The Infected [Books 1-6]

by P. S. Power

  Someone had hurt his love, so he fought.

  Poorly as it turned out, but it was basically what Brian would have done in a similar circumstance, so he didn't blame the guy. Plus the first punch had kind of worked for him. He'd have looked a lot better if he stopped then, but it wasn't about looking good.

  Finally, panting, Rich moved in front of the Captain, looking like he was going to try and do it all again if Brian moved toward them. He didn't, just smiling instead.

  "And on that note I think we'll leave. Captain Monroe, if you'd keep us in the loop on Officer Shaw? If he really ran out of fear, but was being controlled at the time of the attacks, we need to talk to him. If he gets in touch, let him know that." He nodded to the man, then did the same to his new protector.

  "Rick." He left then, Lancaster following behind him, trying not to smile. He didn't talk until they got to the rental car and Brian got in the driver's seat.

  "I'll bet you dinner that Monroe is sitting there wondering why you didn't kill his boyfriend. I'm a little surprised myself." His words weren't teasing, instead they had a worried air to them. Brian couldn't afford to lose his edge. If that happened he'd die.

  "I made myself stop. It was close, but what was the guy supposed to do? Besides, he wasn't getting in the way of me serving the warrant, he was just trying to kick my behind. Not a huge deal." It really wasn't. A lot of people had tried to do that. Not all of them as successfully as Rick had, but most of them didn't have reasons that were as good either.

  That got a real laugh, but the agent didn't say anything to him about it as they drove.

  For some reason he pulled in front of his old house, where he used to park most of the time, back when he had a car. It wasn't there anymore he noticed. For all he knew Doug, his old roommate and best friend didn't even live there at all anymore. Or if he did, Carla the Bigot, his girlfriend, might just run out of the place shooting. He got out of the car anyway and signaled for Lancaster to follow, not having a clue why he was doing it, or even why he stopped at all. Maybe to question Doug about what he'd seen that night?

  Or maybe to kick his butt for not helping him with the police. Not that the man could have, but he hadn't even called out for them to stop. Not that Brian had heard. Of course he'd been distracted at the time.

  He knocked on the door. It felt weird, but he hadn't paid rent in months, so it wasn't his anymore. The place looked about the same, except that the lawn was too high and needed mowing and the mail was building up a bit. It looked like a few days' worth. That didn't mean anything though. Doug just didn't check it most days, coming in through the back. There was no peep hole, so he looked baffled when he opened the door, as if seeing strangers.

  "Hello Doug." Brian didn't sound cheery, old friend or not.

  "Um..."

  He looked about the same. A little heavier, by about ten or fifteen pounds, and with the start of a beard, as if trying to hide the double chin that was growing on his face. It wasn't working too well yet, but he wasn't that heavy, about like Brian used to be plus a little. So not ready to go fight crime, but just kind of chubby. Heavy-normal going into just plain fat if he wasn't a little more careful.

  Brian looked at Lancaster and then back to Doug, wondering if his old friend was going to get it. After a bit he didn't care enough to keep waiting though.

  "It's me, Brian. I lost some weight. Got some scars. Can we come in or will that cause a fight with Carla?" Not that he cared. She was a bitch and no matter how badly things had gone at the end for him personally, Doug could do better.

  "She's not here. We broke up... Come on in, I guess. The place is a mess." He backed up, showing that he wasn't a liar. The living room needed to be cleaned and the bit of kitchen he could see through the door did too. Mainly papers and food boxes. Doug didn't cook, so if he ate it, there was a package involved somewhere.

  "I have some beer, or... Um... Doritos?" He shook his head gesturing to the sofa, which meant they had to clean it off if they wanted to sit. Brian did it by habit, remembering when they'd gotten the old thing off of the side of a street, carrying it eight blocks to sit where it was. All the furniture had a similar story and nothing new had been added since he'd been there last. Except mess. At least when he'd lived there he'd bothered to pick up most days.

  The beer was in cans and the cheapest kind, which was what they'd always gotten, and those promised Doritos in the one nice serving dish they had. A wooden bowl that Brian had gotten at a yard sale for fifty cents. He pulled a single chip and ate it slowly, waving the beer away. He couldn't afford to drink anymore. Luckily that had never been a huge thing for him.

  Lancaster took his though and opened it, taking a sip stoically. It wasn't high quality beer after all.

  Doug actually introduced himself, putting his hand out to shake with the Agent like an adult and everything.

  "Doug Tibs."

  Shaking the hand without standing Lancaster smiled a bit.

  "Daryl Lancaster. IPB. We have a few questions for you Mr. Tibs. Off the books no doubt, since I'm drinking your beer. Thanks by the way, been a bit of a day already." He took a sip and let his eyes close for a minute. When he opened them he continued.

  "On the night that Brian was arrested... you remember that don't you?" He waited but Doug nodded, swallowing nervously.

  "Good, there have been some problems in that regard. Anyway, can you go over what you saw from your perspective?"

  The tale was a little different, mainly having to do with Carla really freaking out, because Brian was Infected and would kill them both.

  "Then you came back and I had the big knife from the kitchen, which wouldn't have done much, but I didn't know what else to do. I was scared and she kept screaming at me to do something. You came back and acted like I was being stupid, even though you were covered with blood. Then you got up and ran to the bathroom, while she kept screaming at me and called the police. There was a lot of blood, so I figured that you needed help. Then... you know they came and Carla freaked, which got them to freak and they all acted like you were dangerous, even when it was clear you could barely move. I didn't do anything... I tried, but one of them said he'd shoot me if I moved again. Then I just stood there while they kept hurting you." Tears came to his eyes, which was an odd thing for him to do. He wasn't that type.

  "Man, I really wanted to help you. I called the police... after, but they said they weren't allowed to talk about ongoing cases. No one would tell me anything and you didn't come back. Carla was all 'well he deserves whatever he gets. Filthy Infected should all die.' You know how she was. I kicked her out the next day. I mean, what if someone had kidnapped you or something, using a power? You leaving like that didn't mean you were Infected and even if you were, well, you weren't crazy or anything. You were the same guy I'd known for years." He swallowed again and took a sip of his beer.

  "That was the last I saw of Carla, the next day. Since then it's just been me. Are you coming back now? I could use the company. I'm making rent, but my housekeeping skills are horrible. Only good thing to happen, I got a raise at work. Assistant manager now." He seemed halfway proud about the fact.

  "Cool. Great job. Good work with Carla too, I never liked her. She treated you like crap. I mean, I get what you saw in her, but you can get sex from a lot of women." Brian wished he had his own drink to take a sip of, but just nodded instead.

  Doug laughed.

  "Right, lady killer that I am. Still, I have your room and stuff, if you want it? I'm not sure if I can get you your old job back, there have been some cutbacks, but I'll try to put a word in for you, if you want?" He sounded almost hopeful, as if he really had been pretty lonely.

  Brian had to shake his head though.

  "I can't. The one thing Carla had right was that I'm Infected. My power is messed up though. At random times I end up taking the place of people that are about to die. Usually murdered. That's what happened that night. I ended up in a bar in the mid-west, fighting two serial killers.
I lost, as you might imagine. That's all my power does. Get me there. The rest I have to figure out on my own. More or less." He left out the part about his girlfriend's dead sister taking up residence in his head. That still sounded crazy to him, and he was the one living with it. Even months later he wasn't totally sure he hadn't just gone insane, but so far he was making it work.

  That information got Doug to go wide eyed and shake his head for a while.

  "That's horrible... So it's kind of like that Proxy guy that they talk about on the radio? You have to go and fight like that too? No wonder you got in such good shape." He waved at the far wall where the T.V. was.

  "It stopped working that night. I think one of the police officers knocked it over or something. It just plays static now." He shrugged as if it didn't matter, even though he used to love watching television. That and playing video games. The console was sitting unused too.

  Collecting dust.

  Lancaster just sat, listening and taking little sips of his beer, acting as if this was just a normal conversation between old friends. Brian kind of wished he'd jump in and just explain that Brian was Proxy, getting it over with, but it was going to be left up to him. Jerk.

  "Yeah. Exactly like that Proxy guy. It's the code name they gave me at work. I live at the main base there now. I'm getting a week or two off, my power is supposed to be letting me have some time anyway. I still had to go and trade with the President's daughter when the bombs hit a few days ago, but I wasn't hurt too badly. We lost a man in that. Ink. He was standing not ten feet from me. I don't know if you heard about it all?" It had been on the radio, but who knew what Doug would listen to?

  "That was you? I... yeah, I heard some things. Like some regular guy fighting a hundred class fours to the death in Canada? That was... you?"

  "Sixty-two, not a hundred." The words just slipped out, but it wasn't something he wanted to dwell on. It had been kind of traumatic.

  Lancaster nodded though, leaning back, like they were there to visit or something.

  "Class fives, not fours. He was in a cold water lake for six days doing it too. He had to drown them all, one by one. He also fought Tesseract and nearly killed the guy. Only officially known class eight on the planet." The man took another sip and actually leaned forward to get a few chips from the bowl on the table, looking across it at Doug, who seemed wide eyed. "Did you hear how he did that?"

  His old friend shook his head.

  "No. I mean, it was probably in the news, but I don't remember it. How?"

  "He figured out that Tesseract was using fourth dimensional space somehow and that he could hurt him by hurting himself. So he took his knife and stuck it into his own heart." Agent Lancaster pantomimed the move, just so there would be no mistakes later.

  "How's that for freaking hard core? I've had nightmares about it and I wasn't even there."

  Brian had too, but he didn't bother to mention that part of things. There were bad dreams about a lot of things.

  "Hey, I'm getting a bit hungry, anyone want Chinese? I'm buying. We can get take in. I pulled some cash." He turned to Doug to explain the whole thing about the hotels and how he was worried restaurants might be the same.

  "Then you guys are staying here. I'll have to clean, but... yeah. Chinese sounds good. Fried rice and extra egg rolls?" He chuckled, but Brian nodded.

  "And General Tso's Chicken. Phone book still in the kitchen?" He didn't wait, finding it exactly where he'd left it.

  Lancaster wanted something with beef in it, but they had a pretty good spread of food coming and chattered while they waited. Mainly about what he'd been up to in the last months. Most of it was pretty gruesome, so he censored those parts. A few things were cool though.

  "So... I have a girlfriend now. Karen. She's really nice, you'd like her." Good looking too, but he didn't mention that. It felt crass. She was more than her appearance.

  Lancaster nodded.

  "Really sweet. She was in the Olympics a few turns back, gymnastics. Got a silver medal. Now she's on Team One, Lady Glory?" It was just idle conversation, but his old roomy actually knew the name.

  "Wait... the blue, glowing one? Cool I guess. Kind of bright when you're trying to sleep..." He tried to keep a straight face, which got a grin from Brian.

  "She doesn't do that all the time, glow like that. Only when she wants to, which is almost never while I'm trying to sleep. Unless she can't find the light switch. Then all bets are off." It had only happened once, but he'd been left half blind for a while. He'd had to open his eyes, which left him in pain and had come awake with a knife in his hand, standing on the bed. It was a freaky thing to do, but Karen had just been understanding about the whole thing.

  That was kind of her thing, compassion.

  Doug didn't have nearly as much to share, but there were a few pieces of information, mainly about Carla, who he'd heard had gotten really into the Infected hate movement.

  "Sally from work, you remember her? She recognized Carla in the store and asked what she was up to. It sounds like she's gone full on, living in the woods, cult member or something. On the good side, I suppose, she seems to have lost some weight. I'd like that better if I had too. How did you do it? A low carb thing? Drugs?" He was kidding, since they used to joke about that a lot, how the people on television stayed so skinny all the time.

  It was hard to lose weight, so it had to be drugs, right?

  "I cut way back on what I eat and started working out a lot. I mean running and stuff. Martial arts. Lots of things. I don't have a computer on the base or anything, so not a lot else to do when I'm not working."

  Lancaster tilted his head and nodded at Doug.

  "Yeah. He's down playing it. I was in Delta Force and did some other work for the Army a while back. We didn't train like he does. Right now he's supposed to be taking it easy. He's..." There was a look, one that went a little sideways and just missed catching Brian's eyes.

  "The fights, even when he's won, they do damage. Too much. If he were just a soldier or fighter we would have retired him already. It's... not great." He locked eyes with Doug again, making a single nod.

  Doug looked down, seeming to be thinking about something, what it was kind of surprised Brian, when he heard it. It wasn't anything that he expected at all. Not in a million years.

  "I'm..." He stopped, finishing the beer in his hand as if trying to built up his courage for something.

  "I'm Infected too."

  If it was supposed to be shocking it didn't exactly meet Brian's threshold of weird anymore. He just shrugged.

  "Cool. What can you do?" It sounded almost like he was talking about work again, like they were getting a new machine at the toilet paper packing plant.

  Instead of describing it, Doug stood up and then sighed.

  "Promise not to laugh? It can look kind of funny." His face had a smile though, which made Brian wonder if it would be a joke after all. Doug could do that from time to time.

  Lancaster shook his head, "no fair asking us to pass up a chance at levity. Let's see it anyway. I guarantee I've seen goofier things."

  Making a slightly different face the chubby guy rose into the air, then floated, bobbing a little, about an inch from the ceiling. Then he landed gently, not even making the floor squeak as he did.

  "I can also do this..." He took his empty beer can and put it on the floor, caused it to rise until it hit the ceiling and then waved at it, which made it drop to the floor hard, slowly crushing itself.

  "Basically it's just making things lighter and heavier, so not that useful or anything."

  The agent just clapped a few times, smiling.

  "Here, do the couch. With Brian and I on it. Just floating to start with." He didn't act as if it would be that big of a deal, even as they did their own floating. After a few minutes they got waved down too, but only returned to normal.

  Giving his friend a nod Brian sighed.

  "Incredible Doug. How hard was that for you? Do you think you could have k
ept us up in the air longer? Or lifted more weight?"

  "Oh sure. I did my car for about forty minutes a few months ago. I wasn't tired or anything from it, but I got bored. I can also crush concrete blocks into powder that way, but they normally try to dig into the ground first and it makes a mess. It's just making them light or heavy, so, like I said, not so useful. I can carry more at work, and take some weight off my feet, but I think that's what's causing me to gain weight. Not fighting gravity enough, so I have to stop that."

  Brian shrugged.

  "I can get you on at the IPB with that ability, I think. Really we kind of have to. If I came back without you, holding on to that kind of power, my boss would make fun of me. What's your first mode?" He waited, ready to explain the concept, but Doug seemed to have studied up on the whole thing a lot more than he'd been letting on before.

  "I don't seem to have anger any more. I can become afraid, find things funny and all that, but there just isn't any anger. Not even annoyance. It... Started before you left. About a month and a half."

  That got a reaction from Lancaster, and from Becky, who walked into the center of the room, even though no one else could see her do it.

  "He's got at least a class three power from what I've seen and probably a class four if he can do even half of what he just said. The odds of him just happening to be your roommate and developing an ability at the same time is nearly impossible. Billions to one at least."

  For once Brian just answered her out loud, not caring if anyone else got it.

  "A specific Infector situation? Or maybe not that 'specific' just a person that spreads the Infection somehow? It would have to be someone we both knew, so Carla or someone from work then. If it isn't just an incredibly strange coincidence."