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

Part 47

Site Kilo-29
Winter-1993
Day ???

"You're blind?" Kincaid asked. I nodded and about threw up. "Aw shit. What are we going to do about all those fucking mutants?"

"You could run that flamethrower till there wasn't any gas in this whole place and still not get them all." Donaldson said. "I've looked over the maps, this place is huge, and there's old caves that were never included in the facility that they could have gotten into. I don't think it's doable."

"So we just seal this place up with them inside and hope nobody comes back in?" Shads asked.

We were moving, Shads and Donaldson leading my slowly. I could tell Kincaid was in front of us, slogging through the snow.

"That's pretty much the plan. Survive, get out, call in for backup, hope we aren't contaminated." Donaldson answered him. "If we are, then we hope it isn't something that they're going to kill us because of."

We were silent as we moved through. Each door thumped or squealed, not wanting to lift up, and once we had to backtrack and go around a door that stubbornly refused to do anything.

"I've noticed something." Kincaid suddenly broke the silence. I was busy watching the sparkles swirl on the blackness.

"That suit's feet are full of shit?" Donaldson asked. Kincaid chuckled.

"Well, that part was obvious." He was quiet for a second, and I could hear our feet whispering through the snow. "This place is starting to fail more and more often. I don't know if its Tandy, the fact we're using it, or that we busted up the control stations, but this place is starting to feel dead."

The silence was heavy as we kept moving, and I could tell he was right. Before the place had some kind of ominous presence, as if it was waiting for something terrible so it could come completely alive. It felt like a great beast slumbering.

Now it felt dead. Like 2/19th in the winter.

My vision came back slowly, in sparkles and hazy flashes, until I could see, but it was in grainy black and white.

I was still bleeding in there.

Kincaid, Donaldson and Shads were black and white. Nancy, John, and Catherine were in full color. I kept petting Martin where he was hiding inside the sling that held my right arm, trying to keep him from being scared as we walked through the snowy tunnels.

"You know what sucks?" Kincaid suddenly asked. "And don't say the shit in my suit."

Everyone laughed.

"When I get out of here, I won't be able to talk about this after some guy in a suit records everything." He finally continued. "I won't be able to talk about running the flamethrower, I won't be able to tell everyone how I found Lex Luthor's secret hideout." He sighed. "Worst of all, nobody will ever know that for awhile I was a regular high speed troop."

"Maybe you'll get a medal." Shads suggested.

"Hell, I'll just be happy getting out of here alive." Donaldson said.

"Me too." I added. Donaldson turned and looked at me and I smiled.

"Can you see?" He held up three fingers.

"Three. And yeah. Not very well." I told him.

"Did my best." he sounded defensive.

"You did fine." Shads let go of my arm and I almost fell, so he steadied me again and we kept walking.

"Still having hallucinations?" Donaldson asked.

"I don't know. I might be. I might be laying face down in the snow somewhere for all I know." I told him, shrugging. "It's OK." I stroked Martin's forehead with my fingertips. My hands were cold, I didn't have on gloves.

"We're going to die in here." Shads voice was as soft and sad as I remembered it. "I hope it doesn't come to that."

...The NATO guy stood in the bunker, staring at the row upon row of stacked 8' artillery rounds, each round a binary chemical round. I had hundreds, thousands of them, all designed to cover Eastern Europe with enough toxin to turn people into liquid shit.

..."You keep excellent records, Sergeant." He was saying. He sounded sad as he looked over the ammunition. That was nothing new, people who saw the contents of the bunkers were usually horrified. "The random spot checks for inspection of the ammunition is admirable.

..."I don't want there to be any problems when the balloon goes up." I told him. I was nervous, standing in the bunker with a NATO inspector. One word from him meant hundreds of hours of work for us, or shutdown, or a complete background check on 'suspicion' if he so chose.

...In my world, guys like this, faceless, nameless, wielded almost more authority than the President or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

..."I hope it doesn't come to that, Sergeant." He said softly, turning back to face me. He was wearing sunglasses even though the inside of the bunker was dimly lit.

The memory shattered and I stopped, turning to look at Shads.

"What?" Shads asked.

I squinted, looking at him closely.

He was too short, too young.

Then what was my mind trying to tell me?

"Nothing, Private, just got lost for a second." I lied. He nodded and we kept walking through the tunnels.

The lights went out and we stopped, fumbling for the flashlights. The cold got more intense, my fingers starting to ache, but we didn't move even after we managed to get the feeble amber of the lights to come on.

"You ever thought about just giving up?" Shads asked, leaning against the wall.

A low chuckle answered him, carried on an icy breeze that flurried the snowflakes.

"Just sitting down and waiting for it. You know?" Shads finished. He slid down the wall and sat down, crossing his arms on top of his knees and putting his head down. "Just end it."

I shook my head. "No. I don't give up." I started slogging through the snow.

"Fuck that, I wanna live." Kincaid said.

"Shads, come on, man, get up." Donaldson said, walking up and grabbing his arm.

Another chuckle. The hair on my neck stood up.

"Why? We're gonna die down here." Shads sounded close to crying. "Sergeant Ant will live, he always does."

"ON YOUR FEET!" Donaldson bellowed out, drowning out Tandy's chuckle. He moved over to Shads, grabbing him by his arm and hauling him to his feet. "Get on your feet, soldier! Get. On. Your. Fucking. Feet!"

"We need to keep moving." Kincaid said from out of the darkness. "We can't stop."

"It's him. He's doing it." I muttered.

Donaldson ignored me, getting Shads to his feet. When the other man went to collapse back down, Donaldson let go of him.

And slapped him.

Shads just stared at him, a red handprint on the cold whitened face. Donaldson leaned forward and stuck his face only an inch or so from Shads' face.

"Keep moving, soldier." Donaldson said, grabbing Shads by the back of the LBE. "Or I'll fucking skull drag you." With that he started hauling Shads down the corridor. "Let's go, men."

I stumbled after them, the corridor tilting every few steps. Donaldson let go of Shads LBE after a few steps when an angry snarling sound echoed from behind us.

"Sounds like you pissed him off." Kincaid laughed.

"Shut up, Kincaid." Donaldson said. Kincaid just shrugged, snapping the igniter twice.

The corridor narrowed down to about the width of a golf cart, the pipes up by the ceiling and the lights so dim they were little more than felt more than seen glows that did nothing to illuminate the hallways. The snow glowed with almost a life of it's own. The cross corridor up ahead meant that the elevators weren't too far away, or we could take a right and end up back at the main vehicle lift.

There was the clink of metal on stone.

...I got to my knees, and reached behind my back to pull out the bayonet, ignoring the shriek of pain from my shoulder.

"Shut your mouth, you fucking bitch." Clifton said, and I heard the smack of flesh on flesh and the slap of Nagle's bare back hitting the tile. She let out a long moan.

"Oh yes." She gasped. "Now you're getting what Mama likes. Try not to slap me like you're a little girl for the next one if you want to get me hot." There was another slap and Nancy groaned again. "Oh yes." She gave a shuddering sigh.

I used the wall lockers to brace myself as I got to my feet. The knifeblade clicked as it touched the wall locker, but they didn't hear it...

I took two more steps.

The click of metal on stone repeated.

...I used the wall to brace myself as the world tilted around me, the knife clinking as the tip touched the cinderblocks of the stairwell wall...

I stopped, holding up my left hand with a closed fist. I made a hissing noise and the others stopped to look at me. I tapped my left ear, pointed down the hallway, then pointed at my eyes and shook my head.

Kincaid opened his mouth to say something, then his eyes widened and he nodded at the same time as Donaldson and Shads.

"We need to hurry, we don't want the Major to leave without us." I said, pitching my voice loud enough to carry. I drew the pistol clumsily, my cold fingers and the weird tingling through my body robbing my limbs of any dexterity. The pistol was heavy in my hands, the strength I'd cultivated gone.

The corridor drew closer and we drew closer together, keeping out of each other's fields of fire, with Kincaid in the middle of us. The dry hiss of the ignition flame seemed loud over the sound of our footsteps crunching through the snow.

"When we get back I'll open the doors and well get out of here, we have the Major and his men set up the tents for an extreme cold weather environment, then we wait for the biohazard team to get here from Dakota." I wasn't really paying attention to my own words, and I knew they weren't either.

From out of the darkness we could hear a low growling.

"What happens then?" Shads asked. His voice covered the sound of him moving the selector lever to semi.

"We play cards and beat out dicks till they get here." Kincaid said. For once he didn't snap the igniter.

"We hope we aren't infected." Donaldson lifted the butt of his weapon to his shoulder. He tapped the grenade on his ammunition pouch and then pointed at Shads, who nodded and unsnapped a fragmentation grenade from the pouch, letting his weapon hang by the strap.

We were less than a hundred feet from the intersection.

"Join us in the dark, Samuel." Kebble whispered.

"Why are these bitches infatuated with me?" Kincaid bitched.

Twenty-five paces.

Shads held up the grenade at eye level, kicking the retaining clip free with his thumbnail before pulling the pin.

"They're horny, Barbara." I told him.

Twenty-three paces.

"They've been dead a long time." Kincaid finished, and I could tell he was grinning.

Donaldson waved at Shads, who cocked his arm back and made a Basic Training perfect throw with the grenade. We all went prone as it went out, and my vision went with sparks.

"Blind!" I called out as the grenade hit something with a thunk.

The grenade went off with a crack that made the whole cavern shudder as the explosive force bounced off the concrete walls, doubling and redoubling as it filled the area.

Screaming started as my vision came back full of sparks. In grainy black and white I could see the infected coming around the corner, their hands full of gleaming steel, snow spraying up around them as they charged toward us.

Kincaid was already back up on his feet, waiting with the flamethrower. Donaldson and Shads were firing, killing them as quickly as possible.

I'd dropped my pistol into the snow.

For every one they killed, five more came around the corner.

I reached back, grabbing my rifle one handed, and fumbled it in front of me as Shads and Donaldson concentrated on the front ranks, pulling their triggers as fast as possible. I managed to get the weapon up as more of them poured around the corner. I pushed my arm out of the sling, Martin falling into the snow.

There were more screams and more gunfire as I let go of my rifle and put Martin back. Kincaid's flamethrower kicked on with a whoosh and the screaming redoubled. I patted Martin to comfort him, then grabbed my weapon, ignoring the pain rolling down my arm and into my chest, cracking open the shotgun assembly and checking the load.

Beautiful.

"Come to Papa!" Kincaid bellowed out. "Son of a bitch! That hurt!"

I snapped the weapon closed again and raised it up, resting the magazine on the ground as I sighted by feel and instinct, trusting long training and muscle memory. I had one hand around the barrel, the other around the magazine, with my finger on the trigger.

"TWO OH THREE OUT!" I yelled, pulling the trigger.

The weapon went bloop and kicked against my shoulder, making everything vanish in a rushing noise for a moment, but I ignored it, cracking open the weapon and letting the shot shell fall free as I dug another one off the bandoleer that I'd insisted on wearing. I grabbed the one off the top, the HE, and pushed the 40mm round back in.

In the meantime the grenade flew down the corridor, hitting the far wall and going off, filling the crossroad with concrete shrapnel and explosive fury.

Kincaid bellowed in pain and fury, sweeping the fire across the hallway, filling the entire length of the hallway all the way to the crossroads with his fury as I sighted again through dimming vision and pulled the trigger again.

"203 out!" I yelled, this time into darkness. My fingers fumbled as I reloaded another one.

"Eat this, bitches!" Kincaid bellowed out. "I got something for all your asses!"

"203 out!" I tried again. The trigger didn't want to go back, and I couldn't see. My body was cold, beyond even shivering or pain.

I couldn't get past the trigger's breaking point. It was immoveable.

"203 out." I whispered.

Out of the darkness something crashed into me, rolling me in the snow. My vision was dim, but I could still make out a scrawny figure on top of me, raising up a knife. It was dressed in blackish rags, with no nose or lips or ears, with strips of flesh hanging off of the skin to reveal weeping wounds.

I got my arm up, but not where I intended, and instead of my forearm meeting with their wrist the knife slicked through the muscle on the outside of my forearm. I drove a punch into its side with my right arm, but it didn't even move it in my condition.

Shads came out of the darkness, kicking it off of me and shooting twice before turning back to the job at hand.

My vision went out, and the sounds of the other men fighting for our lives faded away.

I laid on my back in the snow, staring up at the darkness. Snow was falling around me, my shoulder was throbbing agony.

..."Ant! I love you!" She yelled down the stairwell.

I heard their boots pound back up the stairs.

I love you...

I lay there in the darkness, in the snow. I could feel the wind blowing in, and knew he must have gotten the door open. My eyes were open, but I couldn't see, even though I blinked when cold snowflakes hit my unseeing eyes...

I was out of gas. Too many injuries, the injuries too severe.

I'd cheated death too many times to get out of it this time. I should have died in 2/19th. Should have died in Desert Storm. Should have died when my mom had bashed in the back of my head with an iron frying pan.

It was time.

My Father came out of the darkness, kneeling down next to me.

"You're a good man, son." he told me, reached out and smoothing my hair. "You've done your best by your men, you've made me proud." He wiped one of the tears away from my eye. "You've never once disappointed me, boy."

He sighed. "I love you, boy." He started to fade away.

I tried to reach up to him, but didn't have the strength, until he was gone.

...The footsteps crunched through the snow and disappeared, leaving me alone in the cold, and the snow.

Time ticked by, my shoulder growing cold, and it felt like all my warmth was pulling out of my shoulder. I could feel the freezing blade stuck through me, pinning me to the ground, pinning me to the ice and snow.

Sharp, cold icicles touched my face, slowly tracing over my face, pausing on my lips to tug them open.

There was a low, bubbling chuckle as the sharp icicle ran down my cheek.

I could hear footsteps pounding down the stairs...

I knew what it meant. I knew what was happening to me. I fumbled in the sling, my numb fingers finding what I wanted. Softness that nuzzled against me. I pulled Martin out in the darkness and brought him up to my cheek.

We were both crying in the darkness.

"I love you, Heather." I whispered.

Or tried to.

The darkness pulled me down.