The Infected 2: Gabriel

by P. S. Power

  This got a grim look, which slowly turned into a thing that shouldn't be called a smile yet would be, by anyone not really paying attention.

  “Oh yeah... I hear that too. It's being looked into, no word yet. You've been out of the loop, so head up warning... She's not Beatdown now, it's Quartz.” The guy didn't blink. It was eerie and a little cold looking. Like what Yi did sometimes.

  “Changed when she had to go back to team one, back when Prime looked to be quitting.”

  “Oh. Yeah, no one's mentioned much to me yet, probably comes from having been a bit... difficult in the past. No one wants to risk jamming their hand in the wood chipper. Who can blame them?” After all, really that was all about protecting himself from other people, being hard to be around so no one would want to bother him. It worked.

  Denis realized what had taken place now. It all hit him in a sudden rush. Maybe nearly dying let him see it. Understand it.

  He'd been brainwashed by those fucking self-help books.

  Be honest with yourself, be kind and polite to others, manage your anger, don't let it manage you. All good advice, except the part where he'd turned into a little pansy. Worse, that crap seemed to be working, at least a little. No one had screamed at him too much yet and a few people had every right to. Yi for one and probably every one of his friends. Plus anyone that the guy had saved since Denis had tried to kill him.

  Sure, Penny had kicked his ass a bit, but he'd kind of earned that too. Without even getting into the whole Brian part of things.

  Fuck.

  Life had been a hell of a lot simpler before. Wake up, demean someone, hang out all day and keep people away, then sleep. That didn't recall all the lonely nights and the rage of course. That rage, that sense of being weak, less than everyone else, it had led him for... decades. Most of his life now. All to prove to that self-righteous child abuser he was worth something. That Denis Tompkins was a real “man”.

  The screwed up thing being that he didn't even know what that meant. Bow ties and suits all the time? Being a jerk to everyone and driving them away? He'd only ever managed one relationship that lasted longer than a month and she'd been deaf. Probably didn't realize what the hell Den said half the time. He knew it in fact. She'd finally left him for some guy that didn't have a mustache and could sign.

  Goody. Insight. Just what he needed to feel good about himself. It would have been nicer if he wasn't a douche. Well... something to work on.

  Jay got looked at, poked, prodded and told not to walk until the ankle healed, then the male doctor, Kern, who looked about mid-thirties like Denis was, but had light brown hair and more of a “college boy” look about him, pulled out a box of high calorie meal replacement bars and tucked it into the man's lap.

  “Eat. You used up about twenty thousand calories slowing your fall, at a guess. If not a lot more. Replace it or else.”

  The box was torn into so fast that Denis thought the guy might be eating the wrappers too. Half way in the fast blond man, his own clothing looking a lot more worn now, frayed, held the half eaten pack out.

  “Sorry, I didn't think about anyone else... Here, you guys have the rest...”

  The lady doctor, a hot Japanese woman that could have been anywhere between late twenties and late forties shook her head and told him to eat them all. He needed the calories more than any of them. Everyone else could do just fine without a meal or two she asserted firmly. Argos still didn't eat trying to assure her that he felt fine. He looked pale and in pain, but he didn't admit to feeling that way.

  Marcia snorted.

  “If you don't eat, you don't heal. If you don't heal, we're a man short. We can get someone to take your place, but no one that has your abilities. So get working on those.” She crossed her arms and tried to look tough, it just didn't work this time. Denis could get that. Jay kind of looked like one of the pretty male movie stars that women liked and was humble and darned close to kind to everyone because of it. Hard to really get mad at someone like that.

  Sighing Denis looked at the guy.

  “Yeah Jay. You should have those done by now, we probably need to load up or whatever and the longer you take to eat, the more behind we get. As it is I don't know how we're supposed to get to Chicago, can this thing take us?” Pointing at the helicopter got Lancaster to shake his head.

  “Not even close. It can get us to the airport though. Denis is right Jay, you heard the doc. I know it's a little against your first mode, but no one here's going to whine about being a little hungry when they need you for backup later with a mob closing in on them, trust me on that. Get that food down while we get ready. Clark, if you would?” The gesture at Argos got the man hoisted into the air, the thin tall Clark just holding his hand out to make him rise and then guide him along as, a bit grudgingly, Jay ate.

  Argos looked guilty the whole time, but honestly Denis knew he wouldn't have been able to eat yet himself anyway. He probably needed to, but inside his mind the ground kept rushing at him, over and over again. That, he realized, could put a man off his feed. Marcia needed to eat more than most people did too, but didn't want to for the most part, since she didn't have a sense of taste or smell, it was a fight for her to keep weight on. Karen was like him, he thought, needing more if she used her power a lot, but otherwise just normal. The other two he didn't have a clue about at all.

  In the copter they had a lot of room, but sat close for some reason. He got why Karen did it, her nature meant she wanted to comfort others, the rest of them made no sense at all. Some kind of team building crap? Denis had half his body pressed against Tobin and the other half against Marcia. Across from them Jay got pressed between Karen, who'd been his friend for years after all, and Doctor Burrows, who seemed to be doing it just because the guy looked good. She winked at Denis when he raised his eyebrows at her. It probably wasn't funny, but he had to laugh anyway. No one seemed to notice though.

  The trip to the airport took less than half an hour. That, for some reason, reminded Den about the plane, when he asked about it no one knew where, or even if, it had crashed yet.

  “I just hope no one gets hurt.” Denis murmured. Tobin nodded but no one else could hear him over the noise from the machine. A deep beating roar that shook his bones a little after a while.

  They had, as he should have expected, missed their flight. Personally he blamed the inept assassin pilot. If he couldn't kill them, he could have at least gotten them to their connection on time, right? Wasn't that part of his job? The part he was getting paid for by the government?

  They got in on the last one going out from the tiny airport for the day, but it meant a wait until nearly midnight. Seven hours away. Great fun. They didn't even have their luggage anymore. Not that he'd had a lot anyway. They could make do. They didn't really need clean clothes to do their job, did they?

  Lancaster, it turned out, had been assigned to go with them as backup. He'd been the original choice, since at first Hooper's office had insisted that Proxy go in too, and Brian Yi was one of Lancaster's people to cover it turned out, since he needed a field man more often than most of the others at the base. Yi was also one of the most famous agents in the world right then, which was news to Denis. So Hooper and his cronies wanted the feared and yet oddly popular man front and center at each event, believing that he'd kill people probably. Lancaster chuckled as he explained that bit of wisdom.

  That one got shot down by McCreedy, one of Hooper's butt-buddies in the house of representatives, the agent told him, trying to get him up to date on the situation.

  “That came as a shock I bet, they normally walk in lock-step, but the man stepped right up to Hooper on that one, and didn't back down at all. Saw footage of him yelling about it on C-span. Then again Brian saved McCreedy's life by taking out Tesseract. When a guy beats up on the world's only known class eight by stabbing himself in the heart to save your ass, you probably have to show a bit of respect. Of course Proxy saved both Hooper and his daughter on separate occasions, so you'
d think he'd want to play nice too.” The guy stretched, muscle bulging under the suit jacket. Denis thought he might look good with muscles like that, if he could get some. He surely wanted it.

  Then after a few seconds' focus, he made himself not want it nearly as much. Just a normal desire to be fit took its place.

  “So they decided to try and cheap us into failure instead. Barely enough money to cover the plane and rooms. Your TL, Christian Poures? She offered to cover the whole program herself out of pocket, so the bastards added a rider to forbid the use of any personal funds. That's to make sure no one can bribe any of you into... really I read the thing six times and I can't say I understand the point, but it got into the final draft anyway. I can't even legally buy you dinner on this trip, since I'm not on the team roster. It's a cluster-fuck, filled with extra gooey, creamy fuck in the middle, just in case we might manage to pull a rabbit out of our hats.”

  Denis' stomach growled then as if in response, they both laughed.

  “Hey, stop all that talk, you're making me hungry.” It was just a joke, but the large man went still.

  That... There couldn't be anything offensive in that could there? Lancaster looked around and grinned.

  “Right, meal time. The Director's buying for this trip. Politician that he is, he had himself put on the team as an alternate in case anyone gets sick or injured. I just hope we never have to really use him. Talk about visible presence. Only Prime would be more obvious. That place looks overpriced and like it has low quality food... any takers?” A single gesture indicated a place down a ways, one that looked like it might have something edible and at least had chairs inside visible through the slightly smoked windows. It was also the only place so he nodded. For some reason he really did feel hungry now, a lot more so than usual.

  He'd probably used his useless power the whole way down, Den realized, trying to catch himself. Well, that hadn't worked at all. The ground had probably been scared to death though, because he hadn't been accidentally projecting anything but terror, that was for certain.

  The first problem of the day, other than bigots trying to get them killed, turned out to be bigots denying them service. Trying to. Not the counter girl herself, who seemed nice enough, the one that rang up what you put on your tray at the end of a cafeteria style line. She looked young and a bit scared after talking to an older woman and what looked to be her overweight lesbian lover, a woman with a tan purse that disturbingly had a tiny dog, or possibly a large rat, in it. One like the little thing from the fake fast food Mexican place on TV. It yipped occasionally instead of informing them all about what kind of food it wanted. Too bad, that would have been kind of cool.

  They approached the girl while giving them obvious dark and mean looks. The young blond was a sweet looking thing that must have been about twenty or so and had probably been a high school cheerleader before she realized that wouldn't really work out as a career path but wanted to try gainful employment before resorting to porn or marrying some guy for his money. Whatever the women wanted she shook her head and they finally left to go back to their table and talk on cell phones in hushed tones.

  Nothing happened for a bit, until they got up to get their food. Then a small crowd appeared suddenly, like magic, a man in a blue business suit shoved to the front and angrily shook his fist at them. Well, not at them. At Tobin. He got right in his face too.

  “Dirty Infected! We don't want your kind here! Leave honest decent folk alone!”

  People behind them started muttering and Lancaster smiled. It was cool and professional, not a threat even.

  “Under the Infected protection act, Infected individuals have full rights to use any public facility. After all, it's not a real infection, you know that right? You don't catch it from contact, that's just a name given to it initially that stuck.”

  The man, stupidly, shook his fist at Lancaster too. Denis wouldn't have done that for money and his first mode was greed. The bigot seemed to also be a moron for sure. He might be forgiven not knowing who anyone else was, or even not realizing that Tobin could probably kick his ass, as obvious as his Infected status was, the man was tiny, so that could be confusing to a slow person. But Lancaster was just freaking huge and tough looking. Marcia, wearing a t-shirt from the Disney store and a pair of black Lycra stretch shorts with over-sized running shoes stepped forward and grinned.

  “Are you sure you don't want an autograph? Mr. Peterson is a noted super-hero and government agent. He's also going to be coming out with an album soon, wonderful voice. You should listen to him sometime before you judge him based on blind hatred.” She sounded like a PR agent, which made Denis smile. It was about the first time he'd ever heard the woman sounding sweet.

  The man sputtered at her.

  “Hatred? I don't hate Infected, I just think that monsters should be controlled for the safety of everyone else! We aren't bigots, we just want our families to be safe, is that too much to ask? Are you saying we can't be safe so that some freak can travel around singing? For Christ's sake woman, have you no pride or fear of your own? Consorting with... Things, like this one...”

  Things?

  Denis grinned and wondered if the guy would like to feel a sudden case of the runs coming on, resisting the urge to retaliate took effort. A lot of it. What kind of idiots were these people? If they were so afraid of Tobin, shouldn't they avoid him? Denis knew that he really wanted to avoid falling for a while for instance, and was still deciding whether to develop a phobia of the ground itself...

  Sane people didn't feel fear, and then run to pick a needless fight with the object of it, did they? Of course the team wasn't there to get in an argument with regular people and doing that, as satisfying as it would be right then, nerves already on edge for the day, would just create problems with their real job, when their faces were all over the news in the days leading up to the hate rally.

  Denis decided to let cooler heads handle it for now, only to find that there didn't seem to be any nearby. Marcia had a grin on her face, sure, but the kind of thing that would have made these “good” citizens run away if they had half a brain. Gosh, who hung around with obviously Infected people in public? Oh, right, other Infected. Seriously, did they think that all Infected looked like Tobin?

  The tall blondish haired Lancaster blinked very slowly, probably a relaxation exercise for fighting Denis thought, that or trying to not hit the bigot in front of him. Maybe his own version of going Zen? Possibly literally. A lot of soldier and warrior types did things like that didn't they? The crowd grew slowly, a few people at a time, most just watching, a few calling out hate slogans. If a slow and awkward chant of “get out dirty Infected” could be called a “slogan”. It made its point clear at least.

  When they got back to the base Den would have to find the bum looking man and apologize to him abjectly. His act had been right in keeping with reality it seemed. These people really couldn't start a good chant at all. Even a one of “get out, get out” would have been more effective. Denis shook his head. You'd think they'd plan these things out first, wouldn't you? At their meetings or “hateapalooza” or whatever they called it. If you wanted to be an ignorant bigot, well that was a problem, but not preparing ahead of time to spew their hate properly was all on them. No pride in what they were doing at all.

  Finally a woman in the back, who was decent looking, in a slightly too skinny way, pointed and called out that Jay, still with a wrapped foot that could take nearly a day to heal, was the super-hero Argos. For a second the crowd got quiet, then the core group erupted angrily, the lesbian women, or at least the ladies wearing matching rings and holding hands periodically, both tried to push Karen, who responded by turning into Lady Glory. She didn't use her power though, she just glowed blue and stared at them. It looked impressive, for all that she didn't have any other physical power at all. She really gave the impression that force blasts or something would be the next step. Using abilities on people that weren't being violent yet didn't play wel
l in the press, so she held her hand. Denis didn't think they'd have to wait too long before they could though.

  These people seemed to be eager for confrontation.

  Ah.

  Oh yeah...

  It made sense. So much sense. Looking around he saw the camera phone off to the side in the hands of a man old enough that even having a cell phone was probably a new idea to him. To the left a younger girl that looked a bit like white trash gussied up for the prom had a small video camera out and trained right on them. The idea seemed clear, bait and even attack the Infected IPB agents, since Argos and Lady Glory didn't kill people it was even pretty safe, and then when they fought back, or did anything at all menacing, trim the video in editing so that it only showed the use of powers on a crowd. Even if he used his own abilities it would be obvious right now. Angry bigot to peaceful airport lurker in fifteen seconds or less just didn't happen.

  One of the women, the smaller one without the dog in her bag, suddenly found her courage and jumped forward to try and slap Marcia. She could take the blow no problem, the thing being that it would be striking an IPB agent, who was, like it or not, suddenly on duty. This was a “riot” and they were the squad with that detail, weren't they? The blow landed with a resounding clap and a cry from the attacker.

  “My hand! You fucking broke my hand with your ugly face.” She wailed, holding her right arm to her chest. Her girlfriend, wife probably, jumped in to try it too, which caused Lancaster to move forward.

  That wouldn't work though, since he was huge and even looked tough. If he stopped the woman there would be trouble, the bigot mob would step in to protect her. It felt seriously fucked up, the whole thing, all of it. Sighing a little Denis stepped in front of the giant man suddenly and smiled, raising his left hand over shoulder level to get the agent to stop.