"I was willing to go toe to toe
with any man. Knives or bare hands,
I'd still go for it.
Against Tandy?
Run."

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 boot prints, 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 boot prints.

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

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

"Don't." I pleaded, my hand falling from the hilt behind my back. "Don't say his name."

I knew, right then, who one of the people was that were fucking with us. I knew who was one of the ones stalking us. Who had probably 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. The laughter of a drowning man. The last laugh of a man dying of pneumonia. A low bubbling chuckle that promised pain, terror, and carried a promise of darkness in it.

I'd read about evil, heard about it from fire and brimstone preachers in my youth, been told I was evil by my biological 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 low bubbling chuckle made the lizard in the back of my head whimper with primordial fear.

As the laughter wrapped around us, chilling me even further, it went through my mind that the evil I'd known in my life before was a small child holding her breath till she crapped her pants because she was denied a pony compared to whatever was laughing.

Silence, except for the howling of the wind, descended on the stairwell as we all looked at each other. We heard slow footsteps coming down the stairs, thudding against the steps, shaking the entire steel lattice they rested on, the air shivering and the temperature dropping with a sharp snap that made the old breaks in my hand throb sharply. Tendrils of white fog drifted down the stairs, leaving glittering frost where it grazed the walls. The banister began to shiver as frost slid down it toward us, and we knew what was happening.

He was coming down the stairs.

We moved into the orderly room hallway from the bottom landing of the front stairwell, and I turned, grabbed the door, tried to pull it shut, kicking the chock up so it could move freely.

It didn't budge.

"Come on, Ant!" Nagle yelled, pulling on my sleeve, trying to pull me away from the door. The lizard realized I was trapped, cornered, and released the panic button it had been hammering on to get me to flee who was coming down the stairs.

With his ears flat against his head he slammed his hand on the fight button and rage flooded through me.

"Fuck this! I can take him!" I snarled, letting go of the door and pulling my knife from the sheath behind my back. I stepped into the middle of the doorway, moving into a guard position, the knife held pointed downward in front of my sternum and my half-fist up under my chin. "I'm not running, I can take him."

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

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

We could hear him coming down the steps. Slow, deliberate steps that made the air itself shiver and made it seem like the shadows twisted and writhed in the space beneath the stairs.

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

Tandy?

Or the blizzard?

At the thought of the blizzard the lizard threw up a map of the barracks, pictures of it from various angles, a topography map, and began highlighting things on it. Plans rocketed through my brain as the little lizard sorted all the options that might give us the slightest chance of survival outside.

It only took a second for the little lizard to decide upon the plan and throw it up where I could see it.

"Come on!" I yelled, turning and heading toward the door. We had a chance. If we kept our 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. Screaming wind sliced 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, 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 as I moved through the snow and darkness, trying not to stumble, trying not to lose my balance and contact with the wall. The only thing I had to guide me aside from my hand on the wall was the plan that the lizard had thrown up.

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 dragged Nagle up the hill, blind, deaf, and numb. I hoped she still had ahold of Bomber, my best friend, but I couldn't tell. I could only trust her, trust in her strength to drag my best friend through the blizzard.

The ground leveled out and I knew I was either laughing or sobbing in relief in the darkness. A handful of steps more and the next corner came. I followed it, keeping my hand on the wall as I moved along it until I hit the picket fence that surrounded the front lawn of the barracks. 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.

Even with as loud as we could yell, we could barely hear one another over the snow.

"Let's go! Hold onto my jacket!" I hollered back, and climbed over the fence, Nagle holding onto me, throwing me off balance and almost dumping me face first into the thin layer of snow over the frozen grass. 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? The little lizard that lived in the survival center at the back of my brain asked.

I was warm and tingly. My joints and the places I had broken bones before no longer hurt. My balls didn't even hurt any more. I was warm, fuzzy, and sleepy.

Oh. Shit. The little lizard shrieked, and flailed at the panic button. Adrenaline flooded my system as the small survival portion of my brain seized control of my body, doing whatever it could to make sure I survived long enough to get out of the cold. The lizard over rid my conscious control of my body, forcing me onward out of sheer instinct.

My new found strength let me help Nagle over the fence, and then Bomber. Both of them sagged when they managed to get over the fence, the cold sapping them of their strength. I roared in rage and denial, the little lizard still hammering away at the panic button, and I grabbed them by the back of their jackets, half dragging them behind me. They stumbled to their feet, holding tight onto me as I kept bulling forward through the snow. Together we stumbled forward, Nancy pulling us to the right as she kept one hand on the wall of the barracks, till we tripped over the steps and into the alcove where the doors that led to the CQ area were recessed into the building. The wind hammered at us as we fought our way to our feet to climb up the steps and pulled open the outer doors. We half fell into the alcove between the doors, the wind slamming the outside doors behind us.

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

The little lizard in the back of my mind heaved a sigh of relief, letting up on the panic button. It still kept hissing like a tea kettle, kicking on the adrenaline and holding down the rage button, driving me to my feet, and I reached down and heaved Nancy and John to their feet.

When we pushed open the inner doors the little lizard relaxed as we managed to escape the clutches of the blizzard. Nancy gave a half-sob half-laugh as the hydraulic cylinders on the doors hissed and then thumped as the door shut behind us.

"We made it." She half-laughed.

"I thought we were dead." Bomber said.

"I refuse to die on this god-forsaken mountain." I snarled. My system was still full of combat chemicals and the rage still pounded at my temples.

"Amen, brother." Bomber said and 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 me first, 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 dragged 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 and ice.

"Tell me this isn't happening." Bomber whispered, moving over to one of the beds and sitting down before clicking off the flashlight.

"It's happening." Nagle said from where she was sitting on the chair in front of the door.

"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 all Tandy." I said, moving by feel over to Stokes' bed.

"Don't say his name." Nancy's voice was tight with fear in the darkness.

"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."

"No, it was him in the stairs. But I don't think whoever killed the guys on CQ and smashed up our rooms was Tandy." I said, moving next to Bomber so I could reach out and grab him by the jacket to pull him up. "Come're, Nancy." I heard the chair shift in the darkness. "I don't know why he didn't take us when we were outside, but it was him on the stairs."

"He likes the fear." Bomber said, his chattering teeth and Texas accent making our long friendship the only reason I could understand him.

I could hear Nancy's footsteps in the darkness, the sound making the little lizard in the back of my head jump up and hold his hand over the panic button.

"It's me, Anthony." She said when she bumped into me. Her voice kept the lizard from hammering on the panic button again. I reached down and grabbed the heavy quilt from Stokes's bed, a hand-made 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.

"I'm so cold I don't think it would even work." I grumbled. Bomber laughed.

"Trying to shove a frozen hotdog into a frozen bagel doesn't sound like a fun time." Nancy chattered.

"Maybe next time?" Bomber offered. We all three laughed, still holding onto one another both to stay on our feet and to warm up. 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 answered. 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 and I feel like I've got razor burn on my pussy."

"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 free of pain enough, to move around. We put Stokes' blanket back on her bed, dug out a towel from 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 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. It started to turn and then stopped. Figuring the lock might be frozen I twisted harder.

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...