The Infected 1: Proxy (34 page)

Stop being a little bitch.

Not gentle, that Dharma girl, but effective. All he had left was the will to fight, so he had to cultivate that. Too many people would die if he just gave up, innocent people that needed him, even if they didn't care about him. Even if they reviled him. Brian would help them if he could.

Not even Dharma came to see him the first day, which was fine, he decided. Spending his time by his bed, exercising as he could, slowly and carefully, trying to regain the strength he'd lost being immobilized. It came back quickly and by the end of the day he could walk to the bathroom himself. Small victories and all, but something to strive for.

The next day they let him go back to his room. He had to wear a monitor and check in once a day, but he'd passed some test or another it seemed. As he walked back to his room alone, he realized something; he felt incredibly embarrassed. Everyone would think he was weak - weaker - and look down on him now.

Trying to kill himself...

Taking a deep breath he just walked down the hall. People would think what they wanted, they didn't want to bother with him anyway, did it really matter what they thought? Head dropping and eyes closing tightly as he walked, he knew it did. Oh, well. Couldn't change it now.

Brian showered and then decided to go work out, dressing slowly. In the hall he thought he heard a voice, but figured it would be residual from the last weeks. He didn't remember everything clearly, but he knew that not everything had seemed normal the whole time.

Walking, slowly at first, he ignored that everyone stared at him, some looks felt more than a little hostile, which just meant he needed to get back into fighting shape faster, not that he'd really ever been there. If people were going to attack him, or betray him again, he'd try to be ready.

No one explained to him why Lady Glory had done it to him, or if it was on purpose or not, just that she had. They even talked around that, pointing out how his own life had kind of set the field for everything.

True he figured, but the real problem had been her. Karen. Well... and his own weakness. He should have resisted harder, he should have fought for control and not given up. Losing that control... That's what had really cost him in the long run. He couldn't let that happen again.

Not ever.

Brian would keep fighting, no matter what, until he couldn't any more. It was that simple.

Slowly, he started to run, shocked to find that he still had some endurance left. Laps fell aside, grinding away, sweat pouring from him. After a few hours Brian moved to the weight machines, lifting small weights, but as many times as he could, then did sit-ups, back extensions and then every other exercise his body would do, until he couldn't move anymore. Brian rested, his back on the floor, feeling vulnerable as people stared at him. So he got up and made himself run more.

At lunch he went and made himself a sandwich, not talking to Mark much. When he offered to make it for him, Brian just shook his head. He'd do it himself, he told the other man, not wanting to put anyone out.

After that he went back to the gym and practiced every move he could remember, unarmed first, until he could hardly move, then armed, knife and stick, waving the practice weapons around in a way that felt comical to him. No one laughed though, not that he saw. Having no other clue as to what he should do, he followed his old pattern and went to the gun range outside.

It occurred to him as he walked that, given everything, no one would probably want him to have access to powerful firearms. He didn't care. They could stop him if they wanted, but if not, he needed to get better. Selecting three handguns, all different types, he loaded them carefully and took twenty extra clips for each, already loaded.

Firing carefully, aiming each time, he fired round after round, right hand going numb, he switched to his left, sucking badly enough that even the fixed black, man-shaped target barely got touched. Working without pause, he emptied each magazine, it being well after dark by the time he finished. He debated doing more, but hunger gnawed at him.

Going to the back of the armory, he dug out some military rations from the back room and ate one that claimed to have some relation to noodles with beef. He could almost see it, if he really tried. Mushy noodles with stringy brown fibers that might have been part of an animal at one time. Disposing of the package when done, he kept the little pack of condiments and napkins, wiping his hands on his sweat pants instead. Then he pulled out an old M-16 and practiced rifle work for a while, until he almost couldn't keep his eyes open any more.

He pulled another handgun from the armory, a nine millimeter, and carried it back to his room, keeping it near him as he slept.

The next day he repeated this, no one talking to him except Mark. He didn't even see the others, he realized with a shrug. Not important enough to bother with he guessed. They were probably avoiding him.

On day six Lancaster came and watched him for a while at the range. He'd been trying to shoot with both hands at one time, his wrists aching from the damage the police had done months ago, but not enough to really keep him from trying.

"Tight group for simultaneous shooting. Have you worked moving targets?" The agent asked casually, almost sounding bored, or like he wanted to come across as really relaxed.

Brian shook his head. "Not good enough for that yet. I'm hoping that by next week I can start. My left hand is still weak, about half as good as the right."

The man didn't say any more, so Brian kept practicing, forcing himself to reload as fast as he could, his fingers stiff and clumsy on the bullets, but knowing that loading a clip could be as important as firing accurately at times. He worked until he ran out of bullets, looking up to find Lancaster still there.

He stopped and blinked a few time, deciding he'd been being rude, the man had obviously come for a reason.

"Sorry. I've been spending a lot of time alone lately. Guess I forgot my manners... Can I help you with something?" He made his voice polite, which actually worked for once, not sounding like a veiled threat or instruction to back off.

Lancaster shrugged. "Yeah. I set up some training for you, if you think you're up to it. Hard core stuff. Not easy... but not stuff just anyone gets either. I mean no one. I had to beg more than a little bit to get this for you. Interested?"

Brian shrugged - why not? Then for the first time in weeks, he smiled. It wasn't a real smile, but his lips moved. Better than nothing, right? He swallowed hard and looked down. Lancaster told him they'd leave at oh-nine-hundred the next day, gear would be provided, all he had to do was show up out front if he wanted to go.

Not knowing what else to say, he started putting things away, so he could get to bed early. Lancaster left without saying goodbye.

Brian wondered what the training would be, and guessed he'd find out soon enough. It would probably involve him being beaten and driven into the ground, but hey, wasn't that everything?

The plane flight took most of a day, which didn't seem too bad given the private jet they rode in. The seats were still big and comfortable, more so this time than the last, because he wasn't nearly as beaten up. His tongue had some sore spots, but almost everything else had healed while he'd been strapped down to the bed on floor eight, and even more so in the week that followed. It felt nice to just sit for a change, to let things go and relax.

Chewing on his upper lip a little, Brian wondered if that meant his ability to enjoy things might come back someday, maybe it had already started to even? He accepting a bottle of filtered water from the attendant - this time a man that smiled with his lips, but had eyes that looked dead and far away - who wore tan fatigues so highly starched they shone in places. Brian thanked the fellow, trying not to sound listless and uncaring. The guy helped him out by getting him water, he could at least try to not be a jerk in return.

The bottle felt damp under his hand, a thin film of condensation forming over the blue and white label, colors probably meant to fool his subconscious mind into thinking the water was extra pure or something. It probably worked, water in a brown-labeled bottle didn't seem nearly as pleasant when he tried to imagine it. When the water was gone Brian got up and immediately placed the container in a small closed bin labeled "recycling". The green plastic container with black felt tip writing on it seemed out of place on the expensive aircraft, but the idea seemed nice. Help save the world and all.

After a couple hours, Lancaster - the only other person on the flight - looked up from the papers and folders he worked on. Setting them aside on the seat next to him, he pulled one out of the pile and handed it to Brian who sat across from him, so that they could talk if the need arose. It hadn't yet, because whatever the job of being an IPB agent was, it seemed to include a lot of reading.

Without thinking about it, Brian put his hand out and took the manila folder. It had black smudges on the outside and looked like either someone had read it over and over again, or that it had passed through hundreds of hands. The agent didn't tell him what it might be about or even ask him to read it. He just looked at Brian, expressionless, until he opened it and started to go through the documents.

At first Brian felt a little surprised, the whole thing being about him. Most of it had to do with the fights he'd had, the problems, the beatings by the police, almost everything. There were even three pages about him having stopped talking to Penny, but no one could figure out why. It was considered important, because so far he'd been the only person to manage it at all.

There were psychological reports on him, most of them more favorable than he'd have thought, given the events of the last few months. The pages looked slick at the corners from being turned so often, a few having a lot more of this than the others, including one page spoke of his increasing isolation and suggested several potential courses of action.

Another page caught his interest a lot more than the others, a list of suggestions that could, potentially, extend his life span. His breathing stopped for a few moments and he went still. Someone thought he could possibly live? A bit longer at least? Now that took him by surprise. It meant increased training, specialized gear, and keeping him psychologically healthy, but it could possibly work. The document was initialed M.T. and summarized that this would only work if he made it happen himself.

Well that just made sense. No one else could live his life for him, could they? That would be so much easier though.

Closing the file, he stared at Lancaster for a minute, then handed it back.

"I'd like to talk to this M.T... If it's allowed. When we get back, I guess. I haven't even been thinking about staying alive for a while now. Originally I was told I could get up to two years, but... Well, I can do simple math. That was based on a much slower rate of events. I passed that threshold almost two months ago. Then again..." Taking a deep breath he shuddered on the exhalation.

"Then again, I'm still here, aren't I? They thought I might make, what, eighteen to twenty-four fights max, probably less. So far I've managed more than twice that." He pointed at the file. "Fifty-nine. That's not even counting the times I just scared people away or got people out of non-violent jams. Scaring off animals or getting kids out of traffic, that stuff."

Lancaster nodded, a small smile on his pale face, he looked like he wanted to encourage Brian to keep talking, but Brian had kind of run out of things to say, so he closed his eyes and concentrated for a few moments. When he opened his eyes Lancaster had gone back to his papers, but looked up expectantly.

Brian sat straighter and leaned forward just a bit. "I think that there's a variable in the equation that hasn't been mapped out yet. I think... maybe... something inside me filters out situations that I can't win or something? I mean, I could definitely die in any of these things - step left instead of going right, that kind of thing - but I haven't gone into anything totally suicidal yet. Even in fights against people that clearly should have killed me on paper, there's always been a loophole, some way to win no matter how unlikely. Maybe... I don't know, if I work things right, could I survive this? For a while at least?"

Without speaking Lancaster handed him another, much thinner, file that looked new and had no smudges at all. Inside there were documents with suggested training, far more intensive armed and unarmed combat, since he had the basics down, advanced survival training, possible ways to send him with weapons and projections which showed that if he had any kind of weapon, his potential life span would go up exponentially. The initial moments of each event - the file called them events not fights - seemed the most crucial in that regard. The initial surprise of his arrival being the biggest part of his power. After mapping out the current fights, it suggested that most of them could have been ended within about twenty seconds if he were armed even with something as simple as a billy club and nearly as fast if all he had was a rock the size of his fist.

After he read it twice he handed that file back too. Agent Lancaster didn't say anything for almost an hour, he just kept working. Brian waited. He'd been shown all this stuff for a reason, he guessed, not just to pass the time. What Lancaster said when he spoke, his tone of voice soft and friendly, shocked the hell out of Brian, coming from a place so different than expected that it seemed bizarre.

"We can get you the training Brian, but... if you want, we can skip it too. Everyone, well, those that have fought at least, knows that you may not want to go on with all this. You've done your part and more already and, if you want... I can make sure you don't have to do it anymore. It's not what I want or what the higher-ups think should be done, but if you're done, you don't have to keep going..."

Brian snorted and shook his head, laughing darkly. The man was offering to kill him during this training thing. Or at least let him die. Where was he two weeks before when that offer would have actually meant something, Brian wondered?

"I have to save them, all those people that die if I fail. I know I can't save them all, but I still have to. You understand, right? If it means living when everything else tells me I should die, then I will. You know that... It's in the file on me there. Page thirty-six." He pointed at the first file, several hundred pages thick, that he'd read first.

"I can't help it, if people are in danger, I'll fight. Fuck it, if they need me, I want to fight. I'll do whatever I have to in order to make this work. Even if it means dying. I tried to off myself about sixty times, but, well, that was f-ed up, sure, but it wasn't me. It was something done to me. Don't mistake that for being what I want."

Lancaster smiled, his eyes sad and tired looking. Brian hadn't given it much thought before, but he must be about forty-five or so. The guy had to have seen way more than Brian ever had, just to be in the position he was. That had to weigh on a soul over time. Dark suit still looking pristine, even after the long flight, the other man nodded and pulled out a small laptop computer. For the next ten minutes they didn't talk.

The agent filled him in on the exercise, a vacation for Brian really, that Lancaster worked out, pulling some strings, spending some old favors and as he'd mentioned before, doing more than a little begging. Brian would get a three day survival training course with what was possibly the best survival expert in the world, which would be followed by four days of living alone in the woods, with nothing but his clothes to help him through. Only pussies took knives with them, the agent told him jovially.

The "vacation" part was that he wouldn't have to put up with anybody staring at him, judging with their eyes, Brian figured.

Cool.

On the ground, at a small private airport, they were met by an older man, gray beard, red and black flannel shirt, long hair tied back in a pony tail and faded blue jeans. He was a thin man for his age and looked, if not hard, at least like he wasn't going to keel over instantly. Then, fifty wasn't all that old anymore and Brian met a lot of old guys that could hand him his behind on a plate and make him eat it in the last months. The man held out his hand and introduced himself as Conroy.

Shaking hands let him feel the calluses and strength the man had. "Brian. Pleased to meet you."

Lancaster told them he'd be back in a week, if Brian lived through the little adventure. The voice sounded humorous at least, as if the expectation was for survival, which was heartening.

The first day was interesting, Conroy showed him six ways to start fires and how to bank one and transport it using ash as an insulator and an array of branches and leaves as a platform. Then he had Brian make a fire using each technique he'd demonstrated, putting each one out as they went. After that they built structures using only branches, pine and fir since the forest had those kinds of trees, and built sleeping platforms. A lot of other information came in a steady stream the whole time, so Brian just filed it away. There would be a test, after all.

Brian half expected the man to kick his over before bed and make Brian sleep on the ground, but instead Conroy just showed him how to insulate his clothing with found materials, explaining that air, if he could cause it to be trapped in small spaces, made one of the best insulators.

"And in cool climates almost anything is better than catching a chill if you can help it. Especially if you can't have a fire for some reason. Say lack of fuel, unsafe conditions or being pursued." The man gave a lot of weight to the last statement, pretty much telling Brian to pay attention to the information now, or else.

Oddly enough Brian got it.

He scooped up pine needles and packed his clothing with them, until he looked about eighty pounds heavier. They poked at him and made him smell like a tree, but when night came and the temperature dropped a bit, it really seemed to help. Like having a heavy jacket instead of just the thin fatigue material.

In the morning they went to a stream and worked on ways to collect water using birch tree bark to make cups and pots, how to wash up, and how to build a small pit boiler, using fire heated rocks and broad leaves to line a small hole Brian cleared with his hands and a stick. They didn't eat much, but Brian had grown used to hunger over the last months.

It didn't feel good, but he didn't feel a need to bitch about it either. It was what it was. In the afternoon his companion started showing him the berries and roots they'd been passing all day long and picked a smooth inch worm from a leaf and held it out to Brian.

"Go ahead," he said with a smile that reached his eyes, his beard shifting. "Watch out for the fuzzy bugs, the smooth ones are almost all edible, but bright colors can mean poison, so watch that too."