Outbreak: Boston (11 page)

Forty five minutes later the four of them rolled out with about a half dozen soldiers from the 1/21
st
US Army National Guard Civil Affairs Battalion under the command of a First Lieutenant named Jenkins. Amy had found herself a little unimpressed with the man: he was short and skinny with a big nose and he seemed unable to close his mouth. Sergeant Barnes, the next highest ranking person on the convoy, actually conducted most of the briefing because the lieutenant seemed almost wholly out of his element.

“What’s the deal with your LT?” Amy whispered to a PFC named Moore standing beside her. He was a handsome Latino or Pilipino man with dark hair and eyes.

“They put him in supply where they thought he couldn’t hurt anybody.” the man mumbled with disgust. “The company clerk let him make the coffee.”

“Jesus Christ.” Amy muttered under her breath. Her face turned red and quickly crossed herself. The other National Guardsmen standing nearby bit down hard on laughter or hid their mouths with their hands.

From what Amy could gather from the lieutenant’s attempt at a briefing, a convoy of trucks from the 1/21
st
’s supply company was due back from a pickup from a Wal-Mart warehouse about eighty or ninety miles to the northeast. There were reports of looting and banditry along the highways where people fleeing Boston started running low on gasoline and other supplies, so it stood to reason that the convoy might have run into trouble. Amy did a hands on check of her ‘flight’s’ gear and the four of them piled in to their vehicles to wait for the rest of the convoy to get going.

A tense atmosphere settled over the convoy once they were outside the wire and on their way. There was still a line of cars on the freeway headed towards the AFB and a number of the people who noticed them either threw things at the convoy or screamed and cried for help. Eamon and Jean exchanged uneasy glances as they rolled past in the Five Ton.

Eamon drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel as the convoy rolled down a back road where the supply trucks were supposed to be coming from. He wondered how people like Amy, Adam and the other soldiers did it. They seemed so cool about everything: the looting, the fires and the general chaos. “Where in England are you from?” he asked quietly. The radio occasionally let out a burst of static or yammering that he could barely understand.

“I was born in London. Did a bit of traveling and decided to settle here in the States.” Jean Ann said with a hint of a grin. The man behind the wheel was young enough to be her grandson. “Did you grow up in Boston?”

“Yeah.” Eamon answered. He spared a glance in the old woman’s direction. “Traveling where exactly?”

Jean sighed and ran a hand through her short grey hair. “Let me guess, you’re an American with relatives in Ireland.
Grew up listening to stories from Da or your uncles or what have you about us mean ol’ English oppressing your people, right?”

Eamon hesitated, looked down at the truck’s instrument panel. “Yeah…”

“I put a little time in there, son.” she said quietly and took a drink from her canteen. “Trust me, it’s not as black and white as all that. From what I’ve seen there’s little in the way of good guys in the situation anymore, just a bunch of ignorant pustules without the sense to stop. On both sides.”

“How do you mean?”  

Jean ran a hand through her short grey hair. “Your ‘freedom fighters’ sell drugs to kids and/or take them themselves” she paused to put the canteen back in its carrier “then they’d put a bomb filled with rusty nails and screws on the street outside the local constabularies’ office. Kill a bunch of the evil ol’ peelers, right? Maybe some squaddies? Not to mention anybody that just happens to be walking by at the time. Then after the dust settles, their mates go out and surprise! A couple of your side ‘resist arrest’ and they’re dead…and the folks who just want to live their lives in peace end up ducking bullets or the family car gets torched because Dad left it in the wrong car park on the wrong night.” Jean shook her head “It’s all a load of bollocks.”

Eamon was quiet for a long time as the convoy rolled down the road. After the panic and fear of the city, this quiet was unnerving. He glanced at the side view mirror to see Amy and Adam in the Humvee behind them. “What do you think of the others?” he asked, allowing an extra moment to try and see if he could make out Amy’s face. “There’s something off about that Adam guy.”

Jean considered the question, a slow smile spreading across her face as realization hit her. “Are you jealous?” she asked and laughed when the younger man’s face reddened. Thankfully, the radio squawked something about finding the lost convoy and the taillights of the vehicle ahead of them flashed as it started to slow down.

Amy felt
a little cold in spite of the thick humidity in the air when she saw the supply trucks: the Five Tons were sitting on shredded tires, their sides riddled with bullet holes…and there was blood on the seats. It was the only sign of the soldiers driving the trucks. She locked that away to deal with later as she helped the other soldiers loaded what the looters did not get into their trucks. The lead vehicle of the convoy used to be refrigerated but a combination of small arms fire, summer heat and the robbers being kind enough to leave the doors open left most of the vegetables inside just on the edge of spoilage. They would have to hurry back to base and get the fruits and greens into the fridge or they would be inedible. After a furtive glance, Amy snatched up an orange and hid it in the cargo pocket of her ABUs.

Jean saw Amy staring at a road sign at the side of the highway that read
Holden 64 Miles
. “We’re about ready to go, Airman.” the older woman said quietly, hoping to draw Amy’s attention away from whatever was bothering her.

Amy was quiet for a moment. “My family lives there.” she said absently, turning her head to glance at Jean. “I hope their okay…I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to them since I got recalled to go to Boston.”

Jean put a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. “I’m sure they’re fine.” she said with as much hopefulness as she could muster. “Come on, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

It took the convoy a couple more minutes to get loaded up and on the road. Apparently there was some debate going on between Sgt. Barnes and Lt. Jenkins as to what route the convoy was to take getting back to the Air Force Base. The lieutenant wanted to simply turn around and come back the way they came but Sgt. Barnes wanted to take a more circuitous course, continuing east on the thruway then getting off at the next exit and doubling back through back roads then coming to the base via its less busy
east gate. Amy felt a growing agitation because whoever shot up the original convoy might not have gone very far away. She was relieved when the lead vehicle started rolling away from the remains of the ambushed convoy.

After a brief ride on the thruway they got off at the next exit and turned started ambling towards the south for a few miles before beginning to head off towards the base. Amy wondered if the Army guys were watching the culverts and ditches choked with weeds like she was: nervously and expecting somebody to jump out and yell “Surprise!” with a hand grenade or a Kalashnikov. The sight of the blood inside the cab of the refrigerator truck stuck with her…it was
not something she expected to have to deal with once she got off the plane from Iraq. Frays took out the orange, peeled it then split it into thirds and handed the larger parts to the others.

The road they were on led to a small town. Lt. Jenkins in the lead vehicle radioed back that the town looked abandoned but everybody should still keep their eyes open. Sgt. Barnes told the crew served gunners to make sure their weapons had a round chambered. Amy swallowed nervously and spared a glance at Lacey’s legs sticking down from the cupola.

The town was indeed as abandoned looking as Lt. Jenkins had warned. Paper and other litter from overturned garbage cans blew across the street as the convoy rolled through town. There was the somewhat surreal sight of three cars parked outside what looked to be a diner. The cars looked like their owners would be inside enjoying a meal but the building was burned almost to the ground. The few storefronts visible from the main drag had broken windows. A churning feeling squirmed around in Amy’s stomach in the eerie stillness. She was almost comforted by the blood curdling scream that echoed off the empty buildings. It sounded like it came from the row of shops just off the main street to the right.

Amy dove for the radio’s handset and scooped it up. “Command Element, this is HQ Five Niner.” she said quickly. “I just heard somebody screaming off to my right. Breaking off from the convoy to investigate, over.”

“HQ Five Niner, this is Whiskey Bravo Six.” Sgt. Barnes said from the command vehicle at the head of the convoy. “Roger that, Zoomie. We can’t stop the convoy here so be quick.”

Amy wrenched the wheel to the right and sped up. “Roger that, Whiskey Bravo Six. We’ll just be a minute.” Eamon started to follow the Humvee in front of him. “Stay with the convoy, Eamon. I promise we’ll catch right up.”

Amy pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall just in time to see a black woman come running out of the shattered store window of a Chinese restaurant about two hundred meters away. Adam swung the barrel of the fifty cal towards the sudden movement. The woman screamed for help and ran towards the Humvee, stumbled over the curb, caught herself and scrambled for the Humvee. A dozen or so men and women crashed out of the restaurant and ran after the first woman.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Lacey screamed, swiveling the big machine gun at the crowd. “STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!”

The mob chasing the woman did not appear to be paying Adam any mind. Amy leaned across the Humvee and opened the passenger side door. “LIGHT ‘EM UP!” the airman shouted as she brought the butt of her fist down on the toe of Lacey’s boot.

Two quick bursts of machine gun fire knocked the woman’s pursuers down leaving them strewn across the parking lot like a child’s forgotten toys as the woman jumped into the truck. Amy mashed down the accelerator before her passenger had even had the door shut. Perhaps five minutes later their truck was back in the convoy. They were a quarter mile down the road before she could loosen her grip on the steering wheel. Amy extended her hand to the woman in the passenger seat. “Hi. I’m Amy.” she said, suddenly feeling a little absurd. “Are you okay? Did any of them bite or scratch you?”  

The woman took her hand and shook it so vigorously that Amy was having trouble keeping the truck on the road. “Thank you! Praise Jesus you came!” the woman nearly shouted as she continued shaking Amy’s hand and tears coursed down the woman’s cheeks. Her shoulder was starting to smart so she carefully extracted her hand from the woman’s grasp. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“It’s nothing.” Amy said with a small smile. Her cheeks felt warm as she picked up the handset to the radio and informed the convoy of what had happened. The woman
was nearly hysterical so trying to get any information out of her was kind of pointless. “Are you thirsty?” Frays asked, offering the woman a bottle of water that had been rolling around on the floor of the truck.

“All stations this net.” squawked the tinny voice of Lieutenant Jenkins over the radio “We’re going to circle up for a couple minutes. HQ Five Niner, bring that civilian over to my Humvee. I want one man pulling security behind their crew served weapons.” The convoy started veering off into a field to the left side of the road. “Once the perimeter is established, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

Amy steered the Humvee into a position close to one of the Guardsmen’s gun trucks and dismounted, slipping the sling of her M4 over her head. “C’mon ma’am.” she said encouragingly as she helped the civilian out of the truck. “Lieutenant Jenkins wants to meet you. It’ll be okay.”

Eamon came puffing over, his first aid kit at the ready. “Is everybody okay?” he asked, studying the new arrival carefully. “Did anybody bite you?”

Frays, Eamon and Lacey escorted the woman over to Lieutenant Jenkins and Sergeant Barnes’s Humvee. The woman kept dissolving into piles of tears, gibberish and Praise Jesus. It took several minutes for her to calm down enough to give her name as “Alice”.

“Nice to meet you, Alice.” said Lieutenant Jenkins. He smiled and sat down in the grass across from the woman. “Listen, what happened out there?”

Alice spared a nervous glance at the soldiers surrounding her. “Me and some friends and my kids tried to get out of Boston on I-93. Got stuck in traffic…my boys…Jesus…” she said then melted into a sobbing mess for a minute. Lieutenant Jenkins took her hand and tried to comfort her until she could continue. “We heard the Air Force base was still safe so we thought we’d try for there…”

Eamon cleared his throat. “Alice, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to give you the once over to make sure you’re not hurt before we get back to the base.”

“I’m fine.” Alice said nervously. “I just got a couple little scratches from broken glass and stuff.” Her eyes started to flit from one soldier to the other. “I didn’t get bit, I swear!”

“It won’t take a minute, I promise.” Eamon said, trying to sound reassuring. “We aren’t going to hurt you, but we have to know if you’ve been infected before we bring you back.
”

A pang of sorrow and guilt
struck Amy in the gut like a kick from a mule when she saw the naked fear in Alice’s eyes. Her hands started to tremble so she hid them in her armpits. “I told you nobody got me, no way!” the woman nearly screamed as she scrambled to her feet. “This is crazy. You ain’t laying a hand on me, no sir!”