The Infected [Books 1-6]

by P. S. Power

  Honestly she didn't know. If it were up to her to guess it would be that they were military men, some kind of rogue special ops group. That, or mercenaries. Not that anyone would be asking her, would they?

  "Fuck! Get ready to go underground. Out the tunnel. Set the timer for ten minutes. If anyone gets in the way..."

  Penny shot the man, the nine millimeter in her hand feeling nice after the slightly awkward blade. It was a good idea, carrying a knife. She even had one back at the base, but it wasn't something she was used to keeping with her. That would have to change though. This situation kind of showed how useful it might be later.

  One by one she started shooting the remaining ten men in the head. Ten that she could see. She just ran up to them and fired into the eye holes of their masks. She kept expecting someone to shoot, or at least show some kind of power or other, but they just died, the kids going silent as they did. Their heads exploded and a few of the men panicked, which worked in this case, since they didn't seem to think firing into the large crowd of kids that sat in a tight group on the floor was a workable plan.

  They got in the way, those bodies, but she just climbed on a few of them, stepping on their shoulders, trying to pick the boys that looked like little assholes anyway. It was harder to see than not, right at the moment, being both busy and seeing how many of them had been crying. Thinking about it meant that she didn't notice the man that worked his way out into the room from the door to the left at first, it was an official door, but it looked like it would belong to a janitor's closet, not an escape tunnel.

  That man, who wasn't all that tall, but otherwise seemed a lot like the others, didn't hesitate, aiming the Russian made rifle at a group of girls and pulling the trigger. Or trying to.

  Penny was trapped where she was, scrambling and falling, trying to close the distance to reach the man in time, everything feeling like it was in slow motion as he swung around. She tried, but it was clear she wasn't going to make it close enough in time to stop him.

  The boy that went for him wasn't very large. He might have been a little over five-two or three. He was fat though, even for the room they were in, which was a bit chubbier than she'd remembered middle school being when she was a kid. Honestly, as far as she could tell there was nothing at all to mark this particular boy as special at all. He was slow, and so clumsy she thought he was going to fall down as he rose, the cramped position they'd been in clearly too much for his legs to readily bounce back from.

  He also didn't scream or yell anything at all as he did his own scrambling, trying to move toward the man with the rifle in time. It was strange. The girls were screaming, the clutch of them on the floor that were the most likely targets looked to be pretty miserable themselves, make-up running from the hours of tears already. Some of the others gasped and cringed. Only the one boy did anything though, struggling as fast as his body would allow. Maybe even more than that. He was really out of shape looking.

  Penny ran herself, doing much the same thing, not waiting, but knowing that nothing she did would affect the outcome of what was going to happen next at all. Not a single thing.

  Then finally, just as the gunman was drawing a bead on the girls, the fat boy bellowed something. It was a single name. One she knew well, but wouldn't have thought of yelling herself.

  "Proxy!"

  The gunman froze for a second, then spun, firing at the boy instead of the clutch of girls on the floor. For an instant, just a few nanoseconds, Penny wondered if Brian would magically appear, saving the boy, and everyone else in the room. It was the kind of thing he did after all and if anyone had ever deserved his help, this chubby blond boy was it. That didn't happen. Instead the kid was hit by four rounds in a row, still ten feet from the killer. He didn't stop, closing the distance as red bloom sprung out all over his chest.

  Until he hit the man.

  That didn't do much. The guy wasn't vast himself, but he was in shape and not a child. In a single, very fluid movement, he spun the weapon in his hands and hit the boy in the head as he weakly tried to grab at him, bones crunching where wooden stock met tender flesh. It was horrible to watch, but bought enough time for her to get over to them and shoot the child murdering piece of shit in the eye, taking the top of his head off. No one but her heard the bang, and he went down, the little boy on top of him, still trying to hit him, even as he bled out, and died.

  "Fuck." It wasn't that Penny hadn't seen anyone do that kind of thing before, at least on video, she had. Brian fought like that. Giving everything, no matter what. She just didn't expect some little kid in a situation like this to do the same. For some reason she kept expecting him to get up. To heal, or shrug off the wounds somehow, but he didn't move after that. He was dead, not even struggling for breath now.

  It was about three seconds later that she found her new problem, as the kids got up, and ran, heading right toward the windows and doors out in the hall. The ones armed with explosives. There was no way she could stop them from setting them off, because people were, by definition, incredibly flighty in situations like this. She couldn't even get their attention by shooting or anything. That probably meant they were all dead.

  Wonderful. She nearly ran herself then, when someone, a girl that looked to be about fourteen going on twenty-three, stopped them all.

  "No! No! Everyone stop! Stop!" They didn't listen to her at first, but she kept at it until they did, enlisting some of the larger boys to help her. "Charlie, don't let anyone leave! We all heard them, the building is wired with bombs. If we just run out we could set them off. If there are police outside and we just run out, they'll shoot us. We need to do this carefully. Find a door they haven't set a bomb on or something. Don't touch anything!"

  Penny sped things up by grabbing the girl by the arm and pulling her through the hall, which got almost everyone to follow along. A few had just stayed sitting, not able to get themselves to move at all, and a few cried as they walked, but most just moved along, as if the girl was in charge. Maybe she was? One of the mean girls that was used to bossing people around or something? Regardless, it was working, and the girl stared at her arm, like it was possessed. She went though and didn't try to fight it.

  The only window that Penny knew was clear was the one with a pile of dead kids at the bottom. Looking out, the girl she had a hold on winced, but didn't let herself stop.

  "This way, one at a time. When you get outside hold your hands up and run toward the police. Do what they say." She muttered then her voice low. "God I hope this is right. I don't know what else to do. Is this right?" She stared at her arm, so Penny pulled it straight, so that it was pointed at the window.

  The first one out was a boy, who didn't seem inclined to let the girls go first, but he stopped to pull the bodies of their friends out of the way instead of just running for his life. No one else tried to get out until he had. Looking at the chunky girl in his arms he started crying, but didn't stop moving them away. When he was done he put his hands up, at least a hundred weapons trained on him from the line.

  "We're coming out. There are bombs on the building. This is the only way we could find..." He was met by a cop that tackled him to the ground, screaming at him, but the boy didn't fight or argue, being in too much shock, she figured.

  Lancaster, and a man dressed like a robot storm trooper for some reason, jogged up to the building. When they got closer she noticed that the man's green uniform said "bomb disposal" on it. That made sense at least.

  "Darryl! I think I got them all, but I haven't checked the whole building yet. There were nineteen by my count. They have a tunnel or something though. The whole thing is wired, but one of the men said something about a timer and ten minutes. If that's the case we have about two left." She didn't scream the words, but Lancaster heard her anyway.

  "Out! Move away from the building. I want three hundred meters. The place is rigged to go." Not might be, but is. It wasn't what she'd said, but it worked and people scrambled then, Lancaster and his new frien
d the green marshmallow man handing the kids down, one after the other. No one else closed with the building at first, until a few of the kids needed help to get away. A few Swat looking guys did that part, carrying the kids as they ran away, propping them up.

  The last one out was the girl that had stopped them inside. Freaking hero that she no doubt was. Penny had to admit she'd saved a lot of lives in there, in the end, even if she was probably a preppy cheerleader or something.

  The nice part about being her was that she didn't have to do the paperwork for the whole thing herself. Even as Galley from the DHS grilled Lancaster, she was out of the direct line of fire. She did have to give the whole thing once and the man winced when Darryl explained how she cleared the place, but no one mentioned that the bodies inside were pretty clearly not Islamic extremists. At least not ones from out of the country. The PLO line was still being bandied about to the press, who was being kept back, which turned out to be a good thing, since the explosion that came about fifteen minutes later, after the building had been cleared, was vast enough to nearly leave Penny deaf.

  It didn't knock her down, or Lancaster, since they'd pulled back a good way, ordered to by one of the bomb squad people. Apparently that particular guy was a genius, since he managed to get everyone well away from the place before it had a chance to light up. The world went silent for a bit, nearly a full minute, and then people started muttering to themselves, the emergency personnel trying to make certain no one was left inside when it had gone up.

  It was a thing to do, Penny figured, rather than being useful. They might need to call someone's next of kin after all. But unless they were Infected, and had the right power, no one was just walking away from that situation. Marcia could have, and Prime might have made it. Impulse and Foggy. Possibly Mark if he knew the explosion had started in time.

  It made it sound like a lot of people could have done it, but that wasn't really the case. She just happened to know about half the people in the world that could do things like that. She couldn't have. It kind of hammered home how dangerous going inside had been to begin with. She didn't shake or cower about it now though, since that wasn't her thing. She liked to save that kind of thing for late at night, while she was crying about how no one loved her, in the dark. It always paid to have a plan for that sort of thing after all. Otherwise people tended to melt down at the wrong time, messing things up.

  "We should head out. Being here won't help anything now, and I really don't want to be on television. I'm not dressed for it. I should get some kind of field wear, you know, an outfit for situations like this. Maybe something cool looking?" She was speaking out loud, but didn't expect anyone to hear her. Lancaster came over then and nodded.

  "Right, we should clear out. There are enough bodies here and the less we say, the better the IPB will look. Provided one of the other groups doesn't take credit for the rescue. My guess is that's what will happen. Care to bet on it?"

  It might have been the adrenalin talking, or just that Penny didn't like crowds but her voice was just a little harder than it usually was. So, all in all, normal sounding, like a real girl.

  "No deal. We should get Agent Kimble and scoot. Do you think he's single?"

  She was kidding, but Lancaster asked for her anyway, smirking as he did it, knowing that she'd probably have a problem with it. That wasn't something that had come up a lot, the good looking man teasing her, and it wasn't lost on her that he did it using some other guy. Really, if it wasn't for the fact that he never flirted with anyone, she'd have wondered if he liked men. Not that he seemed that way, but he acted almost as if he didn't understand when the women around him were clearly hitting on him. The same was basically true of the guys though, which as far as she knew had only ever been Warren, but he just stayed so professional all the time it didn't seem human. It would have worried her if she thought about it too long.

  Penny decided not to. He was needling Kimble a little, and the other man just smiled, his white teeth showing on his dark face in the diming daylight.

  "Married. For two years. Always nice to know that I've still got it though." Then, without waiting he started to walk back to the van they'd come in. It was white on the outside and unmarked. At least if a person could ignore the large antenna on the top and the oversized police model bumper on the front. Other than that it looked like it could belong to a very tidy rapist or kidnapper. "Best to get out of here before the paperwork gets too heavy. They're already claiming that the 'terrorists' were taken out by a joint task force. That's code for not wanting to give us any credit. I did all that important driving you know. Don't you think that should be on the record somewhere? Definitely worth a promotion."

  Lancaster nodded.

  "A good afternoon's work. How are you holding up Penny?" There was actual concern there, though neither man slowed down, just climbing into the van and buckling up, not making eye contact with anyone else.

  There was no speaking for a few moments as Penny ran to the side door and got herself tucked into the first of the back seats quickly. Going slow could mean being left behind. That was just something she had to keep in mind. These guys wouldn't do that on purpose, especially Lancaster, but they could end up at the airport before they realized she wasn't around. That meant either staying there or finding her own way home, which would be a pain in the butt. After all, she didn't have any money on her.

  That got a grin. Like she paid for things?

  As she got herself buckled into place she spoke, thinking about all the people that she'd just killed. She still had blood on her from at least a half dozen of them and enough gunpowder on her hands from blowback, having shot most of them at less than three feet away, to make a forensics television show cast look brilliant.

  "I need to clean up, then eat something. We should try to get back to base first, what time is it?" She had a feeling that it was after dinner time, which turned out to be correct.

  "It's seven. Why, have a date?" Lancaster didn't seem to be teasing this time, even though the idea was a joke, in and of itself.

  "Yep. Denis and some of the guys were going to go and beat up Torque after dinner. I totally missed it. Well, I guess I can just sneak up on him later. Is that too much though? I mean he kind of screwed up, but how much ass kicking does he really need?"

  There was no answer for so long that Penny wondered if she'd actually spoken out loud. She forgot to sometimes, just like she could have a running monolog going and forget people could hear her now, since it had become habit over the years.

  Finally the man in the front passenger seat looked out the window and cleared his throat gently.

  "I hope that's not true. You know it's a federal crime to assault an IPB operative on duty. Denis is still on probation too." There was a dryness to the words that got her attention. He was serious, but not angry about it. Agent Kimble didn't seem to notice though and didn't look over at the other man or anything.

  "Oh? I suppose that's true. What else can we do though? It's not like we can lock him up for having sex with Karen, is it? She's an adult woman and allowed to make her own choices in life. He broke all kinds of unwritten rules, but..."

  "Normal people just talk these things out. I know that the situation is a bit different here and clearly fucked, but Karen is a big girl. She wasn't hurt by this, and really, it isn't any of our business. Brian moved on, the rest of you should too. The only thing that a beating will accomplish is making Robert hate the rest of you. Team leader doesn't mean god at the base, but he still has enough pull to make some people unhappy higher up the food chain. Like me. I really don't want to have to assign someone to work with him full time. It would be a pain in the ass to have to put a body guard detail on a super-human."

  Penny sat and watched the world pass by outside, not talking for long enough that the men both seemed to forget about her. That didn't take long, only about five minutes. There was a certain level of truth in what Darryl had said. It really wasn't her business. She didn't agree
that Karen was in control of her actions, and being a "big girl" wasn't the same as not needing help sometimes, but there was the fact that Brian had chosen to deal with the whole thing peacefully. Kind of well too, just coming back with another girlfriend without hesitation. If anything told a person they didn't need you, that was kind of it. He hadn't done it like that though, because he was a good guy. It had just happened.

  Karen and Robert weren't really together. Penny had spied enough to know that one for certain. They were, in fact, staying pretty distant from each other. Mainly so that no one would think they were still going at it.

  If they did, Penny was going to get pictures though. Maybe video. That reminded her to go to the shop and steal some cameras. It wasn't something she'd thought of before, but she kind of had the ultimate camo for being a paparazzi, didn't she? Five feet away from the action, getting porn worthy close ups of the good parts. Not that she'd out everyone, but that might be a better way of handling things really. Blackmail Rob into good behavior. So far it hadn't come up, but with a bit of... It occurred to her suddenly that they already had the footage, somewhere in the records. She didn't have to get new stuff, just make sure she had a copy, so that she could hold it over the guy.

  Brilliant.

  All nice and non-violent too. No one could doubt that she was a sweet and kind girl now, could they?

  That got her to remember the feeling of men dying under her blade, which she'd left in the building when she'd gone through the window. Her right arm ached a little. It was so slight she didn't know if it was psychosomatic or not. It could have been from the jarring force of the impact too. Either way it was a bit annoying.

  Her stomach growled and her body ached a bit, even though she was in pretty good shape. Killing that many people took a toll after all. Instead of food, or a shower, they were put back on the plane, and then had to wait for hours before they could leave. There were two searches of the thing, the TSA acting like they might be smuggling terrorists out of town, and no food was available at all. Finally she looked out the window at the tiny airport building and wondered if they had food inside. It was a private airstrip, so she doubted they had a lot of amenities really. Maybe a vending machine? She could always smash the front in, if it was the right kind...