Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 13

Site Kilo-29-Military Motorpool Area
United States of America
Winter, 1993
Day Two-Afternoon

Whoever had me by the neck was just squeezing, an amateur strangler move which did nothing but make my head feel like it was swelling, blood hammer at my temples and ears, and my eyes feel like they were bulging out. The talons were scratching at the back of my neck, and the face that couldn't be far from mine was panting hot air into my face.

My brain conjured up an image of the mouth opening wide, like a snake's jaws, and coming forward to clamp down on each side of my head before pulling back and closing, tearing my face off and laying my skull bare.

...this is how they killed the others...

...I know, Bomber...

One hit me at the back of the legs from under the truck, and I stumbled forward, sparks appearing in my vision. My shoulder was nothing but pain, and my knee buckled, the metal brace hinges squealing as it twisted wrong. Something bit into my calf, sinking into the thick muscle, and the one that had me by the throat made a huffing sound.

...FIGHT, ANT, FIGHT!...

The Fates, my Father, Bomber, Nancy, Taggart, Dana, Heather, all screamed at me at the same time and I responded with a roar of my own, my knife clearing the sheathe.

They'd taken the others in the darkness, using the fear of the dark that everyone has deep inside to give them the edge, screeching and yowling as they came to cause even more fear, scrabbling at them with claws and ripping at them with bites in the darkness.

They were nothing.

Stateside I got weird looks all the time. I pushed myself remorselessly, 2-3 hours a day pumping iron alternating with days where I ran 10 miles runs in full gear. Every. Fucking. Day. I went to every range I could, ran 2 miles in MOPP 4 every Sunday, practiced with my pistols at the Rod & Gun Club, practiced with my knives when I could, fought at bars, pushed myself with everything I had. I got my ass beat, but you could even learn from an ass kicking. How to let pain be your friend if nothing else. When I exercised I felt calm, the smooth play of muscle and tendon over bone slowly eating away at the rage that the pills only held back.

The only thing better than physical exertion was Heather's arms and the baby's soft breathing as I held her in my arms as she slept and dreamed baby dreams.

I brought both arms up in a sweeping motion to break the chokehold as something slammed into my legs, thinking I was off balance, that I would be stumbling with fear and weakly pawing at whatever had my neck.

I'd survived 4 winters in 2/19th.

My hand shot out and grabbed something made of meat, digging my fingers and thumb in with everything I had, twisting at the muscle as I drug it toward me, letting the rage and the singing of the Fates sweep away the medication that made so slow, so logy, so tired all the time. Rage poured strength into me, and I could hear Nagle chanting "kill kill kill kill" as I went to work.

Darkness and cold held no fear for me. Twisted steel and sex appeal.

Two more hit me, and I staggered, but didn't go down, slashing and stabbing with the blade, my fist hitting meat more often than air, and my eye was starting to adapt to the dimness. The one on my thigh fell away, screeching and crawling and I helped it along with a kick that picked it up and filled the air with the snapping of thick dry branches.

...I love you, Ant!...

Heather, Dana and Nagle's voices. All the ladies love a killer.

Their eerie screams changed in seconds, from feral snarlings to something else as I punched, kicked, stomped, tore at them, and went to work with my knife. I felt more than anything else the one that jumped from the top of the cab just before it landed on my back.

...dumbass...

I reached back with one hand, finding meat, and squeezed and twisted, seeing one skitter forward and kicking its elbow as the one behind me howled. I let go when it felt like something tore and reached back again, finding skin, and twisted and squeezed. It felt mushy in my hands, but I didn't care. The weight dropped off my back.

...Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, because I'm the baddest motherfucker in the valley. Say it with me, boy. I know it hurts but you'll be at the hospital soon...

...yes, Father. Yea, though I walk...

They were screaming and making too human sobs, I was bellowing, cursing and mocking them, full of nothing but roaring red fury and a driving need to hurt them, destroy them, all the while the Fates had returned and were screaming their chorus in my ears.

There was the roar of an engine and lights suddenly lit up the area as clear as day, blinding me for a second. The Fates scattered, their song vanishing in the light.

Screams came from multiple voices, and I could hear the scrabbling of claws on concrete and the feeling of those things vanished. I looked around, my light dazzled eyes showing me only darkness again.

Something huge and dark roared up out of the darkness, stopping less than five feet from me, bathing me in light. I raised an arm to block the light, blinking as my eyes tried to adjust from near darkness to shocking white light.

I was bent at the waist, one arm blocking the blinding light, the other keeping the knife up, knees bent and slightly hunched. I knew I was smiling, and could feel blood running down my neck. My shoulder felt like a chunk of ice was lodged in it and throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

"Christ, Sergeant, are you all right?" Someone called out.

I shook my head for a moment, trying to figure out what he'd said. It was just noise. It didn't mean anything. I bared my teeth and spit.

I was alone again in the darkness, my head swimming from being kicked in the face repeatedly, stabbing with my knife into darkness, Nancy sobbing as she crawled away from me

"Sergeant, are you all right?" Someone else. There was a weird noise, metal on metal. I shook my head again, ignoring the sting of the blood running into my eye and glaring at the light. Blood ran into my mouth and I could taste it.

"Dude, stay back, don't go near him." Another voice, the same noise again.

"Come on, bitches, come on, let's see what you got." I growled, flicking the knife.

"Sergeant Ant, they're gone, it's all right." The voice cleared my head and I started to straighten up. The voice continued. "We need you to turn on the lights, Sergeant Ant. We've got to finish the mission."

Where I was came back in a rush, and I straightened all the way up, looking at the two soldiers who stood at the fenders of the Gypsy Wagon. Donaldson and Kincaid, the two Privates given to me by that the lousy officer those assholes at the Pentagon had saddled me with.

"Sergeant Ant, are you all right?" Donaldson asked. I wiped my knife on pant leg and sheathed it, then pulled out my pill bottle. I stood there for a second with it, aware of Kincaid and Donaldson staring at me as I held it in the light of the Gypsy Wagon's headlights.

And put it back without opening it.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I said, ignoring their expressions and turning around to look at the front of the deuce. Strips of what looked like blackened cloth hung from the grill guard, and there was a spatter of something black and thick at my feet.

"Sorry I almost hit you, Sergeant." Donaldson said, "But when the lights went out it took me a minute to swing the vehicle around to get it in here, you parked it too far forward to just turn straight into the motorpool."

"'Sarite, kid." I said, my stomach clenching and my limbs shaking as the remainder of the adrenaline rushed through my system. "You did good." My stomach heaved.

I took two steps forward, grabbed the grill guard, and leaned forward to throw up. I retched for a couple of minutes until my stomach was empty of everything and I was surprised my toenails hadn't come up. Donaldson and Kincaid kept asking if I was all right, and I kept waving them away while I heaved up bile and stomach acid. When I straightened I took a swig out of my canteen to swish around in my mouth before spitting it on the ground and taking a second swig that I swallowed.

"How many were there, I didn't get a good look." Kincaid asked.

"At least six." Donaldson told him. I nodded, running my hand through my hair. I'd left my Kevlar helmet in the Humvee, and my fingertip found where something had bitten me on the top of the skull, leaving welts and small cuts with swollen lips on my scalp.

"You're bleeding." Kincaid noticed when I brought my hand back and looked at the blood on my fingertips.

"Fucker bit me." I answered. "Scalp wounds bleed a lot." I told them, staggering around to the driver's side of the Gypsy Wagon and sitting down. I was shaking from the adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine that had flooded my system, not to mention my body's typical reaction to combat stress when it was all over. My medication was a dim memory, the fog lifted from my brain.

A vehicle pulled in behind us and flashed its lights.

"Donaldson, you drive, I'll ground guide." I said, pushing myself out of the seat. I grabbed my softcap off the dash and pulled it on. The headband would keep blood from running down my neck or into my eyes. The thick cloth would keep teeth away from my skull, that was the important thing. I didn't think they'd be back, but I hadn't survived as long as I had and still counted on assumptions to carry me.

"Are you sure, Sergeant?" Donaldson asked. When I looked at him I saw something in his face that I'd seen too many times before.

"I'm sure." I moved by him and stood at the rear of the vehicle till Kincaid and Donaldson got back in. I waved Donaldson backwards and right till the vehicle was lined up. I held up a fist for him to stop then moved up the door. Donaldson rolled down the window and looked at me.

"We'll find the lights and get everyone parked." I told him. He nodded. Kincaid has his rifle in his lap and was looking out the window. I turned and then walked further down into the motorpool, heading off toward what would have been my right if I'd still been standing in the door.

The dark pressed in on me despite the lights, and I ran my mind over what I knew, my thoughts faster than they'd been since I'd started taking the pills. Whatever they had been, they hadn't weighed a hundred pounds. They'd been all leathery feeling, sticky and damp, mushy when you got your hands on them. They fought like wild animals, biting and clawing, and preferred to work in packs. The odd one or two might have figured that we were easy prey, but now they were using numbers. They felt pain, though. And fear.

That meant I could kill them.

I walked deeper into the motorpool, waving at Donaldson to follow me. I unclipped my flashlight from my LBE and panned it across the walls. Lights followed and I held up my hand for Donaldson to stop. When the vehicle came to a halt I walked back to the lead vehicle behind the Gypsy Wagon.

The goddamn CIA assholes.

I tapped on the window and Toothpick grinned at me for a few seconds before rolling down the window.

"Wait here till we find the light switches." I told him.

"Whatever, Sergeant." He grinned, mocking me with a two finger salute off his eyebrow. I stared at him for a long second, and his grin turned a little sickly. His eyes flicked from the knife on my LBE to my face, back to the knife, then to my hands, which I knew were streaked in blood on some kind of thick black shit. He clenched the toothpick between his teeth and swallowed, his eyes jumping back to mine.

"That's what I fucking thought, Company Man." I sneered. He flushed and rolled the window back up. I reached forward and tapped it with my knuckles, making him jump, and waited till he glanced at me to smile and chuckle at him.

I wondered how long he'd last in the dark and cold as I walked back.

...Never trust the CIA, they'll fuck you over, piss on your grave, and call it patriotism...

...I know, Father...

At the end of the motorpool we found nothing but bare concrete. I rolled my shoulders, feeling my LBE and Kevlar vest shift into a more comfortable position, then walked back to the vehicle.

"Go back to the aisle, then follow it to the far end." I told Donaldson, who nodded. "I'm going to walk down this wall." He opened his mouth to say something but closed it as my knife whispered out of the sheathe. "I'll be fine, kid."

I gave him a quick instruction. He didn't look happy about it, and Kincaid just swallowed and nodded. I ground guided Donaldson back to the aisle then waved him past me into the aisle between the vehicles before heading back to the far wall.

Whatever it was would home in on me, not on the vehicles. Inside the vehicles, they were probably safe. They didn't have much strength, not enough to peel apart a vehicle and get at the occupants. I'd seen a bear do it once to get at a cooler some idiot left in the back seat of their car, I knew what it took to rip apart a car. They couldn't get at the soldiers in the vehicles so they'd come after the only target I'd left them.

They'd come for me.

I grinned at the thought. They'd have to try again if there were still fit to fight. The alpha would still want to take me down, and I smelled of blood, which they might take as a weakness.

...like Tandy did...

...these things aren't Tandy, Dana...

I walked down the side aisle, keeping my flashlight on the wall, looking straight ahead so I could watch the darkness and the wall both. The loss of the left hand side of my vision nagged at me, and I kept turning my head to compensate, loosing sight of the wall for a moment before I pulled my vision back to it.

Something skittered in the darkness and I smiled. The heaviness of my limbs was vanishing and I could feel my muscles almost thrumming with anticipation. The headache at the base of my skull, my punishment inflicted on me by my medication, was a welcome addition to the pain I used to fuel me.

I walked by two rows of Sheridan tanks, dust all over them, silent sentinels waiting for a war that never happened. I veered over and ran my hand across the heavy tracks, feeling the cold steel under my hand of the machine that had patiently waited in the dark and cold and was now forgotten, replaced by younger and leaner models.

You and me both, brother. I thought sadly. They built us well, and had us sit in the cold and the dark.

Sighing I kept walking, deeper into the mountain, past all of the forgotten equipment, dark and melancholy thoughts filling part of my mind, dark and angry thoughts as I walked past dusty and forgotten war material hidden deep within a mountain. My boots thudding on the concrete poured inside a mountain to create something that I had a lot in common with.

"They built you, and abandoned you." I whispered as I traced my fingers over the side of M113 APC. The admission awoke the anger that was always with me, the rage that had built up over the last two years. What had led me to where I now was, below a mountain in the dark and cold. The thoughts that my pills normally kept me from thinking, the memories that enraged me when my pills lapsed. The 'intrusive thoughts' the mental health techs had given me pills and mantras to ignore.

Those 'intrusive thoughts' were how I had ended up what I was and where I was. I wasn't supposed to be that person any more, and the pills would keep me from being that person any more.

Except I had put the pill bottle back into my pocket and the fight had swept all the other medications out of my system.

"We're relics." I whispered again, to all of the vehicles, to Kilo-29, the mockery my career and life had become.

The Soviet Union had been the big boogeyman for almost half a decade. I'd lived under the specter of nuclear war my whole life. It wasn't a question of if it would happen, it had been a question of when. NATO couldn't win the war, and as soon as the Soviet Union felt confident enough, they'd just roll over us. The Soviets had 10 tanks for every one of ours, our tanks couldn't match them unless it was two of us on one of them. The Apache was worthless. The A-10 would be knocked out the air by infantry rifles. MiG's would shoot down our planes at a 6 to 1 ratio. The Marines' strength had failed, spent in the rice patties of Vietnam. The Air Force had lost the will to fight, nothing more than dim memories of victories they could never hope to achieve again. The Navy wouldn't last 10 minutes, blotted out in nuclear fire and destroyed by the superior Russian Navy. The Army wasn't what it was and we were weak, our spirit and ability to fight lost in the jungles of Vietnam after the death blow of Korea. The Soviet Union had a hundred times the nuclear weapons we had. Their Spetznaz could walk through walls and kill with a light tap of their fingernails. The KBG was everyone and everywhere and killed anyone who got in their way of their masters in the Kremlin. Their weapons were better, they were tougher, NATO didn't stand a chance. That was the mantra I had heard, everyone knew it. But they'd built me and men and women like me and then stationed what they'd built in Germany with only one mission.

Punish the enemy.

The same people who had ordered weapons like me built had shelters like this one built in tectonically stable areas, designed not only to shelter government leaders, but allow a coordination to keep fighting in the radiation, the chemicals, and the biological weapons. Civil Defense had been a priority, then collapsed into nothing more than dusty notebooks in courthouse basements next to forgotten fallout shelters. Units had been shuffled around and hidden behind paperwork to protect critical assets. Men lied to their families and spouses and whether or not they actually died their deaths were listed as training accidents, with those who still lived even giving up who they were. The Cold War got colder and depots were built, plans were laid, all to fight even after the Soviet Union and NATO went toe to toe and the world turned into a poisoned charnel house.

I'd been trained for that battlefield. To arm my comrades with the nastiest weapons we could, even if we had to carry them by hand, even in the face of the enemy if he attacked our sites, no matter what it took we were to arm them, empty our bunkers, and take the fight to them. After our bunkers were empty our mission was fight on the NBC battlefield, take the war to the enemy, break his ability to fight, lay waste to his cities, help commanders coordinate strikes that would break his will, enable my brothers and sisters to fight with weapons that nobody wanted to use. We were not defense. We were offense, and we'd make sure the enemy's troops, factories, and cities were blasted with nuclear fire, his people and animals died choking from chemical weapons that would poison the ground for decades, and I'd spread death over his cities and rural areas with pestilence and disease that would kill for generations. Nobody thought we had the will to do it. Books and movies had us refusing to fight as the Soviet Union blotted millions of people from the nations of NATO, the soldiers pictured crying out that it wasn't right, that they wouldn't do it. That nobody could win, and so they wouldn't fight.

But reality was different. I would fight. I'd sworn an oath. And so would my brothers and sisters, who had sworn the oath to defend their countries, their civilians, their way of life, no matter what the cost. Not just American, but the British, the Germans, Spaniards, the French, the Fins, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Canadians, everyone who refused to knuckle under to the Soviet Union and stood on the line with us and stared at our counterparts on the other side of the Iron Curtain. We subscribed to the old adage that you can always take them with you, and knew that our enemy knew it too. We met their resolution with our own.

As for me, every single life the Soviet Union took from the nations of NATO, I would return tenfold on the Warsaw Pact. They built me to survive, destroy the enemy, and win.

And the Soviet Union knew it. They'd stared us in the eye, knew who we were from our own personnel files thanks to traitors, mistakes, and espionage, and knew in their hearts that we were willing to pull the trigger on the pistol we held to their head as soon as their finger tightened on the trigger of the pistol they held to ours. They knew us because they knew that the men and women on their side were the same as we were. Just as determined, and just as willing to do to us what we were willing to do to them. Nothing noble, just grim duty.

It was insanity, but the insanity itself was a weapon, just like we were.

But then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and the war was over. NATO had won. The world stood shocked for a long moment in disbelief and then rejoiced as the fight everyone had lived of fear of vanished from the horizon. Everyone celebrated the victory for mankind.

Terrible, terrible victory.

Now we were forgotten. An embarrassment to those who knew that it had been acceptable to create men and women who were willing to count bodycounts by the tens of thousands. Something that everyone pretended was rumor rather than admit what had been done during those insane years. My MOS was gone as if it never existed, my 201 file had a blank spot where my MOS should have been proudly listed, most of my records were altered or just plain 'lost' as time went on. Our units broken up in disgrace and silence, our guidons cased and hidden if not burned, the bumper numbers of our vehicles sandblasted off, our records burned, our sites destroyed or left to quietly decay, our brothers and sisters shifted from unit to unit, sometimes the day we got to a new unit we were sent back to 21st Replacement or found new orders waiting for us when we reported in. Those who knew what we had been trained to do considered us monsters, we were often shunned or worse, mocked as useless failures, sneered at for 'having never done your jobs'. We were told that we had nothing to be proud of, that we were nothing and had contributed nothing. Our pay was frequently lost and sometimes a month or two would pass without a single paycheck, sometimes our records were 'lost' and the only proof we were even in the military was the 201 files in our hands, and more than a few of my friends had just packed their stuff in a U-Haul, left their ID cards and dogtags on the CQ desk and gone home quietly or loudly and graphically left after a screaming match and a spectacular flameout that was quickly swept under the rug. Some had put their pistols in their mouths instead. Some of us refused to reclassify to a different MOS and hovered around the edges of our old jobs, doing things that nobody else wanted to, that nobody wanted to admit needed done, things like destroying the very things that everyone had relied on and now nobody wanted around. We were ragged ghosts at the banquet. We were told we were 'in the real Army now' and we were 'relics' and 'embarrassments' by lousy motherfuckers who had never...

The far wall jerked me out of the memory of us sitting on a porch of a house that bulldozers waited to demolish, watching some goddamn REMF from V Corps come and take our hand-made guidon. Hatred coursed through my veins, filling my mouth with a hot bitter taste, I was unreasonably angry, shaking and breathing hard, and wanting nothing more than to hit and smash and break something, anything.

Anyone.

My head was throbbing as I started walking along the far war, shining my flashlight. Behind me something skittered on the concrete, moving deeper into the motorpool, keeping pace with me in the darkness.

I smiled and clenched my fists, my knuckles popping loudly in the darkness. The knife felt right, and the anger and hatred the memories had aroused warmed me and strengthened me. Pain was my friend who helped me overcome injury and exhaustion, the darkness held no fear for me after 2/19th, and my own death was nothing more than an eventuality that I'd welcome as a brother after Desert Storm.

Off to my left something growled.

They bled, they screamed, they sobbed. They could be killed.

Wood and steel floated out of the darkness and into the light of my flashlight, heavy switches that looked like something out of an old 50's Frankenstein movie instead of installed in a state of the art facility.

...get ready...

...Always ready, brother...

The smell washed over me, familiar now, as I drew closer to the switches. I counted five of them in all, none of them locked upright. Above them was the words "SHUT OFF BEFORE EXITING" in big red letters, with the letters A through E below them. A high voltage marker was at both ends and between each of the switches. The switches could handle all the EMP that was thrown at it and just sneer, if it was outside the fireball itself they'd be intact and might even survive on the fringes of the fireball.

Three steps till I reached them. My whole body was tingling, I was breathing slow and deep. The headache at the base of my skull faded to a dull awareness. The metal was old and corroded but little amber lights could now be seen at the base of them. Something winked at the base of them, a broken line at about floor level.

Two more steps. I could hear something skitter and stop, the growl still audible but only barely. It was animalistic, filled with a need. The hinges of the switches gleamed with thick blackish-green grease in the light of my flashlight. I could see a scattered line of glinting brass where the floor met the wall near the switches.

One more step. In front of me I could see the headlights of the Gypsy Wagon steadily brighten on the wall no more than fifty feet from where I was. There was the glint of another door on the far wall that I knew would lead deeper into the mountain, to probably join up with the maintenance section. The gleams turned into expended brass and the cold part of my brain whispered that they were 5.56mm NATO and approximately 30 of them.

Another step and I was in front of the switches, my boot kicking an expended brass and sending it tinkling into the darkness. I turned and faced them, breathing out and shifting my grip on my knife.

I could hear scrabbling behind me as I reached up my left hand for the wooden handle of the middle switch. The lights of the Gypsy Wagon were angling toward me, sweeping across the wall as Donaldson turned the vehicle toward me.

With a roar I spun around, the light clipped to my LBE swinging with me, illuminating something that was coming straight at me.

It was red and black, a black and red ball for a head that lacked ears or a nose, what looked like patchy hair on its head, apparently dressed in black rags over its torso, groin, and legs. Its clawed feet were bare and the talons on its hands were reaching for me as it opened its mouth and hissed at me with a mouth full of small triangle teeth. It wore silver chains with medallions around its neck and its eyes were white with huge pupils that suddenly contracted as my light caught it in the face. The face was full of glee, thinking that the talons that were leading the way would tear into me and rip my life away before I could do much more than scream.

I stepped into it, my left hand slapping away one reaching claw, shifting to my left so it missed with the other claw, the thumb talon digging into the side of my jaw for a second. My hand grabbed the chains that dangled from its neck and I yanked hard. The chains snapped, leaving the medallions in my hand.

The shock ran up my arm as I buried my Gerber into its gut, the blade angled up.

It screamed then, and clawed at my chest, its talons raking my gear, and I kneed it in the crotch as I tensed my shoulder and curled my arm. Lights swept over us both and I could see the pain and fear in its eyes. My lip curled as it ripped the right sleeve of my BDU top with its talons and tried to push my arm away, to push the knife out of it.

The smell of raw sewage flooded the air as I stared in its eyes, wrapping my left arm tightly around it and pulling it tight against me, still pulling my knife upward, putting all the power I had into it. Something crackled and hit the floor with a wet noise. It went silent, its mouth an 'O' and eyes wide. I noticed that it had a hole in its face where there should have been a nose.

"You got nothing." I whispered, smiling.

It pushed feebly at me with one hand, the other reaching behind to to claw at my Kevlar vest, its mouth opening and closing as I felt the knife hit the ribs. A gush of blood rushed out of its mouth and splashed across my chest, steaming in the cold air. I twisted the knife as it pawed at me and shook its head in denial, its mouth opening and closing, the bloody little triangular teeth appearing and disappearing.

"Goodbye." I told it.

It was shaking, trembling, and it lost its bladder and bowels on my boots as I stared in its eyes. It reached one hand up and pawed weakly at my face, sending my glasses askew and pulling my eyepatch from over my dead eye. I just stared, twisting the knife again as another gush of blood, smaller this time, rushed out of its mouth, dark red, almost black in the headlights of the Gypsy Wagon. Bloody froth mixed with green mucus was bubbling from the gaping hole where a nose should have been.

It went limp and I let go, angling the knife so it slid off instead of tearing it from my hand, and it fell to the concrete floor with a final thud.

I stepped back from it, wiping my knife on my pants legs and sheathing it before turning back to the switches. The Gypsy Wagon idled closer as I started throwing them one by one. The engine sputtered and died, the headlights going out between the first and second switch. Between the third and fourth I heard the doors slam.

With each one thrown another bank of lights came on. Some of the lights stayed dark, others exploded in sparks, but the motorpool lit up all the same, revealing a cavernous area full of old vehicles.

When I turned from the switches Donaldson and Kincaid were standing a few feet from me. Kincaid was looking out into the motorpool, his weapon at high ready. He looked a little green around the gills. Donaldson was looking at me when I turned, and he took a step back when he saw my face. My glasses were skewed, my eyepatch down around my neck, my face bloody, and my wide eyes and smile.

I reached up and straightened my glasses as I grinned at him and he flinched again. I ignored that and turned to look at the thing that had charged at me, half expecting it to be gone.

...that's what always happened before...

...I know, Taggart...

The creature was still there, laying on its back. Its open eyes were staring at the ceiling with its stomach torn open and guts hanging out. I could see a couple of the thin silver necklaces that had been around its neck laying near it.

That reminded me.

I looked down at my left hand, lifting it up and opening my fist to reveal the medallions I'd pulled off its chest.

They were dogtags. Eight of them.