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

Part 49

Site Kilo-29
Winter-1993
Day ???

Above me were dark florescent lights, recessed into the drop ceiling, the panels covered by a thick layer of ice. More than a few of the lights had four to six inch long icicles come out of them that were at least two inches thick at the base. I turned my head and saw brushed steel walls, with tile laid over the steel to waist high. Looking forward and tilting my head slightly I saw a heavy steel door read "PERSONNEL LIVING QUARTERS" in front of me and the areas was dark except for the light from a few flashlights.

My rucksack was keeping me from laying flat on the floor, and my ass and the back of my legs were cold from where I was laying on the snow covered tile floor.

"Where are we?" I asked, licking my lips. My mouth was dry.

"OK, I've got it open." Donaldson said. "I'll crank it, see if I can get it to raise up on its own. We OK, Kincaid?"

"Something's moving back there, but I can't tell what it is and I don't have a clear shot." Kincaid answered. I went to sit up, but Shads reached out and put his hand on my chest, holding me down easily. "I don't think it's Bishop, there's more than one of them and they're skulking about back there. Fucking cowards." He finished.

"I'm all right now, let me up." I said, trying to brush Shads hand away. I stopped and stared at the field dressing on my forearm. "What happened to my arm?"

"You with us, Sergeant?" Shads asked, his face coming out of the gloom.

"For now." I told him. He moved his hand.

"One of those things tried to stab you the first time they rushed us, and cut up your arm pretty good." Shads said. "The second time they came at us, you had three of them on you and one managed to stab you through the forearm. The third time one got on you and slashed up your flak vest pretty good. Do you remember?"

"No." I told him, sitting up and unsnapping my canteen carrier. "How bad was it?"

"I took a crossbow bolt in the leg." Kincaid answered. "I pulled it and slapped a patch on the suit."

"One got me in the face and another managed to slash my side." Donaldson said, his breathing was labored as he worked the crank. "I'm OK. But he still managed to fuck up my face. I would have helped you out, but I was kind of busy."

"I got one of them, and you managed to get the others." Shads said. "You kept yelling out 'two nineteenth' and 'finish the fight' while you were fighting."

"Yeah, I wasn't really here." I said, then took a long drink off of my canteen. The lemonade in it tasted like ambrosia.

"We figured that." Donaldson laughed.

I looked at Shads for a few seconds, trying to remember something important, and ignored the sudden flare of pain in my head. He turned away after a second, and the paranoid part of my mind insisted he was trying to keep me from remembering something.

"We're on the first level, but a lot of the doors aren't working for some reason." Shads said.

"And that fucking Bishop, Tandy, whatever the fuck he's called, has come at us twice." Kincaid bitched. "You were right. Grenades, flamethrower, bullets, none of it bothers him."

"He didn't take any of you." I stated the obvious.

"No." Donaldson answered. "He didn't make any aggressive moves, just stood there, taunting us."

I took another drink and started replacing my canteen. "He likes the fear." I told them. Shads nodded. "Help me up."

Shads stood up and reached down to me. I grabbed his hand and let him help me get me to my feet. The world didn't tilt, and I checked real quick.

My pistol was back in the holster.

"Thanks for finding my pistol." I said.

"No problem. Figured we might need it." Kincaid said, snapping the igniter a couple of times.

Shads didn't have a pack on his back.

"It get bad?" I asked them, looking down the hallway in the same direction as Kincaid.

"Yeah, they've rushed us four times, once in the stairwell." Donaldson said, stopping for a second to catch his breath. "If it wasn't for Kincaid, we'd be fucking dead."

"Sorry I wasn't here." I told them, feeling myself blush at letting them down.

"You're with us now." Shads said softly.

"Thanks for not leaving me behind." I told them, I reached for my weapon and it was missing. "Where's my rifle?"

"I've got it." Kincaid said. "It's on top of the tanks."

"Thanks." I said, grabbing Martin out of the sling and pushing my right arm out of it. They'd bound my arm to my chest again. I took a second to tear open my flak vest and tuck Martin inside before resealing it. Satisfied he'd be safe, I turned to Kincaid, reaching up and undoing the 550 cord they'd used to tie my M16/M203 to the top of the flamethrower fuel tanks.

"We wouldn't leave you behind." Donaldson said, his breathing labored. I could tell he was still trying to charge the system.

"No, you wouldn't, would you?" It wasn't a question, I just knew these men wouldn't leave me behind.

"You wouldn't leave us behind." Kincaid said, shrugging like it wasn't any big deal to haul another man through miles of frozen tunnels.

"You came for us when we needed you." Shads said softly. "You don't leave your men behind."

There was a loud clack from behind us.

"Finally." Donaldson said.

"Open it up. Kincaid and I have this direction." I told them. The memory/dream was fading fast, going back to where I stored all the bad shit, but it kept nagging at me, the same as the memory of the NATO inspector checking out my site.

The door screamed as it raised up, the whole thing making the air vibrate. Several icicles fell, and one shattered on the top of my helmet.

"It's up, come on." Donaldson said.

"Go, K-Bar." I said, backing up. Kincaid spun around and vanished and I picked up the pace, walking backwards, keeping watch on the hallway behind us.

Things were moving in the darkness, coming closer.

I slid open the M-203, letting the shell drop into my hand and checking the round by feel.

It was live.

I snapped the M-203 back together as I passed the door seal. Donaldson threw the bar and the door started to slow.

The things in the darkness were visible as faint patches of shadow.

"Last time was weird." Shads said as the door finally changed direction.

"Define weird." I said, crouching down and keeping my weapon trained on the hallway.

"Shadows on the wall." Shads answered. "They came forward, but they looked weird, and there wasn't anything we could see that could have been throwing the shadows."

"How did you handle it?" I asked. The door was almost lowered.

"I fed 'em a taste of my baby." Kincaid said. "Fire. Lots of it."

"They actually made high pitched squeals and ran back the other way." Donaldson said. "It was the damnedest thing."

"Think they have anything to do with Tandy?" Shads asked.

...The interrogation room was large, with soundproofed walls, a large one way mirror on the far wall, a single table I was sitting at, papers across the table that were maps of the barracks, maps of our section of post, after action reports and statements from all of us. The lights were bright and right in my face, my arm in an immobilizer that went around my torso and kept my right arm from moving. My left leg was in a leg brace, the knee throbbing. I was slightly doped up from my painkillers and still woozy from the skull fracture. My stomach still hurt from where they'd gone in to surgically "explore" the appendectomy Nagle had done on me.

...The man across the table, who's face I couldn't see because he was backlit, reached out and made another notation of the map of the restricted area, drawing a dotted line between the motorpool and the platoon office side of the barracks. The maps of the barracks, the dispensary, the motorpool, the chow hall, and the restricted area were all annotated with lines, reference numbers, and symbols.

..."You crossed five hundred meters in the dark, in 80 mph winds, during a blizzard, with no extreme cold weather gear?" The second man asked disbelievingly from where he sat on the right of the silent one. He or the one on the left of the silent one had been doing all the speaking, the center man silent as they took my statement.

..."Yes. We had tethers that we secured at what points we could." I answered. I wasn't strapped to the chair, but the undone straps made it obvious that being free was a privilege.

..."And that's when this so called 'Tandy' took Specialist Leeks?" The left hand man asked.

...The memory rushed back, of Leeks screaming, and how we'd floundered through the snow trying to reach them, only to find nothing but blood, bloody cloth, and snow.

..."Yes." I stated.

..."Bullshit. What actually happened? Did you kill him once you got him outside?" The left hand guy, Lefty, asked.

..."Agent." The voice was low, and sad and tired sounding. "Did you review the records and statements surrounding Private Tandy?"

The memory shattered, and I resisted the urge to turn around.

I remembered.

The door shut, and the lights inside the airlock came on for second before slowly dimming down. They pulsed twice, coming on slightly brighter, and then slowly went dark, leaving the four of us in the airlock, lit only by the blue flame of the flamethrower's pilot light.

"Here goes nothing." Donaldson said, and I heard the bar clack.

I turned around as the door's activation mechanism began thumping. There was a weird sound to it, and I recognized what it was, the hissing noise that gained in volume during each thump and then started to lessen in the split second before the next thump.

One of the hydraulic cylinders or hoses had a crack in it.

"Donaldson, you and Kincaid first, Shads and I will take up the rear." It wasn't hard to make my voice sound normal. I threw the sling for my weapon over my left shoulder and drew my knife from the sheathe on the LBE.

"OK." Donaldson said, his attention focused on the door as it began to tremble.

"What do we do if more are on the other side?" Shads said, and his voice brought up more memories, made me relive them for a split second. The debriefing, the other agents, the whole things.

I remembered

"We fucking kill them." Kincaid laughed, keeping pressure on the trigger so that the flamethrower was ready to go.

"We'll also see if we can recover any equipment for where we were earlier." Donaldson said. The door was starting to raise.

Adrenaline was flooding my system, washing away the painkillers, the anti-psychotics, everything. I embraced the pain like a lover's touch, relishing it, enjoying it. I felt my body react to it, examined it, accepted it, and then regretfully let it go as my senses sharpened and I could actually feel strength returning to my limbs. I switched the knife to my right hand, the numbness gone, the familiar feeling of the hilt heightening as the adrenaline brought me up.

The door raised up and locked into place. Donaldson and Kincaid stepped through. Shads glanced at me and I waved him ahead of me. He glanced at the night, just a flick of the eyes, but I noted it, following him.

The hallway beyond had six inches of snow in it. The hallway stretched to the left and right, with colored stripes showing us the way to various living quarters. Icicles hung from the ceiling and the light were barely providing any light, visibility vanishing less than twenty paces in either direction. Snowflakes were falling gently, a light snowfall that didn't impinge on our sight because of the darkness, snowflakes that glittered in the dim lights. An emergency light had kicked on in the distance, but only showed us a single red glowing oval that was dim and blood red.

Shads threw the bar, and the door shrieked as it slowly lowered. From the bottom of the steel panel the bar was set in clear fluid started leaking, steaming in the cold.

"What the shit is that?" Kincaid asked, referring to the liquid.

"Hydraulic fluid. The system's leaking." I told them.

The door suddenly slammed down when something went with a crack. The steel plate bulged slightly, deforming as the master cylinder exploded inside the wall. More fluid began leaking down, still steaming.

"Why's it so hot?" Kincaid asked.

"It's not, really." Donaldson stated. "The pressure probably warmed it enough so it's melting the ice, and that's what's steaming."

"Probably." I said, waving in the direction of the Officer's Living Quarters. "Let's get going. Kincaid, lead the way, Donaldson, you're next, Shads is in front of me."

They all nodded, and we started walking.

"Do you guys trust me?" I asked.

The million dollar question.

"Absolutely, Sergeant." Donaldson said.

"Fuck yeah, Sergeant." Kincaid stated, clicking the flame-thrower's igniter. "Flamethrower, fuck yeah!"

"Yes, even though you're not yourself." Shads said. "You've never let anyone down."

"Good." I said, stepping forward and grabbing the back of Shads' LBE. I snatched him against me, bringing my knife up and putting it against his throat as my other arm went around him, pinning his arm to his side.

"Sergeant?" Shads asked. His voice sounded scared. "It's me, Shads."

The other two men turned around, and Donaldson started to take a step forward then stopped, cocking his head slightly and narrowing his eyes. Most importantly he lifted the barrel of his weapon up to point at the ceiling. Kincaid turned, saw what was going on, and nodding inside his suit.

"I trust you." Kincaid said, letting the flamethrower ejector fall from his hands to hang by the strap.

"Tell these gentlemen who you really are." I told him, pressing the knife tight against his throat.

"I'm Shads, Sergeant, you know me." Shads said, his voice tight and scared sounding.

Except his body was completely relaxed. He wasn't shaking, his muscles weren't tightening up, and his weight was centered nicely. The back of his neck wasn't sweating, and he wasn't licking his lips nervously.

His voice said one thing, his body language said another.

"Check his pockets, Dee." Kincaid suggested.

"Come on, you guys know me." Shads tried.

"Don't bother, he won't be carrying anything to give him away." I said. "Do you guys see it?"

"See what, Sergeant? There's nothing here but us." Shads said.

"I see it." Kincaid grinned. There was no mirth or humor in it.

"Yeah, Sergeant, I see what you're talking about." Donaldson said. "Go ahead and let him go, I'll cover him."

I weighed it for second.

I was crazy, seeing things, and paranoid.

But did that make me wrong?

"What? What do you see?" Shads still sounded scared.

"You know a little too much, Shads." Kincaid said.

That made up my mind.

I let him go and stepped back, still staying inside my arm's reach of him, but far enough away that he'd have to spin and lunge to get at me.

If he tried that, he was dead.

"Who the fuck are you?" Kincaid asked, snapping the ingiter. "More of those CIA assholes?"

Shads was silent for a long moment, then gave another sigh and seemed to slump.

"Dammit. I told them that this would not work." He said, and his voice brought back another memory, one nearly buried beneath trauma and medication.

..."No, sir, just glanced at them. It sounds like cover your ass bullshit." Lefty snarled. I was angry, furious, a slow, burning feeling that coincided with at throbbing in my head.

..."Keep thinking that." I snarled back, getting tired of the bullshit. I should have still been in the hospital, but instead they'd brought in me in for a 'debriefing' that felt more like I was about to sent to some hole in the ground for the rest of my life.

..."It doesn't matter who your father is, you little punk, you better watch your fucking mouth." Righty told me, and his anger sparked my adrenaline, which swept my medication out of my system. My head instantly cleared and the rage that had been building exploded inside me, even if I gave no outward sign.

...Lefty and Righty were closer to me than they thought. Both had their hands on the table. Lefty was standing up, leaning toward me, and I could make out his features. Angry, arrogant, and stupid. Righty was leaning toward me, still sitting, with both hands on the table, just like Lefty.

..."Let's see you say that shit after you've spent a week or two up there in the snow." I shot back. "Both of you pussies would be crying for your mommy's within a day."

...Lefty started to reach for me and I tensed. I'd grab him, slam him facefirst against the table with as much force as I could generate, grab the pistol he kept showing me, and start shooting.

..."Sit down, and be silent." Center said, his voice soft, sad, and tired. Both men jerked as he continued. "Sergeant, I would appreciate you not killing these agents, if you please."

..."But..." Lefty started, sinking back into his chair.

..."Either take his statement and save your opinions for when they actually matter and someone happens to care about them, or leave this interview." Center said.

..."But, sir." Righty said.

..."I am not interested in the input of you two gentlemen, and neither are my superiors. Frankly, I find it distasteful that the CIA is allowed to be present during what is, in my eyes, a purely military matter." Center said. His voice was cold, emotionless, and devoid of humanity if you discounted the sadness and tiredness. "Either follow my instructions, or leave. If you chose the second option, then the Central Intelligence Agency's presence will be forbidden during future debriefings."

...The fight went out of both men, and I smiled in victory at them. I could sense the grimace from Lefty and laughed. "Should have known you punks were CIA. Too goddamn stupid to be anything else."

..."You little fucking..." Righty started, lunging up.

...Center grabbed Righty's arm and suddenly pulled him back down. Righty missed his chair and vanished with a clatter that made me laugh.

..."Don't be stupid. He'd kill either or both of you before anyone would come to rescue you." Center said. "You were stupid enough earlier when you medicated him despite my orders to the contrary, so I'm not sure if I would open the door to allow you to be rescued." Center's voice was as cold as the barracks.

..."Afraid of losing your friends?" I sneered.

..."I assure you, Sergeant, they are not friends of mine, the Agency I represent, or of the United States of America and its citizenry as a whole in my eyes." Center said.

..."Look, we're in charge of this..." Righty started. Center slammed his hand down on the table with a loud crack that made Lefty and Righty jump and made me almost lunge across the table at Lefty.

..."I told them this would not work." Center said. "You CIA agents can never restrain your baser instincts. If you are indeed the best the Agency has to offer, than I fear for the Agency and our operations overseas."

...It was silent for a long moment before Center broke the silence. "We will be leaving, Sergeant Ant. You will return to the hospital to heal while I and my superiors look over the information you have given us thus far. We will wait to continue this interview until after we have made the Central Intelligence Agency understand their role in this process."

..."But..." Righty.

..."I said this interview is over." Center said, standing up. "My apologies for the treatment, Sergeant Ant. I hope we meet under more pleasant circumstances."

"You remember." Shads said. His voice held no question, no recrimination, no surprise, just a simple statement of fact.

"I remember." I told him, smiling. "Too bad these aren't better circumstances."

"I'd been assured the interrogation drugs would wipe away your memory of the events." Shads stated, shrugging. "My superiors felt it was a safe risk."

"It might have, except I've been given it too many times before." I told him, smiling. "Now, who are you?"

"Wait, there's a drug that eliminates memory?" Kincaid asked, suddenly sounding worried. "They could wipe out my memory of all of this?"

"No." Shads said. He motioned at his pocket. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"No, but I'll give it to you." I told him. He nodded, smiling slightly, and I brought out the cigarette pack, crushed and battered, and lit one before passing it to him, making it so he had to reach to grab it, but wouldn't be able to grab my fingers without overbalancing further. Something passed behind his dark eyes.

"What about this fucking drug?" Kincaid asked.

"It's injected prior to an interrogation, and it will eliminate a short amount of time before the injection, and then a period of time afterwards, depending on the dose." Shads told him, slowly moving over to the wall and putting his back against it.

"No way." Kincaid said.

"Yeah, it fucking exists." Donaldson said. Shads nodded.

"How the fuck would you know?" Kincaid asked.

"Two months ago, when I dislocated my shoulder, they gave it to me in the hospital." Donaldson said. "I had to sign a shitload of release forms, they told me it was an experimental procedure. The drug keeps memories from forming, and would let me heal faster but I wouldn't remember the trauma."

"Holy shit, and it works?" Kincaid asked. I could see a slight smile on Shads face, and knew he was smiling at the fact that the other two men had gotten off topic. He glanced at me and the smile went away when I dipped the point of the knife at him.

"Yeah, it works. I remember saying I'd do it, the nurse telling me that she would be back with the medication, and then the next thing I knew my shoulder was bound up and doctor was asking me if I felt ready to go home." He said. "I lost about two hours."

"It's used in some interrogations by the CIA when they don't want the subject to remember the interview or what the subject might have said." Shads said, obviously trying to keep the conversation going.

"Yeah, I know." I stated. "Now who the fuck are you?"

"If you're CIA, man, I swear..." Kincaid started, breaking off when I raised my hand.

"No, he's not CIA, he works for one of the Alphabet Agencies though." I said. Shads nodded. "I kind of remember him from a debriefing."

"A sealed debriefing." Shads said quietly. "The Central Intelligence Agency was quite put out with my superiors for refusing to turn over the interview or allow them to conduct a second one." He smiled. "Sergeant Ant and the Central Intelligence Agency have a rather, antagonistic shall we say, relationship and history."

"Yeah, we kind of figured that out." Kincaid said. The lights at the far end of the hallway that I could see started slowly going out. "Light are going out." He motioned behind me.

"I see it." Donaldson said. "Keep fucking talking, Shads."

"If that's your real name." Kincaid snarled.

Shads shrugged. "That doesn't matter."

"Who do you work for?" I asked him. "Don't make me cut it out of you."

"You know as well as I do that torture doesn't actually work all that well." Shads said, smiling. "Eventually I'd just tell you what you want to hear to make you stop, and I've been trained to make that line effectively useless."

I nodded. Interrogation 101 plain and simple, along with counter-interrogation 101. "So who do you work for?"

Shads was quiet for a few seconds, obviously trying to decide, then he shrugged. "I work for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Sergeant."

I nodded. It made sense. The DIA and the CIA had a long history of butting heads, with a few rumored attempts at a hostile takeover. The CIA felt that the DIA should either be working for them, or that the DIA's assets, and more importantly, their budget should belong to the CIA.

"So why are you here?" Kincaid asked.

"I'm sorry, Kincaid, I'd rather not say." Shads said.

"You don't have to." I told him, ignoring the headache and the fact my vision was starting to blur. "He's on our side."

Shads nodded slowly.

"How do you know?" Kincaid asked. He was obviously remembering the fact that the CIA had tried to kill him on several occasions.

"He's a soldier, just like us." I said. Shads nodded. "The same way I'm in a different Army, he's in a separate military." Shads smiled and nodded. "He wasn't here because of us, hell, he isn't even really here because of me."

Shads paled and I smiled at him. "Like I kept trying to make Agent Killain understand, I'm ugly, not stupid." He grimaced. "Yeah, don't feel bad, everyone has that preconception."

"Then why is he here?" Kincaid asked.

"Because the DIA doesn't trust the CIA." I told him. Shads kept still, as if by not moving I'd lose sight of him. "I was told to clear Kilo-29, all the info available vanished, but the CIA sends operatives with this team, operatives normally used in overseas operations, possibly even operatives that the CIA denies still being on the payroll. After they sent a previous agent. That means the CIA is up to something on American soil, against laws and regulations, and it involved a military asset, which means the DIA wanted to know what they were up to and keep tabs on them."

"How do you know?" Kincaid asked.

"Look at him. It's the truth." Donaldson said. I nodded. "He's trying to keep from giving anything away."

"So when the CIA sent a team, he was probably pulled because I'm pretty sure he's interviewed me more than once. He knows what drugs I'm resistant to, knows my file front and back, and most important, he knows Tandy is real." I continued.

"The last part almost cost me my job." Shads interrupted. "They put me on paid leave while the mental health techs crawled around inside my skull till I finally admitted it was the stress of work and having been assigned covertly to 2/19th that did it. It was over a year before I was allowed to return to active status."

"I knew I recognized you." I told him. "I just couldn't place it. I saw you with the Kill Shop."

"Kill Shop? Like assassins or something?" Kincaid asked. I laughed. "Your old unit had a section devoted to assassinating people?"

"Strategic Planning Section." Shads clarified. "Headquarters Platoon, you wouldn't have seen me much, Sergeant."

"It's complicated." I told Kincaid. The lights were almost all out. "We can trust him, he's with us."

"Trust me, Sergeant, I'm really on your side." Shads said.

"So he's all right?" Donaldson asked.

"For now." I told them. "We need to get moving."

Shads seemed to relax. It wasn't anything visible, just a feeling I got from him, almost of relief. Kincaid and Donaldson went first, heading toward the Officer's Quarters, and I moved up next to Shads.

"I don't trust you." I said just loud enough for him to hear.

"You don't trust anyone, Sergeant, and I don't blame you." Shads said softly. "Believe me, I'm on your side."

"For now." I repeated.

"I'm in just as deep as you. I killed one of the CIA agents." Shads said, still keeping his voice quiet as our boots crunched through the snow. He was quiet for a long moment. "How much are you going to tell them about what happened here?"

I smiled. "I'm going to claim that my head wound makes it so all I remember was going to an amusement park with all of you." I looked at him. "I like Six Flags, personally."

Shads smiled, an honest, real smile. "You think we're going to get out of here?"

"Yeah, I do." I told him.

"I don't." He admitted. He sounded resigned.

"What happened?" I asked him, a little louder. "You want it too much, what happened?"

"Nothing." He told me, but I saw his neck muscles tense.

"Do you want me to trust you?" I asked him. "You know everything about me." I thought for a second. "You were with us in Desert Storm, right?" He nodded. "Then you know what happened to me. Hell, you probably know more than I do about what happened."

"It had to be covered up." He said.

"Then tell me why you seem to want it so bad." I told him.

He was silent for a long time, and I glanced at his hands.

It finally registered. Something I'd seen the whole time, but ignored.

He had a ring scar on his left ring finger.

"Your wife died, and you quit caring." I said. I took it a step forward, thinking about not just the fact he'd killed that CIA agent, not just the way he did, but the sheer joy he'd taken in it. "She got 'cleaned up' recently, didn't she?"

He nodded, looking a hundred years old.

"You should have told me." He shook his head at my words. "You think I wouldn't have believed you, or understood?" he turned and looked at me and I grinned. "I would have taken you with me when I took Agent Killain to 'talk' to the other Agents."

The lights finally went out, and all of our flashlights barely penetrated the gloom, even my hot-shit Xenon lightbulb throwing out a barely visible amber colored dim light.

"Shit." Kincaid said, triggering the ignition flame to add a little more light.

It didn't help much.

A low chuckle sounded through the hallway, and I felt sweat bead up on my back. My world swam for a second, and I almost fell over, but Shads steadied me, pulling my left arm up over his shoulders.

"Do you know who did it?" I asked him quietly as we kept moving.

"Yeah." He tapped his pocket, where the little green notebook rode.

"Give it to me." I told him.

"Why? They can't be touched." Shads sounded depressed. "I had proof and everything, but nobody did anything."

"Just give it to me." I repeated. He looked at me, saw my smile, shuddered, and dug out his notebook. I sheathed my knife and grabbed the notebook, unbuttoning my pocket with one hand and sliding it behind mine before buttoning the pocket back up. Shads kind up slumped under my arm and I squeezed him.

"Don't worry, man." I told him. "I know what you're going through. Was it at least fast?"

He nodded and I squeezed him again as he started silently crying.

"What's wrong?" Donaldson asked when we stopped at the entrance to the Officer's Quarters and saw Shads quietly crying.

"We'll discuss it as soon as we're somewhere safe." I told them. Shads looked at me and I nodded. "When we get out here, I'm going to put together a new crew. Either you'll be on it, or get reassigned, but we'll still be here."

"And?" Shads prompted.

I dropped my arm from around his shoulders, letting him steady me when the world tilted. "We're gonna handle something together."

Kincaid looked at Shads, then at me, and he suddenly smiled. "I'm in, whatever it is." He told me. Donaldson nodded, tossing his lot in with ours, throwing the bar up as he did so. The door started clanking, shivering at it started to raise up.

The darkness pressed in closer, and it seemed like the flashlights weren't even on at all. I could feel my skin crawl as the darkness seemed to caress me under my uniform. Off in the distance, in the direction of the enlisted area, a light exploded silently in a shower of bright sparks.

"Come on, come on, come on." Donaldson said, watching back the way we came.

The red light, just a pinprick, vanished and a second or two later we heard a faint "pop" as the sound of it finally reached us.

The door raised up high enough and Kincaid ducked underneath, Donaldson, Shads, and myself following into the lit hallway.

The hallway was full of corpses, half buried in the five or six inches of snow on the ground. Doors to several rooms were open, blocked by frost and snow covered bodies of the infected or just hanging open silently. Shads hit the bar and the door began to slowly close, the heavily armored door squeaking slightly as the gears inside the frame kept it on track. We held our position until the door thudded into place, the lights flickering when it hit.

"Let's recover the gear." Kincaid said, leading the way.

Our footsteps made that weird squeak/crunch that snow makes as you walk through it. The fans on Kincaid's suit were loud, the same as our breathing, in the dead silence. The bodies of the infected laying there looked like they'd just collapsed in mid-step, and a lot of them still held knives, cleavers, or other sharp implements still in their fists.

There were even four small children, one face up, with black eyes, peeling skins, oval heads without ears or noses, hairlips, and sharpened teeth. Classic signs of inbreeding and genetic damage.

All four of them held knives, and one that couldn't have been more than 10 had frozen rotting fingers on a string around their necks. No bullet wounds or stab wounds, and I doubted we'd killed them.

Every intact body was covered in a thick layer of frost, open eyes staring under the glittering frost, bloodless wounds from where gunfire had hit, or the wounds that had killed them thick with ice.

There was at least thirty of them laying in the corridor or half out of the rooms.

"Sergeant?" Kincaid asked, snapping the igniter.

"Save the fuel." Donaldson and I said at the same time.

"Jinx." I popped out before Donaldson, and all of us chuckled despite the grim tableau in front of us. "You owe me a soda."

We moved to the room where the four of us had been staying. Kincaid stood against the far wall and I moved to the door, raising my hand with four fingers showing, while Donaldson grabbed the handle.

I shook my hand four times, each time pulling a finger back, and as soon as it was a closed fist Donaldson turned the handle and shoved the door inward, getting out of the way as quick as possible.

The door only moved open about a third of the way, stopped by the snow piling up behind it, revealing a dark room beyond.

We went inside, covering the room with fields of fire.

"Clear." I whispered. "Get your shit, hurry up." The other nodded and we quickly spread out, grabbing what we could as quickly as possible. We'd left behind two M16's on the table, and Kincaid's rucksack was still sitting on the couch. The extra surgical kit was on the couch. The chemical gear was still on the table, and our bedrolls were either in the frontroom or visible through the open doors of the bedrooms.

"Shads, grab Kincaid's shit, we'll figure out what to do about your gear later." I said. "Kincaid, watch the door, sound off if you see anyone."

"Roger that." Kincaid answered, moving so he could see the door and had about ten feet from the door.

I grabbed my chemical equipment, arranging it as fast as I could. My gear weighed me down, but I'd caught my third or fourth wind and wasn't feeling as weak as I had before. Colors seemed weirdly brighter, sounds more intense, and my sense of touch and smell seemed intensified for some reason. I wasn't sure why, why the world almost seemed to bounce, why everything almost seemed to vibrate, or even why Bomber, Nagle, Taggart, and Heather had all gone away.

It felt strangely lonely without them.

"Lights are dimming out." Kincaid warned us. I turned and looked, and the hallway was barely lit by the lights. Snow was falling gently, small soaplike flakes drifting down.

"When did the snow start?" I asked, quickly replacing the batteries on the newer chemical alarm.

"Oh, crap, I didn't even notice." Kincaid said. "I don't know, a few minutes ago?"

"Shit." I turned and yelled further into the room. "Hurry up!" I grabbed the cord under the battery and uncoiled it. "Back up, I wanna plug you in."

Kincaid backpedaled slowly until I could plug him into the socket at the bar and he could still have the right firing angle at the doorway to keep track of the hallway and engage anyone who aggressed us.

We quickly gathered our gear, moving back over next to Kincaid. Shads and Donaldson had grabbed our sleeping gear out of the bedrooms, and Donaldson had tied the ammunition boxes to the underside of Shads and his rucksacks, and we'd used the loaded magazines to replenish our ammunition loads.

I'd noticed they'd gone through all but one of my magazines and were all out except for the ammunition in their ammunition pouches.

"Grab the MRE's, everyone garbage one down." I said. I heard Kincaid's stomach rumble even through the suit. "Kincaid, go ahead and unseal, we'll stay over here."

"Are you sure?" Kincaid asked. "What if I get infected?"

"I'm pretty sure it isn't infectious in this cold." I told him. "Cold is your best weapon against infectious disease."

He nodded, letting the igniter fall to hang from the strap and reaching up to unbutton his suit, pulling the hood forward to hang down.

We were silent as we ate quickly, pretty much swallowing without chewing, shoveling in MRE's as fast as we could. My stomach clenched, but halfway through the meal I went into the kitchen, grabbed the pill container and swallowed the days worth the pills, skipping the two that would put me to sleep. I finished up the MRE after shoving the pill box into my thigh cargo pocket. I grabbed the carton of cigarettes where I left it on the counter, next to the microwave, and tossed Donaldson a pack before lighting one for myself and Kincaid.

"When we leave, we'll go back to the Major." I told them while we had a cigarette. "We'll get a GP Medium, a stove, and fill one of the fuel trucks so we can keep the stove running, grab food, and I'll call for help."

"Wait, you can call for help?" Kincaid asked. He glared at me when I nodded.

"Yeah. But I have to be outside of here." I shrugged. "We're only allowed to use it in an emergency."

"What, this isn't a fucking emergency?" Kincaid snapped.

I shook my head and his eyes widened. When he opened his mouth I held up my hand. "We've suffered acceptable casualties, and until we ran the risk of this shit getting out and the CIA fucked shit up." I shrugged. "Now we need a biohazard team, or I at least need instruction, or we've gotta do isolation on our own."

"So we'd need two tents." Shads said. Kincaid glared at him, then shook his head.

"Sorry. I'm still trying to adapt to the fact your some kind of secret agent." Kincaid said. "I've had the CIA trying to kill me for a like a fucking week, so don't really expect me to be all happy you work for whatever the fuck you do."

"The Defense Intelligence Agency, we're responsible for..." Shads started.

"I don't fucking care." Kincaid said. "It's just my first instinct is to burn you to the fucking ground."

"Fair enough." Shads said, smiling quietly. Kincaid smiled back and Shads kept going. "We'll need two or three tents."

"Three." I told them. "If we're lucky there's the positive pressure tents down in the Event or Deep Storage Lockers. We'll haul up some 5K generators, and use those to power the positive power systems as well as lights and diesel fuel for the heaters."

"Why three tents?" Donaldson asked. Shads waved at me.

"We all start in one. Kincaid will be the only one in the cleared tent. Anyone who shows symptoms moves to the third tent, and after 72 hours clear the rest of us will move to the cleared tent after a blood test." I told them.

"What do you need for the blood test?" Kincaid asked, making motions for another cigarette. I lit it and handed to him.

"My medical kit, and a microscope." I told him.

"We can grab that from the Deep Storage Locker medical bay." Donaldson nodded. We sat quietly for awhile, finishing our cigarettes.

"Everyone done?" I asked, finishing field stripping my cigarette and putting the filter and paper in my pocket.

"Ready." Donaldson said.

"Ready." Shads said.

"Kickass time." Kincaid said, pulling his hood over before snapping the ingiter to let us know he was all sealed up.

"Kincaid, lead the way, Shads, you have drag, diamond formation, Donaldson, take the left." I told them.

Kincaid moved into the hallway, looking to the right, then heading off to the left. I followed, with Donaldson followed me, and Shads shut the door on his way out.

We moved to the door that would lead us to the hallways that would take us to the primary military motorpool, throwing the bar and waiting. We waited, watching down the length of the dark corridor, our flashlights doing little more than just making us all formless shadows standing amid faintly glowing snow. It got colder, and the familiar sensation of my balls throbbing painfully a couple of times before just vanishing came and went.

Another light went in a silent shower of sparks as the door raised up.

When it opened, we hurried inside, and Shads threw the bar so the door dropped down quickly. Donaldson threw the other lever and the inside of the airlock throbbed with the sound of the hydraulics kicking on and pressurizing the system. We'd thrown the emergency drop last time, and that not only ran the risk of damaging the hydraulics but usually vented the whole system.

The door opened, and we ducked underneath. A quick check showed the hallway was empty, dark with a few inches of snow on the ground and ice on the walls, but clear all the same.

Shads threw the bar and the door started to lower.

He turned to me, his mouth opening to say or ask something.

Kincaid had moved past Donaldson to take the lead on the way back.

Donaldson was slapping the side of his flashlight, trying to coax a little more light out of it.

I was turned toward Shads, about to tell him that I'd need him to pull drag.

Two hands shot out of the darkness of the airlock, the fingers inhumanly long, with the tattered flesh exposing the sharpened ends of fingerbones, the flesh of the hands blackish gray. The arms were too long, the frayed ends of the desert BDU's coated in frost, and whatever was on the end of those arms was hidden by the darkness inside the airlock.

With a strangled cry I lunged forward, grabbing for Shads' LBE.

The hands landed on Shads' shoulders, the fingers tightening and sinking into the flesh with a popping noise and a crunch.

Shads' expression turned to pained surprise.

I managed to grab the front straps of his LBE.

Shads' was yanked backwards into the darkness of the airlock, leaving me standing there with burning hands as his LBE was snatched out of my weakened grasp.

Before he could even scream the door crashed down, the impact of the door slamming into the slot shaking the whole corridor.

A chuckle drifted through the cold dark air.