Gas & Blood (Damned of the 2/19th Novella) - Rough Draft Finished

Pride of Texas

FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
16 April, 1986
2145 Hours

Atlas had done its best to kill us. Plain and simple. We had started the day with nearly fifty of us working at the massive site, and now, after the entire day, I was down to exactly myself and six effectives.

We had a half dozen alive, but completely doped up on painkillers. From Private Cromwell, who was laying on her cot with a bandage on her stomach from surgery, watching us with clouded but still aware eyes; Specialist Nancy Nagle, who's legs were bandaged after surgery for crush damage, sleeping on her cot and smiling faintly; to my boy Corporal Stillwater, who was doped after major surgery. Foster was awake, his ribs taped and a patch over one eye, and he had immediately moved into the communications room to check over what commo gear still worked in order to get Atlas back online as soon as possible. He was not listed as one my effectives, the damage to his ribs and his concussion should have had him on convalescent leave or five days quarters, but as it stood I could only get away with light duty. Our counter-sniper, Little-Bit, was out of action for at least 48 hours. She had suffered massive concussion overpressure and was bruised from her scalp to the bottom of her feet. The overpressure wave had passed over her, pressing her down on the ground, pushing the sniper scope into her face, fracturing her orbital socket.

Four women had been uprange, Cromwell, who was out, Nagle, who was out, and two Privates, Gilly and Sawmoth, both of whom were standing by the door looking worried. The trucks we had ridden in to return to Atlas had eight volunteers from other crews, as well as two medics. PFC Farley and Specialist Stokes. Farley had graduated from 91A, combat medic, less than three months before, where Stokes had graduated nearly five years prior before attending Special Weapons.

Finally, we had SFC Regison, the NCOIC of the hot-sites in Third Magazine Platoon, someone I'd never met; SSG Bonnhem, First Section Section Sergeant, another soldier I was unfamiliar with, who was looking around the wreckage that was our home with a mououe of distaste on her face; and finally, SGT Reddings, who seemed to think he was now in charge of Atlas. He was outside, yelling at the six soldiers who were slowly getting out of the vehicles to hurry up and get their gear inside.

Atlas would kill him for it. Stillwater was barely tolerated by Atlas, and now he was laying on cot with drained tubes in him and enough stitches to make a cross-stitch for the county fair. I could tell SGT Reddings didn't respect Atlas already. I had heard him talking about how he would have Atlas back at running 100% within a week.

There was no way. We had lost two bunkers completely, more or less vaporized and probably in the stratosphere. We had also lost the dirt shielding and cover for twelve other bunkers when the force of the explosion had stripped the sections facing the exploded bunkers down to bare concrete, or worse, down to the reinforcement for four of the bunkers.

That an over a half a million artillery shells that had been caught up in the explosion. A sizable percentage had probably detonated, more had exploded when they dropped back to earth, but that still left, as far as I could figure when computing in blast force, blast wave expansion, parabolic flight arcs, and tensile strength, around two-hundred thousand rounds somewhere on the square miles that made up Atlas.

Turning all of Atlas into a goddamn minefield.

Still, it was what I had to work with, and my daddy always said that a man didn't get no work done by just standing around moaning over what God and life had handed him.

It was a big shit sandwich, and I'd have to take a nice big bite.

"Specialist Bomber," The yell came as soon as Reddings came in the door. "This goddamn place is filthy! Why aren't you having it cleaned up here? It stinks. What is all this crap on the floor? Why aren't you ordering this room be cleaned?"