The Infected 3: Cast Iron

by P. S. Power

  Calling him out by name made everything much harder though, in the moment. Brian stepped forward, a nine millimeter semi-automatic in hand suddenly. He did it so smoothly Marcia hadn’t even seen him pull it. The kid was getting good. He’d had a lot of practice fighting and wasn’t afraid to kill if he had to.

  “Really?” This came from Prime of all people and sounded… Bored.

  “Were going to do this one again? I don’t think so. Quartz, why don’t we take these gentlemen out to visit with their friends and explain the situation to them? I’m sure that they’ll understand once they have all the information. Especially if I tell them.” The tone was calm and almost reasonable sounding. Since nothing the people out front had could hurt either of them, it even made sense for them to be the ones to go.

  “Good plan Prime, Shall we, gentlemen?” She waved to the men in blue, who didn’t move at first. Finally the older one sighed.

  “Yeah. Wait a second though.” He fumbled for his radio; it was smaller than the old ones she was used to seeing, more like a cell phone than anything else. Some new technology she hadn’t kept up on? The IPB had better units, but for the regular police this was nifty.

  He spoke a little gruffly then, addressing whoever was on the other side as if they knew each other.

  “No, there’s no situation here. The original call was fake… Yeah, death warrants, we heard. Apparently not serious about that. Paperwork error. It happens. We’re leaving now, bringing a couple of people to talk to you, again, this is not a hostile situation.”

  Marcia waited for the conversation to end, then went out the door first, since she was the one that would be hardest to hurt. It turned out to be a good plan, since one of the officers who was only about fifteen feet away, shot her, making a hole in her little black dress, just over her heart. A nice placement, she thought, as the impact sent her backwards a step. A single bullet from a handgun wouldn’t take her off her feet and it didn’t hurt at all, but it was annoying. Her new dress was ruined. She hadn’t even worn it before. Did they think she was made of money or something?

  She didn’t move other than to stabilize herself grabbing the edge of the doorway, not wanting to escalate things. That meant she got hit six more times before the man in charge started yelling. The police had heard shots fired after all, so they started shooting themselves. The only surprise was that more of them hadn’t joined in.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire! Holy fuck you morons, she’s not even armed and hasn’t done anything!” He had to keep yelling for a bit but no one else got hit and the dress was already thrashed. Finally she dusted her front off, seeing three new holes in it and sighed into the quiet that followed the hail of bullets.

  “You do realize you owe me a new dress, right? I mean it too. Each of you that shot me, chip in and have that for me by tomorrow. I didn’t pack that much with me and I’m here for a week. Size two.” She stepped all the way out of the door, having been knocked back into it, since she wasn’t all that heavy and forced herself not to point at the man in charge. He wasn’t that old, maybe forty something. Dark skinned and angry looking, but that could just be due to the situation of the moment.

  “Now, what the… fudge? You just shot a federal agent. Knowingly. That’s something like ten years in prison, just for pulling the trigger guys. Thank God it didn’t hurt me at all. Now, why don’t you explain this to me in a way I can understand, so that we can resolve this quickly and get the people inside off to dinner? We’re on vacation here. This has got to hurt tourism, shooting people that have come to visit your fair state, don’t you think?” She was trying to be bland about the whole thing, but being shot still got her adrenalin going for some reason. She barely felt it, but that didn’t mean her old fear responses were totally gone.

  The man who’d yelled earlier holstered his weapon slowly and stepped out from behind the car door, sounding a bit shaky himself. It was a combat thing. Everyone sane had a reaction to near death situations, and it couldn’t be helped. How you managed it was the important part. People got scared and that made them stupid, which was why they all had plans in place to handle emergency situations. That way all you had to do was remember to follow the rules and you’d have a chance to get out of things alive.

  “Um… Sergeant Ruiz, MPD. I… Uh, apologize for shooting you?” The man was staring at her chest, but nothing good was popping out this time, so he was probably just looking at the holes. Two of the bullets had hit her in the face, which had knocked her back more than the others, due to leverage, but did less damage to the clothing. On hit her bare arm. The others had left little holes with smooth pale flesh peeking out underneath.

  Ruiz wasn’t blustering at least, which was what she really expected from the man, so Marcia nodded, trying to play things off.

  “Thanks. Apology accepted. Though I was serious about the dress. I want a nice one too. No thrift shopping guys. You broke it, you bought it.” She waved at her front and smiled.

  “Now, what’s with the attack set up here? The situation was being handled well enough by your men inside. I mean, they could have been a little more polite to start with, but that’s on the training they’ve gotten, not them. They recovered and were just about to go back to work when you guys rode up and threatened a federal agent with false arrest. That’s… not good. Especially since you probably couldn’t have scripted out anything worse to say, given who you were talking to. What gives? Did you actually get orders to say that or what?” She leaned in as the man walked a little closer, aware that most of the police still had weapons out, if not pointed. That was fear, rather than them trying to attack, she thought. It was still dangerous though.

  Scared people with guns did stupid things. Like shoot at her people. If they wanted to ruin her dress a bit more, they were welcome to it, but if they shot at her friends it wouldn’t go well for them at all.

  “Um… No ma’am, we just got a call at the station, dispatch put it out to us, that there was a death warrant on two of our officers, that Brian Yi had put it in and gotten it, so we came to stop him.”

  Marcia rolled her eyes. It was brilliant of course. Proxy would have killed them all most likely. Oh, they might have taken him out too, without his armor on, if they could put out enough bullets long enough, but even then he might have managed. How exactly he did it, she couldn’t quite see, but it was a real power. He’d taken out Infected by himself that could fight armies and win. A few times he’d done it unarmed and without his armor on. Some of it was even public knowledge. Not all, but enough that these guys should have gone a bit more carefully, that was certain.

  “I see. Well, there is no situation here, other than some mandatory training coming down for you guys soon. This was a very bad plan, and you all broke about a half dozen laws in the last ten minutes. What we’re going to do though is write this off as a training exercise. Alright? Anyone asks and it was just a friendly little welcome, a prank or whatever flies around here. The IPB really doesn’t want the ill will of police everywhere. I know that’s hard to see, since we’ve had to take out some terrorists that pretended to be police at the time, but don’t let that confuse you. We’re all on the same side.” She tried to sound confident, but her voice was a little rough. That happened when she got scared.

  Scott moved past her gently, his expensive suit untouched. Brian was trying to come through the door too, weapon in hand, which got him grabbed by Denis… which didn’t do much to stop him, and then Bridget, which at least slowed him down a bit since she pinned his legs together. The large golden man turned to look at the scene and then winked, which got caught on the cameras no doubt, which were also trying to fight their way past Proxy, now that it looked like no one was going to die. Marcia thought they were being a little overly optimistic given the serious look on Brian’s face.

  Prime spoke loudly enough for his voice to carry.

  “Well, this was an interesting exercise. We should probably not do anymore that are quite this realistic while the con
ference is going on. We have all the wonderful people from the Food Network coming in after all, as well as other celebrities, like the new pop sensation Tobin Peterson as well as Mark Steinberg from the “Steinberg and Friends” cooking program. This is going to be an exciting week for everyone and we all want to thank the good officers of the Miami Police Department for helping us stage this training event. Now we’re all heading down the street to the famous “Maison Enrique” for dinner. You’re all invited to join us if you wish? My treat.” He spoke directly to the police officers, but a small crowd was gathering inside the lobby, most of them looking a bit shaken still, as Proxy struggled to close with the police.

  He really needed to calm the heck down, or it was going to trigger a really bad chain of events. Ink and Lauren had grabbed him too, which stopped him at the door for a few moments but even with all the strength and bulk on him, the guy was slowly progressing anyway. Only inches at a time, but it wasn’t physically possible, she didn’t think. Even if he was superhumanly strong, there was just too much weight with Lauren on him like that. He shouldn’t have had the traction to move at all. Prime couldn’t have done it and she didn’t think she could have either. He did it anyway, moving from side to side, shifting and flowing, rocking and not giving up anything to the people trying to pull him back.

  She looked at the scene for a minute, wondering if Brian had just finally lost it. He should have been able to calm down, but for some reason he just wasn’t. Sure, he hated cops, but this was the kind of thing she expected from him when he was trying to protect someone, not what he did just because he was a little mad. Something was wrong.

  “Brian… What is it? What’s your target?” The words made sense to her, but no one else seemed to get it. He glanced at her then froze in place.

  “Sniper, behind the trees, six hundred meters. They don’t have a shot yet, but they’re going to hit the police when they try to leave. If we don’t stop them.” He started trying to move again, but stopped when she waved him back.

  “Oh? OK. So, gentlemen and ladies, you all heard that? Don’t leave until we can catch the sniper. Level, Prime and I will do that. My dress is ruined already. Everyone got that? Brian, can you point us in the right direction?” It meant him being let go, but he just ducked to a knee, making himself a smaller target, hidden behind several cars from the attackers perspective and pointed, his finger unwavering. The position was on the ground, a clump of well manicured shrubbery with three palm trees nearby.

  It was a race to see who’d get there first. It ended up being her, and the man on the ground was wearing fatigues, but an older style not used anymore. Whoever he was managed to shoot her as she grabbed for the rifle he had, which was a nice weapon, but not the best on the market. So a professional, probably ex-army by the look of things, or a really talented amateur that had actually studied up. After she slapped him lightly, not letting him stand up from the prone position he’d taken, she hoisted him to her right shoulder and carried the rifle in her left hand. No need to leave a mess.

  “Is this one of your people?” She asked Sergeant Ruiz directly when she got back to the squad cars, but the man shook his head.

  “Not ours. I guess we should take him in for questioning? Probably weapons charges if nothing else.” He waved, which got the fellow but in cuffs pretty quickly, before he could wake up. A short fifteen minutes later they all actually left, without any bloodshed at all. She sighed. It was just so messed up that they had to put up with crap like that from the police. She got the idea, that the men and women in blue were just out of their league and didn’t want to admit it all the time due to fear, but it was still a pain.

  Without bothering to change, she decided to just go along with the others to the restaurant. They had a cover story out for the police, the fake training thing, so maybe it would be enough? Probably not, since the whole thing had to have been on some camera or another, but Scott had covered up so smoothly it sounded real to her. They had a mission though, getting to dinner, which meant walking to get some food. She’d have happily skipped, but Warren’s friend was counting on them to help boost his sales. That was important too. You helped out a buddy if you could; it was why she was there herself after all.

  Warren tried to take the lead, actually knowing roughly where the place was, but Bridget made him hang back, taking her job as his protector seriously. It was a good point, which got Marcia to move up into the lead, using her body to provide a bit of cover for the others. Scott flanked her with his daughter on the other side. Level used her bulk to cover them from the back. It had to look a bit funny, but no one in the middle said anything about it. Most of them didn’t stop bullets nearly as well after all and there had been an attack, or nearly had been, so it just made sense to stay ready.

  Brian muttered, having moved in next to Warren, with Karen beside him, holding on to her hand.

  “You should have let me kill those guys Marcia. They’ll just turn around and abuse their power again, probably hurting or killing the next person, since we won’t be there to stop them. We really need to do something about the police.” He sounded sincere but Warren, who was right next to him, snorted and rolled his eyes.

  “Seriously? Look Brian, I hear what you’re saying and even understand why, but those weren’t the same people that hurt you before. They were just some scared people trying to deal with a situation that they were way out of their ability class for. OK, it was almost exactly the wrong way of doing things, but that was just fear, not evil. They didn’t deserve to die for it and it doesn’t mean they’re even bad guys really. Some probably are, but a lot of them are just working a job. You kind of over reacted.” He seemed to realize that taking the man to task while he was still worked up might be a bad plan, but he didn’t take any of it back.

  Marcia had to agree.

  “It’s true Bri. Sometimes an asshole cop is just an asshole, not someone with a secret anti-Infected agenda. They were a bit too aggressive, but what would you have done if you suddenly got put into a position where you faced Ink, Lauren, Tobin and Peggy like that? Especially if you’d been told you were there to maybe protect some child that had been stolen?” She looked back, but only briefly, trying to keep her gaze moving in case another attack was coming. It probably wouldn’t, but odds were that sniper wasn’t in place by accident.

  For that matter she should have gotten Chris to read him and make sure it wasn’t part of a set-up or a larger event.

  The cool blond spoke from behind her then, responding to her thoughts.

  “He planned to start a “race war” by killing a few of the police and blaming it on the Infected population. The man’s not well, mentally, but he’s not a terrorist in any organized sense, just a person with a grudge and a police scanner. Not a credible threat.” Her voice was smooth, like she was trying to sound good for the cameras, but Marcia didn’t see anything close enough to be easily picking them up. Not out in the open. That just meant there might be hidden ones or things she hadn’t noticed yet.

  They walked for a while in silence when Brian spoke again, his voice low and a bit menacing.

  “Sorry. Not trying to be the bad guy. Still, you have to understand… most of you don’t seem to get what the police really are. They aren’t some group of basically good guys like you think. Most of them would abuse and hurt you if they could get away with it. You’re all just too powerful, protected or lucky to have had to really deal with them yet. That doesn’t mean you should trust them. It certainly doesn’t mean I should.” He was looking around at least as much as Marcia was, so their eyes locked briefly, both set brown, if in different shades.

  Warren shrugged, thin shoulders making the loose jacket he wore shift more than it should have.

  “That sounds like the kind of thing someone that’s been arrested for something would say, doesn’t it?” His tone wasn’t adversarial, but Marcia winced, which he saw, his eyes going wide, realizing what he’d just said.

  Brian snapped back at h
im, still on edge from earlier.

  “You mean an expert on the subject of police abuse? Yeah, it does sound like that. Really, if you haven’t been arrested your just talking out of your ass when it comes to what they really do, aren’t you? The fuckers tried to kill me over and over again, even without me having broken any laws. I’m not the only one either. Maybe you should stop trying to blindly defend them and start learning about what the hell you’re talking about first? Do you think those police back there would have treated you fairly if they took us all in? As far as their concerned you’re one of us. You’d have been beaten and maybe killed, for being Infected, even though you aren’t. Is that really what you want to defend? If that’s what you believe in, I don’t want to know you.” The words got more than a little loud toward the end and Brian’s hand worked around to his waist toward the back, where his handgun was.

  Marcia stopped and turned to look at them all.

  “Brian, stop that. Warren has some good points and yes, you do to. No one’s denying that at all. We can’t afford to fight amongst ourselves, especially in public. You two want to hold a debate, let’s wait to get back to the base. Really though, both sides are right, so no one seeing it just one way is going to be correct. We need to keep things balanced here.” She started walking again, quickly, but not too fast for everyone else to keep up with her. It was going to be a long week if people started debating political things on the first day.

  It was already ruined as far as a good vacation for Brian went. He was so agitated it couldn’t possibly be restful for him in any way. Plus he had obvious bruises forming from where Bridget and Lauren had tried to hold him back. It hadn’t been a fight, but in those few moments of struggling he’d damaged himself. It was kind of messed up. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. It was more than she wanted to deal with really. That was part of her job though, keeping things together.