Yeah, about that...
"FINISH THE FIGHT!" I bellowed out the end of unit motto. My boots squeaked on the tile underneath the snow that hid the unit crest and the very motto I'd bellowed into the killer's face.
He paused for a second and I stepped into him, grabbing his upraised wrist, letting him grab my knife hand's wrist, and drove my forehead into his face. My vision went white, but something crunched. The hand on my wrist weakened and I pushed the blade forward, feeling resistance. I smashed my forehead forward again, feeling another crunch. The blade went in a little further and I twisted my wrist.
He screamed then, and I kneed him in the crotch, the blow losing most of its power from the cold weather gear protecting him. I let go of his wrist and punched him in the hip.
Something landed on my shoulder, sparking bright pain that I quickly ignored.
And then that happened...
A hard yank pulled his hand away from mine, and I grabbed him around the waist like I loved him and was drawing him in for a kiss. He used an empty hand to drive a fist into my side, and our feet tangled up as we went down on the floor. Hard. My head bounced again, but I didn't care. Pain washed through me, everything flashed white, and my body went tingly again.
But it didn't stop me from driving the knife into his side again. It went in too easy, and I knew I missed him, just thrust through the parka and probably along his abs.
Another white flash, and someone was screaming, punching me in the face, each punch causing a white flash in the darkness.
I pulled back my arm, yanking it free of whatever was holding onto it and rolled him, putting him on his back in the snow.
"I got you now, pumpkin," I snarled, spitting blood onto his upraised cold weather mask.
And drove my fist, Gerber fighting knife leading the way, all the way to the hilt into something. This time it has the crackling resistance to it that meant I'd gotten him good. Warmth coated my thumb and index finger as I started twisting the knife, ingrained habits overriding the loss of feeling in my body. I pulled the knife free and drove it in again, twisting hard as someone screamed in agony.
"You like that, pumpkin?"
He threw another weak punch as I stabbed him again, this time in the chest. The punch caught me in the side of the head. I went limp, landing on him, but managed to stab him again in the chest. Another white flash and I knew I was being pushed away, landing on my back in the snow, but the room had gone pitch black. My flashlight was probably broken, and Nancy's had undoubtedly fallen into the snow. I could hear a sobbing noise, and I grabbed out with my other hand, my fingers wrapping around a large boot. I grabbed it and pulled, and heard someone hit the ground with a scream.
"I AIN'T DONE WITH YOU YET!" I bellowed out.
I drove my knife into the leg just above my hand, twisting the blade around and dragging it off to the side. I knew it was slicing through muscle, had felt it grind along the bone. The lizard showed me how his body must be positioned as I pulled the knife free.
Another scream, followed by sobs of agony.
"FINISH THE FIGHT!"
The other boot came back and hit me in the face, invisible in the darkness. Another white flash, but the agony in my face didn't stop me from lashing out with the knife again, feeling the peculiar resistance flesh has, and laughing. It sounded choking, bubbling, from the blood that filled my mouth courtesy of my shattered teeth and mangled lips. Again something hit me in the face and I fell face down into the snow, my arms and legs trembling as the lines went down and the lizard hissed in rage, trying to get me back on my feet again.
Sobbing and moaning, something moved away from me in the darkness, but I couldn't remember why it was important. With a triumphant hiss the lizard managed to get my arms and legs back online, even if I could barely feel them. I managed to push myself onto my back, staring up into the pitch black darkness. I could feel the worn and comfortable hilt of my knife in my hand, and concentrated on that.
The little lizard kept hitting on the panic button to drive me to my feet, but nothing more happened. It shrieked in rage when the lights in its little room went out, leaving it in darkness as all the lines went down.
...I'm outta gas...
I laid there, in the darkness, for a long moment, just staring into the blackness. I kept probing at my broken teeth, and the pain made sparks appear in my vision. I was confused as to where I was, but none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was playing with my teeth with my tongue.
"Ant?" Nagle's voice.
"I'm here, Nancy."
"Ant, honey, I need your help." She said softly.
"Where's your flashlight? I'll help you." I told her, rolling onto my side and pushing myself half up. The first time I lost my balance and went face first into the snow, my body jerking in response to the pain that roared through my head. I might have screamed, I probably screamed. The second time I managed to get partway up, holding myself upright. The back of my shoulder throbbed and every time I tried to move my arm the pain surged up, but it was pushed away by the agony of my head.
"Ant, oh fuck, Ant." She said, and I heard movement in the snow. I whipped my knife around at it. "Dammit, Ant, stop it!" Nancy yelled, and I laid down on my side in the snow, too weak to hold myself up.
Another rumble and I felt the snow push me a few inches in the darkness as another avalanche pushed more snow into the CQ area.
"Ant, I'm going to touch your face, OK?" Nagle said.
"OK." I said, laying there. I felt her gloved fingers glide over my face. I heard her flashlight click several times, but no light illuminated the room.
"Ant..." Her voice was full of pain and sorrow.
"Yeah?" I reached out to touch her face and felt her grab my wrist in the darkness and pull my hand over to her cold cheek.
"Baby, I'm sorry." She told me. "I think you're blind..."
But you can fuck me up pretty bad…
"...I lost my hat..."
Nagle grabbed my wrist and then pulled the knife from my fingers. I could feel warm drops hitting my face, and felt her cold gloved fingers, touching my eyes, the warm throbbing agony of my nose, and then across my lips, which felt overinflated and pulsed in time with my nose. Her hands left me, and I heard a rustling noise, a crunching in the snow, and then her hands were guiding me up to my feet. She threw my arm over her and gasped as I leaned against her. Something large and tubular was pressed into my hand, and my boots crunched in the snow as I tried to get my feet under me.
My head was cold. I'd lost my hat in the fight.
"Come on, baby." She muttered, pulling me forward into the darkness. We turned to my left, and I slammed face first into the doorjamb, screaming, dropping whatever I was holding in my hand and grabbing my face as I went ass first into the cold snow. Sparks filled my vision, chasing one another in the darkness, and my teeth awoke with a roar of agony that made my head swim.
I fell over to the side and vomited in the snow.
Her hands were touching me, rubbing my back, rubbing my high and tight.
I'd lost my hat. The realization made me want to cry.
"Come on, Ant." She muttered, pulling me to my feet when I was done retching into the snow. "I'm sorry, I so sorry." She mumbled, pulling me forward. We paused for a second, and she grabbed my wrist, putting my hand on the banister. "Come on, Ant, I need you." She said. She was breathing hard, and I felt her shiver under my arm.
I tripped and fell face first on the landing, barely getting my arm up in time, and I lay on the landing, my foot kicking as I tried to process the instructions to get up, while my lower body kept trying to walk up the stairs. The lizard kept hammering on its control panel in the dark, keeping me moving, keeping me half crawling forward toward an image in my mind of a warm dry little cave. A place I could curl up until the hurt went away.
So much hurt.
I'd lost my hat.
"I'm hurt bad, Nancy." I groaned, finally pushing myself up. I stayed on all fours, retchin
g into the snow again, every heave filling my vision with bright white and causing a sharp pain in my head that made me want to do it again.
The snow covered ice chilled my knees through my pants, pain radiating from my kneecaps, and the wind whipping around me in the stairwell.
"I need you to get up, Ant, please, I need you." She begged, pulling on me.
"I'm with you, Nagle." I managed to slur, forcing myself to crawl forward in the darkness. "I love you, Nancy."
"I know, Ant." She said from the darkness. Warm drops hit my hand, but she didn't sound like she was crying.
"I lost my hat," I told her.
It was pitch black in the stairwell, and I crawled around until my hands hit the stairs. I fumbled over till I grabbed the railing and used it to pull myself up.
Beneath us a door crashed open, and something screamed long and loud.
The stairwell vibrated as something began walking up the steps with slow, deliberate footfalls. Something that moved in the dark, the snow, and the wind.
One foot in front of the other, keep moving; it was all I could do in the darkness. Retch while you move, don't stop.
The footsteps were slow, deliberate, unhurried.
It got colder in the stairwell, the temperature dropping to the point where it felt like my joints were made of ground glass and my exposed skin had thousands of tiny needles poking into it.
My head was cold. I'd lost my hat.
"Come on, Ant!" Nagle yelled, pulling on me. I stumbled against her and she dragged me through the snow, one arm thrown across her shoulder, into the wind, the snow biting my cheeks. My earlobes shrieked in pain as the wind changed directions. My feet were going in all kinds of different directions. My boots slipping on the tiles had nothing to do with the wax, the ice, or the snow, rather it had to do with the fact they wouldn't follow instructions from my brain.
Behind me, in the darkness, I could hear the staircase thump with each step of whatever dark thing was rising out of the depths of the building. The building where the winter had been let in.
The building where not only a psycho was more than likely holed up and hopefully dying of his wounds, but a building where the cold, the ice, the winter had been allowed in. The building where something with long arms, clad in tattered and dirty BDU's, with white hands that had blackened flesh at the fingers and gleaming white bones for talons, hunted in the cold and dark.
Someone was whimpering in the darkness.
There was a banging, and I flinched back from the flashes of white light and the pain that each impact made, but someone, Nancy, pulled me back, almost pulling me off my feet.
"Open the door, please, you have to hurry!" Nancy called out.
"I lost my hat," I added helpfully.
There was a scraping noise, and something pulled me forward, out of the wind and cold and into warmth. Not a warm room, but not the killing cold that was outside the room.
"Oh fuck, what happened to you two?" Carter asked, and I felt someone grab my arm. I pulled back, snarling, and swung at them.
Fuck you and your cold weather mask...
"He can't see." Nancy half sobbed. "Ant, Ant, relax, it's Carter."
Someone grabbed my arm, and this time I let them drag it over their shoulders. I went limp, my legs drained of energy, my legs disconnected from the rest of me. My brain and the lizard were telling them to walk, to carry me forward, but my legs were ignoring them and taking a break.
"Can you do anything?" Carter asked. I retched again, bringing up nothing but a few strings of saliva and bile, and agony across the front of my mouth.
"In a minute. Get me the first aid pack, Hernandez." She ordered, as I was being sat down in a chair. "Carter, get a cold towel and clean off his face and his head."
"What happened?" Lewis asked.
"I lost my hat," I told him.
"Ant got his ass kicked by Frosty the Snowman, what does it fucking look like?" Nagle snarled.
"Fuck, he's bleeding everywhere." Carter answered, and I felt them move away.
There was rustling noise around me, and I resisted the urge to curl up in a ball and cover the back of my head with my hands.
"Did you find Daniels?" Lewis asked.
"He's fucking gone." Carter and Nagle said at the same time.
"Nagle, you're bleeding!" Hernandez said. "Your face!"
"Shut up. Give me the mirror out of the first aid kit." Nancy snapped.
I felt a hand fumble at my shoulder and I half turned, slapping it away, trying to move away from it.
"Easy, Ant."
Bomber.
"Hey, John. I lost my hat," I said, grabbing his hand with both of mine. I sobbed for a second, holding onto my best friend's hand. "I can't see, man. Tandy's out there and I can't see. My career's over, they're going to throw me out." I began crying, lost and afraid in the darkness that no flashlight would chase away. "I'll be sent home. I'll be blind and my mother will..."
"It'll be all right, Ant, you'll see. Nancy's got us, I'm right here, and you won't let anything happen to either of us." He told me, squeezing my hands. He coughed and then groaned. "We've never let each other down yet."
"You're going to leave, they'll put me out, and Nancy will be all alone." I sobbed."And I lost my hat."
"I ain't leavin', brother." Bomber told me. "If we live, I ain't leavin' the two of you behind." He chuckled. "Someone's gotta make sure the two of you don't get killed."
"Oh God, this hurts." I heard Nancy moan, and I turned to look at her. "Carter, I need your help."
And saw only darkness shot through with bright sparks.
"What's happening? Is Nancy OK?" I asked.
"She's OK, buddy." Bomber told me, squeezing my hand.
"You're bleeding pretty bad." Hernandez said.
"I fucked up, man." I told Bomber. He shushed me and squeezed my hand again. "Nancy's hurt bad and I lost my hat."
"Next year, we go to my parents ranch, get you a new hat, and you can just fuck my little sister." He told me, and we both laughed, his laugh broken up by a cough and a deep groan. "Or we'll stay in Fulda and drink till we're bulletproof."
"You gonna come visit?" I asked.
"No. I'm staying." He told me. Oh, yeah, he'd mentioned that.
"That'll have to work." I heard Nancy say.
My vision swam, and I leaned forward in the chair and began dry heaving, my head threatening to burst each time I tried to bring something up and failed. White flashes and bright sparks kept filling my vision. There was a roaring noise in my ears, which just made things worse. When things swam back into normalcy, as normal as sitting in a chair surrounded by blackness could be, I heard Nagle say "I'm going..." but the rest vanished in a roaring noise. There were footsteps, and Bomber squeezed my hand. I could hear the door open, and then shut and lock.
"Who left?" I asked, holding tight to Bomber's hand and looking around.
"Nancy. She'll be right back." Bomber told me.
"She's going to try to get into the other offices." Lewis sneered. "Stupid bitch is going to get killed."
I tried to stand up, and fell back into the chair when Bomber tugged on my hand. Lewis laughed at me and I felt myself turning red. The anger made my head pound and I was sick again. I could vaguely hear a crashing noise, and the rhythmic slamming just made my head pound harder.
"You aren't so tough now, are you, Stillwater?" Lewis sneered. "Don't like me calling her a bitch? How about if I call her a slut, or maybe a whore? Whatcha gonna do about it?"
While he was talking, I'd finished retching. Something about his tone or maybe the expression I knew he'd have on his face, made something inside of me almost audibly click. The lizard's board lit up as I looked up toward the sound of his voice. Adrenaline flickered down my spine and the pain vanished. Rage and hatred still burning inside me from my fight with the psycho, I lunged to my feet, my hands held out, and crashed into the table where Lewis' voice was coming from. He screamed and I smiled in the darkness, the pai
n in my lips flaring up.
I raised my hand, making a fist, and brought it down as hard as I could, making a guess based on where Lewis' voice was coming from.
My fist hit something soft, while my wrist hit what had to be the splints on his legs.
"Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth. Bitch." I shouted, slamming my fist down on his leg with every word. Lewis screamed long and loud, a hard impact into the side of my head made sparks erupt in my vision and my head swim on the second word, but I ignored it. He went silent on the last word.
Hands grabbed me and pulled me back, pulling me to a chair and pushing me down into it. Lewis groaned loudly and I knew the pain would pull him back into consciousness soon. "Unless you give me my hat back I'm gonna beat your ass!" I screamed.
"You gonna act right, Stillwater?" Hernandez asked.
I nodded and groaned as the motion made my head pound again. I was awash in a sea of agony. Cast adrift, the currents of suffering carrying me from a jagged crest of pain to a deep trough of agony. My mouth throbbed, my nose felt like it had been snapped off, I felt like I was breathing through ground glass, and my shoulder hurt like a bastard.
"Fucking bastard." Lewis moaned.
"Shut up or I'll break your arms." Bomber told him, reaching out and taking my hand.
Lewis kept his mouth shut, and I sat in the darkness for a long time.
The sound of the door shutting and locking pulled me out of my haze of pain.
"Nancy's back." Bomber told me gently.
"Did you get anything?" Carter asked.
"Yeah, no thanks to you two chickenshits." She snarled. "I got the first aid kits out of platoon offices." There was a short pause. "We got lucky, SFC Andrews had the platoon combat lifesaver bags in the locker."
"Thank God." I heard Hernandez breathe.
"I'll check Stillwater first, then take care of the rest of you." Nagle promised.
"Hey, don't you have any painkillers in those bags?" Lewis bitched, "My legs are fucking killing me."
"No, they aren't." Nagle snarled, "Bomber's appendix is killing him. Ant's head might be killing him. Your legs are just fucking broken, now shut the fuck up."
Three Little Snowmen (Damned of the 2/19th) Page 31
