Outbreak: Boston (39 page)

The memory of whatever the medic had given her after the incident with Powers called to her. In that bag were the magic little pills that could make it all go away, at least for awhile. She could feel wonderful again and hide in that snug little cocoon and not have to worry anymore it said invitingly. Frays glared hatefully at the bag and turned around in her chair so she did not have to look at it, suddenly loathing the dead medic for giving her the drug in the first place.

She tried to stay mad at Eamon but could not really keep it up. He had been trying to help and, in reflection, she had not been the most cooperative patient so the heavy narcotics were probably his way of making extra sure she followed instructions and stayed in bed. Frays found that she was wishing that he was still here to help take care of his girlfriend because she had no idea how to treat a gunshot wound beyond what he had already done.

On reflection, Frays found that she
respected the man despite of his personal foibles. He was good at his job and, with one glaring exception, a solid professional when he needed to be. She thought back to when Frannie had made him explain his actions that night, what seemed like years ago. The fat, foul mouthed, ill-mannered hairy brute had actually wept a little as he told her what had been going through is mind. She went into the kitchen for a moment and came back with a roll of paper towels and started to clean her weapons as best she could, grateful to have something to do with her hands. For some reason she really did not want to smoke anymore but she was still nic fitting pretty good.

Her stomach growled, seemingly angered by being filled and emptied so suddenly. She ignored it as be
st she could until she finished cleaning and lubricating her weapons. The little bottle of CLP in her cleaning kit was almost empty. “Figures. I ate way too much too fast and get sick. Now I’m hungry again.” Frays grumbled under her breath. She walked over to the table where they had eaten dinner and picked up the bag of pretzels, munching on a handful as she walked back to her chair.
Oh, sweet Jesus!
Frays thought as she chewed the snacks and stuffed another fistful into her face. Amy realized that she had eaten half the bag before she had even gotten halfway across the room. 

Lacey stirred and sat up as Frays stashed the now nearly empty bag of salty bready goodness between her leg and the arm of the chair. “I don’t suppose the head still works in here?” he asked as he scratched his head and looked around. “I’m seriously looking forward to taking a good long shit.” Adam realized what he said and turned red to the ears.

Amy squeezed her lips together to try and smother the laughter working its way up from her belly. When that did not work she pressed one hand over her mouth and pointed towards the latrines with the other, a long series of squeaky little giggles making their way out of her mouth and nose.

Adam paused when he came back twenty or thirty minutes later, looking at the woman sitting in the middle of the dining room with her face in her hands. It took him a moment to figure out, due to the faint moonlight flooding in through the windows, that she was sobbing with her hands pressed over her mouth and nose to dampen the noise. His own face started wrinkling up around the edges as he stood there looking at her. It had been scary enough in the parking lot of the hospital, but he could not imagine what it was like for
Frays to have to fight her way out of the building or to actually have to see what happened to Eamon.

He stood there scratching at something behind his ear and wiping at his cheeks as he tried to decide how to proceed. In the past Frays had gotten angry at him every time he tried to show any concern for her. He thought he understood the reason why: like a good leader she wanted her squad paying attention to their jobs, but it also provided a sort of excuse to create distance between herself and everyone else.
And see how well that’s been working out
he thought to himself. The skinny Marine crept back to the latrine and closed the door harder then walked back, intentionally making a little extra noise this time. “I wouldn’t go in there for awhile if I were you.” Adam said as walked slowly towards Frays, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb “All that good food, my insides didn’t know what to do with it.”

She
had quickly straightened up and wiped her cheeks with her palms when she heard the door shut and smiled at Lacey as he plopped into a chair next to her. “Well, I think there’s a case of MREs still in the back of the truck if you want them.” Frays said with a small grin, despite the slight burning sensation in her cheek. The cut and burns on her face were still a little tender.

An odd half smile curled up on Lacey’s face and stayed there for a second. “That’s alright.” he said as he shifted around on his chair for a minute. His eyes flitted to Amy’s face, lingered there for a moment and went back to the floor in front of him. “How you doing?” he asked, bracing himself for another chewing out.

“I’m…getting by.” Amy said carefully as she studied the pattern woven into the carpet between her boots. She shook her head a little and looked back at the man sitting next to her. “You?”

“About the same.” Lacey said quietly. He stole a quick look at Amy, glad to see he had given her enough time to at least attempt to hide that she had been crying. He knew she would have been embarrassed and pissed off if she knew he had seen her.

“You know something? I’m actually kind of jealous of you.” Frays said after a few minutes of awkward silence. She scratched an itch on the tip of her nose and looked at Lacey out of the corner of her eye. Rodriguez stirred and grumbled in her sleep across the room, adding a strange counterpoint to the faint sound of peepers coming in from outside.

Lacey blinked, more than a little surprised by what he had just heard. He was about to ask why she would say something like that but instead he reached out and took her hand in his, waiting for her to continue. She squeezed it tight and sighed
then took her hand back. “You’ve got a wife and a family of your own.” Frays said quietly. Amy looked at the man and smiled. “The closest thing I’ve ever had to that was a boyfriend who just up and disappeared on me a couple days before I got recalled.”

Adam was stunned.
So THAT’S who she wanted to come back to bed
he thought with the slightest hint of a smile. She caught the expression before he could hide it and gave him a questioning look. “It’s something you said in your sleep awhile ago.” he explained, running an awkward hand over his face and hoping he would not have to explain further.

The two of them looked at each other for a second. “Well, are you going to tell me or what?” Frays asked, silently praying that it was nothing too embarrassing. She pulled her hand away from Adam’s and crossed her arms over her chest as she leaned back a little in her chair. “C’mon! Out with it, Private!”

Lacey felt his cheeks getting hot yet again. “I was watching you sleep…er…um…keeping an eye on you for Eamon after Powers had shot you.” Adam said carefully as he watched a strange expression came to the woman’s face. He really hoped that she was not going to punch him again. Frays did not look like much but she had a helluva right hook. “I woke you up for a second to give you some ice for your face and you said that you wanted somebody to close the window and come back to bed because you were cold.”

“Aw, maaan…” Amy said, turning her face to the ceiling. She shook her head and hid her mortified expression with the palms of her hands. Adam laughed at her embarrassment. It took her a minute but she laughed too and shook her head again. “Hi
s name was Jacob. He was my R.A. at college, stayed a couple doors down from me.

He was a veteran too, Afghanistan I think. We didn’t talk about the war much. He was really great after I got back.” Frays said wistfully. Lacey found it hard to imagine her with a boyfriend, not that she was not good looking or anything like that…he just actually found it difficult to picture her in civilian clothes, let alone carefree and happy as she hung on some guy’s arm. “I was having kind of a hard time adjusting, spending a lot of my time with my schoolwork…which is kind of a bad excuse. Most of my classes were cancelled a lot of the time.
Jacob would take me to lunch at the student union or sometimes we’d pile in my truck and go downtown when his GI Bill payments came in. I’d go for walks in the rain at night when I couldn’t sleep and if he was up he’d come with me. It was…nice.”

Adam smiled, thinking of similar times he had spent with his wife when they were dating. “Sounds like it.” he put a hand on Amy’s shoulder and glanced at his watch. “Holy shit. It’s 0023. Looks like it’s my turn to be on watch.”

“Alright. See you in the morning.” Frays said as she went to pull a couple big overstuffed cushions off the chairs and curled up under her blanket. “Good night, Lacey.” The woman called from her makeshift bed on the floor.

“Good night, Frays.” he answered. He sat there for a minute then rose and went to Frays and crouched over her. “Amy, promise me you’re not gonna beat yourself up, alright? What happened today wasn’t y
our fault. You’re a good leader hell way better than the assholes I used to work with. It drives me fuckin’ nuts to see you feeling guilty over something that you had no control over.” Lacey leaned forward a little and put a hand on her shoulder, looking her square in the eyes. “I might be alive right now if we didn’t run into each other, but I know I’m alive right now because we did.”

Amy paused, a little taken aback by what Lacey had said, not to mention his use of her first name. She tried to smile. “Sure, Adam.” Frays said quietly, already feeling like she was drifting off to sleep. She blinked, trying to keep her eyes open long enough to continue the conversation. “Well, I’ll try anyway. That’s good enough, right?”

Lacey frowned and shook his head. “I suppose.” he grumbled with a sigh. Adam smiled at her before returning to his post across the room.

Minutes later he could hear the familiar chainsaw like sound of Frays’ snoring. He could not help but snicker under his breath as he went to check on Frannie. It was amazing to him how such a loud noise could come out of such a small woman. He shook his head, still sniggering as he took Rodriguez’s pulse and nodded with a small grin. She should be okay in time.

He wished that Rodriguez would hurry up and get better. The sooner she got better the sooner they could all be going to Frays’ hunting camp. The sooner they got there, the sooner he would see Laura and Paul and Becca again. The only thing keeping him sane right now was the knowledge that his family had linked up with Frays. That was several weeks ago…. He tried to put that thought out of his head. If the rest of her family was anything at all like Amy they would do everything possible to keep them safe. He spared another glance at the snoring woman a few feet away, knowing now what ‘everything possible’ meant to her. She was willing to kill to protect their little band no matter how discordant that seemed with what he knew about her so far.

After a few hours he wandered into the kitchen and found a stack of what looked like hamburger patties in the walk-in freezer next to the refrigerator. Adam grinned and took the patties to the sink where he put them to finish thawing. He may not be much of a cook, but he could manage to fry up a couple cheeseburgers in a pan. Adam made up his mind to surprise Frays, as he remembered how much she enjoyed the cheeseburgers from the mess hall back at Hanscomb. And, well, after everything she had done for him making breakfast for her was the least he could do.

The world outside was slowly starting to lighten as the sun started to come up outside. He thought about trying to get the coffeemaker to work, but decided against it. It was one of those big stainless steel contraptions and he did not want to break it trying to find out how it worked. He looked at the snoring woman sprawled across the cushions on the floor; her arms wrapped protectively around her M4 and shook his head as he walked by. She had woken only once since he had relieved her, looked kind of embarrassed and then went back to sleep.

Lacey checked Rodriguez’s vitals then crawled towards the windows, keeping low so that if there was anybody outside they might not see him. It might have been another beautiful day here at this country club. The birds were starting to wake up, chirping and flitting from branch to branch in the trees across the street from the building. The sunlight glinted off of a couple expensive looking cars parked a little farther down the driveway, making their Humvee seem even more out of place with its sand colored paint job.

Something moved in the trees across the way. Lacey raised his rifle to his shoulder and lined up his sights, hoping that he would not have to shoot. A figure approached the Humvee while another hung back just inside the tree line, both of them armed with what looked like an M4 and some kind of shotgun. Adam dropped out of sight and hurried over to Frays. He pressed a hand over her mouth and shook her awake. “Sorry! Sorry!” he whispered in her ear, wincing at the look of surprise on his friend’s face “There’s two guys with guns outside.”

Amy jumped up and the two of them hurried back to the windows. There were two rough looking men rooting through the contents of their truck but it was not until the taller of the two opened the driver’s door and started trying to turn the engine over that Frays decided to take action. They still had
a pretty good supply of food and water, but without that truck they would be carrying Rodriguez half way across the state. “Hold it right there or you’re dead!” she shouted out of the window, using her best command voice as she put the dot of her Aimpoint right on the would-be car thief’s ear. “You two put your hands up and walk slowly towards the building. Do it now!”