I yelled at him, blindly swinging again and feeling my fist hit something in the darkness. I managed to get my left hand free for a moment, but the guy in the stairwell wrapped both hands around it a heartbeat before he managed to wrap both hands around my right hand. He pulled both of my hands down and pressed them against the stairs.
"Hold him still, goddammit!" someone screamed, their voice like jagged broken glass that ripped and tore at my eardrums and then lacerated my brain.
The pain stopped, and I tried to curl in a ball to cry. My mother had been beating me, and I'd managed to crawl under my bed where nobody could see me cry from the welts the belt had left on my back. The welts stung and burned from where she'd dumped saltwater on them to keep where the belt had dug too deep into my skin from bleeding. I knew I was crying, and hated myself for giving into the weakness, for giving her what she'd wanted, even if it was in the darkness under my bed where she couldn't see me.
Fuzzy warmth wrapped around me and dragged me down. It was like I was slipping into warm dark bathwater. I was tired, so tired, and my head was pounding dully. I could feel myself floating deeper and deeper into the water. There were loud noises around me, but they were distant, remote, just faint ripples in the warm water that surrounded me, cradled me, and drew me into its warmth depths. The lizard purred from where it was curled up in front of its little workstation.
You're dying, dumbass... My older brother's rough voice suddenly intruded.
Not. Down. Yet.
We were forged in the Hell
of Special Weapons training.
Killers, world enders, soldiers.
But meat has its limits...
My brother's voice yanked me out of the warm water, and I recognized the warm feeling for what it was.
Shock.
On your FEET! My Father's voice rang in my head. The lizard and I jerked involuntarily as the words my Father used to wake us boys up and that were used to call attention to an officer entering the room rang in my head, impossible to deny. Someone had propped my feet up with something which I kicked away when I jerked. I opened my eyes, aware of how they felt gluey, almost like my eyelids were stuck together. My jaw throbbed with agony, and someone had a hold on my hand and was pulling at something inside of it. My ribs ached, and my head felt like it was full of glass, but I was wide awake, staring at the dimly lit room. Adrenaline flooded my system as I fought that warm languorous feeling.
With a groan I tried to push myself up, and a hand pressed against my chest, pushing me down with a force I couldn't resist.
"Stay down, Stillwater." A voice ordered.
I'd heard those words, plenty of times, after getting an ass kicking in a new school or when some of my brothers ganged up on me. Three or more on one, and I'd usually ended up on the ground, and when I tried to get up, they always said the same thing. It provoked the same response at that moment as it had in the past, and I yanked my hand free, smacked away the hand pressing on my chest, and sat up, spitting what I knew was a mouthful of blood out and glaring around me.
Instead of a school locker room or the back yard of the house, I was in a barracks room, and it took me a second to realize where I was.
Nagle was sitting on the bed next to me, dressed in a set of PT sweats that didn't quite fit her. She was glaring at me, while Jacobs stood next to her holding a flashlight.
"Are you done?" She asked, reaching out and grabbing my hand. "Stupid boy." She chided. She looked at my hand under the light and sighed. "You pulled the thread out of the needle, you dumbass hick."
"Thread?" I was still a little confused as to what had happened, and I was having trouble focusing my vision.
"You gashed open your hand pretty bad." Jacobs answered. "She's stitching it up 'cause we couldn't stop the bleeding."
I held still while Nagle threaded the curved needle she had in her hand and then put two more stitches into my hand, the stitches small and neat.
"How long was I out?" I asked.
"It's almost 0800, you were out for about a half hour." Nagle said, lifting up my hand and using her teeth to snap the thread after she made a complex little knot. "Long enough to take care of most of your injuries."
"My fucking mouth hurts." I bitched, running my tongue along my front teeth. There were some jagged stumps there, and I counted three teeth broken off on the bottom and one of my front teeth on the top.
"Not surprised, your lips are fucked up pretty good and I think your nose is broken too." She set the needle down in the small brown sewing kit and then scrubbed her face with her hands. "And I think you have a concussion."
I smiled at her, feeling the pain as the expression pulled at sore spots in my face. "I'm good." I lied. My left eye wasn't focusing very well.
Why is always the left eye in my family? I wondered. Two of my uncles, my aunt, one of my sisters, and one of my brother's all had eye patches. All of them on the left eye. One of my grandfather's had lost his eye fighting in the Pacific.
I looked around at the room. The curtains were drawn over the windows, but at least it felt warm in the room. The other two-way radio was on the desk, Hernandez sitting next to it, staring at the door, with one of the heavy axes we'd taken from the motor pool in his hands. Lewis and Carter were still snuggled up on the bed across from me, but I could see that Carter's face didn't look so pale, even if the one earlobe I could see looked blackened.
That reminded me.
"How's your nipples and toes?" I asked Nagle. She flushed then smiled.
"Nipples are sore but OK, but you, me, and Bomber have frostbite on our ears and toes." She told me. "Your pinky looks like it's in bad shape." I held up my right hand and looked at my pinkie. Underneath the nail was black and there was a blackish spot on the knuckle.
There was a crash from above us, then another, then a scream. I looked at Nagle and tried to lift an eyebrow but stopped when the pain in my forehead spiked.
"Yeah, that's been going on the whole time." Hernandez offered.
"How's John?" I asked, turning to look at him. He was curled up in the fetal position, holding his stomach and shivering under the OD green wool blanket someone had put over him.
"I think that hit busted up something inside of him." Nagle said, shaking her head. "He's got a bad bruise on the right side of his stomach."
"He's lucky." Jacobs said, toeing the pile of clothing in the middle of the floor. "It should have split him in half. It went through his clothing, the first vest all the way, the clothing between and got through the cloth cover on the second one."
"They must have sharpened it." Hernandez said. "I work in the motorpool, those axes are dull as shit."
The little lizard filed that piece of information away. He knew it was important, I didn't get why.
"Still should have split him in fucking half." Jacobs insisted.
"Not. Down. Yet." Bomber groaned, and tried to sit up. I held out my arm and let him use it to sit up. "Gut. Hurts." He gasped.
The thing that had been bugging me suddenly crystallized as John sat up.
"Where's Hewitt?" I asked, looking around. He wasn't gathered up in the room, and I doubted he was in the bathroom taking a shower or leaving a dump. I couldn't hear the shower running and the room was small enough we'd be able to smell someone taking a shit.
Nagle looked around and swore. "Where is he?"
"He left about twenty minutes after you did." Jacobs supplied, and I cursed. "What?"
"Daniels! What color are his eyes?" Nagle asked when Daniels looked up from where he was sitting on the chair.
"How the fuck should I know? It's not like we're fucking." Daniels answered, his tone more bantering than anything. "Why?" He ran a hand through his close cut black hair, the pale skin of his palm in contrast to his dark skin.
"No reason." Nagle lied, and I nodded.
"Anyone got a plan?" I asked, swinging my feet off the bed and slowly standing up. The world tilted to the left for a moment and I put my hand on Nagle's s
houlder to steady myself.
"Yeah, put some fucking clothes on." Jacobs laughed, moving over to the dresser and digging in it.
Oh, right.
I waited till he threw me a pair of boxers, then went in and took a piss. My dick was red and painful, and my balls still ached. I winced at the fact that the soft tissue of my penis looked chapped. I checked it carefully, looking for any purple spots or blackish skin. My scrotum looked bruised and slightly raw, a combination of the cold and windburn.
"Nagle, check Bomber's dick, make sure it doesn't have frostbite." I said loudly, making sure there wasn't any blood in my urine. With the ass kicking I'd taken during the night, I needed to make sure. It was clear, but dark. I needed to drink more water. Despite what people thought, it was easy to get dehydrated even in a cold weather environment.
"Oh sure, ask the chick." She laughed. "It looks red and raw to the point that it looks like he's got friction burns or something." She called back as I staggered out of the bathroom.
"Oh sure, tell everyone about my dick." Bomber bitched, his voice low and pain filled. Nancy chuckled, and I saw her bend down and kiss his forehead.
"Do we know what the fuck is going on?" Hernandez asked. From the radio there was a steady moaning noise, once in a while broken by a shriek. The door to the stairwell must have still been open down there.
"We've got a fucking psycho on the loose." Jacobs said. "We already knew that."
"But who the fuck is it? And why are they doing it?" Hernandez asked, looking at each of us in turn. "I mean, I can understand wanting to kill you, Stillwater, but for fuck's sake, most people don't even know you're in the unit." He smiled at me and I tried to smile back, wincing at the pain in my mouth.
I nodded as he continued. "I mean, what the fuck did we ever do to him? This shit is just crazy."
"Yeah, it's just that. Fucking crazy." Jacobs shrugged. "It's not like the unit hasn't had its share of crazy people. We probably wouldn't understand why he's doing it even if he told us."
"He's doing it because he can." Nagle said in a dead tone. "He's getting off on it." She shivered and I knew she was remembering when we panicked after seeing the muddy boot prints.
"So what if some asshole is playing games? We can all take him." Jacobs said.
"Except he won't hit all of us at once." Nagle pointed out. "He hit Bomber with the axe and tried to run off, Stillwater chased him and as soon as he had Stillwater alone is when he fucked him up."
"He cut our safety lead." Bomber grunted, slowly swinging his legs off the bed. "Oh man, my stomach hurts." He retched again, just bringing up a thin string of bile. Lewis was going to have a Hell of time G.I.ing his room. Someone had mopped up the bile and vomit, but the acid had eaten into the wax, leaving whitish smears on the tile floor.
"He stole our cold weather gear, and wrecked up Bomber and Stillwater's rooms, as well as made it so we can't get into Stillwater's brother's room." Nagle added. "He may be fucking with us, but that doesn't make what he's doing any less deadly."
"And the stairwell was covered in blood." Jacobs added. "It's sprayed on the wall by the door. I think whoever it was killed someone in the stairwell."
"All right, who do we know it couldn't have been." Hernandez asked.
"Bomber, me, Stillwater, Carter." Nagle stated. "I'll extend all of you the benefit of the doubt."
"That's all of us." Daniels said. "Shit."
"No, the guys on CQ." I added. "They are either part of this, or got taken out. Someone's using a master key, and when I went down there when all this shit first started, they were gone."
Bomber pushed himself to his feet and staggered to the bathroom, stopping once to lean against the wall lockers and retch again.
"Could it be..." Daniels started, looking around nervously.
"Don't even say his name!" Jacobs yelled. On the other bed Carter stirred sleepily and Lewis raised his head up, blinking.
"No way." I told them. "He would have ripped me apart, or would have killed us out in the snow. The blizzard wouldn't even faze him. Whoever is doing this is alive." I didn't say anything about the boot prints, or the fact he'd been on the stairs, and a glance at Nancy let me know that she wasn't going to say anything either.
In the bathroom it sounded like Bomber was shitting his guts out. He groaned loudly, full of pain, and we all looked at each other. The smell had drifted out of the bathroom and it was bad, worse than normal.
Nagle was chewing on her lip, and then looked up. "What about 1SG Quinten?" She asked, standing up.
A cold wind blew across all of us at the mention of the former 1SG. The man had one day just snapped, killing three people and badly wounding another before he'd run off, going down the mountainside behind the barracks and disappearing into the woods.
"No way he's still alive." Hernandez said, pointing at the curtains, "The blizzard would have killed him. Besides, nobody has seen hide nor hair of him in months."
That much was true, but we'd heard rumors of him attacking hikers and people who were out at the field exercise areas, and the MP's had been up to the barracks twice to ask if anyone up on our side of the mountain had seen him.
"That might not be true." Jacobs said. "I've heard some rumors." We all nodded, and Nagle walked into the bathroom. I watched her backside sway as she walked. The sweat pants she was wearing were a size too small, and were tight across her butt. I noticed Hernandez watching her too and grinned at him, getting a grin in return.
I could hear Nagle reassuring Bomber, and heard Bomber retch and shit loudly at the same time. She said something to him, and I knew she was trying to ease his pain.
"Yeah, but he never was found either." Lewis piped up, looking around. "He sure as fuck hooked Till's ass up."
SGT Tillingtons had walked into the orderly room just as 1SG Quentin started attacking PFC Gordons, and Till had tried to keep the First Sergeant from killing the young woman by going after him. For her bravery she'd gotten stabbed twelve times and almost died.
And Quentin had killed Gordons anyway with his teeth.
We all nodded. Lewis got up from the bed and grabbed a pair of boxers to match the one I was wearing out of his drawer and pulled them on, then started getting dressed in civilian clothes, pulling on Levi's and putting on tennis shoes.
"Nobody's come back either, we'd know." I added. "Aside from us, everyone lives off post or over on main post in housing."
"So who's that leave?" Jacobs asked.
"Nobody." Hernandez said.
We all went silent at that.
Nagle led Bomber out of the bathroom. He looked like death warmed over, and I could see the bruise Nagle was talking about. It was dark red, obvious against his pale skin, which was normally well tanned. The bruise was just to the right of his navel and going almost all the way across to his hip. He was sweating and shaking, obviously weak, as Nagle led him back to the bed.
There was another crash, followed by the pounding of footsteps moving from above us and fading away.
"I say we go out there, find them, and beat the shit out of them." Lewis said. "I'm sick of the racket he's making."
"Go on ahead with your bad self." Nagle told him. My head throbbed and I sat back down next to Bomber, who had curled up in a ball after Nagle had tucked him in. Nobody said anything about the fact that I was holding his hand. I was waiting for the dizziness to pass, but it seemed to be getting worse, and my stomach clenched with nausea. I spit blood on the floor and tried to ignore the way my teeth throbbed.
"Hey, I've got to clean that shit up! Don't spit on my floor!" Lewis yelled.
"Sorry." I said. I laid over on my side, still holding Bomber's hand. "Wasn't thinking."
I closed my eyes for a moment, and felt someone press something in my free hand. "Here, Stillwater, spit in this." Lewis said, his voice a lot more gentle. I opened the eye not pressed against the mattress and looked. It was an empty beer can.
"Thanks." I said, closing my eye again and pulling the
can to my chest. I could feel someone tucking the blanket in around me, and when I opened my eye I could see Lewis' legs, and closed my eye again. My head was pounding and my jaw was throbbing in agony. I kept playing with the broken teeth, each time my tongue touched part of them it sparked agony through my mouth. I could feel the splits in my lower lip, all three of them, and the split in my upper lip at the corner. I'd taken more kicks to the face than I'd thought, or that one kick had been really effective.
I remembered the feeling of the heel of the boot crashing into my mouth.
"Wake Stillwater up every hour or so." Nagle yawned. "I'm going to take a nap, I'm fucking exhausted. Keep an eye on Bomber, wake him up when you wake Stillwater. Keep an ear out for noises on the radio."
"Roger that." Jacobs said. I heard some rustling and bed springs squeak. I knew that Nagle was curling up on the other bed, and briefly thought about pushing myself up and snuggling up with her.
"Don't leave the room." Nagle finished, yawning again. "He's out there, and he knows where we all are."
A loud crash from somewhere in the building made me twitch.
He knows... followed me into sleep.
A Hammer & A Radio
Live or Die.
My choices affected more than me this time.
John and Nancy lived or died on my decisions.
And me on theirs.
My dreams were full of pain, and I kept getting woken up. I just wanted to sleep, I was exhausted, my fingers, toes, nose, and ears burned like fire, my cock hurt, and my mouth and head felt like someone was kicking me in the face repeatedly. I kept dreaming of my mother and the abuse she'd handed out to my twin sister and myself for the slightest infraction, real or imagined. I dreamt of my sister weeping quietly, of my twin brother smirking as both or one of us was punished, sometimes for things he had done. Even in my dreams the sight of my twin made me angry, and the anger made my head pound. Not my brother who had joined the military with me as a show of defiance and support for me, but my weasely little twin brother who I hated so bad I could feel the hatred burning in my balls every time I thought about him.
Three Little Snowmen (Damned of the 2/19th) Page 23
