Central Facility Command
War Fighter Tunnels
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, Western Germany
11 January, 1988
1930 Hours

The second hand on the round clock behind me ticked.

Basset's eyes widened as the pistol went off, followed by the unique sound of a skull cavity being evacuated by a heavy caliber round. Dansen's hand loosened, but I was already moving, my brain clicking through all the targets. Before Basset could even move I'd swiveled at the waist, my pistol coming around.

...protect the pregnant women and the babies at all costs, Cromwell...

Stillwater's growling menacing voice.

Her mouth hadn't even finished dropping open when I pulled the trigger again, shooting her through the open mouth. Blood, bone shards, cerebral fluid, and grey matter splashed out of the back of her head in a gruesome halo.

Dansen was falling, her hair on fire from where the muzzle blast had ignited her bangs, her expression still sneering. A star-shaped hole between her eyes was oozing a single drop of blood as she began to fall. The gas from the discharging round had expanded inside the wound, between the skull and the meat of her face, rupturing the wound.

Basset was slumping down, the lines completely down, her eyes blinking as her nerves replayed the last command her shattered brain had sent out.

...KILL THEM ALL!...

Stillwater's roar as we overran the Soviet position in Afghanistan. I could smell the smoke, the cordite, the stench of ruptured bowels as I slammed the bayonet home and pulled the trigger to put the last three bullets, all tracers, from the magazine into the belly of the screaming Soviet soldier.

The image overlay the Control Room as I swiveled again, the iron sights of the M1911A1 passing over another of Basset's troops.

Trigger pull.

Splash of brains across the steel wall as the heavy .45 caught her just above her right eye, shattering her skull and blowing a chunk the size of a child's palm from the back.

Rotating, my right hand on my left wrist as I kept moving, bringing the pistol down, my unnatural strength and my sheer bulk of muscle letting me control the pistol like it was little more than a popgun.

Another of Basset's troops.

Trigger pull.

The bullet hit her between her breasts, punching through her T-shirt. My brain automatically ran the damage, the Field Surgery side of me categorizing her as dead. Sternum shattered, bone shards ripping into the chest cavity, lungs punctured, heart destroyed.

Blood gouted from the exit wound, but I was already moving.

Another of Basset's troops, this one reaching for Wright's hair, a snarl on her face.

Nobody had even started to react.

The first piece of brass, from the shot that had killed Dansen, hit the steel plate floor with a chiming ring, starting to bounce back up. Dansen's body folded onto the floor, her foot kicking rhythmically.

Trigger pull.

Reflexes, training, kinesthetic skill, and something primal inside of me that I hated all merged together with the sights of the pistol.

The round hit the woman in the armpit, exiting out the other side of her body. The heavy .45 round was unjacketed, a lead round with a blunt tip with two circled grooves, and it had mushroomed inside of her body before it hit her biceps on the opposite side of me, plowing through meat, shattering the bone, and exiting.

The second empty casing chimed.

Rotating.

Target sighted

Target acquired

Target verified

Trigger pull.

TICK

The bullet took the woman in the upper left of her chest.

Broken ribs, punctured lung, shattered scapula, exit wound.

Not immediate.

My finger pulled without my conscious brain ordering it to.

The second bullet hit her in the throat, just to my left of her trachea, exploding her throat as it tore through the soft tissues.

...chime...

Still rotating.

The gunshots had merged into one loud continuous roar, a non-stop punishing thunder as I kept rotating on the heel of my left foot and the ball of my right foot, the combat boot's tread not catching on the diamond plate steel flooring.

Target...

Target IFF: Friendly

control the pistol, bring it back down in line, control your fire

...chime...

Target...

Target IFF: Foe

Trigger pull

The round hit the woman in the side of jaw, at the hinge, and her eyes exploded from her skull as hydrostatic shock from the heavy bullet plowing through her brain forced cerebral fluid and blood from her nose and eye sockets, the bullet destroying the hinge of her jaw and exiting just over the opposite ear.

I'd reached the end of my rotation, the sights lining up with the last target.

Sergeant Basset's little bully-boy, SPC Rankin, a fat little twat with enough muscle to make her sneaky punches hurt my pregnant charges. She had an M-16A1 in her hands, her brown eyes squinted in confusion that furrowed her brow below her lank and limp brown hair. She hadn't caught on to what was going on.

Trigger pull...

...and again.

empty

The slide locked back as Rankin's chest took both hits, one in each breast.

TOCK

....Lugus stab your eyes, Stillwater, for making me into this...

The brass chimed again, bouncing off the control board beside me as my hands reloaded the pistol without my conscious brain even telling my hands to move. Hit the eject, magazine sliding into my hand, hand to pocket, rotating my body again, eyes scanning, looking for threats, the new full magazine sliding into the magazine well, locking in as the retaining pins grabbed, hit the slide release. Upper receiver sliding forward, the lip catching the edge of the top round, pushing it into the chamber, the slide locking in place. The sound of the slide locking forward was lost in the rolling thunder of the shots I'd fired.

Everything went to normal speed and the casings all seemed to suddenly fall from out of mid-air as I lifted the pistol to point it in the air, bending my elbow, my eyes sweeping over everyone. The bodies collapsed, half of them trying to throw themselves away from the bullet impact that had already hit them, the R-complex's last ditch attempt to save itself.

The one in front of Wright went down on her knees, vomited blood on Wright's shins, and collapsed face first onto the floor. The woman I'd shot in the jaw and through the head convulsed twice on the floor.

The entire "egg" stank of blood, cordite, and worse.

"Jesus..." Wright breathed.

"Get the babies," I snapped at her. I turned to Groom, "Get on it. Now."

Wright nodded, turning and waddling toward the dorm rooms where the pregnant women, new mothers, and the infants were.

Groom nodded, her eyes like flint, a muscle rippling along the side of her jaw as she headed toward where Rankin was laying on the floor.

I was ahead of her, taking long steps and moving faster than the smaller woman.

Rankin was on her back, staring up, blood running from her mouth and nose. Her hands were on her chest, every short sharp breath whistling and foam oozing from between her lips. She saw me looking down at her and her eyes grew pleading.

She mouthed "help" at me.

I leveled the pistol at her face.

Trigger pull.

The round hit her between the eyes, her head bouncing at the bullet hit the steel plating below her head and it bounced back up, reentered her skull from the initial exit wound, sheered through her brain, exiting from the top of her head. The bullet hit the steel wall and left a dimple.

"Take the '16," I snapped. "There's still more of them."

She nodded, squatting down as I put my back against the wall.

The blood made splishing sounds under my boots.

I could see all the tunnels, all the exits. My right hand was wrapped around my right wrist, the pistol held up by my left cheek, my left arm shivering with muscle tension. Adrenaline twisted my stomach, and my right ankle burned along the tendon with gentle heat that told me I'd moved too quickly.

One of Basset's troops came running out of the hallway that led to the environmental systems, a butcher knife in her right hand, blood thickly covering her hands and dripping onto the floor. I recognized her as the one that always kept vanishing, the one that would try to come into my med-bay while I was examining people.

Arm extension.

Sight lineup.

Doubletap.

She stopped, her head cocking curiously as the knife fell from her hand. She looked down slowly, one trembling hand reaching up to touch the blood spreading across the front of her brown T-shirt. Her crotch went damp as she lost control of her bladder.

"Oh," she said, her voice soft, confused, a lost little girl's voice.

Her knees gave out and she went down onto the steel. She was still looking at her shirt, rubbing her chest as I started moving toward her.

"Guard the preggos," I snapped at Groom, reaching the dying woman as I bit off the last syllable.

Her head came up, looking at me in confusion.

"But," she breathed, "Why?"

I didn't answer, just levelled the pistol.

And shot her through her open mouth.

"GET ME A HEAD COUNT!" I yelled over my shoulder, heading down the hallway.

Something was off.

A feeling of dread was filling me. My reflexes weren't calming down.

Between my shoulders began tingling, the skin tightening and running into goosebumps. Everything puckered up and I resisted the urge to look behind me.

I was afraid Stillwater was there, too massive, with one burning red eye staring at me from the frozen darkness.

I followed the blood drops, which were tear-drop shaped from the woman's forward momentum. The blood drops were fat, the blood so dark it was almost blue on the cold diamond plate steel floor.

My breath steamed out in front of me as the lights flickered, coming back slowly, the harsh white light of the fluorescent bulbs reduced to a dim amber. I shivered slightly, the pistol heavy in my hand, my right hand needed to keep my left hand from shaking. I was holding the pistol so tightly that my hand looked bloodless.

The door to the server room was slightly open. The drops disappeared into the room. I moved closer against the wall, glad the hinges were opposite of me and I was moving toward the side of the door that was open.

Balls of the feet, roll on the outside of the foot, ball of the foot, lift straight up.

"Covington, what the fuck is going on out there?" Someone whispered from inside the room as my shadow fell across the crack of the door.

The lights flickered again.

"Covington?" the voice asked. I stopped moving, extending the pistol again.

...bet you feel real lonely right now, don't you?...

She would be the last one. The only one left from Basset's crew.

"Covington?" She asked again. The door opened wider.

I stared over the sights.

My nipples were rock hard and my crotch was throbbing, but it was far away.

...everyone's combat response is different, honey, but me and you, we've got the same one...

Stokes's voice.

PFC Yoder stepped out of the cold server room. She was dressed in BDU pants, boots, a brown T-shirt, with one of the aprons from the dishwashing section of the chow hall. It was splashed with blood, like her bare arms, like across her face. Her mouth, lips were covered in crimson like a clown's lipstick, and the tip of her nose had a smear of blood on it.

She held a meat cleaver in one hand...

...and a section of meat in the other...

pink skin

light reddish hair

tattoo of a heart with "MOTHER" on a banner

crudely hacked meat at both ends

chipped greater tubercle

hacked capitulum

a biceps

a left biceps

a left biceps from a human

Harris's left biceps

All of it passed through my brain in a second.

Yoder's eyes hadn't quite registered what was in between them, what was leveled at her face.

My brain was stopped. Stilled. Frozen in the crystalline moment that I realized that Yoder was holding the hacked off upper arm of one of my troops in her bloody hand. I was shocked into immobility by the sheer horror of what I was seeing.

The blood around her mouth

...from Harris...

...where she'd been

eating

him

eating

my

troop

"DAMN YOU TO HELL, CROMWELL, YOU BITCH! GET THEM OUT!"

Stillwater's enraged roar filled my brain as I realized I'd failed Harris.

Failed him completely.

Yoder dropped Harris's biceps, her hand coming up and grabbing my wrist, pushing the pistol away from her face.

I watched the chunk of meat that had once been someone I'd liked arm fall to the floor.

The meat cleaver came back behind her head.

Yoder's thumb pressed against the nerve in my wrist.

My hand opened.

Harris's upper arm hit the steel with a soft wet sound.

The pistol fell from my hand as my hand opened under the nerve pressure Yoder was applying.

My eyes came up to Yoder's face.

She was grinning. Her teeth smeared with blood. A chunk of flesh stuck in the gap between her two front teeth. Her eyes wild, crazed, but full of victory.

The meat cleaver came down, aimed right at my face.

She had me.

She knew it.

She'd taken the pistol out of play.

I was just some fat girl. A soft REMF medic. A woman still shocked with horror.

She had me and she knew it as the cleaver came down from where she'd raised it so far back her forearm had been parallel to the floor.

In her mind, she had me.

no