Year's Best SF 17

Reynard licked his lips. “We, uh, we didn’t think there would be any need. The odds against exposure, up here—”

Right. “Exposure—To—What?”

Then the Latin words clicked, somewhere deep down in my memory. Oh, no. I backed off again, staring at him. I threw wild glances at every wall. Every pale, red-speckled, minutely blistered wall.

“Dewdrop on a rose petal” … that’s how my mother’s medical books had described the rash. I rounded on Reynard. “My house has … chicken pox?”

He shrugged again. “There’s, um, a blood test we can run. To make sure.”

I shook my head, willing my hands to stay put on my hips, to remain fisted. I would not give in, not to the itchiness or to the need to slap the living shit out of this so-called tech aide. “Don’t bother. Just treat it.”

“Well, I, um …”

“Honest to God, I can’t take much more of this,” I told him, squirming. The oatmeal solution on my skin was drying up. My bathrobe was stuck to the stuff, so my every move tugged at it, making everything itch all the more. “Do something!” I pleaded.

“I can’t.”

“But—”

“The only treatment available is an antiviral—acyclovir, but it has to be started within the first twenty-four hours after exposure. Three or four days ago it might have done you some good. But it’s too late now.”

“Too … late?”

The white hood nodded. “The virus has already multiplied. It’s everywhere. All we can do now is—”

“Oh, God,” I whimpered and sat down, right there on the floor. The furry rug and my behind were both so inflamed, I began to rotate, pushing myself around in a circle with all four hands and feet. The wiry fur did a wonderful job of scrubbing my arse, but it didn’t help one bit overall. The resulting friction just made the house and me itch even more. I began to weep. “Go away, will you? Just go away.”

Ever so quietly, he did.

When he was gone, I made myself get up again. I could hardly walk for the need to bend over and scratch the floor with my fingernails. But that would only make things worse, so I tottered toward the lavatory, randomly raking the walls as I went, intending to dive right back into my warm oatmeal bath.

Never made it, though.

Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

The freaking house alarm went off. It scared me half to death. I fell over, then rolled around on the carpet as that set off more of my skin and I tried in vain to scratch everything at once. What with the frenzied boogaloo going on, I didn’t realize what had happened, not till I noticed the flashing lights. Oh, boy. The whole friggin’ wall screen had lit up, the background crimson, the space taken up by a single word:

QUARANTINE!

It was a notice from the Health Department, putting me and mine under full quarantine for ten days. As if I could leave.

I goggled. I crawled toward it. I slapped at buttons and entered the reset codes, and then sysop codes, and got nowhere. My house’s smartnet was no longer mine to command. The county had taken control of it, of everything. Swearing, I got up all over again and staggered toward the front door. “That little son of a bitch! The nerve!”

I flung the front door open, groping for my crossbow as whiffets of cold air threw last year’s leaves in my face. I peered through the fingers of one hand, trying to take aim, intending to plant one in his tiny heinie, but stopped when I saw even more flashing lights on my front gate. On his bike, too. His hazard lights were flashing, and so were his headlights. Likewise, something on his bike’s handlebars pulsed in lurid scarlet. Then his horn started beeping.

He bent over, staring at some kind of screen on the bike, oblivious to me and my outrage. Then, ripping his cleansuit’s helmet off, he flung it down. He swore at the bike, ran three steps forward, and kicked the helmet a full forty yards down the driveway.

Bad Idea. As the helmet sailed past the gate, more flashing lights appeared. “Warning!” the house cried. “Perimeter armed! Do not pass posted limits! This house is now under quarantine!”

As if to underline the point, a red laser beam hit the helmet. It flew ten more feet down the drive and sat there staring back at us, a smoking hole dead-center in the faceplate.

“What the … ?” Fox started toward it, but stopped when I yelled at him.

“Don’t! It’ll shoot you too!”

He turned, glared at me in disbelief, looked at the hole again, and demanded, “What kind of burglar alarm is that?!”

Excessive, of course, because that’s what I had to have.

“Look, I’m all alone up here,” I tried to explain. “And people … they don’t read the signs. Or they think it’s a Gingerbread House and they try to cut chunks off.”

I’d caught some picnickers back in October, attempting to barbecue one of my red window shutters. For lunch, the fucking cannibals.

“Well, shut it off!”

“I can’t.”

His face darkened, matching the lowering sky behind him. “Look, lady, I’ve gotta get the fuck out of here! I’ve got a date tonight!”

“You think this was my idea?”

Rather than answer me, he slung his leg over the bike and attempted to start it up. When the ignition key failed him, he used his boot to flip out a bar on one side of the motor. He tried to kick-start the machine. My God, did he think a crotch rocket could outrun a laser?

No go, in any case.

I heard a voice. Not his. From his bike, from the console. Don’t know what it told him, but he began swearing all over again, only louder this time. Then he jumped off the bike, kicked the front tire, and snarled as the bike shuddered once and the kickstand gave way. Ever so slowly, it fell over onto its side.

Oh, boy. Had to weigh, what? Five hundred pounds?

Apparently, he’d run out of cuss words. He fell silent. His shoulders sagged. Eventually, he turned to face me. “They say they disabled the bike. I’m fucking stuck here.”

Which would have pissed me off even more if he weren’t quite so hangdog about it. I stared at him, not even itching for one blessed moment. “What?”

He gazed at the ground. He licked his lip rings. “They, uh, they said they don’t know yet if this is the same strain as regular chicken pox, so they’re worried I’m going to catch it. Or give it to somebody else. So I’ve been quarantined too.”

I rolled my eyes toward the swiftly darkening sky. “Well, shit oh dear. I’m so friggin’ sorry to hear that. Best of luck, Fox.” I turned back toward the house.

“Hey!”

I stopped.

“What am I s’posed to do now?”

“How should I know?” I demanded. “Go put up a pup tent or something.”

“Lady!? I don’t have a freakin’ tent. I don’t have any camping gear. And look at that sky. There’s an effing snow storm blowing in. I’ll freeze to death out here.”

“If I let you bring all that inside,” I made a squiggly hand gesture meant to encompass the whole of his sartorial splendor, “I’ll die. You can’t come back inside unless you’re wearing a clean suit.”

We both cast a glance at his ruined helmet, now well beyond our reach even if it had still been intact.

In the end, we compromised.

Well, that’s my word for it. He has another one I won’t mention here.

I did let him in, but first I made him shuck the clean suit altogether. Then all his clothes and his jewelry. Then