Outbreak: Boston (28 page)

Eamon looked like he was going to say something then thought better of it. Amy was already climbing back up into the cab of the truck. “Come on, guys. Let’s go. Eamon, let us get around you and take over on point, alright?”

The convoy got moving again as Frays looked over her map. “There’s a fork in the road coming up to a tee intersection in about a quarter mile or so.” she said quietly, tracing a new route with her finger. “Take a right. It will take us a little longer, but we won’t be crossing the turnpike at the same point we did yesterday.”

“What about West Concord?” Lacey asked. The turn that Frays mentioned was coming up so he signaled to the truck following them and slowed down to take it. “I don’t know about you, but I’m really not all that keen on getting shot at again.”

Amy snorted and continued studying the map. “I’ve got a way around.” she said after a couple minutes. “Unfortunately, there really doesn’t seem to be a way that doesn’t take us either through suburbs or on a highway. Lousy urban sprawl.”

Adam swerved around a stalled car. “I’ve been thinking.” he said quietly, as if he were measuring what he was about to say out in his head. “How is your
parents’ place outfitted? I mean winter isn’t that far away.”

“The house is on a private road, so the town doesn’t plow it in the winter.” Amy said as she started to carefully fold up her map and put it on the seat next to her. “
My dad started stocking the place up after the whole 9/11 thing. There’s a wood fired boiler for heat and a generator for electricity. I think my dad was going to have some solar panels put on the roof, but I don’t know if he got around to it or not. I was sending them cases of MREs too.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “How did you get
cases
of MREs?” he asked. The fact that Frays did not answer right away but instead looked out the window with a tight lipped smile on her face only increased his curiosity.

“When I was on deployment
people traded me stuff to make…um…improvements to their vehicles.” Frays said at last. She shook her head and pulled her chin to her chest. “I put cigarette lighters from old cars in your Humvee or what have you so you could plug in a car charger for your CD player or wired a hookup into your vehicle’s speakers so you could run your iPod through it.”

Lacey chuckled under his breath. “No way.” he said quietly, looking at the woman seated next to him as if he were seeing Frays for the first time. “Aren’t you a cop? I mean, isn’t that sort of…I dunno…illegal or whatever? What do you mean ‘stuff’?”

“Sort of. I prefer to think of it as using my skills to improve the morale of my fellow soldiers and airmen while on deployment in a war zone.” Amy said with a small smile. “I mainly got MREs so I could send them home to my folks, like I said. Some of the other stuff though? Oh, man…I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

Now his interest really was piqued. “Try me.”

Frays sighed. “Let’s see…there was a little piece of gold about the size of a baby’s fingernail that this grunt said came from one of Saddam Hussein’s solid gold toilets but I don’t know how true that was. A jarhead lieutenant offered me a Kalashnikov he got from somewhere, but I said no. I didn’t have a clue how I’d get it home and I didn’t want to get in trouble for having it. An EOD tech gave me a disarmed Soviet era hand grenade that made a neat paperweight. Got a couple tee shirts, a set of Operation Iraqi Freedom beer glasses for my dad, a hat for my little brother... That’s about it that I can think of right off the top of my head.”

Adam shook his head in disbelief. “Geez. I can only imagine the look on the face of the TSA guy when that hand grenade showed up in your duffle bag.”

“I had a friend of mine weld it to a piece of old steel plate.” Frays said matter-of-factly as she gave the Marine a sidelong glance. “You just go ahead and prove that it wasn’t always a paperweight.”

Frays felt an immense sense of relief when the convoy pulled into the parking lot at the back of the school just before 1700 hours. Somehow they managed to get there well ahead of schedule, probably due to the fact that they avoided the towns and found a place where they could cut across the turnpike was clearer of traffic. A couple people came out to help them unload and divvy up the supplies. “We grabbed way mor
e stuff than we need.” Amy muttered absently as she wandered away towards the open bay doors. “I say we take the extra gear down to the churches since they hooked us up with the cots.”

Powers
noticed the lost, dazed look on the woman’s face and chased after her. He caught her by the arm and smiled a little. “Hey, Zoomie.” he said, attempting to get Frays to stop but she twisted free and gave him a withering glare before she continued on her way. “Frays, where you going?”

“
Keep your FUCKING hands off me!” Frays shouted as she entered the bay. “I need a fucking shower!” The woman stormed off and slammed the door that led into the school behind her. Everyone within earshot stopped and stared at Powers, looking at him with alarm or surprise.

Lacey stopped dead in his tracks
when he heard Frays drop the F-bomb. He could not remember if he had ever heard her cuss, let alone cut loose with one of the legendary Seven Dirty Words. Adam decided to hurry up and help the others get the stuff out of the trucks after he anxiously watched her go inside. Once that was done, he pulled Eamon and Sergeant Barnes aside.

By the time she was inside Amy’s hands were shaking so badly that she gave up trying to keep a grip on her M4. The carbine dangled from its sling across her chest as she meandered towards the showers located in the women’s locker room. Frays turned the water on scalding hot and walked into the stall, letting the steaming liquid soak into her ABUs and field gear. The water pooling at her feet turned a sickish shade of light brown as the dried blood and tissue washed out of the fabric and sluiced down the drain.

Her legs felt weird, like the bones in them had been replaced with rubber. Frays’ back found the side of the stall and she slid down it. She started to feel really lightheaded and she gritted her teeth.
I’m not gonna pass out
Amy thought determinedly when she realized that she was hyperventilating and made an effort to slow her breathing down. She and Jacob had spent a lot of nights in his room watching those old so-bad-they’re-good horror and sci-fi movies from the fifties and sixties. She always found it deeply irritating that the female lead always seemed to fall the heck out whenever the monster so much as looked at her funny. Frays took off her Kevlar and let it thump to the tile as she tried to take deep breaths.
I’m not some dumb bimbo. I’m not gonna pass out.

“Hey, Frays.” Lacey called from the doorway of the locker room. He sounded like he was in the doorway, anyway. She thought she could hear footsteps working their way closer
over the water drumming on her spinning head. “Are you in here?”

Adam peeked around the corner and looked into the stall. He turned off the water and smiled uneasily at the woman curled up in the corner. “Here, let me give you a hand.” he said as he leaned into the shower and helped Frays to her feet. The two of them made their way to a bench bolted to the floor a few feet away where he helped her take off her LCS and body armor. “C’mon, Frays. You’re alright.” He remembered that she had hurt her neck...
Oh, holy shit
he thought guiltily as he started to massage the stiff, obviously painful muscles at the base of Frays’ neck
Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ.

For some reason, even after hearing what little Frays had said about
what happened to her flight sergeant, he did not connect the dots until right this very second. She might have been in one of the Air Force Humvees that pulled up to the checkpoint he had been manning back in Boston.

“They’re dead, you know.” Frays said suddenly, a tremor running through her body and into the palms of his hands. “I-I kinda knew…but...” She shook her head and shivered at the memory of the infected slumping towards her across the bridge, dragging their bullet riddled bodies towards the checkpoint, the cold clammy impossibly strong hands clutching at her.

They were quiet for awhile as Amy let him get the knots out of her neck and shoulders. Adam felt like he was going to throw up as he looked at her. He knew that he had hurt innocent people that day but shit, this was going to get complicated if Frays found out. If he had killed her friends and almost killed her…all the mental and physical pain she was going through was his fault. What the hell was he gonna do? If he said anything about it, he was reasonably certain that she would kill him. Or at least there was a really, really good chance of it. She did not seem the violent type, but aw holy fuck one of the best people he had ever met was hurting so bad and it was
all his fault
. A hundred guilty little salt encrusted knives covered with fire stabbed away at his insides.                 

Frays let her chin droop towards her chest. “I’m not gonna die here.” she said quietly, enjoying the sensation of Adam’s hands kneading the stiffness out of her neck and seemingly putting whatever was wrong with it back to rights somewhat.
She tensed as a knot in her shoulder loosened sending a twinge down her spine. “I’m going home. I’m done here. I’ve done enough. I wanna go home.”

He smiled weakly down at the back of her head. “Sure thing, boss.” Lacey said quietly as he worked a particularly stubborn knot loose. Amy groaned
with pleasure and shifted around on the bench a little bit. “Sure. I can’t wait to meet your family. You already met mine, so I mean it seems only fair.”

Amy
snorted a small laugh into her sodden ABU top. “Right. Fair’s fair.” she muttered quietly. The two of them looked up when somebody else came into the room. Sergeant Barnes, Eamon and Rodriguez stood in the doorway, the two men looking at each other as if they were somewhere where they knew that they should not be. The five people looked at each other for a long minute.

“The medic wants to see you, Frays.” Sergeant Barnes said, breaking the awkward silence. “Leave your weapons with Lacey and come on.”

“What’s up?” Amy started to stand up but Lacey gently pushed her back down to the bench. The young woman slowly realized what was going on here. “You think I got bitten or something, don’t you?” Frays sighed and shook her head, a slow crawling horror coming to life in her stomach.

“C’m
on now, Zoomie.” Rodriguez said, casting a slightly chary glance at Lacey. She took a half step towards Lacey and Frays, an uneasy little smile on her face. “Don’t be like that. We just want to make sure you’re okay. A little break’ll do you some good.”

Frays looked at the floor. “I’m okay, guys.” she said quietly as she scratched an itch behind her ear. A few strands of hair had gotten free again and she tucked them out of the way
behind her ear. “Eamon, Lacey tell ‘em. If I got…sick…from the stuff on me I wouldn’t have made it back.”

Eamon swallowed hard. “Truth be told, Amy” he began and swallowed again “I don’t know what happened with that Army guy. All I know is you said he attacked you and you shot him. You never did exactly give us a chance to hear his side of it.”

Frays rolled her eyes, a hurt and exasperated expression on her face. She tried to look at Lacey behind her. “C’mon, man.” she said quietly, hating how much she sounded like a whiny child. Amy leaned forward, her forearms on her knees. “I’m not sick and you know it.”

Lacey ran his hand slowly over Frays’ shoulder. It took him a couple seconds to find the words. “It’ll be okay.” he said at last. “I’ll go with you over to Eamon’s office. I’m sure Rodriguez wouldn’t mind taking a couple minutes to hang out while he looks you over.”

She grumbled resignedly and stood up. “Fine.” Frays said unhappily as she pulled her M9 out if its holster then cleared the weapon and handed it over to Lacey. Her M4 was across the room leaning against the dividing wall between the shower stalls.

“Don’t worry, boss.” Adam said as he accepted the pistol. “I’ll clean ‘em up real good for you and square away the rest of your gear as soon as I get a chance.”

Frays smiled gratefully as they left the locker room. Her feet squished in her soggy boots as they walked around the building to the nurse’s office, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind. She did not like the way the others looked at her as they passed them in the hall, as if even making eye contact might somehow make them sick or something. Even Alex gave her a wide berth, which hurt. Rodriguez and Sergeant Barnes followed a few paces behind her and Eamon, their weapons at port arms. She felt inexplicably ashamed, like she had done something wrong.

Sergeant Barnes waited outside while Rodriguez and Eamon took Frays inside the office. The fat medic took a box of latex gloves out of the cabinet and snapped on a pair. “Okay, Amy.” he said quietly as he turned around “I’m sorry about this, but I need you to take off your uniform.”

“You’re kidding.” Frays said quietly. She arched an eyebrow at him and frowned, the memory of his hand working its way down her abdomen only adding to her fear. Amy crossed her arms across her stomach and took a couple trembling steps backwards towards the door.

“It’ll be alright, Frays.” Rodriguez said reassuringly. She tried to smile but the expression died an awkward death after a few moments.
She sensed an ebb and flow in the room that she did not quite understand. “It’ll just take a couple minutes then we’ll take you over to the teacher’s lounge for a little while.”