The Infected 1: Proxy Read Free

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,