Infected 8: Impulse: A Whole New Day (26 page)

All she had to do was learn how that was done, and she'd be set. Grinning at his back, she moved in beside him, and laid down. The log actually provided cover for her, though there was no one there to see them.

She whispered, which made the man jump, proving that either she was getting pretty good at sneaking around, or that he was kind of not really paying attention.

"Found you." She waited for him to jump and then roll a bit, scrambling away as she watched him with a smile. He did slow down, realizing that she was... Well, herself, and not the cops.

"Um." He sounded brilliant right then, but rallied enough that she didn't hold it against him. He might not be too bright, or he wouldn't have been
shooting
at her and Quartz, but that didn't mean he was mentally challenged either. "I..."

She got it then. Under the house he hadn't really gotten a good look at her. Dressed up in the finest of Police Chief jacket wear as she was. Not that it was a uniform top, but it had to look strange. She had pale bare legs hanging out the back, and bare feet. The soles of her feet were dirty too, as were her knees. Crawling under a house was to blame, and the man in front of her had similar smudges all over him, she noticed. The lower half of her butt probably showed too, but the man was on task enough not to stare at it. No, he looked directly at her face, blinking.

"It's me, Bridget. We met under the house back there?"

"Oh... I just figured that you'd be older." He looked away, his face blank. There was no talking for a while then, as he clearly considered something. "I can't let you risk yourself. We shouldn't have had kids at this thing. Fucking James. That bitch Amanda too. They both should have at least kept the younger people away. We shouldn't have come at all. That woman, the one that was going to speak, do you know who she is?"

"Marcia Turner? Quartz. She's actually sort of famous. If you bother to keep up with that kind of thing. A super hero."

"E-fucking-
zactly
! We have nothing that can touch her. She can run at a hundred miles an hour and throw cars around she's so strong. Worse, even a rocket launcher wouldn't slow her down. How are we supposed to win against
that
? That bomb, that little girl took it out... and just walked away." He eyed her then, the wheels slowly turning. He didn't run, just looking away and muttering instead. "
Fuck
."

"Yep. Here, get your pants off. You aren't a screamer, are you? We should be safe enough, if we hurry, and aren't too loud. I get to come first!" She moved at him, only to find the man actually scurrying away. After half a moment he started to chuckle at least, rather than scream in fear.

"Oh... Yeah. Right. Where were you when I was fourteen? Anyway, I guess I'm under arrest or something? I can't beat you in a fight, even if I
could
get myself to try and hit you. That's... Damn. Fuck." He started to breathe a bit too hard, so she sat up and patted his shoulder.

He tried to shy away, but not in time to avoid her. His face, now that she had a good look at it, seemed a bit older than she would have thought. It was the chubbiness that made him look youthful, she decided. The man was probably about thirty or so, at a guess. He had fine lines around his eyes that would have been out of place on someone much younger than that.

"Don't worry. We'll get you out of this. Um, Martha back there?" She didn't really know how to explain it all in a way that the bigot would believe, not now that she was known to be one of the filth carrying diseased vermin, or whatever he was thinking of her at that moment.

"Martha? Did you... Um, you know, murder her?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes, holding the move for a ten count, while she tried to hold her reaction in. She needed to be nice to this guy, even if he was being insulting right from the start. Then, she found his simply being, at all, to be a bit of an insult.

Finally she patted his arm again, to see if he'd keep flinching. He didn't really. The man just looked at her tiny hand, his face scared. It was a good hand, she knew. Soft on the outside, and smooth in the palm, with perfectly trimmed short nails that were still clean, even after the last few days.

"Nope. Not even close.
She's
one of the evil Infected. I don't mean that in the way you use it either. I mean that she and her friends are trying to start a war that will kill millions, possibly billions, of regular people. They've been using the hate groups to set things in motion for a long time. In fact, their boss, Devorah Timberland, she
started
most of the major organizations. Most people wouldn't even have bothered to think twice about the Infected if not for them. There was mind control involved. We've stopped a good part of that. The IPB did, I mean." She tried to give him a serious look, but he made a face and seemed to think she was making things up.

At least that was how she read his face. What he was really feeling inside, she didn't understand. He was just too scared for that to show through.

"What? I... This is like that Darren Jones thing? Infected that hate themselves... I..."

She shrugged, it wasn't totally wrong, but also not correct.

"Braid, that's Devorah Timberland, and her main cronies, used to be with the IPB. She... Sort of lost it and went bug nuts on us, back in the eighties. Since then she's been orchestrating most of the anti-Infected things, so that she can reduce the population. Or something. No one is really sure what her plan is. We've been fighting them, but they're good and
smart
. Psychic too. So, you know, it's hard. My guess is that Braid put this thing together today so that other hate groups will start attacking Infected people in response. It may not make sense, but hey, you jerks with your bigotry don't, really, most of the time. My guess is that there will be ten to twenty deaths before the Infected band together and start just slaughtering your kind. In self-defense, so who can blame them?" She was breathing a bit hard herself, she realized, so nodded once, firmly and stood up, which got him to do the same.

He stared at her, hard and long, then whispered, as if the military was just a few feet away from them, which simply wasn't the case.

"Are you for real?"

Actually, she was making most of that up, but it did sort of fit, once she'd lied about it for a while. The truth was however that Braid probably hadn't
started
the hate groups. She just used them, when it was handy.

"Like a heart attack. That's why we need you. Say, what's your name, anyway?" That she hadn't gotten it, was an oversight.

"Eugene. Gene Satai."

He didn't look Japanese to her, but that was fine. She didn't look a quarter Chinese, either. She
was
however, so who was she to try and make a point of it?

"Good. Gene, then. Look, I know that you've been told a lot of things about the Infected, most of it bad. Hell, some of that is even just the truth. There are dangerous Infected and a lot of us have emotional problems. We're still just people however. Keep that in mind? It will make what you need to do easier. You see, we need you to spread the word, about Braid and her people. Like Senator Hooper? He was Infected you know. Also working with
her
. Devorah Timberland, the woman that wants you to die. All of you. Not out of hate either. She's mentally gonzo in the head, and can't see another way for the future to turn out. So she'll kill you all, trying to do it. You, all of your buddies too, have to throw in with us, or she'll win. The enemy of my enemy, and so on." She wondered if that kind of thing would have any impact at all, but she sort of doubted it.

She knew that a lot of that was true and she still thought it sounded lame. A single woman had set up the most deadly situation ever faced by human kind? Worse, she was an alien. Bridget didn't even try to explain that part. The man would just run away for sure, if she tried.

"Bull. That... I know the people that I'm working with. James and..."

"And dead Amanda? Were they the kind to actually throw their lives away trying to
slightly
harass someone like Quartz?" She was actually kind of curious. A wasp landed on her arm and tried to sting her, failing as Gene watched, his eyes going wide. She held it up for him to see, then brushed the thing away. Twice. It kept coming back for more. Why, she didn't know.

Gene closed his eyes. "Yeah. They're diehards, all the way down. I mean, I always expected them to do
something
like this. It was a bit off, I guess, now that I think about it. They didn't
tell
anyone what they were planning, first. They're both blabbermouths, you get me? Big talkers? They were always going on about taking a few rocket launchers into that base outside of town. The one that blew up. That, or getting that Proxy guy alone and taking him apart. He doesn't really have any powers, does he?"

She wanted to keep the fellow on task, but since she wasn't exactly sure what her point was, she nodded.

"Yes and no. He's weak, like a regular person, but in pretty good shape. Slow too. He's also got a kind of precognition that helps him fight, and is just incredibly tough. Or he was. That bomb, it wasn't the TCC that did it, you know that right? Most of those people couldn't find their crosses with both hands, if they were on a chain around their necks. No, that was Braid. It
all
is. From that legislative disaster of the Hooper act, to your friends killing themselves to send a message they probably didn't understand and wouldn't have endorsed if they knew what it was. Not that James isn't still alive. I managed to save him."

"Oh. I... what am I supposed to do with all this?"

If he were smart, and at all sane, she would have suggested that he run, get out of the hate groups and find somewhere isolated, off in the country, to live, so that he might survive what was coming if they failed. Since he was probably sane, and of about average intelligence, she gestured for him to walk with her, moving away from the town of Chester. It felt funny to call it that, after all this time. At the base they always just called it
town
. If you were going into town for any reason, it was Chester that you were headed for. There simply was no place else around.

"Right. You have to get the word out to your people and convince them that their leadership is being controlled and influenced by Devorah and her people. They really are. Not just your one group,
all
of them. Then, if you can, go and hide somewhere. A cabin in the woods, or something. Even a tent, if you have to do it. Braid, she might try to kill you. Or have you killed, more likely. Probably by her pawns... so watch your own people. Just me saying this to you might be enough to make that happen. You can call on us though. The IPB. What's left of it. We'll do what we can to help you. No one will believe us, but maybe you can find a way? Make them see the truth, Gene. You may be our best hope in all of this."

He didn't seem to believe her either, but didn't say no. She was willing to bet that he was going to just pretend that the conversation had never taken place as soon as he could get out of there. She didn't really blame him. Bridget was trapped, by her life, who she was and who her friends were, into being involved in the biggest mess the world had ever seen. This man, Gene Satai, he could walk away, and possibly even hide long enough to live, if he didn't mind letting so many other people die. If he refused to try and stop what was coming.

"It's up to you. You can do what's needed and get the word out, basically try to convince people that their hateful ways are wrong and part of a trick. Or you can run. I... Well, I won't blame you if you just take off. We have to try and save people, but it probably won't work. We're
already
in a war, and we're
losing
, Gene. Most people think that it's you and your friends against me, and mine, but they're wrong. It's all of us against an unseen puppet master that we might not be able to beat. So, you know, are you a hero or not? You seemed willing to take action back there. For the enemy, but now that you know the truth, you can
decide
what you want to do. Braid wants you dead, and despite what you may think, most Infected people just want you to not hate them, personally. It doesn't seem like too hard of a decision to make."

Except that the man was already invested in thinking the way he did. They talked about that part of things, with her mainly agreeing with him, except on some of the fine points. She had a different perspective, having known hundreds of Infected people, over the years.

He'd only ever seen two, close up, he admitted. One of those was Marcia.

She smiled at him.

"Right, and the first Infected people that you ever meet, they do what to you? Torture and rape you? Kill your cat? Nope, even after your friends tried to
kill
people, here I am trying to get you out of going to butt rape prison. Think about it." She kept walking, her senses primed for any changes, though none came. It seemed like she'd slightly over estimated the ability of the military to run a protective line. She could hear them, off in the distance, chatting tensely, as they stood in the road. Not actually even watching where they were going.

She did steer their path away through some dense brush, just to be certain they wouldn't be seen. Gene cursed as a thorny plant ripped at him. She hadn't noticed that for herself, so tried to open a big enough path for him, after that. It took longer, but she wasn't done trying to convince him not to be a douche. The thing there was, as clearly afraid as he still was, it seemed to be having some effect. Probably not enough to get him to join their cause, but at least this one man might eventually rethink his anti-her position. Eventually.

"Sure, but you just want to use me. I can do what you want, but after the first few sentences, no one will even be listening any more. No one wants to think that our leadership is corrupted. Even if I just say that they've been tricked, no one will believe me. Not of the ones that are left. After the Hooper thing, a lot of people left the cause. Um, the movement for purity?"