Outbreak: Better Days (2 page)

Amy could not help but find her mood softening a little bit. “My brother Carl Frays is working here.” she said and returned the man’s smile. “Blond kid about sixteen? About this tall.” Frays held her hand a little over six feet off the ground “Is he around? I’d like to talk to him for a minute.”

The man gave her a playful, cockeyed grin. “Seen Kyle?” he asked
and raised his hand in an approximation of the Nazi salute making Amy roll her eyes and shake her head. “Wait right here, Ma’am. I think I saw him weeding the radishes over on the far end.” The man turned his back and whispered into the microphone hanging off of his ear.

Amy found that she was
still more than a little nonplussed by the sight of armed guards standing watch over people like they were prisoners or something never mind the fact that one of those people was her baby brother. Not for the first time she started to feel a growing concern start gnawing on the corners of her mind. She could not help but feel a little relieved when she saw a gangly sunburned teenager in dirty coveralls picking his way towards her, being careful to not step on any of the plants.

“Hey, Aim!” he called as he approached. Carl looked a little worried for a moment. They had seen each other earlier this morning but now she was back only a few hours later. Was something wrong? Whatever it was it hopefully did not have anything to do with the baby… “What’s shakin’?”

“Just wanted to let you know that I’m gonna be on radio watch again ‘til eleven o’clock tonight.” Amy informed her brother. The look of relief on her brother’s face was almost comical. “So don’t expect me for lunch or dinner. I’ll be over at the TOC if you need anything.”

Carl nodded. “The kid doing alright?” he asked and took a step closer. Amy had trouble sleeping on a good night and the little guy had been giving her some grief lately. The two of them shared a cubicle in the Resettlement Center and Aim kept him up sometimes with her tossing and turning. Sometimes she yelled and flailed about on her cot and it broke his heart to see it. Carl would end up going a few doors down and visit Frannie
if she was around after waking his sister or he would just go for a walk.

“Yep. The little guy’s doing just fine.” Amy said, giving her tummy a light pat. “He’s been kicking the crap out of me all morning.” She already knew what Carl’s next question was going to be before he asked it. “And I just came from the Medics. I was a good girl and took my vitamins.”

Carl snickered. “Alright, Aim.” He gave his sister a quick hug filling her nose with the scent of old sweat and dark, loamy earth. “I gotta get back to work. Be quiet when you come back, alright?”

“Sure thing, Farmer Jim.” Frays said and smiled as she hugged her brother back. “Go on, get outta here. I’ll see you later.” The woman started walking away, waving goodbye over her shoulder. “Keep an e
ye on that corn, mister.”

Amy glanced at her watch as she walked away and was surprised to see that she still had well over an hour until it was time to go back to work. She made a thoughtful face and scratched the back of her neck as she debated a course of action. After a little bit of internal
deliberation she decided to hoof it up to the Resettlement Center and pay Lacey’s kids a visit. The thought of being surrounded by kids made her guts churn and boil and her hands tremble just the slightest little bit as she resolutely made her way towards the building. Paulie and Becca were so adorable and sweet but still…

Frays wiped her hands on her trousers as she stood a few dozen yards from the edge of the group of children huddled in the shade of a leafy maple tree on the edge of the former
Wal-Mart parking lot. A fleshy older woman with a kindly face read to the kids from a copy of what sounded like
Winnie the Pooh
as the little ones sat on blankets on the grass. Amy felt a sudden stab of grief and she sucked her lower lip into her mouth doing her best to keep from falling to her knees and sobbing her eyes out right there on the blacktop. Memories came flooding back of her own childhood when Mom would hold her on her lap in this old rocking chair and read that same story to her before bedtime…

A little brown haired little girl glanced at the woman standing on the edge of the group and
leapt to her feet. “Amy! Hi, Amy!” Becca cried happily as she rushed over and took Frays by the hand. “It’s story time. C’mon Amy! You’re missing it!” Frays sighed, smiled at the girl and let Becca drag her over to sit on a fuzzy blanket with Paulie, her twin brother.

Genny Carver, the child care provider reading to the children, smiled at the younger woman as she sat down with Becca and Paulie Lacey and gathered th
e two little ones close to her. Rachel, a little orphan girl with dirty blonde hair and a look of perpetual lost sadness in her red rimmed green eyes scooted over and put her head in Amy’s lap. Genny frowned slightly, her heart breaking just a little bit at the troubled pained look in the young airman’s eyes.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes Amy checked her watch. “Oh, jeez!” she exclaimed as she gently started trying to extract herself from the children. “I’m real sorry kiddos but I gotta get going. I have to get back to work.
Have a good day, kiddos.” Becca and Paulie each grabbed one of the woman’s legs and gave it a squeeze. Amy’s mouth pinched up and she tousled the children’s hair before bending and kissing the tops of their heads. “Be good for Mrs. Carver alright guys? And say hi to your dad for me.” 

Amy shuddered as she hustled off towards the TOC. Twelve hours sitting there hoping that somebody was going to call them up on the radio was not going to be fun… Frays hoped that whoever she was going to be on the detail with would be interesting at the very least. She had heard a few times that somebody had actually talked to a base in southern Canada checking up
on them. Major Tennyson had ordered the people manning the radio to leave the room so what exactly was being said was a matter of debate.

The radio room was set up inside the old hotel manager’s office behind the front desk. Frays stopped and showed her ID card to the two Navy guys sitting behind the front desk and after they checked their list went into the room. “Hey Frannie!” Amy said with a wide grin as she sank into the nearest rolling chair.

The Latina’s scarred face brightened visibly. “Amy! How the hell have you been?” she asked as Amy rolled her chair up to the table next to her. “Long time no see!” It was easy to see why Carl had taken up with the young woman while they were holed up in the Frays’ hunting cabin west of Boston. She had long black hair and a figure that could make a man drive his car straight up a light pole even when wearing Marine cammies and bulky combat gear. However the right side of her face and neck was covered with pockmarks and scars, the result of a roadside bomb during a deployment in Afghanistan.

As much as she liked her friend Amy could not help but find
the idea of Frannie and Carl kind of unsettling. She was easily a decade older than her little brother and…well...Frannie was on some kind of happy pills or whatever. But then…she did not have much room to talk. And as long as she and Carl made each other happy then she should stop being such a stick in the mud especially since there was so much to be miserable about these days.

“I’m doing good, Frannie!” Amy answered happily and clapped the woman on the shoulder. “Little guy’s
been kicking the crap out of me but well…I can’t say that it doesn’t make me happy.” After everything that happened to her before she even knew she was pregnant she could not help but relish every single strange little sensation of the life inside her. “Whatcha been up to?”

Rodriguez frowned a little bit
and shrugged. “Pulling perimeter guard mostly.” she said quietly as she rubbed her thigh. The woman had been wounded in a firefight with some locals over in Concord a few weeks after the failed attempt of quarantine in Boston. “Handing out MREs and stuff. Winning hearts and minds and all that horseshit. How’s Carl and everybody?”

“They’re great.” Amy said and fidgeted a little. “Just stopped by and said hi to them between getting done with my work and coming here.”
Frays made a strange face and sent a flittering look towards the door. “How’s perimeter guard been working out?”

Rodriguez’s face darkened. “Took down a couple Bravo Charlies the other day.” she whispered, casting a nervous glance at the door herself. She tried to give her friend a reassuring look. “Don’t worry though. That can you gave me worked really good.”

Amy smiled wryly. She had worked out a way to build a suppressor for their M4s while they took shelter in a high school in the aftermath of the failed attempt at quarantine in Boston. “Hey, no problem.” Frays muttered and started looking around in the drawers of the desk. The woman’s face brightened a little as she remembered the sketch she had given the machinists telling them how to manufacture the cans. “Is there a deck of cards in here?”

The two of them sat there playing a game of Spades as they listened to the squawky white noise coming out of the radio set up on the desk in front of them.
Amy turned the volume up on the radio just a little bit. “How…how’s everything going, Frannie?” Frays asked with a conspiratorial glance at the door.

Rodriguez gave Frays a wan smile. “I’m doing fine, Frays.” she said and shrugged as she suddenly found the keypad on the radio very interesting. Frannie leafed through the three ring binder she found on top of the radio,
rediscovering a list of frequencies and procedures for using the equipment. “I’ve been getting my meds. My leg’s still kinda crappy but I get by. How about you?” Carl had come down to visit her in the middle of the night a few times because his sister kept waking him up with her night terrors.

Now it was Amy’s turn to shrug. “I’m okay. No morning sickness or…you know…not a lot anyways. I just eat some MRE bread to settle my stomach. I still get nightmares sometimes but not as bad as I used to.” She smiled slyly at her friend and played a card. “Don’t tell me you mind Carl coming over to visit you.”

Rodriguez looked a little startled. “How did you know?” she asked. Carl had only come to visit a couple times and they had gone out to sit on the benches out front of the Wal-Mart. They would hold each other and look up at the stars. It was weird because they were near a big city but they could clearly see the flickering little lights in the inky blackness overhead.

“I’d hear him get up in the middle of the night.” Amy
explained and stretched then scratched the side of her nose. “You’re a couple doors down and I hope for his sake that he’s not smoking.” Frays grinned and took a trick. As a matter of fact she had smelled Frannie’s cigarette smoke in her brother’s shirt when they got up for work this morning.

Frannie smi
led and shook her head slightly. She discarded sticking Amy with the queen of spades. “How are you and Lacey doing?” Rodriguez asked as she watched Frays pick up the cards and start to deal again. She could not help but feel like kind of an ass for bringing it up when a confused and irritated expression came and went from the woman’s face.

“I’m not sure.” she said quietly as she finished dealing
the cards. Lacey had lost his wife in the same attack that had taken her parents…he had…helped in all the…stuff…that came after… Sometimes, late at night, as much as she hated to admit it, she kind of wished that he was around after waking up on her cot in a pool of sweat with tears drying on her face. “I haven’t seen him much. Haven’t really gotten to talk to him.”

Frannie nodded thoughtfully and flipped down a card. “Say…has Carl talked to you lately?” she asked still rifling through her cards. A million bad things started flying around inside Amy’s head as she waited for her friend to continue. What was wrong with her baby brother? Why did he not come to her with it? Frannie could not help but smile a little bit. “He’s thinking of enlisting.”

Frays felt the bottom fall out. “WHAT!?” she demanded as she fought down the urge to march out to the garden and confront Carl with the information. “I mean…what? No!” Amy threw down her cards suddenly shaking with frustration. “Why? Just…just no!”

“He wants his dad’s gun back, Amy.” Frannie said quietly. By order of the FEMA guy running the camp the only people allowed to be armed in the FOB were military personnel and the Blue Diamond guys.
Major Tennyson, the FOB’s commanding officer, had put out a call amongst the civilians looking for volunteers to enlist in the Marines. “I told him that we’d be going outside the wire soon too. Stupid kid.” She snickered at her friend and gave her a light punch on the arm. “I think we’re a bad influence on him or something.”

Amy pinched the bridge of her nose
, shrugged and shook her head. “You’d think that but like in the other direction.” the woman said quietly. Frannie walked with a limp because she had been shot in the leg and was on meds for PTSD and his big sister woke up screaming every other night. Neither one of them were exactly recruiting poster material. “Stupid kid. He’s not even old enough. The big dummy’s only fifteen.”

Frannie looked stricken. “What? He’s fifteen?!”
She started scratching at the scar tissue on her throat then caught her wrist with her other hand and forced it into her lap. “Goddamn! I thought he was like at least seventeen!” It looked to Frays like her friend seemed to shrink inside her plate carrier like a turtle hiding in its shell.

“Well…he is big for his age.” Amy said, trying to comfort her friend.
Frays suddenly snickered then clapped a hand over her mouth to try and hold the laughter in. Frannie rolled her eyes and snorted. Before too long both of them were laughing so hard that their bellies ached. They stopped laughing immediately and looked at each other in disbelief when the radio squealed and a tinny little voice called out to them from the ethers.