War Fighter Tunnels
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, Western Germany
06 January, 1988
1800 Hours

I closed the door on the clinic and walked into the egg. I felt exhausted, the whole gritty eyes, dry mouth, sore back, aching joints exhaustion thing going on. I knew I was dragging ass, but at least I'd stopped the labor for right now. Heartly had another 6 weeks to go, and the last thing I needed was another preemie baby in the tunnels.

Chatter and voices were coming out of chow-hall as I walked down the tunnel toward the living areas, and part of me just felt too exhausted to head into the chow hall, but the smell of food made my stomach rumble and my tired brain just steered me into the chow hall section.

Two of the refugees from the FSB were on the serving line, and I ignored their grouchy looks, just slapping a tray down and having them throw the T-Rats on my tray. Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, and some kind of apple cobbler. Silverware, a glass of orange juice, and I managed to get to one of the tables and sit down.

Everything tasted like cardboard, and I chewed and swallowed mechanically, just staring at my tray as I ate. My brain was idling in neutral, and I wasn't really thinking of anything, just staring, my thoughts a dull blur that really had no meaning.

I was trapped in the War Fighter Tunnels. Everyone here relied on me. I was only 19, I'd only completed the Special Weapons Combat Medic Course and the Field Surgery course this spring.

I missed my friends. I missed the chatting and intimacy of Atlas.

Hell, I even missed Stillwater.

God, it was like the explosion at Atlas had sent me to some kind of bizarro land.

I didn't want to be down in these tunnels any longer. I didn't want to be responsible for ten women and their babies, or a dozen rape victims, or two men who the military had found wanting and was now returning to civilian life.

I wanted to be back at Atlas. Stink, fear, pain, danger, blood and all. I just wanted to be out there with my friends, sitting in my CUC-V ambulance with my feet up on the dash, reading porn mags and smoking cigarettes while I waited for someone to almost kill themselves again.

The chaos and insanity out there made sense. There was us, the Russians, and the mission. Everything was clear cut, and everything made sense. Even the random and shocking sudden violence and injuries made sense. They were just part of life.

Here, everything was topsy-turvy. I was one of the youngest people in here, the second highest ranking, but I was in charge of a multi-million dollar underground facility designed to allow several hundred people fight on the nuclear and chemical wasteland of Europe during World War Three.

It wasn't fair.

I was only 19.

the average of the combat soldier was nineteen, nah nah nah nineteen

The chorus of the song yanked me out of my gloomy thoughts and I realized that I'd been staring at my empty tray, holding my fork loosely in one hand.

I felt like the day I'd gotten my sleeve caught on a passing truck's trailer and dragged for almost fifty yards down the pothole covered dirt and gravel road of Atlas.

My muscles felt bruised, my blood felt thick, my thoughts felt sluggish. I ached all over. My joints hurts, my teeth hurt, my...

wait...

I ran over my symptoms again.

Vitamin D deficiency.

Crap, we didn't have natural light, and looking up I saw the middle tube of the each fluorescent light was not active.

We'd been underground for months.

I sighed, pushing myself up from my seat, and picked up my tray. I moved over to the gap in the wall where Wright was waiting to take the dirty trays and silverware. The other woman smiled at me, her belly huge and the front of her T-shirt stained where milk had leaked through the pads inside of her bra.

"Come see me tomorrow," I told her. "You're getting close," I told her.

She nodded, smiling. Her eyes were sapphire blue, her red lips plump, and for a split second I wanted to kiss her. I felt my nipples harden and my insides start to go squishy.

I turned away, feeling the pangs of loneliness, the loss of intimacy of Atlas, claw inside my chest.

God, I missed home.

When I was sure nobody could see I lifted up my hands and sniffed at my fingertips.

Yup.

Still there.

My muffin dried up like a mummy in the Egypt sun. I'd be shocked not to pull down my pants and have sand spill out of my crotch.

I missed Atlas.

The lights above me started getting dimmer and dimmer, and I realized with a shock I was past the second corner in the tunnel that led to the Dispensary. There was a half mile of tunnel to go through still till it ended in the medical center's basement, but the lights were so dark I could barely see.

My breath steamed out in front of me.

Was the door cracked?

I reached into my pocket, pulling out a chemlight, and cracked it, the soft blue light pushing the darkness back.

Quicktiming it down the tunnel I got colder and colder. Frost coated the walls at the third corner.

A piece of brass, my brain IDing it as 7.62 NATO, chimed off my boot and skittered down the tunnel. The steel here was pocket, in some places little dime sized sections looked like they'd melted and then hardened.

...we pushed them back, through the smoke and the fire...

...Aine chewed a man's throat out...

The tales I'd heard at Atlas in the dark of more than one lonely night came back to me as I hurried, taking long fast steps. It was getting colder in the tunnel, no light except for the chemlight held tight in my right fist.

The wall on my left was bloody, the crimson ice hardened over brushed steel wall panels.

Shouldn't that have been cleaned off?

Another expended shell casing, this one 7.62mm Soviet, chimed as my foot caught it in the darkness and it vanished in front of me.

I could smell the acrid tang of old CS gas, the scorching smell of WP long burned away.

"PUSH THE FUCKERS INTO THE DARK AND SNOW!" Stillwater's voice roared around me and I screamed, covering my ears, falling to my knees.

"FINISH THE FIGHT!" Bomber bellowed, drowning out my scream of pain.

"BLOOD FOR LUGUS, BLOOD FOR CERNUNNO!" Aine's scream was a banshee's wail from atop a castle wall as enemies crept through the fog toward the walls.

Blood dripped from my nose as I held my hands over my ears, screaming as the echoes physically pushed at me.

I started shivering as the cold worsened, icy fingers worming into my clothing, seeking out sensitive and warm spots. Cold talons pried at my outer vaginal lips, an icy finger pressed at my butt hole, slithering tentacles of frozen air tried to squirm up my nose, a fist of ice tried to push into my open mouth, and sharp barbs of freezing cold tried to slide under my hands to worm into my ears. My eyeballs suddenly hurt and when I blinked I felt two eyelashes shatter.

Snapping my mouth closed I got up, not bothering to reach for a chemlight that was barely visible, instead reaching into my pocket as the icy finger pushed into my ear. I was shivering so hard my teeth were chattering as my body flexed my muscles to produce heat and keep them limber enough to move.

My joints felt full of broken glass as I broke into double-time, jogging down the corridor, careful where I put my feet.

Blood frozen into ice coated the floor at one point, and a snapped off section of bayonet at least five inches long was stuck in the seam between two wall panels, surrounded by frozen splashes of blood.

"KEEP UP THE PRESSURE!" Stillwater's enraged bellow was louder than a jet engine and I felt blood trickle down my cheek from my right ear before it froze on my skin.

The door was just ahead.

A massive three ton door, designed to handle the nuclear blast that would destroy the Dispensary and wipe it off the side of the mountain, built like a bank vault door with locking bars as thick as my forearm. There was no massive wheel, just a keypad and a throw bar on the wall on the right of the door. Below the keypad was a plastic shield that was coated in frozen blood. I knew that below it was the bright red button for imminent impact.

Snow was dusted on the ice, and my boots started kicking up small sprays of it. It began getting thicker and thicker as I approached where I knew the door was.

I stopped when I saw it.

The snow slowly sloped up, as if it had drifted in, until the bottom third of the massive ten foot tall door was covered.

It was closed.

The keypad was blinking red 8's.

It was not only secure, but someone had disabled it from the other side.

Stillwater had locked me in here.

The chemlight began to dim and the cold intensified.

I turned and began hustling back.

The skin between my shoulder blades prickled and tightened.

My footfalls echoed, reechoed, and warped around me as I moved down the tunnel, away from that impossible snowdrift and the locked and sealed blast door.

It sounded like massive heavy footfalls behind me.

...one red eye glowing in the darkness as the hand reached for me, intending on pulling me backwards, against him, where he could tear my clothing away as he had my T-shirt, pull me down on the floor, thrust inside of me, tearing and stretching me...

...filling me...

...completely..

...sweetly...

I started running, adrenaline hammering into my bloodstream. The images ran through my brain. Not Stillwater as he had been in the dark and cold, but other images.

washing off

sleeping, the blankets kicked off, a morning erection against his stomach

aine standing up and his erection pulling from her swollen vagina with a lewd sucking sound in the darkness, her eyes glowing green fire in the darkness of the Fort

nancy leaning back, holding his erection in her hand, tugging gently on it, looking up at him and smiling as he began to squirt on her breasts while I watched, hand over my mouth, from the edge of the stacks of artillery rounds they were hiding between

watching him strip off the armored J-suit, expressionless, but feeling between my thighs starting to throb

biting my lip as I stared at him in the darkness, my fingers slick with juices and moving between my swollen lips

I began running faster and faster, trying to escape not only the pursuing footsteps my brain insisted I could hear, but the images and the feelings those images awoke inside of me.

I turned the corner, dim light letting me see, and I tossed the almost dead chemlight to the side, picking up speed, almost sobbing as I entered the light.

The images in my mind vanished as if I'd never seen them.

Never imagined them while I touched myself in the darkness of the Fort, hidden by my sleeping bag and the dark.

I almost stared crying when I burst into the egg.

Nobody was in there, they were all still eating.

I put my hands on one of the consoles, breathing hard. The air in here was warm, almost hot against my skin.

I'd masturbated looking at and/or fantasizing about all the men out at Atlas. Could you blame me? They were all in shape, all different, and underneath the twisted steel and sex appeal they were good, honest people.

Who loved me unconditionally, even as messed up as I was.

I straightened up, turning around and looking at the tunnel that led to the Dispensary. One by one the lights began flickering, dimming, and going out, until only the first hundred feet or so was still it.

Something slithered and moved in the darkness and a cold breeze wafted out and caressed my skin, making me shiver and hug myself tightly.

Moving quickly, I went to the room I was still sharing with Groom, pulling open the wall locker. Inside was my field jacket, still bloody, with the liner inside. I pulled it on, then pulled on my pistol rig.

In the desk was my .45 Colt M1911A1 and seven magazines. I slotted four of them in the ammo pouches, loaded the .45, and tucked the other two in pockets. Lastly I picked up the round out of the desk, ran the action on the .45, popped the mag, reloaded it with the bullet, and slapped the mag home before holstering it.

Afterwards I sat down in front of the desk, quickly unwrapping my braid from on top of my head and unbraiding it. In my desk was a small plastic pill bottle full of holly leaves. I took out two, pricked them on my pinkie till I got a drop of blood, then wove them into my braid. I wrapped my brain back on the top back of my head, grabbed a boonie hat from where it had been in the desk, and put it on. I grabbed one other thing and shoved it in my thigh pocket.

I needed to check the other tunnels.

I stopped in the egg, wiping my mouth and staring at them. I looked down at the terminal in front of me and punched in the right codes.

The door statuses scrolled up and I checked them before I looked at the tunnels, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand again and swallowing with a thick, dry tongue.

One to the motorpool. That one was blinking an error code for fire, collapse, and explosion. The computer had registered it as a near nuclear hit thermal pulse and blast wave. Sealed.

Please, Lugus, don't let Stillwater have cracked off one of the nukes.

The Chow Hall. That one was reading chemical contamination and locked the system out.

I wondered if he'd used VX or Lewisite.

The barracks. That one led to darkness, madness, horror...

and Stillwater.

Only the forgotten Gods knew what kind of horrors he was enduring up there in those frozen halls.

Dispensary. Locked out. Error code for panel damage.

My hand, without my conscious direction, dug in my thigh pocket, finding what I'd pushed in there, and pulled it out. My other hand opened it.

I stared at the last tunnel as I took a long drink off the bottle of whiskey.

The heat blossomed as I stared at the two mile tunnel bored through the living bones of a mountain that hated with a personal passion.

A tunnel that the lights were off before the first corner.

I capped the bottle and shoved it in my pocket, thanking whoever had hidden it in the desk drawer.

I swallowed thickly, gathered my courage and put on the sticking place, turned on the flashlight attached to my pistol rig, and began walking toward that dark tunnel.

The error code that had been flashing on the monitor kept blinking its scarlet letters in my mind.

ERROR: TERMINAL NOT RESPONDING! SENSORS NOT RESPONDING!

I had to know.