War Stocks Room
First Floor/Basement
2/19th SWG Barracks
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
28 October, 1987
0245

Science says that the dark is merely an absence of light. The Christian religion says that God can light the darkness. The older religion of my grand-mother and grand-father said that terrible things lurked in the dark and only prayer to Gods and placating otherwordly forces means you will survive next to your feeble little fire as Sidhe pressed close.

I could feel Sidhe, could feel the darkness of the Underworld pressing on me with a vast weight as we tromped through the lightless expanse of the War Stock Room. A full city block, a quarter that wide, underneath the ground on the west side, at ground level on the east side. Offices separated the massive room from the eastern side of the barracks.

No sun ever touched the walls of the War Stocks Room. No sun had since it had been built. The wan light of the glowstick stuck between my fat tits only showed me Stillwater's vague shadow and the greenish hued pale flesh of those bags of frozen meat attached to my chest.

It smelled of cold, of rotting meat, of rotted blood, and of rust and hatred.

Something moved beyond the wan light. Slow, unhurried, purposeful. Something that malevolence rolled off of in cold waves.

I shivered, my stomach twisting as it looked for something, anything, to convert to fuel to keep my core temperature up.

The human body can survive for hours, days, with a core temperature as low as 96, but it wasn't good for you, and you'd start to drop into hypothermia when your core temperature hit 95.2, and you'd die not much further.

John Bomber had survived, somehow,  with his core temperature dropped to 85 degrees, but he'd spent three weeks in the hospital and was considered a goddamn medical miracle.

I knew it was just because he was too goddamn Texas stubborn to die that easy.

I was drifting again, the head wound from getting knocked out with an axe-handle combining with the sub-zero temperatures to make me woozy.

At least we were out of the wind.

There was the faint clickering of nails on cement off to my right, repeated to my left, and moving behind me. Claws on bare, grooved cement. Things moving, things able to survive the cold, the dark. Things that were undoubtably hungry.

Stillwater stopped, made a right face, and started moving again.

His left eye glowed red softly. in the darkness when the light from my chemlight washed over his face. I told myself it was reflection of the blood filled sclera and pupil.

The lie didn't make me feel better, I'd seen that inhuman calculating intelligence behind that eye, peering at me from somewhere in that complex and strange gray matter than Stillwater called a brain.

I suddenly remembered I'd heard him mention "the lizard" before, referring to it as if it was an actually living lizard curled around his brainstem, r-complex, and hindbrain.

My skin prickled up in goosebumps as I realized it was real.

And it was looking at me through Stillwater's ruined eye.

Stillwater started moving again after a few heartbeats, heading for the east wall. I could only hope that he knew where he was, I was lost in the darkness. I had no idea how far we had moved or where the door was located in relation to us.

When the door loomed out of the darkness, canvas covered pallets on either side of it, I almost sobbed in relief.

Instead of going through the door Stillwater stopped at one of the pallets, bending down and checking the tag attached to the pallet. He stood back up and started walking down the row of stacked pallets.

"Where are we going? Why aren't we going through the door?" I asked him, my teeth chattering and breaking up my words.

Of course, the big thug ignored me.

He stopped, checked the tags again, then grabbed the top pallet and pulled it, making it tip forward and spill onto the floor of the War Stocks Storage. He repeated it, stopping to tear the canvas off of a pallet with eight dufflebags, four rucksacks, and four stacks of gear sitting on it. He bent forward and checked the tags on the bags, then pointed at the rear set on the right side.

"Gee-rah," He growled.

I bent down and checked, shivering in the cold.

My name, social security, blood type, religion were all on the tag. I realized with a bit of shock that it was a pre-filled toe-tag attached to a body-bag.

Still, I grabbed the gear, quickly going through it.

Winter BDU's, field jacket, field jacket liner, gloves, socks, boots, long johns, helmet, Kevlar vest, LBE, all of it folded and stacked under the helmet. I grabbed it, spotted my medical bag, slung it over a shoulder, then grabbed my ruck and slung it next to the medical bag. I was glad my heritage gave me wide shoulders.

Stillwater had done the same, but had slung the two dufflebags on, one on both shoulders in front, one on his back, rucksack on one side, Combat Lifesaver bag underneath, his gear under his arm.

I copied him.

All the running, the weight lifting, Special Weapons Medical Training at Blackbriar and Fort Sam Houston, all the strength training at Atlas made it so that the two hundred plus pounds of weight was managable rather than driving me to my knees. The clothing was cold but soft against my arms and I yearned to put them on, get out of my torn and damaged clothing and get warm, stop losing body heat, warm up.

Stillwater moved back into the darkness and I followed him, my joints aching in the cold as we moved back to the door that gave access to the basements. I moved next to him, setting my clothing down, and dug in my pocket for his keys. I pulled out the D-ring and went through the tagged keys until I found one marked WSS-SUB on it. First time go, the door just opened right up when I pulled on it.

Stillwater brushed past me when I went to pick up my gear, that nagging pain in my guts, hips, thighs, and nethers sparking to life but quickly subsumed by the pain of the cold. The door thudded shut behind me and he stopped next to another door.

PRIMARY GENERATOR HOUSING

I found the key quickly, going by its initials, and again unlocked the door, the heavy tumblers crunching but holding up. Nagle had explained that brass held up better in the cold than steel, which is why the majority of the locks in the 2/19th Group Building were done with brass guts.

Stillwater followed me in, letting the door shut behind us and locking it.

It smelled of hot metal, rotten blood, diesel fuel, scorched copper wires, decaying meat, old ozone, and something else I couldn't put my finger on.

Stillwater stopped in the center of the room, and I followed his example, waiting for the green chemlight to push the darkness back. It was taking awhile, the darkness pushing back, but I was seeing massive forms taking shape.

He pointed at a smaller shape and I moved up to it.

An OD green painted 5KW generator sat quietly. I set my gear on top of it, then thumped the fuel tank.

Full.

Why hadn't they...

Oh, that's right, authorized people have keys, and Alfenwehr would get more pleasure, more blood, out of not letting them in the room.

Check the drain cocks. Open the fuel line. Flip the switches. Dials flicker, idiot lights come on. Glow plugs: warming... warming... warming... ready. Hit the starter button.

It ground for a moment, the frozen metal turning slow at first, then picking up speed as a bearing began to howl in protest, gaining pitch until it was the shrill glass shattering scream of an opera diva being murdered in an alley.

The glowstick let me trace the heavy duty wires. We're not talking 18 gauge, we're talking each wire a cable as thick as your wrist. The switch box was in neutral, one side stating "Generation Ignition" the other side saying "Emergency Warm Up". I threw it to warm up, and almost screamed when dim red light came on and flooded the room with it.

There were twelve massive generators, all MEP-029 series US Army 500KW generators. Massive beasts, and between the eight of them generating a grand total of 6MW. I knew the Army, two of them, maybe even half of them, would be backups for these backup generators, allowing the barracks to keep power while they were switching over.

Still, six goddamn megawatts? From what I'd learned in High School science class, that was enough to power six thousand homes. This was enough power to keep a small city in electricity. Those had to be fuel hogs, sucking down enough diesel fuel to keep a fleet of semi-trucks on the road for who knew how long.

I turned around and looked at the far side of the room. Two 60kW and four more 5kW generators.

...great, what do I turn on?...

Stillwater was no help, standing there, staring off into space. Weirdly, that ruined eye kept flicking around the room, constantly checking around him, while his 'normal' eye kept staring straight ahead and slightly up.

The red light helped, the lights steadily brightening. Still not very bright, and I doubted they would get too bright, but the 5kW generator was charging the extreme cold weather lithium batteries and providing light. Stillwater probably knew why it wasn't flooding the emergency lights with enough juice to kick on the white lights, but I had no clue.

...it's so goddamn cold in here. how did they survive?...

I began tracing the cabling, looking at the massive generators and the breaker boxes they were attached to. I opened each box, looking at the diagram, and then closing it when I realized I couldn't read jack or shit.

I moved in front of Stillwater, staring at him.

"I need your help, you big thug," I yelled at him, jumping up and down in front of him. It made my mauled tits hurt, my torn bra useless for anything. It also stirred up my guts, which hurt too, but I was beyond pain. I just wanted the big thug to do something more than just stare at the wall.

"The pregnant troops are going to freeze to death, you big thug!" I yelled.

Something flickered in his eyes, and the pupil in his good eye contracted, adjusting to the light, and he looked down at me. I was five foot ten, big for a woman, but he was taller at six foot, forcing me to look up at him.

He looked at the generators, then back at me, then at the generators.

"Yes, the generators, Ant. The preggo's are in the fifth floor training office supply room. The power is down, the water heaters are down, the radiators are cold. They need heat, they need power," I told him, grabbing his chin so he was forced to look at me. I repeated it twice, watching his eyes. Finally there was a flash of understanding.

Not from the Stillwater part. From the lizard. From the ruined eye.

He moved over to the generators, tapping on the glass of the gauges, then on the massive tanks bracketing them. He checked the dummy lights. All of them were red. There was a clear plastic pipe full of waxy white substance.

"Few-ull. Jell-led." He grated out. "Worm."

I nodded. "It needs to warm. The diesel is past its gelling point," I said. "I thought they added something to it."

He shook his head. "Too. Cawl. ed."

"Keep talking, sweety," I told him. "Your speech is getting clearer." I sighed. "You're still in there, Ant.  You and that 'lizard' both. We need you." I put my hands to either side of his face. "I need you, Ant."

That seemed to do something, spark something.

"Crawmwahl," he said. This time there wasn't a second or two pause between the syllables of my name.

"We need to restore power to the barracks," I told him.

He shook his head, walking over to the generators and the breaker boxes. He opened the breaker boxes, staring at the schematics, leafing through them.

...still one foot in Tir na nOg and he can track that shit. god damn Special Weapons for taking him and making him into Ant...

He snapped two breakers over, moved to another box, snapped a single breaker, then turned one of the heavy handled valves that looked more like it belonged on the Space Shuttle's fuel system. With that he turned around and faced me.

"Wahtar heetar feyevah," he struggled out.

"Water heater five needs to be restarted?" I asked him. He nodded.

"I'll do it," I told him.

He grabbed my arm, shaking his head. "Chaynjah," he grated. "Warm."

I realized I was shivering again. I realized just how cold it was.

He moved by me, the door slamming behind him.

The room was warming. According to the thermometer on the wall it was already up to fifty-two Fahrenheit and climbing.

It would have to be good enough.

I steeled myself, knowing what I was going to see as I undressed. BDU top went first, then I knelt down and unlaced my boots, leaving them open with the knotted speedlaces at the top grommet. Step out of the boots and gather myself.

Blackbriar training wrapped around me, sliding into place between the woman and the soldier.

My belt rattled and my pants fell down.

There was blood in the crotch and on the ass of my BDU pants.

My torn panties were next.

Training kept the data from affecting the soldier and allowed me to ignore the woman, the teenage girl I had been before they and the US Army had gotten ahold of me. Basic Training had laid the foundation, AIT had hammered it further, the Atlas explosion had stripped away even more. Special Weapons Field Medical had ground away the rest, hammered me into something new that even the sight of my torn and bloody panties on the concrete floor as I stepped out of them was beyond me.

There were sterile wipes in my medical kit. I got a small package of surgical wipes out, broke the seal, and took off my brown t-shirt and ruined bra. I bent down and withdrew a syringe from my kit and put it in my mouth to warm it so I could inject myself.

I wiped down my crotch, between my legs, & wiped my butt. It took three wipes before the red was gone from my crotch, only two before my ass crack came back clean. It stung, and I stood there for a moment breathing deep and running through my pain mantras. I got another sterile alcohol surgical wipe then scrubbed my breasts, wiping away the blood from the teeth marks and gently wiping off my torn and bloody nipples. I squirted iodine in my hand and rubbed it in. While I was scrubbing my crotch with the iodine I heard the generator's pitch change as a load was put on it. I ignored it, finishing scrubbing my abused parts with iodine.

That done I shot myself in the butt with a syringe of penicillin.

Who knows what those scumbag rat-fucks were carrying.

I tossed back a painkiller and another antibiotic. The painkiller for my guts. They burned and cramped, abused inside, and while I could ignore it, who knows what I'd have to do following Stillwater and making sure the preggos survived. I couldn't afford to lose my breath from pain or have my movement hindered from the internal bruising and tearing.

I catalogued each injury to my body clinically, and pronounced myself Fit for Duty.

Then I dressed.

Panties, white, female, large, one each. Bra, white, female, 34D, one each. Long johns, extreme cold weather, large-medium, female, bottoms with butt flap, woolen, one each. Long johns, extreme cold weather, large-medium, female, tops, woolen, one each. T-shirt, brown, one each, large. Large-medium pants, camouflage-woodland, cold weather, one each. Blouse, large-medium, camouflage-woodland, cold weather, one each. Attach the field jacket liner. Field jacket, modified for extreme cold weather, large-medium, one each. Glove liners, woolen, medium, OD green, two each. Gloves, work, leather, black, medium, two each. Combat boots, 9 1/2W, black, two each. Cold weather cap, fur lined, camouflage-woodland, with ear jaw and chin protection, one each. Softcap, camouflage-woodland, brimmed, one each.

I spun off the mantra for each piece of clothing as I put it on, reciting the nomenclature, wrapping myself in the military language, each piece, each layer, returning me to the soldier I was. The highly trained killing machine that the US taxpayers had paid for Fort Dix, Fort Sam Houston, and Blackbriar to forge out of a teenage girl.

...I am a Special Weapons Medical Trooper, designed and forged to fight and survive on the nuclear battlefield, to maintain and repair all Special Weapons Troops and enable them to fight in the most extreme conditions despite their injuries and to survive to continue the fight in even the most adverse conditions...

When I turned around I saw Stillwater standing there and almost screamed.

"Twisted steel and sex appeal," he growled. His ruined eye glowed red in the dimness.

"All the ladies love a killer," I answered. It was like a switch being thrown. The woman part of me, the civilian I had once been, the vulnerable and human part of me, vanished beneath the soldier and all the training I'd been through.

Standing there, staring at my crew leader, at the man who had survived Atlas and everything else, something happened. Something clicked. Something inside of me clicked and warped and melded. Something I'd touched, something I'd brushed before. Something that shifted my thought patterns.

"2/19th," Ant growled out.

"Finish the Fight," I answered.

We both smiled, knife blades of promised cruelty, our eyes glittering in the dim red light from the emergency lights and the green glow of the dying chemlights.

"Atlas all the way," I said.

"Atlas all the way," He answered.