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

Part 28

Site Kilo-29
Event Locker Area - Access Hallways
Winter, 1993
Day Three-Early Morning

In the cold and the dark I'd faced off against someone with an axe who'd been one step ahead of us all the time. I'd faced off against the enemy in the desert. I'd faced off against a lot of different threats over my life, and never flinched. I'd retreated, I'd backed off, but with the exception of Tandy, I'd never just plain ran.

With the chemical alarm wailing, I took off running.

I wasn't afraid of whoever it was on the other side of the airlock door. I wasn't afraid of the CIA agents. I wasn't even afraid of Bishop/Tandy anymore.

I was afraid of what I couldn't see.

Kincaid was pulling on his left glove, his gear still dropped on the floor behind him.

"Back out!" I yelled. "Kincaid, hurry the fuck up."

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit." Kincaid was saying under his mask. "oh god oh shit oh god oh shit"

I grabbed Kincaid's gear and waved at Shads. "Get to the door, open it up, we gotta get out of this hallway."

Shads nodded, and we waited for Kincaid to finish pulling his sleeves and pant legs over the gloves and boots. At least he hadn't had to use the 5 point tie boots, those took forever, and the military had replaced them with the wet-weather boots for both speed and ease of use.

Less than 180 seconds had passed.

I could hear the clock ticking in my head.

Were the vapors strong enough now to affect Kincaid? Had I been affected? Was my headache from the mine and after effects of my head injuries, or was I affected? Was the trembling I could see in Donaldson the beginning of the shakes from VX?

fuck fuck fuck

"Sergeant, the door won't open!" Shads called out.

Fuck. With the door to the inside of the hallway open, the door to the outside airlock on our side wouldn't engage.

"Pump it twice, real fast!" I yelled back.

Something screamed, rage and pain in the voice.

"I tried, it isn't doing anything!" I couldn't hear the panic in Shads voice, my fear not helping.

"Get ready!" I called out. "Hold your fire till I give the word." I brought my weapon around, pulling back on the charging handle and loading a round into the chamber of my rifle. "Don't let them get on you." I flicked it from safe to semi.

"Sergeant, what about..." Kincaid started. I could hear the panic in his voice.

"Worry about it later." I told him. "We've got enemy incoming."

"Ready, Sergeant." Kincaid told me. I dropped his gear and he snatched it up, pulling it on, and grabbing the rifle.

There was another screech, and the light at the corner went out.

"Here they come." Donaldson said.

"Shads, leave the bar in the locking position and get back here." I called out, checking the ceiling. There were no vents, the ceiling vaulted to help resist collapse.

They had to come down the hallway at us, or back off.

From the sounds of the screeching, they weren't backing off.

Another light shattered, plunging the corner into the hallway. Something glanced off the hallway wall and bounced to the floor. I tightened my grip of the handgrips of my weapon. Wearing a mask made the iron sights useless, but it didn't really matter to me. I was a shit shot with an M16 anyway, barely passing at the range after my first or second retry. I'd never shot Marksman or better on the first try in my entire career. I'd been to remedial ranges, even taken by Captain Bishop to the Rod & Gun Club every weekend for months while he tried to teach me to shoot the rifle right. When the bullets were flying, I was fine. In a rush on the enemy, I was fine. In the back of a truck firing at enemy light vehicles, I was fine. At the range... I just sucked.

One time we'd been out at an old farm, and Bomber had teased me that I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if I was inside it. I pointed at the barn, told him I could too. We'd put 5 rounds in a 30 round magazine, I'd walked into the barn after loading the rifle and switching it to semi.

And tripped

I'd accidentally pulled it to full auto, fallen forward, and my trigger finger went back.

All five rounds had went into the dirt.

I'd never lived it down.

Still, it was the rifle or nothing.

Something darted around the corner and I saw it throw something. The intact light between us went out.

"Steady." I said conversationally, lifting my M-203. "Shads, throw a flare on the next steady."

Over my over-loud breathing I could hear the skitter of claws on cement.

"Ready." I told them. They were getting closer.

"Steady." I closed my eyes. I heard Shads grunt and the white light could be seen through my eyelids.

"FIRE!" I opened my eyes.

They swarmed us, a mass I couldn't pick individual members out of, a mass that just poured around the corner all squat and low, hunchbacked and drooling. Their skin was red and raw, weeping, their noses were gone with only snot oozing holes in their faces. They had on black rags that shone with fluids draped on their bodies.

They held hatchets in their hands as they flinched from the light, caught between the flare Shads had thrown and us.

I started pulling the trigger, dropped down but not on my knees. Everyone else was firing, and someone was bellowing something that was drowned out by the punishing thunder of the weapons. The normal flat recoil was amplified by the tunnel, by the close quarters of the cement, turning into a roar that pounded at the ears and seemed to press my mask against my face.

Some lost arms. More went down as their blood shot from their backs. I clearly saw that one went down with its leg severed at the knee. There were those who went down with shattered heads.

They started screaming, their cries mixing with the deafening thunder of the rifles.

They'd started charging, and they learned a simple lesson about the modern age.

You do not charge into modern infantry weapons.

Movies make it seem like a bullet just magically stops when it hits a body. An M-16 was an assault rifle, designed to kill men, penetrate light cover, even disable vehicles. While a bullet starts to tumble, it would still punch straight through a body if it doesn't hit anything more than a bone. At the close ranges we were shooting, the bullets went straight through any of those things they hit, hitting any of them behind.

The only way someone with hand weapons beats someone with a firearm is if the person with the firearm lets them get close.

We didn't let them.

"Reloading!" I called out, the magazine dropping from my empty weapon. I'd participated in so many NBC rodeos over the years that reloading my weapon, hell, taking my weapon apart and putting it back together, chemical gloves or not, was reflex. The next magazine was out before the first had fallen to the floor and I slammed it in, slapped the bottom of the magazine, let the bolt slide home, and tapped the forward assist.

I resumed firing as the others reloaded, keeping the pressure on them, firing in front of them, leading the way I'd been trained, and moving the barrel in a short sideways figure-8, firing quick bursts to keep the recoil from getting ahead of me.

Maybe I sucked with a rifle, but in the close confined of the hallway, it didn't matter. Rounds that missed richoceted, howling around their end of the corridor. Even a round that shattered did damage, even a round that barely missed caused injury, as fragments sliced into them. The pictures lining the wall shattered, and blood and tissue spattered the cement the entire length of the hallway.

In seconds the hallway had turned into a charnel house.

And they were still coming.

The fact that it was an enclosed area wasn't in my head right as my hand dropped down to grab a grenade.

"TWO NINETEENTH!" I bellowed, my hand on the grenade sitting on my magazine pouch. The fact that there was no "Finish the fight!" answering me jerked me out of pulling the grenade free and killing all of us.

This isn't Desert Storm, dumbass!

Nancy's voice.

Oh, yeah...

They only got within 10 feet of us before they suddenly began turning around.

"Keep up the pressure!" I bellowed out, hoping they'd be able to hear me over the sound of the gunfire in the hallway and the ringing in their ears. I slapped the forward assist and kept shooting.

Only those furthest from us, closest to the corner, got away.

Within the space of a handful of seconds, just barely enough time to dump two and a half magazines, they were all down, only two twisting in agony as the echoes shuddered away. The far wall was cratered where the rounds had hit, but not as deep as I'd expected. An M-16 round will blow through a cinderblock, but they hadn't penetrated very far into the concrete.

My brain filed that information as I walked forward.

"Reload." I ordered, my voice sounding odd. My ears were ringing and my hearing was probably shot for a couple of days.

One of the ones twisting was crying out, an eerie wordless cry that was somehow less than human. It's insides had fallen from a ruptured abdomen and its claws were tearing into them as it mindlessly tore at itself in agony.

I put a single bullet into the bald earless head.

The second one reached up at me, snarling, its eyes slitted in hatred.

I put a single bullet between them.

"Kincaid, Wilkins, you're with me. The rest of you, fall back to the airlock, Donaldson, you're in charge." I raised my voice enough to be heard over stunned hearing, reloading myself.

Both of them caught up with me as I rounded the corner, skirting around the flare that was hissing angrily on the floor. The airlock was open but empty, the far door open to a dark hallway.

Something screamed in rage and hatred in the darkness.

"I OUGHTA COME IN THERE AND KILL EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF YOU!" I screamed back, stepping forward.

Instead I grabbed the lever, and pumped it down twice.

I wasn't going into the darkness, on their territory, without NVG's.

I was ugly, not dumb.

My hearing was screwed up enough I couldn't hear it thud into position as it just dropped. I pulled the bar back up and left it sticking straight out. The flare was burning merrily as I bent down and picked up the hatchet that one of them had thrown at the light.

It had an eagle surrounded by an arc of stars on each side, the weapon good steel and honed to a sharp edge. The handle was metal, and wrapped with leather colored plastic. On the bottom of the handle was serial number, only six numbers and letters long. No manufacturer markings I could see, which struck me as odd. The leather was stained and covered in some kind of blackish mucus-like substance.

I dropped it.

"Open the door, stay on the stick." I called out. Shads reached threw the lever down and the door shuddered before it started to lift. Donaldson knelt down, his rifle ready, and watched the gap rise. I checked the detector again. I couldn't tell if it was sounding off any more, the ringing in my ears the same pitch as the noise it had been making.

One flickering bar.

We went through the airlock, and I reset it and checked it again.

Nothing.

"oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" Kincaid was still saying. "My mouth feels dry. I think I'm shaking. Am I shaking?"

"You're fine." I told him, reaching up and pulling off my mask. The seal and the Event Locker stencil seemed off color to me, but then that could have just as easily been the dazzling from the muzzle flashes and the flare.

Was my mouth dry?

"Sergeant!" All of them yelled at once.

I hefted the detector. "We're clear." I looked at them. "We're OK. I don't think it was enough to get us." I hefted the detector again. "I have these cranked all the way up. We could have gotten a false reading."

"Really?" Kincaid stopped pacing.

"Yes. I've seen these things go off from diesel fumes." I grinned. "Hell, one time, during REFORGER 88 a female soldier squatted near one, took a piss, and it went apeshit, told us we were being hit with mustard gas. We practically rolled on the Russians over that."

"No way." Wilkins was laughing.

"Serious as a heart attack, man." I told him.

"Oh man, that pussy musta been foul." Donaldson said, reaching for his mask.

"Don't." I told him. "Keep 'em on till I've been OK at least 5 minutes." I shrugged. "Most expendable."

"I thought..." Shads shuffled for a second. "I was taught that lowest ranking pulls the mask."

I shook my head. "No. Not this time. You guys could get back, you could just hunker down with the Major and try to ride out till the doors are ready to unlock. You've got the door codes and the exit sequences, you could unlock the doors yourself."

"If we could just ride it out, why are we doing this?" Wilkins asked.

"Because we still have a mission." I told them. "I'm supposed to examine and evaluate this facility within my expertise and decide if it is worth rebuilding or if it should be stripped, imploded, and sealed up."

"What's your opinion so far?" Kincaid sounded like he was levelling out. Hell, I didn't blame him, he didn't panic, and my asshole sure slammed shut when that chemical detector went off.

"My opinion?" They nodded, and I grinned at them. "Pull back and nuke it from orbit."

"It's the only way to be sure." Kincaid finished, and everyone chuckled, even Donaldson, who didn't really get the joke.

"We going to try another way?" Shads asked.

"Yeah." I told him. "We're going to cut through the Deep Storage, I'm going to look for something." I waved at the wall, the motion encompassing the whole facility. "I know just the fucking thing to even the odds."

"What?" Kincaid asked.

"Trust me, Kincaid, you'll find out when I find it." I told him. Kincaid was big enough, had enough endurance, and hell, looked and acted like the type who'd enjoy what I had planned.

Fuck those cannibal cocksuckers. They got to die.

"What is it?" Kincaid sounded like he'd just come downstairs and found his stocking filled with hookers.

"I made a mistake." I admitted. "I fucked up big time, and I think I might have gotten us in trouble because of it?"

"Fuck you're mistake, what is it?" Kincaid wasn't about to be diverted.

"I figured there'd only be between ten and thirty cannibals, maybe five to six groups." I said, holding up my hand to silence Kincaid before he started jumping up and down. "I took a quick guess count. We just killed about fifty motherfuckers."

"Warriors." Wilkins guessed.

"More than likely." I agreed. "So, if they're willing to throw away that many warriors in one shot at us, what does that tell you?"

"There's a metric fuckton more." Donaldson said.

"Bingo." I nodded. Then I jerked my thumb at the hallway. "So we're gonna go get something for Kincaid to even the odds."

"What is it? Is it a missile launcher?" Kincaid asked.

"Dude, calm down before you wet yourself." Wilkins told him.

"You were serious. You're actually having fun." Natchez accused Kincaid.

"Fuck yeah I am!" Kincaid said behind his mask. "Come on, killer cannibals, killer CIA agents, like, the coolest squad leader ever, and an underground base right out of a fucking comic book! What isn't fun?"

"But we might get killed." Wilkins reminded him.

"Fuck that. They die like any other motherfucker." Kincaid told him. I leaned against the heavy door, content to let Kincaid run himself out. "We're fucking soldiers, we go out and fight when we're told to. Ant told us to fight, so we fight. This beats the shit out of dying in some Third World shit hole."

"But, weren't they Americans?" Shads asked.

"Were, man, were." Kincaid told him. "Did you see those cock suckers? They filed their teeth. They're all fucked up from whatever the CIA did to them."

"It's still murder." Wilkins said.

"The fuck it is!" Kincaid told the other man. "Those assholes went to town on my face. They fucking tried to eat one of our guys." He stepped forward. "One of those assholes tried to gnaw its way through my goddamn Kevlar, and I don't think it was because he thought I was hot and wanted to suck my nipples." He pointed at the door. "They used to be Americans. They used to be people. Now they're goddamn cannibal mutants."

"Now they're the enemy." Donaldson said quietly.

Everyone just turned and stared at him.

"They tried to kill us in the garage." He continued. "They've killed god knows how many other people. I half expected them to drop from the ceiling or some shit on the lift. They aren't human any more." He shook his head. "They're just the enemy."

Kincaid pulled off his mask, one of his stitches popping and a trickle of blood running down his face. "They did this to me. Nobody does some shit like this to me and gets to brag about it."

I noticed he wrapped it properly when he put it away.

"You guys can unmask." It was redundant, but it reminded them that I was in charge.

"So what is it?" Kincaid swerved right back to Christmas.

"You'll see." I told him, limping toward the intersection.

"Are you wounded, Sergeant?" Shads asked me.

"You know that thing that drug that guy through the doorway?" I asked.

"Yeah." Shads answered.

"It broke my knee the same year I cut my acting CO's throat in the snow after he attacked me and a couple of other people with an axe." I told them.

There was shocked silence as we walked down the hallway.

"Dude, your Army sucks." Kincaid said.

"That's Sergeant, Private Kincaid, not 'dude'." The effect was spoiled by my laughter though.

"You didn't really..." Wilkins said.

"He tied me to a chair and interrogated me. He attacked us with an axe. He facilitated the attempted rape of one of my troops. He was directly responsible for the deaths of multiple soldiers." I told them, wiping my forehead. Even in the chill of the deeper tunnels, MOPP 3 was fucking hot. "I should have killed him days before, but held off for stupid reasons that sounded like good ones at the time."

"Jesus." Someone breathed.

"Jesus had nothing to do with my old unit." I growled as we approached the intersection.

The hair started to raise on the back of my neck.

...Christ, Ant, he's in here with us... Catherine was hunkered down by wall, her rifle in her hands, snow on her uniform and ice in her hair. She was chattering, dressed only in the winter BDU's.

At the far end of the hallway darkness suddenly covered the access door.

"RUN!" I yelled, turning the corner and limping down the hallway to Deep Storage as fast as I could.

"Why?" Natchez asked.

"Just run!" Donaldson yelled. I could tell by his voice he was right behind me. Kincaid got right next to me.

"Oh shit, it's him, isn't it?" Kincaid asked, keeping pace with me. Donaldson pulled up on my left.

"Anytime it goes dark for no reason, assume it's him and run." I told them.

"What are we running from?" Wilkins asked.

"Smurfs." Kincaid tossed over his shoulder. "Now smurfing run!"

The tunnel twisted and turned, reminding me again that the whole fucking site was probably built around an existing cave system. Mocking laughter followed us as ran, drowning out our bootheels but not our breathing.

Three hundred paces. We had to be deep in the mountain. Down where it was dark and cold.

...we'd killed each other in the dark and cold in an orgy of violent revenge and raw hot sweet hatred...

We came around the last gentle corner and slid to a stop in front of the Deep Storage Locker door.

The door was massive, big enough to drive a vehicle through, unlike the Event Locker. The Continuity of Government Seal was at least six feet wide, and the strokes of the stenciled letters that read "DEEP STORAGE-Site KILO-29" were a foot thick. The keypad was there, but I'd written down Agent Killian's codes, and the first one I typed in was an instant go.

When we hit the bar, sirens echoed through the cavern.

"Think they know we're here?" Kincaid asked.

"Shut up, Kincaid." It was becoming reflex.

The door drew up slowly, the thumping of the hydraulics a physical thing that pressed on the eardrums, pushed on the eyeballs, and made the internal organs resonate. The door was three feet thick, set at least a foot into the floor, and it looked like it was set at least a foot deep into the walls. I could see a heavily greased gear toothed track in the middle about a six inches wide, that weird crusted look on the grease that it gets after a long time. The door was probably steel lined with a concrete core, although we'd found a door that one of the Air Force techs told us was some kind of alloy that made just the door worth several million dollars, so I wasn't putting any bets on just steel.

I ducked down and tried to get a look at the other side and was rewarded with a face full of medal plate with yellow and black striping on the edges.

When it was halfway up I turned around to face behind us. The light on the gentle curve of the corner was getting dimmer. Something tickled my face and I brushed it away irritatably.

"Holy shit." Someone, maybe Natchez said softly enough that I barely heard it over the hydraulics.

"It's snowing." Donaldson said, pitching his voice loud enough to be heard.

"Sergeant?" Shads sounded worried.

Fuck, I was worried.

"He's coming." I said, turning around and hammering on the door. "Come on, you big bastard, hurry the fuck up!"

The door ignored me.

"Jesus, look at that." Kincaid said.

When I turned back to look, I could see what he was talking about. It was snowing in the corridor. Not heavily, but noticably. And the entire arched ceiling was slowly covering with ice, the tendrils starting at the corner and slowly moving toward us. The walls were starting to glitter with frost.

"Can we kill it?" Wilkins asked.

"No." I told him, then turned around and glared at the door as if I could make it lift up faster just by staring at it hard enough.

"It's getting darker." Donaldson said. I glanced back and looked.

The lightbulbs were dimming, the ones farthest away only putting out enough light to see that they existed, they did nothing to light up the darkness that was starting to fill up the corner.

Natchez raised up his rifle, and I knocked the barrel downwards and turned on him. "Don't be fucking stupid." I told him.

"I just know there's more of Kincaid's fucking cannibals on other side of this fucking door." Wilkins said.

"They're not my goddamn cannibals, so fuck you." Kincaid told him.

Wilkins opened his mouth to say something when the voice came down the hallway on a spray of glittering frost.

"Kiiiiincaaaaid..." It was low, and liquid, and just plain wrong. It slithered through the thumps of the hydraulics, an almost oily serpentine sound you could almost see.

"FUCK YOU!" Kincaid yelled down the hallway.

The door was almost all the way up.

"Sssssshaaaaadsssss...." Again, and Shads jerked like someone had pinched him.

"Sergeant?"

"FUCK YOU, TANDY! GO HOME!" I yelled in the same voice I used to be heard over the roar of gunfire.

A long exhale, sounding pleased, was audible over the thumping of the hydraulics.

With a bone rattling thud the door locked into position.

"Wiiiiilkiiiinssss...." Tandy/Bishop whispered.

The internal door shuddered, and I told myself it was the vibration of the air that made two of the bulbs in the hallway explode in sparks.

"Get ready to run." I told them. Visibility was dropping fast.

The internal door pulled back in less than five seconds.

"GO GO GO GO!" I yelled, turnign around and grabbing a handy dandy OD green baseball with a yellow stripe around it. The others ran by me as I yanked the pin out.

"FUCK YOU, TANDY!" I yelled, and threw it as hard as I could, geting a good lob on it, and jumped through the door way.

There was the standard bar, but best of all, there was a red button behind glass.

I threw the bar twice, and the steel inner door slammed shut.

If the grenade went off, we didn't hear it.

We could feel the outer door closing, the vibration of it hammering at the air so hard that it made the walls seem to dance.

There was a knock from the other side of the door.

"Ant?" It was Catherine's voice.

I wasn't the only one staring at the door.

"Ant, please, open the door, I'm freezing to death. My baby is going to freeze to death." We could faintly hear her weeping, even over the almost prehistoric sound of the hydraulics.

I turned my back on Taggart's voice.

The lights had come on to reveal a concrete hallway with a nice set of stencils on it that handily gave us color coordinated lines to "VEHICLE STORAGE", "PREFAB STORAGE", "INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIR", "CIVILIAN AREA", and exactly what I was hoping for.

"MILITARY DEEP STORAGE LOCKER"

Hoo fucking ah.

I started jogging down the hallway, smiling to myself.

"Sergeant?" Wilkins asked as we moved far enough away that we could hear ourselves think.

"What?" I asked, well, snarled to be exact.

"How could we hear..."

I cut him off. "It doesn't make sense. It never has." I told him.

"Did you know her?" Shads asked.

"Yeah."

"Did she die?" Shads sounded worried.

"No, she didn't. I saw her a few months back." I told them.

"Christ it's cold in here." Wilkins bitched. "Did it start snowing because of the door opening and letting this cold out?"

"Sure, why not." I answered. The red line took the second left, and I followed it. The hallway ended in another blast door, this one with all kinds of signs that warned me that if I didn't belong here I'd get my ass shot off.

Big deal. I'd helped put up those signs in places.

The doorway was thick, but not nearly as thick as some of the other's we'd seen. A nice blast door, but it was went up in less than 30 seconds and didn't have an airlock on the other side.

"They're not kidding, are they?" Natchez wasn't asking.

There were stencils and lines, and I knew without asking which ones he was asking about. I didn't care about either of them, I was more interested in the one that read "PRIMARY DEEP STORAGE MILITARY ARMORY" than the two everyone's attention was fixated on.

"No way." Wilkins tossed in.

"Yesterday, I'd have said that." Kincaid said. "Now, oh fuck yeah."

"Just ignore it." I told them. "It's one of the reasons they sent me."

We walked past the two stencils, and I could feel them breathe a sigh of relief when we turned and the two lines went on without us.

They were something I would have to check out.

Or, someplace I'd go to get what I needed to make this goddamn place a fucking smoking hole in the middle of the mountain.

"I don't know how this place is going to be laid out." I warned them outside the door that led into the armory. "I've got an idea, but nothing sure positive." I punched in Agent Killain's code and the door opened nice and smooth.

"Hail Mary, full of grace." Kincaid said, pointing at the wall.

For the first time we weren't being mocked with a framed piece of plexiglass with a sticker that said "YOU ARE HERE" over a bare wall.

There was an honest to God map of the Armory on the wall.

"Look at the size of this place." Donaldson said.

"That's what I want. Kincaid, get it out." I told him. "And if you rip it, I swear to God I'll beat you to death with my cock."

Kincaid just grinned, and carefully edged it out of the plexi.

Thanks to the map, it only took about an hour for us to rearm, and for me to get what I was after.

"Seriously, Sergeant, I get this?" Kincaid asked when I popped the banding on the box. Just the nomenclature was giving him a steel hard boner.

"Yup." I told him, popping the catches. I lifted the lid, then pulled the foam aside. "Ain't they the prettiest ladies you ever seen?"

Kincaid looked like he was going to spray jizz all over the contents of the shipping container.

"It's all you, baby." I told him. "Manual's on the lid, put her together and give her a PMCS. Natchez, you're with him, the rest of you, come with me."

"Where are we going?" Wilkins asked, staring at the container's contents in horror, contents which Kincaid was stroking like other men stroked their wive's thighs.

"We're getting Kincaid ammunition." I told them.

Fuck defensive. I was trained for offensive.

The things the CIA had made out of normal people were a goddamn biological and chemical threat to the civilians that lived on and around this mountain.

In the playbook, I had an option. According to the playbook, cut off from communication with my superiors I had doctrine that told me what I was permitted to do.

Ruthless, inhuman doctrine that required those who followed it to do ruthless and inhuman things.

That was all right. Without Heather and the baby, I wasn't really human anyway.

...vile nasty stupid boy...

I was going to use that doctrine to bring war and suffering to the enemy. God help them if the CIA got in my fucking way.

Kincaid was going to love it.