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

Part 36

Site Kilo-29
Winter, 1993
Day Three-Night

The kid on the ground was done, even if his eyes were open and rolling in the sockets, even if his mouth was open in a soundless scream. The three crouched over him had savaged him with their blades, tearing him apart and completely severing his arm.

I drew my pistol from behind my back and shot him between the eyes, switching aim and firing three times more.

Post Pistol Team Competition Powers activate!

All three of them took bullets directly through the forehead, but all they did was take one step forward toward us.

"Burn 'em down, Kincaid!" I bellowed out over the snow.

He didn't need told twice, bringing up the ejector and triggering it.

I shot the kid in the head before Kincaid triggered the flame-thrower. I wasn't going to let the kid burn alive, fuck that. I'd have tried to save him, but he was dead and just didn't know it yet.

The bar of flame took the three of them, melting them like snow hit with a hot water hose. Kincaid moved forward, the weird stagger-step he'd come to use while deploying the flame-thrower, and washed the bar of fire across the dead Private.

Steam billowed out as the snow was instantly converted to steam, enveloping us, freezing to us, only to be layered on thicker as more steam covered us.

"Door's open! Everyone fall back!" The Major shouted.

"What about James and Smith?" Someone else yelled.

"James is gone!" Kincaid shouted, letting his finger off the trigger.

The snow swirled around us, and my balls started to hurt from the cold.

"Fuck 'em, they're gone!" Someone else shouted.

"Sergeant, here." It was Donaldson, he had the surgical kit. I grabbed it and pulled the sling over my head, letting it fall against the side of my ass.

"Here, Sergeant." Shads. He plopped my helmet on my head and I quickly strapped it. Between the ice and the snow, we couldn't see shit.

Without being told Kincaid started moving forward, Shads taking position just behind his left shoulder. The igniter was sputtering and popping, from lack of fuel or the snow, I couldn't tell. I could see the gauges at the back of the tank.

He had less than 10% of a tank left, and the other tank was reading empty.

"Are we falling back with the others?" Donaldson asked. The hallway was full of snow, driven by a wind that was shrieking through the hallway, making speech almost impossible. The snowflakes cut and bit on the exposed flesh of my face and my hands were already going numb.

"We've got one more." I yelled back.

"I see him, he's finished, Sergeant." Kinciad called out.

Two shadows detached from the snow, moving on Kincaid, arms outstretched, lunging at him from either side.

Shads kicked one back, lifting up his rifle and firing twice, both bullets taking it in the head. It slid down the wall as Donaldson stepped forward and swung his rifle in a basic training perfect buttstroke, the butt of the rifle taking the thing in the middle of the face with a crack. It dropped, and Donaldson put a bullet into the back of its head.

The one Shads had shot pulled its legs up and began trying to struggle up, using the wall as leverage.

"Get back. Get back!" Kincaid burned down something in front of us, cut the bar off, then swung it around as he backpedaled. Shads got out of the way, and Donaldson shot it again as it tried to rise up. Kincaid washed the fire over the first one, then the second, the flame throwing up sheets of steam that reeked of cooked human flesh and scorched blood.

"Fall back, back to the others." I turned, just in time to see another one lunge out of the room, swinging a knife at me. Its eyes were black pits, the gleaming eyes frost covered, and its mouth open in a snarl that revealed blood frosted teeth. I blocked the knife, thrust the pistol out, into the open mouth, and pulled the trigger. It dropped, two teeth shattering on the pistol's barrel as its jaw death spasmed.

We couldn't see anything in the hallway, just blindly moving forward, hoping we didn't end up going through a room door. Three times more shadows came out of rooms, hungrily reaching for us, and three times we dropped them with bullets, Kincaid burning the bodies as we moved past.

Another shadow appeared in front of us, and I lifted up my pistol at the same time as Donaldson raised his rifle.

"Don't shoot, Sergeant. Oh fuck, don't shoot!" The kid was standing in the airlock, both doors open. I dropped my pistol down, but all Donaldson was shift his aiming point to the left of the kid.

"Throw the bar, Shads." I said. My muscles were trembling, fatigue and adrenaline making the nerves sing.

With the ear splitting clattering of something blown out, the door started to lower in fits and starts, jerking as it did so. I turned to look out through the closing door, moving up next to Kincaid.

"My baby's almost done." Kincaid hollered over the din. I just nodded.

Out of the blinding snow a figure appeared, standing defiantly, obscured by the flurries of snowflakes around it.

Dressed in frost covered desert BDU's. Grey skin glittering. Eyes like two holes in his face. Jagged, broken teeth that looked more like a mouthful of meat tearing teeth than anything human. Arms that were too long, with the hands down by the knees, extending at least six inches past the frayed and frozen cuffs of the BDU blouse. The fingers too long for a human hand, the flesh on the ends missing to reveal the ends of the fingerbones, sharpened somehow into claws.

And the smile. The mouth was jerked up into a rictus, exposing all of his teeth and the blackened gums, the flesh wasn't bunched from the muscles pulling, the face slack and dead beneath the grin.

Tandy/Bishop stood in front of us, mostly obscured by the snow, still visible as the door slowly and jerkily dropped down.

My shoulder throbbed once and went numb, cold spreading out of the shoulder joint, down my arm, and into my chest.

"EAT THIS!" Kincaid half screamed, raising up the flamethrower ejector and squatting down. He hit the trigger, the igniter bringing up the sputtering blue flame and the hoses on the back of the tanks shaking, tapping against the tanks, valves, and frame.

Fire sprayed from the ejector before it sputtered out. Less than a 10th of a second worth the flame before the whole thing cut out. Kincaid shouted in pain, pulling his hands off the flame-thrower ejector and letting it fall by the strap.

I could see where he'd left skin behind on the frost covered metal.

The flame hit Tandy/Bishop square, the burning fuel catching him in the chest, and fire bloomed, covering him in an instant.

There was a low, liquid chuckle as the fire wreathed figure took a step toward us.

"close close close close close" Shads, almost a religious mantra.

"shit shit shit shit" Donaldson, barely audible.

"DIE, GODDAMN IT!" Me. I raised up the pistol and began pulling the trigger, aiming center mass at the fire coated figure that was moving toward us. Each shot went where I was aiming it.

It was then I realized that the snow had gotten thicker, not fatter snowflakes, but more of the sharp-edged almost microscopic snowflakes that cut and bit like tiny razors when they found exposed flesh.

The flames began guttering as Tandy/Bishop took another step toward us.

The slide on my pistol locked back, the weapon empty.

Tandy/Bishop took another step, and the fire went all the way out.

He was unharmed, his uniform not even singed by the heat.

Something gave in the door with a loud crack, and the door slammed down, hitting the slot hard enough that it vibrated the air. The lights in the airlock blew out, glass and sparks shooting out. Shads yelled and pawed at his sleeve where sparks had landed on his frozen clothing. In the hallway, where the Major was leading his men toward the motorpool, the lights burst, plunging the whole hallway into darkness. Right before the lights went out, I saw the vents starting to spew snow into the hallway, and the temperature began dropping fast.

Another chuckle sounded in the darkness.

"Fall back, Shads, stick with Kincaid." Shads nodded, pulling the rifle off his back and handing it to Kincaid. He must have grabbed Kincaid's rifle when we pulled out of the room.

"Shit, he's coming, isn't he?" Donaldson's flashlight threw crazy shadows around the hallway and turned the other men into half-formed monsters.

"Holy shit, did you fucking see that? I hit him fucking square." Kincaid said, clenching his fists and wincing. "I fucking hit him square. Why isn't he dead?"

"Because he's not human any more." Bomber said from beside us. His flashlight was on, but wasn't doing shit to strip away the darkness.

"Just like old times, eh, Ant?" Nancy grinned at me. The skin on her cheeks and nose was peeling, the flesh beneath looked bruised. "Goddamn I like this boy." She reached out and stroked Kincaid's cheek. "Watching him run that flamethrower makes me wetter than hell."

"Did someone say something?" Kincaid asked. His eyes looked a little wild.

I shook my head.

"Huh, I could have sworn I heard a woman's voice." He mumbled.

"Sound off!" the Major yelled out as we moved through the darkness. Shads cracked chemlight and handed it to the kid that had gotten stuck at the airlock with us. The dim blue light made his face look corpse-like, and his expression looked like he was going to be sick.

We all shouted out our names, one after another, a reflex hammered into us in Basic Training.

"Let's go, we're falling back to the vehicles." he said. "Sergeant Ant, take the lead, I don't want us getting lost."

"Kincaid, you and Shads pull drag. Don't fuck around." I thought fast, then grinned. "Shoot to wound. Go for his knees, that might slow him down."

The snow was getting thicker in the darkness as we moved through the crowd of what was left of the Major's team, bumping into them in the darkness as we moved up to the Major.

"What the fuck is going on?" The Major asked.

"Something new." I told him. I dug a pack of smokes out of my pocket, grimacing at the red smears on the cellophane revealed in the light of my flashlight.

"And that's bad." Donaldson finished. I nodded as I pulled out a cigarette.

"When we get to the motorpool, I want to know what the hell is going on." He told me. I nodded, and lit the cigarette. The lighter's flame barely illuminated the cigarette, and for a split second I even wondered if the cigarette would light. The flame puffed out on my second drag and wouldn't relight, leaving me to try to get the cigarette to stay lit with just a small bit.

"Snow. Fucking snow from the vents." I heard the Major say as I moved up into the darkness.

"Hold up, Sergeant." Shads said. His voice was no longer quiet and sad, but had an edge to it. An edge I'd gotten used to hearing in 2/19th when it came down to survival at any costs. The edge that replaces a young man or young woman's nervousness and insecurity when they realize that only are they in terrible danger, but they can survive if they just hold it all together.

I stopped, and felt Shads hands at my back, high up between my shoulder blades where the chest straps of my LBE looped over my shoulders to meet up. After a second he patted the top of my helmet.

"Got the glowstick on there, Sergeant." He told me.

"You're a good troop, Private Shads." I told him.

"Fuck yeah he is, boy stuck with you the whole way." Bomber said. "Goddamn it's dark in here."

"It's because we're underground, you inbred hick." Nancy told him. "Christ."

"Nancy." Taggart's voice held that edge of disapproval she used to pull us back in line. Nancy flushed.

"Sorry, John."

"Really, Sergeant?" Shads asked. I glanced at him, through the snow flurries, to see he was blushing.

"Yeah. Glad you've got my back." I told him, stopping at the next airlock and throwing the bar. The sound of the hydraulics kicking in made the air tremble.

Behind us the men with the Major were talking to each other nervously. The Major was letting them talk, get it out of their system, since talking about it would take the edge off of the panic, allow them to categorize it and process it. Their voices didn't sound paniced, but I could hear the stress in it.

They were worried about their immediate survival, angry that they'd been attacked, and grimly determined not to be the next ones to die.

That was good. Anger kept you going, anger kept you from lapsing into depression and making you easy to take down.

The airlock door raised up and Shads and I led the way to the motorpool. Corridors were covered with frost, but after that airlock we didn't encounter snow blowing from the ventilation systems or wind plucking and pulling at us.

Several times we had to stop for the wounded to catch their breath. Once I gave the kid with the bandaged face and the one with the sloppy trach each a Vicoden to keep him going. Blood loss, exhaustion, and pain were taking its toll on the kid, but when I asked him if he was good to go he gave me a thumbs up. The other kid, the one with the trach tube I'd sloppily done just hefted his rifle with a grin and mouthed 'good to go' when I asked him if he was ready.

Entering the motorpool I half expected to find it waist deep in snow, with a thick sheet of ice coating everything. My imagination conjured up the creatures that had once been men trapped in the ice, entombed alive underneath thick glacier-like protrusions, their eyes unblinking but still seeing.

Watching us with barely restrained hunger and rage.

Instead it was cavernous, dark, and filled with silent vehicles. We'd entered through the side door, coming face to face with Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicles, all of us moving quickly into the room and shutting the door behind us, leaving the bar extended in hopes of locking it.

There were only a few lights on, and only a handful kicked on when the door had opened, leaving most of the huge motorpool sunk in darkness. Everyone started to move forward quickly, but I held up my fist in a stopping motion and the Major hushed them, telling them to slow down and keep their eyes out, to watch their flanks.

I listened for a long moment. Bomber and Nancy both were scanning the darkness, and Heather had lifted up on her tiptoes, arms spread out, and eyes closed as she absorbed the entire motorpool around her. Kincaid had dropped his nightvision goggles down and was scanning, while Donaldson was looking at the pools of light out of the corner of his eyes, and Shads was checking out what he could of the roof.

"I don't like this, brother." Bomber told me, and I nodded in return. Something didn't feel right, but I couldn't put my fingers on it. "Feels like the Warfighter Tunnels ambush." I nodded again.

"You're right, Sergeant, I think we're walking into an ambush." Kincaid said softly. I looked at him oddly, but he didn't notice. I noticed that Shads and Donaldson glanced at him, Shads' look was curious, but Donaldson's was a little worried.

"Kincaid, take left. Shads, drop back to about five meters in front of the main body, Donaldson, take right." I stepped forward. "I'll take point, watch my back, keep an eye on the ceiling." They all nodded and let me move up, my pistol back behind my back and the knives tucked away. My rifle looked like crap, and somehow the handgrip of the underslung M-203 had developed a long crack in it. The square forward receiver handgrip had a hole or two where the pieces between the ventilation holes had broken free.

I had no idea how that had happened.

Off in the distance I heard a scraping sound, something brushing against carc paint, not bare metal, not concrete. A faint clink echoed softly, barely audible. A low growl came from in the darkness, an unconscious sound, but made by something living.

Less than a 100 steps and I saw my breath steam out in front of me. A glance over my shoulder showed me that I could see the breath from the other soldiers behind me. Kincaid was frowning, and he let go of his rifle, letting it fall on the sling, and reached out to grab the ejector of the flamethrower. It was an unconscious movement, reassuring himself it was there. I saw his shoulders tense for a second before he let go of the ejector and grabbed his rifle again.

Past the Bradleys and into the rows of heavy cargo trucks. Frost was starting to glitter, not exactly a layer, but more like a feeling of frost, the glimmer on the edges of sight.

A shadow darted between the gaps of two of the cargo trucks, keeping pace with us.

"Stay sharp." I said softly.

Another shadow darted through the darkness in front of us, and I saw the glint of metal held close to it.

"Hand weapons." Bomber said softly, narrowing his eyes. "Watch for crossbow bolts, that pack hasn't attacked in a while. One of those in the throat and you'll be pushing up daisies."

I nodded, moving forward.

We crossed from the cargo trucks to the old M113 APC's, and in the time it had taken for us to move up several rows and cross two the frost had gone from a faint suggestion to a full glittering sheath that coated the vehicles, the ceiling, and the cement floor.

Everything rippled, like I was surrounded by clear Jello, and suddenly I found myself back in 2/19th, staggering through the motorpool, the sky blue and clear above us with clouds around us, no wind brushing at the hip deep snow...

...my side felt like it was on fire, my guts twisting and burning, harsh pain in tune with my hammering heartbeat stabbing me low on the right side. my face was still with frozen blood and my eyes were open, watering in the sunlight sparkling off of the snow. the sun was setting, painting everything purple, red, and pink, the clouds from the storm earlier in the day like cotton candy.

...bomber drug me through the snow, panting with the effort of pulling me after him, dragging me by my LBE and my arm thrown over his shoulder. my dislocated shoulder turned my arm into a bar of fire.

...i was aware i was making noise, trying to talk, but sounding like a babbling infant. something was disconnected in my head, keeping me from talking normally. my thoughts were sluggish and kept disconnecting.

...'tradoc tradoc! barn swallow! red grass! peach grease!' i mumbled as he drug me forward.

...'just hang on, brother, we've got you.' bomber was telling me in wisps of blue cotton candy that flowed from his lips and evaporated, leaving behind the smell of hot popcorn. a dragon looped through the clouds on wings of gossamer.

...spiders made of fire crawled over my abdomen, chewing into my flesh and disappearing into my side, where they began to lay eggs inside of me. eggs that hatched into smaller spiders that began gnawing at my insides, burrowing around, chasing each other through the webwork of gnawed tunnels and passages, giggling like little girls playing tag as their fiery feet skittered through my insides.

...'he's bleeding bad, Nagle, i think he's dying.' stokes' voice, sped up like a chipmunk. the words appeared in front of me, carved out of crystal, and shattered into snowflakes that swirled around me smelling of cherries.

...'he'll be fine, i'll take care of him.' nancy's voice, echoing in my head. the words marched up my cheeks like ants, crawled into my ears, and burrowed into the frozen gears and springs inside my skull, the smell of my Father's chili wafting from the gears to my nostrils.

...'he should be fucking dead. that explosion should have killed him.' riley, his voice warped and distorted. his words appeared in front of me, made of blue fire that dripped frost and reeked of ausbach.

...gobbets of brain began dribbling out of my nose, freezing in the cold, becoming tiny chips of ice that i could see tiny memories inside. i tried to stop to pick them up but bomber pulled me forward, and I wept tears that sang bittersweet lullabies as they slid down my face leaving behind green chemlight trails.

...the vehicles were coated with a thick layer of ice, with snow seeds embedded in the top layer, turning then all into fairy dust coated things of magic and wonder. my eyes kept playing over their fierce and brutal lines, marveling at their beauty. they smelled of strawberries and taggart's perfume.

...'not my boy, he's tougher than that fucking .' bomber, gasping with effort. 'mew me-ow meow mew meow me-ow mew meeeeow meooooow.'

...'he'll be fine. just get him into the motorpool i've got an aid bag stashed in there and I can number his gears so that we can reboot him and install a twinkie powered generator into his thoracic cavity and restart the lizard that lives in the back of his head and dances.' nancy's voice, bubbling up from under water beneath the snow that swirled around my feet warm and comforting, the bubbles shrugging free of the snow in tiny sprays of glittering ruby regrets with the voice of my mother to drift in front of me and popping to release small pale fairies that fluttered and danced on the snow around us, leaving tiny little footprints. their laughter smelled like cordite.

...'THEY'LL COME WHEN THE SUN RISES! FOR BEHOLD, THINE ENEMIES SHALL FALL ON THEE WHILST THINE EYES ARE BLINDED BY THE GLORY OF THE RISING SUN!' stokes bellowed, her voice echoing around the mountain. above us the glacier cracked and shivered, groaning as it split and settled.

...'then and we'll when they .' bomber looked at me, his whiskers twitching and his tongue running over needle sharp teeth, his hot breath reminding me of mre koolaid.

...the fairies scattered from in front us, taking flight on iridescent insect wings, putting their diminutive hands into the pouches at their waists, their only clothing on their perfectly shaped bodies, and sprinkled more dust on the vehicles, creating works of art made from diamond that smelled of dryer warm blankets.

...'it's war, stokes, and sometimes people die. ant knows that.' nancy's grinding clattering wind up voice made the sun start weeping as it set behind the lego mountain capped with vanilla bean crunch ice cream, pearly tears drifting from its coldly burning face to coalesce into the moon, which wept in the voice of my sister. her voice smelled of my Father's cologne as we passed a chevy blazer in the middle of the field of blameless snow that tandy slept beneath with his stomach full of warm red meat that screamed in weaton's voice and warmed his cold flesh with the gibbering fear that he'd drank deeply from kelly.

...the snow on the side of the cuc-v shivered, something waking up, something that smelled of hatred and rage, something that made blood bubbles boil up from the snow and then pop, spattering the cuc-v and the snow with tiny pinpricks of ruby that sang iron maiden's wasted years in my brother's voice

out of the snow it surged up with a wild violin solo, Lunging at ME from beside cUC-V twenty-9, the spear that sang in elmer FudD's voice held tight in its rePtile scaleDddddD hands. It lunged at me, the SpeaR anglangangangled UP to strike me in the throat in the throat in the

"ENEMY CONTACT!" Kincaid's voice roared out and the snow shivered and quaked, the motorpool building crumpled and collapsed and the mountain crumbled with the sigh of a lover and it all shattered, leaving behind the frost covered motorpool.

And the thing in front of me, lunging at me with the spear, intending on hitting me in under the chin and driving the butcher knife lashed to the metal pole up into my brain.

not today, motherfucker... my voice in my head, and only my voice.

I blocked the spear with the rifle by bringing it up into the shaft of the spear to deflect up. I roared, no words, just pure rage as the adrenaline trickled down my spine, the pain and exhaustion vanishing as everything crystallized and the doubt, fear, and everything else was swept away. As everything became right again in the world.

It was a male, dressed in tattered rags with a necklace made of some kind of twisted cord and festooned with fingerbones around its neck. Its eyes were bulging, bloodshot, the whites looking more like grease fried eggs than anything else. Snaggled, broken, and sharpened teeth filled its mouth as it screamed its hatred and rage at me.

Weapons fire cracked behind me, the sound doubling and redoubling as it bounced off the concrete walls and ceiling.

The spear lifted up and went by my head over my right shoulder as I stepped close, getting inside the spear's reach, my rifle already swinging forward to smash against its side. It staggered to the side, dropping the spear, which bounced off my shoulder, and before it could regain its footing I pulled the barrel of my rifle up over my shoulder and then drove the butt plate into its face with everything I had.

It went down with a crunching noise, knocked backwards by the force of the blow. The snot encrusting nose vanishing. Another came at me from the side, and I brought the weapon around, snapping off two shots. Both missed, and it came in low, a knife in each hand, and I knew it was going to try to take out my leg. I fired twice more, missing both times, and knew it was too close for me to drop my rifle and grab my pistol.

Another gunshot and it crumpled, a glance showed me Donaldson firing past me.

I let my rifle drop and pulled out my .45, dropping the spent magazine into my hand and pushing it into a pocket and reloading as quickly as I could. When I pulled back the upper receiver I managed to slice my thumb somehow, but didn't pay any attention as I looked around me.

Over a dozen lay dead, only one from me.

"You're losing it, brother. Get it together." Bomber chided me from where he was crouched down on top of the M-113, looking around.

I shook my head wearily, trying to force back the pounding headache at the back of my skull. It had crept up on me slowly, and I hadn't even noticed how bad it was. The lights that still worked made my head hurt even worse as the dim light jabbed into my eyes.

"You all right, Sergeant?" The Major. Major Kendricks, from First Magazine Platoon, the former Marine who...

wait

Major Darson, someone who was in over his head. Someone who someone else decided was just as expendable as all the privates gathered around him.

Just as expendable as me.

Murdered by someone who was trying to take Heather and the babies away.

Boiling hot rage filled me, coating my mouth with the taste of iron and copper, and my headache twinged once and vanished. My limbs stopped shaking and my back straightened, the crushing weight of my gear vanishing.

"I think so, Major." I answered. "Let's hurry it up, before the get their courage up to come at us again."

"You heard the Sergeant, double time it, men." Major Darson's voice snapped with command, with the ingrained authority that had been missing when I first met him. "Reload on the move, even if the magazine isn't fully expended. Keep your eyes on the flanks."

I started jogging, feeling good, feeling right.

"Scan the ceiling." Major Darson reminded everyone.

A few minutes and the vehicles came into view, sitting by the door.

One look at them and someone behind me let out a groan.

The windshields were smashed in, the hoods were open, sometimes torn off the hinges, other times a huge hole ripped into the fiberglass to expose the engines. My brain picked out two alternators, a tangle of fuel lines, a valve cover, and the front pulley wheels on the ground.

Every single vehicle was savaged, destroyed. The tires were hacked, sometimes whole strips of peeled rubber hung from the metal rims.

One vehicle, the vehicle the Major had ridden up in, was nothing but a charred wreck.

"Oh fuck, now what? We're fucking dicked." Someone, I thought it was Purett, said from behind me.

"We're still good." I said turning around. The Major was looking around him, and his body language told me he'd accepted the condition of his vehicles and was now figuring out his options.

"Secure those two vehicles, pull the TM's and start doing PMCS on them." He snapped out, pointing at two 5-ton trucks suspended from heavy steel cables. "We'll figure out how to lower them down, then we'll put the tires on them and lower them down once we inflate the tires."

I started moving toward the 5-tons, already clicking through the options in my head.

"Sergeant Ant." His voice stopped me, and I turned around.

"Yes, sir?"

"Check your vehicle, see if it's secure. Then find out if we can access the mechanics bay so we can secure tools to get these vehicles ready." He told me. He looked grim, but confident.

"Yes, sir." I waved at my tiny crew. "Let's go, men."

"This is just like any other motorpool drawdown, men. We'll run the checks, get the vehicles ready, and be good to go." The Major said behind us as we moved into the darkness. "Purett, Davis, I want the two of you to check the tool boxes, take inventory of what we have."

His voice receded behind us, quickly absorbed by the armor of the M-113's we were moving between. Every bootstep, every shuffle, every clink and thunk sounded clearly.

The way the motorpool swallowed voices made the hair on the back of my neck raise up.

"Got a plan, Sergeant?" Kincaid asked me.

"A couple of them." I answered.

"I like the one where you have the reactor melt down after flooding the place with VX." Nancy said from beside him.

I ignored that he glanced over, frowned, then turned back to me. "Any of them end with us living, Sergeant?"

"All of them." I told him, grinning. "Don't worry, Private, I've been in worse situations like this and got out alive."

He nodded as we cut between two M-113 APC's to the row we'd left the Gypsy Wagon.

"What makes you think they didn't trash your Humvee, Sergeant?" Shads asked.

"Just a gut feeling, Private." I told him.

The Gypsy Wagon came into view, sitting in the darkness. The flashlights panned over it, and we all stopped dead and stared at it.

In a perfect circle around it snow was piled up, as if someone had taken a cookie cutter and lifted the vehicle out of the snow to set it down right in front of us. The vehicle was covered in thick snow that fell softly off the top and side, down the windshield, and tumbled off the front and across the grill. Icicles hung from the sideview mirrors.

The snow was at least a foot and a half thick, maybe even two feet, thick and white and perfect.

"What the fuck?" Donaldson breathed.

"Ignore it. We're just being fucked with." I told them, walking forward and slogging through the snow to the side of the vehicle. I had slam my weapon twice against the door to shatter the thin layer of ice on the door, but once I did that I pulled the door open.

The smell of rotting meat flooded out of the vehicle, making Donaldson and Shads choke and gag. Kincaid gritted his teeth.

Sitting in the driver's seat was a body, it's mouth open in a silent scream, the skin grey and tight looking with blackish veins beneath the skin. His eye sockets were empty with clotted blood underneath them like frozen tears. His hands were gripping the steering wheel, the skin over the knuckles split to reveal the cartilage and bone beneath. A palm-sized chunk of his scalp was missing, revealing that something had scored deep grooves in his skull. His nose was missing, raw bone with frozen blood on it exposed on either side of the gaping hole. The bottom of his BDU top was missing, his T-shirt shredded to reveal a frozen gaping hole in his abdomen.

His nametag read "RICHARDSON" on the desert BDU top that was covered with frost and mud. The U.S. ARMY was half torn off, hanging down and folded slightly. His combat patch, the 3rd COSCOM patch, torn off until it hung by only a few strands of thread.

and purplish black skeletal handprints were around his neck.

Dangling from his left hand was a pair of dogtags, and I reached out and lifted them up, wincing at the bitter cold of the metal.

They read "BISHOP, LUTHER A." on them.

"Aw shit." Kincaid said.