Traitors (Damned of the 2/19th - Book Five) - Finished

It Just Keeps Getting Worse

2/19th Special Weapons Group Barracks
Restricted Area - Western Germany
Early Winter - 1986
Day: Fifteen

"Open this door right now, you worthless little boy." My mother told me, her voice clipped and dangerous. "Five dry..."

Oh God, she was counting. My legs went warm and then freezing cold.

"Ten wet..." She continued. So far I was up to ten lashings with a wet leather belt.

I stumbled forward, my hand reaching for the door knob. I didn't want another beating, I didn't want to kneel down, my hands flat on the floor, my head bowed, while she brought that thick and cruel notched leather belt onto the flesh of my back, the wet leather cutting into my flesh and spattering me with first water, and then blood if I waited too long and the number got too high.

I'd taken 100 lashes with a wet leather belt more than once.

"Hurry up, you worthless little boy, it's cold out here, and I'll punish you severely for making me wait." My mother told me. "You're in trouble already, you nasty lazy worthless ignorant violent little boy, without making me wait in the cold."

It was that word that stopped me. "cold" My mother would no more admit to cold or heat than she would pass up an opportunity to humiliate or beat me.

I took a step back, pulling my hand back just millimeters before I would have touched the door handle again. My dogtags were chunks of ice against my chest, my chest hurt from breathing in the cold air, and I was losing feeling in my fingers, toes, nose, and what little was left of my earlobes. My hand hurt like the blazes where it was wrapped around the hilt of the knife, the old breaks in the bone feeling like they had been rebroken.

"Aodan. Stillwater. Open this door right this minute!" My mother screamed from the other side of the door.

I whirled around and ran in the darkness, my flashlight jerking across the walls and floors, leaving the door to the CO's office and my mother's voice behind me. I might have been sobbing, and her wordless scream of rage behind me made my knees buckle, causing me to fall against the wall leading to the stairwell. I pulled the door to the stairwell open, ignoring the shriek of the wind and the feel of ice crystals biting on the numbing flesh of my face, and pounded up the stairs as if the Devil himself was on my tail.

When I stumbled into the CQ area everyone turned to look at me. Nagle was looking up from where she was stitching a deep cut on Jefferson's arm, who was staring at me with wide eyes as I fell to my hands and knees. Bomber was by the Day Room, where he was talking to Taggart, smiling and laughing, his laughter cut off as someone or something screamed in the stairwell, a scream full of hatred and rage that didn't sound like anything human.

"Christ, Ant, you all right?" Bomber asked, rushing forward. I was shivering from the cold, from the reaction of a voice that I'd thought I'd put years and thousands of miles behind me, from all the adrenaline, from the raw naked terror.

"Where's the LT and Sergeant Tee?" Jefferson asked. The hostility in his voice was gone, he sounded worried as another shriek sounded just before the door closed behind me and cut it off.

"They're gone." I managed to get out past chattering teeth. "He's down there, He got them."

"What about Carstairs and Durret?" Bomber asked, kneeling down and pulling me to me feet. He glanced down, then shifted over a little. "You all right, Ant?" he whispered, glancing down again. "You pissed yourself." I shook my head and he nodded, willing to let it drop.

"Fuck." I grunted. "I left them down there. Shit." I turned around and reached for the door, yanking it open. "We gotta go get them."

"Stillwater, wait." Nagle said, and I paused, letting the door close again.