Outbreak: Boston (18 page)

Fifteen minutes later Rodriguez was resting comfortably in the teacher’s lounge and Jean was in the infirmary with Eamon looking after Lieutenant Jenkins. Amy was outside the back door of the building, sitting on her Kevlar a few feet away from Sergeant Barnes with a cigarette dangling off her lip. The big black man sat on the ground against the side of the school in the shade. Lacey sat with his legs crossed a few feet away. She had just told Barnes about Rodriguez and the three of them settled into a thoughtful silence. “I’ll talk to Powers about it.” Sergeant Barnes said at last. He stood up and brushed the dust off his uniform and started towards the entrance. “I’ll get one of the civilians to keep a watch on the quarantine room.”

“Sergeant Barnes…” Amy said quietly as she swiveled on her helmet to face him. “What happened out there? I mean…um…if you can talk about it.”

The big man’s face soured. “You were right, Zoomie.” he said flatly. Barnes paused just outside the door and turned back to face the woman. “There were way too many of those things there. Moore and the LT went into that Dollar General first, I was pulling security. A bunch of those things jumped on Moore…started tearing him to bits. I ran in, the LT was just…standing there, watching.” He shook his head in frustration “I tried to get him to follow me ‘cause there was about twenty more of those things coming at us. I threw him over my shoulder, got us to the truck.” Barnes turned and went inside. “Don’t ask me about that again.” he added over his shoulder.

Amy sat there, looking at the door for awhile. Her cigarette burned down to a crooked finger of ash on the filter. Lacey frowned as he watched the woman. “Come on, Frays.” Adam said as he helped Amy to her feet. “Let’s hit up that library. I’ll bet Rodriguez will be practically bored to tears stuck in there all that time.”

Amy stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the shelf of books in front of her with a small, ridiculous smile on her face. She could not help but feel a little out of place with her filthy ABUs, combat gear and weapons. “What do you think she’d like to read?” she asked. Frays picked a book at random and flipped open the cover to glance at the synopsis printed on the inside of the dust jacket. “She strikes me as a fiction person.”

“I dunno.” Adam said as he picked over the Sci-Fi section. “Ooo! Asimov!” He tucked a book under his arm and continued along the wall. “Let’s just grab a couple things from all the sections.”

Amy thrust a fist in the air, holding her other arm at an angle to her torso with a wild expression on her face. “GRAB ALL THE BOOKS!”

Lacey looked at her with an exaggerated frown, hunched over a little and let his arms dangle. “Carry all the books?” The two of them looked at each other for a couple seconds and burst out laughing. They laughed so hard that they hunched over, grasping at the shelves in an attempt to stay upright.

“Come on, Lacey.” Frays said once she could take a breath without giggling like an idiot as she took a look at her watch. “We’ve got guard duty soon. Let’s get a couple things and get our shift over with.”

“I miss the internet.” Lacey said quietly. He walked away and started perusing the nonfiction section. A loud noise caught his attention and he whipped his head around. Amy stood where he left her, the books she had been holding in a heap by her feet.

“Of course! Geez, how could I be so stupid?” she said as she hurried across the room to a row of a half dozen computers set up against the far wall. Frays dove into the nearest chair and moved the computer’s mouse. She sent up a silent prayer and clicked on the desktop’s internet browser. The browser opened as Lacey joined her. His hand trembled on her shoulder as they watched the school’s homepage appear on the screen. Lacey whooped joyfully.
Her fingers danced over the keyboard as she navigated to her email inbox. The two of them laughed sarcastically when they saw that her Spam box had thirty four new messages. “Nothing stops the pornbots!” Lacey observed. He turned away when Amy clicked opened her inbox. Whatever was in there wasn’t his business.

Amy stared at the screen, frantically opening and deleting emails. Lacey listened intently, hoping that whatever noises his friend made would give some indication of what was going on in the world outside. She stopped clicking and typing for almost a minute so he turned around.

Amy sat staring at the terminal’s screen. It took him a moment to realize that her shoulders were shaking slightly so he crouched beside her. When he put his hand on her shoulder and leaned over to see the screen he noticed a handful of tears running down the woman’s cheek out of the corner of his eye. His heart sank but he read the screen anyway, hopes and dread chasing each other around in his stomach.

There was a simple message on the screen:

Amy some chick with kids showed up. Y u send them? Dad’s pissed cause they got broken car and like no gas. I think we’re going to the camp soon.
NE way be safe,

Carl

“That message was dated two days ago.” Lacey whispered aloud as he read the timestamp on the email. He clapped Amy on the shoulder, feeling his own eyes getting moist. Adam felt like he was smiling for the first time since this whole thing started. “So it looks like they’re safe or well, they’re gonna be.”

Amy wiped at her face and glanced up at the ceiling. “Must be a leaky pipe or something.” she muttered under her breath as she stood up.

Adam caught her in a big bear hug and nearly lifted her off the ground. “Yeah, sure boss.” he said once he set her down. “We’ll have to take a look up there later.” Frays scowled at him for a half second before giving him a good natured slap on the shoulder.

Twenty minutes later Amy and Adam got Johnny and Allen, the two guys watching Rodriguez’s door, to let them in.
The woman inside sat up with a startled expression when she saw that each of them had a small pile of books under their arms. “How long am I gonna be in here?” she asked when Frays and Lacey set the piles of books on the small round table within arm’s reach of the couch.

“Just twenty four hours, like I said.” Amy said. She dropped onto one of the four plastic chairs positioned around the table. “We just weren’t sure what you’d want to read, so we decided to grab a little of everything.”

Rodriguez smiled awkwardly. “Um…thanks, guys.” she said in a quiet voice. Her face scrunched up and she felt around underneath where she was sitting. After some fidgeting Rodriguez produced a television remote that had apparently become wedged between the couch cushions. “I wonder what’s on.”

The television mounted to the wall came to life when Rodriguez pressed the power button on the remote. She flicked from channel to channel, mostly getting either static, a blank blue screen or a test pattern. Finally, the image of a highly disorganized newsroom flashed on the screen. A thin black man stared into the camera; his tie loosened and the sleeves of his sweat stained shirt rolled up around his forearms as he mouthed words to his audience. “Sorry.” Rodriguez said, almost as if she were talking to the newscaster rather than the people in the room with her as she turned up the volume on the set. The newscast cut to a terrified young man in a rumpled blazer, his brown hair scattered all over his head.

“-ing. We’re low on food and water.” said the man. The terrified, exhausted eyes flitted to something off camera and he started fiddling with the stack of papers in front of him. “There are eight of us here in the YMCA on Huntington Avenue in Boston. We’ve barricaded the stairs but they’re breaking them down.

“Please, if anybody can hear this, we need help. I don’t know if the streets are safe, but we marked the roof. Somebody, please, we have women and children here. We
…we need help.”

Amy became aware that most everybody near the teacher’s lounge was trying to push their way through the door. All of them were trying to talk at once before the whole crowd started running towards the cafeteria. She remembered that there was another TV mounted on the wall in the corner.

The three of them in the room turned their attention back to the screen. A rhythmic pounding off camera brought a look of animalistic terror to the face of the man on the screen. Amy swallowed hard as she thought she heard a low moan. Rodriguez crushed the power button on the remote and the screen went black. “I don’t need to see that!” she said softly as settled back onto the couch with a shiver.

Amy patted Rodriguez on the shoulder as she stood up. “Come on, Lacey.” she said quietly, marching purposefully towards the door. “We’ve got guard duty.” Adam offered Rodriguez a weak smile, waved and started after his squad leader. He paused at the door and frowned as if he were going to say something then closed the door behind him.

Adam hurried to catch up as Frays marched down the hall. “Frays, wait up!” he called and jogged towards her. “Frays, let’s go. Right now. You and me, we’ll grab a Humvee and go look for our families.”

Amy kept walking, opened the door to the generator room and started up the stairs to the roof. “Think about what you’re saying, Lacey.” Frays said carefully. She turned to face him and sighed, her shoulders sagging. “We won’t do anybody any good if we go running off half cocked and get killed. Look, tomorrow morning I’m going to suggest to Sergeant Barnes that we go on a supply run to Holden. There’s a county sheriff substation there should be more or less intact. While we’re there we can check and see what’s going on at
my parent’s house. If they already went up to the camp then they’ll be just as safe there as we are here.”

“But…but…they’ve been out there for a really long time.” Lacey said indignantly. He half turned away from Frays and rolled his eyes. He stabbed an accusing finge
r in the woman’s face. “I swear… It’s like you don’t give a shit. Goddamnit…what the hell’s wrong with you?”

Amy’s mouth pressed into a thin line as look of utter fury leached into her eyes. “How dare you say that.” she
growled once she had managed to gain some kind of control. “It’s because I love my folks that I don’t want to go out unprepared. We can’t help them if we’re dead!”

Lacey looked like he was about to pop her right in the mouth. “They could be in trouble.” He turned on his heel and stomped up the stairs and onto the roof. He paused in the doorway long enough to turn and spit “I hope your little brother got his fucking brain eaten.” before slamming the metal door in her face.

A few hours later Amy stood staring out over the athletic fields at the back of the school. Adam was watching the front, which suited her just fine. Every so often she stole a look at man and it just set her blood boiling all over again. “Stupid idiot.” Frays muttered under her breath. “Why can’t you just see things my way?”

A heavy set black man with salt and pepper hair wandered up. “You talking to me, Airman?” A gold tooth twinkled in the sun when he smiled at the embarrassment on the young lady’s face. He lifted the binoculars that hung around his neck to his eyes and scanned the tree line some nine hundred meters away.

“No, sir.” Amy answered. She considered lighting a cigarette but reached for the bottle of water in her cargo pocket. After taking a short drink she offered it to the man who waved it away.

“I haven’t been a sir for a long time, little lady.” Alex Smith said, still smiling. He gave the woman a sideways glance and whispered “I
will
take one of those smokes if you can spare one. Just don’t tell my wife, alright?”

Amy laughed quietly and produced her cigarettes. “Roger that, sir.” she said as she lit his then her own. “All quiet on the western front?”

He frowned. “Casey Williams wants to hold a service for that boy who died this morning.” Alex said around a plume of smoke. They were quiet for a moment, silently puffing away on their cigarettes. “It’ll be tomorrow after breakfast so his entire squad should be able to make it.”

Amy nodded. “That was considerate.” she said in a low voice. A sudden wind stirred the grass, moving like a green wave across the overgrown athletic fields. “Look, sir, if you’ve got something to say I’d appreciate you getting to the point. No offense, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me that.” Alex said as he knocked the cherry off his cigarette and dropped the last quarter of it in his pocket. “My name’s Alex.”

“Well, Alex.” Amy muttered as she looked coolly at the old man. “You’re a retired pilot, right? That makes you an officer. Which makes you a sir. And even if you weren’t you’re still old enough to be my grandpa. Which makes you a sir.”

He laughed. “Alright, fine. Have it your own way, Airman.” Alex said, his gold tooth flashing again. “What happened between you and your friend, Lacey over there? Seemed to me that the two of you were getting along like a house on fire.”

Amy frowned with a sigh. “Ou
r families are probably at my house. His wife and two little kids along with my parents and little brother.” She rolled her shoulders and head, enjoying the little pops the cartilage in her neck made. “He wants to run right out and get them but I said to wait so we could plan things out a little better. I can understand that his kids are in danger, but why can’t he listen to me?” Frays took off her helmet and sat down on it. “You know what he said? ‘I hope your brother gets his effing brain eaten.’ Can you imagine that?”

Alex looked at young woman and frowned as well. “That is a tough decision to make.” he said carefully as he regarded the fields behind the building. “I won’t get in the middle of that one. I’m not an officer anymore, thank God.” He extended his hand. “All I’ll say is we all might be dead tomorrow. Personally, I’d apologize to my frie
nd while I had the chance.”
  Amy finished her cigarette, twisted the last burning embers off the filter and dropped the butt in her hip pocket as she ground out the cherry with the toe of her boot. “Sir, with all due respect, I’m really not in the mood to do anything like that right now.” With that, Frays stood up and put her helmet back on as she walked away.