Underground Page 9

  It had been a bagel incident, not a fight, but the wound had still healed just as fast.

  That, plus his strength and speed pretty much meant that he wasn’t going down under any kind of normal amount of force. Which didn’t mean he could be sloppy about life. After all, if they were really attacked there at the Underground, it would be the Infected Protection Bureau that came for them. He was good in a fight, especially if he had a firearm, but nothing he could do would even slow down Impulse or some of the others they had working for them.

  Proxy came to mind. The man would just show up, with no warning and slaughter people. Then the news was forced to report that he’d been fighting killers, but there were never any bodies to show that as being true.

  He turned his mind away from that sort of thing, since so far the only people that had really tried to hassle them were some street gangs and the police. Even they, both groups, had gone away after a while. They hadn’t really had to rough up the cops, even. Just talk to them and explain that it might be best if they didn’t hassle their people too often.

  That made the thing from the day before a bit weird, really. The cops had come, just like Martha had said they would. Instead of invading and shooting fifteen people, they’d left, after the trick that Gift and the others had pulled off. It was the better plan, but unexpected.

  King Rat waved and left, not saying anything else, since Clover was on duty. That meant hiding as well as he could while still being able to see in at least three different directions. Really, there were two important ones from the first position. He was the one that would see most people trying to come in. If they left he might notice them, depending on how secretive they were about it.

  It would be hard to avoid being seen, but he was pretty certain that he could have done it. It would just take heading East, and hugging the dilapidated buildings on that side, so that no one could see him from the window above.

  Nothing happened while he waited for the next shift to start. When Grady No-Eyes got there, the man waved at him, then whistled, which Clover did back, to show that he was the one on shift.

  “Hey… I though King was on this shift.”

  Clover didn’t share too much, since it wasn’t his job to tell on anyone. Not that day.

  “Called away. I took the last half hour or so. Nothing to report. No one in or out today.”

  A bit gruffly, Grady shook his head.

  “After yesterday there wouldn’t be, would there? Freaking fuzz. Why don’t they just leave us alone? I mean, I get it, we’re Infected. We take care of shit here, though. No one goes off on the normies in the city, we don’t steal from them too much or anything. Not that the cops can prove. They just like to hassle people to prove their dicks aren’t as tiny as we all think.”

  Clover nodded then, agreeing, more or less.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with have a little penis. I’d trade what I have for something too small, in a heartbeat. As it is, I need to find a nice porn starlet to hook up with so I don’t have to see the look of terror on women’s faces all the time.” He felt bad, pointing that out, so added more, trying to fix it. “Not that I get to have that problem too often.”

  There was a darting glance at his crotch, which was covered, but clearly showed that he wasn’t joking on that score.

  Grady snorted a bit.

  “If you think that’s a problem, I’d gladly trade you the whole thing. Even the goat man thing. Eyes would be handy, you know?”

  He did, actually. Which was why he wouldn’t have made that particular trade with the other man. Though, in a way it might be all right. As long as he wore dark glasses or goggles, no one would think that Grady was anything other than a normie. He could have shaved and primped a bit, maybe gotten a nice suit, but other than the lack of eyes in his head, the man could easily pass. That probably meant he could even get dates, if he were careful about it.

  That required trying though. A thing that was hard to do, after enough rejection.

  “I’m out, then. You have the shift.” They weren’t formal that way, but it was polite to say something like that, rather than just leaving.

  A half hour of nothing happening caused him to be a bit lazy about going back. He should have walked directly next to the building, using the detritus and power poles as partial cover. He was thinking about that as he suddenly flew forward. Hit in the back. Hard enough to rock him forward, without taking him off his hooves. Clover had to take a step though, which meant that the bullet that had impacted him was pretty powerful. A fifty-cal., probably. A single shot, most likely, since he wasn’t hit again, instantly.

  Spinning in place, he heard where the shot came from. There was movement in the window, nearly a mile away. At least he thought so. It was too hard to really make out. It was the right place though. Where the bullet had come from. He whistled, moving to the right, behind a street sign pole. That wasn’t even nearly enough cover, of course.

  Then, for the first time in a very long while, he yelled.

  “Sniper to the North! Range estimate one mile. Sniper! Take cover!” He didn’t know if the other men and women on guard would know that they needed to hide, really. There wouldn’t be anyone directly visible. If it wasn’t for the ache between his shoulders, which was fading, if slowly, he wouldn’t have noticed it himself. The noise had been a gun shot, but it was across town. Up, as well. From a high-rise building.

  After a moment, there was more shouting.

  “Sniper! Get under cover!”

  On the ground, by his feet, was a single, rather flat, piece of lead. It was huge, but not part of his back at the moment, which was kind of impressive. It made him wonder how hard he’d been murdering that bagel the one time, actually. The real truth was probably that he was proof against blunt impacts and more vulnerable to slicing or even stabbing. It wasn’t a thing that he’d ever planned to test out. The metal felt warm to the touch, but not burning. It probably was though.

  He carried it anyway, using the building as cover as he ran inside, not shouting as he did it. After all, Underground was safe from a sniper. The big issue was that it could be an ongoing attack, or even the prelude to something more aggressive. He didn’t know, so needed to pass the information back to the others.

  As he moved, he saw that Dan, Carrot and Pam were all outside still. Standing there on the ground, looking at him. That meant Dan was, thankfully done with his task of the moment.

  “Run! Get inside! There’s a sniper!” He didn’t have to call the words out twice.

  Dan reacted first, moving with enough speed that an Olympic sprinter would have been hard pressed to catch him. Pam grabbed C. C. by the arm and tugged her into motion, apparently believing him that it might not be safe outside. They worked the door for him, with Pam slamming it shut once they were inside. Breathless or not, for some of the others, they moved, without him needing to explain why it was important.

  They all made noise, but he did the most that way. His great weight and hard cloven hooves making a sound that reminded him a bit of machine gun fire. Even if he was doing it in the dark. There was no time for safety. Not for him. The others were behind him, moving at a quick, but more sane speed. As soon as he was inside, he started shouting.

  “We’re under attack. Sniper, from the North, estimated range one mile. In a high rise. One shot fired.” That he knew of. He had to call this out three times before anyone came. It was Seven, looking like a twelve-year-old girl. Being one, if he had it right.

  She came out of the office, looking scared.

  “I don’t know what to do. Um… Help!” Instead of people coming to rescue the girl at a run, she was simply someone else. A middle-aged man in a decent seeming gray suit, with a blue tie.

  He barked orders, but not at Clover, or the others who came in behind him. It was more for the rest of the people there.

  “We need Pod to the head office, stat! Mindy, Complex and Nero, too. Right now! Put up a call!”

  For some
reason that didn’t do much, even if Clover got the idea. It would be faster to summon people, if everyone started yelling about it.

  So he did it, with Pam-Pam and C. C. adding their voices after a moment. Dan didn’t. No one had told him to.

  Taking a breath anyway, he turned to Dan.

  “Go and get Pod. Bring her here, please. Gently, but as fast as she can go without hurting herself.” There was no directive for him to save himself that way. That was one of the things that Dan’s powers seemed to actually handle for him. He never got hurt while following orders.

  Which, if that truly held, probably meant the man was a class five or so. At least if anyone ever ordered him to take out a few hundred soldiers at one time. How that would happen, Clover didn’t know. It would, he thought. Not that the man needed to be doing that just then.

  At the moment, he sprinted away, moving even faster than he had outside. It was probably at the edge between human and more than that, without truly being noticeable super speed. Enough to break a record or two, probably. The official ones that Infected people weren’t allowed in on.

  Then, lacking anything better to do, he screamed for a while. Calling out, as coherently as possible, trying to get people to summon who they needed that day. It didn’t really work. They managed to get Pod though, and as she moved into the main business office to change, so she could use her powers, Complex showed up. The man was out of breath, which showed that he’d at least tried to get there as soon as possible.

  Clover held up the lead he had in his right hand. Between his thumb and forefinger, for everyone to see.

  “Probably a fifty-caliber round. It hit me in the back. Thankfully it was just me. I don’t know if the shooting continued. I was walking back from position one when it happened. I didn’t make out anything from the shooter, but they were at least a mile off. To the north, in the big glass building that way.” He pointed, to show what direction he meant. “That… Even if they were aiming for my head, that was a good shot at that kind of distance. Not just professional level, but the top of that kind of thing, at the very least. Maybe a person with a power. Sure Shot or something?” That was an IPB guy, but he’d heard about the man several times on various ranges.

  His power let him hit anything, with any kind of projectile. Including bullets.

  It probably wasn’t him. If it was, then the thing would have hit his head. Even if that didn’t break open, his brain would have been scrambled by it. Possibly on a lethal level.

  Taking his left arm in her warm hand, Pam-Pam just held on to him. As if for luck, or thinking he might run off. Like a little kid. He was good that way though, for the moment. Not that he wasn’t holding it out as an option for later. After all, even if it didn’t really do much to him, someone had just tried to kill him. There was no reason to think that it wouldn’t happen again. Worse, other than staying inside or turning into ninjas, there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.

  A motivated killer could sit in that tower for days, waiting for a good target to show up. Then, as soon as one did, bang. They’d be dead, with their head gone or a portion of their spine removed. The hard way. Not, of course, that he knew of an easy way to remove a spine. No matter how you did it, that kind of thing was kind of going to hurt.

  Complex looked away, his beard twitching as he made faces about the whole thing. It was kind of clear that he wasn’t grinning about the excitement. In fact, he seemed annoyed, more than anything else.

  “We can go into lockdown, but we have people out there. Our eyes. Any suggestions on what we should do?”

  Clover had one, which he kind of barked at the man. It wasn’t really fair of him to do that, but they needed intel, more than they did safety.

  “Let Pod get set up. As soon as she reports, we’ll know what to do. Right now, we need a guard on the door, in case this is an invasion coming. I’ll do that. Pam, you and the others stay here, but let me know what’s going on ASAP. Got it?” He nearly growled the last two words.

  No one even blinked at him, just agreeing with him.

  Complex waved at the office.

  “We have this then. Are you going outside?”

  He had to, if anything was going to happen. That would leave him trapped, if they went into lockdown. If that happened, the doors would vanish. Anyone not safely inside would be stuck. Out in the world, where, for him and most of the guards, they simply didn’t fit in. Not that he couldn’t survive on the outside. He’d done it before.

  “Yeah. I’m outside. Give me two minutes, then lock up behind me. Leave a door, so I can knock, if anything happens.”

  He moved then, not realizing that Carrot was right behind him until she spoke, in the dark. That was spooky and nearly had her hit, as he jumped.

  “I’ll stay here, in the hallway. So that you can send messages the other way?”

  He nearly growled at her not to be stupid, but it wasn’t a poor plan at all. In fact, it was verging on brilliant, since they might need to do exactly that. They didn’t have radios or anything like that. Which was an oversight. They were going to get some if at all possible. Even if he had to yell at people and be embarrassed over it later.

  Still, right was right and even if he was used to guarding the girl, she was as good a person for the job at hand as anyone there.

  “Good thinking. I’ll pound six times if I need you to open up. Anything else, and you don’t do it, understood?”

  She was invisible to him, hidden by the inky black still, the door not opened yet.

  “Got it. Six knocks.” She sounded firm. Almost adult about it. Like it was her job to protect everyone there.

  That got him to blink for a moment. Her first mode was honesty. That didn’t mean that her personally assigned task wasn’t making sure the rest of them were all right. They didn’t talk about things much, but for all he knew, she thought that she was there to protect Dan or Gift. Maybe even Pod. Probably not Pam-Pam or himself, of course.

  They weren’t as vulnerable as the others.

  He didn’t know that it would be the truth, of course. That C. C. the kid imagined herself their personal protector or anything of the sort. If she did…

  Well, in that moment, she was doing her part. Appropriately. He was bullet proof, she wasn’t. So she was staying behind the heavy door, ready to pass information, instead of planning to fight. If she had a gun and a bit of training, she wouldn’t have been worse off than most young recruits in a similar situation. She didn’t run off and do stupid kid stuff most of the time, either. She lived like an adult, which she kind of had to. Even the little kids there had to do that.

  Moving out a bit, about thirty feet, he hid his bulk behind a low wall. That was made of brick and seemed to be largely decorative, for all it was thick enough to stop small caliber firearms. It wouldn’t help anyone if the sniper came after them again. He was fine that way, unless he was hit in the eye. At least he assumed that would be lethal to him.

  Hiding made that kind of shot harder to pull off. Barring magic or super powers.

  That thought meant he had a tense twenty minutes, until the door opened. C. C. didn’t walk out, even though she popped her head to look around. Then she waved to him, calling him over to her, instead of risking herself. When he got there, she smiled.

  “All clear. The shooter is gone and no one else is coming for at least twenty-four hours. I don’t know the code or I’d signal everyone else. Do we yell?”

  They didn’t, since Clover knew that one.

  “Four short whistles. Let me do it.”

  He didn’t need to use his fingers to make a high pitch, very loud, blast from his thick lips. Doing it four times, for about half a second each. That came back, from six different sources after that.

  He relaxed, since that was all of them.

  “Clear at all points. Good. I guess we go in then? Did we get anything else from Pod on that? Who’s after us, possibly?”

  That got a nod.

  “Some. She doesn’
t know who they are, specifically. It’s a group and not the police, but they can influence them. So it wasn’t the cops that were really after us the other day. I mean, it was, but they were pushed into it, from the outside. Not using any powers. Pod didn’t get a lot more than that yet. She’s still working, but Pam-Pam thought that you might want to know you weren’t going to be shot again.”

  He did appreciate the thought, actually. He moved, getting the girl to go ahead of him, bumping into her twice since she moved more slowly than he did. It wasn’t on purpose, but he felt bad about it, hoping she wouldn’t think he was trying to rub his junk all over her. That it was kind of happening was bad enough.

  If she noticed it, she didn’t call it out. That probably meant he was fine, since her mode wouldn’t let her sit on things for too long, he didn’t think. Anyone trying to bug her that way was going to be the topic of conversation. Once inside, she led him, quickly, to the office space.

  Where Pod was still working. He moved inside and shut the door, since the woman, Martha, was vulnerable in her current form.

  She was more or less a three-foot-tall black tube, that seemed made of metal or something shiny, with what looked like an extra-large human brain, glowing blue, floating over it, by about a foot. Tiny tendrils of energy, also in blue, moved over the brain itself. It was fascinating, but just seeing it left him feeling like the woman was going to die. Brains weren’t supposed to be seen. It just wasn’t done.

  A voice came then, a mid-tone tenor, with a slightly buzzing electrical edge to it. Seemingly from the black base portion, going over the situation. Rather clinically.

  “Seven, nine, nine, four… Designation, Forward Scout. Unit, Fifth Armored. Super-soldier. Low level tele-empathic.”

  There was more, but Clover understood what was being said, he showed that by cursing. It wasn’t a thing he did all the time, saving that sort of thing for important moments. This one counted.