The Infected 3: Cast Iron (13 page)

They probably hadn’t though. They just weren’t used to the fact that any time the IPB did anything there was a rash of spurious complaints like this. It was part of an organized harassment campaign targeting Infected. The bigots were everywhere anymore. Even on sunny beaches it seemed.

It was even worse for the people that didn’t have the powers and protection that the average IPB operative had. Some people couldn’t even leave home without being physically attacked. Brian actually dialed the phone and started talking into it like there was a person on the other end. After about twenty seconds he looked up and husked at the men again.

“Full names and badge numbers as well as the specific department you’re with. Failure to provide them will allow me to summarily execute you right here, by the way, and so will lying about who you are.” It sounded like a dare to her, but the men swallowed and gave the information, while trying to claim they weren’t subject to things like death warrants.

Kerry walked over, dressed like a librarian in a whole lot of beige. That or like a church lady. Her hair was up though and she had make-up on.

“Actually we can get a warrant on anyone interfering with IPB business. Normally we wouldn’t bother with something like this, but Proxy has had some difficulties with certain departments. I… How about this, we’ll get him to place a hold on that warrant for a while, and let the local office investigate the issue? I’m sure that if neither of you have a history of doing things like this on purpose, we can just forget the whole thing. I mean, if it was a real kidnapping, we’d want you to come and investigate, but surely you can see that you pulling weapons on federal agents might not look that good, right? Especially since it sort of looked like you were hassling Level and Tobin over the issue, when they weren’t anywhere near the child in question. A miscommunication, I’m sure.” She looked over her shoulder at Proxy and then back at Denis, who was staring at both officers.

They suddenly sighed and shook their heads almost as one. The older man rubbed at his short black hair.

“I… Look, sorry. We weren’t trying to stir up trouble. The honest truth is that we got a report that we figured wasn’t real, about Infected flying away a child, and then we saw the big one over there and the woman with the teeth and got a bit scared. We’re pretty much taught to go aggressive when that happens, since we don’t normally get a second chance if we don’t. It’s not fair to the innocent people, but we can’t tell the difference all the time and if we don’t come at a situation hard, we could end up going home in a body bag.” Whatever Denis was doing to the man, it made him sound legitimately sorry, not like he was just trying to talk his way out of things. The voice was sincere and the other officer looked like he agreed with the statement, nodding and wisely keeping his mouth shut.

It sounded about right to her, but Brian kept talking on the phone, hanging up about a minute later. Then he approached the officers again. Both men dropped hands to their weapons, almost as one. It was a mistake, given the situation, but natural reflex for them. Proxy scared them. He should, Marcia knew. If they were sane at all.

“Oh? Well, if you’re too afraid to do the job right, don’t you think you should maybe, I don’t know, do something else? Your job is to enforce the law for everyone. Not go around using your authority to harass innocent people at the behest of bigots and terrorists. Not to use superior numbers to beat or falsely imprison people that haven’t done anything wrong. If your job requires you to do evil things, you have a duty to society to not do it. You’ve failed in that today. Probably a lot of other times too. The only difference is that right now people that have the power to stop you are involved. You aren’t just going to be able to make any of us disappear into a cell or die in a ditch alongside the road.”

He walked over to the men and smiled. It wasn’t something anyone should ever have to see and they seemed to understand that pretty quickly. He didn’t move, not even blinking, which got the men to follow suit. It was probably a trick, meant to get them to respond physically, Marcia realized. If they drew on him now, while he was just standing there, trying to get a legal document, it would be an honest kill. Legal in any court. The only thing about that was the officers most likely didn’t have that information at all. The younger one let his hand wrap around the handle of the gun and started lifting it ever so slightly when Lancaster’s phone rang.

Holding up one large finger the man listened for a moment, and then made a face. It wasn’t anything overly pleased, but then he just shrugged.

“Alright then. Here.” He held out the phone to Marcia, “it’s for you, the Director?”

She wanted to hold her breath and pray that the man just wanted souvenirs and that the call was a coincidence. That wasn’t her job though, was it? Clearly Charlot would be in charge of that. Possibly Bridget. The girl was practically like the man’s granddaughter after all.

“Turner here.”

“Marcia? I hear there’s a small problem there? Well… We actually have one here as well. Um, Sam, from the head office? He put Mr. Yi’s application for a death warrant in as requested… only… It already came back. I’ve never seen one process that fast. But, you see…” Director Moore stopped talking and took several deep breaths.

“It’s been approved. Only from the sound of the situation there it shouldn’t have been? I need you to handle this. Without any death, if possible? This has all the earmarks of a trap.”

That was the truth. She shook her head trying to fight the mess that was surrounding her out of the way mentally.

“On it
then
. I’ll take care of it.”

4

How the heck she was supposed to stop Proxy from killing the officers she didn’t know. It wasn’t like she could just throw down with him in a hotel lobby. Technically speaking he had a legal right to kill the men then and there and she didn’t have one to even try to stop him, orders or not. That would be a huge fiasco though if it happened.

It wouldn’t really have mattered if the men had been terrorists, rapists, or even pedophiles, it would have been bad. People would hear about it and be afraid that the evil IPB had made the charges up. Killing them for being mildly inconvenient and afraid of Infected people would be absolutely moronic. Almost everyone was afraid of Infected people. Brian wasn’t normally that kind of person, one that did irrational things, but he had a real reason to dislike the police. Several reasons actually. It was still a really bad plan and now she had to get the situation under control. Somehow.

“Right…” She had to play the situation very carefully and get things in the correct order or the men might just die before she could explain why they shouldn’t be killed. So what to do? Lie. Obviously. The only problem there was that Brian would be getting a call from the justice department in a few minutes, confirming that the warrant had gone through, so she couldn’t just claim it had been denied.

It wouldn’t matter that it was a mistake that might be corrected in a few days, or even something that their enemies had arranged to discredit the IPB, the press would be all over it and hate of the Infected would grow as a result. It had the feeling of Braid all over it. The kind of trap they were just supposed to just walk into, one baited in a way that Brian couldn’t get himself out of. Not alone. His hatred and first mode desire to protect others from the general threat of the police was just too strong. Regular people might not get that he really didn’t have a choice in the matter at that moment.

She’d have to be clever then.

“Alright, the Director is putting a freeze on this one Brian. This is clearly just a situation that’s been set up to make us all look bad. So what we’re going to do is let these men walk away now and just send an agent over from the local office in the morning with some pamphlets about what not to do with if a similar situation comes up again. Really, other than drawing down on federal agents and being aggressive at the wrong time these guys didn’t even really do too badly. I know the police aren’t your favorite group as a whole, but…” The rest of the sentence was drowned out by the sirens. It had been working too. She’d seen it in Brian’s eyes before he spun to look out the glass front of the hotel lobby.

The flashing red and blue lights came through the front windows as the ten police cars showed up. Worse, the men inside didn’t just walk in to chat, they hide behind their car doors, weapons trained on the building, like it was a hostage situation or something.

Marcia had to shake her head. It was about as stupid a thing as they could have done.

“How the heck did they even know to show up? I didn’t see either of you calling this in.”

Neither officer said anything; they just stood passively, looking out the window. After about a minute of waiting one of the men outside, who was too close to the building for good combat work, used the speaker on his car to shout at them. Worse, to yell at one of them.

“Surrender now. Brian Yi, come out with your hands up! Anything less than compliance will end in your death. Surrender now!” The last words were nearly screamed, more than a hint of panic in them.

It kind of made sense, after a fashion. Brian had killed police before and gotten away with it. Righteous kills, since they’d been taking part in terrorist or other illegal actions at the time, but that meant that almost every officer in the U.S. was personally afraid of him now.

Calling him out by name made everything much harder though, in the moment. Brian stepped forward, a nine millimeter semi-automatic in hand suddenly. He did it so smoothly Marcia hadn’t even seen him pull it. The kid was getting good. He’d had a lot of practice fighting and wasn’t afraid to kill if he had to.

“Really?” This came from Prime of all people and sounded… Bored.

“Were going to do this one again? I don’t think so. Quartz, why don’t we take these gentlemen out to visit with their friends and explain the situation to them? I’m sure that they’ll understand once they have all the information. Especially if I tell them.” The tone was calm and almost reasonable sounding. Since nothing the people out front had could hurt either of them, it even made sense for them to be the ones to go.

“Good plan Prime, Shall we, gentlemen?” She waved to the men in blue, who didn’t move at first. Finally the older one sighed.

“Yeah. Wait a second though.” He fumbled for his radio; it was smaller than the old ones she was used to seeing, more like a cell phone than anything else. Some new technology she hadn’t kept up on? The IPB had better units, but for the regular police this was nifty.

He spoke a little gruffly then, addressing whoever was on the other side as if they knew each other.

“No, there’s no situation here. The original call was fake… Yeah, death warrants, we heard. Apparently not serious about that. Paperwork error. It happens. We’re leaving now, bringing a couple of people to talk to you, again, this is not a hostile situation.”

Marcia waited for the conversation to end, then went out the door first, since she was the one that would be hardest to hurt. It turned out to be a good plan, since one of the officers who was only about fifteen feet away, shot her, making a hole in her little black dress, just over her heart. A nice placement, she thought, as the impact sent her backwards a step. A single bullet from a handgun wouldn’t take her off her feet and it didn’t hurt at all, but it was annoying. Her new dress was ruined. She hadn’t even worn it before. Did they think she was made of money or something?

She didn’t move other than to stabilize herself grabbing the edge of the doorway, not wanting to escalate things. That meant she got hit six more times before the man in charge started yelling. The police had heard shots fired after all, so they started shooting themselves. The only surprise was that more of them hadn’t joined in.

“Cease fire! Cease fire! Holy fuck you morons, she’s not even armed and hasn’t done anything!” He had to keep yelling for a bit but no one else got hit and the dress was already thrashed. Finally she dusted her front off, seeing three new holes in it and sighed into the quiet that followed the hail of bullets.

“You do realize you owe me a new dress, right? I mean it too. Each of you that shot me, chip in and have that for me by tomorrow. I didn’t pack that much with me and I’m here for a week. Size two.” She stepped all the way out of the door, having been knocked back into it, since she wasn’t all that heavy and forced herself not to point at the man in charge. He wasn’t that old, maybe forty something. Dark skinned and angry looking, but that could just be due to the situation of the moment.

“Now, what the… fudge? You just shot a federal agent. Knowingly. That’s something like ten years in prison, just for pulling the trigger guys. Thank God it didn’t hurt me at all. Now, why don’t you explain this to me in a way I can understand, so that we can resolve this quickly and get the people inside off to dinner? We’re on vacation here. This has got to hurt tourism, shooting people that have come to visit your fair state, don’t you think?” She was trying to be bland about the whole thing, but being shot still got her adrenalin going for some reason. She barely felt it, but that didn’t mean her old fear responses were totally gone.

The man who’d yelled earlier holstered his weapon slowly and stepped out from behind the car door, sounding a bit shaky himself. It was a combat thing. Everyone sane had a reaction to near death situations, and it couldn’t be helped. How you managed it was the important part. People got scared and that made them stupid, which was why they all had plans in place to handle emergency situations. That way all you had to do was remember to follow the rules and you’d have a chance to get out of things alive.