Outbreak: Long Road Back (3 page)

Rodriguez nodded thoughtfully and flipped down a card. “Say…has Carl talked to you lately?” she asked still rifling through her cards. A million bad things started flying around inside Frays’ head as she waited for her friend to continue. What was wrong with her baby brother? Why did he not come to her with it? Rodriguez could not help but smile a little bit. “He’s thinking of enlisting.”

Frays felt the bottom fall out. “WHAT!?” she demanded as she fought down the urge to march out to the garden and confront Carl with the information. Out of everything that could have been going on she absolutely did not expect that. “I mean…what? No!” Frays threw down her cards suddenly shaking with frustration. “Why? Just…just no!”

“He wants his dad’s gun back, Amy.” Rodriguez said quietly. By order of the FEMA guy running the camp the only people allowed to be armed in the FOB were military personnel and the Blue Diamond guys. Major Tennyson, the FOB’s commanding officer, had put out a call amongst the civilians looking for volunteers to enlist in the Marines. “I told him that we’d be going outside the wire soon too. Stupid kid.” She snickered at her friend and gave her a light punch on the arm. “I think we’re a bad influence on him or something.”

Frays pinched the bridge of her nose, shrugged and shook her head. “You’d think that but like in the other direction.” the woman said quietly. Rodriguez walked with a limp because she had been shot in the leg and was on meds for PTSD and his big sister woke up screaming every other night. Neither one of them were exactly recruiting poster material. “Stupid kid. He’s not even old enough. The big dummy’s only fifteen.”

Rodriguez looked stricken. “What? He’s fifteen?!” She started scratching at the scar tissue on her throat then caught her wrist with her other hand and forced it into her lap. “Goddamn! I thought he was like at least seventeen!” It looked to Frays like her friend seemed to shrink inside her plate carrier like a turtle hiding in its shell.

“Well…he is big for his age.” Frays said, trying to comfort her friend. She suddenly snickered then clapped a hand over her mouth to try and hold the laughter in. Rodriguez rolled her eyes and snorted. Before too long both of them were laughing so hard that their bellies ached. They stopped laughing immediately and looked at each other in disbelief when the radio squealed and a tinny little voice called out to them from the ethers.

“Say again!” Frays said urgently after she scrabbled for the radio’s handset. “This is…” Frays snapped her fingers, motioning for Rodriguez to pass her the clipboard with the radio’s procedures and call signs on it. “Region One Bravo. Send traffic, over!”

Rodriguez was out of her chair and over to the door as fast as she could manage. “Guys! We got somebody!” she called and then returned to the desk. Her hand started clawing at the scar tissue on her throat her fingers flicking back and forth over the jagged ridge where a piece of shrapnel had almost severed her carotid artery.

The door burst inward an indeterminate amount of time later. “Outside, Airman.” a middle aged Hispanic man who looked sort of like a bulldog in a Marine Corps uniform said as he barged into the room. He glanced at Rodriguez as he took the handset out of Frays’ hand. “You too, Specialist. Close the door please.”

Frays and Rodriguez looked at each other once they had the door shut. Major Tennyson, the post commander, had just thrown…well…politely insisted that they leave him alone to talk with whoever was on the other end of that phone call. “Hey…Rodriguez…” Frays said quietly as she glanced at the two squids sitting behind the desk. The woman’s hand went inside her LCS to rub her son growing in her womb. “Did…did that just happen?”

Rodriguez let a little smile grow on her face. It made her think of that guy Carl had found on the radio that night in the cabin. “Yeah…Yeah…Frays, I think it did.” she muttered quietly and looked at the Navy guys. “This happen a lot? What’s going on?”

The Navy guy whose name tape said Simons shrugged. “I dunno.” he said quietly and looked at the other man next to him. “Like once maybe?” The man glanced at the door like he would like nothing better than to press his ear up against it.

Major Tennyson cracked the door. “Simons, call up the airfield and have them set up the GPS transceiver.” he said loud enough for them all to hear. The four enlisted people exchanged nervous, excited glances. “Tell them to have a detail on standby to receive an airdrop around 1800 hours tomorrow. Frays, pass the word to the people on perimeter guard. Anybody with a pulse out there that sees those ‘chutes is going to be curious and they might not be friendly. Tell ‘em to keep their eyes peeled.” The man left the radio room and marched purposefully towards the door to the hallway. Major Tennyson poked his head back into the room. “Get Lieutenant Haskins over here. I need to talk to her too.”

The former hotel lobby turned into a flurry of activity as the enlisted personnel hurried to follow the major’s orders. Frays’ hands trembled excitedly as she relayed the instructions to the dozens of makeshift guard towers set up on their side of the wall. There was a maelstrom of speculation buzzing along the wires. Frays grinned at the radio.

The two of them listened excitedly for awhile, hoping to get another call from whoever that was on the other end. Eventually Frays and Rodriguez started playing cards again and waiting for their shift to end. Frays dug a notepad out of her hip pocket and started sketching something, concentrating on the paper with the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth. Eventually Rodriguez’s curiosity got the better of her.

“Whatcha drawing, Frays?” Rodriguez asked as she tried to peer over the woman’s shoulder. The picture looked like a weird combination of chicken scratches and Egyptian hieroglyphics or something. Her face scrunched up and she glanced at her watch. She had to be over to the Aid Station in an hour to pick up her afternoon dose of mood stabilizers…

“I’m drawing up a schematic.” Frays explained as she erased part of her drawing and changed a few of the strange little squiggles. “I was just thinking…ever gone coyote hunting?” Frays studied the paper for a moment and added a couple zigzags to the squiggles.

Rodriguez smirked.
Fuckin’ hick.
she thought good naturedly. “I never been outta South Boston before I joined the Army, Frays.” Rodriguez said as she continued to try and puzzle out what the picture was. It looked kind of like one of those Magic Eye puzzles she had seen all over the place when she was a kid. “Not many coyotes there.”

Frays snickered and shook her head. “Well…you play animal sounds like a wounded rabbit or something to get the coyotes to come so you can shoot them.” Frays added a couple more little boxes next to the squiggles and zigzags. “I was thinking that something like that might work since the Bravo Charlies are drawn by noises. Might actually work a little better because they don’t seem that bright.”

Rodriguez nodded thoughtfully. “But what after that? I mean…so you’ve got a bunch of those things standing around in the open.” She scratched at the scars on her cheek then slapped her palm down on the desk hard enough to make Frays jump a little bit at the sound. “Drone the dog shit outta the motherfuckers! Frays, you’re a genius!”

“I have my moments, anyways.” Frays said once she had recovered from the surprise. The smaller woman shrugged and tugged at the sleeve of her tee shirt for a moment as the garment had gotten bunched up under the shoulder strap of her LCS. “If they don’t have a drone flying around or anything I guess we could always just kind of find safe places and snipe them. Then again that would take up a heck of a lot of ammo.”

A slow, devilish grin spread across Rodriguez’s face. “Or we go talk to our friend who can make things go boom.” she said. She snapped her fingers and jumped to her feet. “Or maybe we ask Major Tennyson about getting one in the next care package!”

Frays frowned and shrugged. “I don’t think that they can really like…ya know…stuff one in a connex or whatever.” Frays said quietly. She thought back to the other FOB Freedom on the other side of the world. There had been an airstrip there and she had seen a couple UAVs flying around but had never gotten near where they were kept because that place was behind its own fenced off area surrounded by signs that said things like ‘Classified’ and ‘Trespassers Will Be Shot On Sight’ so she had never really been curious enough to go look. “Did you ever get a close look at one? They seem pretty big to me. At least the ones that we’d need.”

Rodriguez shivered despite the humidity. For a brief moment she was far, far away lying on her back and gagging on her own blood. She had drifted out of consciousness for a moment only to be rousted by the earth shaking beneath her as a shockwave slapped her in the face and pelted her with grit and small rocks. Someone threw their body across her to try and shield her from the worst of it… “Nope.” Rodriguez muttered as she absently wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The woman squirmed in her seat. “Hey…mind if I go grab a smoke?”

Rodriguez went to the bench outside the door and plopped down. She dug out her cigarettes, thumbed open the pack and jammed one into the corner of her mouth with trembling hands. “Hey, Rodriguez!” a voice called cheerily, making her look up then jump to her feet and pull the cigarette out of her mouth. A tall, attractive woman in Multi-Cam trousers and sand colored tee shirt with brown hair grinned as she approached. There was an M9 in a shoulder rig under the woman’s left arm though it looked to Rodriguez that the lieutenant would be more of a danger to herself than anyone else if she ever actually tried to use the weapon. “Geez! Calm down, Rodriguez. How are you doing?”

Frannie grinned uneasily. “I’m doing great, Doc.” she said and lit her cigarette. Rodriguez could sense the other woman’s dark brown eyes searching her face, staring at the latticework of scars covering the right side of her face. Rodriguez looked at the ground and turned slightly in an attempt to hide her damaged face.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Lieutenant Haskins asked, leaning forward a little and lowering her head so she could look the younger woman in the eye. Daryl, the night nurse, had found a bottle of pills stashed in Rodriguez’s plate carrier and brought it to her the night they arrived. She had started dialing down the dosages on people’s medications since there was currently more people than meds to go around…

“I…I just had a flashback.” Rodriguez admitted and looked around to see if anyone was listening in. The younger woman sank onto the bench and took a long drag on her cigarette. “First time in ages.” She let out the smoke in a shuddering breath.
Holy fuckin’ shit I need a goddamn drink right now.
Frannie thought and gritted her teeth against the urge.

Beth sat down next to the woman and put a hand on her shoulder. “I have to go talk to Major Tennyson for a minute. When I’m done I’ve got some time if you want to talk about it.” She smiled at the woman and stood up. The expression faltered when Rodriguez sort of shrugged and nodded. “I’ll see you in about twenty minutes or so, alright?”

Rodriguez glanced after the doctor and took another drag off of her cigarette, held it for a moment then let a plume of smoke squirt out of her nose. An unexpected blood boiling rage built up in her chest as she watched that smarmy little squid go inside so intense it made her vision go white.
Who the fuck do you think you are?
Rodriguez thought angrily at the woman’s back, shaking her head and snorting out another blue grey cloud like a pissed off bull
You think you fuckin’ know me or some shit?

Her hand closed tightly around the pistol grip of her M4. For a half second Rodriguez saw herself walking in and blasting that dumb stick up her ass bitch’s pretty little face right off her head. She jumped and looked around then wiped her face with the palms of her hands. “Holy fucking shit.” Rodriguez whispered as she took a moment to try and collect herself. She glanced at her watch and felt for the bottle of pills in an old ammo pouch on her plate carrier, her breath coming in little hiccup gasps. “Shit. Holy fuckin’ shit…”

Once she was reasonably certain that she could go through the door without fragging a superior officer Rodriguez returned to the radio room. “Hey Frays…I gotta go pick something up from the Aid Station.” she said quietly and shot a glance at the two Navy guys nearby. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Sure thing, Rodriguez.” Frays said with a knowing expression. Her friend was self conscious about her medication and she noticed the guys on Staff Duty trying to act like they were not listening to their conversation. “Hey Frannie…get some pads for me too.” She added in a stage whisper and barely kept herself from bursting out laughing at the looks of distaste on the squids’ faces.

Frannie snickered and shook her head as she walked out of the TOC. After a few steps Rodriguez was shaking with laughter. She found it a little hard to believe that Frays had actually mentioned maxi pads in front of the squids. The goody little two shoes who she had never even heard swear and seemed unable to even say the word ‘sex’… It was the funniest goddamn thing she had seen in awhile.

She gimped along as fast as she could manage towards the Aid Station. They were dialing back on her meds and Rodriguez found that it was fucking with her brain hardcore. There was this jittery sort of feeling in the pit of her stomach like spiders crawling around in her belly and it was getting hard to sleep. And at the bottom of everything there was a deep fear: that she was going to fuck up and get somebody hurt. That she was going to start drinking or taking pills again. That she might start sleeping around again. Worst of all was the fear that she was going to do something to fuck up things with Carl and his sister.