Authors: Robert Van Dusen
A few hours in Frays saw
the people in a cell reach through the bars and grab a passing policeman, probably trying to get the keys to their door. A SWAT officer simply walked up, put the barrel of his MP5 submachine gun through the bars and emptied his weapon into the cell. He then reloaded and put a single round into the heads of the people lying on the floor. That policeman killed twenty three people: Frays knew because she was one of the airmen put on a detail to bag the bodies, drag them outside and then sanitize the cell. She kept count. Sometimes one or two of the people in the cells would flip out and start attacking the others. The police and soldiers ended up shooting them too. And, for some reason, they shot the people that got attacked too…
After that they started loading people into Five Tons and transporting the people in quarantine that way. Anybody who tried to make a break for it was shot. Strangely, most of the trucks returned way faster than they should have with the vehicle crews looking pale and shaken.
Some of the people on the quarantine detail started to lose it after awhile. Frays saw this policeman sitting outside the back door of the guardhouse crying and muttering in what sounded like Russian or something. While they were on a twenty minute break a female MP walked to a portable latrine outside the back door and ate her M9. She had been in charge of Frays’ detail cleaning out the cells after people had been shot.
This process went on for two grueling, heart wrenching, exhausting days. Amy found herself glad that the uniform for the personnel running the quarantine area required her to wear a full complement of protective gear despite the sweat constantly streaming down her face
and pooling in her rubber overboots. There was a little comfort in the fact that the people packed like sardines in the holding cells could not see her face. Even though she could sort of understand the necessity of the whole quarantine thing, Amy couldn’t help but feel like some kind of horrible monster or a guard in a Nazi concentration camp or something.
Sure, she
might have pointed her M9 and thumbed the hammer back once or twice or shoved a prisoner a little too hard, but she was just so terrified and frustrated and thirsty and exhausted that she just could not help but lash out. She never shot anyone but on the other hand she did not try to stop the ones doing the shooting either…
She could not get the look on this one boy’s face out of her head. He could not have been more than
four or five and she had pulled him out of his mother’s arms and carried him to a cell, the screams of the child’s mother chasing her into the guardhouse. The medics had said the boy’s father had bitten him on the arm. Frays held the squirming boy tight and stroked his hair, trying to comfort the child as she carried him inside. He was just so small and scared, screaming for his mommy…
Amy ducked into the latrine
where she peeled off her rubber gloves and gas mask. She splashed a little cold water on her face, leaned against the sink and gripped the porcelain till her knuckles turned white. Frays squeezed her eyes shut and took deep breaths. “This isn’t happening.
This is not happening
.” she told herself over and over again, hoping that she would eventually believe it.
A hand tapped her on the shoulder and Frays yelped as she leapt away, her hand instinctively going to the butt of her pistol. Jean stood a few feet away with her hands up and a nervous half smile on her face. “An army sergeant said we can have the next ten hours off.” said the older woman. She slowly lowered her hands and gave Amy an apologetic look. “Sorry I startled you.”
After a forty five minute wait the four of them sat lumped together around the end of a long table in the corner of the dining room. Lacey snored like a chainsaw next to Jean, the skinny Marine’s arm wrapped protectively around his tray. Amy plunked down next to Eamon with a groan as she pulled off her Kevlar. She interlaced her fingers behind her head and pulled her chin to her chest. “Cripes, hungry Amy?” the EMT asked with an astonished look on his face. Frays had two cheeseburgers, a dozen chicken nuggets and a small mountain of fries as well as a brownie with a massive scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and two big glasses of chocolate milk on her tray.
She smiled and stuck out her tongue then crossed herself and bowed her head in prayer. Frays picked up one of the cheeseburgers and took a bite. Her eyes rolled with pleasure. “Best. Cheeseburger. Ever.” she pronounced and then set about surrounding and destroying the burgers and chicken nuggets, pausing only to gulp down the milk.
Jean smiled and shook her head. “It’s alright but I don’t know about the best.” the older woman said as she eyed her plate suspiciously. “I mean I think I’ve seen this liver before.”
“Hey I don’t know about you, lady.” Amy said after hurriedly swallowing a chicken nugget “I almost died like six times in the past week or so
and I haven’t had anything to eat in about three days. BEST. CHEESEBURGER. EVER.”
Eamon and Jean laughed, startling Lacey. “I’m not asleep, sir! I swear!” the Marine shouted as he tried to jump to his feet. He recovered, but it only made his companions laugh harder. Amy made a snorting, gagging sort of noise then grabbed a napkin and covered her mouth. “I just squirted milk out of my nose!”
That did it. All four of them lost whatever sort of marbles they might have had left. People walking by and sitting next to them started to look at them like they might be cracking. A few shook their heads in disgust when they saw Frays’ armband. “Okay…okay.” Amy said once she was able to breathe. Her chest actually hurt a little bit, but it was a good kind of hurt for once. “Let’s hurry up and get out of here. Other people are waiting to eat.”
Once they were out of the dining facility Amy grabbed Eamon’s arm. “Can I bug you for a minute?” she asked carefully.
“Sure, what’s up?” he asked. He frowned at the concerned look on the young woman’s face. He looked around, watching Lacey and Jean walking towards the hangar where they were going to spend the night.
Amy paused, took a deep breath and said “I’d like you to check me out.”
“I’ve been checking you out since you ran in to us.” the young man said with a cockeyed grin and moved a little closer to the woman’s side.
Frays stepped back and
scowled harshly at the man. “I was in a car accident a couple days ago, you jerk!” she grumbled as she slapped his arm. “A Mack truck hit my Humvee and knocked it into the river. I nearly drowned to boot! Get your mind out of the gutter!”
“Alright! Alright!” Eamon shouted as shied away from the woman, grinning as he raised his hands to ward off any further blows. His shoulders heaved with an exaggerated sigh. “Come on, spoilsport. You’re no fun, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.” she smiled then quickly hid it. “I wasn’t that popular at school.”
“You?” he looked her up and down as he sat her down in a folding chair near the entrance to the tent. “Hard to believe.” Amy was glad the lights were getting turned down so he could not see her blush. “Anyway, take off your gear so I can take a look at you.” Frays dutifully took off her helmet then unbuckled her LCS and pulled her body armor over her head while Eamon dug around in his medical bag for his stethoscope and a pair of latex gloves. He spared a glance at the young woman. “Your outer top thing too.”Amy scowled slightly at the medic but did as she was told.
He took the woman’s wrist in his hand and took her pulse. “Didn’t get on well at school, huh?” Eamon asked as he monitored Amy’s respiration.
Frays gave him a rueful smile. “Yeah.” she said quietly as Eamon stuck a digital thermometer in her ear. “Especially after I got back from Iraq.”
Eamon seemed to look at her with new eyes. “Turn sideways like, if you please.” he said, making a circular motion with his index finger. “I need to listen to your lungs. I want to make sure you don’t got a chest infection or anything.” He put on his stethoscope and instructed her to breathe deeply a few times as he shifted the metal disk around on her back. Eamon nodded to himself as he listened. “What happened?” he asked then added awkwardly “I mean if you feel like talking.”
“I chucked my roommate’s laptop at the wall. Broke it into a million pieces.” Amy muttered with a self depreciating chuckle. She
fidgeted uncomfortably in the folding chair then looked at her boots and frowned. “Her boyfriend popped a bag next to my head when I was sleeping. Then, of course, I became ‘that crazy…you know…on the third floor’. Never mind I’d been back in the world about a week and a half and we got incoming between six and ten times a day for around four months.”
“
That guy sounds like a dick.” Eamon said matter-of-factly, bringing a quick smile to Amy’s face. “Okay, I’m going to check for broken bones and stuff like that, okay? I’m going to have to touch you all over but you let me know if anything hurts, alright?”
Eamon ran his hands around Amy’s head then down her neck. He noticed the woman tense up
and heard a sharp intake of breath when he reached a point near the base of her neck. “That hurt?”
“It’s a little sore, yeah.
I felt it all the way down my arm.” Amy said as the EMT ran his hands along her shoulders then along her arms. “Luckily my RA was going to college on the American Plan too. Got the jerk and my roommate to not call security if I agreed to talk to my parish priest a couple times a week. That, of course, ate up more time I didn’t have and…well, as horrible as this is gonna sound, this whole thing is almost a relief.”
“How do you mean?” Eamon asked. Amy was aware of his hands running down her back and along the front of her torso, putting gentle pressure on her ribs. Eamon felt a tenseness seize the woman’s chest that he guessed had little to do with pain.
“Well, I don’t have to try so hard to act like a regular person anymore.” she said with a wry smile. Her breath caught in her throat as Eamon’s hands moved down her torso, creeping towards her belt line... Amy leapt to her feet and quickly gathered her gear. “Okay! That’s enough. Am I alright, doc?”
Eamon did a bad job of h
iding his disappointment. “You should have said something about this earlier. Working two days straight after being in a car accident?” he said, shaking his head as he rooted around in his bag for a minute. Eamon pressed a small bottle of pills and one of his precious cold packs into her hands. “Here’s some ibuprofen. Take two of those with a little water and it should take the edge off. No more than two every four hours, mind you. The cold pack will bring down the swelling on your face and help with your neck some. I wish I could send you to the hospital for an MRI. Sounds like you might have a little nerve damage in your neck.” The hospital across the highway was currently full to capacity and trying to send their overflow to the Aid Stations at the Air Force Base and the Aid Stations were trying to send
their
patients to the hospital… It was all a huge mess.
“Thanks, Eamon.” she said and hustled off in search of Jean and Lacey.
“One last thing” Eamon said as he packed away his things and stood up. “Don’t wear your helmet for about a day or two. If anybody gives you any problems tell them to come talk to me.” He picked up his own things and followed after her with a frustrated snort.
Somebody nudged Eamon in the ribs. “Get up, dude.” Adam grumbled as he scratched the side of his nose. “Eamon, get up. Time for work!” The Marine kicked him harder, this time knocking the man onto his stomach.
“Fuck off.” Eamon muttered and pulled his blanket around his shoulders. Adam grabbed him under his arm and hauled him rudely to his feet.
“I’m sorry. I think you meant to say ‘Good morning, Adam!’” he said as he clapped the EMT on the shoulder. Lacey stood around while Eamon packed away his gear and slung his pack over his shoulder. “We’ve got twenty minutes to try and get some breakfast out of the mess hall. Hurry up.”
The two of them ended up grabbing an MRE from a nearby aid distribution point which they ate while they walked towards the gate. “Eamon, what did you do with Frays last night?”
Eamon put on his best innocent face. “What do you mean?” he asked then cleared his throat. “She just wanted me to give her a medical exam.”
“Ssssurreee.” the Marine said with a sly grin. “Look dude, she’s cute and all but seriously, I had to spend an hour or so last night listening to her toss and turn so keep your hands to yourself, copy?” The two of them went on a couple more paces when Adam unexpectedly added “So how was it?”
Eamon raised an eyebrow. “She’s the picture of health.” he said with a suggestive little grin tugging at the side of his mouth. “Must do a lot of sit ups and stuff.”
The two of them shared a laugh but abruptly bit their tongues as Amy came towards them at a trot. “Hurry up you guys.” she said quickly as she wiped a droplet of sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. Eamon frowned at her when he saw that she was wearing her Kevlar. Frays gave him an apologetic look. “A bunch of supply guys are late and we got tapped to go check on ‘em.
“An Army lieutenant asked for our help. I thought you guys would rather go for a ride than spend another day working the gate.” Amy explained as they
walked north towards the gate. “Can you guys get the Five Ton and our Humvee gassed up and ready to go? Jean and I are off to grab us a couple cases of MREs and some bottled water. Pick us up at the aid distribution point by the north gate and we’ll hit up my unit’s arms room for some extra ammo.”