Outbreak: Brave New World (38 page)

Lieutenant Haskins came in. “Alright…” she said leafing through the papers on the clipboard in her hand. “I need Private Lacey, Mister Frays and Becca. Time to finish off on your inprocessing.” She stood to the side and let the others pass by into the hall.
Frays raised an eyebrow as she watched Lacey following the lieutenant out of the room. Did she just catch him checking out the other woman’s butt? More disturbingly, was that a twinge of
jealousy
she just felt? “Mister Jones will be around in about half an hour or so to take you to your appointment, Airman. Everybody should be back by then.”

“You nervous, Frays?” Rodriguez asked as she smiled across the room at her. Paulie started fidgeting in his bed a little bit. “Hey Paulie. I bet you a quarter that Amy’s gonna have a girl. What do you say?”

The boy made a thoughtful face. “I dunno, Frannie.” Paulie said as he studied Frays. “I think it’s gonna be a boy.” He looked a little glum and fiddled with his blankets. “I’m bored. I wanna go play outside.” The little boy wondered what happened to his cars. They were in back of the army truck with everybody else’s stuff. Did Amy and Carl grab them? He hoped so…

Amy and Frannie both smiled at the kid. “I’m sure it won’t be long, buddy.”
Rodriguez said reassuringly. She had to wonder if somebody was going to come by with something to read or something if they were going to be kept cooped up here much longer. “I’d like to go outside too, little man. Just a little longer.”

“What did you see out there, Paulie?” Amy asked. There was something that did not sit right with her abo
ut this place but she could not quite put her finger on it. It was probably what the major had said, but still… “Didn’t Carl take you outside?”

“No, he pushed me and Becca in the wheeliechair.” The boy said and smiled
then looked a little frustrated. He liked Carl, even if he did not much like his sister. “We went fast around the room where the chairs are. The lutenent lady made him stop.”

“Did you see any other people or anything?” Frays pressed and frowned when
to her surprise, Tom the medic from the ambulance the night before came into the room. He smiled and unfolded the wheelchair from where Carl had put it when he brought the kids back. Amy became quiet then looked away before smiling at the man.

“Alright, Airman.”
Tom said as he brought the wheelchair to Frays’ bed and backed it up. “Your chariot awaits.” He helped Amy get out of bed and get situated on the chair. Frays smiled at his joke. The medic glanced at the others. “Hey, little guy! How you doin’?” He paused in wheeling Amy out of the room.

“We got eggies for bre
akfast!” Paul told him with a grin. “Amy was nice and gave me her sausage.” Tom grinned back and laughed at this. “The doctor lady was nice too, but she gived me a shots.” The boy frowned and held up his forearm so Tom could see the band aid with little cartoon animals printed on it.
Tom frowned and nodded gravely at the boy’s arm then his face brightened. “Hey Paulie, do you wanna see somethin’ neat?” he asked. Tom turned to Rodriguez and smiled. She could not help but smile back. “You can come too, if you want. I’m gonna take Airman Frays here down the hall to get some baby pictures taken.”

O
nce they got into the exam room Tom helped Amy up onto the table. “Alright, Corporal Waterman’s gonna be right in.” he explained as Rodriguez and Paulie got settled into a chair in the corner. “Lieutenant Haskins is almost done with your people so I’ll go grab them up and bring them down here.”

There was an awkward silence in the room after Tom left. Frays toyed with the drawstring of her pajama bottoms and twitched her bare feet back and forth as if to some unheard rhythm. Frannie
took a seat in one of the plastic chairs against the wall and bounced Paulie on her knee while Amy quietly hummed to herself. Who would get here first?

Lacey came in and scooped up his boy, followed closely by Becca and Carl.
“Did we miss anything?” he asked as he held Paulie. After a few moments the child started squirming so he put him down. “They didn’t take the ultrasound already, did they?”

Amy felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips. It was even money in her book as to who looked more excited: Lacey or her brother. “Nope, not yet.” She muttered under her breath and resumed tapping her feet. An impish little smile came to Becca’s face and the little girl tickled the sole of Frays’ foot.
Frays snorted and scowled at the girl. Amy kept moving her feet out of Becca’s reach and Becca would giggle then try to catch her so she could tickle the soles of Frays’ feet. The two of them goofed around like this for maybe ten minutes or so when the door opened up and a machine on a cart nosed its way into the room.

“Okay, looks like the gang’s all here!” a cheerful voice called as a short
stocky white man in ACUs rolled a white machine on a cart into the room. “One side, folks. Gotta get this in there. Thanks.” He smiled at them and started setting up the ultrasound machine. “Sorry I’m late. Gotta just get this set up…won’t be a minute. Had to dig this thing out of the basement. I’m Corporal Waterman, by the way.”

“I’m Senior Airman Frays.” Amy said and pointed towards Frannie and the others. “That’s Specialist Rodriguez, Private Lacey and his kids Becca and Paulie. That tall guy there in the corner’s my brother Carl.”

“Take notes, there’s a test on this later.” Frannie said with a small grin. She stood up next to Lacey and Carl, jostling with them to try and get a better look at the monitor attached to the machine. Paulie tugged at her hand so she picked him up so he could see too. Becca scrambled up her father.

“Okay…don’t think this is the best quality but we’ll see how it shakes.” Waterman said as he fired up the ultrasound machine. He took a tube of something off of the cart and pulled up Amy’s pajama top enough to reveal the lump in her belly. “Here we go.”

Frays gasped involuntarily when the man smeared a glob of the cold petroleum jelly onto her belly and picked up the sensor. She squirmed then smiled nervously at the medic as he moved the metal and plastic cylinder around on her stomach. It took a little bit but something that looked like a tiny whitish blue peanut showed up on the screen. Amy started to cry when she saw it move. “There it is…” Waterman said as he maneuvered the sensor around to give them a more complete look at the baby. He stared at it a moment. “Looks like a pretty healthy little four month old. A little small, maybe…do you want to know the sex?”

Amy looked at Carl. The boy shrugged. “Up to you Aim.” he said absently, unable to tear his eyes away from the monitor. She looked thoughtfully at the twitchy little thing in disbelief, unable to quite wrap her mind around actually seeing the little person in her own womb.
It was moving on the screen but she could not really feel it.

“Yeah, yeah I do.” Frays whispered. Lacey put a hand on her shoulder and she covered it with her own, sparing a glance over at him. It did not really matter to her at all if it was a boy or a girl but it would be nice to be able to call her baby him or her
instead of it all the time. She looked up at Lacey and smiled.

There it is!
Adam thought and smiled back. He rubbed her shoulder, his hand tightening reflexively.
That’s what she looks like when she actually smiles.
Lacey could not believe their good fortune after everything that happened that Frays still had her baby and it was reasonably healthy. On a whim he bent and kissed the woman’s forehead. 

Waterman moved the sensor around a little more. “Okay…looks like you’ve got a little boy, Airman.” He smiled at her and extended his hand, pumping it vigorously when she took it. “
You’re kid’s in good hands here, Frays. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Chapter Ten

2
4 June 2011 0953 hours NorthCom Forward Operating Base Freedom Sanford, Maine  

Amy grumbled as she stared
out the window. This creepy guy who introduced himself as Nick Allens supposedly from some FEMA bigwig’s ‘personnel department’ had interviewed all of them yesterday afternoon. She guessed that the guy was some kind of ‘government contractor’ from his khaki trousers and black polo shirt with the blue diamond shaped logo embroidered on the left breast. There was something scratching at the back of her mind but she could not figure out what exactly it was. So, like with a lot of things that bothered her, she tried to not think about it. Unfortunately there was really nothing much for her to do but sit around and think.

Frays looked sadly at the little lump under her pajama top as she ran her hands over it. What the heck kind of a world was she going to bring this little guy in to?
He would likely never see a movie or get his driver’s license. He would probably never have a hot dog or call up the pizza place for a large pepperoni and cheese…

On the other hand,
she realized that it was not like her son would know what he was missing. All the crap all the violence and insanity going on would seem perfectly normal to him because he would have nothing else to compare it to. Frays put her arms protectively around the fetus in her womb. This place would likely be the closest to the world she grew up in that he would ever know. However long it was until this place fell apart too.

There was a sort of wrongness to the place that she could not shake but she could not put her finger on either. The idea of Major Tennyson’s orders to shoot looters greatly unsettled her. Killing someone who was just trying to find some food o
r something struck her as just so terribly, horribly wrong and as much as she did not like the word Un-American. It seemed monstrous and made her queasy. How could he ask her to do something like that? It was just too similar to the orders that she had received at Hanscomb…orders she had never really intended to actually carry out herself…but she had. She had murdered that poor little boy…

It bothered her that she had blocked out what happened
when everything started going insane. If she could not trust her own memory what could she trust? What other landmines were hiding in there? It was unnerving, kind of like the mental equivalent of walking on eggshells.

The few ‘civilian contractors’ she had met
here did not help ease her mind any either. She tried to tell herself that she was being foolish, that she did not trust them because of her experiences with other ‘contractors’ overseas. Granted, the ones she had met so far seemed like the civilians that processed your paperwork or whatever and not the yahoos bombing around The Sandbox in customized Land Rovers bristling with PKMs and Kalashnikovs. However those cracked out loonies had to be kicking around here some place too. There had been droves of them tooling around New Orleans after Katrina hit, after all.     

Frays grumbled to herself, a little frustrated that she had thought about pizza as it started a craving for a piping hot pie from the Brown Jug, the little pizza joint and bar just off campus where she went a couple times with Jacob and his friends. They liked bringing her along because
, as Frays was the only non-drinker, she would drive them to the bar and back to the dorms. She found herself missing Jacob again. Maybe he was still around somewhere. Maybe he had been recalled in the middle of the night like she had. Amy dismissed that idea as highly unlikely. Jacob would have told her if that had happened or called her or something. It did not seem like him at all to just disappear.

She sighed and continued to rub her belly as she stared out the window. Rodriguez got to leave the aid station yesterday after Allens talked to them
all leaving her, as far as she really knew, alone in the building after lights out except for Daryl and Paulie. Frays glanced at her watch and frowned.

Rodriguez, Lacey and Carl got assigned to a work detail yesterday afternoon, so they would
most likely be busy until well after nightfall. Paulie had been taken off of bed rest so he was busy making friends with all the medics and following Tom around. The man let Paulie act like he was helping him as he made his rounds, leaving her alone in the room. It was going to be a long hot frigging day. The air conditioning in the building did not seem to be working and the open window did little against the oppressive heat building up inside. Her sheets were already soaked in sweat and her pajamas clung to her. Thankfully Daryl had left her a gallon jug of water and some cups on the table next to her bed so she would have plenty to drink.

Daryl
had also dropped off a dog-eared copy of
The Hobbit
by J.R.R Tolkien to read. She read some of it to Paulie as the little boy curled up with her during his afternoon nap or before lights out. Fantasy was not really her thing, but she was starting gain an appreciation for it seeing as how she did not have anything else to read right now. Part of her still wondered if Daryl would be able to find a Bible lying around. She also hoped that the chaplain would be around to talk to her. Maybe they did not have one?