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

I was standing at Atlas, my body bruised, less than a hundred feet from an explosion that had measured in the literal kilotons of explosive weight. The three men who had been helping me load the ammunition and the two forklifts were just gone as if they had never existed. I could hear the whistling of artillery shells falling down out of the sky as the kinetic energy ran out and gravity took over. Fires were burning everywhere and dust and smoke filled the air.

Someone's hands were on me, pulling at me.

I'd been stupid. I hadn't insisted on the lightning protections being repaired. I hadn't done my duty and failed my men. I'd failed. Failed my entire crew. Failed my unit. Failed as a soldier. Failed my Father. Failed as a man.

Someone was screaming my name.

I...

I was being drug to my feet.

Someone was screaming at me to get to my feet.

My eyes opened and I saw the shower tile, realized who was screaming at me.

"Taggart." I croaked. "Get me to my feet. I gotta get up."

"Just stay up, just for a second." She said, letting go of my arm. I reached out and grabbed the soap dish embedded in the wall, using it to keep my balance.

"Drink." She said, pushing the bottle into my other hand. I raised it up and drank deep, the burn rushing down my throat and into my stomach. My stomach tried to rebel, tried to purge everything. I heard a belt rattle then clank.

"Where did you go to Basic Training?" She asked me, reaching out and slapping my ass sharply.

"Fort Leanordwood" I answered, taking another drink.

"What was your unit in Basic?" She asked, slapping my ass again.

"Bravo two ten, bravo bulldogs, bravo two ten." I muttered, leaning forward and pressing my face against the hot tile. It felt good, the heat seeping into my face.

Hands wrapped around me, holding me up as I sagged again. I struggled for a second, unsure of what was happening, but one hand came up to press against my chest while holding onto a bar of soap, the other stayed around my waist.

"Easy, Ant, easy, it's me, Taggart." She said softly, rubbing my chest with the soap. "You've gotta stand up, stay on your feet."

"Tired." I grunted. "I hurt, really bad."

"I know, but you gotta stay on your feet, I gotta clean you off." She said, the hand on my chest moved to my head. "Close your eyes, Ant, I gotta clean the blood off you."

I held still while she washed my head, hissing in pain when her fingernail snagged one of the cuts and pulled it open. She let go of me and soaped up my back, rinsed off my head and back, then had me turn around to face her, putting my back against the shower wall. She washed off my face, ignoring my outcries of pain, then washed off my face and caught me when my knees gave out.

I opened my eyes to see a small brown nipple in front of my face. Almost instinctively I moved over and latched onto it with my mouth, sucking gently while I twirled my tongue around it. I felt the woman lift up on her tiptoes and heard her moan, her hands touching my head.

"Ant, no." She said suddenly, pulling me up. "Stop. You need to be cleaned off." She rubbed soap on my crotch and started rubbing, and I fell against her again, burying my face in the junction of her shoulder and neck, wrapping my arms around her. "Stand up." Her tone hit a part hat had become spinal reflex and I jerked up, wobbling a little. She rinsed me off, her hands gentle, and when I looked at her I saw her blushing at what she was doing.

I grabbed her hair, pulling her head back, and kissed her, pushing my tongue into her mouth when it opened. I wrapped my left arm, still holding the bottle, around her and pulled her close, breaking the kiss to move to the side of her neck.

And she bit me on the bad shoulder.

"Stillwater!" She yelled when I jerked back, catching me before my head hit the shower wall.

I opened my eyes again, seeing Nancy's face in front of me.

"Nancy." I said, reaching for her breast with my right hand.

She grabbed my hand, pulling it away, and grabbed my other wrist, lifting it up so I could see the bottle. "It's Taggart, Ant, now drink."

I shook my head in denial, but her hand let go of the hand I'd grabbed her breast with and grabbed my jaw, squeezing, the pain forcing my mouth open. She lifted the bottle and twisted my wrist so that the whiskey poured into my mouth.

The pain snapped everything into focus, and it was suddenly Taggart in front of me, not my Nancy, and I went to jerk back but her grip on my jaw prevented me. She let go of my jaw and I took another drink.

"Taggart." I slurred.

"Good, you remember." She said. "Stay with me." She smiled and I nodded. "How old are you, Stillwater?"

"Nineteen." I told her, taking another drink, dropping my eyes to stare at her breasts. They were ski-slopes, tipped with brown, dime sized nipples surrounded by quarters. She had a few stretch marks, which I traced with my eyes.

"I thought you were older." She told me. "I'm a year older than you." I was surprised at that, I thought she was 17, 18 at the most.

"Hard living." I grunted, looking lower. She had a little poof that some women kept no matter how many situps they did that kept me from seeing her pubic hair.

"Where did you get this?" She asked, touching the scar that went almost all the way around my shoulder, a large wide spot in the middle.

"Got stabbed, got frostbite in the wound." I told her, looking back up at her face. She looked so young, and the lust that was pulsing through me vanished. "I almost got my arm torn off this summer, tore all the ligaments from the anchors and they had to rebuild it."

Taggart smiled, running her fingers across my chest to a scar over my heart. "This one?"

"Border patrol." I said, reaching for her crotch, cupping it. Her hand moved mine away and put it on her hip.

"This one?" She touched the cross shaped scar on my shoulder.

"Ex-wife." I told her, closing my eyes. She twisted my nipple, hard, and I opened my eyes again.

"Drink, Stillwater." I nodded. "And keep your eyes open."

She kept touching scars, asking where I got them. Every time I closed my eyes she twisted my nipple. She asked me where I was born, where I grew up, when I went to AIT, what my class standing at graduation was, the name of the girl who took my virginity and how old I was, how long I'd been sleeping with Nancy, if I loved her, did she love me, how long I'd known Bomber, question after question, keeping me on my feet, feeding me whiskey, and at one point standing behind me and half holding me up so I could smoke while standing in the shower and swilling alcohol.

She checked behind my ears for bruising, cleaned my ears and then looked in them for any pinkish fluid leaking out, then checked the cuts on my head and face.

"How do you feel?" she asked after looking up my nose and in my mouth.

For an answer I pushed my hips forward, rubbing myself on her lower belly and smiling down.

"No." She told me, but smiled. "The last thing I want is Nagle chasing my down the hallway with one of your knives in her hand."

I chuckled.

"Stay standing up, I'm going to dry off and get dressed." She told me. "Then I'll help you. Your eyes are still real bad."

I nodded, watching her openly, admiring how thick her thighs were from all the rucksack runs we did, how thick her waist and wide her hips were, and everything about her body. She blushed, but didn't ask me to turn away, and when she bent forward to dry off her calves and shins, facing away from me, I had to wonder if it was for my benefit, but didn't want to ruin the moment by asking.

"Come on out, let's get you dressed." She told me, holding out the towel. She was still naked.

"My uniforms are in my wall locker." I told her.

"I'm not supposed to look away, and after what happened earlier, I don't want to take the chance of you sitting down." She told me. She flapped the towel. "Come on, let's dry you off."

I went to take the towel and she pulled it away. "No, I don't want you bending over and passing out, you're still a little wobbly on your feet."

She patted me down carefully, going easy on the bruising, until she cleared her throat, blushed, and knelt down to do my legs and feet. I looked down at her, the way she ignored the fact my erection kept bouncing off the top of her head or grazing her face. She looked up at me, smiled, and dried off my happy little friend, her bright green eyes locked with mine.

The two soft, slow strokes surprised me.

"All done." She said, standing up and smiling. "I'll be right behind you." She told me, bending down and picking up my uniform. For a minute, I stared at her butt, tempted to reach out, grab her hips, open her up, and bury my face between her legs.

"You know, Nancy said to do whatever you have to in order to keep me awake." I whispered, my voice thick with something that had nothing to do with the pain and injuries.

"And have you go to sleep as soon as you're done? She said keep you awake." She smiled, standing back up. Her smile died suddenly when she reached out and picked up the bayonet. "Besides, there's three reasons why you don't really want me."

I stared at her as she motioned for me to leave the bathroom. I walked out, steadying myself on the wall lockers when the world tilted and waving her off. "I need you to unlock my wall locker." I said, pointing at my duty wall locker.

She stood there, gloriously naked, smelling of clean woman, and I tried to think of any reason I wouldn't want her. She got it open and stepped back, and I moved up to pull down a hanger. I kept a full uniform on each hanger, socks and underwear hidden under the T-shirt.

When we went into the room, I went to sit down and she stopped me, tossing my bloody uniform on the floor before holding out her hand for my uniform. I handed it to her and watched her start to undo the buttons of the BDU blouse.

"What are the three reasons?" I asked her.

"Number one: You're with Nancy, and you really want her, I'm just convient." She said, setting the BDU top aside and getting the T-shirt off. "Second: I'm not very pretty and I'm fat." I looked over her body again. The fat she had was where it was supposed to be, the rest was Army muscle, and sweet woman. She took the pants off and tossed them over where the T-shirt and top were. "Third: I'm pregnant, and nobody really likes fucking pregnant girls unless there's nobody else around." She took off the socks and underwear and tossed the underwear on Bomber's bed with the rest of my clothing.

The growl that I didn't bother to try to stop made her look at me. "What?"

"You're wrong, about all of it, except that I'm with Nancy." I told her.

"Yeah, right." She told me bitterly, kneeling down. She opened the underwear and looked up at me. "Lift."

I was tempted, so tempted. She looked so sweet, so luscious, so delicious, kneeling in front of me, face up, my hard cock inches from her face, breasts right below, glittering green eyes looking at me. I wanted to put my hand on her cheek, stroke myself, then lift her up and kiss her, to whisper all the reasons she was wrong about, and all the things she was right by just being her, into her ear.

But I could see the bitterness in her eyes, and knew that words wouldn't mean anything at that moment.

So I lifted my foot, holding eye contact with her while she slowly dressed me. She let me put the bayonet sheathe back behind my back and put the bayonet away, then follow her in and watch her get dressed. I got my extra field jacket out, grabbed another bottle of Wild Turkey, and left the laundry on the floor.

When we went to leave I reached out and touched her back. She stopped, her hand on the door handle.

"You're wrong, you know." I told her. "I don't care who told you those thing about you, but they're wrong."

"Just words, Stillwater. Just words." She told me, her voice harder than I'd ever heard it before. She turned around and opened the door, revealing the hallway, the snow, the ice, and the wind ripped at us both. When we were walking down the hallway, I reached out and took her hand in mine, surprised when she didn't pull away.

We heard Oakes pleading, sobbing, when we passed the room again, and I pretended not to notice how hard she squeezed my hand. In the stairwell we stopped long enough for me to catch my breath, my head swimming again.

"If we'd have done anything, it probably would have killed you." She said softly at the ground floor landing, when I stopped to retch. It wasn't the alcohol, I'd been in 2/19th long enough to develop an alcoholics tolerance for booze.

Could have been because, like everyone else I knew in the unit, I was an alcoholic.

I didn't answer, and we went into Titty Territory silently.

I let go of her hand when we reached the CQ Area, the room dimly lit by the lights in the trophy case, the thick ice diffusing the light. The snow was blank and soft, mid-calf deep, and one of the windows on the air-lock had given out, spilling snow into the room. When I knocked on the door, I told Bomber to open the door or he'd never fuck a Bigfoot again, and when the door opened, the heat slapped at us like a hot blanket. John looked tired, blood all over his hands.

Behind him, Nelson and Clifton were laying on cots, bandages covering their chests. I could see tubes and bandages on them. Nancy was pulling a blanket up around Clifton and tucking it in. As Bomber shut the door, she looked up and gave me a tired smile.

"Took long enough." Bomber said, coming up next to me and pulling me into a hug. "Another hour and we would have gone up to see if Tandy got you."

"He's busy." I told him about hearing Oakes' voice on the other side of the door and his smile went away.

"Stillwater, come here, honey, I want to take a look at you." Nancy called out, moving over to the table. I staggered over there after Bomber let me go. "Lay on the table." She squinted. "I'm going to need to stitch those up, you're bleeding again."

I did as I was told, laying down.

"Taggart, he seems to like you, hold his hand." Nancy ordered. I felt her small hand in mine. "Raleigh, get your stuff together, when I'm through with him, you, me, and Kebble are going to go take a shower."

I held still while she put in the stitches, just staring at the ceiling and pretending it was just another beating at the hands of my mother, who wore heavy rings on her hands to "better discipline nasty little boys" and liked to use her hands on us.

When she was done, she sighed and rubbed her face.

"I'm fucking exhausted." She told me, smiling. She bent down and kissed me, not biting my lower lip but just dancing her tongue across the stitches she'd put in my lower lip. She leaned down further, her mouth near my ear. "Am I going to like the taste of her pussy?" She whispered.

My Nancy...

"I don't know. She's afraid of you and thinks she's ugly and fat." I whispered back. "Nancy, she kept me from dying in the shower."

Nancy straightened up, smiling down at me. "Go over and get some sleep." She told me.

She helped me up, helped me to my cot, and tucked me in after taking my boots off.

"Kebble, Raleigh, Bomber's going to guard you." My eyes were closed, exhaustion washing over me. "Taggart, you're with me. We'll use Stillwater's room, Bomber, take them to William Stillwater's room. See if you can find anything that'll help us."

"Logan, Jefferson, keep an eye on my patients. If anything happens, Marks, you and Logan come up and get us." She ordered.

I drifted off to Kebble saying that she was afraid of Bomber.

Screaming woke me up. High pitched sounds of animal agony, mixed in with sobbing and pleading.

"Please... stop... OH GOD! STOP!" rang out in the room, and I sat upright, grabbing for my glasses and putting them on. "Please don't bite me any more!"

Everyone was staring at the door as the voice screamed again right outside the door.

As Oakes screamed again.