Hernandez answered his door on the third set of knocks, wrapped in his blanket. When I told him to get dressed and wait for me in his room, he nodded silently and shut the door without anything else.
Jacobs and Lewis both did the same when we went to each of their rooms.
Carter didn't answer, so I unlocked the door and we went in after knocking five times and waiting for long enough for him to get up, even if he was passed out drunk. When I pushed the door open the wind howled around us and I could smell that unique smell that only snowfall has. Bomber's light illuminated the room well enough that we could see snow swirling in from the windows, see how it had dusted the entire room, and that the wind was making his cloth wall hanging of Stevie Nicks flap. As we watched, his Ride the Lightning poster tore free off of the wall and tumbled toward us. Nancy grabbed it when it reached her and we stepped inside.
His room was ice-cold.
When we left the tiny hallway we saw the blankets piled up on the floor from all three bunks. The bunkbeds were completely stripped, with only the single-wide bed against the right hand wall with any linen. Nagle set the poster on one of the desks and weighted it down with a heavy ceramic beer stein.
Carter was laying on the sheet, exposed to the wind, snow, and freezing cold. We moved up quickly, Bomber shining the flashlight on the sleeping man.
He was curled up in his bed in the fetal position, pale in our flashlight beams, and his earlobes and the tip of his nose had a blackish blue tint.
"Shit." Bomber said, reaching down and shaking him. "He's ice fucking cold."
"Is he alive?" I asked.
Please don't be dead, please don't let us be too late.
Nancy put her index and middle finger in her mouth, wetting them, then put them under his nose. "He's breathing." Nancy said after a moment.
Thank God.
"Hold our flashlights, Nagle." I said, handing mine to her. She clipped her flashlight to her jacket pocket and then took mine, repeating her action. Bomber handed the heavy duty flashlight to her and she kept the light on Carter. I moved up by Carter's head, and Bomber moved down to Carter's feet. "Ready?" I asked. Bomber nodded, and we pulled the sheet out from under the mattress and got a good grip on it.
"Hang on a sec." Nagle moved over, grabbed the woolen OD green blankets from the pile and threw them on him. "OK."
"Ready?" I repeated. Bomber nodded again. "We'll carry him down to Lewis' room, it's the closest to the CQ area." Both Nagle and Bomber nodded at that.
On three we lifted him up, and had Nagle lead the way back to Lewis' room, pushing the doors open and holding them the best as she could. As we walked down the hallway we heard a woman scream twice, the second time right before voices shouted in German and boots slammed. All it did was make us hurry a bit more to get to Lewis' room and make the lizard snarl.
Nagle hammered on the door when we reached it, and we heard Lewis yell he'd be there in a second. Carter was pretty heavy, dead weight in the sheet we were using to carry him, and I was grateful when I heard the lock snap and the door handle jiggle.
"Is he dead?" Lewis asked as soon as he opened the door and saw Carter's pale face.
"Not yet." Bomber answered. Lewis nodded and stepped aside so we could get in the room. We staggered over to the bed that wasn't a bunkbed set and set him down on it, sheet, blankets, and all.
"Get under the covers with him, I'll pile your blankets on top of you." Nagle said while Bomber and I stepped back.
Lewis had been to arctic survival just like us, and knew that this was pretty much the only chance Carter had. Bomber and I took back the flashlights, and I took Nagle's, then she went over and gathered up all the blankets off the other two beds. By the time she finished Lewis had finished stripping naked and climbed under the covers with Carter, wrapping his arms around the other man.
Nagle piled the blankets on both of them, wet her fingers again, and held them in front of Carter's nose.
"Still alive." She said.
"Wait here, we'll be back." Bomber said.
"He's fucking freezing." Lewis told us, and shivered under the covers.
"Try to keep him alive, man." I told them. "We're going back down to the CQ Area."
"I'll try." Lewis answered. Bomber reached down and squeezed the other man's biceps before turning and following me.
"Hey." Lewis' voice stopped me right before we went into the little hallway.
"What?" I asked.
"Are we fucked?"
"Not sure yet." I said.
"We're fucked." Bomber said. "And I was short."
"Stuff your fucking tampon in, did you expect to get out of here alive?" Nancy snarled.
"Don't forget about me." Lewis' teeth were chattering.
"I won't, man, ChemCorps word of honor." I told him. He nodded and I turned away, heading for the door. We closed the door behind us and made sure to lock it tight.
An injured soldier takes more of the enemies resources than a dead one my Drill Instructor's voice floated out of my memory.
Don't fuck around, kill them fast and hard, let their friends see what's coming for them. My Father told me.
Predators go for the wounded, set the trap the lizard insisted.
I pinched the bridge of my nose to shut out the competing options and Nancy lifted an eyebrow at me. I just shook my head and she nodded.
"We need to sweep the barracks, see if anyone's here that we don't know about." Bomber suggested as we stood in the dark and cold hallway.
"Like who? Frosty the fucking Snowman?" Nagle asked.
"Like Spetz." I answered. She opened her mouth to argue then the evidence clicked in her mind. Sabotaged phone lines, no power, and enough classified data to keep the KGB busy for months with only a handful of people to guard it.
"I got a bad feeling, man." Bomber shook his head. "And I'm fucking short."
"Will you shut the fuck up about short?" Nancy said, punching him in the shoulder. He rubbed his shoulder, looking hurt, as Nancy continued. "We've got no power, no heat, and no commo. We've got a fucking blizzard. The only way we're gonna survive is if you shut the fuck up about being short, buckle down, and drive on."
Bomber nodded, looking at me somewhat hang-dog and I just grinned at him.
"Let's go before we freeze to death flapping our gums." I grunted. We started to do a sweep of the barracks, a check to see if maybe someone was in barracks that wasn't listed on the morning reports or in the CQ logs. While it was unlikely, someone could have come back to the barracks without logging in at the CQ.
After a quick discussion as we walked down the hallway, we went up to the 4th floor and I unlocked each room. After a quick look see in the bathroom of each room and the living area, we'd leave, lock the door, and move to the next one.
It was getting colder by the minute.
We moved to the second floor, from the far end, and started back toward Lewis' room, repeating what we'd done and checking each room.
Jack and shit was all we found.
As we passed by the second floor middle stairwell I stopped.
"I gotta know." I said. Bomber nodded, his face pale in the backwash from the flashlights.
I pushed open the door, and then slammed it shut.
The entire landing was covered in frozen red.
"Oh fuck." Bomber breathed. I glanced at Nagle and between her wide eyes and Bombers swearing I knew they'd both seen the stairwell.
"Let's get moving." I snapped. Nagle and Bomber nodded, all of us setting our shoulders in the same movement, a roll of the shoulders designed to make Kevlar vests and LBE's more comfortable. It was a sign of how much time we spent in our battle rattle that when we got tense we tried to relieve the tension that way. We hurried on, finishing the sweep of the second floor, skipping room 221, and moving down to the first floor. When we reached Titty Territory Nagle checked the female's rooms, while we stood outside of each one. Despite the fact that there wasn't supposed to be any women in the barracks aside
from Nagle, the idea of going into the female rooms didn't sit right with Bomber and me.
We still kept her in the lights, keeping an eye on her.
From there we moved to Queer Country, sweeping the rooms the same as we had the others.
Nobody.
Something was bugging the lizard though. He was fully aware, and I could feel the sensory data going through him first. He kept tossing images of the stairwells up, a blueprint of the barracks, the blood, how a spot in the hallway, a room, or part of the stairwell smelled or tasted to my senses.
Something was bugging him, and that put me on edge.
We walked back down the hallway, ice cracking and falling from the upper edge of the dividing doors when we opened them to go from Queer Country to Titty Territory. The stress and fear kept us silent as we moved down the hallway.
Finally, we got to the doors that opened up into the CQ Area and pushed them open.
The lizard snarled in rage, slapping his hand on the 'fight' button, his little ears cocking up and fanning out and making a rattling sound in his little throat. Combat chemicals flooded my system a split second before I became aware of what our flashlight beams revealed when they dimly lit up the room.
Both sets of double doors to the outside were open, the inside doors pulled inward, the outside doors pushed outward, the chocks dropped down to keep the doors from closing and the hydraulic pistons hanging loose from where they'd been torn off the door frame. The wind was howling and snow was blowing through the doors. The doors to the Dayroom were open, and I could tell by the way the wind tore through the CQ area that the windows were either open or shattered. There was already a couple inches of snow on the tiles and the wind kept blowing snow into the room.
The lizard, my little mental construct, took it all in in a split second, but my focus was not on the whole room, but rather one thing.
A snowman built in the middle of the room.
It wore a BDU softcap, had a broken OD green flashlight, the battery container only, creating a jagged ended nose, and its eyes and slash of a mouth were chrome. Its arms were two halves of a broken mop, and the hair underneath the softcap was a mop head. A knife handle stuck out of its round chest, as if someone had stabbed it.
I stepped forward and looked closer at the eyes, aware that I was in the middle of the room, that there was nothing between me and the outside on my right, nothing but the Dayroom chairs between me and a twenty foot drop to the ground on my left. I shined my flashlight at the eyes and leaned in to check.
They were chrome with black edging.
Dogtags.
Dogtags with rubber silencers on them.
My spare dogtags.
From where I always left them hanging in the bathroom in my room, just in case I lost the set that was currently hanging from my neck.
The mouth was a broken off knife blade.
The hilt in the chest matched the blade. A hilt I recognized.
One of the knives out of my desk.
The red emergency light clicked on as the batteries found some tiny reserve of electricity inside.
The red light gleamed off of the frost, the swirling snow gaining weird red shadows, the snow turning crimson.
And the snowman, bloody.
Outside, in the snow, came another scream. A long, drawn out scream of terrible agony.
The red emergency light strobed for a second and cut out.
The lizard hissed.
Fall Back & Regroup
Assess the situation, resources, and personnel.
Assess the enemy. Plan accordingly.
That's the Army motto.
How do you assess a crazy person?
With a snarl I plucked my dogtags out of the snowman's face, then kicked it down, cursing and snarling the whole time. I was vaguely aware that I was hovering on the edge of losing control, that I was wavering between panic and going completely ape-shit. The tight rein I kept over my temper was quickly starting to fray between the frustration of what was going on and the very real fear that we'd freeze to death in the near future.
That's not even mentioning the fact we were missing four men.
The snowmen had crystallized everything, that there was someone out there.
From outside came laughter, dark evil mocking laughter.
That did it. The lizard hit every combat button he could find, and the fear was gone, replaced by blinding red rage. Hatred welled up, mixed with the high octane rage, and roared through me in a firestorm that left nothing behind. Not thought, not fear, just the raw primal need to kill wrapped up in hatred and rage.
"I'll fucking kill you!" I screamed at whoever had built the snowman, who had probably killed the CQ, and was laughing at us from outside. My fists clenched and I rolled my shoulders, turning and taking a step toward the outside doors. Before I could take the second step Bomber had me around the neck, pulling me back in a full nelson while Nagle moved in front of me, grabbing my face in her hands.
The laughter kept going, still audible over the wind. The lizard was paying attention to it, cocking its head, but I was past that, consumed with the need to find whoever was laughing.
rip tear kill smash crush rend
"Don't! Don't go out there! Please, Anthony, calm down!" She said. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed me, the taste of her lips, the feel of her tongue darting into my mouth, the pressure of her mouth against mine, suddenly bringing me back to reality. The lizard shunted everything from 'kill' to 'breed' and my mind cleared up slightly, confusing impulses and instincts warring inside me as the image of Nancy as I had last seen her naked on my bed filled my head.
The laughter trailed off.
It's what somebody wants... slithered through my brain. My Father's voice?
I relaxed, and Bomber slowly let me go, Nagle keeping her lips on mine. I'd dropped my flashlight in the snow when I'd started for the door.When Nagle finally ended the kiss and let me go I picked it up, moving slowly, the rage making my head pound.
"What the fuck is going on?" Nagle asked, moving toward the doors. Bomber moved over to her, walking with her to the outer doors and keeping watch as she kicked the chocks up to close them.
Beyond her, in the snow, dark shapes moved around just beyond the reach of my flashlight, as if they were edging toward her but unwilling to brave the light. Bomber kept swinging his heavy flashlight around, as if he was trying to catch them, but they slid away just before the light landed on them.
Four shadows... the lizard insisted, outlining them.
Despite the lizards insistence that someone would materialize out of the snow and snatch my friends, nothing happened.
Once the outer doors were shut, the wind cut down, letting Nagle shut the inner doors. Bomber went into the day room to shut the windows in there.
I simply stood there keeping watch on my two friends, next to the ruined snowman, shaking with the after effects of too much adrenaline. Whoever had done this had been in my room, had gone through my stuff, and had done this knowing I'd find it. I kept mulling over everything as they shut the doors to cut out the wind. I ran the numbers, pinching the bridge of my nose as I thought about the various bits of data the little lizard had highlighted.
"We've got a psycho." I said quietly when the others moved into the CQ area. My flashlight was skittering across the frost covered glass of the trophy case, reacting to my shivering with the cold and my reaction from fear and rage. When I spoke, breaking the silence, Nagle and Bomber turned and looked at me.
"Shit." Bomber said after a moment, looking around the CQ area, panning his flashlight. Snow was thick on the floor, deep enough we could leave clear footprints. The wind had scattered the paper from the bulletin board everywhere, leaving the board bare for the first time since the unit had gone active. He walked behind the desk and stopped. When I shined the light on him, his face was bloodless.
"What?" Nagle asked.
Bomber wordlessly held up the phone receiver, the black plastic looking
unclean in his hand somehow.
Three inches of curled cord dangled from the receiver.
Shit.
"What about the log?" I asked. I wanted the Red Case so I could get access to the War Fighter Tunnels if shit went south. Hell, if they went South? They'd already gone South, and I had a bad feeling that they were going to get worse. If we pulled back to the War Fighter Tunnels, we might have a chance.
"Gone." He said, dashing my hopes.
...shit...
"What do we do?" I asked. My brain was whirring, running through the logic chains and permutations.
The majority of the decision trees ended up with all of us dead.
"I don't know, Ant. Punt?" Bomber came back around the counter and stood next to me. Nagle was on the other side of me, keeping her flashlight on the doors of the hallway and the rec-room.
And the bathroom that Tandy had vanished from.
"We need to get back to the others, we'll have to form up in Lewis' room; I don't want to move Carter." Nagle said. I nodded wordlessly, trying to figure out our next move. Nagle was the authority on Carter, she at least had some idea of what to do with a casualty.
No matter what we did, we were in danger.
...roll the dice or play it safe?...
"Roger that." I said, deciding to play it safe.
Bomber led the way, through the doors, the wind shrieking and the door hinges screaming in protest. The snow scattered across the hallway from Bomber's boots, Nagle's tennis shoes then scattered the snow from Bomber's boots, and my jungle boots scattered the snow from Nagle's as we walked without speaking. The sound of our shoes was muffled, even our breathing was swallowed by the cold and cement, making it eerily quiet. It was nerve wracking; the loudest sound was my own heartbeat thudding in my ears.
The lizard didn't like it.
"Do we tell them?" Bomber asked suddenly, breaking the eerie quiet.
"I don't know. This is way above my pay grade." I answered.
"We need to tell them. There's a psycho loose." Nagle added.
"Except for one problem." I told them as we pushed through the second set of doors. I started to reach for the door handle to the middle stairwell and stopped.
Three Little Snowmen (Damned of the 2/19th) Page 16