Outbreak: Long Road Back

by Van Dusen, Robert

  So Frays and Becca were at the ‘Bootyshop’ as the four year old insisted on calling it while Carl and Paulie were off having a little ‘guys only time’ or whatever. They were watching the kids while Lacey was clearing the debris of the former Refugee Resettlement Center. Carl was going to bring Paulie back over before he had to go to work in a few hours.

  Frays sat on a bucket near the back of the fences around the trailers with her M4 lying on top of her plate carrier within arm’s reach as, of all people, Specialist Francesca Rodriguez clipped her friend’s hair with a pair of rust speckled scissors and a plastic comb. There was a substantial pile of Frays’ dark brown hair in the grass.

  Rodriguez made a thoughtful face as she studied the back of Frays’ head. “I gotta admit I thought this style would look good on you.” she said quietly as she concentrated on cutting just a little bit here or there in just the right places. Rodriguez was way out of practice but she was trying to turn the unruly mess on top of her friend’s head into something sort of resembling a Pixie cut. The woman winked at the little girl sitting on the grass a few feet away. “What do you think so far, sweetie?”

  Becca looked up from her notebook where she was scrawling pictures with one of Frays’ pens. “Amy all your hairs went away!” the little girl said with some amazement. “You look really pretty, Amy.” Becca came over and hesitantly put her little hands on Frays’ knees. “I bet Daddy’s gonna like it too.”

  Frays and Rodriguez both laughed at this. “Are you guys gonna see him later?” Rodriguez asked as she snipped another couple inches of hair away and let them tumble to the ground. Carl, his sister and herself had taken turns watching the kids when their father had work to do. As one of the few people that knew how to run the loader now Lacey was busy quite a bit helping to either clean up or shore up their defenses.

  Frays looked at the little girl and half smiled. “We’re going to take him his lunch in a little bit.” she said and winced. Rodriguez had to tug a snarl out of her friend’s hair before cutting off another hank of the stuff. She frowned. “I kinda wish you had a mirror.”

  Rodriguez chuckled. “Trust me I’m doing the best I can.” The woman frowned and snipped off another bit of hair. “I used to cut hair for a few extra bucks on the side to help cover the bills.” She made a face of utmost concentration and continued. “If you don’t like it don’t worry. It’ll grow back.”

  Frays raised an eyebrow at the woman standing behind her. “You’re not exactly filling me with confidence here, Rodriguez.”

  “Well I gotta hurry too.” Rodriguez countered. “Somebody told her entire friggin’ platoon to get a haircut today.” She brushed her friend’s shoulders off and snipped off a few more locks of hair. “This was supposed to be my day off too, you know.”

  Frays laughed then suddenly felt a ten ton weight smash her into the dirt. She hunched over, elbows on her knees, face hidden in her hands as she found herself all of a sudden fighting back tears. Rodriguez put a hand on the back of her friend’s neck and knelt beside her. “It’s alright, Amy.” Rodriguez whispered in Frays’ ear. “It’s alright…”

  Becca put aside her notebook and climbed into Frays’ lap. The little girl snuggled up against the woman’s chest and pecked her on the cheek. “You’re a good mommy.” Becca told Amy as she snuggled up against her. “I don’t miss my mommy as much when you’re here ‘cause you’re like the mommy for eberybody. You take good care of us, Amy.”

  Carl had found a plastic baseball bat and ball set in the Supply Depot so now he was tossing the small plastic orb to Paulie while the little boy attempted to swat it out of the air. However the kid seemed to be enjoying it. They were even starting to draw a crowd as passersby stopped to watch them horse around. Sadly there were not many kids left for Paulie to play with after the fire or he might have tried to get a game going.

  Carl found that he actually liked helping to take care of the kids in spite of his initial misgivings. Paulie and Becca had kind of grown on him over the past few weeks. He chuckled to himself as he tossed the ball and Paulie managed to barely knick it with the bat. Carl suspected that Frannie was thinking of a family of her own judging by how she looked at him while they were watching the kids. And, well, more and more he found himself thinking the same thing even if he was probably a little young for it. He had to laugh. If Dad had been mad when he found out that Amy was pregnant he would have completely lost his shit if his fifteen year old son made him a grandfather.

  Then again what if something happened to Amy happened to Frannie? Or worse? His big sister had almost bled to death… He did not think he could stand it if anything happened to Frannie. He loved her so much… There was not even a real doctor around to help or anything if something when the time came now…

  Paulie actually managed to get all of the next toss sending the little plastic ball sailing through the air and directly into Carl’s forehead. The little boy laughed and ran up to him when Carl slapped his hands to his forehead and fell over. Paulie poked Carl with the bat and giggled when he grabbed the boy and wrestled him to the ground tickling his armpits and belly.

  Once the two of them recovered they sat on the grass grinning at each other. “Can I have some juice?” Paulie asked after a few seconds. “I’m thirsty.” Carl nodded and sprang to his feet then swept the little boy up in his arms. He flipped Paulie upside down and gently shook the kid before righting him and setting him down on his feet.

  “Sure thing, buddy. Let’s see if we can find us some juice.” Carl said as he took the boy’s hand and led him off towards the nearest FDP. He frowned after a second. Juice of any kind was getting hard to come by. “We might just have to have some water though, okay?”

  Paulie smiled after a second. “Maybe they gots a Pepsis!” he exclaimed happily. The little boy had been mentioning Pepsi a lot lately. Carl wanted him to have his soda more than anything but it did not look like there was any chance of that in the near future. Cokes were rare as hen’s teeth these days.

  They ended up having to settle for warm bottles of water. The two of them started wandering back towards the trailers where everyone was staying now. Amy and Frannie were going to be there with Becca so he was going to leave the kids with his sister. It was almost time for him to get back to work tending the vegetables. As they walked he watched the little boy out of the corner of his eye and thought about what Frannie was probably thinking about.

  “Hey beautiful!” Carl called out when he found Frannie and his sister in the corner of the fenced off area of the trailer park. He walked up and gave his girlfriend a light kiss on the tip of her nose. “How are you?”

  Paulie studied Frays as he tried to figure out what to make of her new haircut. “Oh hi Amy.” he said after a few seconds. “Your head is new.” The little boy then went to Frannie and wrapped his little arms around her leg.

  Rodriguez smiled down at the boy and ran her fingers through his hair. “Hey little man.” she said as she glanced at Frays. “Have fun with Uncle Carl?” The woman frowned slightly. “I think you need a haircut too as long as you’re here, buddy.” The little boy looked like he was going to start whining but Rodriguez beat him to the punch: “Be good and there’s a piece of candy in it for you, alright?”

  “We played baseballs.” Paulie said as he reluctantly climbed up on the bucket that Frays had been sitting on. He frowned, resigning himself to having to sit still while Frannie cut his hair with the scissors. However Frannie did promise him a piece of candy so there was that. “Carl got bonked on the head and he tickled me.”

  “He did?!” Frays asked and grinned at her brother. She found herself a little envious of how easily her little brother could goof around with the kids…or how any of her friends could play with the kids, really. The woman made a stern face at Carl and took a couple steps towards him. “Pickin’ on my little buddy, are ya?!”

  “Hey! Hey! C’mon! Aim!” Carl said as he backed away with his elbows tucked in against his side with his hands
up to protect his face. “Aim! I gotta go to work! Aim! Stop!” He laughed as he prepared himself to catch his sister’s hands in case she did not listen to him.

  Frays nodded. “Oh, alright!” she said in faux exasperation. The woman grinned and winked over her shoulder at the little boy. “I’ll get you later, Carl.” Frays followed her little brother out of the trailer park and stopped him by the gate.

  Carl felt his stomach start to slide from side to side. His sister looked at him like she really had something she really wanted to talk to him about. Finally the woman stood about a foot or so from her brother and stared up into his eyes. “Look into my eyes, Carl.” Frays said in a cold even voice, her eyes never wavering from Carl’s gaze. “Think about what I’ve seen.

  “Ten months ago I killed three men. One of them was maybe a year older than you. I blew his head all over the rooftop of an apartment building in a slum in Mosul. Four months ago I saw Sergeant Emery get shot in the jaw. We were about this far apart when it happened.” She held her hand under the tip of her nose “Everything from here on down just…poof…gone. I tried to pull a friend’s legs off because a dump truck almost knocked our Humvee into the river. Part of the firewall had crushed his legs and he was stuck. There was blood all over the freakin’ place. I can still hear his screams every time I close my eyes at night. Half the platoon of Marines I help train got blown up yesterday. We couldn’t even give them a decent burial because those filthy stinking pusbags ate them. Do you still want to go out on runs?”

  “Aim…they killed our parents.” Carl said quietly. The young man sighed heavily as he tried to put what he was feeling into words. “They…t-they took your little boy from us. They almost took you from me.” His lower lip started quivering. “It kills me when you wake up crying. I-I don’t want you to have to go out anymore, Aim. You’ve done enough. I just want you to…to… be better and I wish Frannie could get a doctor so she could walk right.”

  Frays pressed her lips together and took several small quick breaths. Once she managed to catch hold of herself the woman smiled at her little brother and gave him a hug. “I miss Mom and Dad too, buddy.” she said softly as he returned the gesture. “Look…just think about what I said, alright? See you later tonight.”

  She stood there watching Carl walk away as she dug out her cigarettes. “Hey Sergeant.” Stark said as she walked up. The woman fumbled out her own pack of cigarettes and cursed under her breath. Frays smirked slightly as she bent and picked them up for her subordinate then got one out for her and lit it with her own lighter. “Thanks. Still trying to get used to doing everything one handed for a little while.”

  Frays snorted a little laugh. “How are you and Parker doing?” she asked as she took a deep drag and slowly let a plume of smoke out through her nose. The sergeant arched an eyebrow at her subordinate. “I hope my sheets are still as filthy as I left them.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Stark said around the filter of her cigarette. “Parker kicked me a couple times. That was the most action that went on all night.” She watched the younger man walking away from them for a second. “That your brother?”

  Frays made a strange face for a second. “Yeah, that’s Carl.” she said quietly and shrugged. Frays flicked the ash off of her cigarette and put an arm across her stomach. “Good kid but he’s kind of a dummy sometimes.”

  Stark sensed that there was something going on there but she was not sure if she should bring it up or not. “You’re lucky to have family here.” The blonde looked uncomfortable for a moment as she puffed on her cigarette. “I’d love to call my husband and talk to him for even like five minutes.”

  Frays frowned when the woman standing next to her sniffed and wiped her cheek with the palm of her hand. Most forms of landline and cellular communication had gone dark early on in the outbreak first due to the sheer volume of calls clogging the system and then the fact that there was nobody around to repair the damage done to the infrastructure. There were radio satellite communications but the only set up they had was in the TOC and that seemed to not have the capability to reach all the way to California… Frays felt the wheels spinning in her brain as she tried to think of a way to solve her subordinate’s problem. “I wish I had my textbooks and a place to friggin’ work. I’d build us a dang sat phone if I could get a look at one.” Frays said after a few moments.

  “Textbooks?” Stark asked with more than a hint of curiosity in her voice. This was the longest conversation she had ever had with the mysterious Sergeant Frays and she was not about to let it drop if she could help it. Stark knew there were some rumors going around about Frays and it would be cool if she could find out the truth about them.

  “I was trying to finish up my Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering.” Frays said as she glanced at her cigarette. There were only a few drags left. After the conversation with Carl she kind of did not want to talk about much of anything right now. “Stupid contractor in Iraq blew up my homework. I was busting my butt to try and get caught up again before all this happened. You know they weren’t going to give me an extension on my thesis presentation?”

  “What a bunch of fuckin’ jerks.” Stark said quietly with a small grin. She gave very serious thought to lighting up another cigarette. There was still almost an entire pack in her shirt pocket. “I only ever got an Associate’s Degree. Couldn’t afford to stay in school much longer anyways. VA kept jerking me around with my GI Bill.”

  “I know.” Frays said with a small shake of her head. “My student loan bill looked more like the GDP of a small Caribbean nation. Turns out Ivy League schools aren’t cheap.”

  The two of them shared a laugh. “Where did you go to school?” Stark asked. The mention of Ivy League schools set the woman’s curiosity into overdrive. Never mind that Sergeant Frays was probably a few years younger than she was how on Earth did she manage to get into such a prestigious school?

  “I was going to MIT.” Sergeant Frays muttered as she field stripped her cigarette butt and dropped it into her cargo pocket. “I probably would be graduating about now if my deployment didn’t screw everything up.” A strange, wistful expression came and went from the woman’s face and she scratched the scar on her cheek for a moment. “Anyways, what about you? What’s your degree in?”

  Stark grimaced. “Nothing too useful. Business Administration.” She shrugged and flicked ash off of her cigarette. “I was a secretary.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You learned how to run an office and stuff, right?” Frays said quickly. In the aftermath of the fight with the contractors and the infected the place was a shambles. Lots of key personnel were either dead or had run off some place. “I think I’ve got the right place to put you. They could use somebody who knows what they’re doing running things up there in the Med Center.”

  Stark looked surprised. “No, Sergeant.” she said quickly. The woman frowned at the brace wrapped around her forearm. “I’ll be alright in a couple weeks. Three at the most.” She waved in the direction of the Med Center. “Ask anybody there.”

  “It’s not that, Private.” Frays said a little sharper than she meant to. “You’ll do more good there. They only have four people with any medical training and none of them know how to organize anything. You’ll save way more people there than you ever could snatching cans of beans and bars of soap with us.”

  “Fine. Alright, Sergeant.” The other woman’s argument did make a lot of sense. It did not mean that she had to like it however. “We left your room just like you left it. I think I’m going to go lay down for awhile.”

  Frays watched her subordinate walk away and shook her head. Freakin’ batting a thousand today, Aim… she thought as she stuffed the balled up cigarette butt in her hand into her cargo pocket. She rejoined Rodriguez and the kids where she set about putting her gear back on. “Lookin’ good, kiddo.” Frays said with a small grin at the boy.

  Paulie had a sour look on his face as Rodriguez clipped the boy’s hair. He blew some of it off of
his lip and smiled slightly. “Done yet?” the boy asked the woman snipping and clipping behind him.

  “Not yet, buddy.” Rodriguez said quietly as she dusted off the boy’s shoulders. “Only a little longer. Quit fidgeting and it’ll go faster.”

  After Paulie’s haircut was finished and Rodriguez gave both the kids a couple pieces of hard candy apiece Frays took them inside so she could wash the hair clippings off of him. Becca grinned mischievously when Frays’ back was turned and she was distracted with her brother. The little girl grabbed a cup of water from the pail they had gotten to wash with and dumped it on Frays’ head.

  Frays jumped up with a cry and turned around grinning. “I’m gonna get you for that!” she said as she chased Becca. Paulie stood and, in turn, started after Frays. Frays quickly caught up with the little girl and hoisted her into the air, tickling Becca until she screamed with laughter. The high pitched noise coming out of the girl made Frays’ jaw clench involuntarily. She lowered the girl to the ground and dried the back of her neck with her shirtsleeve. The woman looked at the palms of her trembling hands as she tried to calm herself down.

  Paulie caught up with the other two and grabbed Frays’ leg. “Tag! You’re it!” he called then ran away giggling as he jumped down the trailer’s stairs and scooted outside. Becca took off after her brother with Frays close on the children’s heels. The three of them horsed around between the two metal buildings for a little while before Frays finally had to sit down.

  “I gotta take a break, kiddos.” Frays muttered as she plopped down onto the stairs of the nearest trailer. She had almost forgotten how not fun running around in body armor could be. The woman wiped her forehead and smiled at the kids.

  The little ones scampered up to her and each caught one of her hands. “C’mon! Play with us, Amy!” Becca implored as she tried to pull the woman to her feet. The little girl looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Storytime! Amy, can we do storytime now?”