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

Corruption

Motorpool Vehicle Repair Bays
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
2030 Hours

The stench of burnt blood and pork filled my nostrils, with grease and metal threaded through it. The motorpool bays were where the mechanics could do Third Shop work on our vehicles. Everything from pulling an engine all the way to completely dismantling the vehicle to the frame and rebuilding it. Heavy equipment to lift massive engines out of armored vehicles, everything needed to maintain hundreds of various vehicles. From Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicles to M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks to 25K Forklifts, 30K cranes, all the way down to CUC-V pickup trucks.

During normal operation you'd see a couple dozen mechanics working on up to a dozen vehicles in the massive open repair bays.

But that was then. In "normal" times.

Now bodies hung from chains, gutted, over fire barrels, over the mechanic pits that were filled with fire, slowly roasting over the flames.

Roughly a quarter of them were dead women.

I tried to ignore that many of them were missing chunks of meat.

My eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and I could see people moving around in the smokey dimness. Big men, my size or large, wearing coveralls with the rubberized aprons that mechanics normally used when they were operating the solvent tubs. Their faces covered with welding masks, their hands covered with issue heavy black leather gloves.

They had red crosses painted on the rubberized aprons. A circle in the middle, the ends of the cross wider than they were in the center.

"Templar crosses?" Westlin asked, her voice pitched softly. "Why Templar Crosses?"

I just shrugged, watching them move through the motor pool bay. One moved over to the looped chain hanging down from the whatever it was that the mechanics used to pull the engine then move it away from the vehicle. He began pulling on once chain and the bodies slowly moved, the one over the closest burn barrel moving next to the massive heavy table that I'd seen mechanics repair engines on. At the end a body was moving over a burn barrel. The skin was still there, the waxy looking skin of the dead, still dripping blood from the massive wound used to gut the person. Unlike the other bodies, this one still had hair on the head and on the body. A male.

He let go of the chains and moved to the one that was closest to him. He lifted it up, on arm around the thighs, his other hand pressing on the corpses chest. I saw the massive hook, usually used to attach to lifting points on heavy equipment, slide out of the back of the figure.

He dropped the body on the table, moving over to where there was an ox-acetelyne rig. He put one foot against the bottom of the dolly, leaning it back, and wheeled it over to the table.

"Holy shit..." Westlin breathed.

There was very little cover, and I had to admit, those men intimidated the shit out of me. The lizard noted that they moved oddly. Stiffly. In complete silence.

The one I had been watching lifted up an angle grinder, hitting the button twice. The whir of the angle grinder filled the bay and as I watched the masked and aproned figure applied it to the knee of the corpse.

The lizard slapped a button to interrupt my thought process as I stared in shock, watching the figure start to joint the carcass.

I rescanned the bays to give the lizard a full look at the bay.

The bay was deep enough to work on two five-ton trucks per slot. Six large sliding doors tall enough to get one of the massive tracked 30K forklifts into, wide enough to pull two tanks side by side to the grease pits. Roof peaking forty feet up. Windows cleared of snow at the time, but the storm would cover it in more snow. Lockers against the far wall. Two tool trucks that were broken into. Upright rolling tool chests, pulled open. Tools scattered on the ground. Nine figures total milling about the bays, moving with stiff purpose. Fire barrels and the grease-pits were full of fire, filling the massive cavernous room with flickering light.