Outbreak: Better Days Read Free Page A

hustled off towards the TOC. Twelve hours sitting there hoping that somebody was going to call them up on the radio was not going to be fun… Frays hoped that whoever she was going to be on the detail with would be interesting at the very least. She had heard a few times that somebody had actually talked to a base in southern Canada checking up on them. Major Tennyson had ordered the people manning the radio to leave the room so what exactly was being said was a matter of debate.
    The radio room was set up inside the old hotel manager’s office behind the front desk. Frays stopped and showed her ID card to the two Navy guys sitting behind the front desk and after they checked their list went into the room. “Hey Frannie!” Amy said with a wide grin as she sank into the nearest rolling chair.
    The Latina’s scarred face brightened visibly. “Amy! How the hell have you been?” she asked as Amy rolled her chair up to the table next to her. “Long time no see!” It was easy to see why Carl had taken up with the young woman while they were holed up in the Frays’ hunting cabin west of Boston. She had long black hair and a figure that could make a man drive his car straight up a light pole even when wearing Marine cammies and bulky combat gear. However the right side of her face and neck was covered with pockmarks and scars, the result of a roadside bomb during a deployment in Afghanistan.
    As much as she liked her friend Amy could not help but find the idea of Frannie and Carl kind of unsettling. She was easily a decade older than her little brother and…well...Frannie was on some kind of happy pills or whatever. But then…she did not have much room to talk. And as long as she and Carl made each other happy then she should stop being such a stick in the mud especially since there was so much to be miserable about these days.
    “I’m doing good, Frannie!” Amy answered happily and clapped the woman on the shoulder. “Little guy’s been kicking the crap out of me but well…I can’t say that it doesn’t make me happy.” After everything that happened to her before she even knew she was pregnant she could not help but relish every single strange little sensation of the life inside her. “Whatcha been up to?”
    Rodriguez frowned a little bit and shrugged. “Pulling perimeter guard mostly.” she said quietly as she rubbed her thigh. The woman had been wounded in a firefight with some locals over in Concord a few weeks after the failed attempt of quarantine in Boston. “Handing out MREs and stuff. Winning hearts and minds and all that horseshit. How’s Carl and everybody?”
    “They’re great.” Amy said and fidgeted a little. “Just stopped by and said hi to them between getting done with my work and coming here.” Frays made a strange face and sent a flittering look towards the door. “How’s perimeter guard been working out?”
    Rodriguez’s face darkened. “Took down a couple Bravo Charlies the other day.” she whispered, casting a nervous glance at the door herself. She tried to give her friend a reassuring look. “Don’t worry though. That can you gave me worked really good.”
    Amy smiled wryly. She had worked out a way to build a suppressor for their M4s while they took shelter in a high school in the aftermath of the failed attempt at quarantine in Boston. “Hey, no problem.” Frays muttered and started looking around in the drawers of the desk. The woman’s face brightened a little as she remembered the sketch she had given the machinists telling them how to manufacture the cans. “Is there a deck of cards in here?”
    The two of them sat there playing a game of Spades as they listened to the squawky white noise coming out of the radio set up on the desk in front of them. Amy turned the volume up on the radio just a little bit. “How…how’s everything going, Frannie?” Frays asked with a conspiratorial glance at the door.
    Rodriguez gave Frays a wan smile. “I’m doing fine,