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"So give me the Cliff Notes version of what happened," I told the nine female troops sitting with me around the small stove. I'd opened the Arms Room and the a few other rooms, including giving them access to the Dispensary War Stocks. Now they sat dressed in BDU's, wearing nametags of other people, with Kevlar vests and XM-16E3's in their hands. They'd each eaten two or three MRE's, and Diana had made two of the others stack four dozen MRE boxes against one of the walls.

I'd kept the keys I'd pulled from the Dispensary OIC's office.

They all looked at each other for a long moment, then Diana cleared her throat.

"The Colonel, Colonel Bradford, put Charlie Company out here at the TMC," Diana said slowly, her words picking up speed. She clenched her fists and I could see she was furious. "There was over sixty of us at first. After two weeks we went on rations. One MRE a day. Captain Drake told us that it was only temporary, that food would be brought up," She looked at me, "But the snow was deep, the vehicles were all covered, and nobody could find the keys to the locks."

I nodded at that. "Your unit was instructed to liaison with Main Post, they know you need at least four months of food supply for when it starts to snow."

"Captain Drake said that someone hadn't bothered, that we only had the MRE's that your unit left here," Necro-Girl said.

I shook my head, then lit a cigarette, "We don't keep our War Stocks out in the open for food. We lock it down." I snapped the lighter shut, "It's listed as 'War Stocks' in the lower basement of the barracks."

One of the foursome who had seen me come in laughed bitterly. "How much food are we talking about, Sergeant? I heard that it wasn't enough to last two weeks with hard rationing."

Two of them flinched when I grinned. "A-Rats and MRE's are stacked to the walls, enough food for five hundred people to be fully combat ready fed for just over a year, and to top it off they have a 10% spoilage redundancy built in. That's thirty boxes of MRE's per person, which is a half-pallet. There's nearly a thousand goddamn pallets of MRE's down there."

One snorted in disbelief and I turned and stared at her. The lizard hissed at her, exposing his fangs, and she jerked back. "I helped put them there, and as a War Fighter NCO I'm one of the ones who supervises and inventory of all that shit."

Necro-Girl put her hand on the leg of the one who had flinched. "Don't worry about how brightly that eye is glowing, sweety, worry if he starts having blood drip off his hands again and is suddenly like ten feet tall."

The lizard ran another systems check, looking for a way to purge the contamination that had to be doing that. I didn't feel half dead, but from the way they acted, the way Aine had reached out and touched me, the way Cromwell had controlled me, told me that the slow feeling of my thoughts and my razor thin control on my temper had to be part of the problem.

Flinchy looked at Necro-Girl, then at me, then blew out a sigh and sagged slightly.

Diana was shaking her head, chuckling ruefully. She looked up at me. "You have to be kidding me. Pallets of goddamn food in the barracks, they're sitting right on top of a year's worth the food for a goddamn Brigade,"

"That's without the Event Stocks or the Deep Storage Stocks," I told her. "Those are locked in the deep storage areas below the barracks, but there's enough food stored there to fight World War Three and supply any civilian survivors and any allied units that survive the initial nuke blasts." I grinned at her. "We're Special Weapons."

They all shuddered, and I tried to remember not to do that. I briefly wondered what it was they saw that I didn't. I mean, I knew I was ugly, but if God had wanted me to be pretty he would have made me a girl.

"What does that mean, exactly? I asked Captain Drake, but he didn't know," Necro-Girl asked.

I took a deep drag to center my thoughts, staring at the ceiling for a long moment. Then I looked at Diana. "Got a cravat handy?"

Everyone looked at me weird as Diana leaned forward, picking up the medical kit, and handed me one. I tore open the plastic package and started wrapping it around my head, covering my left eye.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, stop that," Diana said, standing up and moving over to my left side. "You really can't see out of it?"

"No. Corneal damage from frostbite, repeated headwounds, damage to the orbital socket," I told her while she pulled out a field dressing, putting the pad over my eye and winding the strips around my head. "I've taken a lot of damage over the years."

"How old are you?" Diana asked. The others all looked at me strangely and I knew it was their brains realigning with the fact I was actually a human.

"Twenty-one," I told her.

She leaned back slightly, looking down at me. "What? No way. You've gotta be like in your late 20's."

I chuckled, "Nope. Born in '66. My Father didn't go to Vietnam until 67."

"But you've got a combat patch," Necro-Girl said.

"Yeah. My work-site is a designation live fire zone. The DoD gets around the war issue by using the fact that we're still at war with North Korea to make sure people get their survivor's benefits and we get the proper awards," I shrugged. "We get killed, our family's get told it was a training exercise because morticians need training too, and nobody gets killed."

"Sergeant, calm down," Necro-Girl said. I cocked my head and she pointed at my hand. I looked at it without moving my head, since Diana was wrapping the cravat around my head.

It was dripping blood.

The lizard saw it, screeched, and slapped a button to push everything away and lock it all down.

Singing emptiness filled me. I dropped my hand down.

"So what happened?" I asked, to take my mind off the cold icy rage inside of me.

"Well, we didn't find out about it until they took the TMC here," Necro-Girl said. She shuddered. "I mean, we weren't expecting anything. They came over with green blankets wrapped around them, then they all pulled out weapons."

"They killed about half of us right there," A blonde said. "They separated us up, kept us under guard until the snow got too high."

"It got really bad about two weeks ago," One said, "They  started killing a couple of us a day, starting with the guys. They'd drag them off, then bring us backs hunks of meat and force us to eat." She shuddered, "If you didn't eat, they just bashed your brains in and we all knew that you would be in the next bunch of meat."

"And you're all that's left," I said, nodding as Diana moved away from me and sat down.

The nine of them nodded. I reached down and picked up my field jacket, putting it on.

"Are you leaving?" Diana asked. Apparently her and Necro-Girl were the only ones willing to really talk to me, and Diana was apparently the defacto leader.

"I need to go to the motor pool," I said, snapping up the jacket. "It's dark still, and I'm on mission."

"You're going to kill them all," Diana guessed.

"If they get in my way," I promised. "My Chief Warrant Officer handed me the mission from ChemCorps, and," I shrugged, "Mission comes first."

"But why?" One asked when I stood up, pulled on my Kevlar vest and starting pulling on my parka liner.

"Because he has unsecure nuclear rounds sitting in the motorpool, dumbass," One of the blondes said.

"But why does it matter? They're under like a hundred feet of snow," another one said.

I started pulling on my parka. "It matters," I told her.

"What, like the Russians are going to run over here and steal them?" She asked.

I nodded. "Like they did in '86."

They all stared at me.

"They sent a Vympel team in company strength up here to seize the the classified data and secure items," I told them. "Hardened motherfuckers who'd fought in Chad and Afghanistan."

I finished buttoning up my parka and pulling on my LBE.

"So you're going to take on the guys at the motorpool?" One of the blondes asked.

"If they make me," I told her. I looked at them. "Throw the bodies on the other side of the ambulance, you don't want to see what's going to come for them."

"Wait, what if they come back?" One of them asked.

"Then kill them," I told them. "You've got rifles, you have ammunition. They come in here, kill them." I started walking away.

"You don't want our help?" Diana asked quietly as I pushed into the triage area.

I shook my head. "You guys have no combat experience, I've never worked with you before, and you have no Arctic training," I told her. "You aren't acclimated to the cold, the thin air, and I'd probably lose you to the first double-banding that sweeps over us."

"Is it that bad out there?" She asked.

I stopped, putting one hand on the inside double-door of the airlock. "It's Hell out there," I paused for a second, then pulled on my cold weather cap, then my extreme cold weather mask. I stared at her for a second. "Lock all the doors of the areas you aren't using, make sure where you are using is lit, and stay in the light as much as possible."

She frowned and I pulled the goggles into place. "There are things in the darkness worse than me."

That made her shiver and I pulled the hood up, tugging on the drawstring.

"If you hear someone saying your name, don't go looking for who it is. If you see someone walking into another area and you have everyone accounted for, don't go after them. Don't be alone, stay away from mirrors, and most of all, stay away from the windows," I told her.

"But what if they attack us?" She asked.

"Wait for them to come to you," I told her.

"Are you sure we can't have one of the Claymores?" She asked, referring to the six mines I'd taken out of the Arms Room.

I shook my head. "No. I'm going to need them." I pushed through the door, stepping past the bodies. "Good luck, Diana. Sooner or later someone will come and rescue you. It'll be spring at the latest, if you are still alive."

I stepped through the door and let it slam behind me, not bothering to answer her question.

"What about you?"

What about me? Either I'd survive or I'd be killed. It was pretty simple.

Chief Henley and Blackbriar had tasked me on a mission, there wasn't much choice.

The wind hit me as soon as I was halfway up the ramp, swirling around me. I shivered under the parka a little bit and started walking, going back out into the windy and snowy night.

Diana and Necro-Girl had suggested I take NVG's, but I knew that with NVG's you could see oncoming banding, and that the cold drained the batteries and damaged the circuitry faster than someone who had never experienced it would believed. It was weird, since I had thought that cold was better for electronics.

Then Foster had pointed out that it was so cold that there would be minute differences between the contraction of the traces, the chips, and the board itself, not to mention the lenses shrinking.

In other words, the cold just trashed them when you were exposed to -50F with windchill and air pressure in the hazard/deadly zone.

I was moving pretty fast through the snow and ice.

Which meant I was getting closer with every shake and step, moving through the dark and cold.

I'd find out where the motor pool stood, secure the weapons, and find out how Cromwell was doing.

easy peasy, right?