“Mom! Look!” he cried joyfully as he held the money up for his mother to see. “I gots one…two…free dollars!” The little boy crumpled up the bills and jammed them into the front pocket of his jeans before racing back to the dock and picking up his fishing pole again. His little tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated then flicked his line back out onto the water.
Becca frowned and stomped over to the shed where Mister Frays had gotten the fishing poles from. There was another child sized one hidden in the cobwebs in the corner behind an ancient refrigerator mounted to the wall in the back corner. “I’m gonna catch a bigger one than you!” the little girl declared as she clomped past him and onto the dock. “Daddy, gimme a wormy!”
It was almost suppertime when George decided that they should pack it in. There was about a dozen or so keeper sized fish battering into one another when he looked into the pail. “Okay, everybody.” he said as he hefted their catch “Looks like we’re about done for the day. Let’s get upstairs.”
The children groaned and started reeling in their lines. Adam grinned at his children and helped them pick up their things. The kids were probably going to be sore later and he kicked himself for not making them put on sunscreen. Then, he reflected that they all probably could have used some: the back of his neck felt dry and hot.
“Time for you to learn how to clean a fish, city boy.” George told Adam as he followed the Laceys up the stairs. Adam smiled uneasily over his shoulder at Mister Frays and sighed resignedly, obviously not looking forward to it.
Paulie raced over to Rodriguez and scrambled into her lap as if the deck was lava. “Frannie! I caught one! A real big one like this!” the boy said proudly as he spread his hands as far apart as he could. He hugged her and smooched the scarred portion of her face. “Did you see?”
“Yeah I did, buddy!” Rodriguez said a slightly surprised look in her eyes despite the wide grin on her face. “Way to go! I’m proud of you.” She returned the boy’s embrace and then let him squirm off her lap and go inside to tell the others. Frannie watched Paulie go inside then shook her head and chuckled to herself, one hand absently stroking the scars on her cheek.
Adam and George exchanged tight lipped grins after hearing the exchange between Paulie and Rodriguez. “Lacey, could you go inside and get us some newspapers?” George asked as he hefted the bucket onto the landing where, up until that morning, the stairs from the deck had been attached. “And I think there’s a shovel by the back door. Could you grab that too?”
Carl stared at the empty couch when he entered the living room, his jaw dropping. “Mom! Where are you?” he called into the house as he took three quick steps into the room and looked around nervously. “Mom? Amy?” Carl swallowed hard and looked uneasily over his shoulder towards Frannie, Laura and the kids on the deck. “MOM?! AMY!?”
He felt kind of stupid when his mother came out of the bathroom a half second later. “Carl, keep it down!” she scolded with a small smile. “Your sister’s asleep in the back bedroom.” Jessie gave her boy a quick hug and held him at arm’s length.
“Come on, Mom.” Carl muttered under his breath as he squirmed free and glanced again towards the deck. “Mom, stop. Come on.” He smiled a little and kept looking over his shoulder to see if Frannie had witnessed him acting like a scared little kid.
“What, afraid I’m gonna embarrass you in front of somebody?” she asked with a mischievous grin as she glanced towards the people on the deck. “How many fish did you guys catch? Enough for dinner?”
“Yeah, I think we got enough.” Carl answered as he backed off a half pace and looked towards the deck again. Paulie seemed to be keeping Frannie occupied, so he deemed that there was little chance that she had seen him. He smiled at his mother. “I think Dad’s gonna make Adam clean ‘em.”
“Would you ask Mrs. Lacey and Frannie if they’d help with dinner, please?” Jessica said sharply, glaring at her son. “Then make sure your sister’s up. Thanks.” She shook her head slightly and smiled at Carl. “Just go easy on Mister Lacey, alright? We’ve had it kinda bad but I think Adam, Frannie and Amy have had it worse.”
Carl nodded, his brow furrowed. “Fine.” he grumbled under his breath and turned back towards the living room. He relayed Mom’s message to Mrs. Lacey and Frannie on his way to the door that led to the back bedroom. Carl rapped gently on the doorframe and listened, trying to tell if Amy was still asleep inside or not.
He eased the door open and crept up to the bed, a little surprised to see that little beads of sweat were dotting his sister’s forehead. Her arms were wrapped around her torso, her limbs twitching as she mumbled and made little groaning noises in her sleep. “Hey, Aim?” he whispered as he tentatively reached out for her “Aim, it’s time for dinner.”
Carl stumbled out of the back bedroom, both hands clasped over the lower half of his face. Laura and Jessica dropped what they were holding as Frannie rushed towards him. “Hey, Carl. What happened, buddy?” she asked as the young woman took his arm and pulled him toward the nearest chair at the kitchen table. “It’s alright, man. Just lean your head back and let me take a look.”
“I…I hit him.” Amy said from the doorway. She made her way to the table and sat down, hiding her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, Carl. Are you okay?”
“I think you broke my damn nose!” her brother shouted angrily as Rodriguez stuffed a bit of gauze into the young man’s nostrils and held it there. “Jesus Christ on a crutch, the hell is wrong with you?”
“Carl! Language!” Jessica admonished as she rushed forward to take over for Frannie. “What happened, Amy?” Frannie allowed Mrs. Frays to take her spot and gave her friend a brief, worried look. Jessica pinched her son’s nose then glared over her shoulder at her daughter. “Well?”
“I think I was having a nightmare.” Frays admitted guiltily. She shook her head and looked at the table in front of her, sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “Carl grabbed my shoulder and it startled me. Jeez, Carl…I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it. Are you okay?”
Lacey looked from Amy to her brother and back again. “Do you remember what it was about?” Amy speared the man with a harsh look as the image of her flight sergeant’s handsome face exploding in front of her the truck smashing into their Humvee appeared on the insides of her eyelids. If anyone would know what she was having nightmares about it was him…
She shuddered and frowned slightly. “No, I don’t think so.” Amy muttered under her breath and ran the palm of her hand over her face. Laura managed to catch a look of guilt on her husband’s face as he turned away from her. Frays reached out and took her brother’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Carl. I really didn’t mean it.”
His upper lip was already puffing up, but he still managed to frown. “Next time I’ll wake you up with a stick from across the room or something.” Carl grumbled bitterly as he slowly stopped leaning back. He turned to look at Rodriguez standing behind him. “Is it broken?”
“Nah, I don’t think so.” she said as she clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Just got a big ol’ fat lip and a bloody nose. Hold that under your nose and I’ll get you some ice.” While Rodriguez crossed the kitchen Amy struggled to her feet and made her way painfully towards the bedroom door. Frannie sighed and shook her head as she filled a little Ziploc baggie with ice cubes and wrapped it in the dishtowel hanging on the handle of the stove.
“Your daughter nearly knocked your son’s block off.” Lacey announced as he walked down the steps towards the landing where George awaited him with the bucket of fish. He handed the older man the rolled up newspapers from under his arm and frowned. “Everybody’s okay. So…how’s this work anyway?”
George nodded to himself as he spread the papers on the cement. “Well, pay attention.” he said as he flicked open his sharp knife and reached into the bucket. In a matter of minutes a largemouth bass went from flopping and gasping on a year old edition of the Boston Globe to two good sized fillets. “Tha
t’s how it works, son.” He held the knife out to Lacey handle first with a grin “Your turn, Private. Take action.”
Somehow he could imagine that Frays would have found the whole scene hilarious as he tried to grab the big trout his son had caught out of the bucket and get it onto the newspaper. Her father certainly seemed to be getting a kick out of it. He managed to get a hold of the fish long enough to get it almost out of the bucket before it squirmed out of his grasp.
He had to chase the flopping fish around a little before he got it onto the newspaper. Adam even managed to laugh at himself a little bit as he tried to hold the fish down but his face became grim as he held the knife behind the fish’s gill slit. He took a deep breath and started to fillet the wriggling trout. He shuddered involuntarily when the fish finally shivered and stopped moving about halfway through the procedure.
It took him a little getting used to but Lacey managed to do a pretty good job cleaning the fish. The whole thing was kind of funny, really. He had killed two men and God knew how many of those things but he was squeamish about flaying a couple dumb slimy fish. The sight of the blood on his hands still made him a little sick to his stomach though.
George wrapped the fillets in some of the newspapers and handed them to Adam. “Take those inside and give them to Jessie, if you would.” he said as he scrapped the fish guts onto another piece of bloody newsprint and bundled them up. “I’ll get a shovel out of the boiler room and bury these in the garden and be along in a minute.”
“Hey guys.” Adam said as he set the fish on the deck and hopped over the gap where the stairs used to be. It took him a minute to wriggle his skinny ass over the drop off, just enough time for Rodriguez to grow concerned, come over and help him. “Got the fish done.”
Frannie wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Yeah, smells like it.” she chided as Lacey picked up the bundle of newspaper and started towards the glass doors. Rodriguez opened the door for him and grinned. “Wash your damn hands before you get that stink all over the house.”
Lacey flashed a brief smile when he looked at Frays, who sat in the blue recliner with her feet up frowning at the paperback novel in her hands. He glanced towards his wife and Amy’s mom in the kitchen and smiled again. He could sense that both the women had their suspicions about what he and Frays might have been up to together. He was glad that Frays’ dad had been upfront about it and seemed ready to take him at his word when he said that nothing happened romantically between his daughter and himself. Laura on the other hand…
The kids were in the bathroom, probably getting washed up for dinner. “Are you okay?” he asked Amy as he paused in front of the chair. “Too bad you couldn’t come fishing with us. You should have seen the one Paulie caught.”
Amy smiled slightly and closed her book. “I heard it was like this.” she said as she spread her hands far apart. Frays stretched and rolled her head in a slow circle, making the vertebrae in her neck pop and crack, sending a little shiver down the woman’s spine. Adam looked guiltily at the floor for a second before he brought his eyes back to Frays’ face. A little jittery tremor ran through the woman’s body after she appeared to finish working the kinks out of her neck. “Well, maybe next time.”
Lacey’s eyes darted towards the kitchen again and he leaned in close and thought about putting a hand on Frays’ shoulder until he remembered that his hands were covered with fishy stench. “Hey, hon!” he called as he went towards the kitchen. “Got the fish. Where do you want me to put it?”
Later that evening Amy sat in the recliner, her stomach churning and bubbling as she watched Frannie curled up on the hide-a-bed on the other side of the room. The Laceys were in the back bedroom again, her brother snoring on the cot in the dining room. “Can’t sleep either, kiddo?” George asked, frowning a little when he saw his daughter jump at the sound of his voice. “Let’s talk outside on the deck.”
George helped Amy up and with her arm around his waist they quietly tiptoed around the end of the hide-a-bed and made their way outside. Frays grimaced as she settled into one of the plastic deck chairs. It appeared that her feet were not healing as quickly as she had hoped. The two of them sat quietly, looking up at the bright white moon overhead and listening to the frogs down by the shoreline below. “Did they ever tell you about the Highway of Death?” George asked quietly as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out a pack of some off brand cigarettes. To her surprise, he took one for himself then offered Amy the pack. Frays hesitated and frowned then started to take one and hated herself, put it back.
How long did he know that she smoked? It was not something she had done with any frequency. In fact the only time she had smoked with any regularity was when she was overseas and she had quit cold turkey while in Kuwait waiting for the plane to take them back to the states. The last few weeks had been stressful enough to break down her resolve and take the habit back up, at least for a little while…
George lit his cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke. “Saddam’s boys were beatin’ feet north back home out of Kuwait. We laid mines ahead of ‘em and came up behind...you zoomies and the grunts and our fast movers just laid into ‘em.” George said quietly. A faraway look came to the man’s face as he looked out over the water and he shook his head, exhaling a plume of smoke. His mind drifted back to that sandy bit of Hell on the other side of the world, when he was still practically a kid not much older than his daughter when she had gone to serve her country in that same godforsaken patch of earth. “We laid into ‘em too, anything that tried to make a run for it, we just lit ‘em up…main guns and crew serveds just rippin’ ‘em up…” he was quiet for a moment and Amy was surprised to see a little, familiar tremble in her father’s hands as he brought the cigarette up to his lips. “We rolled up after it was done” the man gave his daughter a rueful, almost tearful smile “It was somethin’ to see… They like to say that God’s everywhere. Well, I can think of one place He wasn’t.”
George was surprised when his daughter suddenly dissolved into tears, hiding her face in her hands and sobbing uncontrollably. Amy sniffed back snot and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I-I think I did a bad thing, Daddy.” she sobbed into the palms of her hands as the man wrapped her up in a big bear hug. George picked his daughter up out of her chair and sat down, holding her in his lap as if she were a child again. “I think I did a bad thing. I…I-I didn’t wanna, b-but I…oh man, Daddy I think I’m goin’ to Hell...” Frays lost herself in long choking sobs as her father held her tightly to his chest. “I don’t…Daddy, I-I dunno…t-there was…just so much blood.”
George held his daughter and ran a hand slowly up and down her back as he had done when she was small…not that that had happened all that often. She had been a tough, independent kind of a little girl. Heck, she had practically changed her own diapers as a kid. He smiled a little and rested his chin on the young woman’s shoulder. “It’s alright, kiddo.” he said quietly, still rubbing her back. “It’s alright. Shhhh…it’s alright.” When the worst of it had passed George helped Amy inside and got her back to the recliner.
“There we go, kiddo.” he whispered as he unfolded an old, threadbare blanket he found behind the chair and spread it over his daughter, drying her cheeks with one corner of the worn fabric. “Just get a little rest.” Amy squirmed into the cushions of the chair and smiled drowsily up at her father and nodded, already starting to drop off to sleep.
Frannie had woken up when the door whooshed open and George took his daughter outside. She rolled onto her side and watched through the glass as Frays cried into her father’s shirt, a great big knot twisting and rolling around in her stomach. Rodriguez curled into a ball on the mattress. “Dumb mick.” she grumbled under her breath and wiped at her cheek “Where are you when I need you?”
Chapter Two
12 June 2011, 1143 hours 4 Old Trout Lane 10 miles north of Holden, Massachusetts
CRAAACK! Frannie and Amy both jumped at the clap of the thunder which sounded like it was rig
ht over the roof. It had been raining for a day and a half or so, leaving the lot of them stuck inside with little to do. Frays, Lacey and Rodriguez tried keeping busy by sewing up the holes in their uniforms and socks but that had only managed to kill about an hour or so yesterday and you could only sleep so many hours a day.
Paulie looked at Frannie when she startled, smiled a little and snuggled back against the woman’s chest. Rodriguez squeezed the boy tightly and the two of them turned their attention back to the yellowed paperback collection of Peanuts comics he had found hiding in the corner of the bookshelf next to the back bedroom. Paulie could only read a few words but the boy recognized the picture of Snoopy on the cover and insisted that Frannie read it to him. His sister was doodling in a spiral notebook in the middle of the floor with a couple pencils and some crayons while Amy snoozed uneasily on the couch, her place marked in her book with her thumb. Carl was napping in the back bedroom.
Laura sat at the kitchen table playing cards with her husband and Mr. and Mrs. Frays. She frowned over her hand at her son and Rodriguez across the room. “Paulie, would you come here?” Laura called as she discarded an ace and took a trick. The boy squirmed on Frannie’s lap but did not budge. “Paul. Did you hear me?”
“Moooom!” the boy whined “Frannie’s reading to me.” He squirmed again on Francesca’s lap, making the woman’s face tighten up a little. The wound on her thigh was more or less healed but it still smarted when the boy put his weight on her leg in just the right way. It sounded to her like he was starting to get a little tired. She buried her nose in the boy’s hair and breathed in his scent then squeezed him again.
“You mind your mom, little man.” Rodriguez warned as she lifted the child off her lap and set him on the floor. She smiled as she patted the boy on the bottom and gently nudged him in the direction of his mother. “It’s almost lunchtime. Be good and I’ll read to you some more before naptime, alright?”
Outbreak: Brave New World Page 4