Motorpool Vehicle Repair Bays
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
2030 Hours

The stench of burnt blood and pork filled my nostrils, with grease and metal threaded through it. The motorpool bays were where the mechanics could do Third Shop work on our vehicles. Everything from pulling an engine all the way to completely dismantling the vehicle to the frame and rebuilding it. Heavy equipment to lift massive engines out of armored vehicles, everything needed to maintain hundreds of various vehicles. From Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicles to M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks to 25K Forklifts, 30K cranes, all the way down to CUC-V pickup trucks.

During normal operation you'd see a couple dozen mechanics working on up to a dozen vehicles in the massive open repair bays.

But that was then. In "normal" times.

Now bodies hung from chains, gutted, over fire barrels, over the mechanic pits that were filled with fire, slowly roasting over the flames.

Roughly a quarter of them were dead women.

I tried to ignore that many of them were missing chunks of meat.

My eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and I could see people moving around in the smokey dimness. Big men, my size or large, wearing coveralls with the rubberized aprons that mechanics normally used when they were operating the solvent tubs. Their faces covered with welding masks, their hands covered with issue heavy black leather gloves.

They had red crosses painted on the rubberized aprons. A circle in the middle, the ends of the cross wider than they were in the center.

"Templar crosses?" Westlin asked, her voice pitched softly. "Why Templar Crosses?"

I just shrugged, watching them move through the motor pool bay. One moved over to the looped chain hanging down from the whatever it was that the mechanics used to pull the engine then move it away from the vehicle. He began pulling on once chain and the bodies slowly moved, the one over the closest burn barrel moving next to the massive heavy table that I'd seen mechanics repair engines on. At the end a body was moving over a burn barrel. The skin was still there, the waxy looking skin of the dead, still dripping blood from the massive wound used to gut the person. Unlike the other bodies, this one still had hair on the head and on the body. A male.

He let go of the chains and moved to the one that was closest to him. He lifted it up, on arm around the thighs, his other hand pressing on the corpses chest. I saw the massive hook, usually used to attach to lifting points on heavy equipment, slide out of the back of the figure.

He dropped the body on the table, moving over to where there was an ox-acetelyne rig. He put one foot against the bottom of the dolly, leaning it back, and wheeled it over to the table.

"Holy shit..." Westlin breathed.

There was very little cover, and I had to admit, those men intimidated the shit out of me. The lizard noted that they moved oddly. Stiffly. In complete silence.

The one I had been watching lifted up an angle grinder, hitting the button twice. The whir of the angle grinder filled the bay and as I watched the masked and aproned figure applied it to the knee of the corpse.

The lizard slapped a button to interrupt my thought process as I stared in shock, watching the figure start to joint the carcass.

I rescanned the bays to give the lizard a full look at the bay.

The bay was deep enough to work on two five-ton trucks per slot. Six large sliding doors tall enough to get one of the massive tracked 30K forklifts into, wide enough to pull two tanks side by side to the grease pits. Roof peaking forty feet up. Windows cleared of snow at the time, but the storm would cover it in more snow. Lockers against the far wall. Two tool trucks that were broken into. Upright rolling tool chests, pulled open. Tools scattered on the ground. Nine figures total milling about the bays, moving with stiff purpose. Fire barrels and the grease-pits were full of fire, filling the massive cavernous room with flickering light.

Zero cover. Zero concealment.

The lizard ran the options in less than a second.

Boldness mixed with preparation for full frontal assault.

I opened up the parka, tying it back so I had access to the two pistols riding on my LBE.

We always wondered what happened with the Templars... wound through my brain.

Now we knew. Or at least I knew.

Welding masks would restrict the field of view, the polarized glass would make the room even more dim. The lizard compared my normal field of vision to when Sergeant Carter had taught everyone at Atlas how to weld and I'd worn a welding mask, then applied that data to the men moving to give me an approximate field of view.

I needed to get to the opposite side, where the offices, tool rooms, parts rooms, the lockers, and everything else was. There was a bunk room in there, that could easily hold up to thirty of the mechanics in case they were stuck up at the motor pool due to a storm.

With hot-bunking, there might be as many as sixty, but the amount of bodies here made me figure there would be less than twenty of them up here.

There was one I couldn't bypass, and I had to hope that none came out of the hallway. Still, that one wasn't paying any attention to me at the moment.

My boots made no noise as I moved across the motor pool bays. I wasn't looking at the one in front of me. I was willing to bet that if I stared directly at him, his own lizard would feel mine watching and he'd look around.

Twice my knee brace squeaked, but I was willing to take the chance that the noise the brace made would be hidden by the squealing bearings in the fans, the howling of the angle grinder, and the rattling of the chains.

I removed my gloves, tucking them into the parka pocket, and slowly drew the bayonet I'd clipped to my LBE. I could feel the M7 bayonet scrape the mouth of the sheath as I slid free, but I still stared to the side of the man in front of me as I drew closer.

pop sproing ging

He didn't hear it, or at least it didn't register, and he still hadn't detected me moving up on him.

When I was a step away, tensing, he suddenly turned away from me, moving toward the back wall and I let him get another step ahead of me.

where are you going?

Making sure I didn't look around I followed him. If I looked around, one of the figures behind me might realize I wasn't wearing the 'uniform' they were all covered in. In the dimness, from behind, it would be easy to mistake me for one of them. But if I looked around, they'd twig on real quick that I wasn't wearing a welding mask.

I ignored the small part of me, deep inside, locked in a locker by the lizard, that was screaming in horror at the whole thing.

The lizard helped me emulate his stiff way of moving. It made it easier on my knee, and the squealing from the brace eased off. As if the knees, hips, and spine couldn't bend properly, a waddling gait.

...adult rickets...

...lack of Vitamin D, phosphate, and calcium. living off of  human meat...

...probably scurvy too...

We were in the hallway. Heading past doors, heading toward the locker bays. At the back of the locker bays would be the showers on the right, a laundry room on the left, and stairs at the back that led up to the sleeping bay.

...get her in the water, her core temp has dropped, we need to warm her and the baby up...

The figure moved into the locker room and I could tell that they were moving toward the showers. That confused me. From the stench of BO and rotting blood, I couldn't see them maintaining personal hygiene.

Lamps smelling of kerosene/diesel mix were along the walls.

That little screaming part of me shivered in fear, but the lizard and I ignored him.

The shower and the locker room had been a point of tension lately. 2/19th had gotten more and more female mechanics, and while the first group just deal with the fact the locker room and the shower was unisex, newer female mechanics had been complaining about being forced to change in front of and shower with men. They had been insisting on a wall being put up between two halves of the shower and locker room, which was causing more fighting. Out of the sixty or so mechanics, only eight were female, and they wanted half of everything.

Which was causing even more friction.

The lizard slapped the button to cut off that chain of thought to devote more processing power back to what I was doing.

When he moved into the shower room, everything stopped.

The bones were thick in the shower room. Multiple showers were on, steam reeking of rotting blood filling the room. The drains were slightly backed up, leaving an inch or two of reddish water swirling around.

Against the far wall was a makeshift altar, and the lizard immediately slapped a button to keep me from staring at it.

...what the fuck are they worshiping up here?...

The guy in front of me moved between the spraying water and I followed him, noting that the path kept a person dry, and wondered why the hell they would be avoiding the water, but unwilling to test why.

When he started kneel down I moved.

Backhand to knock the mask away, grab the hair on the return, yank him backwards.

His face was just wrong somehow. My brain noted it, and the lizard brought more power into my limbs as I brought the blade down to slice his throat.

"NO BLOOD ON THE ALTAR, AODAN!" Aine's voice thundered in my head.

I twisted him suddenly, pulling him around, away from the altar. He started to scream, to bellow, and I slit his throat from under one ear to the other, twisting the knife to widen the wound, and pushed him face first into the water. I stepped on his back, pinning him face first in the water so the blood poured out into the water that I had his face pressed into.

Once he stopped moving I squatted down, put one hand on the back of his head, and shoved the bayonet up under the bottom of the skull, feeling the blade grate against the skull and vertebrae. He didn't shift as I pulled the blade free and stood up.

...well, no going back now...

Moving slowly I headed back into the locker room, then up the stairs to the bunking room. Another point of tension in the motor pool personnel. Once again, just a large open bay, no privacy for anyone. Again, the newer female troops were complaining that it made them feel unsafe as well as violated their UCMJ rights to privacy. And of course, they wanted half the room and the only bathroom.

The lizard was letting my brain run on odd trains of thought in order to keep me from dwelling on the things I'd seen that were seared into my memory.

In the open bay there were two figures sleeping on the floor in piles of blankets. Not on the mattresses, not on the bunk beds, but on the floor. That struck me as odd as I moved up on the first one. The motor pool still had power, the heaters on, and the steam from the showers as well as the cooking meat making the whole place stuffy and humid, reeking of burnt and scorched and rotting blood.

He was sleeping in coveralls, boots, gloves, and still wearing the welding mask. His chest rose and fell slowly.

I didn't want to lift the mask, despite the urge that filled me to. In the movies, the hero, which I definitely wasn't, would lift the mask to gaze upon the face of evil. He would stare at the face, which would either be totally normal and slightly innocent, or twisted and monstrous, and suddenly the eyes would open.

Fuck that.

Pressing one hand on his chest I slit his throat, holding him down as the blood gouted out of the sudden savage wound. He didn't even wake up, and within thirty second the blood was only oozing from the wound, his heart having pushed it all out of the massive artery at the side of the neck.

Normally the hot coppery smell of blood would alert everyone in the room that someone had just been wasted, but the stench of blood was already so pervasive that more didn't really seem to affect the atmosphere.

My ears popped as I moved toward the next one, and thunder shook the walls, making moisture drip down from the ceiling. It left reddish smears on my parka.

Part of me screamed at the fact that inside the motor pool building it was raining blood.

I gritted my teeth and moved up on the next one, quickly repeating my actions. I had to choke down bile as the smell of blood got thicker.

The smooth boards of the floor were soaked in blood, thick grime that I knew was made of old motor oil, dirt that had been soaked in oil under the gravel outside, and grease, combining with vaporized and resolidified human fat, and old blood.

I swallowed thickly as I headed back out.

Nobody was in any of the rooms, which meant the half dozen or so in the main motor pool bay were all I had to worry about.

They wouldn't be armed beyond tools. I was willing to bet they had knives or butcher's cleavers on them, and I knew if I let them close with me they'd hack me apart in minutes.

But they were still pretty much human.

Nothing like what I had faced in the spring. They wouldn't be immune to injuries that would be fatal within seconds, immune to wound shock, and unable to be swayed by pain.

Although I doubted they would be subject to fears of personal mortality.

But, I'd noticed one thing about them. They moved in packs, moved as groups.

That led to a weakness.

It only took me a minute or two to prepare. I knew the mechanics wouldn't care about any damage done to the building. Anyone in motor pool probably wouldn't set foot back in the massive bays until they were demolished and rebuilt.

Who could blame them.

The screaming part of me had to be pushed down further as I walked into the repair bay. I had planned on talking people down, getting people to get along, but nothing in the motor pool was worth saving.

...goddamn you Henley...

I reached out and hit the switches on the heaters. They slowly spun to a stop, the howling of the bad bearings slowing down in speed and pitch until finally stopping. One of the heaters gave out in a shower of sparks. The sounds of snapping fat and fire, the liquid scraping of the angle grinder, were the only sounds for a second.

"HEY! FAGGOTS!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, as the eight of them began looking around.

All eight welding masks turned toward me.

"Who the fuck are all of you?" I yelled, backing up slowly. They all began moving toward me, almost as one. That weird waddling gait.

pop sproing ging

I cracked a chemlights and dropped it on the floor as they moved. First toward one another, grouping up, then toward me.

I cracked a second one, almost twenty backwards paces from the first doors of the hallway. They were offset from one another by about five feet to keep people from bumping in to one another.

They bumped into one another at the entrance of the hallway, then got themselves sorted out. I couldn't back up much further. I'd used green chemlights, to match the green tint to the polarized glass of their face shields.

They were huddled up together, crammed into the hallway, when they passed the doors I'd carefully closed.

They were in the perfect position, with no clue what was about to happen. They were raising crude bladed weapons that I realized they'd made themselves with the tools in the motorpool. They raised them with a garbled gibbering war-cry.

No smart ass comment. No clever saying.

I flexed my hands three times. The clacker in each hand making a snapping sound each time I flexed my hands. The clacker generated a quick pulse of electricity. The electricity hit the wires attached to the clacker, speeding up the wire, heading straight for the blasting caps I'd attached them to. Two blasting caps per clacker.

Double welled Claymore land mines behind the doors.

I smiled as my hands flexed the third time.

My smile died as nothing happened.

...aw shit...