Outbreak: Long Road Back (18 page)

Rodriguez hurried into the ladies’ room a few doors down and checked the stalls. No Lieutenant Haskins there… She swallowed hard and tried to shake off the feeling that she had wandered into a nightmare. “Ma’am? Where the hell are you?” the woman shouted now starting to get really unnerved. “Ma’am? Get your skinny ass out here
right now
!”

Rodriguez sprinted back towards the desk and stopped outside an open door a little ways down from the doctor’s office. She had no idea how she missed it being open on her way by. On a chance she stuck her head inside the room and spied the soles of a pair of boots a few feet inside the room. “Ohholyshitfuck.” Rodriguez squeaked as she rushed to the figure’s side and knelt beside it.

Mike looked up when Rodriguez came back into the lobby area. The woman looked pale and he wondered for a second if he was going to have to try and take care of another casualty. “Where the fuck is Lieutenant Haskins?!” he asked somehow keeping himself from shouting at the woman as she approached. Rodriguez stopped a few feet away and stared down at him as if she were trying to figure out if what was going on was actually happening or not.

“S-She’s dead.” Rodriguez managed at last. Her mouth felt like it was full of cotton as she watched Mike trying to save Corporal Waterman. She stood there blinking and concentrated on breathing in deep the way her therapist had taught her to try and control her panic attacks about a millennia ago.

“What the fuck do you mean?!” Mike shouted at the semi coherent woman. “What the fuck happened?!” Rodriguez stood there with her chest heaving as more of the color started to leech out of her face. The scars on her cheek and face stood out like maggots on her skin.

“How the fuck should I know?!” Rodriguez shouted back. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to catch her breath, the horrors in front of her getting all mixed in with horrors from another place on the other side of the world. “She’s fucking dead, alright?!”

A few people came in probably drawn by the gunshots. Things started to get a little weird and disjointed after that: Rodriguez barely remembered sitting at a desk in the Security Forces office and giving a report. Somebody told her she could go so she wandered back over to the Resettlement Center and had a shower. It was lukewarm but helped the confused jumble of the past hour or so come into some sort of focus. Then she was lying on her cot in her room staring at the ceiling…

“Frannie?” a voice said from the doorway. She looked up at Carl as he tentatively entered the room. Female barracks were at least on paper off limits to male personnel however she and her three roommates had boyfriends come by and they had all worked out a system so that nobody ever intruded on each other’s private time.

She sat up and rushed to Carl, burying her face in his chest. “Tell me I’m here. Please please tell me I’m here and not there.” Rodriguez whispered fervently into his shirt. He held her tight and kissed the top of the woman’s head, savoring the smell of the soap in the woman’s hair. “Tell me I’m here. I don’t wanna be there. Where the hell am I?”

“It’s alright, Frannie.” Carl whispered into her hair as he smooched the top of her head again. He desperately hoped that she was not going to start crying. Holding his big sister while she sobbed her eyes out a few hours ago had been bad enough… “You’re right here with me. I got you. You’re okay, Frannie. Shhh…it’s alright, baby.”

Chapter Six

10 July 2011 1832 hours NorthCom Forward Operating Base Freedom Sanford, Maine

Sergeant Hanes looked at the paperwork in front of him and cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.” he said quietly as he shuffled the papers around for a moment. Ordinarily this would not have bothered him but… “According to witness statements two Blue Diamond Group personnel attacked the Med Center looking for drugs. During the course of the robbery one of the men, identified as Derek Yates, held the desk personnel at gunpoint while his companion, identified as Vincent Morales, went into Lieutenant Haskins’ office. During this time Mister Yates shot and killed Corporal David Waterman.

After the two men had fled the scene making off with all of our pain meds, antibiotics and what I’ll be generous and put in my official report as some evidence that Lieutenant Haskins was holding onto for us one Specialist Francesca Rodriguez discovered Lieutenant Haskins deceased on the floor of an examination room next door to her office. Official cause of death appears to be blunt trauma to the head, apparently from being pistol whipped.”

Major Tennyson looked like he had been through the wringer. The grizzled Marine officer nodded gravely. “Alright. Thank you, Sergeant.” he said quietly. The older man sighed heavily. This was just the sort of thing that he would have gone to Lieutenant Haskins for to see what she thought of it. “Go get Deputy Secretary Bouchard and bring him here. Now.”

Major Tennyson stared gravely at the small table that served as his desk. His first inclination was to tell Bouchard and his bully boys to get the fuck off his FOB and anybody who did not like it, as his grandfather would have put it, could take it up with Sam Colt.

He sighed heavily. Making all these funeral arrangements was starting to take its toll on him. He had lost count of the number of people buried in their makeshift cemetery. Up until earlier this afternoon the worst had to be assigning the detail to bury Sergeant Frays’ son. The poor little guy never even had a chance… It had taken everything he had to not give the poor woman a hug during the award ceremony where she got her Purple Heart. He had found himself admiring the woman’s resolve too. He did not know if he could have held up quite so well under the same circumstances…

Someone knocked on the major’s door a few moments later. A stocky guy in a polo shirt and khakis walked in without being invited making the major scowl at him. The man cleared his throat and scratched at his thin, neatly trimmed beard. “I…I’m sorry to hear about Be…Lieutenant Haskins.” Deputy Secretary Bouchard said quietly, his manner like that of a bullying schoolboy called into the principal’s office. “She and I had our problems but I liked her. She’ll be missed.”

Tennyson slowly counted to ten in his head. The man had been contemptuous (at best) of the woman while she was alive and now that she was dead he was trying to play like they were best friends or something. “Thank you for your condolences.” the major said at last. He took a couple more slow breaths before continuing. “We know two of your men did it. They also killed another member of the medical staff. And those two killed everyone else they would have saved from here on out.”

“I’ll have them surrender themselves for trial immediately as soon as the courts are up and running again, of course.” Secretary Bouchard said as he spread his hands in a gesture of contriteness. The burly man shrugged and frowned. “You understand I can’t just let you do anything rash under the circumstances.”

“I am a hair’s breadth from ordering you and all your people the hell off my FOB.” Major Tennyson said, rising by inches from his seat. There was a feeling in the room like kicking over a rotted log in the woods. Both men stared at each other for a long second or two. “Just so you know where we stand.”

Bouchard nodded. “I’ve got more men than you do.” he said and smiled like a shark. “Just so you know where we stand.” He shrugged again and chuckled trying to defuse the situation. “Look…we can still get along. So some of my employees get a little excited or whatever sometimes. Gotta let ‘em blow off steam somehow.”

“You and those animals you got working for you have thirty minutes to get the hell off my property.” Major Tennyson said in the tone of command that only a career military man can muster. “You and me are going to sit right here and wait for your guys to leave. Anybody within sight of my walls after that point? It’s game on, you condescending piece of shit.” Major Tennyson called for Sergeant Hanes and relayed the order to him.
Tennyson surreptitiously drew his sidearm from its holster and held it in his lap pointed at Bouchard’s guts under the table. “Now let’s not do anything rash, Major.” Bouchard said still with that same patronizing grin on his face “I’d like to remind you that I’m the top civilian authority for this FEMA region. As far as you’re concerned I’m in charge here.”
The FEMA man leapt to his feet and Major Tennyson’s pistol boomed several times in his hand sending slugs through the table and punching several holes in Bouchard’s torso from groin to upper chest. Bouchard stood there for a moment staring in shock at the gore soaking through his crisp polo shirt and kacki slacks before crumpling to the ground.

Two men burst into the room and Tennyson brought his M9 up before realizing that it was a couple of his own men. “Piece of shit resisted arrest.” Major Tennyson said as he decocked his pistol and returned it to the holster on his hip. One of them grinned at the corpse and nodded as the two of them came into the room to get a better look at things.
“Yes, Sir.” The other one said as he removed the pistol from Bouchard’s holster and put it in the man’s hand. “See? He threw down on you, sir. Had to defend yourself. Me and Roberts saw it ourselves didn’t we?” The Marine private dutifully snapped photos with his cell phone camera documenting the whole scene for his report.

Frays could not help but feel a sense of things being put right in a kind of horrible way. She and the rest of the trainees had taken a position along the perimeter of the Blue Diamond Group’s trailers while a small detachment of Security Forces went from trailer to trailer turning the mercenaries out into the street. A couple of these men had beaten up her brother just a few weeks ago. On the other side of the world a sick evil man like these guys had come close to killing her and had destroyed everything she had in the world. They had reduced her Master’s Thesis to so much slag, setting her back months and causing her so much heartburn she was surprised that she did not get an ulcer or something.

Now they were the ones getting turned out. Finding out what it was like to be on the receiving end for a change. And, God help her, it made Frays feel pretty good. A tiny little part of her really did hope that one of them put up a fuss. Hopefully it would be the smug South African that had stolen her father’s 1911 and set Carl off.

She glanced down the line. The trainees seemed to be keeping their cool as they stood guard waiting for the Marines to do their jobs. A blood curdling shriek cut through the late afternoon quiet like a razorblade. Frays glanced at the trainees when a second voice joined the first and gurgled to a halt. There was the sharp crack of gunfire.

Instinct kicked in. Frays and the rest of them threw themselves to the ground and raised their carbines searching for targets. There were more shots. Frays glanced around, hesitant to go charging in amongst the trailers and other buildings lest they be mistaken for whoever was causing the shooting and get fired upon themselves.

A figure clutching his throat stumbled around the corner of the nearest trailer and collapsed in a heap. “Stark, Hubbard!” Frays shouted. She waved towards the fallen figure and the two trainees jogged off towards the man. “Everyone else cover them!”

Stark and Hubbard each grabbed one of the man’s arms and started dragging the casualty back towards the rest of the group. The small blonde woman screamed and kicked the casualty in the side of the head as Hubbard unslung his carbine and fired a quick pair of shots into the man’s temple. The rest of them exchanged nervous glances as Hubbard reached out and tapped Stark on the arm. The two of them jogged back to their lines and Stark hustled over to Sergeant Frays. Stark glanced over her shoulders at the others then whispered “Sergeant…that guy was infected or whatever. That guy was one of them.”

A puzzled expression came to Sergeant Frays’ face. “What do you mean infected?” she asked. Frays scowled at the crumpled form about seventy meters away. “How the heck did that happen?”

Stark shrugged. “You’ve got me, Sergeant.” she said quietly as a little tremor ran through her body. “The son of a bitch almost got me. H-er…it almost got a chunk of my forearm.” The woman shuddered and ran her hands over her forearms.

Frays’ eyes went wide for a moment. “But you’re alright?” she asked and seized the woman’s wrists. Frays checked the woman for bite marks or any other proof she did not get off as unscathed as she thought. The both of them calmed slightly when what Stark had said proved true.

“What are we gonna do?” Stark asked. By now it appeared that word of what had just happened was making its way to the rest of the group via Hubbard. Frays was quiet as more sporadic gunfire rang out. Some of it did not appear to be coming from the Blue Diamond Group compound anymore… What the hell was happening?

Sergeant Frays grabbed the little Motorola walkie talkie clipped to her LCS and pressed the talk button. “Big Daddy, Big Daddy Baby Momma.” Frays said quickly into the little yellow and black radio. A little part of her wished they had the time to come up with a different call sign for her… “Sitrep!”