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

Part 24

Site Kilo-29
Military Area - Main Facility
Winter, 1993
Day Two-Night

It was lit in the room, but the lights were behind me, a conscious decision that I'd had done to me more than once. It put me in shadow, but she'd be able to see my eyes and mouth while she talked.

She'd known me as Sergeant Ant, a drunken, somewhat lecherous young Army sergeant who suffered from nightmares but worked hard and kept his mouth shut. The perfect lover for a lonely officer, since I didn't go for the public displays of affection, understood the difference between on duty and off duty, and was perfectly willing to keep my big fucking yap shut and everything a secret. Then she'd known me as a fairly homely guy besotted with his pretty wife and infant daughter with an Army career that was going nowhere fast.

What she was seeing wasn't the person she'd made love to, drank with, watched TV and played with the baby with, the person who's wedding she'd attended.

Staring at her, I was the same man that 2/19th had made me. The man who survived 4 years in that hell hole, who'd been sent back again and again, and who'd done whatever it took to survive.

...we killed each other in the dark and cold, howling out our blood lust and stalking each other through hallways and tunnels...

I knew what she was seeing, and I didn't care.

"Start talking." I growled at her.

"Are you sure you want to know?" She asked. I narrowed my eyes and she held up her hands. "Just knowing this might put you in a world of hurt." She glanced up at the camera, saw it was covered, and smiled.

"It can't be worse than what they've done to me already." I told her. She raised a questioning eyebrow.

...Captain Lewis coughing over the radio, the bubbly sound of a punctured lung audible. "Get out of here, boys, we're already dead here..." and then horrible silence...

...Bomber thrashing on the mattress, burning up with fever and dying by inches...

...my hands tied behind my back as Oakes pressed her thumb into my one good eye at the LT's instructions...

"It might put your wife and kid in danger." She tried. "If I tell you, someone might decide to give you a warning about keeping your mouth shut by paying a visit to your wife and that little daughter of yours."

"Nobody in their right mind would hit my family and leave me alive." I told her. "Nerve gas doesn't care who it kills, and I helped write the manuals on using it in an urban environment." She paled slightly and I smiled. "Yeah. It'd be like that. Read my fucking psych file." I stood up. "Start fucking talking, Colonel."

She shrunk back and almost seemed to deflate.

"How much do you know about the Continuity of Government project?" She asked me.

"Enough. Keep talking."

"You know what it was tasked with."

"Stop dancing around it and fucking tell me."

"This site was initially complete in the late 1950s, one of the largest ones to that date, but some sections of the government weren't sure if a shell shocked civilian populace would be able to handle living in a facility like this, much less be any good to rebuild the US." She said. She stared at me for a long moment. "Someone got permission to gather up a 'sizeable population' mostly drawn from transients, with a handful of people from asylums that were wards of the state with no families."

Oh Jesus...

"Since the civilian populace was to be directly taken to this facility from staging areas without any detox or mental health care the people in charge figured that it would be the best simulation of how the civilian populace would be after a nuclear exchange. They had to know if the weak link in the whole plan, the civilian population, was worth even bothering to bring into these shelters." She told me. The look in her eyes chilled my blood, and I wondered if the Deb I'd made love to in that cornfield had ever existed. "For 36 hours they were sequestered, underwent sleep deprivation and no food, with taped messages that Russian bombers had penetrated US airspace and that World War III had started. Sound effects and drugs were used to make them more pliable and more consistent with what experts thought that survivors would be like, emotionally and physically. They were brought up here in convoys of various vehicles, forced to drive no matter what their condition, and brought inside, being told that this was their only chance to survive the atomic holocaust."

I felt sick. I'd heard rumors, but to actually hear it said so matter of factly...

"Once they got here, they were assigned to the civilian living quarters and the doors sealed." She shifted on the couch, an innocent looking movement. "They were supposed to be sealed for 365 days, long enough for the effects of living in an area like this, with the data gathered to be used to help improve living quarters in other sites."

I kept silent while she shifted again, sitting on her hands.

"Something went wrong during the tests, they lost contact with the bunker less than sixty days in. When the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission investigated the various programs that the Office of Scientific Intelligence had performed at the time, the Civil Defense Agency found hints about Kilo Sites due to an unredacted cross reference file number, thought the sites were theirs, and the sites were opened back up and refurbished."

You can't lie to me, Deb

"They did it again." I interrupted, watching her hands slide back toward her butt.

...her butt was warm in my hands, firm and smooth despite the 10 years that separated us, the muscles clenching as she moved up and down above me, the scarecrow staring down at us as we strained against each other in the Nebraska night...

"What? No." She looked startled. "Don't be ridiculous." She scoffed.

"Looks aren't brains, Colonel."

"No, Sergeant, they didn't do it again. But the later refurbishing teams saw no sign of any people, so they carried out the upgrade and rotated the stocks." She shifted again, inhaling deeply so that her plentiful breasts lifted.

"Apparently they were still down there in the lower levels where the work was never finished. The areas slated for later expansion that were left unfinished due to budget cuts."

liar

"And they've been in here the whole time, breeding?" I asked.

"Apparently." She told me, shrugging.

"How much of the military section have you been in?"

"Not much. I couldn't gain access to it, I didn't have the codes." She told me. "And I was afraid to use the elevators."

I thought about the tape in my pocket, and the blown free panel in the stairwell.

"So your team got jumped by them?"

"Yes. When we went down to check the civilian Event Locker we got jumped."

"Wait, what the hell is this 'Event' shit I keep seeing?" I already knew, but she might let something slip I didn't know yet.

She stared at me for a long moment, then shifted uncomfortably. "They're areas where the US can rebuild after an 'Event' like nuclear war. They have everything needed to restart society. Buildings, vehicles, educational materials, decon equipment, the whole nine yards."

"And how did you find all of this out?" I asked her, slumping slightly. I pulled a small medicine bottle out of my pocket, rattled two small white pills into it, and swallowed them without taking my eyes from her. "Anti-psychotics." I told her when she raised her eyebrow. "Helps prevent flashbacks." She nodded.

Yeah, aspirin is a great anti-psychotic.

"Some of it was in my briefing, the rest I figured out from records left behind that my team and I found going through the offices over on the civilian side." She shrugged. "As near as we could figure, they didn't use the military side, the people in charge figured soldiers would just do as they were told and weren't worried about the psychological factors."

She grinned at me. "They planned on staffing the military side with Army, mostly. You guys are good at just doing what you're told. No offense."

I shrugged.

"What about the Spetz?" I asked.