"Four things were my constant companions in Alfenwehr.

Fear. Rage. Pain. Hatred. They kept me going, kept me on my

feet, and kept me warm. Survival may not be living to

some people, but when it was that or death...

We chose survival. At all costs."

Chapter Three

2/19th Special Weapons Group

Restricted Area, Western Germany

Late Winter- January 1986

Day 9 of Repairs

Day 1 of the Second Incident

Night

I stood there for a moment, thinking, while Nancy picked up the standard issue bayonet and played with it. Bomber was busy clipping the K-Bar to the back of his belt, hiding it under his BDU top, his face serious. Outside the door little feet ran by, heading toward the front end of the barracks, and a little girl's giggle drifted over to us.

"All right, I'm going to go down and we need to figure out how to ask the LT to give us a list of people in the barracks," I told them. "We'll compare it to the people in the barracks, and see who wasn't in formation."

"I'll go with you, I'll claim I'll need the names to make a chart to keep track of the inspections I do." Nancy told me, standing up and putting the bayonet under her BDU top at her back. I knew she was hiding it the same place I was tucking my Gerber and John had hid his K-Bar.

"Good idea," I said.

"I'll go too. I'm not really into staying in here by myself," John told us. As if to punctuate his words, a low pain filled moan drifted out of the dark bathroom. He shivered at the sound. "God, I hate this place."

"It hates us too," I reminded him, heading for the door. "The whole damn mountain hates us and wants us dead."

Above us was the sound of boots crashing to the floor in the room above us and I flinched slightly. The room was empty, except for the bare bones barracks furniture.

"It's getting worse," Nancy said.

The barracks always made noises like that. The explanations ranged from bad plumbing and heating to the barracks was haunted to the mountain was haunted. Personally, I believed that the mountain in general and the barracks in particular hated everything living and wanted it dead.

Which was why it had brought back Tandy.

Private Tandy had went into the bathroom one evening and never come out. The bathroom had one door in or out and no windows, and the door had been in full view of over a dozen people for the entire time between Tandy entering the bathroom and someone bringing up he'd been in there for over an hour. Only his shaving kit and dogtags had been found. The next spring his dead body had appeared, over five miles from the barracks. The Army had officially listed his cause of death as exposure, and claimed that the melting snowpack had carried him 1200 vertical feet as well as bringing him all the way around the mountain.

Except as soon as the snow had fallen in September of this very winter, he'd shown back up. Very much kind of alive. Very much malevolent. He'd killed four people that we knew of. Despite the Army's claims that those people died from "misadventure", we sure as hell knew that something had first taken Tandy, then possessed him and sent him to torment and kill us.

We moved into the hallway, Bomber locking the door behind us. Our breath steamed out in front of us as the three of us moved down the passage, pushing through the double doors that divided the block long hallway into halves.

There was already actual frost on the frosted wire reinforced glass.

The lights dimmed slowly down to nothing more than faint suggestions of light by the time we were halfway down the hallway, then slowly came back to a sullen glow that didn't really illuminate anything too well.

The emergency light, designed to kick on when the power failed, just sat there mournfully, its case open and guts hanging out.

We ignored it.

Another night in 2/19th.

We hit the end of the hallway. In front of us was another set of heavy doubledoors with wire reinforced glass. On the other side of them was the large room that the enlisted hung out in during the normal work day if they weren't sent out to their FSTS sites. Connected to that room were the NCO offices for each of the three platoons and a pair of bathrooms. On our right was a heavy steel door that led to the front stairwell.

That's the one we pulled open, ignoring the loud shriek of the frozen hydraulic piston that was supposed to pull the door shut, and moved into the cold stairwell. It went two more stories up, and two stories down. The bottom was where the Orderly Room, the Supply Room, and the other company mission areas were. The floor directly below us was where the CQ Area, the Day Room, the Game Room, the Rec Room, Titty Territory, and Queer Country were located.

Our boots thumped on the steps as we made our way down, the whole steel frame that held the stairs together shaking slightly.

Above us, something gave a metallic pinging sound and the lights went out, leaving the entire stairwell dark with the lone exceptions of the lights shining through the small panes of frosted wire reinforced glass on each heavy steel door. It gave us enough light to move down the stairs, but not enough to banish the gloom.

God, I hate this place.

We pushed into the CQ Area, ignoring the shriek of pain that floated down from the darkness of the stairwell above us, stepping into the light and warmth of the CQ Area.

Lanks was standing behind the CQ desk, just finished setting down a basic linen draw on the counter. There were three stacks, 2 OD green wool blankets on the bottom, 2 white linen sheets, a pillow, and a pillow case folded and wrapped in such a way as to make it look like it was bound together.

The ADD was pulling off his field jacket and liner, leaving his LBE and Kevlar vest still over the jacket so it was kind of all one piece. The Duty Driver was holding his weapon, pulling the magazine out of the well, while the ACQ was waiting for him to hand the magazine to her so she could inventory the rounds and account for them in the CQ log.

None of the four had my attention.

There were five new people standing in front of the desk, people I'd never seen before in the unit. On the right were two white guys, both with uniforms that had seen some wear from the cuffs and the faded look of the camou pattern. On the left were two men, soldiers whose uniforms were obviously new and still wore 'cruit boots. A tall and lanky black man, his hair the brutally short cut of AIT, and he was signing paperwork that Lanks had obviously given him. The one next to the black guy was a Native American, asking Lanks if he could smoke as if he couldn't see the cigarette between her lips. In the middle was a short soldier who was obviously female from the way she filled out her BDU's. Her reddish auburn hair was done up in a bun to reveal a milky white neck.

The first thing I noticed was that both men on the left had put as much distance as possible between themselves and the female. Before I could really notice anything about the two on the right my attention was pulled somewhere else.

"Hey, Stillwater, two of these guys have the same last name as you! Weird, huh?" PV2 Davies , the ADD, called out, tossing his field jacket and battle rattle onto the table at the back of the CQ Area. It landed with a crash as both men that Lanks was talking about turned to face me.

"Anthony!" the Native American called out.

"Tony!" The black guy smiled.

Both men stepped up, the same as me, and we all three threw our arms around each other into a group hug. We let go after a second and all stepped back so we could look at each other.

James Stillwater, the Native American guy, was one of my cousins, the same as Cassius Stillwater, the black guy. James' father had met his mother in the same place that Cassius' parents had met.

During the Korean War.

Like mine, both of their parents had served in the military in some capacity. In James' case, his father had met his mother in the hospital after the Ho-Chin Reservoir. In Cassius' case it was when both of them had been assigned to the same supply unit.

To say our family was of mixed heritage would be an understatement.

"What happened?" Cassius asked me, referring to the glasses.

"Long story, I'll tell you tonight," I told them both. They  nodded and I continued. "Wait here for us till we're done seeing the LT, we need to bring you up to speed on where those assholes from 21st Replacement have sent you."

"Oh my," Nancy said, stepping forward and smiling at Cassius and James, holding her hand out. "It's obvious the two of you didn't draw the short straw on looks like Anthony. I'm Nancy Nagle, and the big blond hick is John Bomber."

"Is the LT in the CO's office?" I called out, stepping around my cousins. That made five of my family in the unit for some insane reason. My older brother and uncle were in Graf. Privately, I suspected the DoA was putting us all in the same unit so they could just kill us all at once.

"Sure is," Lanks told me. "Hey, you guys going to finish signing for this stuff, or are you just going to fucking freeze to death in the hallway?" she asked my two cousins, who were laughing at something Bomber had said. They both excused themselves and returned to the desk, where Lanks was handing out room keys. The other two guys, both white, looked irritated that they had been forced to wait. I pretty much ignored them and turned back to Nancy and  Bomber, stifling a groan.

The embarrassing stories were going to be thick, I just knew it. Bomber and Nancy were both grinning as I turned to face them in order to head downstairs to the Orderly Room and the CO's office. I made a sour face, which made Nagle laugh.

"Here's your key, Private McCullen. You're in room 147, right down that hall," Lanks said behind me.

I froze.

My blood ran cold.

"Thank you, Specialist." The woman's voice was soft, like warm honey, and a tingling sensation that was way too pleasant slid down my spine. "What time is morning formation?"

"Zero nine-hundred hours, Private," Lanks answered.

"Ant? What's wrong?" Nancy asked, staring at me.

My hands were starting to shake as I heard boots squeak on the waxed and polished tile. I could smell the delicate smell of apple blossoms.

"Anthony Stillwater, as I live and breathe." Her voice was liquid silk and the scent of apple blossoms wormed its way into my mind and made the little lizard that lived at the back of my brain sit up and take notice.

"Ant?" Bomber asked, stepping forward a single step and stopping.

Bootsteps came up behind me, and she stepped up next to me, her arm looping across my back as she wrapped herself around my hip, pressing against me and resting a hand over the middle of my chest.

"Hello, Anthony. I wondered what happened to you after you were led away from the courtroom in cuffs," she told me, looking up at me with her wide gorgeous eyes. "I've missed you these last two years."

She was just like I remembered her from High School. Just a hair under five feet tall, weighing maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Flawless ivory skin with a smattering of reddish freckles across her nose and dusting her high prominent cheekbones; a tiny red cupid's bow of a mouth below a slightly upturned button nose; bright green eyes that were delicately slanted at the corners and looked too large for her narrow oval face. Her small, firm breasts pressed against my left side, and her tiny hands were warm even through my uniform and long johns.

"Hello, Aine," I managed to choke out.

"I go by Hannah, easier for people to pronounce," she said softly, those too large eyes blinking slowly so that her long lashes touched her cheeks for a heartbeat. Her hips flexed forward, pushing against my hip, a miniscule motion that was probably unnoticeable by others but all too apparent to me. "My my, how you've grown, little Anthony." Her hand squeezed gently on my chest, emphasizing the remnants of the thick muscle I'd put on over the summer.

The little lizard in the back of my brain put his little clawed hand over the button that would fire off the urge to rip off her clothing. At the moment my fight or flight was starting to kick in, the cool wet fire of adrenaline trickling down my spine underneath the warm honey of her voice, but the little lizard was seriously considering turning my reaction to fight, flight, or fuck.

She stared at me for a long moment, then turned slightly, almost as if she was hanging off of my hip, to look at Nancy and Bomber. Nancy had a strange look on her face, her fists were clenched, and she was leaning forward slightly. Bomber had a look of confusion on his face as the girl holding onto me smiled at them, revealing small, perfectly even white teeth that were only marred by her incisors being a tiny bit too narrow and too long.

"Anthony and I went to High School together," she purred to my two friends. "Did you know that his father and my father were rivals for the same woman in the 1930's? His father cheated, got his cousins together, and kidnapped Anthony's mother." She giggled, a silver chime in the frozen air. "Turnabout is fair play in love and war, you know. My grandmother stole my grandfather right out of Anthony's grandmother's bed." She demurely lowered her eyelids slightly, bringing attention to her long lashes as she smiled at Nagle.

She let go of me and stepped forward, stopping right in front of Bomber, her right hand reaching up to press in the middle of his chest. "You must be John Bomber." Her voice had stilled all three of us, rendering us paralyzed and mute. "Anthony's little sister told me all about you." She looked up and smiled. "Just think, your family survives today because Travis sent your great-great-grandfather to get supplies from that nearby fort, otherwise your blood line would have ended at a 19-year-old cavalry private when Santa Anna overran the Alamo."

Bomber visibly jerked, blushing bright red as she drifted to Nagle and reached out, cupping Nancy's scarred cheek in one of her diminutive hands.

I saw Nancy's pupils dilate until they nearly swallowed the brown of her irises.

"I heard you're to thank for keeping Anthony alive," Aine purred, staring up at Nagle through her eyelashes. Her other hand reached out and took Nancy's hand. "First down the stairs to save the bonny Stillwater boy as he lay bleeding out on the tile. So beautiful as well as brave."

Nancy flushed red, lowering her head modestly.

Aine giggled and released her, walking around behind me to pick up her linen.

"I'll see some of you later," she said, "Please, Carlton, come with me, those dufflebags are heavy and I already feel slightly fatigued." She paused at the entrance to Titty Territory as Pv2 Davies moved around my two friends and me, one of her dufflebags in each hand. She waved, turned, and pushed through the doors and into Titty Territory. The doors silently swung shut behind her, and she was gone.

"Christ." Bomber let out a breath in a whoosh. Nancy shivered like someone had just thrown cold water on her or a breeze let into the CQ Area by the open doors had chilled her. Her pupils went back to normal, and her eyes grew hard as she turned her eyes to me.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, Anthony Stillwater," Nancy growled.

"Hey, Stillwater, I need you to sign the log," Lanks called out.

"Later," I told Nancy, turning around to face the CQ. My two cousins stood there, their dufflebags at their feet and linen in their hands. To me, they looked like lost small children, despite the fact they were both a year or two older than I was. "Why?" I asked Lanks.

"Because McCullen didn't ride up with these four. Apparently someone gave her a ride to the barracks." Lanks shrugged. "Since she didn't sign in with the MI unit like these two, I need you to countersign that she arrived."

"Sure," I told her, stepping up to counter in six quick steps. "I need the names of the other two also, I'll take the names down to the LT so he can log them in on his paperwork."

"Sure. They're Lannison and Parker," Lanks said, jotting the names down real quick on a piece of scratch paper while I signed that Aine had arrived.

"Hey, Bomber, where's room 285?" James asked.

"Up where we're at," Bomber answered.

"And 266?" Cassius added.

"Same place," Bomber told them. "Here, let us help with your gear." I heard him and Nancy step forward as I looked down and signed the log entry where Lanks had written that PVT McCullen had obtained alternate transportation to the barracks, with a notification to S-2 to find out who had given her the ride. Lanks was on the ball to catch that last part, since nobody should have even known we were there, much less Aine knowing how to get out here.

As I turned back to my family and friends, I caught my first look out the two sets of glass double doors that made up the front entrance to the building. They had been one of the first things to be replaced. There were two foot wide panes of glass on either side of the double doors, and I knew that door glass and the side glass was three inches thick, built to withstand the high winds that came down off the glacier only a hundred fifty vertical feet above us. Six panes of three eighths inch tempered glass sandwiched together. It made the doors heavier than hell, but good balancing and counter weighting made them feel pretty easy to move.

The light from the CQ Area made the snow pressing on the glass into a white sheet, blocking sight of even the covered brick patio beyond the second set of doors.

The blizzard had hit.

I felt a chill up my back.

"You coming, Ant?" Bomber asked me from where he stood by the stairwell door.

"Yeah," I answered, hunching my shoulders and moving toward him.

The frosted glass of the doors into Titty Territory hid what I knew was down the hallway, leading PV2 Davies somewhere they could be alone.

We pushed into the stairwell and I paused while the other four turned toward the landing halfway between the first and second floor, where the stairs doubled back.

"What?" Bomber asked.

"I'm gonna go talk to the LT. I'll catch up," I told them.

"Fuck that. Come on," James said. "We got some catching up to do."

"Naw, I gotta handle this. You guys get them up to speed on what kind of shit-hole the Army's sent them too, run them through basic safety, and have them drop their gear in their rooms," I told them, walking down the stairs to the ground floor. "I'll be back in a few," I called up to them as they headed upstairs.

"Roger that, Corporal," Bomber shot back. No malice or sarcasm in his voice, he knew as well as I did that I had to establish right quick that I gave orders before my cousin's familiarity with me got us in trouble.

"I need that list, Corporal!" Nancy called out.

"I'll get it," I shot back, trudging deeper into the gloom at the base of the stairwell.

What the hell is she doing here? I wondered as I headed down to the landing.

The last time I'd seen Aine was when I'd been taken in front of the judge, when I was offered the chance to join the military instead of being tried as an adult. It was a sweetheart deal that just meant I'd be joining the military early. The judge had served in Korea and believed that the military could turn a young man's life around. The recruiter, the DA, and the prosecuting attorney had all served in Vietnam and shared that bond with my father, who had actually served with the DA. The fix was in, and the local Sheriff's department wanted to avoid the scandal that would have erupted when it came down why I'd done what I had done.

She'd been sitting at the back of the courtroom, and I could remember her clear as day in her Stevie Nicks T-Shirt, blue jeans, and her hair piled high on her head thanks to hairspray with an apple red bow on the top. She'd been watching me closely, her lower lips held between her sharp little teeth and her huge eyes sparkling. She'd leaned forward as the judge warned me that if I failed to complete three years of service my deferred sentence would be immediately adjudicated.

She'd given me a sad little wave when they led me out in handcuffs in order to go immediately to MEPS processing. Unsurprisingly, I was the only one there in handcuffs and with a police officer to make sure I didn't run for it. Not that I would have, since I was basically getting what I wanted for my life, albeit with a small caveat.

Now she was in the barracks, and the glancing look at the orders I'd seen in the logbook, she'd somehow completed the yearlong NBC Warfare MOS training and basic training. She looked almost childlike, with tiny breasts and slim hips, but I knew she'd been born only a few days before me.

I pushed open the door, the wind that suddenly shrieked down the stairwell sending it crashing against the wall, and walked into the short hallway beyond. On the immediate right were the mail boxes for half the unit, on the left was the opening that led to the room where we usually gathered up to clean our weapons or draw/return them from the armory. The Arms Room, Secure Item Storage, NBC Room, and the Supply Room were all accessed through that little room, although you could get to the Supply Room through the double doors at the back that led out to the loading dock.

I walked past the mailboxes and hung a right, moving down another short hallway. The mailroom door passed by on my right, same with the utility closet, until I could turn left into the Orderly Room, turn right to the tiny hallway to the bathrooms, or walk up the door of the First Sergeant's Office.

The Orderly Room was deserted, only the single light that was left on by SOP grudgingly putting out a dim yellow light. I could see through the windows at the far end of the room that, yup, the blizzard was on this side of the building before.

I'd seen one side of the building whiteouted by snow and the other side completely clear.

I knocked on the door to the CO's Office, three sharp knocks, just like military etiquette demanded, and waited at Parade Rest. I'd learned early when a CO had been standing by the door and opened it himself that it was best to be safe rather than being caught standing around like some Lunchmeat Larry.

"Enter." LT James' voice carried through the door, and I opened it to step into the CO's rather large office. Chairs on the wall in front of me and to the side, enough so that a dozen people could sit comfortably. The unit guidon and the V Corps guidon side by side on the stand, the flags hanging limply. Pictures of Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, General Rogers, and Lieutenant General Wetzel all stared at me with cold dead eyes as I walked in, executed a crisp left face, then walked forward to stop three paces from the CO's desk and come to attention with a snappy salute.

"Corporal Stillwater," Lt James' said, surprising me by standing up before saluting me back with none of the delay that a lot of officers put into to let the enlisted know who was in charge. "Stand at ease, Corporal." He sat back down as he spoke.

I dropped my salute and moved to At Ease, my left hand behind my back with the knuckles at the belt-line, my right straight down, and my feet shoulder-length apart. "Thank you, sir." He waved it away, and closed the folder he'd been reading.

The unit METL.

"How can I help you, Corporal Stillwater?" he asked me, leaning back slightly in the chair and folded his hands on his flat stomach.

"Specialist Nagle asked me to come down and get a list of the people on Rear-Dee, so that she can make a table to keep track of the results of her inspections, sir," I said, keeping my eyes above his head. "Additionally, we have five more Privates that just arrived."

He sat forward, pulling a pad of paper from the side of the blotter and picking up the pen on the desk. "Rank and names?"

Checking the paper to make sure I had the names right I told him. "Pv2 Parker, Louis M, from 1st Infantry Division. PFC Lannison, Michael J, out of First Cavalry." I shrugged. "Both of them look like men who have been in for a while, probably got busted and pawned off on us."

James looked up with a slight reproving expression. "We do not hold minor transgressions from other units against a soldier once he or she reports for duty in 2/19th Special Weapons, Corporal. Unless it is something that speaks majorly toward their character, this unit should be about second chances." I accepted the rebuke silently. "The others?"

"Privates Cassius and James Stillwater and Aine McCullen," I told him. He glanced up and I sighed inwardly. "The two male soldiers are my cousins."

"Spell Private McCullen's name, please," he stated, going back to writing down the names. I told him and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

"It's an old family name," I told him.

"You seem familiar with her," he prodded.

I sighed inwardly again and decided to lie. "I knew her in High School, sir."

Actually, her family and mine had been shipped to America in the mid 1600's, but had hated each other for far far longer than that.

About the time of the Fall of the Roman Empire, to be exact.

Both families knew better than to let the other emigrate somewhere without sending a few people to settle in same place. Despite the fact that the rule of law had replaced the lawlessness of the Old West, paranoia still remained in both families of a repeat of that unfortunate episode following the Civil War, or what happened after the Revolutionary War that had caused the Continental Government to separate us for almost 20 years by over 200 miles.

I'd known her since pre-school, had played with her in kindergarten, had snipped off one of her braids in first grade, and watched with interested as her body changed in eye catching ways while we were in junior high.

The LT stared at me for moment, then nodded slowly. He dug in one of the manila folders on the desk and pulled out a copy of current company roster and who was assigned where, and began copying ranks, last names, and first initials over.

"I find it interesting that five members of your family are in this unit," the LT stated, still writing.

"Almost seven hundred members of my family and extended family are currently in the United States armed forces," I told him, which made him cock an eyebrow in surprise. "We're a large family. I have fifteen brothers and sisters, of which eleven are currently serving, and my extended family is pretty large, mostly farmers."

He looked up sharply, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and looked back down when I continued. "About half of my family are adopted children. My family believes that children should grow up in a home." He grunted non-committaly and I shut the hell up.

"If they have not gone through arctic survival, they shall have to be sent to the main body for training," he told me, still writing. "I refuse risk their lives when there is no urgent need." It didn't need an answer, so I didn't give one, standing silent while he finished copying the names and ranks of those still in the barracks.

"Specialist Nagle's required list, Corporal," he told me, tearing the sheet free and handing it to me. "Is there anything else in need of my attention, Corporal?"

"Just one thing, sir." I gathered my courage.

"GA." The use of the slang surprised me.

"Why did you confiscate my boot knife?" I asked.

He smiled and leaned back, once again folding his hands over his stomach. "I had noticed that it wasn't the boot knife you normally carry, and by 'disarming' you of what appeared to me to be an obviously inferior quality weapon in front of the rest of Rear Detachment, I knew that it would prevent future problems." His smile changed, becoming almost cold and hard. "And don't pretend that you don't have that Gerber fighting knife I've heard so much about at your back even as you stand in front of me."

Goosebumps raised on my skin and the weight of my knife grew suddenly heavier at the small of my back.

"Is there anything else in need of my attention, Corporal?" he repeated, raising one eyebrow. The smile, if you could call it that, was gone, and his expression was mildly curious.

"No, sir," I answered.

"Then carry on, Corporal," he told me. He returned my salute from the chair when I came to attention and saluted him, then went back to perusing one of the manila folders in front of him as I did a quick about face and hustled out of the office, breathing a sigh of relief once the door shut behind me.

The man gave me the willies.

The lights in the hallway that connected the stairwell to the outside door buzzed as I quickly moved to the stairwell door and yanked it open, ignoring the shriek of the hydraulic cylinder and heading up the stairs. I could understand why he took it, and I doubted he had our rooms searched if he let me walk out of that office knowing good and goddamn well I had a knife on me.

A low liquid chuckle sounded up from the darkness below as I put my hand on the door that led into Hammerhead Hall on the second floor.

That I paid attention to. The lizard hissed in terror and slammed its little clawed hand down on the panic button, slapping the run button next as it threw a map of the barracks up with the fastest way back to my room highlighted. Running on fear and blind instinct I took off, slamming myself against the door and barging into the hallway, turning to kick the door shut behind me. I took off down the hallway, almost at a run when I hit the doubledoors leading to the half of Hammerhead Hall I lived in. My hand was already in my pocket, pulling out my keys just in case, when I reached the door to my room.

Finding it unlocked I quickly got inside, slamming the door behind me and throwing the deadbolt by twisting the knob underneath the L-shaped door handle.

My two cousins, Stokes, and my two friends turned and stared at me when I shot through the little hallway and into the main room.

"Umm, Ant, honey, are you all right?" Nagle asked.

"We're in fucking trouble," I told them. I went to run my right hand through my hair and realized only then that sometime during my flat run for about almost two city blocks I'd drawn the knife from behind my back.

"Are you all right?" Nancy repeated, stepping forward and gently grabbing my wrist. Stokes moved over and put one of her hands on my shoulder, gently squeezing, and I was suddenly aware of just how strong she was as Nancy kept speaking. "Calm down and give it me." She tugged at the blade of my knife and I let go of it. She let go of my wrist, stepping back and handing the knife to Bomber.

"Tandy's in the fucking barracks," I told them. Bomber dropped my knife on the floor and Stokes paled visibly. "There's a blizzard outside and Tandy got inside somehow."

"Are you sure?" Bomber asked, bending down and picking up my knife. I pretended not to notice the slight shake in his voice that was only noticeable due to our long friendship.

"I heard that weird laugh of his when I was coming up the stairs," I told them.

"Fucking great," Stokes said softly, shaking her head. Before they shut down guard duty up at the Motor Pool in October, she'd had the unpleasant experience of being trapped up in a guard tower with two other soldiers while Tandy prowled around in the fog below them all night.

My two cousins looked at each other and then at me. They both had the expression on their faces that I'd get when I'd wake up screaming my mother was in the closet.

"Who the hell is 'Tandy'?" Cassius asked.

"He's not a who, he's a what," Nancy said, moving over to sit on the bed. "Shit. Shit shit shit." Stokes sat down next to her, picking up the bottle of Picardi 151 from between her feet and taking a long pull off of it.

"Then what is he?" Cassius demanded.

"We don't know. We just know he comes when it snows, and anyone he grabs, he pulls into the darkness and we never see them again," Bomber said, reaching out and grabbing the Asbach off the top of the dresser. He uncorked it and took a long swig, then continued as he passed it to me. "Tandy is, or rather was, a guy in the unit who vanished out of a windowless room, whose body vanished from the morgue. Earlier this winter he killed at least three people."

"You're shitting me," James said as I took a drink. When I lowered the bottle he held out his hand. "Gimme that." I passed it to him.

"Great, a McCullen girl and some killer ghost?" James shook his head. "I thought you guys were just fucking with us about how bad this place is."

"You guys have no idea," I told them, sitting next to Nancy. She took my hand and squeezed it, and I could feel that her palms were sweaty.

"How do you know it isn't some dude in a rubber mask?" Cass asked. "Has anyone tried grabbing him to prove it's just some asshole?"

Bomber let out a harsh laugh. "The last guy who tried to play Scooby Doo didn't fare so well." He took a swig off the bottle and shivered. "Aside from the screaming, all we found of him was his dogtags, some bloody scraps of uniform, and some blood spray."

Cass and James stared at him.

"If it's old man Jenkins in a rubber mask, I'd say the rubber mask is the least of our problems since he apparently eats them," Nancy added. Cass shuddered and Nancy grinned without any humor. "Yeah, we've figured out that whatever Tandy takes, he eats."

"At least you guys have to go back to the main unit at Graf as soon as the LT feels the blizzard's died down," I said.

"Why?" Cass asked, taking a turn on the bottle. I could tell he needed numbing.

"You guys go through arctic training?" Bomber asked, lighting two cigarettes and passing me one. Nancy grabbed it before it got to me and took a drag before handing it back to me.

"No, why?" Cass answered.

"Because you can't stay up here between September and March unless you've passed arctic survival training," Stokes told them. "You can freeze to death in a sleeping bag if you don't know what you're doing."

"No way," Cass scoffed. I glared at him, which seemed to startle him. There was a difference between the silent and shy child he'd grown up with and Corporal Stillwater, US Army, that he was still coming to grips with.

"A week ago, before LT James took over, some former 101st Airborne douche froze to death in the middle of night because he went to bed in his longjohns and piled blankets on top of his sleeping bag," Bomber told them, taking the bottle back. "We lost about twenty people just this year to cold weather injuries severe enough to either kill them or result in the amputation of fingers and toes."

"Jesus," James breathed.

"Doesn't care about this place," I finished, holding out my hand for the bottle. Bomber passed it to me. The Wild Turkey warmed my stomach and calmed my singing nerves as I took two long swallows off of it. The lizard purred, taking his claws fingers off of the button and letting the red plastic lid fall over it. He stretched with the warmth and I could feel my limbs tingle and warm.

"We can't do anything about Tandy, so we'll just stay here, drink, and BS," Nancy said, squeezing my hand before standing up. "But you guys can't sleep in here, this bed's mine." She kicked the right hand drawer at the bottom of the bed. She turned her head and winked at Stokes. "You, however, can share it with me." Stokes blushed at that and looked down at the floor.

James and Cass glanced at each other, but had the presence of mind not to comment on Nancy's statement. Instead, Cass started it off with telling everyone about the time in 6th grade I'd accidentally shot my father, his uncle, in the crotch with a potato gun and how I'd taken off running and the old man still caught me. Bomber and Nancy both howled with laughter at the stories, most of which ended with me getting a well-deserved whupping with a belt.

"So what do you guy's do? We were told in AIT that we'd probably end up out at a place like Umatilla where we just inventory rounds and play with our dicks all day," Cass asked after a story about my brothers and I throwing our baby brother off the roof and into a haystack. They'd stressed that it was a three story house several times, and we threw him up as far as we could, while he was dressed a Superman.

"Yeah, I mean, how much could there be to do?" James added.

Bomber, Nancy and I all looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing. I was feeling the Ausbach pretty well, my body warm and tingly, and my near perpetual bad mood had been pushed away once the alcohol had lowered my stress level.

"Let me give you some advice," Bomber said, still chuckling. "Everything you learning in AIT about 'how things are done'? Just forget them. You might live to PCS."

"Come on, you're fucking with us," James said.

I shook my head. "We're in Third Magazine Platoon, which is all hot sites." I held up my hand when Cass opened his mouth. "A hot site has live chemical weaponry and nuclear rounds on site. I run Atlas, the biggest goddamn hot-site in Western Europe. There's a bigger one, but it's on the Polish/East German border, and it only beats Atlas in size, Atlas has more ammunition and bunkers." I grinned at them. "Atlas is something else, hardened to take a near nuclear hit, hell, maybe even a direct hit if the War Fighter Tunnels hold up."

"What the hell are those?" Cass asked.

Bomber glanced at me and I looked at him. He cocked his head slightly, and I knew he was asking me if I should be telling them any of this, which made me grin. "John, my Father is 'The Sergeant Major', fucking SOCOM legend and all around snake-eater idol. You think they aren't going to make a security check for this shit-hole?"

"They've got a fucking pulse, they'll be passed," Nancy tossed in.

Stokes grunted before replying. "Third Mag is short on people, so unless there are pictures of them getting ass rammed by Lenin with a mouth full of Stalin cock, they'll pass."

Bomber shrugged, leaving it up to me, and I turned back to my cousins. "The War Fighter Tunnels are... well... tunnels. They're buried about a hundred feet down, reinforced concrete, spring suspension, the whole nine yards. There's commo gear, a medical bay, barracks, operations control, pretty much everything you need to run a war from inside of it." I shrugged. "It's smaller than the master control station under the barracks, but you get the idea."

James whistled, and I knew he was figuring in his head just how big the place would be. "All right, I got it. It's a big damn site. They didn't tell us about something like that."

"Welcome to the Cold War," Stokes said. "The one I work at is about half the size of Atlas, and we bust our asses to keep up with the work out there. Monkey runs another, a little bit bigger than Perseus, where I work, called Hercules."

"So, it's pretty much just inventory and shit, right?" Cass asked.

"Nope," Nancy said. We all shook our heads as she continued. "Take last summer, for example. We had a shit-ton of Red-Eye missiles, not to mention millions of tons of ammunition with the condition code of destroy in place. That's without even mentioning thousands of chemical weapons rounds that needed shipping to Johnston Atoll for destruction, and some SRBM and MRBM nukes and those old ass nuclear artillery rounds and demolition mines that the Army lost along with our fucking sites. To top it off, a shitload of a new Hotel-104 weapon system was added to all of our sites at the last fucking minute when they sent goddamn Alpha Battery, 4/27th Field Artillery out here, and their pissy little bitch of a commander demanded we get all his rounds stacked and racked so "Sudden Impact" could be operational by June. The little bitch." The longer Nancy spoke, the harsher her voice got at the memory of all that work.

"Oh, God, don't forget the fucking M1's main gun." Bomber groaned. Stokes groaned too at the mention of that.

"What's the Abrams got to do with anything?" Cass asked.

"Everything between March and May," Stokes snorted. I went to light a cigarette and she grabbed it from me. Nancy grabbed the second one, and I decided to toss John one so I could light mine in peace.

"Our bunkers got misplaced in the late 1960's, so all we had was the old M-60 Patton 105mm ammunition and the M-551 Sheridan 152mm main gun rounds and those fucking POS Shillelagh missiles, so priority went to loading the place up with 105mm APDSFSDU." I rattled off the acronym for armor piercing discarding sabot fin stabilized depleted uranium main gun war-shot for the M1 tank. "That and replacing those goddamn Shillelaghs with TOW-II's."

"Hell, Perseus only went fully operational in November," Stokes said. "We managed to finish like two days before the NATO inspection."

"That's because you're a lazy bitch for an Amazon." Nancy jabbed an elbow into the larger woman's ribs and Stokes laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone figures Stillwater practically used a whip on you guys to get Atlas up and running by July," Stokes teased back.

"Practically, nothing," John said. He shuddered. "I still have nightmares."

Cass and James looked at each other, both aware the conversation had half-drunkenly moved beyond them, but having the common sense not to interrupt with whatever stupidity usually popped out of private's mouths.

I took another pull off the Aubach. "God, I don't know how many times I called the Chief asking if we could come back, just for one night, and had him hang up on me."

Nancy was kind of staring at the wall as she spoke, not really seeing the posters. "Remember how we hadn't had a shower in like a month when it rained?" Bomber and I mumbled that we did as she continued. "We all stripped naked and went outside the Fortress in the rain with bars of soap. Remember how the rain was warm, and we all huddled together in the dark to wash each other's backs?"

"Yeah. Remember when that pallet of anti-tank mines went off when we were taking them to the pit?" Bomber asked.

"Shit yeah, blew the forks right off of King Kong," Nancy said softly.

The lizard, a little unsteady from the alcohol, replayed the memory of turning around just in time to see the entire pallet of mines explode on the forks of the huge 50,000 pound forklift. How the shockwave had knocked me on my ass, and how the sudden sharp pain of broken ribs and the agony of a broken arm had hit be before I'd hit the ground.

I looked down at my left hand, where a thin white scar was over the bone just behind the pinky, with a puckered white scar next to it. A chunk of steel had hit my hand and exited out the side, breaking the bone and forcing Nuremburg Army Medical Center doctors to put a surgical steel pin in the bone. The doctors had also had to put a pin in one of the bones of my forearm, which had been badly broken in the same blast. Nancy saw me looking at my hand and wrapped it in hers, hiding the scars.

...my Nancy...

"You guys had it rough out at Atlas," Stokes said softly.

"But we fucking did it," Nancy growled.

"Fucking-aye right we did," John agreed. "Got Atlas up to speed before any other of the sites, hot or cold."

We were silent for a long moment, broken only by the soft gurgle of the bottles as we drank, staring off into space. I kept seeing Westlin's face in my mind, contorted by pain, a smear of blood on her cheek, as she lay dying on the upper helipad.

Atlas had taken its price in blood.

"What is there besides those sites?" Cass asked softly. I felt a little bit of irritation at him breaking into our silence, but the lizard shut it down quickly.

"That's pretty much it. First Mag facilitates ammunition use for units visiting West Germany, usually by coordinating with 144th Ord out of Wildflicken and 15th Ordnance out of Meesau, but that's about it."

"Oh, and living in this shit-hole," Stokes yawned, stretching. The movement caught every eye in the room as her massive breasts shifted like continental plates under her brown T-shirt. I could see James' eyes widen, and remembered he'd always like girls with big tits, but Stokes would chew him up and spit him out. Pleasantly, of course, but a broken back was a broken back.

"Fuck the depressing shit. You, Cass, what's the dumbest thing our Ant here had done?" Nancy asked, putting her arm around me.

"Well, how about when his older brother William and him ran off and joined up with a carnival when he was thirteen," Cass laughed. "They were gone almost the entire summer before his dad drug him home."

That sent everyone into gales of laughter as Cass told them about how William had come back with a tattoo of a monkey screwing a woman on his shoulderblade. From there the stories segued into various other trouble I'd gotten into around Junior High.

The rest of the night went by full of laughter inside our room and the blizzard howling outside the covered window.

But the lizard in the back of my head stayed awake, watching everything.

He knew that Tandy was skulking around.

And worse: Aine was here.