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Daywalk, Third Wake Time

Snow fell gently around me as I dug in the snow by the creek and harvested wild onions and leeks. My fighting blade was belted to my hip in the leather sheathe that the woman had made for me, a comfortable weight that I appreciated.

She was not as I had expected. I had expected differently. How, I could not remember. but she was how she was, and that was fine. She was not a woman of sweet words and soft touches, but rather a solid presence that I was able to draw strength from as she drew strength from me. Now that her eyes were uncovered she helped around our home. She often sat and watched me cook with a smile, watched me hold the small white rabbits I had snared and put in cages. Her violet eyes were full of warmth and affection.

That alone was enough for me.

I was a man. The affection of a woman was reward unto itself.

A rustling in the bushes caught my attention. I glanced up, one hand going to the leather wrapped hilt of my fighting blade. I went perfectly still, breathing slowly and evenly so no steam rose from my face coverings.

Nothing.

I had almost relaxed when I heard it from far away. A scream of fear and rage. It rang faintly across the frozen forest. Once, twice, a third time, and I heard an enraged bellow answer it.

A fey threatened and her protector moving to help.

That was dangerous. Her wild feral cry would stir up the creatures of the woods.

I pushed the vegetables I had gathered into the leather pouch at my hip and took off running, weaving a complex pattern to avoid being easily followed home.

Her screams of rage and fear echoed through the woods.

I wondered, briefly, as I hurtled myself over a frozen creek, who had dared attempt to lay their hands on one of the beautiful but terrifying fey.

Not me. That's all that mattered.

I knew better.

When I got back home the woman was asleep, dreaming.

I started making food for us, glancing at her once in a while.

I wondered what she was dreaming about that made her stir and mumble in her sleep like she was in pain.

2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, West Germany
17 April, 1987, Friday
1330 Hours

The barracks still held their typical chill as I walked down the hallway to the Orderly Room. My Class-A's felt too tight and slightly restraining, my medal plate looked stupid with all the ribbons, and people I didn't recognize stared at me as I carried my suitcase on one hand and a folder with my orders in it in the other.

Shaft, the eternal Orderly Room Clerk, looked up at me when I came in. She lifted her fingers from her typerwriter and scooted her chair back, standing up.

"Cromwell," She smiled. She was one of those women with a natural beauty that other people paid Hollywood plastic surgeons millions to try to touch.

"Shaft," I smiled, setting the folder with my orders on it in front of her.

"How was your flight?" She asked me.

I shook my head. "Exhausting. The C-141 blew a door seal two hours out of Rammstein, the noise was terrible."

She pulled open her desk drawer, removing a bottle of bourbon. "Drink?" I held my hand out and she slapped the bottle into it. I noticed some of the Orderly Room clerks frowned disapprovingly as I took a long pull off the bottle, but I couldn't give two shifts what some baby-blood newbie thought of me. I handed the bottle back. "Better?" she asked, putting the bottle back.

"Much," I told her. "CO in?"

She shook her head. "We don't have one at this time," she told me. "No XO or First Sergeant either."

That made me raise an eyebrow. I looked around, spotted a chair, and pulled it in front of her desk, dropping my suitcase. "What happened?" I asked as I sat down.

She shook her head. "It got bad a few weeks ago. We're talking bad like only 2/19th gets." She pulled the bottle of bourbon back out, then turned in place to pull open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

"Define: bad," I said, opening the folder and pulling out my orders returning me to duty with 2/19th.

"Stillwater's missing, presumed dead," She said.

That made me drop my folder. It hit with a loud smack and everyone looked at me.

"No way. No way he's dead," I said.

Shaft turned around with a six-pack of Coca-Cola, setting it on the desk. She pulled a can out of the plastic ring and handed it to me. "He just vanished one morning. All of his stuff in his room. Only thing missing was his dogtags, a single uniform, and that knife of his. Everything else is there."

I took a long drink off the Coke and handed it back. She poured bourbon in it while I digested what she had said.

Stillwater. Dead. I couldn't believe it. From the sound of it, it was one of those disappearances that everyone half ignored due to the unspoken circumstances.

The mountain had taken him.

"Bomber said that tomorrow a bunch of us are going to pack his stuff to be shipped back to his family Stateside," Shaft told me. "John wanted to wait until Anthony's brother William got back from working with the Big Red One."

That made me nod. If they'd done it without the big thug, William would have been furious at being excluded from the 2/9th death ritual for his brother. At 6' 4" and 240 lbs nobody wanted to piss that killing machine off.

He and Anthony were cut from same cloth.

"Johnny and Stokes wanted to wait till you came back too," Shaft told me. Her voice was gentle.

I lit a cigarette with a shaking hand, fighting tears.

"How's Nagle doing?" I asked. God, I could just imagine. She must be crushed. She loved Tony fiercely, with all her heart. It was a weird, self-destructive, and all consuming, but it was love.

Sometimes I was jealous of them.

Shaft went still and the entire Orderly Room went silent.

"Fucking whore," One of the girl's by the window said softly, her voice full of spite and malice. It was Pv2 MacGruder, who'd been E-4 till she had put three bullets in her husband and his lover in their bedroom about a month before I'd left for Special Weapons Training. She'd been allowed to take the double-homicide as a Company Grade Article-15 in return for reenlisting PDA.

"What did I say?" I asked, suddenly worried the anger and glares were for me.

Shaft shook her head. "Not you, honey," She said gently. She leaned forward and poured more bourbon in my Coke can. "Drink."

I did, still frowning.

When I set down the can, Shaft reached forward and took my hand.

"About a week after Stillwater vanished, she married a guy out of 11th ACR," Shaft told me gently.

I sat up straight in the chair like I'd been shocked. "She what?" My hand tightened and I felt the bones of Shaft's hand grind. "Stillwater had asked her to marry him and she'd agreed."

"She's a whore," another one of the Orderly Room clerks, PFC Jane Chang, snarled, her voice full of hatred. "She didn't even wait till his fucking body was cold, the slimy scag."

Shaft just nodded, her face not showing any reaction to how tight my grip was. I willed my hand to relax.

"Stillwater came up missing, the Rangers and everyone else searched for about 72 hours, nobody could find anything, so he was declared missing and presumed dead," Shaft said. She shrugged. "A week later she filed her marriage certificate with me."

"You should have burned it and sent her ass to Three Moose Island Depot out on the Aleutians, see how the REMF fucking slut likes that," Chang snapped.

Shaft held up her hand. "Our job is their paperwork, not our feelings, Chang," She said softly. Despire the softness of her tone the rebuke made Chang flush and look down, her face Oriental face unreadable except for the red on her ears and on her neck and the fury in her dark eyes.

"Yes, Specialist," Chang said. The other three clerks started staring at their paperwork, but the undercurrent of rage and fury still simmered against me.

"We may not all like or know Stillwater that well," Shaft said, "But he was one of ours, you know?"

"I know," I said. I heaved a sigh. "It's official? He's dead?"

Shaft nodded, then looked at her can of soda. "Officially, he's presumed dead."

"Jesus," I said softly.

"Let's go put a copy of your orders on the CO's desk, for whenever we get one," Shaft said, standing up. I nodded numbly and followed her as she unlocked the CO's door and went into the large office. She swept her hand over the three light switches and the florescent lights buzzed spitefully to life. It was slightly dusty, the flag and the guidon racked by the desk, and smelled faintly acrid and sour.

"We last the Big Three last month," She said, moving over to the desk. We used The Big Three to refer to the CO, XO, and 1SG offices, since that pretty much summed it up.

"What happened?" I asked, looking around. The CO's office had that empty, dead feeling that rooms in 2/19th got after a little while. Like the shadows were wrong, like the furniture was just slightly off true, and like the pictures were sneering at you when you weren't looking.

President Ronald Reagan was missing his gentle paternal smile and instead his lips were twisted slightly like he had just ordered you to be strangled. Bush looked less like a small ineffectual man and more like the CIA Director he had been.

I hated the CO's office.

"Officially? Death by misadventure. Truthfully? Truck bomb," She said. "They went to Bonn to meet with some of the NATO personnel. Someone parked a truck outside the building and blew it up. Killed twenty people. They're saying a ruptured gas line destroyed an empty building. Killed a bunch of NATO officers and their staffs."

She waved a hand to encompass the entire office. "Officially, the XO died in a vehicle wreck two weeks ago. The First Sergeant died a week back of a congenital heart defect, and we're typing up the paperwork right now that yesterday the CO had a stroke behind his desk brought on by exposure to blood agent out at Perseus last week. We had to type up the paperwork that he'd visited the site without proper equipment after a leak."

"So, Cold War Bullshit," I said.

"Yeah," She said. I set my orders on the desk and Shaft set them in the inbox. She looked around, noting that the door was shut, then reached under the desk to snap a switch down there.

"Sorry, office is wired for sound," She told me. I nodded. That didn't really surprise me. She looked around again. "Henley knows this, Cromwell, and I'm telling you on his orders to me this morning when I told him that you were inbound."

I just nodded.

"Stillwater's alive," She said. That made my eyebrows raise and she shrugged. "As far as we know anyway."

"How bad?" I asked, wiping my mouth. Jesus.

"Bad enough they aren't telling us much more. Blackbriar said he's alive, and that he was 'recovered intact' whatever that means, but beyond that, we've got nothing," She told me. "An old contact I have in SOG told me that she just reactivated five SEALs off the deceased list too."

I whistled low. Talk about maximum deniability.

"It was a fifteen man list, with Stillwater's name on it. You're supposed to know because Henley wants you to keep an eye on him. A close eye, especially after he finds out that Nagle ran off and left him," She told me. She shrugged, put her finger to her lips, and put her hand under the edge of the CO's desk. There was another metallic snap. "So you can see we're kind of without leadership again."

I snorted. "Nothing new there. If they wanted to improve 2/19th's efficency they should just let us fire most of the officers and senior NCOs out of a cannon and into the sun."

"Don't tempt them," Shaft laughed, and waved at the door. "Let's get your off TDY and back into this wonderful US Army opportunity for advancement, excitement, and life affirming experience."

That made me snort. I followed her back into the Orderly Room, sipping on my drink as she did up the paperwork that officially transferred me from Blackbriar Ridge to 2/19th.

I wasn't sure what was worse.

Nagle running off and marrying some worthless faggot out of 11th ACR?

Or that I was back.