received a call from Hoffman, who had ordered him to proceed immediately to the other side of the third ring for an urgent arrest.

He barely had time to write down the address and rush out of the house.

"Hey dad," Peter greeted him rather indifferently, shrugging in his direction but not looking up from his handheld computer. Typical.

"We got another infected downtown," Erik announced.

Thea put her hands to her mouth: "Another? You mean... here?"

Erik shook his head and sat down on a chair next to the kitchen table. Suddenly he felt the tension of the day weigh upon his shoulders all at once.

"No, no... on the other side of the city," he reassured her.

Thea turned to her son. "Come on, put on something in the microwave for your father, can't you see he's exhausted? Stop lolling on the sofa all the time."

Peter stood up with a listless grunt and proceeded to the kitchen.

As soon as he went out of the room, Thea sat down beside Erik: "These episodes... they seem to happen more and more often. Do you think there's a wave of the plague again?" she asked with a worried expression.

"Um, it's hard to say... I don't think so, anyway. We do mostly preventive withdrawals," he explained.

In fact, they never happened to find other cases of infection in the same area where they had arrested an infected. Evidently the system worked.

"OK," Thea said, appearing relieved. "OK. What a shock!" she added with a nervous laugh, then got up and went into the kitchen.

"So everything's OK, right?" Thea called from the other room.

Erik thought of the creature's knife that slashed at his arm, and the rush of adrenaline when he pushed the other lizard-man out of the van. He thought of the expression on the arrested woman's face while Hernandez hit her, and the creeping doubt that some of his colleagues, friends of a lifetime, might not be what they seemed.

"Sure," he answered, "everything's OK."

Later when they were in bed and Thea was sleeping next to him, Erik reflected on how much he would be willing to give to talk to his wife as they once did, when she really seemed to listen.

Now she always appeared too busy, as if her head was elsewhere.

Of course, she was concerned for everyone: for Maja, who lived alone near the computer company she worked for to pay for her studies, for Peter, who could hang out with bad company, and for himself and his missions.

But it seemed that once she found that each of them was unharmed, that was enough for her, and she didn't wish to go deeper. As far as Thea was concerned, if they were safe, they were fine.

Sometimes, though, Erik wondered if he had really come out unscathed from all these years on the job. Perhaps the psychotherapy sessions that he had so despised twenty years ago would have been useful now. He let the thought linger for a while.

Then he rolled over in bed, and finally fell asleep.