Outbreak: Boston by Robert Van Dusen Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    Nausea roiled around in Amy's stomach. She desperately wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else than right here with some crazed NCO expecting her to hold down a diseased man. She took a deep breath and gathered her courage. “Eamon, on the count of three you grab his arm.” she said carefully as to try and keep what she had eaten earlier where it