Outbreak: Boston (38 page)

The vehicle made short work of the aged wood and Amy found herself driving across the green of a golf course. The flag marking the hole disappeared under the truck and stood wobbling in the air as she steered out onto the fairway. Something about the sight of the yellow flag waving back and forth in the Humvee’s side mirror struck her as strangely funny, along with the ruts the truck was leaving across the carefully manicured grass.

There was a low house surrounded by a chain link fence coming up on her right so she slowed the vehicle down and made for it. The truck thumped over a curb and she pulled over in front of what looked like the golf course’s clubhouse. Frays pried her fingers off of the steering wheel and took a few deep, shuddering breaths before jumping out of the truck.

The country club must have been a really swanky place before they showed up. She could see a half dozen tennis courts along with a large patio area and a huge swimming pool on the other side of the fence. Frays shook her head and rushed to the back of the truck as Lacey was climbing out. “Are you okay?” he asked and looked around, confused by their new surroundings
and more than a little worried. He had heard his friend screaming in the front of the truck. “Where’s Eamon?”

Amy blinked stupidly at him for a second. “I’m sorry.” she whispered as the color leeched out of her face. “They were all over us. I tried…I tried to get us out. I
-I really did. I’m sorry.” Frays shook her head again and started towards the truck then put her hand against the vehicle and stood there for a second. “Let’s get inside. We gotta bring Rodriguez inside.”

Lacey tried the heavy wooden doors at the front of the clubhouse and found them locked up tight. He backed off a few paces to build up a good head of steam and threw himself at the doors, barely even managing to make them shudder in their frame. Frays watched the scrawny Marine bemusedly for a second until she noticed that a stone next to the doors looked a little too much like plastic. She picked up the stone and examined it, finding a small compartment with a key in it. “Hey, Lacey!” she whispered, holding the key up so he could see it. “Work smarter not harder, man.”

She fitted the key in the lock and turned it, opening the door. “Come on, let’s go get Frannie.” Amy said as she turned back towards the truck. Adam shook his head and gave the woman’s back a half smile then joined her at the truck. It took a little time but they got the stretcher unstrapped and carried Rodriguez inside.

The inside of the clubhouse was just as high end as the outside suggested. Everywhere they looked there was expensive hardwood, plush upholstery and luxurious carpeting on the floor. They pushed two square tables together just inside the door and then hefted Rodriguez up onto it. Adam looked around in awe of their surroundings. They made a quick search of the building to make sure they really were alone. Surprisingly, the back door leading to the kitchen was smashed in but there was nobody and, more importantly, no
thing
in the clubhouse with them. “Looks like somebody busted in early on.” Frays remarked as they made their way back to the main room.

“What makes you say that?” Lacey asked. He did not really care all that much as long as the place was reasonably safe. He had had enough close calls today, thank you very much.

“Look around, man.” Amy said, motioning towards the brackets in the corners of the room and behind the bar. “The kitchen area looks untouched but the booze and the TVs are missing. Hopefully, there’s some food and stuff still there.”

“Looks like we can spend the night here, anyway. That fence should keep anybody away.” Lacey said hopefully. The building also had heavy wrought iron bars bolted over all the windows facing the outside. He wondered what kind of food rich people ate and if the rumors about them eating the garbage parts of exotic animals were true as he locked the front door. He started towards what looked like the kitchen at the back of the room.

Amy frowned at the empty IV bag resting on Frannie’s chest and gently pulled the needle from her arm. She checked the unconscious woman’s vitals and was surprised to find that her heart rate and respiration, while still weak, did not seem as bad as Eamon had let on. Frays had no idea what to do for the hole in her leg but it seemed to her that with a little time and rest she would probably recover. Amy sank into a chair and hid her face in her hands, caught somewhere between grief and gladness.

“Hey, Frays…Frays, I think you better come take a look at this!” Lacey called from the other room. Amy jumped up from her chair with her carbine at the ready as she burst into what appeared to be the kitchen. She stalked around the stainless steel ranges and countertops, flicking her illuminator off and on at odd intervals to disguise her location as she moved through the darkened room towards the sound of Lacey’s voice. She found him standing in front of an open wooden door towards the back corner of the room.

A look of awe slowly crept over Amy’s face as she took in what was on the other side of the door. Adam started to laugh, quietly at first but gradually growing in volume when he saw the look on his friend’s face. “Quick! Let’s get some of this stuff loaded up in the truck!” Frays said with a small grin as she hurried inside the pantry and started gathering armloads of canned food off the shelves.

“Do you know how to cook?” Adam asked as he picked up a number of enormous cans of fruit. Amy glared at him over the top of the cans piled up in her arms, making him nervously open and close his mouth a couple times. “I-I’m only asking because I can burn water. It seems like kind of a waste if there’s this great kitchen and neither one of us know how to use it.”

Amy snorted, the man’s nervousness bringing the tiniest hint of a smile to her face. “I can a little. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been craving a ham and cheese omelet for
days
.” she said as she slipped by him and went back into the kitchen. “I hope they’ve got some eggs in this place. Do rich people eat eggs?”

It took a couple trips but they ended up with a pretty good supply of canned goods in the back of the Humvee. They spent the better part of the day fortifying their new temporary home as best they could by piling furniture in front of the front and back doors. Lacey started to realize just how much their physical condition had deteriorated over the last month or so. They had both had to take several breaks, as the chairs and tables seemed heavier than they might have before. He realized then that they had probably been very slowly starving to death. Adam shivered at the thought.

When they finished that, Adam kept an eye on Rodriguez while Amy went into the kitchen and pulled open a massive refrigerator. She was a little disappointed when the light did not come on but pulled out a flashlight and held it between her teeth as she searched the inside of the cavernous appliance. The air inside it was still chilly, making Amy frown as she rooted around in the refrigerator.
Maybe the grid just went down here
she thought hopefully.

Frays could not believe their luck: not only did the stove run on gas (she had to light it with her cigarette lighter, almost burning her hand in the process, but she got it going none the less) but there were unspoiled eggs and cheese in the fridge as well as a good bit of some kind of smoked sausage. Amy found herself munching on some of her ingredients as she did the prep work. The sausage was kind of spicy but very good. She combined these into a massive omelet which she left in a covered pan on the stove and went out to into the other room.

“Hey, Frays.” Lacey called when he saw her. “What’s for dinner? It smells great!” She was more than a little surprised to see that not only had he set two places at a table near Rodriguez, but he had also opened some cans and put them on the table next to their plates with long handled serving spoons sticking out of them. The Marine and even put a couple candles on the table since the place did not seem to have power and it was starting to get dark.

“Um…an omelet.” she said quietly. The domesticity of the whole scene seemed disjointed and strange after all the lunacy that happened to them today. “It should be ready in a couple minutes. I’ll bring it out when it’s done.” She backed carefully out of the room and stumbled into the kitchen, suddenly feeling a little short of breath.

Maybe five or six minutes later Frays carefully folded the omelet and let it cook a little longer before sliding it out of the pan and onto a silver serving platter. She frowned at the eggs and thought for a moment about throwing the whole thing across the room. Frays picked up the platter and carried it into the other room instead.

Lacey greeted her arrival with a cheer as she set the eggs in the middle of the table. Amy bowed her head, said her Pater Noster and made the sign of the cross before picking up her fork and reaching for her portion of the omelet. A hint of a smile came to her face because Adam looked up when she finished. After so many weeks of living on near starvation rations their little meal seemed a feast: in addition to the omelet there was a huge can of halved Bartlett pears in syrup as well as a big jar of green pitted olives and a bag of pretzels that Lacey had found behind the bar on the other side of the room. Adam also poured them both tall glasses of actual for really and truly orange juice, which they both drank greedily even though it was warm and kind of off tasting. 

Lacey looked at the woman wolfing down a handful of olives across the table from him as he forked a portion of eggs into his mouth. “This is really good.” he said cheerfully, pointing towards the omelet on his plate with his fork as he pushed a string of melted cheese into his mouth that had landed on his chin. “You’re going to make somebody a really good wife some day.”

Amy cocked an eyebrow at him and bit back a retort, choosing to take what he said as a complement since she was reasonably certain that was how he meant it. “Thanks.” she said quietly after she had finished chewing. Frays glanced at her watch and polished off the last of the olives. “I’ll take first watch. I’ll wake you up around midnight or so then you wake me up at seven. We might have to stay here at least a couple days until Rodriguez gets better. In the mean time, we’ve got a good bit of food and we’ve both lost a lot of weight over the last month. We’re gonna sit tight for awhile, get rested up and see if we can’t put a dent in what’s left of all that food in the back.”

Adam looked a little upset but smiled anyway. “Sure, boss.” he said as he cut another portion of his omelet, speared it with his fork and started bringing it to his mouth. “Sounds like a plan.”

Adam stretched out on the floor a little bit after he cleared the dinner table, using his rucksack as a pillow. Once Amy was certain that he was actually asleep she hurried into t
he restroom near the front door, barged into the nearest stall and crouched over the toilet. Once she had finished being sick, Frays shakily got to her feet and went to the sink where she washed her face and rinsed her mouth out before going back out into the main room.

After a moment’s thought, Amy got
the cleanest of her uniforms out of her rucksack and took it into the latrine to change her clothes. While she changed she carefully looked herself over for any wounds, praying to every saint she could think of that she remained unhurt. Frays nearly wept with relief when she discovered that none of the things had taken a chunk out of her on the way out of the hospital. She turned on the flashlight on her LCS and let down her hair, spending a few minutes to carefully pick the shards of glass out of the thick tangles of hair on top of her head.

Amy wandered out into the room and sat down well away from the windows with her carbine across her lap, trying to get her hands to stop shaking. All through dinner she had fought back the urge to be sick, struggling to keep a happy face on for Lacey’s benefit and hoping he would not notice.
Frays dug around in her rucksack and found a pack of cigarettes in the pouch on the flap closure. She frowned at the red and white box in her hand, debating whether or not she really wanted a smoke right now as this seemed to be the last pack she had. After a few more moments of debate Amy ripped open the cellophane, popped one of the cancer sticks into her mouth and lit it with a flick of her lighter.

She hid the cherry of the cigarette behind her palm and sat there quietly smoking and trembling like a leaf. After two drags she knocked the cherry off and ground it out on the carpet with a guilty little smile. This was the kind of place
a lot of her classmates had hung out in on weekends, the spoiled rotten rich kids who had everything in the world laid out at their feet and did not appreciate it.

She did not exactly fit in with them before she had gone to war but they seemed positively
alien
to her afterwards. She remembered listening to one kid complaining about the four hundred and some odd dollar iPhone his parents bought him to his friend as she waited in line at the student union with Jacob. She could only stand there next to him shaking her head in disbelief. The village near her FOB had raw sewage running in the streets and now three weeks later she had to listen to some punk whine about how an expensive toy his parents got him was not exactly the one he wanted. Jacob had given her an understanding look then smirked and mimed slapping the kid in the back of the head. The two of them had giggled like idiots for a good twenty minutes or so afterwards. The memory brought a ghost of a little smile to her face. All of a sudden she missed Jacob, wanted his arms around her so bad it hurt: his black hair, his infectious little smile…

Frays
shook herself free of those thoughts and glanced at Lacey. She wondered how the man could sleep so soundly whenever the opportunity presented itself. If he ever had any nightmares or anything it never showed while she slept like the old joke about a baby: waking every hour or two screaming. She glanced at Eamon’s medical bag hanging from the back of a chair near the table where Rodriguez was resting as she checked her pulse and respiration again then went and sat down.