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

Part 43

Site Kilo-29
Master Military Operations Command
Winter-1993
Day Four-Morning
Roughly T Minus 4 Hours

Donaldson stared at me, then he shook his head slightly, touching my knee.

"Sergeant, you're hurt really bad." He said gently. "Do you know where we are?"

"Site Kilo-29, an old Cold War War Fighter site." I told him, still smiling. "I'm not a fucking idiot, Dee."

"Sergeant, if you don't do something, everyone's going to die." Donaldson said. "You have the power to stop this. We all have family we want to live."

"Fuck this, let's just beat the codes out of him to stop this shit." One of the Meatheads said. I couldn't remember their names anymore.

And didn't care.

"First time you hit him in the face or head, and he'll die, then what?" Shads asked. I glanced at him, and Taggart had just bent forward. While I watched, she whispered again in his ear. He got up from where he was sitting and moved next to Donaldson. "Let me try, Dee."

Donaldson looked up at him and nodded, standing up and moving out of the way. Bomber went with him, and Taggart squatted down next to Shads when he did the same. She was wearing a white dress, with laces on the front holding back her full breasts, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

"You should have let Donaldson talk sense into you, Ant." Taggart said. Her face looked incredibly sad, and one tear trickled down from her cheek. "Now he's going to have to hurt you."

I barked a laugh at that, staring at her. "Hurt me, Taggart, really? How? You forget, the LT worked me over for two hours and I didn't say shit." I laughed again. "You were with the others when the LT interrogated Bomber, Nagle, and me, remember? What the fuck would you know about someone hurting you?"

She shook her head sadly, silently weeping, and a small part of me felt bad for what I was saying. She'd stood with us at the end of that, and again later that winter. She deserved better, but I hated threats.

"I'm sorry, Ant, you didn't leave me any choice." She reached down and picked up her two small children, balancing them on her knees as she squatted in front of me. "Remember I love you."

"Sergeant." Shads said, pulling my attention to him. He looked washed out, pale, like an over-exposed picture. I sneered at him, and he just continued in his sad voice. "I know you're not actually killing anyone. That you're just willing to stand aside and let it happen." He told me, and I nodded, almost throwing up at the motion. "I think that every time you've tried to stop bad things from happening, things got bad for you. You probably feel like nobody tried to stop bad things from happening to you."

"What would you know?" I asked him. "You weren't there with us."

"No, I wasn't, but I'm here with you now." Shads said. "I didn't give you away to those hit men, I protected your men as best I could, and I haven't once flinched from giving you my best. That should show you I'm not going to stand by and just let things happen."

Against my will I nodded again when Bomber said "The kid's got a point, Ant. Say what you want, but he's got brass balls."

"My room-mate would get drunk and tell me things about his old unit. Two-nineteenth, if I remember right." I nodded again. "He told me about being trapped in the barracks with an axe killer. He told me all about how no matter how badly you got hurt, you kept trying to keep going."

"Didn't matter. Most of us died anyway." I told him.

"Still, that doesn't sound like someone who's willing to just stand aside and let things happen." Shads said. "You took an oath to defend the people of this country, and you know as well as I do that you can't uphold that oath and then stand aside and let this happen."

"Yeah, I can." I smiled. "Just like everyone stood aside and let that shit happen to us." My smile got wider. "Just let them try to cover this shit up like they did her death."

Shads frowned when Taggart leaned over, cupped her hand around his ear to shield her lips from my sight, and started whispering again. When she leaned back he sighed and shook his head.

"Would Heather want you to kill everyone in revenge for her?" Shads asked me. I jerked, but he continued. "Should all those women with babies like yours and hers die because someone could have stopped it, but chose not to?"

"Shut up." I growled at him.

"Why? I'm dead in about five hours anyway, so I think I'm a bit beyond threats." Shads told me. "Why should I let you off the hook so that you'll just stand aside and let Taggart and Nancy and Bomber, who seem pretty fucking important to you, die just because life fucked you over again? You think standing aside makes it so you aren't responsible?"

His dark eyes were boring into mine, and I couldn't look away, his eyes robbing me of the ability to shut his mouth with a hard right hook.

"Maybe your wife and kid are dead, like those agents and those women on the PA system said, maybe it was all just lies." Shads told me. "Either way, you'll either be killing them by standing aside, or you'll be shitting all over their graves by not doing what's right." He held up the picture I kept in my ruck. Of Heather holding the baby on her lap, Heather smiling for the camera and the baby with the open mouthed expression that all happy babies have in pictures. I went to look away and Shads grabbed my jaw with the other hand, preventing me from looking away.

"Do you think either one of these people want you to stand aside and let this happen, Sergeant?" Shads asked me. He set the picture down and picked up the little photo of Nagle, Bomber, Taggart and me sitting on a porch, two babies on Taggart's lap, mine and hers, and a toddler waving.

"How about these people, Sergeant?" He asked. He glanced at the back of the picture. "John, Nancy, Catherine, Denise, Susan, and Baby Fifty Taggart. Do they deserve to die? Did losing Heather make it so you don't care about them either?"

I tried to pull away, but Shads' grip was like iron. "If they killed your wife and children, are you willing to kill these people and these kids?" He put the picture down, and lifted up a camo wallet, letting it fall open to show me a little girl with black hair in pigtails, smiling unselfconsciously despite missing one of her front teeth. "This is my little sister. She's ten, this picture was taken on her 10th birthday." I tried to pull away. "LOOK AT HER! She lives in a city that will get nuked off the map. She hasn't ever had a first date, she will never grow up to hold her children, she'll never walk down the aisle." He let go of my jaw and reached down to pick up the other two pictures.

"Look at them. Look at them and tell them that now that you have the chance to save someone you're just going to stand aside and let it happen. That you'll let them die just because nobody will tell you why you should stop it from happening." Taggart was whispering to him while he spoke, and she leaned back and looked at me like her heart was broken. His face hardened and he let the pictures and wallet drop from his hands.

"Go ahead and prove that even if you hadn't been injured you wouldn't have saved her." Shads told me. "Now's your chance, Ant. Yeah, you're hurt bad. Yeah, you might be dying, but this time you're in position to save people."

...don't look, brother. Go with Nancy and Catherine, we'll handle this...

...Don't look, Ant, come here. Don't look, baby...

He leaned back slightly.

"If you're willing to quit feeling sorry for yourself and stop acting like an asshole and do what you know is right, Sergeant." Shads said. He stood up, looking down at me. "I don't think he wants you to hold him any more if you aren't going to be the decent person he loves and you want to let something so terrible happen." He reached down and wrapped his hand around Martin, who's little arms were reaching toward Shads.

When he pulled his hand back Martin didn't even try to hold onto me, letting go and hugging tight to Shads instead. His little body was shaking, and I knew Martin was crying. Not because Shads had taken him away, but because of what I was doing.

"It's OK, I'll hold you until we die. You won't have to die alone." Shads told him, cradling him gently. Taggart was whispering in Shads ear, still silently weeping. "He loves you, he just hurts really bad and thinks that hurting other people will make it so he won't hurt so bad. He doesn't mean to hurt you, little guy."

"Martin, no, I'm sorry." I said, holding out my hands. "I love you."

"Man, he's really fucked up." Someone said.

"Shut the fuck up, he's fucking dying." Kincaid said, popping the igniter twice real quick. "You act normal when you're dying from a head injury."

Martin flinched away from me, clutching tighter to Shads, and I started crying again.

"He loves them too, and you're just going to let them all die, Ant." Shads said, petting Martin. "Think about those children in your photos, think of them dying from this. Martin can see it, can't you?"

The image of Heather and the baby being murdered by the CIA vanished. Instead I saw Catherine's children die from starvation in a desert where there farm had been, the rainwater they drank killing them. I saw Bomber dead, holding his sister's hand, sitting in the barn on their family farm, both of them skeletally thin, missing their teeth and hair with dried sores all over their skin. I saw Nancy turning away from the flash, shielding her eyes with her arm. Her hair flashed into fire and then ashes, gone in an instant. Her uniform smouldered for a second as her skin blistered and reddened, then her uniform burst into flame and she started to scream but the blast wave picked her up, tearing her apart. Cathrine starving, dying of radiation poisoning, trying to get back to her farm where her children were already dead. My Father trying to lead a small pitiful band of survivors somewhere safe, puking up his guts from radiation poisoning and dying by inches as he struggled to stay alive in his vain quest to find somewhere they could stop, somewhere they could live, as small children succumbed to poison, disease, and radiation. My twin sister, piling rocks over my older brother, finishing without the strength to go on and quietly dying, wild dogs tearing her apart for what meager nourishment they could get from her.

Then

Her body.

...her chest and stomach hacked open, spread open. Naked, her inner thighs bruised, blood smearing them, raw wounds where her nipples had been. Her empty eye sockets staring at the ceiling. She'd died hard, it had taken hours, it was plain to see...

..."We're too late." Riley whispered, his breath steaming in the cold...

..."Don't look, Ant" Stokes said, moving in front of me...

..."Don't, brother. You don't need to see this, let us handle it." Bomber said, his voice choking up...

..."Come over here with us, Ant, don't look, baby." Nagle said, holding her arms out to me.

..."Don't look, Ant. Come here, please." Taggart said, her face pale. "Please come here, we need you."...

..."They stomped on the baby after they cut it out of her, the fucking bastards." Stokes said, her voice as cold as the winter outside...

...Riley retched as Taggart and Nagle embraced me between them. Soothing me with wordless noises of comfort as they held me tight...

..."This isn't happening, Ant, it's just a fever dream. You're still delirious." Nagle whispered. "Tell him, Catherine, please, tell him he's just dreaming."...

..."You're just dreaming, Ant. This never happened." Taggart said, pulling my face into where her neck and shoulder joined, "She died in a vehicle wreck two weeks ago, baby, this never happened...

"I'm sorry, I couldn't save her. I couldn't stop what they did to her." I said, the vision of her fading away. "I couldn't stop it."

"Look away, Ant, you don't need to see this." Nancy said. "Look at me, instead." I looked up and saw where she was standing behind Kincaid, dressed in a sundress with daisies we'd picked in the field in her hair. "You heard Catherine, it never happened."

I nodded, and the memory was gone, replaced with the knowledge that it had been a closed casket ceremony because of how terrible the car wreck had been. A glance showed me Martin peeking at me, looking worried. I looked back at Kincaid, who was still staring, smoking another cigarette.

"You ready to do something to stop this, or are we going to sit here and watch the world burn?" Kincaid asked me. He shrugged. "I don't care either way."

I nodded, slowly standing up, feeling light. I was going to float off the floor with the weight of my gear missing. I'd been wearing it for so long it seemed weird to have taken it off. The fact that I was light headed didn't help. My body still seemed clumsy, like it was slightly swollen, overinflated, and it wasn't quite my body and it was hard to make it follow my orders.

"Do you want him to hold you again, little guy?" Shads asked. I looked over in time to see him smile. "OK, then I'll give you back to him."

I held out my hand and Shads set Martin into my hand. Martin hugged my arm as I pulled him close to my chest, closing my eyes and bowing my head, nuzzling the top of the little sock monkey's head.

"I love you, Martin." I said, hugging him. "I'm sorry I was being such an asshole."

"It's OK, Sergeant." Shads said quietly. "Like you keep saying, it's been a rough couple of days."

"All right. I pretty much know what we have to do." Kincaid said, standing up as I turned to look at him. "You sure you and your monkey don't wanna just kick back and let the end of the world happen?"

"What the fuck, Kincaid? You want this to happen?" Mystery Private asked. "Are you trying to get him to let him happen?"

"How about, I don't care either fucking way?" Kincaid said, shrugging. "Not that it'll matter to any of us."

"What do you mean?" One of the Meatheads asked. I couldn't remember his name, and I wasn't sure if I cared.

"We're dead anyway." Kincaid said, shrugging. "I figured that out yesterday." He grinned at me, "That's why you were keeping us separate from everyone else, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"What the hell are you talking about, Kincaid?" Mystery Private asked.

"We're infected." Donaldson said quietly, an imitation of Shads that was spot on. "When we got attacked, we got infected with whatever it is they have."

Bomber shook his head, leaning on one of the desks and taking a long pull off the bottle. He caught me looking at him and just shrugged, rotating his forearm and tapping the oval scar on the inside of his forearm with the neck of the bottle. The scar from where they'd put blister agent on our arms to show us what it was like. You didn't have to do it, you could just drop on request, but everyone who passed the AIT had done it. Catherine had the scar, Bomber had the scar, Nagle had the scar, I had the scar.

"What is it?" A Meathead asked.

"Something nasty." Kincaid shrugged. "I don't fucking care anymore."

"Sergeant, what is it?" Michaels asked.

I looked at him, reaching out to grab the desk when the world tilted and missing, but Donaldson was right there to catch my arm and keep me on my feet. "I don't know. I left my samples in the refrigerator in the living quarters, and I never got a chance to run lab tests on them."

"Are we all gonna die?" A Meathead asked.

"Probably." Kincaid answered. I moved past him, Donaldson throwing my left arm over his shoulder and helping me, my right arm curled up against my chest, holding Martin tightly against me. "In the meantime the Sergeant, Dee, and I gotta stop this place from killing everyone." The suit rustled and I knew he had shrugged again. "Personally, I couldn't give a shit less either way anymore."

"Can't Sergeant Ant do something?" Mystery Private asked, still fixating on the idea of being infected with some nasty bioweapon. "I mean, what if we're really contagious or have something really deadly?"

Kincaid laughed, and triggered the igniter, holding it for a long moment. The dry evil hiss of the ignition flame filled the entire room.

"Oh." Someone said.

yeah

"I already figured out what happens if it's something really vile." Kincaid said, his voice low and deadly.

"Flamethrower." He said. "Fuck yeah."