Frank's eye widened at the sight of Priscilla dropping her towel and exposing her naked form. He'd always suspected she had a fantastic body; she'd been an athlete and wanna-be Navy SEAL, and even today, years later, she still exercised every day. As she slipped into a long tee shirt, Frank realized that Pris and Allison had very similar forms, both created through a life of hard work, even if those forms of work -- ranching and athletics -- were very much different from one another.
If he thought he'd been surprised by Pris exposing herself, Frank was even more so shocked when she first headed out of the room packing a big knife, then returned less than a minute later with it and herself covered in blood. Frank had never considered whether or not Pris had the ability to kill a man, let alone stabbing him in cold blood. Why the fuck would he every have contemplated that? Now, though, he knew.
She ordered him into her bedroom before once again gettin' neked to clean herself up. Frank explained more of the details, including how he'd used the storm drain and how he had 5 more people on his list of rescuees.
Pris accepted the offer of rescue but only before adding, "I have someone who has to go with us or I'm not going."
Frank was about to argue that they needed to keep this operation small, but then he remembered what Allison had said about bringing more people who he thought were appropriately suitable. Before he could argue one way or the other, though, they were heading out of the house and down the alley.
They ended up at and then inside a house on the corner, where Pris introduced Beverly and Connor. Frank knew they both by sight and Connor by name, though he wouldn't say he was very familiar with either of them. After some conversation and more orders from the woman currently calling the shots, the pair were packing backpacks as Pris had.
"Explain precisely how to get to that storm drain cover you were telling me about," she ordered Frank, telling Beverly and Connor to pay attention. She explained what happened if she and Frank didn't reach them before sunlight, explaining, "I don't want the two of you being punished for something that wasn't your idea in the first place ... got it?"
Frank saw that it was his turn and described the route back to and around Pris's house, then down the block to the open storm drain. (He didn't want the pair going through Pris's house because of the guy's whose blood was now staining everything near him corpse.) Frank handed them one of his flashlights, only to learn that Connor had scrounged up two of their own while packing.
"Like Pris said," he warned, "stay hid, stay quiet ... and if we don't reach you, I've failed and you need to get back here."
Frank intentionally put the potential for failure on him, not him and Pris. This was his plan, and if it crapped out on them and got them caught or killed, only he was to blame. He moved to the kitchen's backdoor and told them, "Get going, and stay quiet. Check for patrols before you move out into the open."
The pair headed out, and Frank looked to Pris. "I'd planned on going to Candy King's place next, but our little detour puts us closer to Doc Cooper's place, so..."
They headed out the back but in the opposite direction that Bev and Cooper had taken. As Frank had suspected, there were virtually no patrols out tonight; they traveled three blocks and only saw one pair of men strolling down the middle of one street, laughing and joking while sucking on a bottle of moonshine made right here in Greenburg.
They arrived at the back of Howard Cooper's place. Pre-pandemic it had been one of the town's two clinics. Today it was the only remaining one and was Doc Cooper's residence as well. Frank tested the door know and found it unlocked. Looking to Pris, he said, "He never locked it. Who's going to hurt the town's only doctor, right? No one's going to steal his drugs either. The Militia makes its own crack and sugar-heroine."
He was pretty sure Pris knew all about the locally produced, poppy-free version of heroine that had hit the streets about a year before the pandemic. It had become the rage amongst heroine addicts because of it cheaper cost and led to a new drug war between the local producers/distributors and the traditional distributors of heroine imported from overseas.
Quietly, Frank entered the back hallway of the clinic, creeping along slowly and listening for movement and voices. It was almost midnight by now and there shouldn't have been any patients in the clinic, but emergencies did happen, and when they did, those who'd suffered in them ended up here, sometimes overnight.
Frank had just reached the end of the hallway when a woman suddenly appeared from around the corner. She stopped short, eyes and mouth open wide, and was just in the process of screaming when Frank surged forward to grasp her body with one hand and cover her mouth with the other.
He thought he had things under control until she kneed him solidly in the crotch. Emitting an oof of pain but still maintaining control of the woman, he let his greater weight and position take them both down to the floor, where he groaned for a long moment before another male voice asked harshly, "Frank King, what the fuck are you doing to my wife?"
Unable to form words, Frank removed his hand from around the woman's body and gestured wait with a raised finger. By the time he was able to speak, the situation had already been explained to the Doc. Frank released his hold on the woman and rolled to his side in a semi-fetal position. He moaned, "Sorry ... didn't mean to scare anyone."
It didn't take anything at all to get Howard to agree to leave Greensburg. He had been very vocal about the Militia being selective about who got medical care, even finding himself needing stitches over his left eye after an altercation with a Militiaman who'd hit him with the butt of his gun.
He was reluctant to leave all of these people without a doctor, but he knew they'd find another one; he'd heard rumors about a pending trade of National Guard gear to the Denver Militia in exchange for this, that, and the other thing, and knowing that Denver -- now with a population of over 6,000 -- had at least a half dozen doctors, he knew that his flight from Greenburg would force the Militia to trade for a new doctor as well or instead.
Howard's wife -- who apparently had also been subject of a recent Militia trade -- was more than happy to throw together a bag. The Doc put the other pair to work filling bags with antibiotics, pain killers, flu medicines, anti-virals, and more, while he did the same with medical equipment. Frank warned that they couldn't carry the entire clinic away, but Howard was insistent that they take the items he'd picked out.
When they were ready to leave, all four of them had their hands full. They backtracked, first to Bev's house, then to Pris's. Sneaking through the dark to the storm drain, Frank called down and got a response from Cooper. He told the younger man, "We're sending someone down and lowering bags to you. Do you best not to drop them."
Doc's wife descended the later, followed by Doc who stopped in the middle to act as middle man for the passing of the bags to the bottom of the pipe. When they were done, Frank told Pris, "You don't have to go with me. You can stay here. I'll be back with the others."
JesseJ
Snowdrops