Original story: http://nothotbutspicy.com/para/50fa

All credit goes to 50 Foot Ant of Something Awful.

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Contents show]

Chapter 1

I gave permission for The Humper-Monkey story to be used, as well as my epilogue to the whole saga.

Is he dead?

Yes.

He died during a particularly brutal year on our family. We lost two of my sisters, two of my brothers (including Monkey), an uncle, my mother suffered multiple strokes, and my son got his leg blown off by an IED. We had to sell the family property to cover medical bills, funeral expenses, and make sure the widows and the kids were all taken care of.

Monkey's son died of an overdose not too long ago.

Was the 2/19th story true?

There were only 20 of us in the barracks when it burned down.

Tandy vanished, to be found that spring during ARTEP.

The barracks that replaced the burned down one was plagued by electrical and heating problems.

The unit suffered several disappearances over the years that were listed as "AWOL" or "Training Accidents" or "Death by Misadventure" after a cursory investigation. We had suicides, murders, disappearances, and strange deaths. Winter was the worst, when the snow would pile up, the road would be impassible for several weeks, and the noises and lights would start again.

We had our own little mini-post, away from main post, that most people didn't even know existed. We had our motor pool, our chow hall, our own dispensary, and our barracks. That was it.

Our unit, unlike most companies, was over 200 strong and run by a full bird Colonel, and even though we were listed as a "Company" on the TO&E for the Battalion, we consisted of over a 3rd of the Battalion's manpower. It was really confusing when I went Stateside and went to my first formation to find out that a common company size at the time was the size of one of our platoons.

I was sent to a different post and spent most of my Germany tour on TDY and drunk with my friend John Bomber working at various ammunition sites where nuclear and chemical weapons were stored. Messau and Grebenhiem top the list. Whenever I was recalled back to the unit, I spent as much time drunk as possible.

But, was Tandy real?

Yes.

Were some of the dead found looking like they were a victim of the Joker Toxin?

Yes.

Were some people never found again, and listed as "Presumed Victims of Foul Play"?

Yes.

Was that place haunted?

If anyplace on earth was haunted, it was the 2/19th company area.

Finally: My stories are all about drunken stupidness, women, and general stupidity of the immortality of youth. I keep it that way deliberately. I don't like to think about 2/19th. I don't talk about 2/19th, not even to my mental health tech, my wife, or my friends. I don't have pictures from back then, and I didn't keep in touch with anyone but Nagle, Bomber, and a few others, although Stokes came to Monkey's funeral and cried.

I hope you enjoyed the ghost stories. Some things were changed to keep anyone from figuring out where he was stationed. Names were changed to protect those who, like me, probably just want to forget about 2/19th and what happened there.

But Tandy is real.

Out of the First Twenty, eleven of us have died. More than one of those who died became paranoid that Tandy was stalking them, or claimed to have seen his twisted visage outside the window in the days before they died.

Do I believe he stalks the First Twenty?

You decide.

Chapter 2

My 13 year old kid woke me up screaming at the top of her lungs last night.

When I went in to her room, which is at the back of the apartment on the second floor, she was huddled in the far corner of the room, covering her face, and crying. Her curtains were open next to her bed, and the window was cracked slightly.

As soon as she saw me she ran to me and threw her arms around me, crying hysterically.

When she calmed down, she told me that she'd woken up because someone was tapping on her window, and when she rolled over and looked, that's when she saw it.

Fingers had reached in and were slowly drawing her window open further and further.

In the darkness was a white face, with deep sunk eyes that "hated" her.

And a smile "like a jack-o-lantern."

That's when she screamed and threw herself into the corner.

I told her it was a dream.

Goddamn 2/19th.

2/19th Company Area

Restricted Area, Western Europe

Christmas Season, 1988

The names have been changed to protect the participants

I woke up on the top bunk, with the usual glaze of ice on the ceiling above my head, shivering from the cold. I had to piss pretty bad, so I climbed down, careful when I put my weight on the floor. Sure as hell, a thin patina of ice coated the tile. The room was silent, dark, and lonely. The lights on my stereo system were dead, so I didn't even bother with the light switch.

The power was out again.

I took a leak, then got dressed. Long johns underneath T-shirt, jeans, and a flannel shirt, with nice warm socks and my combat boots. Shivering, I grabbed my keys, flashlight, and knife then headed out the door, locking it behind me, and walked down toward the double doors that separated the hallway into two halves.

The hallway was as long as a city block, pitch black with just a dim glow from the emergency lights, and had ice glittering on the walls. I thumbed on my flashlight and clipped it to the pocket of my flannel so I didn't have to bother holding onto it.

Something banged and screamed behind me.

I hunched my shoulders and pushed my hands into my pockets, ignored the low moan as I passed the laundry room and pushed my way through the double doors. A whiff of decay, rotting meat and the unmistakable subtle scent of rotting blood, was whipped away by a cold breeze, and my breathe plumed out in front of me.

My boots thudded on the tile as I headed toward the far stairs, passing by people's rooms. People I knew, people I drank with, fought with, and worked with. People that were gone back to the States or deployed to Graf or Bremerhaven, leaving only a skeleton crew of 24 "mission essential" personnel behind.

I'd been recalled from Fulda, where Bomber, Nagle, and I had been TDY to 11 ACR for around 3 months, and denied leave.

Which was the reason I was opening the door to the main stairwell, which went 2 stories above me and 2 stories down, the last underground. A shriek sounded from upstairs followed by a low sobbing moan. I shivered and went down the flight of stairs, keeping one hand on the ice slicked wall in case I hit a patch of ice over the grip strips and went down the stairs.

Two days ago a new E-5 out of Fort Hood hadn't listened to our warnings, and went too fast on the steps, hit a slick spot, and fell a flight of stairs. He broke his leg, a couple of ribs, and had a compound fracture of one arm, as well as knocking him cold.

And froze to death in a puddle of his own blood before anyone found him.

I pushed open the door to the CQ Area, noticing that the door to the 1st Floor Rec Room was closed, along with the day room, and of course the unisex bathroom that nobody used..s

The same bathroom that Tandy vanished out of before the building had burnt down and been rebuilt according to the same floor plan.

"Jakes?" I called out.

No answer except for the emergency light behind the desk giving it up and slowly fading out, pulsing slower and slower before finally being nothing more than a faint red glow more felt than seen.

No CQ, no ACQ, no Duty Driver, no Assistant Duty Driver, no nothing.

Just me, shivering and breathing out plumes of steam.

Curious, I walked around behind the desk and opened the log. If the clocks on the wall were right (and they were all off between 5 and 15 minutes) Jakes had answered the phones when the ammo sites called about a half hour before to let the unit know that they were all clear, but nothing else was written outside of the hourly checks from the FSTS sites.

Parkas, cold weather masks, trigger mittens, all were laying on the table against the back wall.

Shit.

I dug out my keys, walked to the back of the CQ area, and opened up "The Closet", where the breakers were and the weather readouts, and flicked the switch out of habit, getting nothing.

My flashlight revealed that all the gauges and dials were dead. Water pressure was about all we had, and the power had been out long enough that the water-heater temperature was down to about 50 F. Outside temperature was well below freezing, wind speed was above 50MPH, humidity was bad, and the barometer was going south, dropping while I was watching.

Shit.

I went back out into the CQ and checked the lines. Two were dedicated lines, one to V Corps, the other to the Rangers. The other four lines were standard phone lines, used to make normal calls. The other two lines were only for emergencies.

All but one of them were dead, nothing but an echoing silence. The dead one gave a steady crackling hiss.

I heard a low chuckle behind me and the door to The Closet slammed shut, making me jump.

Damn it.

I dug out the morning report and crosschecked the names with room numbers in the alert roster. Only 13 of us in the barracks, the rest either lived off post or in on post housing. From the sheet, Jakes was the highest ranking according to the morning report from the day before, with me, Bomber, and Nagle coming in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively.

Opening the rest of the drawers didn't turn up the keys, the vehicle dispatch, nothing that should have been there.

I checked the log again. Nothing about the Duty Driver or the ADD having to go somewhere. No emergencies. Only standard "All reports logged" and times, along with 1LT Jackson calling in that he was heading to Frankfurt but no reason why 1st Platoon's platoon leader was leaving us without an officer against SOP.

But then, LT Jackson had only gotten to the unit two months before, and in the week I'd been back to the unit I'd heard him wax poetically about how everything that had happened was either bullshit or how if he'd been here when everything went up in flames things would have turned out differently.

I sat down, lit a cigarette, and turned the chair so I could see the door outside, the double doors to the hallway, and the stairwell door, plus I could see the clocks if I just turned my head instead of turning all the way around.

I'll give them 15 minutes...

It was almost 2 A.M.

Somewhere four men were wandering around.

Had they gone outside? Without their cold weather gear and in the weather that the gauges were reporting outside, they would be dead within minutes. When the hypothermia kicked in, they'd get confused and who knows how far they'd wander.

If they went outside, we'd find them in the spring, if ever.

The 15 minutes went by and I opened the logbook, took a piece of paper out of the drawer, and wrote that I'd be back, I was checking the barracks, and if anyone needed anything, I'd be back before 3AM.

I glanced outside, through the two sets of double doors, and saw nothing but white.

Whiteout. Fuck.

I hated the barracks. I begged, bribed, and threatened to get put on TDY or unit support rather than be back in the barracks. Nagle, Bomber, and I had managed to wheedle our way into field exercises for over 9 months, only returning to the unit for an afternoon or maybe a weekend here and there. If I wasn't at a field exercise or TDY, I preferred to stay out at the FSTS and away from the unit.

The shriek that echoed down the hallway reminded me why I'd rather be training C-DAT's how to inspect the APDSFSDU-T's and watching them to make sure they didn't lick them or something.

I used my key to open up the dayroom, the rec-room, to find nobody inside. In the day room the TV was on, displaying only static, and through the windows I could see nothing but swirling white, with faint hints of something dark moving out there that I told myself was just my imagination.

Taking a few deep breaths I went in and checked the bathroom.

It was ice cold inside, the sinks and stalls still looking like nobody had ever used them. There was dust on the sinks, and the floor tile was dull with no black streaks from soldier's boots on them. Nobody had been in there for weeks, months, maybe not since the building was built.

Another scream sounded out from behind me and I shivered and headed out of the bathroom, ashamed that I was shivering from more than the cold after being in that bathroom.

The last place anyone had seen Tandy before ARTEP...

I half expected to see his shaving kit still open on the sink.

The double doors between the CQ area and the first half of the ground floor hallway screamed when I pushed my way through them, my flashlight beam dancing around, sparkling on the frost that covered the walls. My breath plumed out in front of me as I walked down the hallway, my boots thudding. SGT Swope had slipped on ice in the hallway a week ago and broken her elbow.

I stopped outside Nagle's room and knocked on the door. It took a few minutes and a few more knocks, but Nagle answered, wrapped in a nightgown, fuzzy robe and a blanket with her fuzzy bunny slippers, wearing a look that combined irritation and sleepiness.

"What the fuck do you want, Ant?" She snarled/yawned. "Go beat off, I'm sleeping."

"CQ crew is gone, can't find them, power's down." I told her.

"Go away, don't care." She answered, and went to slam her door, but instead bounced it off my boot.

"Get dressed, Nancy, I'm gonna grab Bomber." I smiled and held up my keyring, "Don't make me come in there."

She grumbled behind me as I walked off and she closed the door.

Through the double doors, take a left, up a flight of stairs, take another left, and head toward the end of the hallway.

Ignore the screams. Ignore the sobs. Ignore the cold chill down the back. Ignore the whiff of burning flesh and jet fuel.

God, I want a drink.

I didn't bother knocking on Bomber's door, I just used my key and walked in.

For some reason when keys were handed out (I came back after everyone else had moved into the barracks) they'd handed me a key which turned out to be a master key. You named it in the barracks, my key opened it if it wasn't a secure area with a heavy security door and locks. I should have turned it in, I should have reported it, but for some reason, I kept it.

Bomber was curled up under his blankets, so I just grabbed the edge and whipped them off.

2/19th was required to be extreme cold weather survival certified by order of the post commander. Before you could move into the barracks, you had to attend the class. You learned how to survive in the cold, and one of the most important parts was how you sleep. While a person is sleeping they have a tendency to sweat. That sweat can create ice between the blanket layers, in the sleeping bag, or on top of your blanket/fart sack, so you had to sleep a simple way.

Naked.

And Bomber sucking his thumb, like always.

"Get the hell up, you Texas retard!" I yelled at him, throwing the blankets back on top of him in order to spare my eyes any more full view of Texas.

He came awake pretty quick and I filled him in on what I had and hadn't seen. He cursed, both at the situation and me, but he didn't refuse to come with me, just bitched and called me a chickenshit for not doing it all by myself.

While he dressed I stood and looked out the window. It was nothing but swirling thick white. If it wasn't dumping snow on main post already, it was going to smash the fuck out of them within a few hours and dump a few feet on them. The ski resort would be thrilled with all the powder.

We were cut off and isolated.

Again.

Nagle was waiting for us at the CQ Area, her flashlight in her hand, picking up the phones, listening, and slamming them down.

"How the fuck did our dedicated line go down?" She asked.

The dedicated lines ran to main post, the cables wrapped in foam and in pipes that were then buried into the ground. By all rights, there should have been nothing short of a nuclear weapon able to knock them out, and then only if the line itself got damaged by the burst.

Or sabotage.

It was 0230, the log book was unchanged, the cold weather gear was still there, and the clocks were still ticking away. The amount of time they were all off had shifted, but that was normal. Rumor control said that no two clocks in barracks kept the same time.

"What do we do, Ant?" Bomber asked, rubbing his hands together. All of us were in jackets (Bomber and I wore fleece lined Levi jackets, Nagle wore a goosedown jacket), but it was getting colder in the barracks and the chill was starting to soak into our bones.

"First thing first, we see if we can get the generators fired up."

Straight out of the handbook.

We hit the middle stairwell and went down to the basement, the darkness seeming to get thicker as we went. My flashlight started to dim, the beam getting more and more yellow the further down the steps we went. Our footsteps sounded muffled, and the wind had managed to slither into the stairwell and pluck at us with icy fingers.

The generator room was down in what used to be the sub-basement, which we had to access by going into the furnace/water heater room.

I unlocked the door, and my flashlight went dead. Bomber and Nagle waited for me to switch the batteries in my flashlight (Never go anywhere in the building without extra batteries, always store the batteries wrapped in paper and then wrapped with tinfoil) before we opened the door.

The massive hot water heaters sat silently against one wall, the two furnaces were silent, the oil tanks squatted between the water heaters and the furnace. The room felt claustrophobic despite the size, all bare unpainted concrete. Pallets of covered war-stock lined the far side of the room, and the door to the stairwell to the sub-basement was at the halfway point, across the room from the oil tanks.

"We should have stayed in Fulda." Nagle bitched. "I'm so cold my fucking nipples are going to fall off."

I grinned at her, and went in. We stopped by the switch boxes and moved the big handle switches from external power to internal, bitched for a few minutes about how cold it was, then walked over to the door, quickly unlocking it. When I hauled the door opened, the smell washed over us.

Decay.

The sub-basement always smelled like there was something dead down there, no matter how much time had passed, no matter how well it was searched with nothing found, it always smelled like death.

We went down the stairs, and I unlocked the door to the generator room, ignoring the other three doors in the short hallway. All of them contained additional war stocks for use in the barracks.

According to the inventory sheets and rumor control, the generator room contained four 5K generators and two 60K generators, 6 fuel tanks were outside the building, two down in the sub-basement. Like the oil tanks, they were inside the building to prevent slurry or freezing in the pipes or lines. The generator room, like the three other rooms, could be accessed by the large hallway that ran behind them.

The barracks sat on a hill, which meant that the ramp from the hallway to the doors that opened out to the surface was fairly gentle of an incline. The war stocks and the generators had been moved in through the doors, into the hallways, then into the correct rooms via large double doors at the far side of the room. I'd never seen them, but I'd checked the door a few times on CQ to make sure it was still locked. You just checked it, if it was locked, you signed off on the sheet by the door, if it was unlocked, you locked it and noted it on the sheet before signing off.

"We'll fire up the generators, then sweep the barracks and see if we can find Jakes and the others." I said. Bomber grunted and Nagle just nodded.

I pulled open the door to the generator room, already thinking about what order I'd need to fire them up. Looking forward to then getting the water heaters and furnaces running. My brain ticked through that the water heaters needed to be priority, since living areas were heated via radiators, and the oil furnaces would be used to warm up the rest of the big ass building. At the rate the temperature was dropping, we'd need to wake everyone up, or at least check on them, and make sure we didn't have any cold weather casualties.

I flashed my light in while thinking over the steps I'd need to take.

The cables that led into the ceiling or walls glimmered, black under the frost. The fuel tanks sat solidly, full of diesel fuel, coated in frost. The doors looked like they were frozen shut. The chain looked like it had been coated with pixie dust by tinkerbell.

And no generators.

The smell of decay rolled over the three of us.

"What the fuck?" Bomber said.

A scream ripped down the stairwell.

Chapter 3

"I hate this fucking place!" I yelled, staring at the mostly empty room.

"Where are the fucking generators?" Nagle asked, stepping into the room and looking around. "There's supposed to be generators in here."

"Goddamn black market assholes." Bomber grumbled, then turned and looked at me. "What's the plan, smart guy?"

I looked at the empty room, wondering where the hell all that sheer weight of metal could have gone. You needed a goddamn forklift to move 5K generators, a pallet jack at the very least. "I have no idea." I admitted, walking in and stopping next to the fuel tanks. Out of curiosity I knocked on them.

Empty.

Fuck.

Nagle checked the lock on the chains on the door that led to the access hallway, pulling on it for moment. Locked. I bent down and took a look at the hoses that led from both the pipes on the walls and the fuel tanks.

Not a single scratch or nick on the copper nipple.

I sniffed them, but all I smelled was the ever present smell of decay.

"We're not in trouble that bad." Bomber said from the darkness behind me. The dumbass hadn't brought a flashlight with him and Nagle was panning hers over the ceiling, pointing out icicles, some of them almost a foot long.

"Yeah, I heard freezing to death isn't that bad of a way to go." Nagle sneered.

"He's right." I told her, standing up and shivering again. "The furnaces and water heater are all oil fired. We'll get them running and then figure out what to do."

"My thought exactly." Bomber grinned. "Glad to hear you agree with my plan." I made a face. Typical Bomber.

We headed back up the stairs after closing the generator room door. The cavernous basement swallowed our lights, and I could almost feel the darkness pressing on us, and for some reason I became very aware of the building squatting over us. A building that had been built by the lowest bidder.

A building that almost exactly followed the floor plan of a barracks that had tried its damnedest to kill me and 19 other people, including my older brother. A building that had already been found to have serious construction faults.

"Fuck, these things are electrically fired." Bomber said after taking the panel off the first massive water heater and looking inside with my flashlight. "You press the button and hold it till the burners light up and the fans kick on."

"We'll have to do it the hard way." I said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it real quick. I knelt down and looked inside, pointing out to Bomber where to shine the light. The data sheet on the water heater was still on the inside of the panel and I stared at it for a long time, memorizing parts of it.

"Well?" Nagle asked. She was shining her light in steady sweeps across the darkness and I could hear her teeth chattering. Bomber was knocking on the oil tanks and getting back dull thumps. Full. Thank God.

"It needs electrical, we're going to have to do this the hard way." I said, standing back up and taking my flashlight back from Bomber. I panned it across the wall and then wiggled between the two heaters so I could see behind them.

A scream echoed through the basement, raising goosebumps on my arms. I was suddenly very aware that I was pinned between and slightly behind a water heater that probably weighed about two tons. Without water.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Nagle snarled. She was in a bad mood, cold, tired, and if she was anything like me, a little scared.

"We need to find a generator." I told her, then kicked my boot. "Bomber, pull me out."

"Hey, Ant, in case you didn't notice, the generators are gone." She said as Bomber grabbed my ankles and pulled me out from between the hulking metal behemoths.

"In the generator room, yeah." Bomber said, and I nodded. "Let's check the inventory sheets."

We went to each tarp covered stack, pulling the inventory sheets out the clear plastic envelopes and quickly scanned them.

Body bags. Uniforms. Boots. Sleeping bags. TA-50. Tools. All broken down by platoon and squad. Everything we'd need to fight when the Soviets rolled into the Fulda Gap.

Except fucking generators.

"What about the war stocks rooms?" Nagle asked when we finished. It was getting colder, even down in the basement, which meant that it had to be colder than a witch's ass on a brass broomstick in the rest of the barracks.

"No key." I answered. "Jakes has the keys, they weren't in the CQ Area."

"How many of us are left in the barracks?" Bomber asked, shivering. All of our teeth were chattering and I started walking toward the stairwell access.

"CQ is all from the barracks tonight. That leaves ten people we need to find if we count them. If we don't, we need to find six." I answered, remembering the morning report. "That's if nobody else is missing." I finished lamely.

"Yeah. If." Bomber agreed, his normal Texas cheer missing.

In the stairwell both Nagle's and my flashlight cut out, leaving us in darkness. A whispering noise surrounded us, and the faint sound of scratching could be heard. A sobbing moan drifted through the stairwell, and I heard either Nagle or Bomber inhale sharply.

I suddenly had to piss really badly.

I could hear Nagle unscrewing her flashlight and I did the same, almost racing her to get it open and drop in new batteries. I stripped the tinfoil and paper off them and dropped them in, then sighed with relief when it lit back up.

I still remembered my flashlight batteries cutting out and new batteries not getting my flashlight restarted one fateful night.

We started up the stairs, reached the mid-way landing, turned to go up, and stopped in our tracks, staring.

Nagle screamed.

Bomber cursed.

I just stared, mouth open.

Dark red had oozed from the edge of the ceiling that was formed by the 2nd floor landing, running down the wall next to the 1st floor door, and freezing solid. Our flashlights glittered off the frost that covered it, and my brain just refused to process what I was seeing.

Bomber moved before I did, rushing up the stairs, heedless of the ice on the steps, and slamming his shoulder against the door. I was right on his heels, and could feel and hear Nagle right after me. Nagle tripped me as we went through, and we both went down on the floor, dragging Bomber with us. I kicked at the door wildly until it slammed shut and then scrambled backwards until my back hit the wall. I knew my eyes were wild, and I was shaking from more than the cold.

"What the fuck was that!" Nagle yelled.

"How the fuck should I know?" I yelled back.

"It was fucking blood! Oh fuck, it was fucking blood!" Bomber yelled, jumping up.

"CQ Area!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet.

All three of us blew through the mid-way doors, pounded down the hallway at a dead run, and burst through the doors to the CQ Area and came skidding to a halt.

It was empty, and we looked at each other and laughed nervously for a moment. A faint sobbing noise sobered us really quickly. We went around the counter and back to the drawers.

While Bomber jotted down the numbers of the occupied rooms, I went into The Closet and checked the gauges.

No power.

Temperature had dropped by 5 degrees.

Wind speed was gusting up to 60 mph.

When I came out of The Closet Nagle held up the V Corps line and shook her head.

"Damn it." I cursed. I pointed at the double doors. "We're getting a hell of a storm out there. Nobody's coming to fucking save us."

Bomber grinned at me.

"What's so fucking funny?" Nagle asked.

"At least I got to fuck a Bigfoot." He said.

I couldn't help it, I laughed, and so did Nagle.

"All right, let's go get everyone else." I said. "How many on the first floor?"

"Nagle. That's it." Bomber said.

"Second floor?"

"Everyone but James and Tanner." He told me. "They were on CQ."

"Fourth?"

"Nobody."

"Good."

"I'm not going back in that stairwell." Nagle said.

"You wanna stay here by yourself?" I asked.

"No."

"Let's take this stairwell." Bomber suggested, and we both nodded.

"Third floor first." I said, rummaging around in another drawer and coming up with a heavy duty flashlight. One of the ones with the big square batteries. I clicked it off and on, then slapped it a few times. We got lucky, it lit.

Bomber opened the door and we shined our flashlights in. No blood on the wall, but there was still thick ice. We tromped up the stairs to the third floor and pushed out into the hallway. The office space to our right was empty, but at Nagle's suggestion we swept through it real quick, using my key to open the doors.

Nobody.

We knocked on Tanner's door first, and got no answer. After trying twice more I unlocked the door and we went in.

It was empty.

I relocked the door and we headed down to Jakes' room, where we repeated the process.

When I opened the door the wind hit us in the face, the temperature in the hallway dropping. I could see that his window was open, letting in the snow and the wind. Cursing we went in, shut his window, and looked around.

Empty.

We got luckier on the second floor.

Daniels and Hewitt shared a room, Hewitt answered the door after I banged on it a couple of times.

"What the hell's going on? It's fucking freezing in here." He said. He was dressed in PT sweats.

"Furnace and water heater are off, and we've lost power." Bomber said. "Daniels in there?"

"Yeah. Why are you banging on my door?"

"I'll tell you later. Just stay in your room, OK?" I said.

"You woke me up for that shit?"

"I'm serious. Don't go anywhere just yet, but wake up Daniels and get dressed." I told him.

"Why?" He asked.

"I'm taking a head count, then we're going to figure out what to do." I told him.

"You're an asshole." He answered, and slammed the door. I was tempted to kick in his door and beat his ungrateful ass.

Hernandez answered his door, wrapped in his blanket. When I told him to get dressed and wait for me in his room, he nodded and shut the door.

Jacobs and Lewis both did the same.

Carter didn't answer, so I unlocked the door and we went in.

He was curled up in his bed, pale in our flashlight beams, and his earlobes and the tip of his nose had a blackish blue tint.

"Shit." Bomber said, reaching down and shaking him. "He's ice fucking cold."

"Hold our flashlights, Nagle." I said, handing mine to her. Bomber did the same, moving down to Carter's feet. "Ready?" I asked. Bomber nodded, and we pulled the sheet out from under the mattress and got a good grip on it.

On three we lifted him up, and had Nagle lead the way back to Lewis' room, since it was closer.

"Is he dead?" Lewis asked as soon as he opened the door.

"Not yet." Bomber answered. Lewis nodded and stepped aside so we could get in the room. We staggered over to the bed that wasn't a bunkbed set and set him down on it, sheet, blankets, and all.

"Get under the covers with him, I'll pile your blankets on top of you." Nagle said while Bomber and I stepped back.

Lewis had been to arctic survival just like us, and knew that this was pretty much the only chance Carter had. Bomber and I took back the flashlights, and I took Nagles, then she went over and gathered up all the blankets off the other two beds. By the time she finished Lewis had climbed under the covers with Carter and wrapped his arms around the other man.

Nagle piled the blankets on both of them, wet her finger, and held it in front of Carter's nose.

"Still alive." She said.

"Wait here, we'll be back." Bomber said.

"He's fucking freezing," Lewis told us, and shivered under the covers.

"Try to keep him alive, man," I told them. "We're going back down to the CQ Area."

We left Lewis' room and at Bomber's suggestion we went backwards, telling everyone to get their blankets and wait in Lewis' room, Room 208, and waited till everyone agreed.

Once everyone started moving, we went up to the 4th floor, and I unlocked each room. A quick look see in the bathroom of each room and the living area, we'd leave, lock the door, and move to the next one.

It was getting colder by the minute.

As we passed by the second floor middle stairwell I stopped.

"I gotta know." I said. Nagle nodded, her face pale in the backwash from the flashlights.

I pushed open the door, and then slammed it shut.

The entire landing was covered in frozen red.

"Oh fuck." Bomber breathed.

We hurried on, finishing the sweep of the second floor and moving down to the first floor. Nagle checked the female's rooms.

Nobody.

Finally we got to the doors that opened up into the CQ Area and pushed them open.

Nagle screamed when our flashlight beams dimly lit up the room.

Both sets of double doors were open. The wind was howling and snow was blowing through the doors. The doors to the Dayroom were open, and I could tell by the way the wind tore through the CQ area that the windows were either open or shattered. There was already a couple inches of snow on the tile and the wind kept blowing snow into the room.

And there was a snowman built in the middle of the room.

It wore a BDU softcap, had a broken OD green flashlight, the battery container only, creating a jagged ended nose, and its eyes and slash of a mouth were chrome. Its arms were two halves of a broken mop, and the hair underneath the softcap was a mophead. A knife handle stuck out of its round chest, as if someone had stabbed it in the chest.

I stepped forward and looked closer at the eyes, aware that I was in the middle of the room, that there was nothing between me and the outside on my right, nothing but the dayroom chairs between me and a twenty foot drop to the ground on my left. I shined my flashlight at the eyes and leaned in to check.

They were chrome with black edging.

Dogtags.

Dogtags with rubber silencers on them.

My dogtags.

From where I'd left them hanging in the bathroom in my room.

The mouth was a broken off knife blade.

The hilt in the chest matched the blade. A hilt I recognized.

One of the knives out of my desk.

The red emergency light clicked on, turning the snow crimson.

And the snowman bloody.

Outside, in the snow, came another scream. A long, drawn out scream.

The red emergency light strobed for a second and cut out.

Chapter 4

With a snarl I plucked my dogtags out of the snowman's face, then kicked it down, cursing and snarling the whole time. I was vaguely aware that I was hovering on the edge of losing control, that I was wavering between panic and going apeshit. I could smell jet fuel and burning bodies, I could hear screaming, and the scars across my back had ignited, my brain registering the freezing wind howling around me as my shirt charring on my back.

"I'll fucking kill you!" I screamed, turning and taking a step toward the door. Before I could take the second step Bomber had me around the neck, pulling me back in a full nelson while Nagle moved in front of me, grabbing my face in her hands.

"Don't! Don't go out there! Please, Ant, calm down!" She said. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed me, the taste of her lips, the feel of her tongue darting into my mouth, the pressure of her mouth against mine, suddenly bringing me back to reality.

It's what somebody wants... slithered through my brain.

I relaxed, and Bomber slowly let me go. I'd dropped my flashlight in the snow, and when Bomber let me go, I picked it up slowly, anger still making my head pound.

"What the fuck is going on?" Nagle asked, walking over to the outer doors and kicking the chocks up so she could close them.

Beyond her, in the snow, dark shapes moved around just beyond the reach of my flashlight, as if they were edging toward her but unwilling to brave the light.

Four shadows... my mind insisted.

Once the doors shut, the wind cut down, and Bomber went into the day room to shut the windows in there while Nagle shut the inner doors.

I simply stood there, next to the ruined snowman, shaking with the after effects of too much adrenaline. Whoever had done this had been in my room, had gone through my stuff, and had done this knowing I'd find it.

"We've got a psycho." I said. Nagle and Bomber turned and looked at me.

"Shit." Bomber said, looking around the CQ area, panning his flashlight. Snow was thick on the floor, wind had scattered the paper from the bulletin board everywhere. He walked behind the desk and stopped. When I shined the light on him his face was bloodless.

"What?" Nagle asked.

Bomber wordlessly held up the phone receiver, the black plastic looking unclean in his hand somehow.

Three inches of curled cord dangled from the receiver.

Shit.

"What about the log?" I asked.

"Gone."

"What do we do?" I asked. My brain was whirring, running through the logic chains and permutations.

The majority of the decision trees ended up with all of us dead.

"I don't know, Ant. Punt?" Bomber came back around the counter and stood next to me. Nagle was on the other side of me, keeping her flashlight on the doors of the hallway and the rec-room.

And the bathroom.

"We need to get back to the others, we'll have to form up in Lewis' room, I don't want to move Carter." Nagle said. I nodded wordlessly, trying to figure out our next move.

No matter what we did, we were in danger.

Roll the dice or play it safe?

"Roger that." I said.

Bomber led the way, through the doors, the wind shrieking and the door hinges screaming in protest. Our shoes left snow in the hallway as we walked in silence down the hallway.

"Do we tell them?" Bomber asked suddenly, breaking the eerie quiet.

"I don't know. This is way above my pay grade." I answered.

"We need to tell them. There's a psycho loose." Nagle added.

"Except for one problem," I added as we pushed through the second set of doors. I started to reach for the door handle to the middle stairwell and pulled back with a hiss.

"What's that?" Bomber asked. All three of us stood at the door to the middle stairwell.

Above us, in the darkness, the landing was coated with red ice. On the other side of the door the wall was coated with the same.

"One of them might be the psycho," I told them.

"Shit." Nagle summed it up.

Bomber nodded, and wordlessly we all started walking to the end stairwell rather than take the middle stairwell.

I led the way, checking up with my flashlight. Nagle came in next, flashing her light down the stairwell, leaning over and looking all the way to the bottom. Bomber closed the door behind him and we all stood for a long moment in the stairwell. After a few moments of silence, broken by a sobbing scream from upstairs, we began plodding up the steps to the second floor.

The door opened with a shriek that echoed down the hallway, and Hewitt popped his head out the door.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on yet?" he asked.

"Tell Daniels that we're forming up in Lewis' room, 245." I told him. "Bring all your blankets."

"Fuck you, tell me what's going on." He answered. I could smell the booze on his breath.

"Stay in your room and freeze to fucking death then." I snarled back, moving past him.

Jacobs answered his door right away, and asked us to wait for him while he grabbed all the blankets in his room. He had 2 other room mates, both of whom had gone back to CONUS for Christmas, and he grabbed their blankets too.

Hernandez had more than just blankets, he'd grabbed his sleeping bag and his room mates sleeping bag.

"I busted the locks on their wall lockers." He admitted.

"Good man." Bomber said, taking one of the sleeping bags. "Good thinking."

We all walked down the hallway. Outside the wind was howling, inside moans and screams echoed through the dark hallways.

I unlocked the door to Lewis' room with my key and we all went in.

I was half afraid that the room would be empty except for Carter's corpse.

"Lewis?" I asked into the darkness.

"I'm here, Ant." I almost wept at the sound of his voice.

"How's Carter?" I asked, moving further into the room. The others followed me.

"He's shivering." Lewis answered. "I think he'll make it."

"Thank God." Nagle breathed.

"We're going to form up in here, I'll explain when everyone gets here." I said. Nagle walked over and sat on one of the empty beds, taking a blanket offered by Jacobs with a wan smile and wrapping it around herself.

The temperature in the barracks was still dropping.

I was almost ready to go down to their room and drag them out when Hewitt and Daniels showed up. Hewitt wasn't carrying anything, but Daniels had blankets in his arms, including the quilt he usually kept on his bed.

"What the fuck is going on, Ant?" Hewitt asked.

"I don't know." I admitted.

"Someone needs to go down and start the generators." Lewis said.

Nagle barked a harsh laugh and held up her hand when everyone looked at her. "Sorry, it's just that that ain't happening."

"What do you mean?" Hewitt again with the nasty tone. I caught myself looking at his hands.

They were clean.

"The generators are gone." Bomber answered. "I don't think they were ever there, but even if they were, someone stole them."

"Bullshit." Hewitt snarled. "You three are full of shit."

"Then go check, high speed." I snarled back.

I'd hated Hewitt since he'd gotten there in June. He was a nasty mouthed fucking bigot who talked shit about people behind their backs while being all nice to them in person. During REFORGER he'd taken my Walkman from under my pillow and took it out to guard duty with him, and I caught him putting it back with dead batteries.

"I don't need to to know you're fucking lying." He sneered.

"Call me a liar again." I snarled, taking a step toward him. My muscles were still thrumming with the adrenaline from that fucking snowman, and my frustration and fear had built up into a temple throbbing rage.

"You're a fucking liar, Ant." He sneered, "What are you going..."

Dropping my flashlight I hit him while his mouth was open, catching him right on the lower part of the jaw, and I felt it go under my knuckles. He started to spin with the blow, but I wasn't done with him. I put my left into his stomach, folding him up, and drove a knee into his face. Everything went red as I went with him down to the floor in the darkness.

Bomber and Hernandez drug me off him. I was shouting that I'd beat his ass for that goddamn snowman bullshit and everyone was staring.

Lewis was sitting up, and it was obvious that both he and Carter were naked under all the blankets.

Eyes went from me to Lewis.

"Lewis... why are you and Carter naked?" Daniels asked. Nagle was kneeling down next to Hewitt, checking his pulse.

"Hypothermia." He said. "Gotta warm him up or he's going to die." He laid back down and pulled the blankets back over the two of them.

"Oh." Daniels said, then turned to me. "What snowman?"

I filled them in on what we'd seen so far.

Hewitt woke up during the recounting, and his glare told me that he didn't think it was over. I hoped not. I wanted to beat on the racist cocksucker some more.

"Blood? No fucking way." Jacobs protested.

"Go look." Nagle said.

Jacobs borrowed Nagle's flashlight went out the door, and I locked it behind him.

Less than five minutes later he was hammering on the door. I opened it up and he rushed into the room, his face pale.

"There's fucking blood everywhere!" He half yelled.

"No shit, Sherlock." Bomber answered.

We filled them in on the rest, including the snowman. Thankfully Bomber omitted the part where I almost went charging out into the snow.

There was a loud crash outside the room, and all of us jumped.

"It's getting cold as fuck in here." Hernandez said. "We've got to do something."

"I've got a plan." I said, and everyone turned to look at me.

"Bomber, Nagle and I are going to go out there." I said.

Everyone stared at me.

Outside the door to the room there was a long drawn out scream.

Chapter 5

Bomber, Nagle and I walked down the hallway, only my flashlight leading the way. Nagle and Bomber had given theirs to the few people left in the unit that were all gathered in Lewis' room. The barracks creaked and groaned around us, and a steady slamming noise could be heard coming from somewhere in the building.

Frost glittered on the walls and floor, with patches of ice here and there. When we pushed the midpoint doors open there was a crack of breaking ice and the swirl of wind around our legs. Once again I caught the odor of something dead and rotting.

"Someone's opened some more windows." Nagle said when we paused on the other side of the doors. Upstairs there was a scream of agreement that floated down the stairwell behind us.

"Who do you think it is?" I asked.

"If it's someone from the unit, it has to be either the guys from CQ or someone from the unit that we didn't know was back." Bomber said, rubbing his hands together. "Kee-Rist, it's cold."

We kept walking toward my room, and I pulled my keyring out of my pocket. We stopped in front of my door. We'd agreed to grab the extreme cold weather gear out of our rooms before we followed through with my plan. A plan that held a little bit more than a trace of desperation. Sadly, it was pretty much our only hope, and it carried more than a little bit of risk.

I reached out, put my hand on the handle of my door, and reached forward with my key.

And my door fell inward, pivoting in my hand and smashing me across the shins, knocking me down and taking Nagle with me. I laid there for a moment, a little stunned by the fall, bouncing my head off the ice covered tile, and the fact that my door had just fallen the fuck off!

Bomber panned the light into my room as I looked up, and my heart sank.

My roommates and my wall lockers were all open, the doors hanging half off the hinges. Our TA-50 scattered around, down stuffing blowing out of the room and into the hallway. My desk drawers were yanked out, the three 3-drawer chests broken, my stereo and computer smashed.

My windows open.

"Someone kicked open your door," Bomber said as Nagle and I got to our feet.

We went in and looked around. My blankets were ruined, the quilt my grandmother made me shredded, the cold weather gear was hanging from the end of the bunk bed, sliced down the back and stuffing pulled out, and my longjohns tied into a noose and thrown over the chair in front of the desk.

My Guns N' Roses poster was shredded on the wall, my award letters torn off the wall and laying on the snow dusted floor, and my poor Amiga-500 was shattered in front of the dented refrigerator. It looked like someone had taken my typewriter and used it to beat to death the rest of the electronics in the room. My Amiga monitor and my roommate's television were smashed and set on the beds, the mattresses torn down the middle and the stuffing ripped out. Ice glittered where water had been poured on the beds.

To top it off, all my roommates and my clothing was piled in the middle of the room and was nothing more than a mass of ice and cloth. Someone had poured water on the clothing or soaked it in the shower before throwing it in a pile in the middle of my room.

"I think someone doesn't like you." Bomber finished, no trace of his usual good humor and his Texas accent thick enough to smother someone. Nagle was moving through the room, staying in the beam of the flashlight, poking around in the wreckage that not too long before had been my room.

"Ya think?" I asked. Someone had even cut the fingers off my black gloves and torn up my trigger mittens. And then left them on my desk, a chunk of ice, to mock me.

My knives were broken, the hilts and the blades laid out nice and neat on my dresser. My Zippo lighter collection was destroyed, the lighters pulled apart and then crushed and then set up nice and neat on the dresser, next to the knives. 3.5 and 5.25 floppies were either broken and scattered around or crumpled up and thrown about.

My alarm clock was smashed and then set back upright on my roommates dresser, the hands pointing at midnight.

Everything was gone. Everything I owned, everything my roommates owned, was destroyed.

All three bottles of Wild Turkey had been broken and left on my bunk.

"Let's try my room." Bomber suggested after a few minutes. I nodded mutely, trying to figure out who had done it and why, and coming up blank.

We all walked the few doors down to his room. We paused for a moment, listening the banging noise from inside, beyond the door.

Bomber gave me the smile that he usually got right before he clocked someone in the face. I smiled back and drew my knife from the sheathe on my belt.

He turned the handle, and I held up three fingers, jerked my hand and folded one, did it again, then finally made a fist. With a shout he threw open the door and both of us charged into the room.

Bomber's windows were open, wind whipping snow in.

His wall lockers were open, the doors banging back and forth.

The mattresses on the bunks were bare. His wall lockers empty, even the one with his civilian clothing. His walls were bare. His room mates' lockers were empty. His TV was gone. Even his rodeo buckles were gone off the walls.

His room was bare. Only the desk, the dressers, and the beds.

No three drawer chests, no desk drawers, no dresser drawers, even his bathroom was stripped bare.

It was if nobody lived there.

"My room..." Nagle said, and we looked at each other.

Without bothering to search Bomber's room we hurried to the stairwell, jogging in our haste to get there before whoever had ripped Bomber and my room to shit got to hers.

Bomber went first, banging through the door and heading for the steps, flashlight casting wild shadows on the walls.

And slipped on the first step.

Bomber yelled and went face first down the stairs, bringing his arms up over his head as he pitched forward into the darkness, the flashlight flying from his hand.

I thought he'd slipped on the ice and lunged forward to grab him.

And felt my foot go out from under me right at the edge of the steps.

I windmilled, reaching out and grabbing the steps going up and swinging hard against the banister. Nagle screamed Bomber's name. Bomber cursed as he bounced off the steps.

My knife fell between the stairs, vanishing into the darkness with a metallic clatter.

I managed to keep from going headfirst down the stairs, holding onto the slick steps and breathing hard. Nagle had grabbed my jacket and was pulling me toward her, an action I was grateful for as I scrabbled for a toehold. It took a couple seconds, but she managed to get me back onto the landing.

Bomber was groaning on the halfway landing, so we knew he was alive.

Nagle bent down and ran a hand over the edge of the landing, then reached down and felt the first step.

"They're coated with ice. Thick ice." She told me.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking." Bomber groaned. "Assholes."

Nagle and I moved down next to him, moving slowly. The flashlight had landed on the landing, casting bizarre shadows in the stairwell.

Above us there was another scream, almost mocking what had just happened.

Bomber had slammed into a mop bucket that hadn't been there the last time we had been on the steps and the sight of it told us that the ice on the steps wasn't an accident, that someone was supposed to go down the stairs and probably break their neck.

Or get knocked out or injured bad enough they couldn't move and then freeze to death.

"You alive, Texas?" I asked him, squatting down next to him and rubbing his shoulder.

"Yeah, no worse than a bull ride." He said, sitting up.

"I'm going after my knife." I told them, scooping up the flashlight.

Bomber nodded, and Nagle looked doubtful, but she didn't argue.

I looked down the steps, into the darkness, and had a sudden change of heart.

Someone had moved from fucking with us to setting traps.

What was down there in the darkness?

"Fuck the knife." I said, helping Bomber up.

"No, we go after it." He said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Right now we're unarmed, and I don't think we want someone running around with a knife that the whole company knows is yours." Nagle answered before Bomber could say anything. "We need your knife."

I nodded, and together we walked the flight and a half of stairs, taking it slow and shining the flashlight on the steps to watch for any more traps.

At the bottom of the stairs we found my knife, laying on the floor, the matte black Gerber blade waiting patiently for me to find it.

That wasn't what had our attention.

The door to the orderly room area was wedged open, and in the light of the flashlight we could see down the short hallway to the door that led outside.

It was wide open to the snowy night.

Staring at the door and the hallway, I reached down and felt around till I got ahold of the knife and slowly straightened up.

Footsteps were outlined in snow.

Footprints that came from outside and stopped halfway to the stairwell door.

Bare footprints.

Chapter 6

Nagle covered her mouth, her eyes wide, and she backed up till she hit the steps and fell on her ass. Bomber was staring at the footprints, his mouth working silently. The wind went from swirling in the entryway to howling up the stairwell a split second after glass shattered high above us.

I couldn't take my eyes off the footprints.

"No. No no no nonononononono..." Nagle moaned.

"It can't be..." Bomber whispered, barely audible over the wind.

"Don't." I pleaded. "Don't say his name."

I knew, right then, who was fucking with us. Who was stalking each of us. Who had killed the four men on CQ. Who had nearly frozen Carter to death.

Carter, the only person still in the entire barracks who had been part of the First Twenty.

Except for me.

I turned to tell them something, anything, to try to deny what the snow outlined footprints told us when we heard it.

Laughter.

Low, bubbling laughter.

I'd read about evil, heard about it from fire and brimstone preachers in my youth, been told I was evil by my mother, and thought I'd seen the aftermath of evil by coming to 2/19th.

The laughter that echoed from the darkness of the stairwell above us was something that made everything I thought I knew about evil pale in comparison.

The evil I'd known before was a small child holding her breath till she crapped her pants because she was denied a pony.

Silence, except for the howling of the wind, descended on the stairwell as we all looked at each other. We heard the rush of footsteps coming down the stairs, the banister began to shiver, and we knew what was happening.

He was coming down the stairs.

We moved into the orderly room hallway, and I turned, grabbed the door, and tried to pull it shut.

It didn't budge.

"Come on, Ant!" Nagle yelled, pulling on my sleeve.

"Fuck this! I can take him!" I snarled, pulling my knife from the sheathe.

"No, you can't." Bomber yelled, grabbing me by the back of my jacket and pulling me away from the door. "Come on!"

"Ant, we need you." Nagle said, her voice cracking with fear.

We could hear him coming down the steps.

We were trapped between the stairs, where something dark and evil was rapidly descending toward us, and the blizzard outside.

"Come on!" I yelled, turning and heading toward the door. We had a chance. If we kept out heads together and didn't panic, we could do it. I sheathed my knife as we headed for the door, the freezing wind bringing tears to my eyes. "Kill the flashlight so he can't follow us!"

"Are you fucking crazy?" Nagle asked, flinching from the wind as the light went out and the hallway went completely black.

"We'll go down the hill to the ski resort! We can make it!" I yelled, grabbing Nagle's hand. "John, grab her hand and don't let go!"

One step out the door and the blizzard took us. The wind screamed around us, slicing through my heavy fleece lined denim jacket like it was tanning oil. Snow smothered me, blinding me almost immediately. My face, ears, and hands went instantly numb. The wind cut through my pants and my balls felt like someone had just kicked me square in the sack, then gave a dull throb, then just vanished.

All of it in less than a heartbeat.

I took a hard right instead of heading straight, reaching out with my free hand to put my hand on the wall of the barracks. I squeezed Nagle's hand and moved as quickly as I could, keeping my hand on the wall.

Forever passed till I felt the corner of the building, and I made sure Nagle made it, then kept moving, the incline telling me we were moving toward the front of the building. The snow made it treacherous going, and I knew if I slipped, I'd lose my bearings as I rolled down the incline, past the building, and possibly across the road and into the German woods.

That's what the killer was. The incline at the sides of the barracks, the 15 foot drop, where it was so easy to slip, lose your bearings, and freeze to death before you even understood what had happened.

I half drug Nagle up the hill, blind, deaf, and numb. I hoped she still had ahold of Bomber, my best friend.

The ground leveled out and I knew I was either crying or sobbing in relief. A handful of steps more and the next corner came. I followed it, until I hit the picket fence that surrounded the lawn of the company. I pulled Nagle close, and reached out till I felt John's denim jacket, then pulled him close too.

"We're almost to the front entrance!" I yelled.

"Thank God." Bomber yelled back.

"He probably thinks we're dead!" Nagle yelled.

"Let's go! Hold onto my jacket!" I hollered back, and climbed over the fence, Nagle holding onto me throwing me off balance. Still, once I was over I remembered that it was left to the front of the building if I faced the fence from the inside.

Not that I was worried. I was starting to warm up.

Wait? What?

Oh. Shit.

Nagle came next, followed by Bomber, and we fumbled along the building till we found the steps and the alcove that led to the CQ area. The wind hammered at us as we fought our way up the steps and pushed our way through the outer doors.

The lack of wind felt like someone had just wrapped me in warm blankets.

We pushed open the inner doors, and Bomber clicked on the flashlight.

The CQ area was empty, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Moving as silently as we could, we snuck down to Nagle's room. She reached for her key when suddenly Bomber reached out and stopped her.

He shined the flashlight in his own face and shook his head, pointing at first me, then him. Nagle's eyes opened wide, and it took me a second longer to realize what he was saying.

Our rooms had been trashed. God only knew what was waiting for us in Nagle's room.

I closed my eyes for a second, thinking fast, then dug my keyring out, my numb hands clumsy. I moved a couple doors down the hall and waved at Bomber to shine the light at the nametag on the door.

SPC STOKES

I jammed my key in the lock and unlocked the door, quickly opening it and waving Bomber and Nagle in, then quietly shutting the door and locking it.

Nagle grabbed a chair and drug it over to the door, putting it under the door handle to keep someone from opening it even if they unlocked it.

Stokes' room smelled of strawberries.

"Tell me this isn't happening." Bomber whispered, clicking off his flashlight.

"It's happening." Nagle said.

"What the fuck did we do?" Bomber asked, his teeth chattering, "Why the hell is he out to kill us?"

"I don't know, but I don't think it's Tandy." I said, moving by feel over to Stokes' bed.

"Why the fuck not? You saw the goddamn footprints." Bomber swore, coming closer to me. I pulled her heavy quilt off her bed, wadded it up, and set it on the bed.

"If it was Tandy, he wouldn't have fallen for it. He would have snatched us and killed us one by one when we were outside." Nagle answered for me. "That's his world out there, we wouldn't have made it to the side of the building."

"Bingo." I said, reaching out and grabbing Bomber by the jacket. "Come're, Nancy."

When she bumped into me, I reached down and grabbed the heavy quilt, a gift from my brother to her, and wrapped the three of us in it. Nagle's arm snaked around me and pulled me tight against her, and a second later Bomber was pulled tight against the two of us. Bomber was wiggling, and I wondered what the fuck he was doing.

"Nothing gay." Bomber said, and I felt his fingers unbuttoning my jacket and then my flannel, finally pulling up my shirt. A second later Nagle smothered a giggle and I knew he was doing the same to her. Then we pressed together, shivering and shaking in the middle of Stokes' room, naked chests pressing against each other. We pressed our faces against each other, trying desperately to warm up our faces.

"What's the plan?" I asked, shaking so hard I was sure that I was going to dislocate a hip or something.

"Your brother's room," Nagle said, her teeth chattering.

"Hey, yeah, doesn't your brother still have your dad's pistol in his wall locker?" Bomber added. He was quaking as bad as I was.

"Yeah, he does. And a shitload of knives." I answered.

"We warm up, take his cold weather gear, take his pistol, grab some knives, then go with the original plan." Nagle finished. She suddenly giggled.

"What's so funny?" Bomber asked.

"This is like one of my best masturbation fantasies, having two guys pressing against me." She whispered, and we all smothered laughter.

"I don't think now is the time to warm up that way." Bomber whispered, his voice mock serious.

We stood there for a long time, shivering against one another, until I suddenly groaned in pain.

"What?" Nagle asked, sounding afraid.

"I can feel my balls again." I groaned. It felt like a ball of lead in my stomach, my balls throbbed, and my cock suddenly felt like it was on fire.

"That's a good sign." Nagle whispered. "My nipples feel like someone tried to bite them off."

"Ha, tough luck suckers, I don't feel anything like..." Bomber suddenly groaned and sagged, forcing me and Nagle to hold him up. "Oh God, someone is squeezing my balls."

Finally we were warm enough, and not in pain enough, to move around. We put Stokes' blanket back on her bed, dug out a towel form her dresser and dried our hair, then moved over by the door.

We listened closely, moved the chair, and eased the door open.

Above us a scream sounded out, but we ignored it and slipped out into the hallway.

"Lock it?" Bomber asked.

"No, leave it, we might need somewhere to run again." Nagle said.

"Good plan." I agreed.

We'd agreed to go to the end stairwell, and we moved quickly and quietly to the heavy door.

It was propped open, and wind howled down the stairwell.

For once it was going to work for us.

We slipped up the stairs, being careful to watch for ice or anything else, and snuck into the second floor hallway.

My brother's room was only a few doors down.

I counted doors, and waited for Bomber to catch up with the flashlight. He shined the light on the door nameplate just to be sure.

There his name was.

I put my key in the lock and went to turn it.

And it didn't budge.

I tried again, both ways, but it didn't move at all.

I went to pull the key out, and it slipped out of my hand.

"What the fuck?" I asked.

Bomber shined the light on the lock, and all three of us groaned at once.

Clear, thick liquid had welled up around my key, a single drop slowly creeping down the face of the lock from beneath my key.

Just to make sure I reached down and touched the drop with my finger, then rubbed my finger and thumb together.

They stuck.

Superglue

Chapter 7

"Back back back." I hissed, and Bomber led the way, Nagle following him, and me pulling drag. We hurried as fast as the frost and our boots let us move quietly, ghosting down the hallway and into the stairwell. Bomber turned off the flashlight and we moved quickly and quietly down the stairs.

The stairwell door was open still, but at least the door across from it that led outside was still chained shut. The end stairwell didn't go any further down than the ground floor, so when Bomber waved Nagle and I back, we didn't go up the steps, but instead ducked down and scooted toward the back of the stairwell, hiding under the steps.

Bomber knelt down, then peered around the corner slowly, careful not to move too fast. After a moment he waved us forward.

Nagle squeezed my hand for luck.

We moved as quietly as we could back to Stokes' room, slipping in and checking the room thoroughly with the flashlight after we put a chair under the handle again and locked the door.

We sat down on Stokes' bed and wrapped her quilt over our shoulders, snuggling up together. Nagle was shivering the worst, so once again she was between Bomber and me. The cold was getting worse, and we had six men upstairs who were counting on us to do something, one of whom was suffering from hypothermia already.

"He's one step ahead of us." Nagle whispered, her teeth chattering. "This is insane."

"I noticed." Bomber answered. He had both hands jammed down his pants and I followed suit, cupping my genitals and hissing in pain at the contact of my ice cold hands on my already sore genitals.

"We've got to do something." I said. "Otherwise, we're just sitting here waiting to die."

Bomber checked his watch and cursed. "It's not even 0600."

"Are you sure?" I asked. It seemed like a lifetime had gone by.

"It's 0500." He told me, and I stifled a groan. Sunrise wouldn't be until 0800, and the whole time it was just going to get colder. And sunrise wouldn't help, all it would do is turn the entire world white. If we tried to go outside during the daylight we'd be in even worse shape.

"Put the blue lens in and hand me the flashlight, I'm gonna toss Stokes' room." I said, holding out my hand. Bomber took a moment, then handed it to me. I slipped out from under the heavy quilt and began checking over everything.

Stokes was on leave, not at Graf or Bremerhaven. Her TA-50 would be here at least, and if we were lucky, her two roommates stuff would be here.

I hit jackpot in a dresser drawer full of panties.

Keys. It looked like the three women had taken the spare keys for their locks and agreed to hide them in the room in case someone came home and had forgotten their keys or one of them asked another to get something out of their wall lockers and bring it to them in the field.

I opened the wall lockers, shivering in the cold, and almost started crying with relief.

Their extreme cold weather gear was there. To top it off, one of Stokes' roommates worked in the motorpool, so her heavy coveralls were hanging in the locker. I brought out the coveralls, the parkas, the cold weather masks, the field jackets and liners, the parka liners, and the pants.

In Stokes' and her room mates' rucksacks was the mandatory roll of 550 cord. In Stokes' 3-drawer chest I found her leatherman, and their flashlights were on their rucksacks.

When I found the vibrators, I gave silent thanks for big pussied women. Three of them were D Cell hummers. I silently promised I'd never make any jokes about deep or wide women again. I promised that if I got out of it, I'd find a big pussied woman and worship her for an entire weekend. Any woman who used a D-Cell vibrator was my personal goddess from here on out. I promised to sacrifice a virgin to a big pussied woman. I promised to build an altar to them and dance naked around it on the full moon.

We got dressed silently, layering on the cold weather gear, everything but the boots, which didn't fit any of us. We split up the flashlights and Nagle carried the extra one along with the batteries. My knife got transferred from my belt to hers.

Bomber and I both were going to carry entrenching tools.

Not because we thought we were going to do any digging, but because you can kill a man with one.

Something that had gone from drunken BSing theory to a seriously real possibility.

"What if he's in the hallway?" Bomber asked.

"Doesn't matter." Nagle said from behind the mask.

"Why not?" I asked, clenching my fists. My fingers were burning and tingling, a good sign but a painful one.

"We're going out her window." Nagle told us, and Bomber and I nodded.

We opened the window, and jumped out, landing in the snow outside the barracks, trying to keep our balance.

We were tied together by about 5 feet of 550 cord, one end of the cord was tied to the crossbrace on Stokes' window, and I fed it out as Bomber led the way across the yard. We climbed over the picket fence, and I took care of something real quick.

Across the street.

Zero visibility. The pressure of the wind was forcing us offstep. Breathing was like a knife in the chest it was so cold.

I was letting the 550 cord run between my fingers, keeping tension on it, and I heard Bomber curse as he ran shin first into the bumper of a car. I could tell he was moving around, checking something, and then he came bumping back, pulling Nagle into the clinch so she could hear what he had to say.

"Flat tires." He yelled.

"Roger!" I yelled back.

We went past the cars and started up the short incline that led to our motorpool. Fifteen or twenty feet up, maybe 10 feet from the end of the car. The incline was brutal, but working together we managed to climb it.

I kept tension on the 550 cord in my right hand, my hand dropping down to the D-ring I'd clipped to the parka to reassure myself it was there while I kept my shoulder against the chain link fence that was all that stood between us and the motorpool.

Finally I felt Nagle yank on the cord that connected us, and knew that Bomber had managed to cut through the fence ties on the ground and had lifted up the fencing far enough for us to get underneath.

I ducked underneath the poncho that Bomber had put down to keep the ends of the chainlink fence from tearing through our cold weather gear while we crawled under the fence. I gave thanks to Bomber's innovation and kept feeding out the 550 cord, keeping tension on it. Every few steps I checked the D-ring, just to be sure.

Finally the wind suddenly eased and I bumped into someone's back, stumbled to the side, and felt the side of the motorpool garage against my body.

We'd gone less than 500 yards, and I felt like I'd run 10 miles in full combat gear. My muscles were trembling with exhaustion, I could feel the sweat running down my back, and I couldn't seem to get enough air.

We skirted the motorpool building, looking for the door, until I bumped into Nagle's back. I stood there, in the howling darkness, my feet freezing in my combat boots, so cold that they just painfully throbbed with shooting pains in my toes.

Finally I heard a crash over the wind, and saw light pour out of the suddenly opened door.

All three of us rushed into the building. Bomber threw down the entrenching tool, it was bent wrong, the blade twisted and buckled, but it had done its job. I tied the 550 cord off on the door, then unsnapped the D-ring and set the assembly aside. I kicked the door shut and breathed a sigh of relief.

We'd made it.

It was warm in the building, and we quickly peeled off the cold weather gear, anxious to stand underneath the vents that the huge heaters pushed hot air into the motorpool building through.

All three of us stripped naked, standing beneath the blowers. Nagle still held my knife, I still held onto the entrenching tool, and Bomber kept a lookout, the flashlight still in his hand.

It took awhile, but we were finally warm, and we got dressed in the clothing we'd started with, leaving the heavy coveralls and the cold weather gear laying out on a tool bench right under a blower so it would dry and warm up.

Of course I watched Nagle out of the corner of my eye. I could tell by the smile she shot me that she knew I was watching.

My balls still hurt, or I'd have probably gotten hard right there.

Four CUC-V's, plugged into the wall to keep the fluids warm and circulating, were sitting in the motorpool bays. The sight of them made me breathe a sigh of relief. A quick check of them showed the steering wheels were still locked and they didn't have keys in the ignition, but that wasn't a problem, there were two sets of keys for every vehicle. One back at the company, the other in the Motor Pool Sergeant's office.

"We're fucking golden, Ant." Bomber grinned, rubbing his hands together. "We'll grab one of these, load Carter into it, we all pile into the other, and we go down and tell the MP's what's happening."

"Hooah." I grinned.

Nagle was looking around, shining a flashlight into the dark or shadowy areas of the bays as we headed to the office. She was frowning while she did so, chewing on her lower lip.

"What's up, Nancy?" I asked her, slowing down and looking around. The motorpool bay was big, but it was largely open, anyone coming at us would be seen quickly, and between the three of us, would get royally fucked up.

"We're forgetting something, but I don't know what." She told me. "I just know it."

"Does it matter?" I grinned, pointing at the NCOIC's office door.

"I think so." She said softly.

We moved up to the door and checked it. It was locked, but I slammed the point of the entrenching tool in between the door and the frame, right at the lock, and with a wrench tore it open. We went in, grinning, and I opened the keybox with one good whack with the entrenching tool.

It was empty.

Just a piece of paper that someone had written "MISSING SOMETHING?" in red ink.

The lights cut off, and the blowers went dead.

Between the time the lights went out and the emergency lights cut on, we heard running feet, that dark and evil laughter, and a loud booming noise.

He was still one step ahead of us.

Bomber jumped away from the door, cursing, and I felt Nagle grab me when I went to run into the bay. Her fingers dug into my arm and she pulled me back with surprising strength.

"Don't." She whispered. "He probably knows you're the type to charge in, and he might be waiting."

The realization that my anger and fear had almost pushed me into making a terminal mistake washed over me. Exhaustion, fear, and pain were driving me toward making mistakes, and mistakes were something we couldn't afford.

"We need to get weapons." Bomber said. "We'll grab axes and head back to the company, hole up in Lewis' room till someone comes for us."

"Won't work." I said, shaking my head.

"Why not?" Bomber asked.

"We'll freeze to death by this time tomorrow." Nagle said, and I nodded.

"Fuck." Bomber looked around.

"Wait, I've got an idea." I said.

"Let's hear it." Nagle said, "I'm out of ideas."

I told them quickly, and they nodded.

"Are you sure you can do it?" Nagle asked when I got done explaining it.

"I'm sure." I told her. "Well, I'm pretty sure."

I went out the door first, entrenching tool in hand, my nerves hyped up, but nobody jumped us. We stuck together and gathered everything up, then made our way back to where we'd left the parkas and other cold weather gear.

To where it had been.

The empty tool bench silently mocked us.

"GODDAMN IT!" Bomber yelled.

"No worries." I told him. He looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "Follow me."

We went back to the offices, past the emergency showers and into the locker room. While Nagle stood watch Bomber and I began ripping open the lockers one after another, pulling out the winter coveralls, any gloves left behind, anything we could use to replace our missing stolen cold weather gear.

I watched the door while Bomber and Nagle layered four sets of coveralls on, and put on some of the motorpool guy's lucky/work hats. Once Bomber was done, I went over and did the same, layering them on. More than a few of the motor pool guys had left socks in their lockers, and we pulled them on over our hands until we had makeshift gloves. Before I pulled on the socks, I smeared thick grease over our faces, rubbing it onto our lips and around our necks.

It was thick, bulky, and hard to move. The grease felt sticky and gross, the socks stunk, but it reminded me of childhood, and the memory of throwing snowballs with my siblings made me smile. We waddled back out into the motor pool bay, the emergency lights only giving off a dull yellow glow that was barely enough to see by while we retied ourselves together.

Bomber fished the compass he'd taken from Stokes' room out of his shirt and let it hang from the string. We'd used engineer tape to fashion makeshift loops on our belts for the axes we'd grabbed. I opened the door, and we drug our supplies out into the howling storm. I reached down, found the D-Ring with a smile, and clipped it to the rope around my waist.

This time I took the lead for a little while, Bomber and Nagle dragging the heavy part of the load, until Nagle tugged on our tie to stop me. Then she took the lead while Bomber and I drug it through the snow and gravel. We were almost to the fence when Nagle took Bomber's place.

We pushed our supplies under the fence, squirmed under it, and wrapped the poncho around Nagle, tying it off with a rope.

"Ready?" I shouted.

"Ready!" they shouted back.

I grabbed the 550 cord from where I'd looped it into the fence to keep tension and tugged.

And felt it give. Cursing, I reeled it in, coming up with the end in only a couple of minutes.

Our lead back to the barracks was gone.

Without a lead, our chances of missing the barracks and tumbling down the hill or getting turned around in the snow were almost assured.

Once again, whoever it was thought they were one step ahead of the three of us.

I tapped Nagle, who tapped Bomber, and they gathered close. When Bomber turned on the flashlight and shined it in my hand, we could all see that the end wasn't cut, wasn't snapped, but had been untied.

We had to get back. It was more than just us.

The wind howled with glee and whipped the snow around us.

Chapter 8

The cut line snapped against my glove, driven by the wind, and I could see Bomber shake his head. The blue lens over the flashlight gave him and Nagle's faces a bruised look in the darkness and the snow.

I dropped the line, reached down, and grabbed the D-ring and tugged on the line threaded through it.

It held firm.

"Not this time." I snarled, and the other two nodded in agreement.

"You two grab it, I'll lead." I said, and led the way down the hill.

They lost control of the package and it slid down the hill, coming to a stop when it slammed into the bumper of a car. Even over the wood we heard the sound of crunching plastic and breaking glass. Still, a quick checkover in the dim light showed that it was all still good.

Bomber and Nagle grabbed it and picked it up, carrying it across the tarmac. The line on the D-ring was tied off to the fence, and I quickly used the axe to chop through the little white picket fence. After that, Bomber led the way, using the compass, and led us to the edge of the building.

"Stokes' room?" Nagle yelled out.

"Negative, he was in there to untie the line. We'll bust in the center fire escape and then we'll have to take the middle stairwell." Bomber answered.

"Back me up." I answered, and started in on the door lock with the axe. Three hits to rip through the steel lining of the door, and a few more to smash the lock up good enough to pull open the door.

The smell of death and decay rolled over me when I opened the door, the darkness beyond the door more absolute that the darkness I stood outside in. Snowflakes whirled and danced, vanishing into the gaping maw of the door.

I clicked on the flashlight I'd stolen from Stokes' room, the beam muted by the snow howling around us, and stepped into the barracks.

It was somehow colder inside the building.

To the right was the stairwell access door, ahead of us we'd have to go up three steps, but we'd be inside the barracks proper, in the center hall that went the entire length of the building.

Nagle and Bomber followed, Nagle coughing at the stench that rolled over us. The wind outside didn't break it up, but seemed to compact it, to concentrate it somehow in the small emergency hallway.

Once they got the package in, they shut the door, and we stood there for a long moment.

"When I find that bastard I'm stomping a mudhole in his ass," Bomber said, cracking his knuckles through the socks.

"At ease that shit." I said, reaching down and grabbing the package. "Nagle, you lead, Bomber, let's do this."

Bomber and I lifted it up and Nagle led the way through the side access emergency door, which opened with two quick hits with the axe, then we moved carefully down the stairs with the package, trying not to lose our balance with how heavy and bulky it was. Our sock covered hands wanted to slip, and the grease on my hands made the socks both tacky and slick, the metal biting into my fingers. The cold of outside having numbed up my fingers and made them feel like stiff clay.

Nagle opened up the bottom door, and we ignored the shriek of rage from above us, ignored the sobbing wail that rolled down the steps, and pushed into the short hallway and stopped in front of the door of the furnace room.

"Did you lock it?" Nagle asked me, and I shook my head. Bomber was standing next to me, shivering, his teeth chattering loud enough for me to hear it.

I pulled the door open, revealing the cavernous black beyond. A third of a city block long and wide enough for twenty men to stand at arm's length from one another. It was supposed to be designed for our unit to hold formation in during the winter.

Now it was menacing. Something could be in the blackness. Someone could be waiting in there, wearing a pair of NVG's with a knife, pistol, or rifle in their hands, watching us in the doorway with a dark and evil smile.

"Let's go." I broke the silence, bending down and lifting up the package. Bomber nodded and grabbed his side, and with Nagle leading the way, we headed back into the furnace room.

It took us about 10 minutes to locate the water heater we were after. According to the datasheet next to it, the big fucking oil fired heater was responsible for only one thing.

The radiators.

We set down the heavy load, and stood in the darkness for a minute, stomping our feet and smacking our hands together to get circulation moving again.

"John, go through the breaker for this heater on the wall, Nancy, come here."

John clicked on his flashlight, the red lens making everything blood smeared, and disappeared into the darkness. Nagle came up as I stripped off the socks and glove liners.

"This is gonna hurt." I grinned at her.

"Shut up and do it." She said, unzipping the coveralls one by one and tearing open the two vests we'd all layered in till I could see her T-shirt.

I slipped my hands under her shirt, sliding my hands underneath her breasts instead of cupping them, and the soft weight enveloped my hands. She hissed in reaction to the cold of my hands, and I gritted my teeth as the explosion of painful tingling engulfed them. I couldn't feel my pinky fingers, and I hoped the flesh wasn't blackened and dead.

"Done." Came Bomber's voice from the darkness after a few thumbs and a loud *clack* noise. "How you too doing?"

"He's fucking freezing." Nagle bitched.

"I can kind of feel them." I answered. "You still got the leatherman?"

"Yeah, I'm coming back." His footsteps drew closer, the swinging red light of his flashlight bobbing in the darkness.

"OK." I said, pulling my hands out from under Nagle's shirt. She quickly buttoned up while I kept talking. "This thing is supposed to be a four forty system, but let's hope that this thing can provide enough power to get it to work a little bit."

I kicked the side of the 1.5KW generator we'd hauled all the way down, with 2 5 gallon cans of mogas strapped to it. We had two coils of electrical cord on it, along with one of the mechanic's toolkits that had been left outside of the tool truck. I was never so glad someone had broke reg in my life.

"Nagle, you act as my light, John," I said, accepting the leatherman from him.

"Yeah?" He turned and was looking in the darkness.

"Don't fuck around. Anyone comes at us, kill them." I told him. The reflected glow of the three flashlights was enough for me to see him nod, his jaw clenched.

I used my knife and the leatherman to rip the housing off of the bottom of the water heater, cutting the wiring that led from the junction box to the heater itself, and then tracing it.

Wind howled, creatures in the snow gibbered and screamed, something off in the distance in the dark menace of our barracks kept slamming, and once we heard laughter echo through the room.

The whole time I worked as quick as I could, tracing the wiring and figuring what needed to be connected and what could be abandoned, and deciding eventually that I didn't know enough about what the fuck I was doing and I had to leave everything hooked up.

Nagle and Bomber were silent, only the sound of their breathing once in awhile audible over the wind. I started losing track of time, once aware I'd closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

It was then that I realized that I had to get off the pot and hurry up, or I'd freeze to death laying on the floor and John and Nancy wouldn't even know.

John. My best friend. I remembered drinking beer with him at Oktoberfest, watching the German women dance, and how he pulled me into the crowd to pushed me at a thickset blond woman who caught me.

She spun me around, dancing with me, and her lips were sweet when we kissed while we were dancing.

Nagle...

What? Nagle had been sitting at the table, and when I looked over at her she'd yelled my name, whistled, and clapped. Her clapping rose to a roar and...

FUCK!

I lifted up my hand and bit between my thumb and pointer finger, the pain pushing everything back. Working quickly I took the three phase wire I'd cut away from the wall and drug it next to the generator, using guesswork to figure out which wire to put into the threaded connection, and tightening down the nuts with my fingers.

"That's it." I said. I was shivering from laying on the concrete floor, my core temperature having leaked away into the bones of the building. I was sleepy, and swaying on my feet from having tried to trace all the wires.

All that time laying on the concrete for nothing.

"Ant, here." Nagle said, wrapping me in her arms. She wormed one hand in between us and unzipped by coveralls, then hers, and pressed her bare chest against mine, the heat off of her taking my breath away. "John, he's freezing." She complained.

I felt another set of arms go around me, and the chill of the wind was cut off even as my cold clothing was pressed into my back.

"Goddamn redneck moron." John muttered. I felt kind of bleery. "Come on, man, wake the fuck up."

"I'm OK." I said after a few minutes. "I think I'm OK.

"Is it hooked up?" John asked, looking at the lashup job I'd done on the generator.

"Yup. Fire it up." I told him. He nodded, bent down, and wound a rope he'd taken from around his neck onto the generator.

It took six tries before it fired up.

Something under the water heater began clicking, and John knelt down, reaching out and pressing his thumb against the bright red rubber button.

The water heater clicked, there was a thin whine of the fans coming up to speed, and then pale light erupted from the bottom as the whole oil-tray rails lit up. The generator was making sputtering noises, and John bent down and began fucking with the top of it.

"This thing isn't built for this," he muttered.

"Then we'll get another one in a couple of hours if it burns out," I chattered.

"Let's secure the room." I muttered, still holding onto Nagle. She felt like she was burning up with fever, like she was made of hot coals.

I'd almost killed myself.

"Wait, Ant, you're not ready." She told me. I felt Bomber's hand touch the back of my grease covered neck.

"You're still really cold, brother." He told me. I just nodded and leaned forward slightly, letting Nagle hold onto me.

I heard John pick up the Makita drill and watched him vanish into the darkness, only the bobbing of the red lensed flashlight giving him away.

After a few moments the drill whined, and Nagle pulled her hands from under my arms and shoved them down my pants.

I almost screamed as those red hot hands, made of lava or burning iron, cupped my genitals.

"Christ, you're cold." She breathed in my ear.

"Can't... think..." I told her. I knew that I should like her hands cupping me, but all I could think of was how badly it hurt. I knew that the warmth pressed against my chest was important, but for the life of me I couldn't remember why.

"Once John's done, we'll go upstairs and I'll warm you up." She promised, then flicked her tongue out and touched it to my earlobe.

And sputtered as she licked the grease I'd smeared my ears with.

There was a loud groan that made the air vibrate, as if the building was giving birth, followed by a couple of loud snapping noises that made me jerk back from Nagle, sure that the support beams had broken and the building was about to collapse on us.

Then the water tank gurgled loudly.

"Feeling better?" Nancy asked me, zipping up the front of her coveralls.

"Yeah." I told her, following suit. The adrenaline had helped.

The drill had stopped, and I could hear boots coming toward us.

"That you, John?" I asked.

"Ayup." He said, flicking the red light up to his face and smiling. "Got it done."

"Good, let's get the fuck out of here." Nancy answered.

We grabbed the axes, dragged the extra stuff over to 2nd Platoon's war stocks and hid them under the tarp, and hid one can of mogas under HQ Platoon's tarp and the other under motorpool Platoon's tarp.

We headed back out into the small hallway, and Bomber shut the door.

I slapped all four hasps shut and Nagle threaded the heavy duty vehicle locks into them.

"That should give us a little time." I said. John nodded, reaching up and tucking the two-way radio behind the emergency light. The transmit button was taped down.

"Let's head upstairs, check on the others." I suggested.

Another long groan shook the air, this time followed by the sounds of a hundred men hammering on the door, and the air inside the stairwell seemed to shimmer with the enormity of the sounds.

The stench of decay rolled over us again.

"CQ Area. I want to check the barometer and temperature." Nagle said, and we all nodded.

We moved carefully up the stairs, the ice glittering in the light of our flashlights, and by unspoken assent we ignored the red ice the glittered with malicious glee on the wall.

The hallway was dark, and we could hear something moan and rattle down the length of the hallway.

Somewhere there was the tinkle of shattering glass.

John led the way, pushing through the doors, and we walked carefully down the long hallway, pausing at the double doors that led to the CQ Area. We all glanced at one another, knowing good and damn well anyone on the other side of the glass would be able to see our colored flashlights.

All of us nodded, and John pushed the doors open, snow piling up as the doors swept it away in an arc.

Flashlights had been set in the snow to perfectly illuminate the three snowmen sitting in the middle of the CQ Area, surrounded by wind driven snowflakes.

All three of them had BDU softcaps, one had a rodeo buckle, another a black lace bra, and the third had a pair of broken knife hilts jammed into where the eyes would be.

"Fucking bullshit!" John yelled, balling up his fists and taking one step forward.

That was when the dark figure who had been standing by the stairwell door stepped around and swung an axe.

And hit John in the stomach.

Chapter 9

John folded around the axe handle with an "Oof", pulling it out of the figure's hands and going face first into the snow, his hands at his midsection. The figure laughed, nothing more than a formless shape in the darkness. John's flashlight had fallen so it shone on the snowmen, who smiled at us with empty heads full of snow and secrets.

"Motherfucker!" I yelled, lunging forward.

The figure whirled, and I had a hand on it for a second, grabbing a handful of cloth that was torn out of my grasp as it darted into the stairwell.

"Ant, come back!" Nagle yelled, but I was past hearing her.

The figure ran up the stairs and I followed, grabbing the banister on the landing and swinging around in a 180 to follow and maintain my momentum.

And ran into the heel of a boot.

It smashed into my mouth and my nose crunched. Blood filled my mouth and sheeted down my face as I stumbled back against the wall, then threw myself forward again, fury filling me.

Killed my best friend!

The figure turned, but I got a hand on its back, grabbing the cloth and pulling.

They crashed into me in the darkness, and we both went down, them on top of me.

An elbow hit me forehead, but I shrugged it off, trying to wrap one arm around the figure's throat, kicking with my feet as we struggling in the darkness of the stairwell landing.

The elbow hit me again, this time in my nose, and everything went gray for second, my hands dropping limply to the floor as I lost where I was for a second. A blow hit my face again, and pain filled me.

The jet hit, and flames surrounded me, snatching the breath from my lungs, searing my flesh. I knew my hair was gone, and I squeezed my eyes shut, still pounding forward, trying to get out of the fire before it consumed me.

With a roar I opened my eyes again, seeing the figure sit up on top of me, long, inhuman arms reaching down and hands wrapping around my throat as they leaned forward and put the pressure on me.

I

Their hands weren't quite seated, but I could see the white of their teeth, pulled back in a maniacal grin, in the darkness of the hallway.

Refuse

Nagle was yelling, the flashlight beam skittering around the stairwell, silhouetting the figure's head but not revealing who it was.

To

They figured they'd won. I was on my back, and they thought dazed, laying on the stairwell landing.

Die

My hands came up, between their arms, and swept outward, just as I'd been taught, collapsing their arms at the elbows.

In

In the same motion I grabbed the back of their head in my hands, and I heard them squawk in surprise.

This

I brought my head up as I pulled them down, still roaring in fury. Around me fire roared and people screamed, while the stench of burning jet fuel and roasted flesh filled my nostrils.

God Forsaken

They screamed as my forehead hit their face, and I felt teeth cut my forehead. They punched at me as I let them pull back and then did it again, feeling something crunch against my brow.

Place...

They rolled off me, kicking, and the toe of a boot caught my shin even through the padding of the coveralls. I didn't care, and I drove my fist twice more into their head, neither one of them perfect shots, since they glanced off the person's head, but more than enough to keep fighting.

"ANT!" Nagle's voice was a scream.

I saw the dim flash of steel reflected in Nagle's frantically searching light, and instead of going for the knife I brought up one arm to block it.

First rule, son, is that you're going to get cut... My father's voice echoed from when all of us boys were lined up learning another lesson at his knee.

My other hand reached out, fingers finding the ear...

The shock of the knife arm hitting my forearm made my shoulder groan in the socket. If he'd gotten me with the blade, I didn't care.

My thumb pressed into the dent, and I crooked it, pushing as hard as I could, and I felt it sink into the socket, the eyeball squishing to the side.

They screamed that time, the knife falling next to my head, and a punch drove my head against the tile and I was surrounded by flames and dying again and roared with rage back at whoever it was. Still, my arms dropped again, and I knew I was running out of steam. I roared in denial as the flames surged around me and I felt the searing heat on my back, and punched them in the face, aiming for the teeth I could still see clearly, and bright pain burst between my knuckles. They fell back, and I rolled over, trying to get up, but they were faster and above me.

They kicked me twice, scrambling up, and the second shot caught me under the chin, snapping my head back into the tile. I sat back up and drove a punch into the knee, reaching around behind me frantically. My hand found the knife they'd dropped, the other one trying to block the kicks they were flailing at me, ignoring the ones aimed at my ribs and stomach and protecting my face. The boots thudded into my ribs and I yelled in triumph as my hands wrapped around the hilt. I brought it around, and slashed them across the shin, but another kick caught me on the side of the neck and my already numb and bruised body jerked. I got the knife up, and got ready to defend myself.

But they were scrabbling away, up the stairs, and I could hear them sobbing as I pulled myself up. Muscles screamed and my vision swam, and I knew blood was running down my face, but I didn't care in the slightest.

I've got you now, motherfucker... hissed through my brain.

I took one step when I heard her.

"ANT!" Nagle, her voice filled with fear and dismay.

My attacker, or her and my (probably) dead best friend?

Dammit

I turned and went down the stairs, stopping when Nagle turned and faced me from where she was crouched down next to Bomber, bent over and rocking back and forth while she was sobbing, the matte black of my Gerber fighting knife in her fist. She looked at me, then turned to face me, straightening up.

"Is he..." I asked.

"My fucking gut hurts." John moaned, rolling over. The axe was embedded in the layers of coveralls.

"Don't say anything, lemme see the wound." I said, falling to my knees next to him.

He was my best friend. He'd been there through everything. Even when I got divorced, he'd been there. With a drink, with a shoulder to cry on, with an outstretched hand to pull me to my feet and support to help me carry on. He was my best friend.

I loved him.

I pulled his hand off the axe and dug my fingers into the cloth, terrified at how deep the wound had to have gone.

And found the axe stopped.

"What the fuck?" I asked, then pulled the axe free.

No bleeding, and I unzipped his coveralls and pulled them open.

The axe had hit the flak vests we'd wrapped underneath the top layers of coveralls.

The vests we'd used to break the wind and to add more padding.

The wide blade, the way John folded around it, all of it made it so the axe didn't penetrate the twin layers of thick Kevlar.

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD, YOU FUCKER!" I yelled, fury surging over the relief.

Nagle laughed. Sitting there in the dark, with the wind howling around us, she began laughing. Tears were rolling down her grease covered cheeks, blown to the side by the wind,

I started laughing too.

"It's not funny, my stomach really hurts." John groaned, and I held out a hand and pulled him into a sitting position.

"I thought you were dead, you fucker." I said, still chuckling. The wind agreed, chuckling as the gust wound down and it picked at us, plucking at our clothing and trying to worm cold fingers in with us.

"So did I." John admitted. He looked at his stomach, where there was only a red mark. "Hurts like a motherfucker."

"Be right back." Nagle said, standing up. She shined her flashlight behind 