A Very Good Man (59 page)

  Would be.

  Her fear of the Infected bordered on pathological. As far as he knew, she didn't have a reason to feel that way, no attacks on her or her family or even close friends had ever been mentioned. That, of course, didn't stop her from hating. She almost seemed to revel in it at times, like those insane people back in the sixties, just before the virus had shown up, who'd actually argued that some people weren't as good as others due to the color of their skin. Like something that stupid could ever be important? Funny how no one worried about black and white, when purple was setting their car on fire with his mind, Brian mused, smiling at the old joke painfully. His upper lip bled.

  The whole thing needed to be explained quickly or Carla might shoot him when he walked out the door. Or maybe stab, because she might not have a gun. It wasn't as if she'd ever liked him anyway so giving her a reason to make trouble would be a bad idea. For a while now the chubby strawberry blond had subtly been lobbying Doug to kick him out, but he wouldn't do it. They were friends and Brian was good about paying his half of the rent each month, doing that before even buying food for himself.

  Well, Doug wouldn't before. Now he might. Infected people were dangerous. Not all of them, sure, but that was like arguing that only some gang members were psycho killers. Most people would be afraid to live with one anyway, regardless of how often they claimed to be nice and kind. Brian didn't know what he'd do, but figured that leaving would be the best thing for the others. No need to make them any more uncomfortable about all this than he had to. Besides, did he even deserve a home anymore? After he failed that woman like that?

  Brian pushed the bathroom door open just as Carla let the police in, pointing at him without pause, screaming, “There he is, there he is!” She didn't just call it out, it held fear and panic in the tone, almost making Brian look over his shoulder to see what had frightened her.

  The screaming set off the police even as he tried to explain, they shouted over him when he tried to explain that all the blood was his and that he hadn't done anything wrong. It made it a little hard to be heard. It also seemed a little rude, since this was his house and he was obviously the one hurt here, not that anyone in the room had done it.

  “Down on the floor, now!” An officer only a little taller than himself, maybe five-eleven, with a blond mustache who might have been about thirty, stood with his gun already drawn. It wasn't pointed at him, not yet, just the stained blue carpet under their feet. The look on his face said that he wasn't just being an asshole to Brian at the moment, but made a practice of it all the time, which left his face frozen in a perpetual sneer. The man screamed nearly incoherently at him. Brian did his best to comply, explaining as calmly as he could, that he was injured but was doing what they wanted.

  “Shut up! On the floor now!” For the second time that night guns were trained on him. It made him mad, since he hadn't done anything wrong, except fail, but nothing to arrest him over. Being Infected wasn't illegal, just unpopular.

  Brian slowly started down to his knees, but his ribs, the broken ones on the right, twinged horribly, shooting pain through so hard that his right hand went to upper thigh as he doubled over, not able to stop the movement. The cops all started screaming then, so he couldn't understand any of them. He knew they wanted him to get his hands up, so he tried, obviously in severe pain. The blond cop in front, still pointing his gun, moved forward quickly and kicked him in the ribs, the place where they hurt most already, or close enough that Brian couldn't tell the difference. It was a stomping motion with his left foot that cause Brian to fall, clutching himself as he blacked out from the pain.

  When he came to his eyes burned so much he couldn't open them. Worse than the alcohol and salt earlier. His whole face burned like it had been put on a stove burner. It felt harsher than that, like fire had been put in his eyes, worse even than the time at a family cook-out when an ember from the bonfire had hit his face.

  Pepper spray? While he'd been out? They weren't supposed to do that, were they? Had they pried his eyes open to put it in or something?

  For some reason his body seized, over and over again, pain shaking him. He heard angry voices yelling but couldn't do what they demanded, his arm wouldn't go behind him, because of the ribs. That didn't really matter, because every five seconds the taser forced his hands to convulse forward no matter what he did. This went on until the machine stopped working, two or three minutes later, Brian guessed. The battery had run out. He knew that because the man holding the device called it out to the room.

  Then they hit him with things, blows with sticks and kicks it felt like, he couldn't get his eyes open long enough to see it, which made it worse in a way. There was no way to know what would hurt next.

  Finally his arms were ripped around behind his back, making it nearly impossible to breath. Brian really felt like he was going to die when someone hit or kicked him in the ribs again, this time clearly targeting where they knew he was injured. Even though he was already handcuffed and hadn't been fighting at all.

  Brian felt a wave of despair come over him. He couldn't even breath to explain that he hadn't done anything. He passed out, which seemed a mercy.

  Later Brian woke up in a beige room, at an orange Formica table, feet and hands cuffed to a short chain, a metal clip had been put through the links of the chain to shorten it, so even sitting down he couldn't straighten his legs or back at all. It left him bent, the fat from his stomach pushing against his legs, just a little. He could barely get any air in, the hunched over position made it hurt too much to even try for anything deeper than a sip of air. After a while, an hour maybe, a man, large and powerful looking, with dark skin and hair came into the room. This new man wore a green and tan uniform, different from the blue the police had worn. Making small sounds, grunting, the guy did something behind him, turning off a camera maybe? Then he walked around so Brian could seen him slowly putting on black leather gloves.

  “So you like fighting with cops? We'll see how you like this you Infected fuck.”

  Then the man beat him for about an hour. By the end of it, the little vision he'd gotten back had vanished again and at least one tooth, toward the back on the right, came out from the repeated blows. It hurt and he kept blacking out from the pain, only to wake and find the man holding his nose closed or putting a hand over his mouth.

  “You're not so tough now, are you, you piece of shit?” The man sounded eerily calm and angry at the same time, a less jovial version of the freaks in the bar. At least they'd laughed occasionally as they beat him.

  The man, apparently bored or tired from all his hard work, called in several others who carried Brian to a tiny cell, a metal door from the sound opened, a scent of old urine and desperation coming from whatever lay behind it. Then they forced his hands behind his back again and fastened the chain to his legs, which they bent at the knee so that his feet nearly touched the chain between his wrists. Chuckling evilly they left him lying like this on his stomach.

  Brian didn't know how long he laid there, not able to move, pain coursing through him if he tried to do anything at all. It was just as bad if he didn't move half the time, arms and legs cramping painfully from the odd position. Fighting for breath and not making it, a feeling of panic came over him, telling Brian that he was about to die here. No one came to let him ask for a lawyer or to take him to a doctor. They just left him there.

  To die.

  At first, maybe a day or two later, he'd thought that his eyes were still swollen shut, but realized after a while that blinking was possible. At least with his right eye. Then, he thought they'd managed to beat him into blindness. Eventually Brian realized it was probably just pitch black in the little room and clung to that idea. It was better than being blind after all.

  He didn't know it's size, but the room sounded small, if that meant anything, no echo's from his breathing or anything noticeable to clue him in.

  Some time later, Brian couldn't tell how long, the door opened and he was sprayed with water, enough hit his mouth for a few tiny swallows. The man at the doors voice sounded hard and more than a little evil, but that didn't surprise Brian too much, all police seemed to be wicked and bad now. Maybe it was a prerequisite for the job?

  He knew it probably wasn't really true, but there'd been a lot of cops beating him and he hadn't even tried to do anything wrong, not to anyone. More to the point, if only the “bad cops” had beaten him, why hadn't the supposedly good ones tried to help him at all? No one had even called out that he'd probably had enough.

  “Drink up. It's your last meal, bitch.” The man came in and kicked him in the chest, stomach and groin over and over again for a while, forcing pain to sear through him, a feeling that seemed like his bones themselves hurt under the greater pain. Then, the asshole laughed as he left. Brian couldn't be sure, but he thought it might be the same one that had attacked him at the house, mustache guy with the horrible case of ass face. Brian felt helpless, under the pain, but really wanted to kill the guy.

  At that moment, Brian would have killed them all. All police everywhere. If he could have. Maybe that rage was his main emotional thing? He doubted it though, because that feeling faded as he blacked out and when he came to again all he felt was sad that he hadn't saved the woman in the bar.   Brian didn't know how he knew it with such certainty, other than the obvious failure. The knowledge just rested in his mind, sitting there, taunting him with the pure fact of the matter.

  He hadn't even bought her time to run. Head against the cold cement, he cried for her, face half in the standing water on the floor, built up to nearly an quarter of an inch deep. For some reason the room didn't have a drain.

  He couldn't drink the water on the floor, it smelled bad enough that he instinctively knew it wasn't safe. Worse, most of that stench had come off Brian, a scent of rot from his wounds, swollen and infected by now most likely. Regular infection that could have been treated with drugs, antibiotics, if the police weren't killing him.

  Desperate, Brian forced himself to check out the cell finally, screaming in pain and grunting as he rolled, the only form of movement left. Roll on to his side, scoot a few inches over, grunt and gasp for breath. Then repeat. The water slapped his face and drove into his mouth over and over again. He spit it all out, even dying of thirst as he was. Behind his back the hands didn't have any feeling, except a bitter coldness he suspected would be due to either nerve damage or blood being cut off by the cuffs. Not that it mattered, but he knew his hands might be dead, starved of everything they needed to stay alive. At least they didn't hurt anymore.

  It was something.

  A bright side to the whole mess.

  After a long time of rolling he discovered that the room wasn't really empty, it had a toilet made of metal but no bed or cot that he could find. The metal felt cold, like there was water inside, but he couldn't reach it. The best he could manage was to rest his face against the outside and try to lick condensation from it. Water was right there, inches away, teasing him. He didn't know for sure, but he thought he could smell it, clean water, right up there, where Brian couldn't possibly reach it.

  If he'd been healthy, unwounded and in much better shape... it still would have been out of reach. The cuffs and chains were just too short. Brian thought he could have balanced on his knees, maybe, if he could get up on them. That just didn't seem likely at all. The best he managed in this state took him to a wall, screaming again from the effort. He couldn't even work himself part way up, much less rise enough to be of use.

  Thirst dug in, his throat raw and parched like he'd never even imagined it could be. Inside Brian knew at that moment, if someone would free his hands, he'd commit murder for a big-gulp of Pepsi. Or even Dr. Pepper. Literally bash someone's brains in for it. Or kick them in the groin for some water. He started to chuckle, a low, pain-filled thing that sounded more like a sob. Brian got that the police were bad, evil even, and meant to kill him, but he couldn't understand how come they hadn't done it already. Why torture him first? What did they gain from it?