Outbreak: Brave New World

by Van Dusen, Robert

  He noticed that her tan was fading some but the skin usually covered by her clothing was still only a few shades darker than the white sheets she was sleeping on. He almost reached out and shook her until he remembered what happened to Carl when he did that.

  He poked Amy’s shoulder with the buttstock of his M16. “Hey, Frays.” Lacey said softly, continuing to jostle the woman with his rifle “Time to get up. Breakfast time.” Amy grumbled and rolled onto her side then sat up. She dug something crusty out of the corner of her eye and looked at him. He smiled. “C’mon. Your brother and Frannie made up the last of the powdered eggs and some home fries.”

  She smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes. “Yum.” Frays grumbled as she stretched and felt around on the floor for her boots. “You know I think I’d do just about anything for some real eggs.” Amy started frenetically struggling to tie her bootlaces. “Gotta pee. Gotta pee. Gotta pee…” Lacey held in a laugh as the woman rolled over the bed, shoved him out of the doorway and sprinted down the hall. “Back to me, would ya?” Amy called over her shoulder as she tugged the bars on the door out of her way.

  Amy barely made it outside and into the little bit of grass down the stairs on the right. Thankfully Frannie must have heard her and followed outside instead of Lacey. “Look…about last night…” Rodriguez said quietly as she kept an eye on the surrounding area.

  Frays frowned as she squatted against the side of the house to conduct business. “Don’t worry.” she whispered and finished up. “Like I told Carl, I’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world if I gave either one of you any crap. Just…please…he’s young. I think you’re the first girl that he’s ever even talked to. Just…be careful, okay? Please?” Amy looked at the ground and nudged a little rock to one side with the toe of her boot. “And…er…thanks for taking care of me the other day.”

  Frannie clapped her friend on the shoulder as they went back into the house. “Hey, you guys pulled my ass outta the fire. You coulda left me there but you didn’t. And…well…I kinda owe you and Lacey one.” she said as she held open the door for Frays. “C’mon. I’m starving. Did you know they canned potatoes? I sure as hell didn’t.”

  They ate quickly after Amy said the blessing. Paulie and Becca looked worriedly at the grownups. “We gotta leave the note for Mommy.” Paulie protested once they finished eating. Frays and Lacey were doing the dishes so the boy pushed away from the table and rushed to his father’s side. The little boy tugged on the leg of Adam’s trousers. “Daddy, we gotta leave a note for Mommy and Amy and Carl’s Mommy and Daddy!”

  Lacey met Frays’ eyes for a long moment. They both seemed to be fighting back tears, neither one of them able to speak. “I know, buddy.” Adam said at last, his voice a hoarse whisper, as he forced a smile and roughed up the boy’s hair. “Just a minute. When we’re done with the dishes, okay?”

  Amy put a hand on Paulie’s shoulder and squeezed. “Can I help you, buddy?” she asked after she finished washing the last plate in the sink. “I wanna make sure that my mom and dad know what’s going on, okay?”

  Frays dried her hands as Becca and Paulie brought the girl’s notebook to the table. Amy sat down and hefted the children into her lap, giving the little ones a pen and flipping the book open to a blank page. Becca and Paulie shared the pen, taking turns scrawling a note to their mother. The little girl gave the pen back to Amy. “Your turn, Amy.” she said and pressed her cheek against Frays’ chest.

  Frays nodded gravely. She had no idea how she did not burst into tears as she listened to the children tell her what the scribbles they made on the paper meant. Amy frowned as she flipped the notebook to a clean page. The woman took a deep breath and hesitated before starting. She had to stop a couple times, pinching the bridge of her nose and squeezing her eyes shut. “Hey, Carl.” Amy called down the hall to her brother. “Want to add anything?”

  Carl hugged his big sister and took her seat at the table. His face scrunched up as he read what Amy, Becca and Paulie had written. He hid his face behind the palm of his hand, the young man’s shoulders trembling as he struggled to contain himself. Frays put her hand on her brother’s shoulder then bent slightly and whispered something in his ear. Finally Carl picked up the pen and started to write.

  Amy retreated to the foyer, one hand jammed in her armpit the other clasped tightly over her mouth. Lacey stuck his head in and frowned. “You okay?” he asked as he took a few tentative steps into the room. “Becca and Paulie are ready to go. Wanna take one last look around with me and make sure we’ve got everything?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure.” Amy nodded as she tried to collect herself. She took a couple deep breaths then pulled open the coat closet in the foyer. Frays leafed through the garments hanging there and frowned as she gathered an armload of heavy down jackets. It was warm out now, but in a couple months they might be kicking themselves if they did not grab any cold weather gear. Plus the warm coats could make a handy impromptu pillow or blanket if they had to.

  Adam watched her pulling the coats out of the closet for a moment. The man glanced over his shoulder then went to Amy’s side. She made a passable attempt at a smile at him. Come to think of it he could not remember if he had ever seen a genuine smile on the woman’s face. The thought made him a little sad for some reason. He thought her warm dark brown eyes were very pretty and he could not help but be a little curious if she had a smile to match. Adam turned to leave her to whatever she was doing then paused and went back. “He was very proud of you.” Lacey said quietly. He sighed and looked awkwardly at his boots for a moment. “He loved you and felt terrible about how he treated you.”

  Amy’s chest heaved as she struggled to keep from breaking down. How did he know exactly what she needed to hear? An odd thought occurred to her. She had cried for Sergeant Emery. She had cried for Jacob. Heck, she had cried for Jean and she barely even knew the woman. She had even cried for Powers and he had tried to kill her…even if that had been an accident. But for some reason she could not cry for her own parents.

  She was sad to be leaving and would be even if her mother and father were not buried here. There were so many happy memories here from before: before Iraq, before this…plague…or whatever this was when her family was whole and together.

  This place had been a summer sanctuary from the kids that teased her at school. At first they made fun of her because she was kind of gangly, plain looking and smarter than the others and then because she was almost ten years younger than the other students. Her memories of this place were full of hazy carefree days spent swimming and fishing and playing in the woods with the few other kids that came up with their families for the summer… Dad would take a week off from work to take her and Carl deer hunting here in the fall, complete with a note explaining that his kids conveniently had the flu or something to give to their teachers afterward.

  Leaving it behind was just another part of her old life that she was losing and would most likely never get back. Amy had always secretly hoped that she would get to bring her kids here some day to enjoy the place as she had growing up. Abandoning the camp was just another physical reminder of everything she had lost over the past few months and it hurt so bad…

  Frays glanced at the door, now crossed over with the nailed together boards. Adam put his arms around her, holding the smaller woman to his chest. She did not trust herself to so much as open her mouth. Amy simply held on to him as tight as she could somehow just barely keeping from bawling her eyes out again.

  He held her close and slowly rocked the woman from side to side as he had with his wife when she was angry or worried about something. Adam sighed and tightened his grip on her for a moment before releasing Frays and holding her at arm’s length. “C’mon.” she said at last, smiling at him and clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ll double check and make sure that the kids got all their stuff.”

  They gathered up the last little odds and ends out of the house. Amy also insisted that they leave a care package of sor
ts on the dining room table for anyone that might come by after they had gone: two cases of MREs, a gallon of boiled lake water as well as the .44 Special revolver Adam had found and its ammunition. Becca made sure the note was displayed prominently on the table as well with one of the cases of MREs holding it in place.

  They piled into the truck, the children wedged between Carl and Frannie on the back seat. Freddie rode in the back of the truck with the gear, the animal excited by the possibility of ‘going buh bye’. Frays found herself slowly getting used to the dog but she was glad that the black lab would be in the back of the truck where he would not be a danger.

  Amy snapped her M4 into the rack by the steering column and secured it in place with the Velcro strap, exchanging a nervous look with Lacey before pulling out her Saint Joan’s medal and praying quietly in Latin. After a hasty Amen, she held the starter switch. The starter motor whined a couple times before the powerful diesel engine turned over and Frays put the vehicle in gear, backing down the hill then driving out onto the main road.

  The roads were relatively clear most of the way north to Princeton. “Holy Mother of God.” Amy muttered, making the sign of the cross as they rolled closer to town. The place looked a lot like the on base housing units at Hanscomb. There was nothing but charred bones of houses and buildings as far as they could see on either side of the road. A couple shambling forms wandered through the ruins but if they were infected or just healthy people in shock from whatever happened it was impossible to tell. Amy decided to err on the side of caution and stepped on the gas speeding away from them as fast as the terrain would allow.

  It took a couple minutes but they stumbled across the source of the disaster that had befallen Princeton. It looked like a big fiery fist had punched a divot into what Lacey guessed used to be the town’s main drag. “Looks like a gas main sprung a leak.” he observed, his tone almost clinically detached as Frays steered the vehicle around the several hundred meter wide chasm where the street used to be. He thought he could make out a huge pipe that had been split by the explosion in the side of the hole. When did it go up? They almost certainly would have heard an explosion that big at the cabin.

  Amy maneuvered the vehicle around the side of the crater and put on a little more gas to get the truck clear of the crumbling pavement on the edge of the hole. “Don’t look, kids.” Amy said as she took the truck around the blackened skeleton of a car on the other side. There were three or four Bravo Charlies stumbling towards them, tripping over debris scattered over the blacktop. Frays pressed down on the gas and plowed them over, their bodies bouncing off the truck’s brush guard with meaty thumps. She tried to not hear the sickening crunch of bone under the vehicle’s tires as she rolled over the zombies.

  The road out of town was fairly clear even though Amy had to steer around the occasional ruined car or pile of debris. Frays was glad to see that it did not look like any of the infected they had seen wandering what had up until recently been Princeton seemed to be chasing them. She glanced at her watch what seemed like a couple hours later, squirming uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. “Crap. I need a five minute break.” Amy announced as she steered the truck to the side of the road. “Keep your eyes open, guys.”

  Lacey rolled his eyes. “Jeez, already?” he joked as Frays stopped the truck and put on the parking brake “We’ve only been on the road for like an hour. Didn’t you go before we left?” Amy gave him a sour look and climbed out of the Humvee. The others climbed out a few moments later to stretch their legs and let Freddie empty his bladder too. Carl and Adam kept the others away from Frays, who leaned against the driver’s side front tire squatting with her trousers around her ankles. Frannie stood nearby with her back to the woman making sure the others kept their distance, providing at least a little bit of privacy.

  After they had conducted their business they filled their water sources from one of the cans in the back then piled back into the truck. Adam took the wheel this time, he and Frays switching so that she was in the front passenger’s seat. The weather was nice and warm, a pleasant breeze stirring the thick stands of trees on either side of the road. It was getting quiet and kind of tense in the truck.

  “Who knows a joke?” Frays suggested as she let her eyes scan from the road to the shoulder, the trees and back again slowly in search of anything that might look like an ambush or some other danger. She wished that they had a couple pairs of NODs or something so that they could drive at night without turning on the vehicle’s white lights or at least see what was going on around them if they stopped after dark. “C’mon, somebody’s gotta know one. Just remember there’s kids so keep it clean everybody.”

  They were all quiet for a minute, thinking. It was kind of absurd. A joke? Now? Carl spoke up first. “There was this U2 concert in Dublin.” he began, pausing to scratch an itch on the tip of his nose. “Bono calls for a moment of silence in the middle of the set and once everybody calms down he starts clapping his hands” Carl clapped his own hands, about once every couple seconds or so “Bono says ‘Every time I clap my hands a child in Africa dies’. The whole place is quiet for a little bit then this guy shouts out in the back of the concert hall ‘THEN STOP DOIN’ IT YA FECKIN’ SICKO! JAYSUS!”

  The kids looked confused at the joke but everyone else cracked up making Carl look pleased with himself. The smiles fell away from their faces as they rolled down the road and came around a bend. A big orange Ford F250 and a rusty red and silver Bronco blocked both lanes of the road about a quarter mile down the road. “Whoa, whoa Lacey.” Amy said quietly as the man started slowing the Humvee down. The two of them peered at the vehicles straining their eyes to see if the roadblock was abandoned.

  Adam looked over at Frays. “What do we do?” he asked quietly. His palms got sweaty on the steering wheel and he glanced over his shoulder at his kids. They were scared and Paulie was still pale… A familiar, cold look was on Frays’ face when he looked back at her. The truck was rolling towards the roadblock…Lacey had taken his foot off the accelerator. Visions of the shitstorm that had gone down in Concord started dancing in his head.

  “Hold on, kids.” Frays ordered as she braced herself against the dashboard. She patted her little passenger with one hand. Sorry, little guy! Amy thought guiltily as she glanced back at Lacey. “Punch it, man.” Frays muttered a prayer to Saint Catharine as Adam mashed down the accelerator.

  The Humvee’s engine roared, pressing them back in their seats and leaving a trail of burned rubber on the blacktop. Several figures sprang up from behind the trucks and sprinted for the woods on either side of the road. One of them raised a handgun, firing wild shots over his shoulder as he fled into the forest. There was a terrific screech of metal on metal impact when the Humvee slammed into the trucks blocking the road. Their truck fishtailed, threatened to flip over but Lacey somehow managed to keep the big sand colored vehicle on the road.

  The kids were screaming in the back seat, the two of them getting thrown around between Carl and Frannie. Amy’s head snapped back when the Humvee plowed through the trucks frying her left arm like a slab of hamburger slapped onto a hot grill. Adam gave a glance around the inside of the truck. “Everybody okay?!” he stomped on the gas and glanced in the truck’s side view mirror. “I can’t believe it! Look at that!”

  Amy looked in the mirror on her side of the truck and grinned. If the would-be robbers were going to come after them it would have to be on foot. The Humvee had knocked both vehicles into the ditch on either side of the road at odd angles. Their trucks were stuck and it would be hard to get them out. Frays felt no inclination to stop and lend a hand. “We’re alright, guys.” she said as the truck bellowed around a corner.

  A small compound of structures that looked kind of like barns made from corrugated steel came up on their right hand side of the road. A truck screamed out of behind the smallest barn, tearing across the compound’s gravel parking lot. “Hold on!” Frannie shouted, trying to get her M4 to bear on the vehicle. Ada
m veered to the left but the Chevy S10 caught the back bumper. The Humvee spun hard, its tires squealing and smoking as it clipped the guardrail on the side of the road.

  Amy jammed her carbine out of her window and squeezed the trigger, waving the weapon back and forth as she dropped half a magazine of 5.56 into the S10’s cab leaving the vehicle’s windscreen a spider’s web of cracked safety glass. The noise was deafening as Frays’ weapon sprayed hot brass into the laps, chests and faces of those in the back seat. “DRIVE! GO! GO! GO!” she shouted, banging her nonfiring hand on the dash. Amy frantically ejected the empty magazine and jammed a fresh one into the M4’s magazine well then slapped the weapon’s bolt release to chamber a round. The empty magazine rattled around on the floor of the truck when Lacey cranked the wheel and slammed down the gas leaving the scene in a plume of burnt rubber and exhaust. It was only after they were a half mile down the road that he realized that Becca and Paulie were sobbing behind him.

  Frannie slowly loosened the white knuckle grip she had on her M4’s pistol grip. Abandoned houses came and went, barely noticed by the occupants of the Humvee. “Is everybody okay?” she asked, setting the carbine aside and pinning it against the vehicle’s door with her thigh. Becca was closest to her so the woman started checking the little girl over first. “You okay, Becca? You alright?”

  It looked like Becca had mainly been scared by the excitement and there was an angry red mark on her forearm where an expended shell casing had burned her. Frannie’s heart leapt into her throat when she moved to check her brother. “Lacey, Frays we need to stop.” Rodriguez said, keeping her voice low and measured but giving the two of them an urgent look when they glanced over their shoulders at her. Rodriguez was holding the boy’s injured hand above his head while trying to get pressure on the stumps of his fingers.