Three Little Snowmen (Damned of the 2/19th)

by Timothy Willard

  I was behind Carter and Daniels was facing me, my flashlight and Carter's both shining on Daniels, who had paused just for a moment. Carter was facing Daniels and me, which meant that he saw what happened next perfectly. Daniels had paused in front of the unisex bathroom, shining his flashlight into the doors of the rec room, game room, and day room, trying to see anything that might be lurking inside.

  A pair of white hands, with blackened flesh at the ends of the fingers, at the end of inhumanly long arms clad in ice crusted BDU's, shot out of the unisex bathroom doorway.

  The hands grabbed Daniels by the shoulders, and before he could do much more than gape in surprise, the hands tightened with a loud crunch noise, I saw the talons that had replaced fingers sink into the flesh.

  Before we could do anything, Daniels was snatched into the darkness by those pale claws, snatched so fast and with so much strength that his boots were left behind in the snow. Snatched so fast he didn't even have a chance to scream.

  Snatched off his feet and into the bathroom by cold white hands that ended in blackened talons.

  Carter, the lizard, and I all screamed like little girls.

  In the Dark & Cold

  Science says that dark is the absence of light.

  On Alfenwehr, darkness was a physical thing that hated.

  In the bathroom a scream sounded that suddenly ended in a bubbling and gargling noise and lewd crunching sounds. Daniels' boots sat in the snow in front of the unisex bathroom door, steam coming from the dampness left by Daniels' feet before he'd been yanked clear out of them and into the darkness of the bathroom. The crunching went on as Carter and I screamed. The lizard was hammering on the panic and flee buttons as hard as it could, primal terror overriding everything else.

  "RUN!" Carter yelled, his eyes bulging in the dim light from my flashlight.

  I whirled around and ran for the stairs, slipping in the snow as I scrabbled for purchase on the slick tiled floor under the snow. It wasn't the careful steps through the snow that experience had taught me, but rather a panicky floundering as I fought to get through the open doors of Titty Territory and to the stairwell door. I ripped open the door, completely ignoring the wind that shrieked around me, and charged up the stairs. I could hear footsteps hammering after me and ran even faster, panic filling me. The lizard and I were both sure that the thing that had snatched Daniels up was what was behind me.

  Both of us were still screaming as we rounded the landing and ran for the door that opened up into the hallway of the second floor. Ice shattered under my boots as I took the steps two at a time, running as fast as I could, and slammed into the bar that opened the door, crashing the door open to bounce off the far wall. I whipped out my hand, grabbing the doorjam, my momentum swinging me around, and I put a shoulder into the twin double doors, trying to turn so I could head into the First Platoon Area.

  White hands with blackened talons...

  "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck..." Carter was yelling, a steady mantra.

  We got to the door and I stopped myself before I tried to just charge through the double doors that led into the platoon area, instead stopping and hammering on the door hard enough to shake them.

  "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!" I screamed.

  Carter smashed into the door with me, hammering on the door.

  "OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN!" He shouted.

  The locks clicked and we threw the door open, running to the far side and spinning around to stare at the door, which was open to the large room where people hung out, smoked cigarettes, and drank coffee while they waited for whatever job the NCO's decided to send everyone out on.

  "For fuck's sake, close the goddamn door!" Carter yelled.

  "What?" Nagle asked, shutting the doors and locking them.

  "Where's Daniels?" Lewis asked from where he was sitting on the mattress.

  "He's fucking gone!" I screamed, snatching up one of the fire axes and turning around to face the closed doors.

  "Tandy! Tandy got him!" Carter yelled, looking around for a second and grabbing up another axe before moving up next to me.

  "Bullshit, Tandy isn't fucking real." Lewis said scornfully.

  "Tell Tandy that!" Carter yelled.

  "Daniels sure as fuck just found out he's real!" I yelled at him.

  "Boys, what happened?" Nancy asked, moving up to me and cupping my cheek.

  "We went down to check the CQ Area." I told her.

  "And then?" She asked, moving over to Carter and resting her hand on his cheek gently, her other hand coming to rest over his heart. "What happened then."

  "We saw that the avalanches are pushing snow into the CQ Area, had ripped apart the outside doors."

  Nancy stepped between us, putting one hand on Carter's arm and the other on mine. "How bad is it?"

  "Bad. The snow is like waist high at the doors, but not much on the main part of the room." Carter said, visibly starting to relax.

  "Then what did you do?" Nancy asked.

  "We went to check behind the CQ desk for the first aid kit." I blurted. "Daniels moved in front of the unisex bathroom door."

  "All right. Then what?" Nancy asked gently. She was softly rubbing my arm.

  "That's when Tandy lunged out of the bathroom and grabbed him right out of his fucking boots!" Carter said. "Pulled him right out of his boots and into the bathroom."

  "He screamed for a second then we heard Tandy bite him. It sounded like someone biting into an apple." I said. The shaking had stopped, and the lizard was easing off the buttons.

  "It's that other guy fucking with us, there's no such thing as Tandy. It's just a bullshit story to scare 'cruits." Lewis said.

  "YOU DIDN'T SEE IT!" Carter screamed. "No way that was the psycho!"

  "You didn't see those hands!" I screamed at him. "Nothing human has hands like that!"

  "Calm down, boys." Nagle said softly. "Are you sure Daniels is dead?"

  "What do you think, Nancy?" I asked, "Tandy grabbed him!"

  "We gotta check. We have to make sure." Nagle said, looking around. "We need to find out if he's dead."

  "He's fucking gone." I spat. Carter nodded.

  "We don't know that." Nagle said slowly, "We need to check and make sure."

  "Then you're doing it by yourself." Carter snarled, "Tandy's out there, I'm staying right fucking here, and there's nothing you can say to make me go."

  "I'm telling you, Nancy, people don't survive when their screams stop like that." I told her. "He's out there in the cold and snow. The winter got let into the barracks, and now he's stalking us."

  Nagle looked at me, her eyes pleading. "Ant..."

  "I'll go." I said, and then sighed, turning to Carter. "He's going to kill us all sooner or later, Carter, and even if he doesn't, we've got someone else to worry about."

  "Don't care. I'm not going down there." Carter answered.

  I nodded to him, understanding perfectly why he didn't want to go down there. Rumor said that Tandy was after the First Twenty, those of us who had been there when he'd vanished from the bathroom before the barracks burned down.

  "Ant, I can't go down there alone." Nagle pleaded.

  I sighed, setting down the axe. "I've got your back, babe."

  Hernandez stared at us for a long moment, his sense of duty warring with his fear of what might be out there. He glanced at our wounded, looked at my face, then stared at the door for a long time, and I knew that he was thinking about was out there in the darkness, wind, snow, and cold. He'd heard the stories of Tandy, he'd been in the unit long enough to hear the stories.

  "Fuck, I'm short too." He complained, "I'm a triple digit midget on the ETS express."

  "Stay here." Nagle said, shaking herself. "You and Carter need to guard the wounded in case the psycho tries to kill them." She pointed at the axe on the table. "If he breaks in, use those on him; don't stop until he's in at least four different pieces."

  Hernandez and Carter nodded as I moved up to the doors. I w
aited for a few moments until Nagle moved up and put her hand on the handle to the door.

  "Ready, Ant?" She asked, smiling a wan smile at me.

  "Always ready for you, baby." I told her, and she smiled as she opened the doors. Outside the footprints we'd left were already gone, swept away by the snow and wind. The only light was from our flashlights, and the snow seemed to just absorb it rather than reflect it, banishing what feeble light we had into darkness. Behind us, the doors shut with a whisper and we heard the metallic click of the lock, and the scraping sound I knew was someone putting a chair on the handle to keep someone from opening it if they managed to unlock it.

  "He's going to kill us, you know?" Nagle said, looking around and panning her flashlight around.

  "I can take him unless he runs again." I said, "He got lucky in the stairwell."

  We started slogging through the snow in the room, heading toward the stairwell door, and she smiled at me, looking sad.

  "We let the snow in, we let winter in," She told me, pulling open the door. "When that happened, we let Tandy in." She finished as we moved into the stairwell. "He's going to kill all of us."

  "Don't talk like that, honey." I told her as I started down.

  The stairs were empty, full of windblown snow, and I winced when I inhaled the cold air and my teeth erupted into pain. I squinted, trying to see the stairs through the snowflakes, but they stayed blurry.

  "What's wrong, Ant?" Nagle asked, seeing me squint and cock my head.

  "Nothing. Fucking snow makes it hard to see." I said, and she grabbed my arm, pulling me around to face her. She shined her light in my face.

  "Your eyes are fine." She reassured me. "Com'on, maybe we can save Daniels."

  I nodded, and we hurried down the steps, pushing open the door to the first floor hallway. She stopped when she saw how the snow had pushed its way into the building, shattering the glass panels on either side of the outside doors, ripping loose and mangling the two sets of doors that had acted as an airlock.

  There was another rumble, and the building groaned again, shivering under my boots. The snowpack that had forced its way through the doors was moving forward a couple of hand spans deeper into the room. The NORAD clock fell off the wall behind the almost snow covered desk.

  "Jesus." Nagle breathed, a plume of warm steam coming out of her mouth.

  "Has left the building." I finished.

  The only sound was the wind shrieking through the hallways and the crunching of the snow under our boots as we made our way toward the unisex bathroom door. Daniels' boots were still in front of the door, no longer steaming. Nagle led the way, shining her flashlight on the snow, and stopped in front of the door, waving me over.

  Fear clenching my stomach I stopped next to her and looked into the bathroom.

  No Tandy.

  Nagle and I moved into the bathroom, the lizard whipping his head around wildly to take in everything and his hands on the panic buttons. We looked around the corner where the sinks, mirrors, and toilet stalls were, Nagle's flashlight picking up the small broken window high in the far wall that was only six inches high and maybe a foot and a half wide, a window that hadn't been in the design when Tandy had vanished from the bathroom. A light dusting of snow covered the tiles, but the door was wedged open by the packed snow that had been forced into the CQ Area.

  The bathroom was completely empty.

  No tracks, no blood, no bodies.

  Only Daniels' flashlight shining up at the ceiling under the window.

  "Fuck." Nagle breathed.

  "Let's go." I said, turning around. We went back out into the CQ Area, and I checked behind the counter, coming up empty for the first aid kit. Nagle kept flashing her light around the room, often pausing on the open doors of the rec room, the dayroom, the two bathroom doors (male and female), and the open dark maw of the unisex bathroom. I opened the door to the Retention NCO's office that was in the little CQ office, shining my flashlight around and finding nothing. I shut the door, not bothering to lock it, then began pulling open the drawers and looking through them, hoping to find field dressings or something that someone had tossed in there, but once again coming up empty.

  I looked up, opening my mouth to tell her we were out of luck, that I couldn't find the first aid kit.

  Behind Nagle a dark form stood, and when I passed the flashlight onto him, I could see his one good eye, bloodshot, staring at Nagle.

  Nagle, who was right in front of him, maybe two feet away.

  Behind him, footprints disappeared into the first floor hallway.

  He brought the bayonet up as I started to move, yanking my knife free from my belt.

  "Ant?" She asked as I put one hand out to vault over the CQ counter.

  The knife came down.

  The lizard hissed and punched the button.

  "Ant?"

  YOU CAN’T KILL ME!

  No plan survives contact with the enemy.

  That's why they're called the enemy.

  In my mind, I had it all worked out. Vault over the CQ Counter, land on my feet, reach out with one hand and snatch Nagle forward, use the momentum generated by that to get in close, slam the knife into his belly and give it a quarter twist before dragging it out and doing it again. He'd cut me, probably good, but that was rule number one in a knife fight. You gonna get cut, baby. I knew it, he probably didn't.

  I vaulted over the counter smoothly, my knife in one hand, the other hand balancing me as my legs swung up, over the counter, and back down smoothly. I was grinning, knowing that I was about to dump his guts around his feet.

  My feet hit the snow, drove through to the wax on top of the tiles, and went out from under me.

  Fuuuuuuuuu...

  My head bounced off the counter's edge, and everything vanished in a white flash for a split second.

  Nancy Nagle was turning, one arm coming up to protect herself, falling toward me. The knife was still coming down, his forearm slamming into hers and forcing it down. Her scream was loud as she threw a right cross into his chin, snapping his head back and forcing him to stumble back.

  My head hit the snow covered floor and bounced with another white flash. My whole body went tingly and everything went blurry. There was two Nagle's fighting with two killers. All four of them were fuzzy, out of focus, and my legs and arms twitched spasmodically as I tried to get my body to get up, get to my feet.

  Nagle tried to block the overhand knife stroke, but the killer drove her arm down, the blade plunging into her chest, and she screamed again, falling off of the knife. I could see the knife steaming in the cold. Steaming from Nagle's blood coating it.

  Get up get up get up get up get up get up... The little lizard in the back of my skull hammered on the panic button with everything it had.

  Nagle hit the floor and the figure put a boot into her stomach. She screamed again, a choking, high sound of animal agony. ON your FEET! my Father's voice rang in my head, impossible to deny.

  Combat chemicals flooded my system and everything snapped together. I was beyond pain, beyond exhaustion.

  Time to end this.

  I was on my feet, one hand against the counter to keep myself balanced. The knife was in my hand, heavy, but familiar. I thrust myself away from the counter, toward him, the knife back and away from my body.

  He was bending down to grab her.

  ...twisted steel and sex appeal, all the ladies love a killer...

  The knife looped out, around his neck, and I grabbed the top of his parka, pulling his head backward, and the Gerber, my trusted friend, sliced around the front of his neck, biting deep and catching on something for a moment.

  An elbow caught me in the mouth as he suddenly straightened up, sending stars spangling across my vision, making me stumble back against the counter.

  He turned and faced me, standing up straight and holding the bayonet in his fist, point down: standard downward stabbing hold. I could see his bloodshot eye through the hole in the cold weather mas
k, his teeth, missing one of his canines, bared through the little slit in the mask. The part that covers the mouth was hanging down, and I knew it was to let him breathe.

  I was using the counter to hold myself up, everything blurry around me, my head ringing with pain. I needed to vomit, my stomach cramping, and nausea making my head swim. I ignored it all, letting the anger at the killer, at the unit, at my mother, at life, and fear for Nancy, for Bomber, for the pitiful few of us left, all coalesced into one burning mass of pure hatred.

  There was a slash across the throat of his parka, stuffing puffed out of the slash, and the button at the middle of his throat had a bright mark where my blade had scored across it. I'd missed the kill, forgetting to take into account the thick cold weather gear.

  ...born to fight...

  The hatred warmed me, gave me strength, and let me push the pain away.

  ...trained to kill...

  Nancy was crawling away, leaving a black trail in the snow, her flashlight and mine still illuminating the snow filled room around us.

  ...willing to die...

  She wasn't whimpering, wasn't crying, just slowly crawling across the snow.

  ...but never will...

  Nancy was crawling across the snow, reduced to nothing more than an animal trying to escape the pain. Reduced to training hammered in her to keep moving, not to lay down and die, but to keep going.

  You killed Bomber....

  It was tough standing up on my feet, since I couldn't feel my legs, but rage and hatred began to drive me as the lizard hissed in rage. Fuck what I was taught; screw the whole "keep your cool" mantra that was pounded into me by my Father, by the Drill Instructors, by my own personal code.

  You killed Nancy...

  Primal rage could do a lot.

  I shook my head, reminding myself I'd taken harder hits at the Green Goose Club in Fulda, that this asshole didn't have anything on me. I was made of twisted steel and sex appeal. All the ladies love a killer.

  He came at me, knife brought back over his head, trying to rush me against the counter and use his large size and bulk to pin me and then finish me off at his leisure with the bayonet...