Time/Date Error (Damned of the 2/19th-Book Six) - Done

The Scent of Milk

Room 275
Far Hammerhead Hall
2/19th SWG Barracks
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
28 October, 1987
0445

The door closed quietly and Stillwater stood there for a moment, wavering back and forth slightly like he couldn't keep his balance straight. I hugged myself tightly, willing the cold to retreat. Whatever that thing had been, it hadn't been the man it had appeared to be.

Outside the room there was still screams.

"Have you ever seen that before?" I asked him, my teeth chattering. Again, his thought process took long, measurable seconds, during which time the screams outside in the hallways kept going, although it sounded like there was less voices than before. Finally he shook his head. "Did you look at it?" Again, it took a long time for him to shake his head. They were still screaming, but I found myself unwilling to care. "Am I in danger because I saw it materialize?" After almost double the amount of time, he shrugged. "Yeah, thanks, ya big thug."

At least the screaming had stopped.

Part of me wondered how the mountain selected which victims became part of its arsenal and which ones were just victims. My eyes met with Stillwater's, that cold calculating intelligence staring at me from one red ruined eye, and I suddenly understood.

"Do you have any weapons in your room?" I asked him, more to break my own nervousness than anything else. After a moment he shrugged, not moving.

"You're a big help," I said, turning and going deeper into the room. The bloodsmear and pool of blood he had been lying in were frozen on the floor and I stepped carefully to avoid slipping on the blood. Without a doubt I'd end up lying on the floor unconscious and slowly freezing to death before I woke up.

There was a pair of bodies in the main room. Obviously the guys who had helped attack Stillwater. I had wondered how many had gone for him, since three had come back claiming to have killed him. One had died, one was probably well on his way by this time, but one of them had been unmarked and strutting around what a tough guy he was.

Moving over and bending down, ignoring the pain in my gut, I searched them quickly. Both had knives in their hands, which I pulled out of their frozen hands and pushed the blades between my boot and the sock, so I had two knife hilts sticking out of the tops of my boots. I checked their ID's real quick.

Missouri driver's licenses, military ID cards showing them to be Army Reservists, about sixty dollars between them, pictures of family members. I pulled their dogtags and shoved them into my pocket. I didn't matter that they had attacked Stillwater and done worse to me, before Alfenwehr warped them. Some people believed Alfenwehr simply brought out the darkness that was hidden inside of them, but I viewed it more as a kind of poison that slowly seeped in and warped someone.

On the wall there were six shadowboxes that had been broken into. I could tell by the frost on the red velvet that they had been broken open a long time before. Drawers were pulled open, silent testimony that someone had tossed the room. I checked the gap between the bottom inside of the dressers and the bottom outside. Two dressers, both empty. Not surprising, some of the officers had figured out that the space in the bottom was often used to hide contraband.

But Stillwater was crafty. I knew that he wasn't stupid enough just to hide things in the obvious locations. I pulled the drawers out, checking the back of the dressers. Checking the better hiding places like under the fridge, under the beds where the pull-out drawers would block someone from seeing easily, under the bottom of the three drawer chest where there was a six inch gap between the two thin particle-board bottoms.

One of them had 20 round boxes of 5.56mm and empty magazines that were disassembled, the second had the same for the M1911A1 .45 ACP, the last had something that made me glace back at Stillwater, who was still standing by the door and staring at nothing.