Outbreak: Boston (43 page)

“Sorry. Sorry.” Frays said quietly as she tossed the bandage in the garbage. “I’ll put a new bandage on your leg and then let you conduct your business, alright?” Amy dug a new pressure bandage from her CLS kit, tore it open and wrapped it around the wound on her friend’s leg. “There we go.” Amy said, satisfied with her work as she pulled off her gloves.

Once Rodriguez finished and Frays helped her back to the table. Amy went back to the latrine and came back with a handful of damp paper towels which she used to wipe the sweat from her friend’s brow. Once Frannie was reasonably comfortable, Amy helped her take off her gear and ACU top then covered her with the blanket. “Still hungry?” Frays asked as she made sure Frannie was covered up. “I think Lacey was just making some lunch.”    

“Are you shitting me?” Frannie muttered as she pressed her hands to her forehead. “Trying to take a shit almost fucking killed me. I dunno. We’ll see.” She wiped her cheeks and looked at her friend. “So…about that Percocet…”

Frays chuckled as she looked through the bag and grumbled as she inspected the labels on the different bottles. “Well…here’s your penicillin…” Amy said as she set one off to the side and continued digging. She frowned at a vial in her hand. “I think this will work. There’s some Tylenol Three. That’s codeine, right?”

Rodriguez held out her hand. “Gimme.” she said sternly, her brow furrowed as Amy shook the pills out into her hand and gave them to her. “Thank you.” Frannie muttered as she popped them into her mouth and washed them down with water from her camelbak. They both started to relax when the drugs started to kick in a few minutes later.

“I’ll see what Lacey’s got for lunch, okay?” Amy asked. She smiled weakly at the woman on the stretcher and patted her shoulder before moving off. Rodriguez nodded as the drugs wormed their way into her mind and dulled the pain in her leg.

Amy blinked and shook herself as she walked across the room and went into the kitchen. “Looks like we’re going to be here awhile.” Frays said quietly as she went to see what Lacey was doing on the stove. “Frannie can’t even get to the latrine without almost passing out and we can’t carry her if the truck goes down hard.”

Lacey had cut a canned ham into slices and was warming them up in a frying pan. “I kinda figured.” he said as he frowned at the supposed pork sizzling before him. Adam flipped a couple and slid them onto a plate next to the stove. “She’s got a pretty nasty hole in her leg.”

“It’s about an hour’s drive from here to
the camp.” Frays said over her shoulder as she wandered towards the pantry and tugged open the door. She pulled down a couple cans: some corn and green beans and a can of beef broth for Rodriguez. “Do you think we should chance it?”

Lacey glanced at Frays as she came back into the kitchen and pulled a couple pans out of a cupboard and joined him at the stove. She pried open the cans with her multi-tool and dumped it into the pans and lit the burners with a match. “I dunno.” he said, finishing up the canned ham and sliding the last of the slices onto the plate. “I think she’s going to be okay, but we’ve got to be careful. Like you said, we can’t carry her all the way.”

Amy stirred the various things in the pans. “Right.” she frowned at the corn. Frays shot a look at the meat Lacey had cooked and shook her head. “One of these days you’ll have to learn how to cook an actual meal.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Adam’s mouth. “Why should I? You’re right there.” he said quietly. Adam ducked when Amy made a half hearted swat aimed at his head. The two of them looked at each other and snickered as Amy took the vegetables out of their pans and dumped them into a bowl. “What’s the soup for?”

“Rodriguez wanted something to eat.” Amy said as she went to a cabinet and took out a big coffee mug. “I think she might do better with some broth for right now.” The two of them took the food into the dining room and put it on a table near Rodriguez.

Frannie looked somewhat disappointed when Amy gave her the mug of broth. “I don’t get real food?” she asked as she took a sip of the hot liquid. Rodriguez started drinking the broth as fast as she could manage.

“We’ll see how you do with that first.” Frays said with a hint of a smile. She turned and went back to the table with Lacey. “Let me know if you want more.” After she said her Pater Noster Frays cut a piece of the pork and took a bite. Her face wrinkled up and she spat it out with as much manners as she could manage and looked suspiciously at Adam. “I don’t think this is any good.”

Adam furrowed his brow at the food on his plate. “I dunno, tastes fine to me.” he said as he finished chewing a little of the meat. He frowned and stuck his fork into a piece of meat and held it under his nose. “Mine’s okay.”

“I think something’s wrong with mine.” Frays said as she smacked her lips and took a sip of water from her camelbak. The meat left a nasty, bitter oily taste in her mouth. Adam reached across the table and helped himself to a piece of meat from her plate.

“Tastes fine to me.” he said as he chewed the food carefully. Adam scowled thoughtfully at the woman across the table from him. “The can was fine and I
swear I didn’t drop yours on the floor or anything.”

Frays gave him a sour look and tried a little bit more of the meat. “Bleh.” she said as she spat it out and shook her head. Amy turned and held the plate out to her friend. “Do you want this, Rodriguez? I can’t eat it.”

Frannie took her friend’s plate and dug in with gusto while Amy sat at the table with a hand over her mouth. Adam studied the woman out of the corner of his eye as he ate. Something started to click in his brain: trouble sleeping plus pretty violent mood swings plus occasional vomiting plus food aversion equaled….

“Um…Frays…” Lacey said quietly as he finished off his corn. The man looked at the table for a moment, unsure of how his friend would react but he frowned and pressed onward. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen for a minute?”

Amy blinked at the man across the table from her. “Um…sure…” she said as the two of them left the table and crossed into the kitchen. “What’s going on?” she asked as the swinging doors closed behind them.

Adam hopped up on the counter and looked at Amy. He took off his helmet and rubbed the top of his head nervously as he took a deep breath. “Look…um…are you…er…preggers?” he asked timidly as he studied the woman’s reactions. “I dunno, I thought you were just stressed out until just now. I mean, it isn’t like we had a whole lot of pork at the school.”

Frays sank back against the counter behind her. “I…I dunno.” she muttered quietly as she wrapped her arms around her belly. Her mind raced as she tried to do some math in her head, an angry grimace coming to her face. “What are you saying?” she asked, suddenly growing furious with the man in front of her. “Are you calling me some kind of slut or something?”

“No, no!” Adam said as he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He frowned and looked at Frays, a low sigh escaping through his nose. “Look, c’mon. You know me. I would never think anything like that about you.” He shook his head and frowned, suddenly wishing he had never brought this up. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Amy shook her head and scowled. “I know.” she muttered under her breath, feeling unbelievably self-conscious as she rubbed under her ear. “I dunno…I might be. I…um…you know…only once, ever, a couple weeks after I got back to school. The doctor said that stress might have messed up my…you know…and that was before all this.”
Pregnant?
Frays thought, growing frustrated with herself.
How on EARTH did I miss that?

Adam felt like the bottom just dropped out. “Jeez…” he grumbled, wondering what the hell they were going to do now. “We need to get you so
me…some goddamn vitamins…geez, you’re gonna need a fuckin’ doctor…” All of a sudden he was very, very pissed off at Eamon. Here he was being dead when Frays and the fat dumbass mick’s girlfriend needed him.

Frays felt sick. If she was pregnant it would be a minor miracle if her kid actually made it to term. The car wreck in Boston, her smoking (even though, in retrospect, she had not
really been able to take more than two or three drags before butting out her cigarette in weeks), the drugs Eamon had given her… If Eamon walked through the door right that second healthy and whole she was not sure if she would want to kiss him or punch is friggin’ lights out.

“Oh, God.” Amy whispered as she felt her legs slowly going out from under her. She sank to the floor and hid her face in her hands, mortified. How was she going to explain this to her parents?
How the heck was she going to tell Carl that he was going to be an uncle? “Oh, God…”

Adam felt his friend’s anxiety like a knife
twisting in his guts as he went to her side. He crouched over her and pressed his forehead against hers. “It’ll be alright. We got this bitch, right buddy?” he whispered into her face. “We got this. This ain’t nothin’ we can’t deal with. We’ll get through this.”

Frays felt a smile start to work its way onto to her face. “Dang straight, buddy.” Amy said quietly as she let Adam help her to her feet. “We got this. If I am pregnant we can deal with it. I’m going to have this kid and raise it right. Or…as right as I can, anyway.”

A mischievous smile crept onto Adam’s face. “You know…if it’s a boy Adam’s as good a name as any.” he said as he gave her a quick hug. Lacey was actually more than a little surprised when Frays returned the gesture.

She looked at him and shook her head as they started towards the dining room
. “Don’t go counting your chickens before they hatch.” Amy said under her breath and gave the Marine’s shoulder a playful smack. “I don’t even know for sure if I’m pregnant or not yet.”

Chapter Twelve

9 June 2011 0539 hours Concord
Country Club Concorde, Massachusetts
    

They passed the week or so since the incident with Lacey’s former squad mates mainly eating, sleeping and caring for Rodriguez’s leg. A zombie happened by a couple times but Frays and Lacey developed a system: one of them would cover the other with their rifle while the other bashed the creature in the head with a table leg. This saved ammunition and cut down on their noise signature, keeping the possibility of any unwanted visitors to a minimum.

Once she was well enough, Lacey and Frays left Rodriguez alone long enough to make quick searches of the immediate area to see if they could find Holder and Reynolds’ gear where they had left it in the woods. It took some time but they eventually stumbled across the dead men’s stuff hidden under some leaves. There was little in their kit of use, save a Ruger 10/22 .22LR caliber rifle with a couple spare mags, some empty M4 mags, a dozen 12 gauge buckshot shells and some wet weather gear.

They decided to give Rodriguez the rucksack that was in the best condition along with the wet weather gear. Frays did her laundry as best she could in the sink and donated one of her uniforms to her friend, though the clothing was a poor fit as Rodriguez was a few inches taller and more slender around the hips.

Frannie eventually healed up enough to the point that she could hobble around the clubhouse, as long as she was careful. The codeine helped and Frays or Lacey made sure she got her penicillin three times a day, so thankfully her wound did not seem to show any sign of infection.

The two of them still made sure their patient got plenty of rest on a pile of cushions on the floor a little distance away from the door. Amy was giving Frannie her morning dose of penicillin when the woman pulled a medicine bottle out of a pouch on her plate carrier and handed it to her friend. There were a couple lonely little blue pills rattling around in the bottom of the brown semi-transparent cylinder. “Is there more of these in the bag?” she asked as Rodriguez gave the plastic container to Frays.

Frays studied the label on the bottle for a moment then dug around in the bag. “I don’t think so. Doesn’t look like it.” Amy said as she gave the bottle back. “Why? What’s it for?”

“It’s a mood stabilizer.” Rodriguez said with a small sigh. The woman looked towards the toes of her boots and frowned.
Frannie looked around for a moment as if trying to find a way to explain further. “The docs at the VA hospital gave me them. I was getting treated for PTSD. I’ve been breaking the pills in half to try and make them last, but I’m almost out.”