The Infected 3: Cast Iron (39 page)

Speaking in a flat voice, Brian agreed with her assessment.

“Exactly. You got him into place in time. Just in time I think. One of the nukes had gone off and he made the explosion itself go away. It was hard core. I wish I had a cool power like that. Anyway, he took the rest out in two waves. Otherwise we’d all be dead. The people there I mean.”

Lancaster nodded to him and then, for some reason looked at Conroy, as if the man would know what to do next. Not only wasn’t he in charge, but what was there to do? It was time to go home and start picking up the pieces. First they had to make sure that all their people were alright, but after that it was back to the base. Marcia wondered if the Food Network conference would be canceled now.

They loaded up and drove back in silence, listening to the radio the whole time. As expected the response to what Proxy and Director Moore had said met some resistance. Not as much as she’d expected though. She’d kind of thought that maybe half of what was said in the press would give the idea a chance, but it was closer to ninety percent. Senator Hooper was just too well known as a hate monger for the general public to not get the idea.

At least they understood why the IPB might think he was involved. Not all of them believed it by any means. The debate was subdued by the death tolls from D.C. No one mentioned that Ink died trying to save the First Lady at all. They just talked about Level and Bridget doing their jobs. About how they were all still doing their jobs.

Mike sat next to her, hugging her occasionally, trying to comfort her. He got the idea of course. Ink wasn’t her close friend, but they’d worked together and for the mission she’d been his commander. It was her decision that put him in harm’s way. If it hadn’t been for her and for the life she had before, they wouldn’t have been called into the whole mess and he’d still be alive.

Or dead from the nukes, a hard little voice in her head chimed in. After all, if they hadn’t been in place to find out what was going on, they couldn’t have responded as they did. The Director would have been in his office, not taking care of the nuclear bombs coming in. The President and his daughter would be dead too. It might have been a mistake to send in Ink, but he’d been the best person for the job at the time. Maybe if she’d sent Scott? He was more powerful, so it might have worked. Then again she could second guess herself all day long. It had happened, the man was dead and so was the First Lady. The failure was hers, no matter what. She cried again, wrapped in her ex’s arms, wishing that they’d been able to stay together even if she was Infected.

The mood wasn’t a happy one, and it didn’t lift as they made travel plans to get back home. The only good thing came when Mark showed up at the hotel, waiting for them to get there with Scott and Charlot. Peggy nearly tackled Denis as he came in, crying when she saw them. Even Brian got a hug from her, if a very careful one. It was strange, but Marcia got one too and then the muscular woman held her arms out to the air.

“Penny?” Her voice was rich and full of emotion, and her arms closed a bit after a while, wrapping the invisible girl into an embrace as well. They were friends after all.

The strangest thing that happened though took place a few minutes later, when Alan the cooking show guy walked over to them and started passing hugs out as well.

“I know that… One of your friends died. We need to keep going though. We’re moving the conference to D.C. and setting up aid kitchens. I don’t know if you can join us, but Warren already volunteered those of you that can be spared. We know that not all of you can…” He was cut off by a voice from behind him, a female one that sounded shrill, but more sober than the last time Marcia had heard it.

“We don’t need them Alan. It was their kind that did this. Everything bad is because of the freaks. I warned you all but no one would listen. Maybe now you will.” Deb the famous bigot. She had the equally famous anorexic woman behind her. Not as back up, Marcia suspected, since the woman rolled her eyes and crossed her arms while looking disgusted.

“Don’t be a moron Debbie. This was all Hooper’s fault. It’s what we get for letting Republicans run anything except gun clubs.” She turned to look at Mark, since he was the cooking personality leader in the group, and spoke a lot more warmly to him.

“We could use the help. The damage is pretty bad and most of the people there are eating leftovers and military emergency rations right now. No one has power and might not for weeks. We need to get them clean water and decent food. It’s probably just the Network trying to capitalize on tragedy, but it’s still real enough. What do you think?”

Mark looked around and finally nodded.

“I need to clear it with the agency, but we’re going to need more people in D.C. anyway, so having them help out is a good enough thing for the reserve forces to be doing, instead of just standing around. I’ll try to sell the Director on it. Marcia, what are your thoughts on it? You’re the Deputy Director, so if you nix it that’s probably it.” He looked at her as everyone else turned to see her response.

“We need to get Brian back to the base. Apparently this idea that he isn’t going to be going anywhere for weeks was a bit less than honest.” She looked at him, but he just shrugged.

“My power got me where I needed to be at the right time. It worked. I’m beginning to think that the ghost in my head only tells me things that I need to hear. Not exactly a ringing endorsement as to her truthfulness, but I can’t complain overly. Besides, I didn’t have to fight, so that part seems right enough.”

Marcia didn’t get why he couldn’t have worked from the base, but apparently he could see it somehow. Something he’d done there had been important to the whole thing. Or to something else. For a second she wondered if it had been that craziness with the cops. Had that meant something to the greater scheme of things? She doubted it, but there was probably some factor she didn’t see. She noticed a lot, but it would be stupid to think that meant she got it all. Thinking like that led to mistakes.

“We also need Chris, since we’re going to drain every last bit of information from our prisoners before we hand them over to Homeland Security. We should make those arrangements now, before Kerry gets bored watching them on the bus and decides to kill them all while they try to “escape”. She wouldn’t do that normally, but…” They’d helped get one of her friends killed. Her lover.

No one asked why that was, but the agents took over the travel plans. It wasn’t perfect, and meant leaving a lot of their friends in danger, away from home. She didn’t want to do it, but they had to be seen helping. Now more than ever. That meant putting out fires, like Bridget had done and helping to clear rubble, as well as guarding the President and his kid while they grieved. Feeding people and helping with medical supplies wasn’t glamorous, but it was important too.

It was damned sure that the hate groups wouldn’t be helping out. Marcia nearly smiled at the thought, but held it in, since it would make her look like a ghoul if she went around grinning during a tragedy. Instead she finished deciding who’d go and who would stay on the east coast. The hard part was with Peggy and Tobin.

She looked at both of them and then just shrugged.

“Do you want to go back to the base or go and help Mark and the rest?” It was up to them. People would be rude to them if they went, which they didn’t need to hear, but if no one that wasn’t perfect looking ever did anything openly good, no one would know that some Infected that looked a bit funny might have good hearts too. She wasn’t about to order them into action with people that just hated them though. Someone had to do it, but there was no rule saying it had to be them.

Peggy shrugged and muttered something that wouldn’t serve as an answer, but Tobin nodded.

“I’ll go. Some things are more important than feeling comfortable.” He sounded confident and proud in that moment, which was good, since at least three cameras were on them when Marcia looked around. She was used to it, from the base, since everything was captured all the time, but she had to remember it now. Say the wrong thing here and the world might just hear about it by the next day.

“Alright. We’ll go with that then. Peggy, we need a decision in an hour. If you can’t choose for yourself… Flip a coin? There is no wrong choice here.”

That was almost true. For the others there really wasn’t a bad choice, for the moment. For her there could be though. If she sent the wrong people, if she should be consolidating the forces, rather than spreading them out, or if the exact opposite was what would work, it would all be her responsibility. The hard part was that almost everything had good reasons for doing it right now. The IPB needed good publicity, but they needed their people to be safe too. More than anything they needed to know what the hell Hooper was up to.

She didn’t mention it out loud, but that was going to be Penny’s new job. Tracking down and getting data on what the man really had planned. She needed some training first, but it was clear they just didn’t have much time for that. Maybe not even the weeks they’d need. Conroy would have to figure out how to deploy her fast and then they’d need to do everything just right. The real problem was that Hooper was a Senator. The Director thought he was dirty, even illegally so, but he’d been careful not to openly accuse the man of anything, because that would end badly. For them. Instead he’d called on the man to fix what his followers were doing in his name, asked him to speak out against it.

It had been clever, and would be even more so if it worked. Hooper was kind of trapped now by those words. If he didn’t put a message out to end the violence, he’d look culpable. If he did, then it would look like he was admitting that his own people were behind it all. Marcia figured he’d weasel himself out of it, with a vague speech apologizing for how his innocent friends had been lumped in with hate groups simply because they saw the need to protect themselves from the evil Infected. The man was good at things like that after all. Too good for it not to be something other than what it seemed.

It wasn’t the first time, but she kind of wondered if Braid was controlling the man somehow. Feeding him information about what exactly he needed to do to bring about the war she wanted. The woman could have worked her way in with the man; after all, even though she had powers, she wasn’t Infected. Just insane. A person from another world that wanted to help could have a certain draw. If the man even knew he was being manipulated at all.

It was just as likely that he was what he seemed too. A power hungry bigot that lived in constant fear of anyone with more power than he had, no matter what they did with it. That might explain why he tried to kill the President. If it really was him at all. She knew it was, but that didn’t mean she was right. She knew a lot of things to be so, that just weren’t. It was mainly her first mode, she knew since it pointed out what could be, making her suspicious. But it did that to everything. Almost everything. It saved her most of the time, since she didn’t trust anything, but it made hating people harder too. Some people deserved it, like Mic and Weathers. Others, like the kids they’d have with them… that was harder. They didn’t seem good, but was a twelve year old boy responsible for the stupid things other people had taught him?

The trip ended for her, Chris, and Penny that day. Brian too, of course. Peggy opted to go with Denis, even phrasing it that way, since the two were kind of going out. She didn’t know all of it, but it seemed to be more than casual, but not a real relationship. He was attentive enough, but people like Peggy didn’t let others in if they could help it. She’d be afraid that the man would find someone better looking and leave her. That was probably correct too. Hopefully Denis wouldn’t be a vast jerk about it when it happened. He was pretty hot though and famous enough to be getting attention from a lot of women, so it would happen eventually.

Mike sat with her and Brian, with Penny. Christian was the odd one out, sitting toward the back, near the prisoners, but not with them either. She was busily taking things out of the men’s brains as they flew, not wanting to wait, in case she uncovered something important. After two hours she got up from her seat and walked over to the others, nearly sitting on Penny until both Brian and Mike put their hands out to stop her. Mike jumped up, so she could sit, since she looked exhausted. He leaned on the side of Marcia’s comfy cream colored chair so he could listen in.

“I… there’s something wrong Marcia. I kept coming back to why they would have called you, Lancaster and Reyes in on like they did. Mic thinks it was about torturing you, like he said earlier and the other man seemed to think it was a courtesy, extended to old friends so that you wouldn’t die. I’m not sure though, but I think the boy with them knows more about it. He keeps thinking about the woman with long hair that came and told them what to do. The one in charge. I’m not positive, but I think it might have been one of Alpha Squad. The one known as Trivia? I’ve only seen video footage of her, since Brian is always in too much pain to take things from his head on purpose, but that seems right.” She yawned and rubbed her face with both hands.

“Sorry. That means this wasn’t done on accident. It was probably a set up from the get go. I don’t know what the plan really was, but we may have walked right into it.”

Brian shook his head, looked at the aisle like someone was standing there and then let the barest hint of a smile twitch at his mouth.

“Dharma says no. From the data she got from my subconscious mind, it seems more likely that it was meant to be successful, but that…” He froze, looked at the aisle again and then at Chris who was staring at the girl Marcia couldn’t see, as if she’d said something amazing. It was one sign that Brian hadn’t totally lost his mind at least. It was still eerie as all get out when they did that.