Infected 8: Impulse: A Whole New Day

by P. S. Power

  There was thrusting and grinding, that given her unclothed state started to turn her on a little. She fought it back, since doing anything right then would look bad. Anything interesting at least.

  "Stop that. If you don't, I'll have to rip your arm off to make sure the bomb doesn't detonate. I can do that, too, I don't mean that metaphorically. Your blood could make things slippery, so let's not go there." That would probably be the tag line on the hate channel, later that night. Her saying that. Her mom would have a field day, scolding her for being that politically insensitive.

  So she tried again, ignoring what had just come out of her own mouth and speaking louder, for the cameras off in the distance. There were a few parabolic mics pointed her way, which meant they'd get the first part too, but she'd already said it, so it would have to stand.

  "Stay calm ma'am. I'm sure that with appropriate psychological counseling, and a good regime of psychotropic drugs, you'll be better in no time. Help is coming. The IPB is here to make sure that no Infected will harm you today. Try to relax, until help gets here." Not that she believed that. Who did they even have left that could help them?

  That answer came about twenty very long minutes later. The protestors were over by the prison tree, out of harm's way, thanks to Will, under arrest, if not actually being prevented from leaving with more than words. Marcia spoke to the cameras, and then borrowed a phone to call in DHS and FBI support, and the bomb squad. The local Police Chief looked panicked, and tried to run, only to be tackled by Kenny, who clearly didn't know what he was doing at all. It ended up in a tangled mess, with the older man coming out on top, but not able to get away easily. The Intern for channel five was holding on to his legs, and managed to trip him, in a pretty desperate seeming fashion.

  All he knew was that the man had been being questioned by Marcia, not why. Bridget called that info out, feeling bored with her hand holding duties already.

  "He moved off the stage before the attack started, and it looked like the woman with the first device used that as a sign to get started. Her man friend, too... I don't suppose anyone knows where he got to?" She looked around, but honestly wasn't certain that she could have picked him out of a lineup, given all the distractions she'd had that day. No one else seemed to know either, or if they did, they weren't fingering the guy for her.

  "It's the clothes, isn't it? You end up naked, and everyone just stops listening to you." She said this directly to the still moving and squirming form under her. That had calmed down a lot, since the woman was probably going into shock, from the broken hand. She was cool to the touch, but that would just have to work itself out. Bridget wasn't going to run and fetch a blanket for her.

  There was no answer, not even from the terrorists calling out slogans for the cameras. Those were trained on them, since this was one of those dramatic "tense standoffs" that the media loved so much. Plus, there was a naked girl involved as well as literal girl on girl action. What wasn't to love? She kept talking then, realizing that, trying to pretend to be soothing the other woman, speaking as if she were merely temporarily stricken with mental illness, not just evil.

  For all she really knew, that might even be the case. Who blew themselves up just to make the point that Infected people scared them? It wasn't sane, was it? None of this really was.

  Marcia backed up Kenny, still talking on the borrowed black cell phone, and without pausing to take a breath as she kept talking to whoever it was. That was done by a quick kick to the back of the attempted escapees knee, then a slap to the back of the head, which knocked him right out. She didn't stop talking either, even after that was done, or give any indication that she was doing anything in particular.

  "That's right. We have several situations here. The local police look to be in on this again, or at least their head honcho does. We have what appears to be a live bomb on a dead man's switch, being held in place physically by one of our Operatives. We have about thirty terrorists under arrest, but that situation might change. Their being held by... I don't know him. A concerned citizen? So this could all start going sideways at any moment." There was a pause and she nodded. "We'll hold then. The local bomb disposal squad is coming, which could be another set up. Don't dawdle, thanks."

  Hanging up with her right thumb, she walked over to Bridget, waving for Kenny to stay with the Chief.

  "If he moves, shoot him." She said it darkly, but it was clear that Ken didn't have a weapon.

  What he did have was a pair of big old intern balls, apparently, because he nodded once, his rat face looking a bit damp from sweat.

  "Sure thing, boss. If he so much as twitches, I'll shoot him in the back of the head."

  Without even checking for irony, Marcia kept walking, stopping as she got right next to the bomb situation. It wasn't like she'd get herself blown up or anything.

  Bridget winced, looking at the borrowed clothing. It was a bit mussed, but not torn anywhere that she could see yet.

  "Good. Above all else, we need to protect that outfit. What's the sit-rep?"

  "We have DHS and FBI incoming. That will take about half an hour, since they don't have local operations here. The bomb squad will be here in a few minutes, and the military is coming to surround this location. I can't love that, since the kids here in town clearly don't have the right training for this. That will keep some of the terrorists from running off. Probably not all. If I had the time I'd work up a joint exercise and run them through the line and back, so that everyone could get some practice." She looked at Bridget, clearly wanting to say something, but then looking at her hands. "Do you need anything? Some water?"

  She did, but couldn't have successfully had any right then, she didn't think.

  "I'm good, for a while. Will isn't just a concerned citizen. I made him an Agent earlier. The paperwork should be on your desk, to sign off on." She was teasing, since no one would give the kid grief over taking the possible terrorists like that, she didn't think. Not on the law enforcement side of things. His parents, now they might just have a problem with it, given that they were in the thick of the prisoner group. Someone was going to be grounded for sure.

  For once it wasn't even her.

  Marcia nodded.

  "I think I signed that already, earlier today. Good thinking. Keep doing that, since we're going to need it. I also called in Gravity, to make sure we have some back up too. Just in case." She didn't explain that part, but Bridget understood what she meant. Just in case everyone coming turned on them. It wasn't that likely, but also not impossible. That the local police hadn't tried to attack was really down to the fact that no one in charge had ordered them too. Yet.

  They were fine, however, until one of the arrested crowd members, a man that looked like he had neo-Nazi tattoos on his neck and hands, pulled a knife and started stabbing Will in the back. She couldn't move, and Marcia started to run at the attacker, but there was no way that she was going to get there in time to stop the first few thrusts.

  "Die, Infected mother fucker!" It wasn't an inspired scream. For one thing, Will wasn't that at all, as far as she knew.

  The blade sunk home, not just once, but several times, before Marsh got there. The Nazi anti-Infected bigot was punched by the woman. Once. He went down, and from the sounds involved, he wasn't going to get back up.

  "Medic! Multiple stab wounds, get someone over here, now!"

  The only people available to help were the local police, the press, and the arrested people. Bridget was a bit surprised to see that the familiar female cop was the first one to respond. She'd seemed about sixty percent pro-hater earlier, but she didn't hesitate now, even after Will had been called Infected.

  "Mitch! Get the kit, we need to stop the bleeding. Call in an ambulance!"

  Will was pretty stoic about the whole thing, clamping his jaw, rather than screaming like most people would have. His mother and father came over, along with his younger brother, who looked to be about Ed's age. So about thirteen. Maybe fourteen. It was hard to tel
l without asking.

  "Will!" This was bellowed, as his bearded and rather fierce looking father came over at a gallop. "This is what you get for going against your own kind."

  The lady cop had her hands on his back, with Will lying on his stomach, trying to hold the blood in. It hadn't been a big blade, thankfully. A pocket knife, so about three inches long and half an inch thick. Enough to make a person have a bad day, but as long as they helped him, he'd live, Bridget thought. More to the point, she hoped that was the case.

  That way she'd only have to kick Will's dad's ass for not backing up his kid properly. It was his fault that his parents were terrorists? Really? Her mother and father might not be perfect, each having their own issues in life, which were pretty major, but damned if they wouldn't back her up, if she were the one attacked like that. Even if they thought she'd been in the wrong in the first place. That Will didn't have that made her both sad and angry.

  Looking over it was hard to see what was going on, but there was a lot of blood, the bright red shining in the mid-day sun. It stood in contrast to the grass. Some of the people tried to help the Nazi guy, but that didn't work. She could have told them all that it wouldn't, since she couldn't hear a heartbeat, and it sounded like his neck had broken. Then, joke or not, she'd told Marcia that Will was one of their people. Right before the Nazi guy had acted. That made an attack on the kid their problem. One that they weren't going to take sitting down.

  Except for her, given that she was, literally, sitting on one of their other problems.

  Thankfully Doug came flying in, at a nice controlled pace, about four minutes later. It might have been two, and just seemed like longer, since it was that kind of day. Just to round the whole thing out, her tummy started making grinding noises. Not growling, it was past that already. It was a deep and grating thing that got the terrorist she was on to give her a funny look.

  Bridget shrugged in answer.

  "I don't have time for a sandwich right now. Thanks to you." She started to make a joke about cannibalism, but if this took too much longer she might really be tempted, so kept her face shut. It wasn't a fun thought, after all. Not the kind of thing that would really have her acting without control. Not until she realized that her hunger was so bad that putting anything in her stomach was better than suffering any longer. Then all bets would be off. It wasn't that bad yet. Not even close. Still, a snack would have been nice. She tried not to think about it, since while she could dream of cake and meatloaf, she was going to get bland and sickening oil. Even that was better than nothing, but not what her brain wanted to fill in. For her entire life food had almost always been something easy for her to get. Not just regular stuff either. Mounds of delicious gourmet fare was hers, with little more effort on her part than a walk down the hall.

  Things had changed now. It hit her again that her old life had finished. She hadn't really been convinced that there was going to be a war before, she realized. That had seemed like something that they could stop. Proxy would do his thing and they'd all pull together and it would all be fine.

  There she was though, sitting on top of a suicide bomber, who still occasionally tried to throw her to the side long enough to kill herself, even though everyone else was too far away to hurt.

  The bomb team arrived, from the local police force, just as she considered all of that. They were dressed in nifty anti-being blown up outfits, but didn't want to close with them for some reason. At first, she rather naively thought that it was about the explosive. That the experts could see something she didn't, like a second bomb or detonator, and knew that putting their soft bodies too close to it would lead to their deaths.

  If that was the case, now that Gravity was there, they could move to an empty area and she could just let the thing blow up. That would kill the woman under her, which would be a shame, but it might have to be done. Not that she had any great love for the hater down there. She was probably a pawn, however, and might know who had set the whole thing up. At least who they worked with, as underlings.

  Dead, the woman couldn't tell on her friends, which would slow the investigation down.

  It wasn't that however, they were all just afraid of her. The naked girl that was protecting them all. She knew that because she could overhear them talking about it.

  "Impulse... She's the one that attacked the whole force last year. I hear she isn't exactly stable." The man that spoke muttered the words to the other man dressed in a bomb suit from about a football field away.

  She grinned, not wanting to be the one to make trouble for once. Then she yelled, decently loud.

  "You mean when I had to subdue those terrorists? They had just attacked our base and personnel. Now, if you gents could come on over and see about fixing this, that would be really nice. Thank you." She even sounded happy and pleasant, neither of which were things she really felt. It was taking forever for the ambulance to get there, and if Will died, she was not going to feel good about things.

  It would probably end with his father dead, for one thing. The man wasn't on her list of friends, right now.

  That got them moving however, and the man that actually came toward them had a little remote control camera on a robot, which was connected to a long wire. That way it wouldn't set off any radio detonators.

  She nodded as the man muttered that, talking to himself.

  "See, that's why you get the big bucks. I never even would have thought about that." He glanced up from the screen and looked embarrassed. Then he whispered again, clearly to her this time.

  "Sorry there. The truth is I've only used this thing a few times, and only once for a bomb. That doesn't happen a lot here. Mainly we deal with fireworks that get left around. We need to get eyes on that device though. I don't suppose you can shift a bit without setting it off?"

  The little silver machine trundled up, going slowly, the camera lens pointed right at her, or so it seemed.

  "I think so. Are you getting my good side?"

  That got a dark chuckle. "Hell yeah. Don't worry, we won't put it up on the web. For one thing you'd know who to come looking for. So, if you can move left, in three, two... now."

  The shifting wasn't hard, though the bigot screamed, and the lights from the ambulance caught her attention. A sense of relief came over her then, knowing that someone was coming to help them. Will was, kind of, her responsibility. Letting him get stabbed like that had been sloppy. She should have had the people searched. Somehow.

  In all the tense operation of dealing with the bomb took forever, and she had to do all the hard work, since, as the cool bomb man pointed out, she'd handled the one from earlier well enough. They'd seen footage of it, which was part of why it had take so long to get there. Odds were, given everything, that the two devices had some things in common. Like one maker. Not that anyone would really know that in time to help.

  In the end they just brought her a knife and had her cut the thing off, standing well back. The straps that held it in place probably didn't have anything to set them off inside them. If they did, well, she'd go boom. Again. So would their future informant. It was a risk, but less of one for her than anyone else there. She'd mentioned that to the man, who didn't whip out his tremendous man beast, and tell her that he had it covered. That was sort of refreshing.

  The explosion didn't happen. What did, was the ambulance taking Will off to the hospital, and the police actually doing their job and handcuffing the suspects that were under arrest. Including their boss. That was a hard one to explain, but they did it. One of them did at least. He shrugged when the older man growled at him.

  "Do it and you're fired, Specconi."

  "Take it up with the union? If you're innocent, then this will all pass. If not, then we can't let a terrorist organizer go, can we? When I hired on, you told me, yourself, that all those accusations were unfounded. That it was the Infected that had made you out to be something you weren't. Damned if you didn't jump off the stage and start running though, just before the bomber
s started yelling. I saw the footage, Chief. We all have. That pretty much means that you were in on it."

  That got a nod from everyone around the whole place, because that made normal person sense, didn't it? The only way that he could have known to jump and run would have been his own guilt and culpability. Except that she remembered hearing something. The same man had, once, backed down when Brian had threatened to kill him and his whole force. There had been almost a hundred armed cops, and they'd already tried for Brian that day. They weren't afraid of one man, given all that. Still, he pulled them all. Running away, at decent speed. Which didn't fit his overall personality, as far as she could tell. The man was brash and loud, not cautious. He used force as a rule, and expected it to work, even when that was stupid.

  He'd quieted down, over the last months, because, everyone in the IPB said, the man realized that without his old cronies, he wasn't in as good of a position. They'd even stopped going for Proxy, as far as anyone could tell. Which was good, since Brian would have killed them all. He might have officially been a class two, but that was a lie. One that, now that she knew about herself, she had to wonder if it was done on purpose. Proxy had fought, and killed, sixty-plus class fives once. That would put him at something like a class seven, she thought. It didn't totally make sense, but it was true. The thing there is that the Chief had no way to know that at the time. Brian should have been no worse than a man with a gun, in the situation they'd been in at the time.

  The Chief had run though, in fear.

  What if that had been different though? Not cowardice, but the simple knowledge of what was about to happen? She thought about it for a minute, while she cut away the vest, listening, and not blowing up. When that was done her new bomb buddy sent a little cart on a wire, with what seemed like a heavy duty chest on it, and asked her to, gently, put the thing in it and close the lid. Then it got driven away, as the police woman came to see about little miss bombypants.

  Walking over to the Chief and Marcia, who was not too far away, hiding a smirk, Bridget shook her head. She wasn't certain of course, but she waved at Quartz.