The Infected 1: Proxy (28 page)

"In the field, if it comes up, you can use regular super-glue for this, it's what it was designed for you know. Now, let's get moving." Jason sounded gruff for some reason, not angry so much as pressed for time. Marcia followed along to the outdoor range and stood while Jason got ear and eye protection for Brian, then had him fire round after round from different kinds of handguns at a target in front of him, about twenty feet away.

"This is just to get you used to the sound and kick. We'll do this for a week or so, come here each day and start, regardless of who's here or not. Two hundred rounds per day, at least. More if you have time."

They worked until dinner, Brian finding his hands had gone numb from all the firing and hearing protection or not, his ears rang. He still felt starved, but not like he had before. Dinner - meatloaf and mashed potatoes - wasn't his favorite any more. He ate it all anyway.

Penny tried to talk to him, but he ignored her, pretending not to hear. Brian knew it was mean and petty of him, but seeing her sit there, trying to happily make conversation with him, as if she hadn't cut ties between them, kind of pissed him off. If he'd done that to her she'd have gone ape-shit and probably tried to hurt him or trashed his room or something. But she seemed to think that it was all right to hurt him.

He tilted his head, thinking.

That did seem to be the common thought around here. It didn't count if you caused Brian pain. No, just heap it on and he'd come back for more. True, but not nearly as cool as it sounded. If they were going to keep doing that he should get a smiley face or gold star in his record at least. Brian took a deep breath and let it out, shuddering slightly.

Later, sitting in his room in the dark, he waited, hoping that he'd be able to sleep that night. The night before had sucked, and he really wanted to sleep now. Whatever Kern had given him had worn off hours before, and his legs ached to the bone for some reason. He knew he'd run a little further than normal, but that probably wasn't it, since he should be in shape for it now. Maybe the kicking drills of the last few days were getting to him?

A knock came at the door, which he didn't answer. After a minute it came again. He got up, hoping it wouldn't be anything pressing, and found a woman standing there with a medical kit and a smile. He recognized her, she'd worked with him before, but he couldn't recall her name.

"Sara. Doctor Sara. Everyone calls me that. So, sleepy time shot and a muscle relaxant. You should be out till morning." She stood back and looked at him closely.

"Come to medical after lunch tomorrow, all right? I want to check some things. Nothing big, but show up so I don't have to hunt you down. It makes me cranky when I have to do that..." Her look reminded him of a little kid getting stubborn, and she playfully shook her fist at him. She wasn't fat, but she looked a little big for this place, as almost everyone stayed in shape here. It seemed to be a rule or something. Then again, if you knew that at any time you might have to fight to the death, you got yourself into the best condition you could, right? She caught Brian looking at her body and blushed, making him blink. He didn't explain. Kinder to have her think he was a pervert than that she looked a little heavy.

It wasn't like it didn't look cute on her after all.

She grinned at him on the way out, so he made himself smile back, the drugs already taking effect. She seemed nice. He got under the covers and turned on to his least injured side, ten minutes later he fell asleep. His dreams came in fragments, dark cells and people hurting him. For a long time he didn't realize he'd been dreaming at all, the whole thing having the flavor of real life. That... bit. His real life shouldn't be about things like that. No one's should. Dreaming was about the only entertainment he had and that crap was all that was on? Brian decided he really needed to see about that television some time soon.

The next day he jogged painfully around the track. It took half an hour of work to warm up enough for the whole thing not to hurt much anymore, and another hour to feel good to him. Karen came and stared at him, so he waved to her, but she gave him a strange look and walked away, leaving again. Did his waving seem needy maybe? It probably didn't seem suave, he knew, but that shouldn't matter, since he wasn't trying to pick her up. Right? After lunch he headed over to medical to find Doctor Sara, which didn't take long since she'd waited for him and had an actual examination room ready. He hadn't rated a real examination room yet, he told her.

She held a clipboard and looked at the pages on it, twenty or so it looked like at a glance.

"Let's get your height and weight, then vitals. If you'll kick off your shoes and get on the scale?" After he did, she worked the little weights, finally writing something down. "One seventy-four"

He felt surprised, he hadn't been that light since college, his sophomore year if he remembered correctly. Height came in at five-nine, like always. Still a little heavy, but not too bad he thought. Doctor Sara agreed.

"That's the top end of healthy for your statistics, given your current muscle mass, but it's not bad. Your body fat level is a bit high for the amount of work you've been doing, but that should fix itself, you've only had a couple of months of heavy training, right?"

Brian shrugged, it hurt.

"Less than that really. Unless we're counting being locked up in a cell and starved as work. But even if we are the first hospital stay can't really count, can it?"

After a few minutes she checked the chart again and seemed to be counting something.

"Brian, how many events have you had since you've been here?"

His blank look must have clued her in to the fact he didn't really understand her, so she explained that she meant fights. He had to count on his fingers and ask if she meant each "event" or each person he'd fought with. She laughed.

"Just things where you actually had to..." She made little movements in the air approximating punching and a little kick with her right foot. It looked horribly cute, her being in a pair of blue scrubs and all.

"Not really sure, between twenty and twenty-five, I think. That's not counting practice with Beatdown. That should count though. I'm beginning to see how the woman got the name." Laughing hollowly he pointed out the wounds on his body that were her work.

"She cuts you? What the fuck! Glad I don't have her as my martial arts instructor, I'd be dead by now." Sara grinned and sent him off then, so he wouldn't be late for his lessons.

Brian shook his head feeling a little bit like she should have been a little more concerned about the harsh training he'd been getting. Then again, maybe even the doctors here just accepted that he had to be pushed that hard? It... well, it was insane, but really, he kind of did. He didn't have time to learn the real way.

The next few weeks went on the same way, more or less. Brian took people's places several times, fighting to the death more than once, and Marcia stopped cutting him as much, but made up for it with increased bruising. He didn't talk to Penny, but she seemed fine with that so he let it go and tried to focus on his own work. It still hurt a bit, he'd thought they might be real friends at one point. Apparently she hadn't.

The only thing he actually enjoyed any more was running in the mornings. And eating. That at least, running, had gotten easier. Karen stopped coming at all, and no one mentioned it, so he didn't either. He just did the exercises she'd shown him before as soon as he'd healed enough to make it work. For the most part, except Marcia, Mark, and Jason, people ignored him, giving him funny looks and otherwise not even talking to him.

To his surprise he realized that he'd almost made it to his birthday, only two days away, a kind of milestone for him, twenty-three. He kind of found it hard to believe and wondered to himself if he was going to die the next day, like the bomber pilot three days from retirement in a war movie. Well, he'd be careful not to show anyone the old photo of his "girl back home" since that always seemed to be the thing that really got that guy in trouble.

No need to tempt fate.

At three he went outside to the range, only to find a crowd had gathered near the front gate, chanting something. Poorly. It was almost an incoherent mess of sounds, with at least three different ideas being used by different groups. The only thing they had in common was that they all sounded aggressive.

He looked at the weapons that had been laid out for him that day, by Jason Montrose no doubt, and picked up a fifty caliber machine gun, a huge thing that he could barely hold and fire, but that looked damned impressive. It had a belt feed and rounds as thick as his index finger and nearly as long as his hand. The black and silver weapon pointed upward, he approached the gate to see what the situation might be.

On his side of the gate, people stood as if to prevent entry, Lauren and Prime in the middle - at the front, looking massive and intimidating - to each side most of first and second team were arrayed out in a single file line, looking ready to fight.

Lady Glory moved to the front and spoke loudly, over a bullhorn, her voice still sounded digitized and tinny, which might be an effect of her power, after all if it made her glow, it could also be distorting a lot about her. Possibly even her attitude? Brian wondered. She didn't seem quite all together mentally as far as he could tell.

"We understand your fear friends, but we can't help being what we are... Please, let's not have violence here today..."

On the other side of the fence, between the protesters and the fence, were riot police in full gear, they held rifles and stood facing inward, their backs to the crowd. They had clear plastic shields, which they hit with the side of the rifles, trying to intimidate the people inside the compound. Kind of brilliant, facing off against the IPB like that. If he changed the definition of "brilliant" to mean mentally challenged at least.

Morons.

A large tank-like thing pulled up, and aimed what looked like a huge gun at them. Brian pointed the fifty caliber without thinking and almost opened fire before realizing it was just a battering ram and not something more dangerous.

Pointing the barrel back up, he walked forward until he stood behind, but between Lauren and Prime. They were both bullet proof, if it came to shooting, so that meant leaving them in front just made sense.

"Guys, what's going on here? Did someone get too rowdy last night, drinking in town? Sleep with the mayors daughter or something? Prime? Tell me you didn't get his wife pregnant again..." Speaking loudly so as to be heard over the chanting, he waited. Lauren turned and saw him, then looked back at the threat.

"Not... really sure, though that would at least be a reason... they just showed up about twenty minutes ago, obviously organized, but a lot of police seem to be with them. Until we learn otherwise we have orders to treat them as a hostile military force, so if they attack us, we fight back. That's all we know." The giant armored woman sounded hesitant. Scared.

The golden man nodded and looked down at him slightly.

"Charlot told me to expect something like this about a week ago. It seems related to the Hooper bill, which will basically make it illegal to be Infected. The government would be allowed to arrest anyone, just on the suspicion they might be Infected, and execute wholesale anyone deemed "beyond their ability to control". The danger for us there is that, by definition, all of us here are beyond their ability to really control. We choose to work for them. That doesn't mean they could lock us up easily. We have administration people that would be put to death under those rules. Hell, we have food service people and doctors that wouldn't make the cut."

He sounded worried about it, which was out of keeping with his ego, wasn't it? Because as far as Brian could tell he wasn't worried about himself, just the others.

The name Hooper sounded familiar to Brian, but he had to think about it for a bit to make the connection. " Hooper... like the little girl and her nanny that Lauren saved?"

The black and brown armored giant looked down at him, an obvious and huge gesture though only her head actually moved.

"I seem to remember you tackling a man a dozen times outside of your power class and getting the girl to safety, not me, but yes, that Hooper's father. Instead of seeing it as good guys versus bad, he seems to have fixated on the idea of bad infected being responsible for everything that ever happens in the world. Possibly including his parking tickets and bad attitude." Her voice, coming from behind the solid face plate, echoed a bit, sounding lonely and sad.

Brian belatedly got down on the ground and set up the two-legged stand on the weapon in case he had to fire it. That should have been automatic, but the fifty caliber was just too new to him. The small metal legs folded down, letting him take aim far more accurately than if he had to try and hold the thing to fire it. He targeted the armored vehicles tracks on the right side. If it moved on them, it wouldn't get far.

Then they all waited.

The crowd grew anxious and finally rushed the fence about an hour later, patience seeming to be in short supply. Brian didn't fire, since the vehicle hadn't moved and hitting the crowd with this weapon would simply be murder. Even though things were flung over the fence, no one on his side moved much, though a few dodged missiles. A full and closed soda bottle flew over the fence, a remarkable throw, since it came from the back of the crowd, and hit Brian in the back with a loud thud, knocking the wind out of him.