Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (39 page)

Zoe was
lying down. Cigarette smell was coming out of the place. The
officer unlocked the cell-door and she stood up.

“
You are starting to resemble my little brother.”

“
What, is he the one paying bail for you instead of the other
way around?”

Zoe
grabbed her coat and snorted loudly. “Of course. Do I look like a
geek?”

The
middle aged police officer was waiting for me at the
exit.

“
Let’s not see you around.”

“
I hope the best for your nephew,” I told him, and I meant
it.

“
You are too damn polite,” Zoe said as soon as we left some
distance.

“
I find it best not to antagonise people of authority.” I went
to the driver’s side. She grunted. I went to the passenger’s
seat.

She
turned on the ignition and stayed in place, looking
around.

“
How do we get to that hotel?”

Chapter
28

Zoe
showered and spread on the bed as if was made of feathers. I let
her have it all to herself, after that uncomfortable holding cell,
so I sat on the chair.

She was
looking at my notes, and I was filling in. I felt kinda anxious, to
be honest. I was in training after all, and I barely had
any.

“
Uh huh. Nai. Not bad for a noob,” she said in the
end.

“
I figured I could handle the interviews. Getting people
informed should be done by you.”

“
Mmm, I’m not feeling it right now. I’m hungry. Let’s go
somewhere.” She perched up her head and stood still. “You didn’t
spend all our money on booze and hookers, did you?”

“
No!” I laughed out.

“
Gawd, I’m so disappointed in you.”

We drove
around town until we found fast food. Thankfully there was a
Goody’s place, the Greek hamburger store chain. We ordered a couple
of big meals and indulged like there was no tomorrow.

Zoe
stole 10 packs of ketchup and lathered it all on the fries. Then
she ate them by hand, moaning with delight each time.

“
Here, have mine as well,” I said and passed them
on.

“
You’re such a gentleman,” she said and added them to the
pile.

“
So, what do we do next?”

“
Well,” she said between bites, “we have only a day, so let’s
prioritise. The most important thing is to talk to the medical
professionals. Get them aware, tell them what to expect, things
like that. You’ve done the interviews, more than I would have done,
you freak, so we just need to copy some medical reports and put
them in our case file. Then we are done.” She leaned back and
stared at her swollen belly.

“
OK. I guess we leave it to the locals then.”

“
Duh, yeah. It’s not like we can monitor things across the
country for months. The symptoms in humans and animals take months
to show, you know. We could show up in 3 months if there really was
a case, but the locals need to handle it personally.”

I took a
bite of my burger and pushed the rest of it away from
me.

“
You’re not gonna eat that?”

“
Ohi.”

Zoe took
my meal and gave it a coup de grace.

She
looked at my face, trying to chew down in one gulp.

“
What’s bothering you?”

“
See, there’s something weird about this case. Not that I have
any experience in these sort of things, but the symptoms are
unusual. Emma had a maniacal obsession with examining her blood.
Tens of times per day.”

“
Hey, I read the mom’s interview. They had a few issues, they
didn’t know how to handle her.”

I bit my
lips and thought about it out loud. “Look, the way I saw it, is
that Emma cutting herself wasn’t the issue. I think that the mania
was researching, no matter how silly that sounds for a
nine-year-old girl, her blood in regular intervals. She was cutting
herself to gain access to her blood.”

Zoe
stared at me for a while. “It’s still freaky.”

“
It’s freaky because it was a little girl. Try to think of her
for a sec as a woman. Then it simply becomes
methodical.”

“
Methodical until it turned her into a rabid, literally,
animal that attacked a cop in the night and got her
shot.”

“
Yeah, you’re right, that doesn’t add up.”

She
watched her hands for a while. They looked like she had just killed
a man.

“
What did they tell you about the cop?”

“
Well, the poor man is a mess. He blames himself, he’s gone
crazy over the shooting. He is under investigation of course, which
does not concern us. But it’s why the police was so against us,” I
said, and gestured at her with my hand.

Zoe
acted like something bitter was in her mouth. “I
noticed.”

“
I explained to them that the positive rabies test on the poor
girl helps the officer’s case, so they eased up a little. But if
you saw him, you’d know that legal troubles are the least of his
worries.”

“
If we get called to testify in court, you are the one coming
all the way back here. Not me.”

I raised
my hands. “Fine.”

The
manager started sweeping the floor next to us, politely urging us
to leave. I picked up my stuff.

“
What?” Zoe said. “It’s not even 11 o’clock!”

I
shrugged and picked up her coat.

“
I hate this town,” she said and went to wash her sticky
hands.

Chapter
29

Science
Teacher’s Report

T. Athanasiou

Emma was
bright. She kept asking questions. Good ones too, because all they
do is ask questions anyway but they are usually
irrelevant.

I was
teaching them one day about blood, how it carries oxygen from our
lungs, travels through our body to every cell. I didn’t notice it
then, but she was fascinated by it. At class break, she caught up
to me and bombarded me with questions. I answered as many as I
could.

The
logical part of me says that it would have happened anyway. The
emotional part says that it’s my fault.

I’m too
enthusiastic. I show the kids experiments, I bring props, try to
get them to be hands-on. Some like it, others don’t bother looking
up from their phones.

So yes,
it makes me happy to see that my enthusiasm is getting through to a
student. I know that not all of them can become scientists, but
even the greatest minds of all time were slobbering children at
some point. Somebody got them excited with science.

I didn’t
see her condition, I admit. I’m usually blind to ordinary things.
My girlfriend would have to dye her hair purple for me to take
notice. I only heard it in the teacher’s office. We discussed it
all together, decided we should see if there was a case of
bullying, or talk to the parents to see if it was something
domestic. We agreed and moved on. I didn’t put much thought into
it.

A few
weeks later, Emma was missing from class. I assumed she was sick,
or just staying home. They had made a big deal out of it. Next
morning, Lefteris’ uncle called me. Said he needed a
friend.

I went
to the police station, everybody knows me there cause we hang out
sometimes. I just barged in and found my best friend in an office.
Everybody had a worried look. A grim, worried look.

I asked
him what happened. He was delirious and crying. His uncle told me
he’d shot a kid by accident.

I stayed
with him all day. I took a day’s leave but the rest of the time I
had to work. I went to him straight from work, every waking hour.
The drugs are helping. I don’t think he’ll ever get over
it.

Chapter
30

The
neighbour next door was rolling around on her tricycle. Her parents
didn’t want to talk to us, but they gave us permission to talk to
her.

The
little girl was still at preschool. Her mother propped herself up
on the fence but didn’t intervene at all.

Zoe got
down on her knees and waited for the girl to complete a circle and
come closer. She was simply doing figure eights on the lawn,
pulling a dog’s collar on a leash behind her.

“
Hello,” Zoe said with the standard tone all adults take when
addressing children.

The girl
looked at her toes and then at her mom. She was brought up
properly. “Hello miss.”

“
I’m Zoe and this is Poly,” she said while presenting us with
flourishes. “We just want to talk to you about Emma.”

The girl
chugged some air and let loose a screeching whine. “Alitis didn’t
do it!” she screamed. “The man said Alitis bit Emma but he didn’t
do it. He was a nice doggy!”

Her
mother rushed to her side and simply hugged her.

I turned
over to Zoe and mouthed, “What the hell?”

Zoe
slouched her shoulders in a resigned attitude. “They had to check
the dog for rabies.”

“
So?” I asked.

Zoe
covered the side of her mouth and whispered the words at me. “The
only way to check is to cut it’s head open and look
inside.”

I
brought my hand up to my mouth. I looked at the crying girl,
embraced by her mother, leash still in her little hand.

Zoe made
a walking back gesture with her fingers and we left in
silence.

Back in
the car, Zoe threw around the back seat a bunch of papers from the
case file. That was her filing system. She found one in particular,
and wrote something down while saying in monotone, “Neighbour’s dog
tested negative for rabies.”

“
Hey!”

“
Whath?” she asked, with a pen in her mouth.

“
Why the hell would they euthanize the girl’s
poodle?”

She took
the pen out of her mouth as if I had interrupted the donning of the
royal crown. “Are you serious?”

“
Yeah…” I said, with a waning attitude.

“
Dogs are the perfect lyssa carriers for some reason. They are
like honeypots to the virus. Their close proximity to people makes
them very dangerous. Not to mention they drool everywhere. In a
confirmed infection, we can’t mess around. The most probable pets
needed to be tested.”

“
They didn’t have to kill it? Did they?”

“
Nai. The had to. If it was just a rabies scare, the dog would
be monitored for three months and kept isolated. This time someone
died. In this case, they chop off it’s head and look inside,” she
said, and accommodated the explanation with hand
gestures.

“
Ugh. That’s horrible.”

She
pointed the pen at me. “Hey! It’s better than having the whole
family choke convulsively at the mere mention of water and die
foaming!”

I just
stared at her gaping for a while. “I guess it is…”

We were
both silent on the drive to the hospital.

Chapter
31

The
hospital was old and rustic. A few attempts to modernise it have
been made, but the town’s character had swallowed it
back.

There
wasn’t much staff, so we had to wait for a while. Zoe kept going
outside for a smoke, I stayed at the waiting area.

There
weren’t many sick or injured people, certainly nothing too gory or
disgusting. But sitting there, waiting and wallowing, made me think
a lot.

Was I
right for this kind of work? It was starting to get to me, the
interviews and the tears. No matter how much I tried to distance
myself from these strangers, they were ordinary people and I felt
sorry for them. The job wouldn’t get any better. Its subject was
disease. It would always entail doctors, hospitals, sick people,
and unfortunately dead people. It’s not like we had to watch
autopsies or anything, but it was all diseased.

I was
beginning to understand why Zoe was eager to slip away from an
investigation. The bonus cash didn’t hurt, but it’s not that she
was a bad person. The cases got to you. No sane person would want
to live through more of them, especially here, where there was
nothing we could do really. It felt like we were too late to the
party. Zoe’s thinking of not coming at all was not too irrational
(other than scamming the government).

I looked
at a man who had a poorly bandaged hand. The bleeding had stopped
but it was serious. I had no choice but to listen to how he injured
himself on some farming equipment. He was telling the story to
other people, loudly.

I was
completely absorbed and didn’t notice Zoe coming back.

“
Come on, the doc’s waiting,” she said. “Those Apollon guys
don’t like rescheduling their appointments.”

His
assistant was eyeing us as if we had peed in her favourite
pot.