Authors: Robert Van Dusen
Amy smiled and waved to the child with her non firing hand. Two men stood on the front steps of a house three doors down. One of them picked up a baseball bat and they started walking towards her like they meant business. Frays moved diagonally across the street, her M4 in the ready position as she fixed the two men with as hard a look as she could manage under the circumstances. Her hand slid from the grip of the M203 to the carbine's magazine, her finger poised to flick off the launcher's safety at a moment's notice. The two men halted perhaps sixty meters away, shooting daggers with their eyes. A weapon with a bore the size of small child’s fist had that effect on people.
She walked quickly down the street, getting more and more nervous as others started to notice her too. Relief slapped Frays in the face: a young man in what looked like Marine camo and combat gear was helping a woman with two crying babies load supplies into a big red Chevy minivan a block and a half up the street. Another pudgy
man with a bushy beard, who looked like he was in his early to mid thirties wearing an EMT's uniform glanced at them as he seemed to be checking the babies. He had some kind of large black rifle slung over his shoulder that looked like a Kalashnikov with elephantiasis. Amy hurried over to them and smiled when she saw the words “US Marines” on the man's uniform. The name tape on his Kevlar read “Lacey”.
“Hey, Marine.” she said happily, stopping a little ways from their vehicle. Something struck her has odd. The man was in full battle rattle, complete with his M16, yet if she remembered the information she had gotten this morning correctly there should
not be any troops in this area. “What's shakin'?”
“I gotta get my wife and kids outta here.” he said quickly. The man was maybe twenty, certainly no more than twenty five and built like he was made of twisted wire. He appeared kind of short for a man: he seemed only a few inches taller than Amy’s five feet, five inches. He also looked scared as hell. His wife was tall and thin with straw colored hair
that looked like she might have been in her senior year of high school. As Lacey moved to shield his family Amy spotted the subtle movement of the man's thumb as he flipped the safety off his weapon.
The EMT stood up and looked nervously from Amy to the Marine. “Let's take it easy, everybody.” he said quietly, holding his hands up as he took a few steps towards the two of them.
“Hey, listen.” Frays said carefully as she turned slightly. Now the muzzle of her M4 was pointed well away from him and his family. “Let's make a deal. I'll help you pack your stuff” Amy studied the man's face for a minute, trying to see if he was one of the Marines from Checkpoint Twelve “If I can hitch a ride with you back to the supply point. It's only a few miles west of here and we're really shorthanded.”
The man paused, thinking over what this Zoomie was offering. He glanced at his wife, who gave him an urgent look. The little girl behind him started crying again
and that seemed to make up his mind. “Alright. Grab those boxes over there.” he said as he reengaged his weapon's safety and motioned towards a pile of cardboard boxes.
Amy walked toward them, hand extended
as the young woman smiled as widely as she could manage. An odd thought occurred to her:
I’m gonna have a heckuva shiner in the morning
. “I'm Senior Airman Amy Frays.” she said as she shook Lacey’s hand. “Nice to see a friendly face.”
“I'm Private Adam Lacey.” he moved aside as the two women shook hands. “This is my wife, Laura and our kids Paul and Becca.”
“I'm Eamon Teeling.” the EMT volunteered as he shook Amy's hand. “Come on, let's get packed up.”
They stuffed as much food, water and necessities for the kids as the SUV could hold the lot of them piled in. Laura drove while Adam rode shotgun. Amy and Eamon sat in the back seat with the two
kids. As much as she tried to stay serious she found it next to impossible in the face of the two small children. She just could not bear seeing the two little kids upset.
Amy tried to keep the kids from crying and give directions at the same time, but it didn't work very well. “The supply point is just off I-80.” Frays said at last as she gave the nearest child’s belly a gentle rub. The little boy giggled and smiled at her from his
booster seat. “Who's a handsome little guy?”
Laura smiled over her shoulder. “They like you.” she said quietly as she carefully watched the two strangers. “Normally the kids are pretty shy around new people.”
The four of them rode in silence until they came to a hastily erected barricade manned by a half dozen soldiers. Amy gave the kids one last tickle before climbing out of the vehicle. She and Eamon stood off to one side while Lacey said goodbye to his wife. Once they kissed and Laura climbed back into the car Amy hurried back over.
“Thanks again for the ride.” she said quickly and gave the woman's hand a gentle squeeze. “If you can get to Holden, my parents' house is at 372 Walnut Street. Tell my dad that I'm okay and you're a Marine's dependent. He should let you stay there till this thing blows over.”
“Thanks.” Laura said, still looking at her husband. “I'll do that.”
Lacey stood there staring after his wife for a few minutes. Finally, Amy walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, man.” she said carefully. “Let's get back to work. She'll be fine. My
mom and dad will look after them.”
The three of them walked up to the barricade. Three soldiers stood between them and a blocky black command trailer. The soldiers eyed them suspiciously. “Halt!” commanded one of them. Amy saw that he looked like a Private First Class in the Army. “What are you doing here?”
“We got separated from our units, PFC.” Amy said quickly. She held her hands up, palms towards the soldiers. “Who's in charge here? We need to report in and try to find them.”
Two Five Tons rumbled up to the supply point and more soldiers jumped out. “Come on in.” he said, waving the three of them inside their perimeter. “Police Lieutenant Guzman's in the trailer. Sergeant Williams just got back.”
Amy thanked the soldier and led Eamon and Lacey past the barricade. She stood between the Five Tons and the trailer and frowned. “Could you guys go see if they need any help over there?” she asked, motioning towards the soldiers unloading cases of MREs and bottled water. “I'll go report to this lieutenant and be out in a second.”
Thankfully the young Marine seemed to defer to her higher rank (even if it was from a different branch of the service) and Eamon joined him. Amy grunted, surprised and satisfied that the very first official order she had ever given actually got obeyed. She walked quickly to the trailer, climbed the two metal stairs and knocked on the door.
“Enter!” shouted a muffled voice. Amy opened the door and found herself in a cramped room stuffed full of all kinds of communications equipment. The air in the trailer stank of cigarette smoke, stale coffee and unwashed bodies. A tall, skinny Hispanic man in a black policeman’s uniform turned in his chair and regarded her little interest. “What do you want?”
Amy came to attention and saluted. “Senior Airman Frays reporting, sir.” she said sharply. The man stared at her a moment and eventually she let her hand fall awkwardly to her side. “
Um…as far as I know Checkpoint Twelve has been overrun, sir.”
The lieutenant's face twitched. “So?” he muttered angrily as he swiveled back to answer a phone. The man's jerky movements and dilated pupils told Frays that the policeman was flying high on something. She took a few steps closer to the lieutenant, her nose wrinkled at the smell of dirty diapers coming from the man. Cocaine and strong coffee: not a good combination.
Amy cleared her throat, suddenly a little uneasy. “I think one of the Marine Combat Engineers opened fire.” she recounted as the policeman looked as if there was little she could say that would interest him, yet she pushed on with it anyway. “The crowd went crazy. A handful of the civilians had guns and they started shooting. At each other, at us, all over the place.”
“So?” the lieutenant grumbled. “You got your machine guns and stuff don't you? What the hell happened?”
“Somebody on the other side of the bridge drove a dump truck through the crowd, sir.” Amy answered, shivering slightly at the memory of the people flying in the air, the screams. “The driver struck the Humvee I was in hard enough to send it into the river.”
“You got
away.” The policeman spun back and forth in his chair, eyeballing the young woman in front of him. “You left your buddies, didn't you?”
Anger flared up and Amy felt her cheeks become flushed. “Sergeant Emery, my Flight Sergeant, got shot in the head when the crowd started shooting.” she said bitterly, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “Another guy in my flight, Airman Jacobson, was trapped in the Humvee when it sank. I-I tried, sir, but I couldn't get him out.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment then opened them slowly.
“I'm sure you did.” the lieutenant said. A condescending grin spread across his face. “You may go now.”
It took every ounce of willpower she could muster to not slam the door on her way out. She took a half moment to regain her composure before joining Eamon and Lacey were unloading the trucks. They were helping a handful of Army privates stack supplies: boxes of MREs, cases of bottled water, tents, and medical supplies. A large white man with sergeant's stripes on his sleeve walked around barking orders at the lot of them. When he noticed her he started off in her direction.
“You just reported to Lieutenant Guzman?” he asked as he came within speaking distance. The man looked her up and down. “Hurry up and help your guys get these trucks unloaded so we can get these tents up. We're expecting wounded soon.”
She hustled over to the trucks. “How many wounded?” Amy asked loudly as she took a case of water that one of the privates handed down to her.
“I dunno, Zoomie.” he said quietly as he slid a pile of rough pile of tent poles towards the end of the truck. “Sounds like a whole bunch.”
The next half an hour or so passed in a flurry of activity: setting up tents and cots, dumping the bottles of water into big coolers on wheels and setting up tables to distribute the MREs. A Deuce and a Half pulled up just as Frays and Lacey were showing Eamon how to cook a Meal Ready to Eat. “It's three lies for the price of one.” Adam explained before opening his meal packet. “It’s not a meal, it’s not ready and you can’t eat it.”
“Hey! Give us a hand over here!” cried a soldier as he leaped from the back of his truck. “We’ve got wounded!”
The three of them hurried off to help unload the stretchers. Eamon snapped on latex gloves and checked each of them as they were unloaded, directing the soldiers where to put them. He could not help but notice that at least two of the eight casualties had bite marks on their hands, arms or faces. The others had more conventional injuries: they had been stabbed, shot or hit by cars and stuff like that.
Amy put on a pair of rubber gloves in her Combat Life Saver kit and did what she could to help. The first man she came to looked like he had been badly mauled by some kind of animal. “Don't bother with him, he’s already dead!” Eamon called as he struggled with the injured man he was working on. “I’ve got a sucking chest wound down here!”
Thirty or forty minutes later they had done what they could for the wounded. The Army sergeant let Eamon and Frays take a break outside one of the tents. The two of them snapped off their gloves and tossed them in a garbage can that had the international biological hazard symbol on it. Amy and Eamon crashed onto a low bench. “That was...somethin' else.” Amy muttered as she opened a bottle of water. She chugged half of it at a go then offered the rest to the EMT.
He waved off the water and felt something in his pocket. “We did good.” he said, digging a packet of M&Ms out of his pocket and tore it open. “We need to get them to a hospital, but we bought them a couple hours anyway.” He offered some of the candy to the woman seated next to him.
Lacey approached wounded men tentatively. Some of them lay there moaning, still in pain even though Eamon had given them a little of his precious stash of painkillers. The dead lay silently staring up at the bright afternoon sun.
He espied a blanket on the back of one of the trucks and picked it up. The Marine unfolded it as he approached, preparing to cover the dead man with it. He was inches away from the corpse when it moaned, rolled onto its side and reached for him. Lacey screamed and fell onto his backside, scrabbling away from the stretcher like a crab.
All at once everybody in the supply depot crowded around. Once they saw what was going on, the privates hung back near the trucks. “What the hell is going on here?” the sergeant bellowed as he stared down at the man on the stretcher. Now the man on the stretcher made a strange kind of croaking noise as he reached for those around him. They all recoiled as the wounded man attempted to drag himself after Lacey.
The sergeant stomped over to the stretcher. The wounded man groaned and rolled over, his hand now grasping after the NCO’s leg a few feet away. “I thought you said he was dead!” he roared, glaring at Eamon. “Where the hell did you go to medical school?”
“Princeton.” the EMT said coolly. “And yes, he was dead.”
The sergeant glared at his soldiers then at Frays and Lacey. “Restrain him before he hurts himself.” the man ordered as he waved the others towards the groaning figure. When none of his subordinates moved he marched over, grabbed one of the privates and pushed him towards the man on the stretcher. Eamon and Frays took a couple steps closer to the man but balked at the last moment. His skin was a sickly gray, his eyes covered in a pall of milky white.