Outbreak: Brave New World

by Van Dusen, Robert

  Jessica returned with the first aid kit and handed it to her husband followed closely by Adam with the warm water. She started to sit next to Amy but stopped when her daughter speared her mother with a warning glance. The two children crouched on either side of the man, watching with perplexed expressions as he treated his daughter’s feet.

  Once he had on a pair of latex gloves he first carefully inspected Amy’s feet then worked up a soapy lather on the washcloth. George gently washed her feet to get rid of the last bits of dead skin then carefully pried each of her toes apart so he could clean in between them. Amy’s face was pinched up in pain as her breath came in short bursts. She squeezed handfuls of the couch cushions while her father gently scrubbed with the washcloth, abrading off dead skin then disinfecting the affected area.

  Becca left the group for a moment then returned with a fuzzy little teddy bear in her hands which she offered to Amy. Frays smiled and chuckled when the little girl gave her a harsh look then shoved the stuffed toy into her arms. Paulie frowned at his sister then stood up and hugged his father’s leg. The Marine picked up his boy and held him tight while he watched Mister Frays treat his daughter.

  “Looks like you’ve got one nasty skin infection or something going on here, young lady.” George admonished while he tested the temperature of the water with his fingertips. If she had been one of his Marines he would have read her the riot act about proper personal hygiene while in the field, making her recite chapter and verse from training manuals and then volunteering her for every single shit detail that he could come up with just to make sure the message sank in. Then again his daughter was Air Force. They probably did not spend much time on stuff like that. He smiled a little bit as he rinsed off her feet then gently helped the young woman set them in the water to soak. “This should help, but you’re not going anywhere for at least a couple days.”

  Amy frowned and groaned under her breath. “C’mon, Dad.” she grumbled as she tried to stand up but George reached out and put a hand on his daughter’s middle. He gently pushed, forcing her to sit back down. “Dad, we’ve got a lot of stuff to do. I can’t just sit here.”

  George smiled and shook his head. She reminds me a lot of me at that age. he thought then changed his expression into a scowl. “Yeah, but you won’t be any good to anybody if your feet get any worse. You’re staying put and that’s final.”

  Amy grumbled under her breath. “Fine.” she said sharply. Frays looked down at her lap for a moment and tried to slap a more dignified expression onto her face. “So, what’s the plan for today? Are we gonna start boarding this place up too or go check on the neighbors?”

  “I say we secure this place first.” Lacey said as he set his son down and looked at the others. “What do we have on hand? I mean, this place isn’t that big so we can get it squared away pretty quickly between us.”

  “I got a woodshop out in the barn.” George said as he stood up and glanced at the others then tapped Adam on the arm. “C’mon, Lacey. There’s a pile of two by fours in there. I’ll cut them up to fit over the windows and you and Carl can bring ‘em in here so Jessie and Laura can nail ‘em up. You and me can tear out the staircase leading to the deck after that. From what we’ve seen, those things can’t climb very well.”

  Amy and Frannie exchanged glances. “What are we gonna do?” Frannie asked when George and Adam started off towards the front of the house. “I mean, I can sort of get around. I can help put the boards up on the windows.”

  George nodded. “Alright. Just don’t push yourself too hard.” he said quietly then turned to face his daughter on the couch. “Amy, dry your feet off after a couple more minutes and elevate them. You keep an eye on the kids as best you can but don’t you let me catch you off that couch unless it’s an emergency, you hear me?”

  George led the way to the woodshop and unlocked the barn with the key on his key ring. The older man held the door for Adam and closed it behind them. “I’m glad we got a minute to talk like men.” George said as he flicked on the lights then walked across the room to a pile of long planks stacked in the corner of the room. “I’ll only ask this once and I expect you to be honest. Have you done anything with my daughter you can’t tell your wife about?”

  A pained expression ghosted across Adam’s face. There was a lot that he had seen and done since he had seen his family last that he would be perfectly happy if his wife and kids never ever ever found out about. “No, sir!” he said quickly when he realized what George was alluding to. Adam chuckled to himself as he looked around the shop. “Look, nothing like what you’re thinking of anyway. Sir…Frays…your daughter… We saved each other like a dozen times between us trying to get out of Boston. I dunno…we…we kept each other going, know what I mean? And…um…I-I…ya know…killed two men that were going to…to, well I think they were…ya know…gonna hurt her.” Adam blinked, clearly taken aback that information had slipped out.

  Now it was George’s turn to look surprised. “What do you mean hurt her?” he asked. He scowled, a sick feeling starting to roll around in the pit of his stomach as he was not exactly sure if he really wanted to hear what the young man was going to say.

  “We ran into a couple guys from my squad.” Lacey mumbled, shuddering at the memory of that day a few weeks ago. “Lance Corporals Holder and Reynolds…real jerks… They used to treat me like shit. Anyways, they tried to steal our Humvee but we stopped them. Frays zip tied their hands behind their backs but Holder got loose. He held a knife to Am-er…Frays’ throat and I shot him…Reynolds tried to jump me and I shot him too…” Adam shuddered. Sometimes he woke at night disturbed by dreams where he was a half second too late or his aim was off only by a few inches…

  “Good for you, son.” George said as he walked up and shook Adam’s hand furiously. “As far as I can see, you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about.” He put an arm around the younger man’s shoulders and clapped him on the back. “Thank you. I mean that. Now, let’s get this done.”

  George measured the boards and cut them to length while Adam carried them into the house. The women nailed the two by fours over the windows while Amy scowled at them and from her position on the couch.

  Becca sat on the floor next to the couch and took it upon herself to keep her new best friend Amy entertained while she recuperated: she had discovered an ancient issue of Time magazine on a shelf. The little girl could not read so she flipped through it and made up stuff to go along with the pictures inside instead. Frays, still not best pleased with being confined to the couch, still listened politely and asked questions helping Becca come up with more details. Paulie helped Frannie and the others by carrying a big coffee can full of nails around as he followed behind them. The little boy shot looks at his sister and Amy whenever he happened to be nearby.

  It was almost lunchtime by the time that the windows were covered with boards and the staircase ripped out that connected the deck to the concrete stairs that led down the cliff face to the shore of the lake below. George mounted brackets into the frame of the front door at head middle and ankle height to hold pairs of two by fours nailed together which they could use to bar the door. Now that it was reinforced, the already sturdy door with its five hinges screwed into a steel doorframe and two deadbolt locks would take a lot of work to knock in.

  With the house now reasonably well secured, Jessie and Carl made a pile of peanut butter sandwiches for the noon meal and opened up a bag of corn chips while Laura mixed up a pitcher of lemonade. Everyone except Amy gathered around the table to eat, who lay on the couch and glumly accepted the sandwich her little brother gave her. He smiled and patted his sister’s shoulder before joining everyone at the table. A secret little thrill ran through him as he sank into an empty seat next to Frannie. Their chairs were so close that he could smell her hair, practically feel the warmth of her body heat next to him…

  A sour look passed over George’s face as he cleared his throat and exchanged a troubled glance with his wife before he beg
an saying the blessing. They ate quietly for a few moments mainly because they all seemed to having the same problem: the peanut butter was sticking to the roofs of their mouths. “So how far is it from here to your neighbors?” Rodriguez asked once she managed to drink a little lemonade. The drink was really watered down, she guessed to probably make the powdered drink mix last a little longer. Her mother did the same thing when she was growing up…

  “It’s probably about a mile or so on either side.” Carl said as he struggled with a stubborn bit of sandwich. He was suddenly a little self conscious and fought back the urge to scrape the peanut butter off with his finger. Did he just catch Frannie smile a little out of the corner of his eye?

  Amy wolfed down the sandwich and started in on the handful of corn chips that Carl had put on her plate. “Before we go tromping off, how much stuff do we got here?” she asked as she propped herself up on an elbow and tried to look at everyone around the table. “Once we’re finished eating I say we take an inventory.”

  “We’ve got about a year or so worth of food up in the attic. Or we did, anyways. We weren’t counting on five extra people.” George said his brow wrinkling slightly as he concentrated. “The storage bins in the boiler room are still full of firewood from those trees that fell down last spring. We’ve got about three quarters of that thousand round tin you bought for your old Mosin-Nagant that Carl’s using plus something like nine hundred rounds of twelve gauge birdshot and slugs. There’s five hundred rounds in the cabinet for my .45 and eight hundred for my Winchester. There’s a little Marlin .22 and about three hundred rounds for that too.”

  Adam could not help but be a little impressed. “Looks like we won’t need much for a little while anyway.” he said quietly as he popped a couple corn chips into his mouth. Lacey smiled at his kids and took his wife’s hand under the table. “How much first aid stuff do we have?”

  “That’s the problem.” Jessie said quietly as she refilled her glass. “A lot of the medicine we have is going to expire soon. It was on the list to replace.” She felt an inexplicable twinge of suspicion when the young man across the table from her spared a barely perceptible glance over his shoulder towards Amy then Rodriguez.

  “Is there a drug store or something in town?” Rodriguez asked as she glanced at Lacey then faced the others. “We could go hit that up if there’s anything close by.” She popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth and chewed slowly. “We’ve done it a couple times already. No problem.”

  George gave his daughter and her friends a mildly disapproving glance then nodded slowly. He knew his little girl was not the type to go around breaking the Eighth Commandment unless it was the only way she could think of to help somebody else. Did the Good Lord have an exception in the Ten Commandments for times like these? “The grocery store in town has a pharmacy in it. I doubt there’s much left there though. Things were starting to get…out of hand when we left.” he said quietly and took a sip of the watery lemonade. The older man shook his head slowly. “For right now I think we should just sit tight and let everybody get healed up, try and scrounge up some food around here.”

  “What, you mean like hunting?” Rodriguez asked. She looked uneasy for a moment and fiddled with some of the corn chips on her plate. Her eyes flitted around nervously. “I dunno if I really wanna shoot Bambi and Thumper.”

  Carl and his father exchanged somewhat amused glances before the younger man spoke up. “It’s not really that bad. When your leg is better I can show you how.” Carl said quickly then cleared his throat and looked from Frannie to his parents. “I mean, if it’s cool.”

  Frannie could not help but snicker and glanced at Mr. and Mrs. Frays. George and Jessica sat there, shared a brief look of unease then George nodded. “If you want to, Rodriguez. Don’t look at me.” he said with a hint of a smile. He made a mental note to have ‘The Talk’ with the boy later. Granted, it was only fair since Jessica had done it with Amy before she left for college, but still…it was not something he was looking forward to. He felt his age for the first time in awhile. His little boy was growing up.

  Amy rolled her eyes and sighed quietly. “Well, Rodriguez, Lacey how much ammo and stuff do you guys have? Let’s all inventory our stuff after lunch, set up a guard schedule and everything.”

  There were piles of M4 magazines, grenades and other bits of kit spread out on the living room floor while Frays sat up somewhat on the couch. Rodriguez and Lacey sat Indian style on the floor on opposite sides of the gear as they cleaned their personal weapons. They had already field stripped and cleaned the M2 .50 caliber machine gun from the back of the Humvee but Frays had used up the last of the ammunition for it in Concord. ‘Ma Duce’ would be staying in the house for the time being unless they got lucky and stumbled across some more. There were still links scattered all over the floor in the Humvee so if they found loose rounds they could get the big beast ready to rock again with a little work. They might find some already linked up and ready to go at an overrun checkpoint or something but the odds would be against something like that. If somebody else did not pick it up the weather would likely have ruined it by now if the ammunition was left out in the open.

  Carl sat on the little step between the dining and living rooms, watching the three of them as they cleaned their weapons and reorganized their gear. Frays could not help but notice the way he kept staring at Rodriguez when he thought nobody was looking. Adam grumbled under his breath and looked at the two women and spared a glance at his wife and kids. They were seated around the table the kids drawing on a piece of paper. “Okay, between all of us counting what we’ve got in our weapons we’ve got twenty fully loaded M16 mags, eight fully loaded M9 mags, four of these CS grenades for your M203, two M84s and three M67s.” he announced as they looked over the equipment placed in neat piles on the floor between them. “We also got eighteen extra twelve gauge shells for the 1014 and seventy five rounds for that .22 rifle there. I’ve got about a quarter pound or so of C4 and seven blasting caps on clackers.”

  Amy frowned, nodding to herself as she did some math in her head. “Okay. Well, let’s divvy the mags up between us.” she said carefully then regarded the other ammunition. “I’ll keep my M203 rounds. One M67 a piece. Rodriguez, you wanna keep your flashbangs?”

  “Three people, three frag grenades.” Frannie said as she accepted one of the little metallic baseballs from Adam and fastened it into a pouch on her plate carrier. The front plate in the carrier was more or less useless now but she had to admit that it had held up like a champ. It had stopped both a high powered rifle round and one of the two pistol rounds fired at her back in Concord. The other had dug the furrow across the top of her left thigh taking a good chunk of the quadriceps with it. She gave the others a wry grin and snorted. “I’ll keep one of the M84s, unless you guys don’t have carriers.”

  “Can I have one?” Carl asked hopefully. He looked from Lacey to Frannie to his sister and grinned as he stood up and walked up to Lacey. “C’mon, please? It would be sooooo cool!” Frannie and Adam burst out laughing when Amy and her parents all shouted “NO!” at the same time. The three of them went through the rest of their gear and packed it up in their rucksacks after they divided up the limited supply of ammunition and magazines.

  Lacey fingered a hole in the crotch of the Army ACU trousers as he stuffed it back into his rucksack and frowned. “Does anybody have a needle and thread?” he asked and looked around the room. Amy and Frannie looked at each other then at Laura. She shrugged and glanced at Jessica.

  “I think I’ve got some around here somewhere.” Jessie said quietly as she finished drying the plate in her hands and put it in the cabinet. George glanced at the younger Marine and shook his head and finished up the last of the lunch dishes. Jessica returned a few moments later with a spool of thread and needle, which she tossed to Adam. “Here ya go.”

  Adam smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Frays.” he said and started trying to thread the needle. It took him a couple tries an
d then he had a go at repairing the hole in the garment. The man mainly succeeded in breaking the thread a couple times and jabbing himself in the finger. After a couple minutes of watching Lacey make an attempt at it Amy grumbled and held out her hand.

  “Gimme that, Jarhead.” she said quietly. Adam dutifully handed over the garment along with the thread and needle. “Watch me, alright?” Laura frowned when her husband moved to Amy’s side and sat close to her while she mended his clothing for him. Rodriguez frowned slightly as she took in the scene then shook her head, grabbed her M4 and went out onto the deck where she sat down in a plastic chair and rested her chin in her hands, watching the lake.

  She spared a glance over her shoulder to make sure she was alone then took a plastic medicine bottle out of a pouch on her carrier, shook one of the blue pills into the palm of her hand and swallowed it with a little water from her camelbak. A sudden, horrible thought occurred to her like a flash of lightning: she could take all the antidepressants in the bottle and it could all be over. No more pain, no more having to put on a happy face… She could just curl up, go to sleep and that would be that.

  The woman frowned at the carbine resting between her legs. The muzzle turned into a black hole absorbing her thoughts, drawing her inwards. That would almost certainly get it done. It wouldn’t be the first time I had something big and black in my mouth... Frannie thought bitterly as she shifted her weight in the flimsy plastic chair and considered the business end of the homemade suppressor clamped over the weapon’s muzzle. It would make a helluva mess if she ate her gun. And Amy’s family seemed like nice enough people never mind those poor kids…

  She sat there a little while, listening to the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees, trying not to dwell on any of the dark thoughts plaguing her. Just because her mom was probably dead along with the rest of her squad that had made it to the armory was no reason to do anything rash. That idiotic Lieutenant Jenkins, Sergeant Barnes along with Evans and that poor damn fool Powers. Moore had gotten torn to bits because the lieutenant refused to listen to Frays for some reason, driving the LT to commit murder and suicide.