Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 22

Site Kilo-29
Military Area - Event Recovery Area Charlie Seven
Winter, 1993
Day Two-Night

Tiredness, pain, hunger, the fact I suddenly had to pee, all of it vanished in a rush of adrenaline. I let go of Debs and jumped to my feet, bringing my rifle around.

"We're pulling out, we'll exit this building and extract to Enlisted Living Quarters!" I called out. "Donaldson, you still have NVG's?"

"Yes, Sergeant." Donaldson called back.

"Give them to Colonel Killain. The rest of you, break out chemlights, have someone attach it to the back of your LBE." I turned to Deb. "Colonel, I'll you need to lead us on the safest straight route to upper level access."

"All right." She said, straightening up.

The terrified girl was gone, replaced with a woman with the aura of command, a leader and a survivor. The Debs who had cried in my arms was still there, I knew, but she'd be back later, when we were safe. Colonel Killain stood up and grabbed a rifle leaning against the MRE boxes.

"Get whatever you need, we probably won't be back, Ma'am." I said, turning around. "Kincaid, load a white cluster flare and get ready. You're going to be right behind me, and I'm going to be behind the Colonel." Debs flipped on a flashlight and rushed by me, moving into the room and quickly sorting through the papers, shoving them into a satchel.

"Grab extra weapon and body sling them, I want everyone with at least one extra weapon. If you see any ammunition you can easily carry, secure that also." I turned on my flashlight and panned it across the room. Just food, water, what looked like boxes of vitamins, an open box of tampons, and a large medical bag. I grabbed that and pulled it over my head. A Kevlar helmet was on the floor and I grabbed it, plopping it onto my head. It was too big, but a quick adjustment of the headband had it sitting right.

"Colonel, grab your battle rattle, I don't want to lose you to a fucking crossbow bolt or a spear." I said.

The temperature seemed to drop to below freezing in the room.

Debs whimpered. Colonel Killain finished shoving papers into her bag and turned to pull on her Kevlar vest and LBE.

There was another chuckle, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

Corporal Ant whimpered. Staff Sergeant Ant readied his rifle and swapped out the CS grenade for a white flare cluster.

"Colonel, where does that hatch go?" I asked, moving into the frontroom. My men were grabbing what they could, loading up. Donaldson threw Natchez a satchel full of magazines and Kincaid was looking through the firing port.

"Theres a ladder that leads to the sub-level." She told me.

"Can we get to the main facility from there?" I asked, moving over to the hatch and kneeling down.

"Yes, but the level is unfinished."

"Will it be faster and safer to move through there or stay up here?" I asked.

"I don't know."

Outside of the house there was a loud squealing noise, the sound of metal being peeled.

"Listen up, men, we're going to move through an unfinished level." I turned to Kincaid. "Kincaid, Donaldson, the Colonel is the package, nothing matters beyond getting her back to Major Darson. Do you understand?"

Both men nodded.

"Colonel, do you have any flares in here?" I asked. Debs nodded, pointing at a wooden box in the corner. "Men, load up on flares, Kincaid, toss me one."

The men started stuffing them in whatever spare pockets they had. Kincaid sent one my way with a smooth underhand toss.

I pointed at the door then pumped my fist twice. Everyone looked at me confused.

"Colonel, come here." I snapped. She moved over next to me. "Colonel, kill those mines and move over by the door. When I give the word, lead us out, fastest route to the elevator hallway." She nodded.

It was weird. She was 10 years older than me, outranked me by a phenomenal amount, and had that thing, that aura that command level officers get, but she was looking at me like I was something different than the brain damaged knuckle dragging thug I knew myself to be. It had nothing to do with our torrid affair before I met Heather, it had nothing to do with the fact she'd sat on my couch and watched Ren & Stimpy with me and laughed.

It was trust.

I yanked back the hatch and kicked the flare off, tossing it down into the hole I'd revealed, then moved over by the door, ignoring the access shaft and ladder. Debs moved up next to me and nodded.

"GO GO GO!" I bellowed, leaning back and kicking open the door.

Colonel Killain shot through the door and I waved Kincaid through. "GO GO GO!" I kept shouting, waving the men out the door.

From the hatch I heard a low, bubbling hiss.

"FUCK YOU, TANDY!" I yelled at the hatch, then darted out of the room. I could see the bobbing chemlights and put on the speed. I caught up right before Colonel Killain led them to the right along a line of sandbags. We moved along the line before she spotted a stake sticking up out of the ground and vaulted over the waist high wall that she'd helped build.

"Keep going!" I called out. "Follow the Colonel, remember your training!" I stopped and knelt down at the line, fingering the barrel of the M-203.

"Sergeant Ant!" Donaldson called out.

I could hear the screeching of something tearing at metal back the way we'd came.

"Flare out!" I called, bringing the M-203 up to my shoulder and firing it in one smooth motion.

The cave was only about 100 feet high, big enough to use a crane to move stuff around, and a wholly natural formation except for the concrete floor. Still, it gave the flare enough time to arc out then start to drop.

Before it went off, I had the M-203 emptied and reloaded.

The white light filled the cavern, the flare hissing and sputtering as it waved back and forth below the parachute. It had deployed only about 50 feet up, but it gave me enough time and enough sight to do what I needed to do.

I'd caught LT COL Bishop in the doorway of the temporary building, in the act of scraping his fingers down the inside of the door.

"Sergeant Ant!" Donaldson called out.

Bishop turned his head slightly.

and locked eyes with me.

...Deep, sunken eyes, nothing but black pits full of hatred and dark mirth. Gaping open jaws, full of broken and jagged teeth that were too long for the mouth. White skin, with the edges of the mouth pulled up in a horrific grin.

Grimy, dirty, tattered BDU's, covered with frozen mud and a rind of frost.

A hand held in front of my face, at the end of a too long arm, the wrist and forearm protruding from a ragged torn BDU sleeve. The fingers were blackened, long, and twisted, with the fingerbones thrust through the blackened flesh...

I shivered, my body heat vanishing, my nose and non-existant earlobes aching. An icicle slid deep into my shoulder and shifted around below the butt plate of the M-16.

His face was the ashen gray African descent people get when they die, his careful corn-rows were puffed out in places and full of ice and/or frozen mud. His uniform, usually immaculate, was torn, muddied, and had patches of what had to be dried blood. His arms looked too long, his hands malformed, and he stood with his legs bowed slightly. His eyes were dark pits with black eyes that glittered, holding malevolent joy and hatred.

His mouth was too wide, full of broken and ragged teeth, too many teeth in a too large jaw, hanging open in a wide joker's smile, his purple tongue flopping around in the dark pit of his mouth.

He knew I could see him, and knew that I knew.

I didn't say anything to warn him. I'd seen myself how fast he could be. Not just whatever it was that Tandy was, that was now my first CO, but Bishop himself. A Golden Gloves boxer, a man that took joy in his training.

I pulled the trigger on my M-203, and without bothering to watch the short flight, I pivoted in place and came up to my feet in the same motion.

Behind me was a roar as the 40mm HE grenade went off, but I wasn't paying any attention, instead rushing to catch up to the others.

"Sergeant Ant!" Kincaid called out.

There was an eerie scream of rage behind me.

"KEEP GOING!" I bellowed, lowering my head and picking up speed. I wasn't a sprinter, I was a distance runner.

please don't let me hit a mine

The flare dropped too low to do much more than illuminate the ceiling and I cursed, running half-blind in the near-darkness. I bounced off something massive and almost went down when I hit an bucket full of 30 round magazines.

...oh God, RUN ANT!...

...no shit, Nancy...

I hit sandbags that I couldn't see in the dimness and flipped forward, coming down hard on my bad shoulder, and I screamed for a second before I ground my plastic teeth together and cut it off.

"Sergeant Ant!" Donaldson yelled.

"Flare out!" Kincaid yelled.

It bounced off the ceiling and then deployed as I scrabbled up, the light letting me see I was about to run head first into a bulldozer blade. I angled and bounced off it, my leg brace squealing as I twisted my knee wrong and something began to burn in it.

Something chuckled off to my right and I reversed direction, hurdling over a fighting position, then cutting back right, knowing he'd cut back in front of me and was waiting for me to run straight into his arms in the dimness.

The original flare was strobing, almost finished, making the whole cavern flash weirdly.

"Where's Sergeant Ant?" Meyers called out.

"He'll be fine, run, soldier!" Killain snapped back. The authority in her voice drew a little more speed out of my legs.

I caught up with them just before they hit the tunnel. Colonel Killain was just grabbing the wheel to spin it when I slid to a stop on the concrete. I turned around, dropped down to one knee, and hosed an entire magazine into the darkness behind me.

"Who was that?" Shads asked while I reloaded my rifle.

"It's not a who, it's a what." I snapped, fear and adrenaline making me shake.

"Let's go, men." Colonel Killain snapped.

"Fall back, Colonel. Donaldson, cover the package, Kincaid, you're with me, we're on point." I said, pushing my way forward. "Shads, you're on drag. You see anything behind you, use lethal force, no warnings." I reached out and squeezed Deb's shoulder as I passed. "We stay together, and we'll live to make it back to the others."

Donaldson was fingering a tear in his BDU sleeve that revealed his forearm and the two bleeding scratches on it. He looked up at me.

"Something came at me in the dark, I managed to get my arms up." He said. He swallowed thickly. "Sergeant, it was fast, and I don't think..."

"You're alive, son, worry about it later." I told him. He nodded, his eyes huge in the lights of the tunnel. "Colonel, do any of the military Living Quarters section elevators come down here?"

"No, Sergeant." She answered as moved next to Kincaid and bumped him with my shoulder. He grimaced, not quite a grin, and bumped me back. I stepped into the hallway and turned around.

"Stay in formation, stay close, do not leave formation no matter what you hear." I told them. "I don't care if you hear Mary Joe Rottencrotch down a side tunnel, if you break ranks, you're fucking dead." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder to indicate the tunnel behind me. "It's about a mile to the elevators, visibility is for shit and it's going to get worse."

"Sergeant, you aren't going to believe this." Shads suddenly spoke up.

"What, Private?" I asked, pushing down the irritation at being interrupted.

"It looks like it's... snowing in the cavern we just left." Shads voice was very very quiet.

Someone scoffed.

"Ant?" Debs voice was scared.

"That's enemy territory now, son." I said. "Stay close and keep up." I turned and started to jog down the corridor.

We didn't make good time. We kept having to cover the side passages and move into the corners like it was urban assault training. Colonel Killain wasn't in good shape, weeks of fear, living like a trapped animal, and lack of sleep leeching away her endurance. Wilkins was puffing heavily, loaded down with everything he could grab that looked important from Deb's hidey-hole. He had six rifles piled on his back and several cloth bags hanging from his neck.

It hadn't been more than a few minutes before the lights cut out, plunging the tunnel into darkness.

A liquid chuckle floated out of the darkness.

"You know what's hunting the Colonel, don't you." Kincaid said after a couple of minutes, as we moved through a tight twist in the corridor. It wasn't a question.

"Something that shouldn't be here." I answered, coming around the corner with my weapon ready.

My flashlight flickered.

"What is it?" Kincaid asked. Not accusatory, just a question.

"If it is what I think it is, I don't know." I told him honestly. Kincaid's flashlight flickered and went out.

"Dammit." Kincaid smacked his flashlight a couple of times as we moved through the tunnel, coming up on the table where I'd been knocked goofy.

"Don't bother." I told him. He cracked a chemlight and shook it.

It just changed color.

"What the fuck?" he stared at it for a second then dropped it. "Must have been defective."

We passed the table and my flashlight flickered and then went out. I slowed down. I could hear the men behind me cursing and banging on their flashlights. A few tried chemlights, but they only provided enough light to see their color in the darkness of the tunnel.

"Colonel, do your NVG's still work?" I crossed my fingers.

"There's a lot of static and sometimes the image freezes, but they still work." She told me.

"Give them to Donaldson." I said.

"What's wrong with the lights?" Meyers asked.

"There's a blizzard outside, the mountain's probably ionized." I told them. "There's probably lightning strikes out there right now, the charge just killed our batteries."

"And the chemlights?" Meyers challenged.

"They're old, from war-stocks from almost a decade ago. They're early versions, they have around an 80% failure rate." Colonel Killain said. "Use your head for something besides a way to keep your helmet from falling off."

"Oh." He paused. "What about the flares? I've got a bunch."

"Save them, they won't help in here, the tunnel twists and curves too much." I told him. "They'll help the enemy more than us."

"Ready, Sergeant." Donaldson told me, moving up next to me.

"Can everyone see the cat's eyes in front of them?" I asked. There was a murmur of assent.

"Before we take off, sound off quietly." I told them. They quietly called out their names, confirming that everyone was there. "Doubletime, troops. Kincaid, stick close to the package."

"Roger, Sergeant." Kincaid said.

"Move out."

We ran through the darkness, Donaldson leading the way. There was no use in clearing the side passages, nobody had any working flashlights or chemlights.

I knew why Tandy had come, or rather whatever dark, malevolent force that inhabited what had been Tandy. Tandy had been a nice guy, quick with a smoke or a joke or an offer of a pull off the bottle in his pocket. He'd been sent to 2/19th after failing out of Track-2 alcohol counseling and a drunk driving incident that left 8 other soldiers hospitalized. That didn't make him evil, just stupid and careless. He had honestly felt bad about what happened, and helped keep the 17 year old me from being depressed at being sent to 2/19th.

Then he'd vanished out of that fucking bathroom, to reappear at ARTEP the follow spring.

At least 2 members of the First Twenty had been here. There'd been a picture of the barracks. It was dark and cold up here on this mountain, and it was an isolated mountain in the middle of nowhere.

But two members of the First Twenty was just too good for whatever it was to pass up. Just the picture would have evoked fear and terror in Bishop and Richardson.

I was willing to bet that one of the creatures had been taken first. Then once it had caused enough fear in the creatures, it had possessed enough strength to take Richardson. Once it had taken Richardson, well, Bishop was the best for fear.

And now I was here.

Whatever it was planned on going for a three-fer.

Donaldson stopped and I nearly slammed into him.

"The elevators." He told me. I could hear him clicking the button.

The whole hallway filled with the shriek of metal on metal and a groaning noise so intense it shook the air and made my eye water. The tunnel was wide in front of the elevators and the troops crowded around as the doors began to slide open.

There was a strangely disjointed shadow on the floor, and before I could stop myself I fired three rounds into it.

Kincaid and Donaldson fired too.

Debs put two shots into it.

The mannequin took the abuse silently. They were like that.

"Get in." I said. "Kincaid, you're on the package."

Kincaid went by me, holding tight to Colonel Killain's arm, and I did a headcount as everyone went by.

We'd made it through the tunnels without losing anyone.

It was a fucking miracle.

I moved into the elevator, hitting the button for the first floor. I moved between the two desks, pulling Colonel Killain next to me. Donaldson moved to one side, Kincaid on the other.

The doors shuddered and started to close.

"What the fuck was all of that about?" Meyers asked, turning around and facing me.

"You wouldn't understand." I yelled over the noise of the doors closing behind him.

"I want to know what the fuck is going on! Who the fuck was chasing us?" Meyers yelled.

Long arms shot through the gap, the cuffs of the BDU's frayed and smeared with mud and reddish frost. Too long fingers settled on Meyers' shoulders, the ends of the long fingers nothing more than sharpened bone poking out of the tattered greyish skin.

The fingers tightened, puncturing Meyers' uniform and into his skin right above his collarbones, a weird popping noise that somehow carried over the howl of the doors closing.

Meyers mouth was opening, pain just starting to register on his features.

And Bishop pulled him through the gap in the door a second before the doors slammed shut.

Meyers started screaming.