2/19th Special Weapons Group Barracks
Restricted Area - Western Germany
Early Winter - 1986
Day: Fifteen

Bomber swore softly under his breath in the darkness, and I could hear all three of us breathing as the hallway got noticeably colder. Another strange chuckle sounded out in the hallway and I felt the edge of panic fluttering around in my stomach.

Ahead of me, in the darkness, the door thumped once, twice, three times.

The chuckle sounded again, and this time I was able to tell it was coming from our right, in the other half of the hallway.

"Run for it!" Bomber yelled, and I felt him move past me.

"Not yet." I hissed, reaching out in the darkness to where the LT had been standing. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and heard him squack as I slammed him face first into the wall with one hand and opened the door to Room 221 with the other. Cold air and the smell of rotting flesh mixed with the unmistakable scent of hot blood wafted over me. I could dimly see the inside of the room, see the blood smear that led from the door to the wall lockers on the right.

To my right, the double doors shrieked as they opened and icy wind blew against me.

I shoved the LT into the room and slammed the door, plunging the hallway into darkness, then whirling around and running for the stairs at the far end of the hallway. I saw the light ahead of me as Bomber reached the stairwell door and waited, turning on his flashlight and shining it toward me.

"Run faster, Stillwater!" He yelled, and I lowered my head, putting everything I had into it. I was a distance runner, not a sprinter, and I knew without a doubt that I'd never make it to the flashlight before long arms grabbed me and talons sunk into my flesh just above my collar bones.

A scream sounded behind me, long, drawn out, almost inhuman, reaching the higher registers where a human voice shouldn't make those kinds of sounds, and I slid across the waxed floor tiles, trying to keep my momentum up to make it into the stairwell but slow down enough so I could actually make the corner. Bomber moved as I scrabbled into the stairwell, and he slammed the door behind me.

"Where's the LT?" He asked as we headed downstairs.

"Making an acquaintance with 221." I told him. "Who's next highest ranking?"

"You are." Bomber answered, pausing right in front of the door. "Think we'll make it?"

I thought for a moment. The LT had done some serious damage to our cohesiveness, serious damage to military discipline, and there was more than just me aching for some payback with the LT's little minions.

"Depends on if someone pops." I answered. "If nobody pushes anything, we'll be all right. If someone snaps, then all bets are off."

"Then lets hope nobody snaps." Bomber answered, pushing open the door to the CQ Area.

Everyone left was gathered up.

We'd lost a lot of people so far.

Glouse, gone from his room. Martins, killed in the stairwell. Corman, vanished when he went on a security check of the barracks. Lewis, who'd been sent to the Motorpool during the daytime with Littles and never come back. Carstairs and Durret, who vanished between the Orderly Room entrance and the Supply Room. Sergeant Shabazz, who'd been in Room 221 when the door slammed shut. Sergeant Tee, who'd vanished in the CO's office while the LT had been left alive. And hopefully the LT, murdered by whatever it was that lived in Room 221.

Out of 23 of us that had been here when it had started, only 12 of us remained.

Twelve Little Indians, trapped in the snow.
Twelve Little Indians, with nowhere to go.

Everyone, even Kebble (who was sitting in a chair with a pressure dressing on top of her head), turned to look at Bomber and me when we burst into the room.

"What?" Nancy asked, "What happened."

"The door to 221 slammed shut on Shabazz and the LT." I lied. In a way it was true, just not the way I presented it. I knew, without a doubt, that the blood smear that led to the wall lockers was from Shabazz, and that he was inside of them, dead by his own hand.

"You aren't highest ranking, Stillwater." Oakes sneered. "Since I outrank you, and I'm ordering you to..."

Nancy didn't say a word, just turned around and slapped the other woman, the backhanded strike throwing the other woman to the ground to land in a heap. She shifted her weight like she was going to kick Oakes in the stomach, then rocked back on her heels before turning back around.

"It's all you, Ant." she told me, shaking out her hand.

"We go with Sergeant Shabazz's plan. We hole up here, wait for rescue." I told them all. "We'll get sleeping bags, cots, and supplies from the War Stocks and everyone will gather up in the Game Room. We'll push the video games and pinball machines against the far wall and hope for the best."

"How long will we be there?" Taggart asked. Her voice was small.

"The Rangers will come up and get us soon, honey." Nagle said, moving next to the younger woman. "They rescued us before, they'll rescue us again."

But how many little Indians will remain? I wondered.

"Nagle, Bomber and I will go get the cots and grab War Stocks rucks." I said, putting on my best command voice and attitude. "Taggart and Logan, you stay here in the CQ Area and keep an eye on the doors. The rest of you, push the pool tables against the wall and do not open the door for anyone but me."

They looked startled at that, then saw Nancy and Bomber both nodding along. Out of the remaining soldiers of Rear-Dee, we were the only three who had spent a winter there.

I was in charge, something I hated with a passion. I'd tried to hand my rank back a couple of times only to get told to shut up and go back to work. I didn't like being in charge of people's lives that weren't in my squad, men and women I didn't know like I knew my crew.

But the Army didn't care about what I liked or didn't like. It just laid duty on me and told me to do my best.

We headed down the hallway toward the middle stairwell, into the darkness of Titty Territory that the emergency lights did nothing to penetrate. We were silent as we walked, both of them spread out enough to give themselves fields of fire around me, the weird way we'd started walking after the previous winter.

I gotchur back, brother...

I had Nancy and John with me, we'd made it through the previous winter, we could make it through this one. Last winter there had been a psychotic with an axe stalking us through frozen hallways, this winter there was only a tin god and Tandy. We could ride that out, right?

Right?

Opening the War Stocks area reminded me of the year before, where we'd set up a pathetic little 1.5K generator to power the furnace so we didn't freeze to death.

There was a patch of tiles that were stained from where a friend had taken an axe between the shoulder blades and bled out. Usually I was able to ignore it, but it really bothered me at that moment.

Goddamn you, Ant, you coward! sounded out in my mind.

Bomber used his key to unlock the door, and we trudged into the large basement room, heading for the War Stocks against the wall. The entire section was full of everything each platoon would need to fight and survive for 72 hours if the Soviet Union rolled for the Fulda Gap. Rucksacks, uniforms, sleeping bags, TA-50, but the most important to us were the platoon stocks.

Cots, extra blankets, space heaters (gas fired heaters you had to assemble, one had saved our asses the year before), tents with liners and floor sheets, the first aid bags that Nagle had campaigned to be included until they were (even though they were locked in a locker, a hit from Bomber with an axe opened the locker quick enough), and the food stocks.

We worked in silence. Bomber lashing six cots to a rucksack frame twice, Nagle strapping four boxes of MRE's together and lashing them to the bottom of the ruck frame on the two John had loaded and the one I was loading. I put a pair of aid bags on a ruck, then grabbed two cans labeled POTABLE WATER.

"Give me the cans, Ant." Nagle told me. I handed them to her as John went over and grabbed the axe back up.

"We'll come back and grab the rest of the shit we need." I told them, pulling my knife from my hip. They both nodded, and we headed back up to the CQ Area. The whole way, all I could think of was that the other dime was gonna drop, that our problems were just beginning.

Trudging through the darkness of Titty Territory, the light of the CQ Area did little more than make the windows on the doors at the end of the hallway glow faintly. I held up my hand, stopping John and Nancy, and footsteps continued above us for three or four more steps before stopping.

Bomber swore softly and I nodded.

Twelve little Indians, cut off by the snow
Twelve little Indians, with nowhere to go
Twelve little Indians, huddled against the night
Twelve little Indians, which will survive the fight?

My brain kept spitting out nonsense as we trudged down the hallway, our shoulders slumped, our heads hanging, and our footsteps heavy. The spark was gone out of Nancy's eyes, and Bomber's wit seemed to have dim.

I wondered how I looked in the darkness.

When we reached the CQ Area, we dropped everything off, Nancy telling Taggart to fill the cans with water and put them near the radiator, and we went back to the War Stocks, grabbing more equipment. Blankets, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, all of them made the trek, requiring almost a dozen trips before the three of us got everything.

The last load seemed to take the longest. Twelve sets of extreme cold weather gear and twelve sets of snow shoes, just in case we had to make a run for it.

When the first light went out, I heard Nagle sigh, and glanced at her to see her shaking her head. I glanced at Bomber, who grinned at me.

"Same shit, eh? Seems like the building would get some new tricks, don't it?" He asked, shoving another field jacket liner into a rucksack.

I opened my mouth to tell him to shut the fuck up when the rest of the fluorescent lights, fifteen of them in all, exploded, showering sparks down into the room.

"Nice going, John." Nancy snarled from the darkness. "I'm going to take one of Stokes' dildos and kick it up your ass."

"At ease that shit." I told them, digging in my thigh cargo pocket for my flashlight. The beam was faint and yellow, a dim circle that barely lit up anything. I panned it across where Nancy had been, closest to the door, and breathed a silent sigh of relief that she was still there, caught in the motion of scratching her ass. Sweeping the beam back across, Bomber was standing up and shrugging the rucksack onto his chest, so he had one on his back, one on his chest, then he bent down and grabbed the two at his feet by the top straps.

"Let's get the hell out of here before John accidentally opens a portal to hell." I groused, and the others nodded.

Our footsteps echoed in the darkness, my flashlight not even able to penetrate the darkness all the way to the door. We couldn't tell if it was open or shut, even though we'd left it open that didn't mean anything. For all we know, it was still open and the hallway lights had gone out when the War Stocks room lights had failed so spectacularly.

Still, I'd walked through this room enough times, in far worse circumstances, that I was pretty well aware of the direction I was walking. Water heaters and furnaces on my right, flat echoes from my left where the wall was pretty much bare, a thumping sound from behind me where the noise of the generators bounced off the walls.

It took a bit, but the wall showed up in the light of my flashlight. I could tell by the poster that I'd drifted to the right too far and corrected, the beam sweeping away from "IVAN IS LISTENING" that someone had defaced with "Then pay my fucking phone bill, Ivan!" in a piss poor attempt at humor.

The door was closed, and my fears proved unfounded when it swung open easily.
To the right the stairwell door was open, and wind swept down through the hall and into the War Stocks Room with a shriek. Small ice crystals and snowflakes stung against my face, driven by the wind that was howling down the stairwell, into the hallway, and past us.

The hallway was pitch black, my light faintly showing the mailboxes set into the other wall. On the ground snow had covered the tile, almost three inches thick against the door and featureless in the hallway. I panned the flashlight up to expose icicles as long as my hand hanging from the ceiling, then to the left, showing that the door was thrown wide open and snow had tumbled from outside and into the hallway.

"What the shit?" Bomber asked, stepping past me and into the snow. "How long were we fucking in there?"

"Not this long." I said, the snow crunching under my boots as I joined Bomber in the hallway.

"It's just more bullshit tricks. John pissed it off with his smartass comments." Nancy said, elbowing John in the gut as she passed him and moved up next to me.

I shrugged, and we headed into the dark stairwell. Our boots crunched on the icy steps as we headed up to the first floor. Pushing on the door to Titty Territory, all three of us could hear ice crackle, and I stepped back as a thin sheet of ice fell off the door and shattered on the tile.

Halfway down the hallway Nagle stuck her hand out to stop John and grabbed my arm. "Hold up."

"What?" I asked, clicking off the flashlight to save the batteries.

Three little Indians, standing in the dark...

"Things are already bad, Ant." She said. "There's a bad division in Rear-D already, thanks to the LT having the three of us beat up, not to mention that people are afraid of you, Ant."

"Me?" I asked. "Why me? I'm just a drunk and a slut."

John snorted, and Nancy continued in the darkness. "Tony, I love you, you know that, but trust me, while we've been gone they've been talking all about what went down in the generator room, you watch."

"Fuck 'em." I snarled. Like I gave a fuck what they were talking about. If they had any issue with it, we could go discuss it somewhere private. Where there weren't any cameras or witnesses.

"Just watch it, both of you. Things are going to get ugly if the Rangers don't show up soon." Nancy warned us, then let go of my arm. "Let's get down there and find out what's going on."

We pushed our way into the CQ Area, ice falling from the doors to shatter on the tile on the Titty Territory side of the doors. Only Taggart and Logan were still in the CQ Area, Taggart's cheeks were shiny with tears, but she was silent and pale faced behind the CQ counter. Logan was staring through the doors to the Day Room, watching the snow fall through the windows. There was a foot of snow on the windows, only about six inches below where the windows would open up to. That meant that there was a shitload of snow on the ground.

"We can't find the phones." Taggart said, her voice small.

"Yeah, I figured as much." I told her, smiling. She flinched back and I looked at Nagle, who nodded knowingly at me and mouthed "see" at me.

We walked up to the door to the Game Room, and I hammered on the door, bellowing at them to open the damn door. Nagle was telling Taggart and Logan to go ahead and come on with us.

The pool tables and pinball machines were against the wall, and Jefferson was using a Leatherman and a crescent wrench to take the legs off of the last pinball machine. The others had put together the cots, laying sleeping pads, then sleeping bags, then two wool blankets on the sleeping bag. Twelve all in all. We dropped the gear we were carrying on the floor with a crash, and everyone turned to look at us for a moment before going back to what they were doing. I waved Taggart and Logan into the room, and locked the door behind them.

I grabbed a cot and pulled it over to the other side of the room, sitting down on it and putting my head in my hands while I tried desperately to figure out what to do. All of my instincts told me to leave the dead weight behind and grab the cold weather gear and the snowshoes and hike out of there for rescue, but I had a bad feeling that I'd come back to an empty barracks. But it wouldn't matter if I made it through the wind, cold, and snow, since the Rangers or any other rescue force wouldn't be able to get through until the snow eased up, and by the time that happened, they'd know something was wrong anyway.

Nagle and Bomber dragged cots over by mine and sat down, Nagle leaning back with a sigh. Bomber dug in his pocket and drug out the coverless, dog eared book he always carried in one of his pockets, opened it up to a random spot, and started reading. It was either I, the Jury or Bolo, the same two books he'd been reading the whole time I knew him.

After a few minutes, I looked up, noticing that everyone but Logan and Taggart were sitting on their cots silently, pointedly not looking at each other. Kebble was lying down, her head bandaged and the field dressing bloody.

"All right, people," I started, and everyone turned to look at me. "Two man rule. Nobody goes anywhere alone. If you have to use the latrine, you take someone with you, I don't give a damn how shy you are. Keep each other in sight at all times."

"He's serious." Nagle piped up when the muttering started. "We saw last winter that anyone who goes out alone usually doesn't come back."

"Bullshit." Oakes sneered from her cot. "I'm not letting someone follow me into the bathroom so they can perv on me."

"I'm not kidding, Oakes, everyone adheres to the two man rule." I told her.

"Or what?" She asked. I stood up, and she flinched back, causing a few others to laugh. She turned beet red and stared at me, her eyes full of hatred. "What are you going to do?"

"If you can't adhere to the two man rule, I'll lock you in the Day Room." I threatened. "You'll get fed twice a day, shower every other day, and you will only use the latrine three times a day." I glared at everyone. "Anyone have a problem with the two man rule?"

Nobody answered, and most of them looked away.

"Goddamn it, people, I'm just trying to keep you alive until rescue comes." I told them, throwing up my hands in frustration. "This isn't a goddamn game! Think about how many people we've already lost! For fuck's sake, listen to the barracks, does it sound like I'm bullshitting you all?"

The thud of boots on the floor above us punctuated my words, followed by a scream that wafted through the vent.

"Hear that? It's only going to get worse." Nancy told them. "To top it off, we've got a killer stalking us."

"That Tandy bullshit?" Jefferson asked. "That's just a bunch of shit."

"Look, this is our best chance of staying alive. The two-man rule will keep you from just vanishing." I interrupted, ignoring Jefferson. Taggart raised her hand, and I nodded at her.

"Does that mean someone has to watch us shower?" she asked.

"To be honest, I'd rather that someone watched you in the shower, but I doubt you guys will listen to me." I told her.

"Like someone's going to vanish out the shower or something?" Oakes sneered. I was getting sick of that tone of voice, and the urge to throw myself across the room and cut her throat reared its ugly head.

"It's happened before." Bomber put in, kicking my boot. "Last winter, a guy went into the shower, and after an hour, his roommate went in to check on him and he was gone. We never found him."

"Bullshit." Oakes said. "Think I'm some fucking 'cruit?"

"Here? You are." I told her. "Look, believe us or don't, but stick with the two man rule, I'm fucking serious."

I could tell by the expressions that most of them didn't believe me, but I figured a couple of casualties and the opinions would change.

Oakes opened her mouth for another sneering comment when a hard knocking on the door interrupted her. She paused comically as we all turned and faced the door.

"Open the door, it's cold out here." Martins said as the lights in the Game Room flickered and went out.

"Don't. Open. The. Door." I breathed into the sudden silence.