Outbreak: Brave New World (6 page)

Amy smiled slightly and closed her book. “I heard it was like this.” she said as she spread her hands far apart. Frays stretched and rolled her head in a slow circle, making the vertebrae in her neck pop and crack
, sending a little shiver down the woman’s spine. Adam looked guiltily at the floor for a second before he brought his eyes back to Frays’ face. A little jittery tremor ran through the woman’s body after she appeared to finish working the kinks out of her neck. “Well, maybe next time.”

Lacey’s eyes darted towards the kitchen a
gain and he leaned in close and thought about putting a hand on Frays’ shoulder until he remembered that his hands were covered with fishy stench. “Hey, hon!” he called as he went towards the kitchen. “Got the fish. Where do you want me to put it?”

Later that evening
Amy sat in the recliner, her stomach churning and bubbling as she watched Frannie curled up on the hide-a-bed on the other side of the room. The Laceys were in the back bedroom again, her brother snoring on the cot in the dining room. “Can’t sleep either, kiddo?” George asked, frowning a little when he saw his daughter jump at the sound of his voice. “Let’s talk outside on the deck.”

George helped Amy up and with her arm around his waist they quietly tiptoed around the end of the hide-a-bed and made their way outside. Frays grimaced as she settled into one of the plastic deck chairs. It appeared that her feet were not
healing as quickly as she had hoped. The two of them sat quietly, looking up at the bright white moon overhead and listening to the frogs down by the shoreline below. “Did they ever tell you about the Highway of Death?” George asked quietly as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out a pack of some off brand cigarettes. To her surprise, he took one for himself then offered Amy the pack. Frays hesitated and frowned then started to take one and hated herself, put it back.

How long did he know that she smoked? It was not something she had done
with any frequency. In fact the only time she had smoked with any regularity was when she was overseas and she had quit cold turkey while in Kuwait waiting for the plane to take them back to the states. The last few weeks had been stressful enough to break down her resolve and take the habit back up, at least for a little while…

George lit his cigarette
and exhaled a plume of smoke. “Saddam’s boys were beatin’ feet north back home out of Kuwait. We laid mines ahead of ‘em and came up behind...you zoomies and the grunts and our fast movers just laid into ‘em.” George said quietly. A faraway look came to the man’s face as he looked out over the water and he shook his head, exhaling a plume of smoke. His mind drifted back to that sandy bit of Hell on the other side of the world, when he was still practically a kid not much older than his daughter when she had gone to serve her country in that same godforsaken patch of earth. “We laid into ‘em too, anything that tried to make a run for it, we just lit ‘em up…main guns and crew serveds just rippin’ ‘em up…” he was quiet for a moment and Amy was surprised to see a little, familiar tremble in her father’s hands as he brought the cigarette up to his lips. “We rolled up after it was done” the man gave his daughter a rueful, almost tearful smile “It was somethin’ to see… They like to say that God’s everywhere. Well, I can think of one place He wasn’t.”

George was surprised when his daughter suddenly dissolved into tears, hiding her face in her hands and sobbing uncontrollably. Amy
sniffed back snot and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I-I think I did a bad thing, Daddy.” she sobbed into the palms of her hands as the man wrapped her up in a big bear hug. George picked his daughter up out of her chair and sat down, holding her in his lap as if she were a child again. “I think I did a bad thing. I…I-I didn’t wanna, b-but I…oh man, Daddy I think I’m goin’ to Hell...” Frays lost herself in long choking sobs as her father held her tightly to his chest. “I don’t…Daddy, I-I dunno…t-there was…
just so much blood
.”

George held his daughter and ran a h
and slowly up and down her back as he had done when she was small…not that that had happened all that often. She had been a tough, independent kind of a little girl. Heck, she had practically changed her own diapers as a kid. He smiled a little and rested his chin on the young woman’s shoulder. “It’s alright, kiddo.” he said quietly, still rubbing her back. “It’s alright. Shhhh…it’s alright.” When the worst of it had passed George helped Amy inside and got her back to the recliner.

“There we go, kiddo.” he whispered as he unfolded an old, threadbare blanket he found behind the chair and spread it over his dau
ghter, drying her cheeks with one corner of the worn fabric. “Just get a little rest.” Amy squirmed into the cushions of the chair and smiled drowsily up at her father and nodded, already starting to drop off to sleep.

Frannie
had woken up when the door whooshed open and George took his daughter outside. She rolled onto her side and watched through the glass as Frays cried into her father’s shirt, a great big knot twisting and rolling around in her stomach. Rodriguez curled into a ball on the mattress. “Dumb mick.” she grumbled under her breath and wiped at her cheek “Where are you when I need you?”   

Chapter Two

1
2 June 2011, 1143 hours 4 Old Trout Lane 10 miles north of Holden, Massachusetts

CRAAACK
!
Frannie and Amy both jumped at the clap of the thunder which sounded like it was right over the roof. It had been raining for a day and a half or so, leaving the lot of them stuck inside with little to do. Frays, Lacey and Rodriguez tried keeping busy by sewing up the holes in their uniforms and socks but that had only managed to kill about an hour or so yesterday and you could only sleep so many hours a day.

Paulie looked at Frannie when she startled, smiled a little and snuggled back against the woman’s chest. Rodriguez squeezed the boy tightly and the two of them turned their attention back to the yellowed
paperback collection of Peanuts comics he had found hiding in the corner of the bookshelf next to the back bedroom. Paulie could only read a few words but the boy recognized the picture of Snoopy on the cover and insisted that Frannie read it to him. His sister was doodling in a spiral notebook in the middle of the floor with a couple pencils and some crayons while Amy snoozed uneasily on the couch, her place marked in her book with her thumb. Carl was napping in the back bedroom.

Laura sat at the kitchen table playing cards with her husband and
Mr. and Mrs. Frays. She frowned over her hand at her son and Rodriguez across the room. “Paulie, would you come here?” Laura called as she discarded an ace and took a trick. The boy squirmed on Frannie’s lap but did not budge. “Paul. Did you hear me?”

“Moooom!” the boy whined
“Frannie’s reading to me.” He squirmed again on Francesca’s lap, making the woman’s face tighten up a little. The wound on her thigh was more or less healed but it still smarted when the boy put his weight on her leg in just the right way. It sounded to her like he was starting to get a little tired. She buried her nose in the boy’s hair and breathed in his scent then squeezed him again.

“You mind your mom, little man.” Rodriguez warned as she lifted the child off her lap and set him on the floor.
She smiled as she patted the boy on the bottom and gently nudged him in the direction of his mother. “It’s almost lunchtime. Be good and I’ll read to you some more before naptime, alright?”

The boy grinned up at her then turned and
joined his mother at the table. Frannie arched an eyebrow at Adam who only shrugged slightly while Paulie climbed into his mother’s lap. Laura scowled at her and flicked another card out of her hand and onto the table. Rodriguez shook her head and turned her attention back to the comic book then she folded the footrest to the recliner and stood up. “What’s the deal, Laura?” she asked angrily as started towards the table. Frannie stopped and leaned against the railing that separated the dining room from the living room. “You’ve been eyeballin’ me and Frays since we got here. I don’t like it.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Laura said sharply. Paulie looked uneasily from his mother to
Frannie and back again. The boy did not know what exactly was going on but he did not like it. Laura rolled her eyes and exhaled sharply. “I don’t know
what
your problem is.”

Frannie clenched her jaw, incensed and struggling to keep back the urge to cross the room and slap the taste
out of the bitch’s mouth. “My problem?
My problem?!
” Rodriguez sputtered once she had enough self control to form words. “
My
fu-“

George
loudly cleared his throat then frowned and leaned back from the table a little. “Come on, now.” he said quietly, smiling a little to try and ease the tension. “Everybody just calm down.” Amy got up and took a few steps towards the dining room as Becca stood up and hid behind the woman’s leg. Frays glanced from Rodriguez to Mrs. Lacey, trying to figure out what the heck was going on as she picked something out of the corner of her eye.

Paulie looked puzzled and confused by what was going on. “Mommy, be nice!” he said sternly as he turned on his mother’s lap. The boy put his hands on his hips in a perfect impression of George. “Frannie’s nice and comfy and pretty and she doesn’t have a mommy or daddy or anybody! Be nice!”

Paulie looked around confused for a moment. The grownups looked at Frannie with strange expressions. Mrs. Frays looked like she might cry and he started to wonder if he had said something wrong. Amy was by Frannie’s side. Frannie stood there next to the recliner looking at the floor leaning against the post separating the living and dining rooms as if she might fall over. Amy put a hand on her friend’s shoulder and frowned. It took a few moments for Frannie to be able to meet her friend’s gaze then she gave a wan smile before plopping back down in the comfy blue chair.

Amy sighed and shook her head. She headed back towards the couch and paused
when Becca’s drawings caught her eye. Despite the childlike scrawling Frays could plainly make out pallid, gray skinned figures chasing after a red SUV that kind of looked like the Explorer in the driveway. The windows of the vehicle were full of frowning faces. Amy shuddered as she stood there staring down at the open notebook on the floor. The little girl looked at Frays then picked up the notebook. “Wanna see my pitchers, Amy?” she asked and gave the woman a prideful smile. “Mommy says I draw good!”

Frays glanced towards the girl’s mother then
nodded and smiled a little. A vague sense of unease flitted around inside her stomach like a bird in a cage. “Sure, kiddo.” Amy answered as she returned to the couch and sat down. Becca closed up the notebook and bounded after her then scrambled up into Amy’s lap. Frays swung her legs up onto the couch and let the girl get situated on her stomach.

“Your daddy made aaall the Bad
People fall down.” Becca explained as she showed Amy the first picture in the notebook with a triumphant wave of her little hand. It was a childish cartoon of a big man with a smoking gun in his hand with three of the grayish stick figures piled up at his feet. Becca smiled and pointed to the man in the picture. “He’s very brave.”

Amy glanced over at her father and smiled a little as Becca turned the page.
Frays shuddered when she saw the next picture the little girl had drawn in the notebook. “Some Bad People eated a lady all to pieces.” the girl explained and scowled at the drawing. It showed more of the grayish figures crouched over a crude stick figure with red and yellow loops and squiggles all around it, obviously meant to represent the victim’s innards. “Mommy told me not to look but I did anyway. She covereded my eyes.”

Amy started shaking uncontrollably
, her arms tightening around the child. “Somebody made all the people go to sleep.” Becca turned the page, showing Frays a bunch of stick figures lying on top of one another in a ditch. A sudden still image of strange people’s faces covered with blood, their blank eyes staring accusingly, flashed inside of Amy’s eyes when she blinked. Frays lifted the girl off of her and set Becca on the floor.

“Hon, I…
I g-gotta go to the bathroom.” Amy explained then hurried off towards the latrine with a palm pressed over her mouth. Rodriguez followed after her friend, making it to the door just in time to hear the sound of somebody violently throwing up on the other side. The urge to Exorcist barf all over the place punched her in the stomach, forcing her to pause and put on a neutral face before rapping gently on the doorframe and sticking her head into the room. Frays was on her knees leaning over the toilet and clutching at the porcelain bowl. The airman glanced at her then turned and vomited again. Frannie grimaced then smiled sympathetically as she eased into the little bathroom.