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

Part 25

Site Kilo-29
Military Area - Main Areas
Winter, 1993
Day Two-Night

The meathead froze when Major Darson shouted "STOP!" at the top of his lungs. He was staring at me coming straight at him, his hand only inches from the bar. He flinched back as I moved up next to him, putting myself between him and the handle.

"It's Meyers, he said he's OK." The guy protested.

"It can't be." Kincaid said. "Nobody screams like that and is OK." Kincaid was staring at the Colonel's door, his expression carefully neutral. The way he was holding his rifle spoke volumes though.

The Major came up next to us while I was talking to the meathead. "You can't trust anything you hear right now. If someone went missing and you hear their voice, you can't be sure it's them. If it's someone you know who isn't with us, or someone you know was killed, and you hear their voice, dont. open. the door."

"Sergeant, are you sure it isn't Meyers?" The Major asked me.

There was a knocking sound on the door, a ringing metal sound like you'd get rapping your knuckles on the fender of 50's Chevy. "Come on, guys, it's cold and dark out here, and I think that crazy guy's after me." Meyers said from the other side of the door.

"See, I told you, he's just fine." The meathead said.

"Sergeant, it sounds like Meyers. Maybe you're wrong, maybe he got away." The Major told me.

I shook my head and pointed at the door. "Sir, what kind of door is this?"

Another ringing knock. "Guys, come on, I'm starting to get scared."

The Major looked at me like I was crazy. "A blast door, the same thing that separates all the sections." He told me.

My knuckles made a dull thump when I rapped them on the door. "Right, sir." I told him. "A foot thick door with a steel lining and only God knows what for the core, set in a six inch deep track with rubber seals."

I knocked again. A dull thump that was only audible to us.

The ringing knock answered that even Kincaid could here from where he was walking toward us.

The Major suddenly got it and went pale.

"Major, don't let Sergeant Ant convince you and Caruthers to leave me out here, please." Meyers said.

The meathead jerked back suddenly as if the door had been revealed to be made completely of hissing spiders. "Wait, how does he know who's..."

"Caruthers, goddamn you, open this fucking door." Meyers' voice suddenly turned cruel. "Your mother was right, you're a goddamn dickless wonder. No wonder your step-father beat you up all the time, he was right, you're a fucking coward."

Caruthers staggered back a pace or two, the words hitting him like physical blows, the blood draining from his face.

The voice changed, becoming female, but no less cruel. "Come on, Loius, you wouldn't leave me out here, would you?" The Major's eyes bulged out. "If you open the door, we can do all those things we played at when we were kids."

"Get away from the fucking door." I told them, moving back. "Look at the center of it."

Ice glittered on the door, a thin coating of frost that thickened toward the middle, a diseased looking splotch with tendrils starting to spread.

"How... who... what is it?" The Major asked, his face horrified.

"You liked touching my butt when we were kids, Louis, if you open the door, I'll let you touch it again." The girl's voice was younger, preteen or just into adolescence now. "Maybe you'd like to stick something in it?" There was laughter, the tinkling of a broken bell.

I could hear a dark bubbling mirth beneath it.

"We never knew." I admitted, taking my own advice and backing up.

"That's right, Ant, run away." My brother's voice. "You always get your ass kicked in a straight up fight. Why don't you tell them all about how you weren't man enough to save any of those kids in the crowd?"

Another laugh.

"Just ignore it." I told them, turning around and walking away. "It's just words, it can't get in right now." I rolled my shoulders and dug my cigarettes out of my pocket.

The packet was crushed and the first two I pulled out were broken. Fucking figured.

Caruthers was backing up slowly, shaking his head. "How did it know who was on the other side of the door?"

"Who gives a shit, as long as it's on that side of the door?" Kincaid asked, reaching up to scratch the cut on his head and yanking his hand away when his fingernails caught the edge of the wound and tugged on it.

"Pretty much." I agreed, catching up to Kincaid. "How much did you hear?" I asked him. Donaldson was standing outside the rec room, leaning against the wall and looking bored.

"Everything I needed to know that your friend is a murdering whore." He said. "I think she left the others to die to save her own fucking skin."

"There could be another reason they died. She could be telling the truth that they tried to fight." Darson said, turning away from the door with hunched shoulders. "She deserves the benefit of the doubt." He started walking toward the rec room, and I figured that he'd moved everyone in there while I was waiting for Agent Killain so that he could watch the surveillance cameras without the rest of the troops hearing or seeing what was going on.

Behind us we could hear laughter, like an old man with pneumonia.

"She's responsible for the deaths of two people I liked." I said. "She admitted to flat out murdering one, and I think she either murdered the other one or let them die. She's used up her 'benefits' as far as I'm concerned." I reached out and went to open the door to the rec room.

"What do you mean by that, Sergeant?" Major Darson asked me, grabbing my arm. I looked down at his hand, then back up at him, then down at his hand again.

He let go of me.

"It means, if I even think she's endangering any of our men, I'll cut her fucking throat myself." I told him. I looked him square in the eyes. "Those are your men in here, and by proxy, mine, and I won't let her put them in danger for her career or that bullshit line about National Security."

He looked startled at that.

"People like her always spout that fucking National Security line. They usually use it to justify the worst shit. Killed some little kids? National Security. Ran away and left an innocent person holding the bag so they went to jail or got executed? National Security. Enabled the murder of innocent people and sold drugs and weapons to terrorists and assholes? National Security." I sneered. "Most of the ones I've met were self-serving scumbags on a power trip who thought they were untouchable and could do whatever the fuck they wanted."

"Sound like you have history." Kincaid said.

"You might say that." They all took the hint and dropped it. I opened the door and we went inside, where everyone was scattered around. Some of them were playing pool, four guys were playing spades, others were telling jokes, and a couple were sprawled out in the chairs sleeping. The guy with the bandaged face was sitting up, listening to the others telling jokes, and the guy with the trach tube was playing spades, holding up his fingers to bid 3 books of his own.

Everyone pretty much stopped and stared at us when we came in.

"Carry on, men." The Major said, then turned to me. "I think we need to talk privately."

"No." I told him. He looked startled, and I raised a hand to cut off his objections. "Just trust me. If we talk privately, out of sight of everyone else, something will happen to one of us, and it'll tear our little group apart."

...There was forty of us when the snow started to fall again...

...we killed each other in the dark and cold in a frenzy of hatred, blood lust, and insanity...

...eight of us left the lower egress, six of us made it to post...

"Then what do you suggest?" He asked. I pointed over by the television, which was off in a corner by itself and pretty much away from everyone else. He nodded, and turned to his men. "Jackson"

The name itself brought back painful memories.

"Douglas, and Caruthers, you three stand guard outside the door. The Colonel is hereby confined to her room until further notice and is to have no contact with anyone else unless Sergeant Ant or I say differently." He told them. One of the guys telling jokes sighed and one playing pool made a disgusted noise before they both headed toward the door.

"Take weapons." Kincaid told them. He turned to me. "I'm going to get Donaldson, I'll be right back."

"Have Wilkins, Natchez, and Shads take their shit into the room too, they're going to bunk down with us. Don't take long." I told him, then followed the Major over to the corner, pulling a chair with me so I could sit down. He heard the nose, saw what I was doing, and grabbed one for himself.

He waited till I sat down before starting to speak.

"What do you know about what we're facing?" He asked.

"You heard like I did where those things came from." I told him.

...what about the shadows, smartass?...

...hush, Nancy...

He nodded, and I continued. "She was lying about the test in the 1950's being the last test. If I had to guess, I'd guess they did it after every SLEP completion."

"SLEP?"

"Service Life Extension Program, basically overhauling and refitting." I told him. "Which means that the newer ones have probably been in here for at least 5 years, but I'd guess closer to 10 years." He looked as sick about that thought as I felt. "I don't know if they just abandoned their test subjects, or if that's part of the experiment."

"Would they really go that far?" He asked.

"Your talking about the Office of Scientific Intelligence." I told him. I pulled out my pathetic pack of cigarettes and found one that wasn't broken. "We're talking about a group who views that American public as nothing more than guinea pigs. Read up about some of the experimentation they did back in the 50's and 60's."

"So how many do you think there are of them?" He asked me.

I thought for a couple of minutes, thinking about 2/19th and how the place could reduce us to animals in the space of a couple of weeks. "I think there's probably at least three different groups, probably more, and each group has anywhere between twenty and thirty members."

"How'd you come up with those numbers?" He asked.

"Simple. Too many, and they'd need too big of a place to live. They'd need more food, and I think they probably eat the emergency stores and each other. Plus, I haven't seen any signs of rats, and since this place looks like it was a natural cave formation, we should have seen some sign of rats or bats, which means those animals are either all gone or have learned to hide. Probably a little of both." I pulled my sleeve back to show him the bandage on my forearm. "Plus, some groups don't use tools, these ones did, and I think the crossbow came from an Event Locker. Some groups prefer to use hit and run and only a few attackers, while others have jumped us en-masse."

He nodded at that. "OK, it all tracks so far." I waited, I knew what the next question was. "Do you think that Lieutenant Colonel Bishop is doing the killing, or was she lying?"

...His face was the ashen gray African descent people get when they die, his careful corn-rows were puffed out in places and full of ice and/or frozen mud. His uniform, usually immaculate, was torn, muddied, and had patches of what had to be dried blood. His arms looked too long, his hands malformed, and he stood with his legs bowed slightly. His eyes were dark pits with black eyes that glittered, holding malevolent joy and hatred...

"She's telling the truth, as far as she knows it." I told him.

"What aren't you telling?" He asked me.

"It's not Colonel Bishop any more." I stared off to the side, my mind flooding with images of all the times I'd gotten a look at Tandy. Never a good solid look, just enough to fill me with bone deep terror. "I believe her when she said she killed him. From the way she said she set it up, she shot him in the back of the head, and she probably left his dead body in the snow that night."

To his credit, he didn't scoff at what I said, so I kept going. "I think that it was already in here before that, and that Colonel Bishop knew it. That it got in here somehow before Agent Killain killed him."

She wasn't Debs any more, and I refused to use her Air Force rank. She'd turned her back on the right to that when she'd murdered my former CO.

"How what got in?"

"I don't know." I answered. The door opened and Kincaid and the others came back into the room, all of them carrying MRE's and moving over to sit down to eat in their own little group.

"How it got in, or what it is?"

"Both."

...the huge picture of the 2/19th barracks sitting in a foot of snow, with three bloodied snowmen on the lawn. The drapes were closed on the windows, the glass entrance to the building acting as a mirror, and the snow in front of the barracks was flawless and unbroken by footprints or disturbed snow...

"So you're telling me that something you don't know what it is, got in somehow you don't know, and is using the dead body of your former CO to hunt and kill people?" He asked me. He shook his head. "Sergeant, I'm prepared to believe that someone committed a horrible atrocity and experimented on innocent people and now the survivors of that experiment are a bunch of deranged killers roving through this facility killing anyone who dares enter it, but I draw the line at dead men stalking the living."

I shrugged. "I'm just telling you what I know."

"I will acknowledge you probably believe that." He graciously told me. "But I'm going to take into account that you've admitted to taking several serious head wounds."

...let's see how he feels once Tandy gets up to speed...

...it's not Tandy, Nancy, it's Bishop now...

...same thing, Ant, you'll see...

"Either way, I think we all need some rest." He told me, looking around. "I'd suggest getting a meal, then taking your medication and getting some sleep."

I stood up, saluted, and after he returned it I moved over to Kincaid and Donaldson.

"It's really your dead CO, isn't it." Kincaid said, handing me an unopened MRE. Chicken Ala King, my favorite. He was eating the dehydrated mixed fruit by just biting off chunks, chewing it and then taking a drink off his canteen, swishing the water around and then swallowing the slurry.

"You two believe me?" I was a little startled.

Kincaid snorted, then bit off another chunk of his mixed fruit brick. I waited for him to swallow and continue. "Sergeant, I saw that picture, I saw how you reacted to it." He looked at Donaldson, who nodded. "There sure as fuck wasn't any snowmen in that picture that first time we went by it."

"And when you saw them, you started rubbing your shoulder." Donaldson said quietly, looking at the three men who hadn't been with us. "The same shoulder as one of the snowmen had a bloody mark on."

"When you took off your shirt, I saw that scar on your shoulder." Shads told me. "I've had shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff from baseball. I've got a scar about three inches long." He tapped his right shoulder. "Yours is a lot different."

I nodded, opening up the brown bag and pulling out the heating pack. I put in my Chicken Ala King and added water to the bag to make the whole thing heat up while they kept talking.

"I looked behind us right before you fired your grenade launcher." Natchez told me. "I saw that guy in the doorway." He shuddered. "For some reason just looking at him I about shit myself."

"Did he hit with the grenade?" Wilkins asked.

"That depends." Natchez answered, then looked at me. "Were you aiming at him or the building?" I shook my head, watching the package swell up as the water reacted with the chunk of fibrous board, heating the water and pouring steam out of the end of the plastic envelope. "Sergeant Ant hit the plywood in front of the building, setting off the mines right as it started to walk across the plywood."

They were all quiet at that, the clacking of the pool balls loud.

"And he was still able to pull Meyers out of the elevator." Donaldson said. "If that one mine knocked Sergeant Ant out, those mines should have killed Sergeant Ant's old CO."

I nodded.

"Were you ever able to stop this thing before? In the place where they took that photo?" Shads asked.

...Kebble began screaming from inside the stairwell. I looked over in time to see her bloody face slam against the glass, her face distorting as something pressed her ravaged face against the ice and glass. Blood bubbled from her nose and sprayed from her mouth as she screamed again. Kebble was suddenly yanked away from the window. She was still screaming as darkness filled the window and the blood that Bomber had spit on the window froze solid...

...we spun around, and Tandy stood behind us, mostly hidden by the dark, only his pale face, with its merciless grin and dark eyes plainly visible. As one Taggart, Nancy, John and I opened fire with our rifles, the bullets shattering the glass behind him, Tandy not even reacting as a bloodless bullet hole appeared in his forehead. The wind swept in from outside, and he vanished in the blizzard driven snow that swept into the CQ area through the broken glass of the doors and windows, leaving behind only that nerve wracking chuckle of his...

...oh god, he's right outside the door...

"No." I said quietly, letting the envelope fall open so the steam could empty out and I could grab my Chicken Ala King without the metallic envelope burning my fingers.

"Then we're fucked, aren't we?" Wilkins said, staring at the remainder of his MRE. It was obvious he'd lost his appetite and that it had nothing to do with the shitty food in his lap.

"No." I told them. The all looked at me in disbelief. "I survived it, so did other people. If we can get out of here, get off this mountain, he won't follow us."

...unless it's snowing, Ant, then he'll kill you all in the dark and snow...

...that's not helping, Catherine...

"But if we stay here?" Donaldson asked.

"I don't know." I told him honestly. "Usually we ended up abandoning the barracks or getting rescued, we never made it a whole winter."

"Jesus." Shads muttered.

"Well, it could be worse." Kincaid said, grinning.

"How?" Wilkins asked.

"We could have to be anally mastered by a yeti every morning." He upended the package and poured the last few crumbs of mixed fruit into his mouth. "That's be worse."

"We could have to blow a leper." Natchez offered.

"We could be back in Basic Training." Donaldson chuckled.

"We could be tankers." Kincaid tossed out.

"We could be forced to have pineapples jammed up our asses then eat them." Shads said.

"We could be in the Navy." Wilkins laughed.

That got us all to laugh. A few people stared at us, but we ignored them, trading "We could be..." back and forth, getting more and more outrageous the entire time. Within a few minutes we were all breathlessly laughing when Shads mentioned cleaning out Singapore hookers with our tongues after Fleet Week.

We ate in silence after that, finishing up the odds and ends of our MRE's. I went over and checked on the two wounded guys, giving them a several of the Percocet from the big bottle of them in my ruck and telling them to take them and get some rest. I talked with the Major and set up a sign/counter-sign password with him so we'd know when to open doors or not.

"Let's bunk up. We'll take turns on guard shifts, don't open the door for anyone but the Major or that knows that password." I told them. "Wilkins, you and Natchez play rock paper scissors who goes first. Whoever loses goes second, then wake up Donaldson, then Shads, then Kincaid."

"Why am I last?" Kincaid asked.

"Because you're going to take some antibiotics and some painkillers and heal up." I told him. He nodded and went in the room.

Everyone took turns in the bathroom, Kincaid took the big master bed, Wilkins lost the throw with scissors and took one of the kids beds, Shads took the other. Donaldson crashed out on the couch, and I sat in the big overstuffed chair after wedging all the doors open. We left closet lights on with the doors almost shut, the bathroom light with the same, and the nightlight in the two kid's rooms, so that while the room was really dim, it wasn't completely dark.

I sat in the dark and listened to them doze off. I'd taken a maintenance dose of my medication and a couple of Percocet, so while I felt a little tired, I didn't exactly go to sleep. Unless I took a 'bedtime dose' I wouldn't sleep anyway.

I sat there and mourned the loss of someone I'd thought was a friend. Mourned the loss of a man I admired and a man I'd worked with, drank with, and partied with.

...we love you, bunny...

...I love you too, Heather...

When everyone's breathing told me they were more or less asleep, I got up quietly and went to my rucksack, quietly opening it and digging something out of the back pocket. Natchez watched me, but turned away when he saw what I had in my hand.

I went back to the chair, laid back after propping my rifle into between the side and the bottom cushion so it stood up at a 45 degree angle.

Then I cradled my sock monkey and closed my eye.