All three bottles of Wild Turkey had been broken and left on my bunk.
While everyone else looked around I moved to my dresser, pulling the drawer out and letting it drop onto the floor. While Nancy and Bomber stared I reached deep into the dresser until I found what I'd taped to the back of the inside of the dresser.
"What?" Nancy asked.
"Hiding spot." Bomber grunted, kicking at the pile of ice and cloth, knocking away a spray of ice chips.
"For what?" Nancy asked.
"This." I said, pulling it free and holding it up for them to see.
A Gerber Mark II fighting knife sat in its sheath, held tightly in my fist. I grinned at the two of them as I reached behind me to lift up my jacket and flannel shirt so I could put the sheathed blade between my jeans and my lower back.
"He's been going out of his way to get rid of all your knives." Nancy said, waving her hand at the broken knives on the other dresser. Bomber nodded, putting his hands in his armpits to try to warm them up.
"Let's try my room." Bomber suggested after a few seconds. I nodded mutely, trying to figure out who had done it and why, and coming up blank. Sure, I wasn't exactly the most popular guy in the unit, but for the most part, most of the unit didn't even know I existed beyond my name being listed on the training schedules. I stayed out at Atlas, with my crew, and I couldn't think of anyone that I might have pissed off this badly.
We just stepped on the door as we left the room, not bothering trying to put it back up in the frame. The knife felt comfortable at the small of my back, and I tried to ignore how much it actually mattered to me to be armed again.
And how much it hurt that all of my worldly possessions had been destroyed. Again.
Nancy turned, lifted up the door by the corner, and pushed it into my room, getting it out of the hallway.
"In case we end up running down this hallway in the dark." She said. Bomber and I nodded.
We all walked the few doors down to Bomber's room. We paused for a moment, listening to the banging noise from inside, beyond the door.
Bomber gave me the smile that he usually got right before he clocked someone in the face. I smiled back and drew my knife from the sheathe at the small of my back. The worm hilt of the knife, a gift from my Father on my 13th birthday, was comfortable in my hand. Bomber was still smiling as he put his hand on the handle, nodding to me and Nagle, who's face was expressionless and her eyes flat.
He turned the handle, and I held up three fingers, jerked my hand and folded one, did it again, then finally made a fist. With a shout he threw open the door and the three of us charged into the room.
Bomber's windows were open, wind whipping snow in.
His wall lockers were open, the doors banging back and forth.
The mattresses on the bunks were bare. His wall lockers empty, even the one with his civilian clothing. His walls were bare. His room mates' lockers were empty. His TV was gone. Even his rodeo buckles were gone off the walls.
His room was bare. Only the desk, the dressers, and the beds were left.
No three drawer chests, no desk drawers, no dresser drawers, even his bathroom was stripped bare. Not even the drawers under the beds were there.
It was if nobody lived there.
"My room..." Nagle said, and we looked at each other.
Without bothering to search Bomber's room, we hurried to the front stairwell by the CQ area, jogging in our haste to get there before whoever had ripped Bomber's and my room to shit got to hers.
Bomber went first, banging through the door and heading for the steps, flashlight casting wild shadows on the walls. I panned my flashlight as the lizard hissed in warning. I looked at Bomber as he took his first step down the stairs...
And slipped on the first step.
Bomber yelled and went face first down the stairs, bringing his arms up over his head as he pitched forward into the darkness, the flashlight flying from his hand.
I thought he'd slipped on the ice and lunged forward to grab him.
And felt my foot go out from under me right at the edge of the steps.
I windmilled, reaching out and grabbing the steps going up, that were on my left, and swinging hard against the banister. Nagle screamed Bomber's name. Bomber cursed as he bounced off the steps.
My knife fell between the stairs, vanishing into the darkness with a metallic clatter.
I managed to keep from going headfirst down the them, holding onto the ice-slick bannister and breathing hard. Nagle had grabbed my jacket and was pulling me toward her, an action I was grateful for as I kicked my boots, trying for a toehold. It took a couple seconds, but she managed to get me back onto the landing before I followed Bomber.
Bomber was groaning on the halfway landing, so we knew he was alive.
Nagle bent down and ran a hand over the edge of the landing, then reached down and felt the first step.
"They're coated with ice. Thick ice." She told me. "It wasn't here last time we used these steps."
"I'm fine, thanks for asking." Bomber groaned from the mid-way landing. "Assholes."
Nagle and I carefully moved down next to him, moving slowly and watching our footing on the slick ice. The flashlight had landed on the landing, casting bizarre shadows in the stairwell, the clear lens cracked, but other than that just fine.
Thank God.
Above us there was another scream, almost mocking what had just happened.
Bomber had slammed into a mop bucket that hadn't been there the last time we had been on the steps and the sight of it told us that the ice on the steps wasn't an accident. Someone was supposed to go down the stairs and probably break their neck.
Or get knocked out or injured bad enough they couldn't move and then freeze to death.
"You alive, Texas?" I asked him, squatting down next to him and rubbing his shoulder.
"Yeah, no worse than a bull ride." He said, sitting up slowly.
"I'm going after my knife." I told them, scooping up the flashlight.
Bomber nodded, and Nagle looked doubtful, but she didn't argue.
I looked down the steps, into the darkness, and had a sudden change of heart when the lizard gave a soft rattle of warning.
Someone had moved from screwing with us to setting traps.
What or who was down there in the darkness?
"Fuck the knife." I said, helping Bomber up.
"No, we go after it." He said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Right now we're unarmed, and I don't think we want someone running around with a knife that the whole company knows is yours." Nagle answered before Bomber could say anything. "Even if they don't recognize it as yours, that's the one with your last four and your initials engraved into the blade, isn't it?" I nodded. "We need your knife."
I nodded again, still staring at the darkness, and together we walked the flight and a half of stairs, taking it slow and shining the flashlight on the steps to watch for any more traps.
At the bottom of the stairs we found my knife, laying on the floor, the matte black Gerber blade waiting patiently for me to find it.
That wasn't what had our attention.
The door to the orderly room area was wedged open, and in the light of the flashlight we could see down the short hallway to the door that led outside.
It was wide open to the snowy night.
Staring at the door and the hallway, I reached down and felt around till I got ahold of the knife hilt and slowly straightened up as I sheathed it.
It wasn't the snowy night, the hallway, that had my attention.
It was the footprints.
Footprints were outlined in snow.
Footprints that had frozen mud that had fallen from.
Footprints that came from outside and stopped halfway to the stairwell door.
Footprints that marched through a glittering patch of frost, frost which spread from the footprints themselves.
Booted footprints.
Fight Or Flight
I was willing to go toe to toe
with any man. Knives or bare hands,
I'd still go for it.
Against Tandy?
Run or die.
Nagle covered her mouth, her eyes wide, and she backed up till she hit the steps and fell on her ass. Bomber was staring at the boot prints, his mouth working silently. The wind went from swirling in the entryway to howling up the stairwell a split second after glass shattered high above us.
I couldn't take my eyes off the boot prints.
"No. No no no nonononononono..." Nagle moaned.
"It can't be..." Bomber whispered, barely audible over the wind.
"Don't." I pleaded, my hand falling from the hilt behind my back. "Don't say his name."
I knew, right then, who one of the people was that were fucking with us. I knew who was one of the ones stalking us. Who had probably killed the four men on CQ. Who had nearly frozen Carter to death.
Carter, the only person still in the entire barracks who had been part of the First Twenty.
Except for me.
I turned to tell them something, anything, to try to deny what the snow outlined footprints told us when we heard it.
Laughter.
Low, bubbling laughter. The laughter of a drowning man. The last laugh of a man dying of pneumonia. A low bubbling chuckle that promised pain, terror, and carried a promise of darkness in it.
I'd read about evil, heard about it from fire and brimstone preachers in my youth, been told I was evil by my biological mother, and thought I'd seen the aftermath of evil by coming to 2/19th.
The laughter that echoed from the darkness of the stairwell above us was something that made everything I thought I knew about evil pale in comparison. The low bubbling chuckle made the lizard in the back of my head whimper with primordial fear.
As the laughter wrapped around us, chilling me even further, it went through my mind that the evil I'd known in my life before was a small child holding her breath till she crapped her pants because she was denied a pony compared to whatever was laughing.
Silence, except for the howling of the wind, descended on the stairwell as we all looked at each other. We heard slow footsteps coming down the stairs, thudding against the steps, shaking the entire steel lattice they rested on, the air shivering and the temperature dropping with a sharp snap that made the old breaks in my hand throb sharply. Tendrils of white fog drifted down the stairs, leaving glittering frost where it grazed the walls. The banister began to shiver as frost slid down it toward us, and we knew what was happening.
He was coming down the stairs.
We moved into the orderly room hallway from the bottom landing of the front stairwell, and I turned, grabbed the door, tried to pull it shut, kicking the chock up so it could move freely.
It didn't budge.
"Come on, Ant!" Nagle yelled, pulling on my sleeve, trying to pull me away from the door. The lizard realized I was trapped, cornered, and released the panic button it had been hammering on to get me to flee who was coming down the stairs.
With his ears flat against his head he slammed his hand on the fight button and rage flooded through me.
"Fuck this! I can take him!" I snarled, letting go of the door and pulling my knife from the sheath behind my back. I stepped into the middle of the doorway, moving into a guard position, the knife held pointed downward in front of my sternum and my half-fist up under my chin. "I'm not running, I can take him."
"No, you can't." Bomber yelled, grabbing me by the back of my jacket and pulling me away from the door. "Come on!"
"Anthony, we need you." Nagle said, her voice cracking with fear.
We could hear him coming down the steps. Slow, deliberate steps that made the air itself shiver and made it seem like the shadows twisted and writhed in the space beneath the stairs.
We were trapped between the stairs, where something dark and evil was rapidly descending toward us, and the blizzard outside.
Tandy?
Or the blizzard?
At the thought of the blizzard the lizard threw up a map of the barracks, pictures of it from various angles, a topography map, and began highlighting things on it. Plans rocketed through my brain as the little lizard sorted all the options that might give us the slightest chance of survival outside.
It only took a second for the little lizard to decide upon the plan and throw it up where I could see it.
"Come on!" I yelled, turning and heading toward the door. We had a chance. If we kept our heads together and didn't panic, we could do it. I sheathed my knife as we headed for the door, the freezing wind bringing tears to my eyes. "Kill the flashlight so he can't follow us!"
"Are you fucking crazy?" Nagle asked, flinching from the wind as the light went out and the hallway went completely black.
"We'll go down the hill to the ski resort! We can make it!" I yelled, grabbing Nagle's hand. "John, grab her hand and don't let go!"
One step out the door and the blizzard took us. Screaming wind sliced through my heavy fleece lined denim jacket like it was tanning oil. Snow smothered me, blinding me almost immediately. My face, ears, and hands went instantly numb. The wind cut through my pants and my balls felt like someone had just kicked me square in the sack, gave a dull throb, then just vanished.
All of it in less than a heartbeat.
I took a hard right instead of heading straight, reaching out with my free hand to put my hand on the wall of the barracks. I squeezed Nagle's hand and moved as quickly as I could, keeping my hand on the wall as I moved through the snow and darkness, trying not to stumble, trying not to lose my balance and contact with the wall. The only thing I had to guide me aside from my hand on the wall was the plan that the lizard had thrown up.
Forever passed till I felt the corner of the building, and I made sure Nagle made it, then kept moving, the incline telling me we were moving toward the front of the building. The snow made it treacherous going, and I knew if I slipped, I'd lose my bearings as I rolled down the incline, past the building, and possibly across the road and into the German woods.
That's what the killer was. The incline at the sides of the barracks, the 15 foot drop, where it was so easy to slip, lose your bearings, and freeze to death before you even understood what had happened.
I half dragged Nagle up the hill, blind, deaf, and numb. I hoped she still had ahold of Bomber, my best friend, but I couldn't tell. I could only trust her, trust in her strength to drag my best friend through the blizzard.
The ground leveled out and I knew I was either laughing or sobbing in relief in the darkness. A handful of steps more and the next corner came. I followed it, keeping my hand on the wall as I moved along it until I hit the picket fence that surrounded the front lawn of the barracks. I pulled Nagle close, and reached out till I felt John's denim jacket, then pulled him close too.
"We're almost to the front entrance!" I yelled.
"Thank God." Bomber yelled back.
"He probably thinks we're dead!" Nagle yelled.
Even with as loud as we could yell, we could barely hear one another over the snow.
"Let's go! Hold onto my jacket!" I hollered back, and climbed over the fence, Nagle holding onto me, throwing me off balance and almost dumping me face first into the thin layer of snow over the frozen grass. Still, once I was over I remembered that it was left to the front of the building if I faced the fence from the inside.
Not that I was worried. I was starting to warm up.
Wait? What? The little lizard that lived in the survival center at the back of my brain asked.
I was warm and tingly. My joints and the places I had broken bones before no longer hurt. My balls didn't even hurt anymore. I was warm, fuzzy, and sleepy.
Oh. Shit. The little lizard shrieked, and flailed at the panic button. Adrenaline flooded my system as the small survival portion of my brain seized control of my body, doing whatever it could to make sure I survived long enough to get out of the cold. The lizard over rid my con
scious control of my body, forcing me onward out of sheer instinct.
My new found strength let me help Nagle over the fence, and then Bomber. Both of them sagged when they managed to get over the fence, the cold sapping them of their strength. I roared in rage and denial, the little lizard still hammering away at the panic button, and I grabbed them by the back of their jackets, half dragging them behind me. They stumbled to their feet, holding tight onto me as I kept bulling forward through the snow. Together we stumbled forward, Nancy pulling us to the right as she kept one hand on the wall of the barracks, till we tripped over the steps and into the alcove where the doors that led to the CQ area were recessed into the building. The wind hammered at us as we fought our way to our feet to climb up the steps and pulled open the outer doors. We half fell into the alcove between the doors, the wind slamming the outside doors behind us.
The lack of wind felt like someone had just wrapped me in warm blankets.
The little lizard in the back of my mind heaved a sigh of relief, letting up on the panic button. It still kept hissing like a tea kettle, kicking on the adrenaline and holding down the rage button, driving me to my feet, and I reached down and heaved Nancy and John to their feet.
When we pushed open the inner doors the little lizard relaxed as we managed to escape the clutches of the blizzard. Nancy gave a half-sob half-laugh as the hydraulic cylinders on the doors hissed and then thumped as the door shut behind us.
"We made it." She half-laughed.
"I thought we were dead." Bomber said.
"I refuse to die on this god-forsaken mountain." I snarled. My system was still full of combat chemicals and the rage still pounded at my temples.
"Amen, brother." Bomber said and clicked on the flashlight.
The CQ area was empty, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
Moving as silently as we could, we snuck down to Nagle's room. She reached for her key when suddenly Bomber reached out and stopped her.
He shined the flashlight in his own face and shook his head, pointing at me first, then him. Nagle's eyes opened wide, and it took me a second longer to realize what he was saying.
Our rooms had been trashed. God only knew what was waiting for us in Nagle's room.
Three Little Snowmen (Damned of the 2/19th) Page 18
