Outbreak: Boston (36 page)

She dropped down inside the truck. “Give me my M4!” Frays shouted over the ringing in her ears. Josh, terrified, dug around in the back seat and eventually came up with Amy’s carbine. “Thank you!” she yelled as she stood back up. There was a group of people off to their right so she flicked the M203’s safety off and thumped a CS grenade in their direction.

The truck screeched to a halt outside the inn. “Rodriguez! Where are you?” Eamon screamed into the radio’s handset. He looked around, hoping to see the woman running towards them. Time seemed to stand still as they waited for a response. A bullet whined off the hood of the Humvee.

“Eamon! On me!” Amy shouted as she climbed down out of the cupola and jumped out of the rear passenger side door. She ran around the vehicle to Lacey’s door. “We’re going to check the building. If we’re not out in ten, bug out.”

Lacey was about to say something but she and Eamon hurried over to the inn. Josh sat there frozen in the seat behind him. “Get up in that cupola and return fire, damn it!” Adam shouted angrily. He turned around and cuffed the younger man on the head. “Do it!”

Amy kicked in the front door and scanned the large dining room, covering the area with her carbine as she moved inside. Eamon was close behind her. He stepped over a dead man just inside the door. “Frannie! Are you in here?” he shouted, making Frays grimace. She was about to yell at him to shut up when she heard a groan from the back corner of the room.

The two of them moved quickly towards the source of the noise. The metallic scent of blood reached them as they got closer, making Eamon rush forward in a panic. “Oh, God.” he muttered quietly. There was a deep gash in her left thigh about six or eight inches below her hip. He dropped to her side and tried to set to work. “Don’t worry, baby. I got you. You’re gonna be alright.” the medic said quickly, fighting back the panic rising in his chest. There were two bullets in her vest, but neither one seemed to have gotten through the Kevlar. Eamon dug around in his medical bag and pulled out a big roll of gauze which he stuck inside the wound and secured with a pressure bandage from the woman’s plate carrier. The woman was disturbingly pale and weak from blood loss. Amy pressed her mouth into a thin line and turned around to provide security for Eamon while he struggled to patch Rodriguez up.

“Amy!” Eamon shouted once he had staunched Frannie’s wound as best he could “Is there a stretcher in the truck? We gotta get her out of here right now!” Amy rushed back outside, swinging the muzzle of her carbine around as she tried to secure the area then grabbed the stretcher and returned. Josh’s eyes widened as he saw a police car come barreling towards them with its lights on and sirens blaring. Several more police cruisers converged on them from opposite directions. He brought his rifle up and started pointing it at the policemen.

Amy and Eamon started towards the front door, carrying the stretcher. “Down! Down!” Frays ordered as she started lowering Rodriguez to the ground. She peered over the windowsill at the front of the dining room. There were four or five police cars out front and the cops had their guns pointed at them. Josh was pointing his rifle back at them, waving the weapon back and forth nervously. 

“Josh!” she shouted, hoping to get the
young man’s attention. “Josh, stand down!” Frays stood up a little more and cupped her hands over her mouth. “Josh, knock that off right now! You idiot!” She wanted to go out there and stop him, but realized this whole thing could go sideways very easily. If she went rushing out there the policemen might very well misunderstand what was going on and open fire.

A shot rang out, shattering the glass over Amy’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of the gunfire Josh and the police exchanged just outside the inn. Lacey ran from the driver’s seat of the Humvee and crashed through the front door as bullets tugged at his uniform and whined over his head. It fell eerily silent after a few moments. Frays cautiously peeked over the windowsill again, trying to avoid cutting herself on all the broken glass on the floor all around her. It felt like there were more than a few shards caught up in her hair.  

She could see the tattered remains of Josh’s body hanging half out of the vehicle’s cupola. Frays took a deep breath, let it out slowly and turned to Eamon, her mouth pressed so tightly shut that her lips seemed to be almost gone. “How is Rodriguez?” she asked and turned to face the police outside. “She okay?”

The fat medic kept low but moved closer to Amy. “She’s really bad.” he said quietly so Frannie could not hear him. “She needs a transfusion bad. She’s lost a lot of blood and she’s in shock. We’ve got to get her out of here. If we can get her to a hospital I might be able to fix her.”

Amy frowned and looked at the semi conscious woman on the stretcher a few feet away. She nodded gravely, pondering their next course of action. “Center pouch on my left side is my CLS kit. There’s an IV of saline solution in it.” Frays told Eamon before turning her attention back to the window “Sheriff Yates? You out there?” Frays asked loudly. She could sort of hear the people outside talking to each other but she could not make out what they were saying. Eamon crawled over and tugged at Frays’ gear then started to work on Rodriguez.

“Is that you, Frays?” the sheriff shouted back. It sounded like he was right outside, maybe already using the Humvee for cover. Amy peeked over the windowsill again.

“Yeah, it’s me!” she yelled, still trying to see what was going on outside. “Listen, sheriff, one of my people is wounded! We gotta get her to a hospital right now! This whole thing has gotten way outta hand! Can we call a truce and talk about this?”

There was a pause again followed by what sounded like an argument between the people outside. More people with guns started converging on their location. Frays felt a sinking feeling as she watched them encircle the building. She spared a glance at Lacey, who had his M9 out. He had apparently left his rifle in the Humvee.
Dumb private
Frays thought as she low crawled over to him and tapped the man on the arm. “Lacey, I need you to go cover the back door. Let me know what you see out there, alright? Just keep calm. We’re gonna be okay. Just keep calm, alright?” She was amazed by how composed she sounded.

Lacey nodded shakily, seeming to draw confidence from his squad leader. “Sure thing, boss.” he said as he started to move towards the rear of the building. Amy crouched and looked out of the front windows again, waiting for Adam to get into position.

He moved to the door that Rodriguez had blocked up when she took shelter in the building and peered out of a small window next to it. There was a small parking lot behind the inn with a handful of cars in it. He could make out two or three people leaning across the hoods or trunks of the cars pointing long guns at the building.

“I can see a couple people with rifles about seventy five meters or so out of the back door.” Lacey said quietly as he leveled his handgun at the closest one. Scoring a hit at this range with his M9 was an iffy proposition at best, but if they tried to come closer he would be ready for them.

Frays saw somebody pass Sheriff Yates a bullhorn. “Frays!” he shouted through the device “Have your people lay down their guns and come out. You’re right. This has gotten out of hand. Come on out and we’ll see if we can’t work this out!”

Amy surveyed the scene at the front of the building. There were way too many jumpy looking civilians with guns pointed in their direction for her liking. “Have your posse go home!” she shouted back as she moved closer to Eamon. “I’d like to take you at your word, but I don’t want any of those civilians to do anything foolish.”

It sounded like there was more arguing among the people outside. It took a couple minutes but the civilians she could see started to move off. Frays reloaded her M203 just in case. “Eamon, how’s Rodriguez doing?”

The man glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “The same as before. Bad.” he said quietly as he watched the civilians start to move off. Six policemen stared over the barrels of their weapons at the building. Rodriguez moaned softly on the stretcher so Eamon went to her side. “It’s okay, baby. Shhh…shhh...” he said as he dug out a syringe and injected a little morphine into the Y of the IV
line running to Frannie’s forearm. The fat medic held her hand like a shipwrecked man clings to a piece of debris in the middle of a turbulent sea.

“Okay, they’re gone!” Yates said through the bullhorn. “Come on out, Frays.” Frays slapped the magnification module into place on her carbine and scanned the buildings and alleys across the street, looking for any sign that the policeman was lying to her.

“Lacey, talk to me!” she shouted over her shoulder as she looked through her Aimpoint. “What’s going on over there?” Frays frowned as she continued to scan her sector. “Answer up, Marine!”

“I can’t see anybody. Looks like they’re gone.” Lacey said at last. He glanced over his shoulder towards the front of the building then continued staring out the window. “What are we gonna do, Frays?”

She looked around one last time then folded the magnification module out of the way. “Alright. On me but keep low.” Frays said quietly. She could hear Lacey moving towards her and glanced at the man out of the corner of her eye. “Everybody mask up. I want to go talk to Sheriff Yates and see if we can’t work this out. If things go sideways I’ll put a CS grenade out there. You guys get Rodriguez to the Humvee and I’ll cover you if I can. I might not be able to get my mask on in time, so one of you might have to come get me if I can’t get to the truck. If I remember right, there’s a hospital about two miles from here that’ll hopefully have what we need to patch up Rodriguez.”

The people inside the inn dug their gas masks out of the carriers and fitted them over their faces. Eamon put on Rodriguez’s for her once he had put his own on. “Sorry, babe.” he said quietly when she started to panic a little “It’ll be okay. It’s just your gas mask. I’ll take it off in a minute, okay?”

Amy looked out over the windowsill. “Sheriff! I’m coming out, alright?” she said, tugging a white tablecloth off a table nearby. Frays stood up slowly, holding the tablecloth over her head then started for the door. Lacey could only shake his head as he watched the woman walk cautiously out the door and approach the sheriff.

“What happened today, Sheriff?” Amy asked once she was within speaking distance. She glanced at each of the policemen around her. None of them appeared to be pointing a weapon at her, but they had not put their guns away either. “I got two people dead and another likely unless I can get her medivaced time: now.”

“I dunno.” Yates said as his eyes flicked from the young woman in front of him to the inn and back again. “There were shots fired and somebody blew up Norman Tailor’s house. Then you guys came tearassing across town shooting everything that moved.”

“I didn’t shoot at anybody who wasn’t shooting at me first, sir.” Frays said, narrowing her eyes at the man. She caught a glimpse of one of the sheriff’s men moving behind one of the squad cars off to her right. Amy shook her head. “We have to get Rodriguez to a hospital. Our medic can help any of your people that need it too. And I came out here to talk like a reasonable person, Sheriff. Tell your deputy there to stop trying to sneak up on me.”

“George, lay off.” the sheriff muttered quietly. He turned his attention back to Frays. “I think you guys just better leave.” The few deputies close enough to hear what he said looked at each other with expressions ranging from mild confusion to anger. “If you stay, it’ll just be a matter of time before something like this happens again.”

Amy looked back over her shoulder
in the direction of the school for a second. “The people at the school need us, Sheriff.” Frays said as she shook her head and glanced towards the inn. “Will you guys look after them? I mean I really don’t think they’re any better off than anybody else in town. And there was some…trouble recently. Stuff I really don’t think we have time to go into right now.”

“Fair enough.” Yates said with a small nod.
He rolled his eyes and frowned. “Look, Frays. There’s a hospital about two miles down the road. Get on MA-62 Southwest. It’s right on the other side of the turnpike, so you can’t miss it. I don’t know if there’s anybody there now, but your man can find what he needs.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.” Frays said and extended her hand. “I’d like it if you could get our dead back to the school and make sure the people there get their weapons.” The young woman swallowed hard. “I wish things had turned out different.” She looked at the road between her feet for a second before returning her eyes to the sheriff’s face. “This was a huge mess today.”

Yates took her hand and shook it. “I know. Good luck.”

Five minutes later they had Rodriguez loaded up in the Humvee and Josh’s body secured in a body bag. Amy took Lacey’s weapon out of the rack next to the driver’s seat and handed it back to him. “Next time remember your weapon, you dumb jarhead.” Amy said quietly. She tried to smile to soften the statement, but in light of everything that had happened Frays felt like she was laughing at a funeral. “I’ll drive.”

Eamon jumped in the back to keep an eye on Rodriguez while Frays drove. Lacey sat staring morosely out of the passenger’s side window. He looked at the woman behind the wheel as if seeing a whole new side of her: he had called her stupid (among several other less nice things) for trying to save Powers’ life but he had also seen her shoot (and probably kill) at least two or three people just ten or fifteen minutes ago. He was surprised to see that she seemed relatively undisturbed by this. Lacey’s eyes played over the bloodstains on the back seat, which were already starting to draw flies. He swallowed back bile.