The Infected 3: Cast Iron

by P. S. Power

  “So, what’s that there then? A box of cockroaches or something?” She was too worried to sound bored.

  “What? I don’t have anything. What do you mean?” He tried to look innocent, and it just didn’t work. Instead of arguing about it, Marcia just turned him around by the shoulders and held him by the back of the neck with her right hand while she looked for herself.

  “Um…” She said, not getting it at first. It was just a tiny jar that said it was brown colored paste style food dye. It looked brown. Maybe it had something else in it? Poison… or feces maybe? She didn’t bother trying to open it to see, since she couldn’t smell it anyway. Instead she took the man prisoner. That was fair, right? It could be a terrorism attempt.

  Marcia held the jar carefully, in case it was an explosive, but didn’t really think it was. The kid was pretty obviously just trying to be playful. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been sent in by someone else with a real weapon, but it did mean that crippling him was probably out of bounds. So she called for Bridget to send some help. That got her…

  Karen and Charlot.

  Well, why not? They both had powers and had been IPB operatives at one time. Karen still was. Charlot had retired and both had been on Team one, so hadn’t fought much, but this was a cooking show thing, most likely. If not, she’d deal with it herself.

  “What do we have here?” Charlot sounded sinister when she spoke. A tone that the years had taught Marcia to associate with the woman not being ticked off at all. She just sounded that way.

  “Another sabotage attempt? If it isn’t Carlos from Cake Kings again. You’d think he’d have learned when a little girl totally owned him earlier. Well, nothing for it, we’ll have to make him pay. What do you suggest Marcia? Castration? Hanging? Smearing him with frosting and sending him back in his underwear?” She closed on the man who actually squealed like a little girl.

  “Oh come on! I was ordered to do this. It was all Ginger Harris, our producer. Don’t take it out on me.” He sounded totally unconcerned by the prospect of anything threatened, which probably meant he didn’t really understand the situation.

  Marcia shook her head.

  “No. Until we get what he was carrying checked out, he’s under arrest. If that’s anything other than what the container says, I suggest you tell us right now. This is either a prank, which we can tolerate, I suppose, or it’s something much worse. Too many people have tried to kill us all in the last few months to just let that go. Carlos… That name sounds familiar in regards to terrorism, doesn’t it?” It was very familiar, of course, since Carlos the Jackal was a famous terrorist in the late seventies and early eighties. He’d never been caught, but since that was from before this kid had been born it probably wasn’t him. Unless he could time travel and this was really just the start of his early career, the other things in the past coming later for him.

  It was a scary thought.

  Not a real one though. Not based on the information she had. They were in the middle of a real situation though, and for all she knew, this man could be part of that as a player or pawn. She needed to get things checked out and in a way that wouldn’t leave them in doubt.

  “Is Chris back yet? I need him checked fast and can’t really afford to play with him. If he’s clean… Well, then pick either the frosting or the castration thing and make it happen. Otherwise we need to call in IPB local first and we won’t be going with frosting.” It was a plan.

  One that made Charlot grin as Karen pulled the young man along with her. She didn’t have super strength, but she used to be an Olympic gymnast and had kept in shape. The kid moved with her. Of course he wasn’t exactly fighting either. The red head was cute. It was one of the reasons she was on Team one. Everyone on that team was pretty good looking. Most of the other women made her and Bridget look plain by comparison and Bridget was still growing and filling out. In a couple of years she’d probably look a lot like her grandmother, who was thought of as pretty darned hot by most of the guys.

  Ten minutes later Carlos passed her, covered with a good caking of white frosting that had been rubbed into his hair and over his now bare shoulders and legs. He had on bikini briefs that were all black, but they weren’t thong or anything, so he’d probably live through the walk of shame well enough. She got the door for him, so he wouldn’t get anything on the doorknob. She had to touch it later after all, most likely.

  She smiled.

  “Tell… Ginger Harris was it?” She waited until he nodded.

  “Tell her that Marcia Turner said that the next time this happened she better clear it with us first. We have some real things going on and if I have to retaliate myself it won’t be with something a mere shower can fix.” What that would be she didn’t know, but death came to mind. That was mainly because she was worried though.

  “Right. Right. I’ll tell her, but really, I need this job. I have no other real skills, so you know, what am I supposed to do if I get sent back in again?” He seemed miserable enough that Marcia took pity on him.

  Not much, but a tiny bit.

  “Wear cuter underwear?” She gestured him out, his bare feet clean she realized, meaning he wasn’t leaving footprints.

  As he passed he smiled at her, which probably worked on women most of the time, but at the moment looked pretty spotty, covered in white as he was.

  “You want to see my cute underwear? OK, but maybe we should get a drink first?” He was trying to look alluring, which made her laugh, but not in a mean way.

  “You’re really trying to pick me up while standing in a hall, covered in goop? That take some balls, I’ll grant you that.” She was about to send him on his way when the shooting started.

  Four shots. From the sound she guessed something small, like a thirty-eight, for two of the shots, then one or two other weapons. A nine millimeter, which sounded farther away and muffled. Almost like it was silenced.

  Marcia pushed Carlos back through the door and ran toward the sound, hoping she wasn’t too late.

  7

  It took about ten seconds of running at the fastest speed possible for the carpeted floor to reach the site of the shooting. Two men laid on the ground, covered in blood. The average looking man that had given his name as Larry Wilson had a weapon out, but it was a forty-five, not a nine millimeter. Sure, Marcia knew she could have been wrong as to the sound, but the thirty-eight she’d heard was in the hands of one of the downed forms. The other man didn’t have a weapon out, though there was a holster under the baggy shirt he wore.

  Both the men had a familiar air about then, though neither had much of a face left. Each shot in the back of the head.

  “You alright?” She was looking at the CIA man, who looked to be in shock. He shook his head for a few seconds, then looked down at his unharmed body and nodded.

  “I’m good. I was just headed down the hallway when they stepped out, Morris pulled a gun and fired at me, then they both… Exploded. I didn’t hear anything, it just happened, almost like it was magic. I need to get out of here. I don’t want to explain to my boss what I was doing at a shootout. I’m supposed to be on vacation right now.” He looked around and then shuddered just a tiny bit. The man might be a psychopath and largely without fear, if she was reading the signs correctly, but that didn’t mean adrenalin couldn’t start flowing when things got bad. He looked ready to fight though, not run.

  Marcia stared at the scene, the whole thing not making any sense for a while, until Proxy and Impulse ran up. The girl was letting Brian keep up with her, jogging slowly to the scene instead of rushing in like a moron. Like she had. Then, she could back it up by being almost impossible to hurt. The girl could too, but it was protocol to wait for your teammates when possible.

  “Penny.” Brian looked at the wall and ran over, holding something that wasn’t there. Someone, Marcia understood. Cellophane.

  It explained how someone had just walked up behind the guys and shot them, one after the other. It even explained how she’d heard the
nine. It was probably that the sound had gotten out of the range of whatever kept people from noticing things Penny did. It was an odd thing, but it made sense.

  “Is she hurt? Do we need to…” The hard part of working in the field with the girl was that she pretty much couldn’t be helped if she got hurt. She did it herself, or they got Brian to take care of it. No one else could see her well enough. At all, to be honest. Most people couldn’t even feel her, unless she made their limbs dance all around or something. Mark could see her, when he was using his power, but that wasn’t as useful as it sounded for medical problems. If something was wrong, they’d just have to do their best and get Brian help with the more complex bits. Call Dr. Burrows back at the base and have her walk him through what had to be done.

  “No, I’m fine.” The girl sounded small and far away, almost unheard in the silence of the hallway.

  “I shot them. Those men. I killed them.” She sounded like she was in shock.

  That made sense; the girl hadn’t killed anyone before most likely. Hit a few people, but there was a point after the first time you killed a man that it all hit you solidly. Penny was going to get that now, it seemed. Without anyone really being able to be there for her. Marcia didn’t shake her head, but wanted to and walked over to where Brian was, kneeling beside him, holding her arms out. She thought she felt something then.

  Penny could feel her if nothing else, right? She was less able to tell if the girl was around than most people, but it was about the thought this time, nothing else. She needed to know her people, her team, were there for her.

  When she turned Wilson was gone already. Not that she blamed him, but that would be harder to explain than not. All they really had now was a shooting by an IPB operative of two men. Penny couldn’t really prove it was a righteous shoot, since neither men was Infected. Looking at the hair and body shape, she figured that the second man was probably Harpo. The clothing was nicer than she’d have thought would be his style, but the hair was a distinctive blond fuzz. Wiry and obvious. His mouth was still in place too, so they could check dental records, if it came to it.

  It would have been easier if the men had been Infected though.

  Marcia shrugged.

  Why shouldn’t they have been? She pointed at them and made sure Proxy was looking over at her at least. Others had started to gather, and cameras were rolling already, so she tried to act like what she was saying was real. It was harder to do than it sounded, but she thought she might have gotten it right.

  “Two shooters with ties to a terrorist organization? What’s that Penny? You saw them both use Infected abilities? The bigger one was enraged the whole time and tried to kill an innocent bystander who ran off?” She kept it up for a minute, acting like she was just checking the facts as they came in.

  Brian stood and nodded.

  “I see. Well, that makes sense. A lot of the higher levels of the hate movement have been taken over by self-loathing Infected. Good job, saving everyone in the hotel from their shooting spree Penny. I’d hate to think what would have happened if you hadn’t come along like that.”

  They kept that line of patter up for a while, until Lancaster and the other black suited agents walked up, looking at things calmly. None of them said anything about who the people on the ground were, but Lancaster did make a point of finding Penny. He seemed to be patting her on the back. It was hard to tell, since the man was just waving his hand a little as far as Marcia could tell. That didn’t stop him from doing it, even if he did look like he was having some kind of mental breakdown.

  It was Reyes that got who the bodies were first, since the I.D. they both carried had pictures of them. That was one problem with fake ID. You couldn’t be around people that knew you well. Taking his time he held the plastic licenses out for the others to look at.

  “Damn.” It was dark and muttered, but Marcia had to nod at the man.

  “I know, not a good thing at all.”

  Her first impulse was to run, get everyone out of the building to protect them, then double back and see if anyone was watching. That part still needed to be done, but they couldn’t really afford to leave yet. Sure, her part in this was half done. Now she just needed to find the other two missing men and it would be finished well enough. Finding out what they were doing, either being forced to it or on their own volition, would make her feel better, but wasn’t really important to the mission.

  Whatever they had planed it was too dangerous for her to mess around in. Penny wouldn’t have killed them if they hadn’t seemed about to kill someone themselves. That she’d managed to do it before Wilson bought it was pretty fast work. Most untrained people would have just stood around, waiting to make sense of the situation first. Normally that got people killed. They didn’t have the shoot first mentality needed to really take a life before things got even worse. Instead they froze, trying to understand what they were seeing, like it was a movie playing out in front of them.

  Penny had done her job though and hadn’t complained about it yet even. It was practically a miracle.

  Protocol said they had to wait for the local PD to get to the scene, as well as the local IPB unit, before taking off. It was unfortunate. It meant, given everything, that Proxy had to stay and really, he just had a problem with the cops. It wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t end up being an issue again. Especially now that he was on this bunches radar. If they pulled the normal strong arm crap with him, the whole thing was going to blow up on everyone fast.

  It would be important to try and get that calmed down before anything too severe happened. The hallway was starting to fill with people too, only part of them belonging to the IPB. Most were camera crews, so if Brian had another meltdown, the whole world would get to see it.

  Before she could try to talk Brian into being reasonable, Denis walked over though and gave the black fatigued dressed man a serious look.

  “We have too much going on for you to do anything Yi. I mean, look around.” He didn’t let his attention waiver, but waited while Brian did exactly that, noticing that they were the center of attention. Then he continued without so much as blinking.

  “So if we have a problem with the police, I’ll drop them. You just hold your position and try to “talk me down” if it comes to that. That will make it seem like I’m just overreacting and since no one will be hurt, that should play a lot better on the Ten O’clock news.”

  Brian didn’t make a sound for a long time, but he finally shook his head.

  “I get the idea. I’ll be good. I just… We really, really need to do something about the police. Look at those guys yesterday. They were about to open fire on us, just because a few of us look a bit different. What would they have done if they had Lauren or Peggy alone, or Tobin?” His gaze found those very people, since they’d come out into the hallway when the rest of the cooking show personnel did.

  All their people came in fact, making Marcia realize something.

  “Mark! The cakes. They’re a target; we need to secure the back door.” She didn’t even get to the mention of the full idea before Stasis blinked out of existence. It was a real point though. Normal people wouldn’t have used the death of two people as a distraction to gain entry for something that trivial, but these were TV people. Thinking they were above that kind of thing might just be a mistake. True, she’d probably be wrong, but if she wasn’t it could make a huge difference.

  After all, she wasn’t all that certain that the Cake Kings weren’t doing it because of a deep and abiding hatred of the Infected for instance, meaning that it was a form of terrorism. Maybe they should arrest them all for questioning? That probably wouldn’t play too well, so she let the idea go. For the moment. If they kept doing it though, she was having Christian take a peek at their minds. There were limits after all and pranks were almost always a form of hostility, no matter what anyone claimed.

  They had to wait for a long time before the cops came. The IPB local got there first, even t
hough they were called last, as was required by the rules. The four men that showed up had a familiar look to them, all in great shape, and all in their thirties or forties. Not a lot of young guys made the cut. Normally the IPB was just too hard to get into unless you’d proved yourself mentally stable and secure, meaning it was hard to get agents to fill all the positions. On the good side it meant that they just did their jobs and didn’t try to get in a dick waving competitions with anyone, most of the time at least.

  This time they seemed fine, right up until the police got there.

  “This is a crime scene. Get these fucking freaks out of here now, or we’re placing you all under arrest.” The words had a slightly panicked edge to them, coming from one of the twenty or so police on the scene. The grey haired one, who was a lean man with nicely tanned skin. He didn’t look friendly though, with a constant look of disgust on his face. The lines showed it to be habitual at least and not just about them. It was like life displeased the man and he was going to take it out on everyone else.

  But no one was that disgusted all the time. Not unless it was their first mode. Marcia caught Chris’s eye as she stood in the crowd and mentally tried to convey what she wanted. A half minute later the attractive blond, who was in at least three camera shots at the moment nodded just enough to let her know she was right.

  The man was Infected.

  Also in charge of the police in the area, as far as this crime scene went. It wouldn’t do to out the guy either, since that would just ruin him, most likely. She smiled instead.

  “Material witnesses. This is an IPB investigation; you’re being called in only as a courtesy. Since we believe this is linked to terrorism we’re most likely going to have the FBI and DHS all over this too in a few hours. Best to let us handle it and just guard the perimeter. Both safer for your people and the civilians on the scene, less hassle for you all that way too. Maybe if you moved the cameras back though?” She spoke gently, so her voice wouldn’t carry, but that didn’t help as far as the man in blue was concerned. She wondered what his ability was? Probably nothing that impressive or he’d have been tagged by the IPB by now. You couldn’t be disgusted by everything and have a really active power without it being triggered eventually.