"It's OK to be expendable."

"Wake up, Ant." Nancy's voice pulled me from a dream of sitting in my brother's room, holding still while his girlfriend mopped the blood off my face and he told me that I needed to stop getting my ass kicked so often.

I opened my eyes, and could see her above me.

The lizard rejoiced at the sight of her. She was smiling, and I could see her eyes, her hair, and her skin. Past her I could see the white of the ceiling.

I couldn't make out any features, I couldn't tell her expression beyond guessing from her teeth that she was smiling. I looked around, and I could see fuzzy blobs scattered around, but at least I could see something instead of darkness everywhere.

"I can see you." I told her, wincing as speaking pulled at the stitches in my lips.

"You can?" She sounded happy, and a hand popped up, holding up three fingers. "How many..."

"Three. No pinky." I said, and she leaned down and hugged me.

She lit a cigarette, and held it out to me. I was proud of myself for being able to grab the tiny white blur without burning myself. I knew it was a test, she was seeing if I was lying to her.

The nicotine felt good, easing the pain.

I noticed it was really warm in the room, and light was coming from the window. I looked over, but all I could see was brown with white edges.

"How do you feel?" She asked, leaning in close. She suddenly came into focus, and I could see she had a roughly stitched up line from her eye to the bottom of her jaw.

"My head hurts." I told her, pushing myself into a sitting condition. "How's Bomber?"

"Unconscious, but breathing strong." She told me, bending down and covering one of my eyes. She flashed the flashlight in my open eye, uncovered it, and then repeated it with the other eye.

"Still concussed." She said, and then made a face. "I think you might have a skull fracture." She sighed and rubbed the side of her face. "We're all beat up."

I looked around, unable to identify the man shaped blobs standing up.

"How's Lewis?" I asked. I didn't really care, but I figured I should at least act like it mattered to me.

"Dead." She admitted. "Can you get up?"

"Yeah." I began fighting to get up. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" She asked me.

"No. Last thing I remember was..." I wracked my brain and winced at a sudden sharp stabbing pain. "You telling me I was blind and dragging me up the stairwell."

"I don't know. One minute he was speaking, the next minute he was dead. No wounds, no nothing." She admitted, stepping back and turning into a blurry blob as I got to my feet. She took the cigarette away from me and didn't give it back.

"Why's it so warm in here?" I asked, finding a chair shaped blur and sitting down. I should tell her that I still can't see worth a shit, but right now, they needed me. They'd been there for me; I needed to be there for them.

"Hernandez and Carter figured it out, and we made it while you were asleep." She sat on my lap and kissed my forehead. "We went down to the war stocks, dragged up a pair of GP Mediums, put one over the door, put one over the window and used tables and tent poles to hold it there.

"We put up the tent liners on the walls, and on the floor. Then we set up a stove, ran the stovepipe through the hole in the tent and out the broken window, and fired it up." She told me. "Hernandez might have saved all of us."

"You didn't wake me up?" I asked.

She snorted. "Not even. There were a couple of painkillers in one of the bags, I gave them to you and Bomber to keep the two of you down. You needed the time to heal."

I nodded, and moved over to the blurry tables, finding a box quickly. I lifted up the brown bag, having to bring it almost to my nose to read the label. 'Chicken ala King'. Great, well, with my teeth, it beat catshit and rice.

"Ant..." Nagle was next to me. I turned and looked at her, squinting.

"What?" I smiled.

"Give me the MRE." She said, and I handed it over. She moved. I couldn't tell what she was doing very well. She held up the package. "What does this say?"

I squinted again, tilting my head to try to read it.

I couldn't even make out the black printing.

"Chicken and Rice." I guessed.

She held it closer and closer, until I could see the blurry black lines and then it swam into focus.

Pork Patty with Beans.

"You can't see, can you?" She asked. Someone else was coming up behind her.

"I can see." I protested, fumbling in the box and pulling out another one. I held it up to my nose. 'Chicken ala King' I tore it open and turned around to see another blur standing there. Since it was skinny and light skinned, I figured out who it was.

"Carter." I nodded, moving over to the chair and pulling open the bag.

"Nagle says you can't see." He told me.

"I can see just fine." I lied, squinting at my food.

"How many fingers?"

I turned my head, and my vision blacked out, sparks shooting across my sight. In a second everything faded in, like an old black and white TV, full of static, which slowly turned to color. I could make out his hand, the fingers blurry, but he was only holding up three of them.

"Three." I answered.

"Ant?" Nagle asked. This time from the other side of me. I turned my head, and my vision did it again, this time making nausea twist my stomach. "Ant?" She called again, this time in front of me. I slowly moved my head, seeing everything blur out for a moment, until I was looking at her.

"What's wrong with him?" Hernandez asked.

"Nothing." I grunted, tearing open the foil and squeezing the chicken into my mouth. It hurt like the devil, opening my mouth, but fuel for the meat machine took priority even over pain.

"Concussion for sure." Nagle said, like I wasn't even there. I felt a slight stir of anger; I was sitting right in front of them, for fuck's sake. "Maybe a skull fracture, maybe worse."

"I'm fine." I said, swallowing my food and ignoring the pain in my mouth. "Have you heard anything else?"

"No." Carter said. "I'm going to try to get some sleep, it's almost dark."

I nodded, and my vision shut off again. This time I counted. Two and a half seconds. With a sharp pain in the front of my head right before my vision came back on.

I could see the blob that I'd decided was Carter move away and slowly turned my head to face where I could hear Nagle breathing. Her face was just a featureless blob; all I was able to make out was her hair, what might be eyes, and a blob.

"How bad is it?" She whispered, leaning forward.

"If I turn too fast, I can't see. I can't make out details much farther than my nose." I admitted. "Think I'll be OK?"

"I don't know." She admitted. "Your face looks like Hell. I put like fifty stitches into you. He stabbed you in the shoulder but left the bayonet in." She chuckled. She shook her head and then took my face in both hands, leaning forward and kissing the tip of my nose. "Only Ant."

"How bad did he get you?" I asked her, the red welt on the side of her face vanishing as she pulled farther than a foot away.

She shrugged, or at least I thought that's what the movement was. "He cut my face, and stabbed me the through my right boob." She moved again. "I didn't even hear him come up behind me."

"He's fucked." I said, grinning. "I think I got him pretty good."

"No, he's in good enough shape that he smashed the shit out of our generator while everyone was being patched up." She told me.

"Hey, shut up, I'm trying to sleep." Carter said.

"Sorry." I said, and then leaned into Nagle till she swam into focus. "I think it's time for Plan B."

"The Kurt Russel plan?" She smiled, and I nodded slowly as the lizard hissed in approval, figuring out as long as I moved slowly, my vision didn't cut out.

"When Carter wakes up." I smiled.

She wiped off my chin with her fingers.

They were bloody.

* * * * *

"I think I should go." Carter told me, a dark blurry form.

"We need you here in case he goes for the wounded." Nagle told him. I just stood beside her, holding the axe in my hands, with Hernandez on the other side of her, holding an axe of his own. "You stay here, hold down the fort."

"I wanna go." Bomber said from where he was laying on the mattress.

"Fine, get up and walk over here." Nagle told him. He tried to sit up and fell back with an outcry of pain. "That's what I thought."

"Why can't Stillwater stay here?" Carter asked.

"My fucking plan." I growled.

"Can you even fucking see?" Carter asked.

"Good enough." I told him. "You wanna try making me stay?"

"He's Ant, he's good." Nagle told him, and then turned to the door. "Unlock the door, Dez."

The locks sounded like thunder, and the door shrieked when it opened, the noise ripping down my spine and making my stomach twist. I swallowed back the bile and looked out into the platoon area.

I'd spent more than a few hours sitting out there, smoking cigarettes, BSing with everyone else, waiting to find out where I was going for TDY or to the field next.

The chairs were all covered by snow, pushed against the far wall. The broken windows, which were just dark blurs, let the wind in. Hernandez and Nagle's flashlights panned out, settling on the space about three feet from the door.

It took my eyes a moment to focus well enough to understand what made both people with me inhale sharply and the lizard snarl.

Four snowmen, wearing BDU caps, one with a mophead for hair, all with outstretched arms. I could barely make them out, and stood still as Nancy moved close, kneeling down in front of one.

"Fucker's been in our rooms." She snarled, standing back up with something pink she'd pulled off the face of one. "This is my fucking vibrator." I heard Carter snicker, and Bomber laugh, and she blurred right before John yelled.

"Don't throw your battery powered fuckstick at me!" John laughed, and then groaned.

"There's three more out here, so unless you want to play '3 holes no waiting' over there, shut the Hell up, you Texas redneck." Nagle answered. The affection in her tone robbed the words of their sting. All of us chuckled. "Lock the door behind us." She finished.

We moved out into the snow, and the sound of our boots seeming preternaturally loud to my ears. Nagle smashed down one of the snowmen as she passed them, cursing as she did so. The wind was howling down the hallway and swirling in the platoon area, the cold wind biting at my exposed face. The throbbing in my cheeks and nose receded within a few seconds, and I silently breathed a sigh of relief that the pain had vanished. I probably should have told someone, but what was I going to say? That I was at my limit?

We were all at our limits.

The snow dusting the hallway was thick enough to crunch under our boots as we moved into it, the handleless doors blank as we passed by them: Simon's room, where we usually sat and got blind drunk talking about sports, SPC Corman's room, with the foosball table he'd bought, my brother's room, with the key still stuck in the door.

"Hey, don't leave me stuck in here, guys." from behind the door of 221. A man's voice.

We just kept walking, ignoring the door when someone banged on it.

"Please let me out." A woman's voice pleaded as we kept walking toward the broken midway doors.

"Fuck you, bitch." Nagle mumbled as we kept going, past my room, where my stuff had been destroyed.

We stopped at the end stairwell, and Hernandez flashed the light at each of us before Nagle spoke.

"All right. When we get up there, we work as fast as possible. I'll keep watch, so Ant, Dez, it's up to you." She told us. I nodded, and I think Hernandez did too, but it was too hard to tell in the darkness, with my blurred vision, and the snow blowing in from the shattered window behind me.

"Roger that." I slurred. My mouth tasted of copper. The cold wind had split open my lips again. And either the stitches had torn or I was bleeding between them, but it didn't matter since I could barely feel the stinging pinch.

"I'll lead the way." I said.

"Why you?" Hernandez asked, reaching out and stopping me.

"I'm expendable." I answered.

"What?" He said. He looked at Nagle, who was nodding. "Why?"

"Three reasons." I told him. "Number one, I'm already injured," I looked at Nagle, "I'm probably going to die anyway. Number two: Nagle's the closest thing we have to a medic, and you're still in good shape." I took a deep breath, and admitted the one thing that I had learned through pain when I was small child. "Lastly, I'm a boy."

I pushed his arm away and headed toward the steps.

"What the fuck does that mean?" He asked.

"It means he doesn't matter." Nagle said in soft voice, and I nodded.

My Nancy...

She was right. I was a boy, boys didn't matter. Boys went to war and killed innocent women and children. Boys worked to provide for the family if they could stay sober long enough to hold a job. Boys were nasty vile creatures who defiled girls. Boys were nothing but violence and stupidity. Boys shouldn't be taught to speak. Boys didn't need to go to school. Stupid boy. Violent boy. Disgusting boy. Nasty boy. Ignorant boy.

When it was time, boys died to protect those better than them.

Which was everyone.

And it was one of those times.

I moved slowly up both flights of steps, stopping on the fourth floor landing, shifting my grip on the axe. I could feel the hatred and rage pounding at my head, and ignored the nausea, the sparks in my vision, but embraced the pain, hatred, and rage. I welcomed it, nourished it.

Pain is nature's way of telling you that you're alive, boy... My Father's voice.

...I'm really, really alive, Father...

"Plan B, baby." I said, and then pushed open the door to the 4th floor hallway. Into upper NCO and Officer Country.

The hallway felt warm after the brutal chill of the stairwell, and I felt a slick sick pleasure at the fact that I was about to ruin someone's day. There was no wind, no snow or ice in the hallway. The air was still, and I could faintly smell the stench of blood in the air.

"Let's break shit up." I said, then stepped forward and shattered the window at the end of the hallway with the head of the axe. The wind blew over me, ice crystals that hadn't become snowflakes yet biting at my exposed skin.

Hernandez moved past me, swinging the axe into the first door. I moved past to the next door, leaned back, and slammed my boot against the door, kicking it clean off the hinges. I stomped into the room, breaking both windows with the axe before turning around and walking out of the room. Hernandez was in the first room, and I heard glass shatter.

We made our way down the hallway, breaking down doors and bashing open windows. When we came to the double doors that separated the hallway, Hernandez and I hacked the hinges off and stood there for a moment, the axes in our hands, when they crashed to the floor.

The building groaned and shivered around us.

At the far end I could faintly see that there was some kind of light. It was fuzzy and unable to be pinned down for what it was.

The light was partially blocked by a shapeless blob filling the vague square of light.

"I'm coming for you, bitch!" I bellowed down the hallway.