She felt a small twinge of almost like homesickness when she saw that the restaurant where her mother had worked (which was next to the fire house) had its back window smashed out and somebody had left the rear door open… The whole thing left her feeling like she had wandered into a nightmare for a brief moment. Would somebody please be so kind as to wake me up already? Amy thought as she watched them for a few more seconds Any time now would be great, thanks…
Frays flipped the magnification module out of the way, allowed herself a brief moment of mild shock before glancing back at the others and shaking her head. Amy pointed with two fingers towards her eyes then at the building, holding up first three fingers then four indicating to Rodriguez and her brother what she had seen. Frannie nodded. Amy held her index finger up to her lips then signaled that the three of them should go prone and low crawl past the building as quietly as possible.
Once they were on the opposite side of the railroad bed and had crawled on their bellies until they were out of sight then stood up and continued on their way, sticking to the shade of the trees overhead. Frays set a quick pace, but not so fast that Rodriguez would have trouble keeping up. Then, of course, it had been a while since she had done any serious walking or anything herself. Perspiration ran down her neck and occasionally made her eyes sting. The soggy dead skin that had sloughed off her feet was probably not quite as healed as she had thought too, come to think of it.
The plan hit a snag when the group neared Grove Cemetery. “Well crap.” Frays muttered under her breath. The high fence that she remembered being around the burial ground’s perimeter was not there. Carl tapped his sister on the shoulder and pointed towards the overpass that crossed over the railway just a bit further down the tracks. Frays glanced at Rodriguez, who nodded and the three of them set off at a brisk pace for the bridge.
They climbed the gentle cement grade beneath the Route 122A overpass and huddled together in a little cavity meant to allow rain or melted snow to drain off of the bridge and down into the railway bed. “How’s your leg holding up, Rodriguez?” Frays asked. The other woman had dug out her cigarettes and lit up a half second after they sat down, shielding the cherry from view with the palm of her hand. Amy rolled her eyes as she watched Frannie blow a series of smoke rings. Holy crap I want a cigarette! Frays thought and frowned slightly.
“Nothing an aspirin or two wouldn’t fix.” Frannie said with a small grin. She noticed the look in her friend’s eyes as they followed the cigarette as it bobbed up and down in the corner of her mouth. Rodriguez took one last drag off of the cancer stick, butted it out and put it back in the pack.
“I’ll rub it for you if you want.” Carl volunteered giving Rodriguez a sly, wolfish grin. Frannie and Amy both snickered as the boy moved a little closer to the woman, the long barrel of his rifle getting stuck on the cement over their heads.
“Down, boy.” Frays said, smiling a little as she put a hand on his chest. “Drink some water, Carl. It’s hot out and neither one of us can carry you if you get heat stroke.” Carl scowled a little at his sister but did as she told him. Frays followed her own advice, slurping water from her camelbak as they rested in the cool little cavern.
Amy savored the lingering scent of burning tobacco in the air for a moment as they hunkered beneath the overpass like bums. A brief inspection of the floor revealed black marks on the concrete, probably the remains of long gone campfires. The rains a few days ago probably swept the ashes into the gully below. She paused, her hand hovering above the cold damp concrete. She noticed a rusty dust covered hypodermic syringe on the ground a few inches from where she sat making her grateful she did not decide to climb a little farther inside. On top of everything else going on, a raging case of hepatitis (if she was lucky) would not help matters at all. Frays carefully picked the needle up by the barrel and flung it out of their little cave.
Once everyone had a chance to rest for a minute and take some water Frays crawled out of the little cubbyhole. “C’mon everybody.” she said as she stood carefully and stretched then adjusted the straps on her rucksack. “Let’s get going. Aspirin’s on the shopping list too.”
There was a trucking yard of some sort to the west of the tracks, its perimeter secured by a rusty looking fence topped with loops of concertina wire as they came out of the southern side of the overpass. Frays, back on point, signaled a halt in the shadow of the overhead roadway and surveyed the lot with her weapon’s sight as she had back at the fire hall. It looked quiet but they crawled on their bellies past the building just the same to be on the safe side.
The three of them hustled across the tracks to a small brick building. Frays knelt and pointed her carbine south towards Sunnyside Avenue while Rodriguez stood behind her pointing her own weapon towards the house barely visible through the stand of hardwood trees on the opposite side of the tracks. Frannie tapped Carl on the shoulder and gestured in the direction they had come, indicating that the boy should cover that side.
Carl looked around nervously as they waited for a moment. Amy seemed to be checking out the area ahead of them where Sunnyside Avenue crossed the rusted tracks just a little south of where they were. His mouth felt dry and he desperately wanted to lower his rifle to get a drink from his canteen. The boy spared a glance at his sister and her friend out of the corner of his eye. He felt a little better knowing that at least Amy and Frannie knew what they were doing.
There were a few lazy fingers of black smoke reaching upwards over the treetops to their east and south, making him hope that the entire trip was not a huge waste of time. “Aim, look!” he whispered, pointing the trails of smoke out to his sister.
“I saw them, Carl.” she answered as she carefully observed the area around the railway crossing. It did not look like there was anybody around but that did not mean they were unobserved. There was a barnlike structure at the corner of the street and the railway with what looked like a transformer across from it. It seemed unlikely that there was any danger from the building: the area around it and the trees were burned pretty badly, probably when a fire had gotten out of control. “No fire crews around.” She sighed heavily and spared her little brother a sympathetic look “I hope our house is okay.”
Carl felt a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “I hope we’re not wasting our fuckin’ time.” he muttered, drawing a scowl from his sister. Rodriguez, observing the exchange out of the corner of her eye, snorted a quiet laugh out of her nose.
“Carl! Language!” Frays hissed in a perfect imitation of her mother, making Rodriguez bite down hard on the laughter threatening to explode out of her. Amy realized exactly who she sounded like and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as she struggled to keep silent herself. The airman glanced over her shoulder at Carl. He was smiling with his cheek pressed against the stock of the ancient Mosin-Nagant, still covering his area.
“Okay, I’ll cross the railroad first.” Frays whispered, pointing towards the grey metal box on the southwest corner of the intersection. The transformer’s finish was rusty in spots and scorched from the heat of nearby fires. “Looks like a lot of the buildings along the tracks around here have already burned down, but keep your eyes open. Ready? Let’s go.”
Amy rose and hustled the fifty meters or so to the transformer then crouched beside it, glassing the area to the south. Her heart sank as Frannie and Carl hurried along a few seconds later and took up prone positions in the ditch about thirty or forty feet past her. There was a swath of charred fingers sticking up out of the blackened earth. Several hundred meters down the railway she could make out the skeletons of another warehouse or something along with several semis or flatbed trucks. Frays rose to a half crouch and went as fast as she could to where Carl and Rodriguez were hiding in a ditch at the edge of the rail bed.
As she approached the toe of her boot caught on a rock sending her face first into the gravel then tumbling down the slight grade where she came to rest into a conveniently placed mud puddle, the ground still soupy f
rom the rainstorm. Frays lay gasping as the cold mud seeped through her uniform, the shock of the impact jarring her earlier injuries and sending fiery little electric jolts shooting down her arm. It took everything she had to not scream or moan as she lay there in the muck trying to clear her head...
Half dazed, Frays almost shrieked and started flailing when something caught hold of the drag handle on her LCS and started pulling her out of the mud. Amy expected to feel cold hands on her, teeth sinking into her flesh… The airman relaxed a little when she realized that she heard Rodriguez muttering curses under her breath as she dragged her over to her brother instead of a slavering monster set on tearing her to bits. “Hey, Frays! You alright?” Frannie asked as she glanced over her shoulder at her friend.
Amy blinked and shook her head, making a conscious effort to control her breathing. Frays swallowed and nodded. Rodriguez let go of Frays’ drag handle and helped the woman to her feet. The two of them reached Carl a little farther down the tracks and dropped to the ground.
“Aim, you alright?” he asked, his eyes wide. There was a little bit of blood oozing from a scrape over his sister’s left eye. Frays tried to follow the boy’s gaze then felt the warm liquid slowly making its way down the side of her face. She frowned then pushed her weapon aside and dug into her CLS kit.
“Just fine, Carl.” she said quietly. Rodriguez glanced over at Frays then crawled over and took over giving first aid. Amy grimaced when the woman wiped the side of her face down with an alcohol pad. Rodriguez gave her patient a questioning look when she noticed the way Frays was opening and closing her left hand. Amy cut off any discussion with a slight shake of her head and a small smile. No need to make Carl worry. Frays thought as she flexed her fingers a couple more times.
Her arm felt weird like it was kind of numb or something, as if she had banged her elbow really hard but slightly worse. Luckily the feeling started to kind of fade away after a few moments. With the application of a couple pieces of gauze held in place by medical tape Frays was ready to go again. Frays smiled, making the tape pinch at the skin around it and gave her little brother a thumbs up after Rodriguez had finished. “C’mon, we’re almost there. Looks like everything’s clear for a little ways, but there’s still a structure on the east side of the tracks. Low crawl past it.”
The railway was covered on both sides by thick stands of maple and elm trees the rest of the way until Amy and Carl recognized the back of the Big Y. A strange sense of bitter nostalgia stung him as Carl led his sister and Frannie towards a hole in the fence at the back of the store. He had worked as a stock boy at the place last summer before school started and still put in weekends to save money for a car in time for his sixteenth birthday this April. Of course, now there were plenty of cars there for the taking not that it was really any help because he did not know how to drive.
Amy looked at her brother out of the corner of her eye as the three of them crouched next to a box van in the store’s back lot. The store seemed to be quiet enough and did not look to be burned from this side of the building, but that was no guarantee of what was inside. Hopefully there was not a bunch of filthy disease ridden monsters stomping all over their potato chips or anything…
Frays crossed herself, muttered a quiet prayer then pulled the Saint Joan’s medal she wore around her neck out and kissed it before tucking the little metal disk back into place under her clothing. “How did you know about the hole in the fence?” she asked, covering Rodriguez as the woman hurried across the parking lot to the back door. Once Frannie had climbed the stairs to the loading dock, cleared the area and taken up a position next to the rear door the woman brought her carbine up to cover Frays and her brother.
“Me and Mikey Thompson would sneak down by the tracks on break to smoke.” the boy confessed, smiling a little at his sister before sprinting across the lot to join Rodriguez. Amy looked shocked for a moment then, once Carl was safely across the lot and at the back door with Rodriguez, hustled to join them.
Rodriguez and Frays stacked up at the back door. “Carl, cover us.” Amy whispered over her shoulder as she pointed towards the parking lot. “Me and Rodriguez will go in first. When we say ‘clear’ you come in behind us and close the door.”
Rodriguez took a flashbang grenade out of a pouch on her plate carrier and held it up for Frays to see. Amy pursed her lips for a second then shook her head. “No.” she whispered in Frannie’s ear. “Go soft. Those things get drawn by noise, remember?” Amy saw the woman nod as she slipped the grenade back into its pouch and secured it. Frays put a hand on Rodriguez’s shoulder and squeezed, indicating that she was ready to go.
In a flash, the two of them were through the door which had been left open probably by some considerate looters or maybe an employee who had left in a hurry. Frays and Rodriguez swept their immediate area, using the tac lights attached to their weapons to illuminate the shadowy store. “Clear.” Frays whispered as she flicked the light off and on, moving to the end of a row of shelves nearby in between activating the pressure switch on her weapon light. Rodriguez mirrored Frays’ movements, covering the opposite side of the door. Nothing seemed to be moving in the store. “Clear.” she said. They both felt a little better when Carl rushed inside and gently closed the door behind him.
The air inside the store was thick with the cloying smell of rotten vegetables, spoiled meat and dairy products that were several weeks past due. Amy gagged a little on the stench and peered into the dark. The store was dimly lit, the only light in the building now coming through the shattered windows at the front and the small skylights overhead.
The three of them moved quietly through the store, tiptoeing around knocked over displays and garbage strewn on the floor. The place was a mess: there was a station wagon parked in the display windows, shelving units were knocked over, there was trash everywhere. There were moldy clumps of rotten food on the tile floor. A couple times they came across a gnawed skeleton lying on the floor: either the victims of the creatures or human predators it was impossible to tell. “Don’t look, Carl.” Frays whispered over her shoulder, hoping that the dumb kid would actually listen to her for a change.
Frays took point while Rodriguez brought up the rear while Carl was in the middle with his rifle slung over his shoulder. He gripped the Mosin-Nagant’s bayonet in one hand, using the other to occasionally pick something up off the floor or a shelf as they passed and stuff it in his backpack. Carl directed his sister towards the pharmacy with gentle taps on the shoulder, right to go right left to go left, in between his pilfering.
When they reached the pharmacy Amy hopped over the counter then started rifling through the shelves where the prescription drugs were stored searching for not only any kind of an antibiotic she could find but also secretly hoping to find another resupply of Rodriguez’s meds. Amy frowned as she picked through the remaining bottles left scattered on the shelves or on the floor. There were a few white paper bags in a plastic basket which she tore open and looked at the labels on the pill bottles inside with her flashlight. Frays could not help but be more than a little concerned about what would happen when they eventually could not find any more of Frannie’s ‘little blue battle buddies’. She had heard that bad things could happen to somebody who was on those things and just suddenly stopped taking them…
Frays vaguely remembered hearing Rodriguez hitting on Lacey when she was laid up after the incident with Powers. Everything had been a little fuzzy and strange for a few days thanks to the concussion and pain meds. If Amy had been more certain that she actually heard what she thought she heard Frays might have mentioned it to her friend, but she was not so she did not. Frannie had been low on her meds then and it seemed sort of out of character for her.
Amy spared a glance over the top of the counter towards her friend. For some reason having the kids around seemed to help Frannie out but there were a couple times a day where she could tell her friend just wanted to go on and be with Eamon. She sighed and made a strange face and
pondered how to bring up the subject the next time they were in private…
Frannie and Carl searched the shelves outside the pharmacist’s area, filling their bags and pockets with whatever looked useful. Boxes of adhesive medical strips, a bag of cotton balls, some hydrogen peroxide… Carl glanced at his sister as she rooted through the drugs and smiled to himself as he tucked something into his pocket. He saw Frannie filling the cargo pockets of her ACUs with little stuffed toys and other such things for the kids from a display that had been knocked over at the other end of the aisle. “Hey, Frannie.” Carl whispered from the end of the row as he picked up a blister pack with a dozen toy cars and a little nylon mesh bag of plastic army men that had somehow ended up on the floor in the chaos and stuffed them into his pack. “Got anything good?”
“Multi-vitamins, some cold medicine, a bottle of aspirin, a bunch of band-aids and a half box of protein bars.” she answered, jamming a couple of the foil wrapped bars into an empty pouch on her plate carrier. “You?” Frannie spared a glance at the boy then turned her head a little bit to check on Frays.
“Some razors, three bars of soap…” Carl swung his pack off his shoulder and rooted through it, though still glancing around to keep an eye on their surroundings. “A thing of powdered Gatorade and…” he held up a big bottle of prenatal vitamins then tipped his bag forward, showing Rodriguez two plastic containers of baby wipes and a travel sized bundle of newborn diapers.
Frannie smiled and clapped Carl on the shoulder. “Uncle Carl.” Rodriguez said quietly and chuckled to herself. “Good thinking, man.” She turned to Frays and was glad to see that the woman had finished with whatever she was doing behind the desk.
“Ready guys?” Frays asked as she finished stuffing the few bottles of pills she had liberated into her pack beneath a spare uniform to stifle the noise they might make. She paused, straining her ears to see if she could hear anything coming towards them. Rodriguez and Carl nodded as she readjusted the straps on her rucksack. Amy spared a glance at her semi functioning watch. “Okay, five more minutes. Second objective.”
Outbreak: Brave New World Page 10