Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

Trapped

War Fighter Tunnels
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, Western Germany
06 January, 1988
2000 Hours

I was running when I reached the egg. Sergeant Basset, SPC Yoder, PFC Covington, and SPC Rankin were clustered over by one of the internal monitor terminals; Groom, Beach, and the female Harris were clustered up talking by the entrance to the armory and equipment section access.

They all turned and looked at me as I came to a stop and whirled around, ducking down behind one of the ballistic defense panels.

Nagle '86 was scratched into the back of a panel to the side of a detailed penis and testicles, the metal slightly rusted and reminding me of dried blood. I shuddered, staring down the hallway.

Someone laughed as I slowly stood up. I realized I had my .45 in my hand and angrily jammed it into the holster, turning around to face the two groups of soldiers.

"Something funny?" I asked, glaring. I glanced down, the front of my uniform covered in drying blood, looking just darker than it should in the yellow lights of the egg.

Rankin locked eyes with me for a long moment, but like everyone but Groom, she looked away.

"That's what I thought," I said, moving over to the terminal. It had gone into idle lockdown, but a tap on the spacebar brought it back up, demanding my password. I tapped in rapidly on the 10-key pad on the right of the keyboard, a 12-digit code that I'd memorized over a year ago.

Part of my brain noticed that Yoder had tried, again, to get a look at the code.

The best way for them to get my code was each of them remembering one number and what place that number was.

Which is why I kept rotating through the Atlas bunker door codes. All of them memorized.

"What's going on, Heather," Groom asked, coming up to the opposite side of the console and resting her hands on it. She pitched her voice low as she leaned forward. "What's wrong, Squeaker?"

"We got problems," I told her. I punched in the door status. They hadn't changed. Remember what I'd originally intended on doing, I navigated the menu till I found what I knew had to be in there. "Vitamin-D lights" were right there in the startup section. I set them on 24 hour on cycle in the egg and to turn on with the lights in the facility when the lights were manually activated.

"How bad?" She asked when I was done.

"The winter's let in at two of the tunnels so far," I told her bluntly. I nodded at the motor-pool access. "I'm going to check that one, then the barracks, then the sally port egress."

"Want me to go with?" She asked.

I darted my eyes at Basset and her cabal of rancid twats. "No, stay here."

She caught the glance and nodded slowly. Something about them had felt off for the last couple of weeks.

Like they were contaminated, unclean, like some kind of sickness had touched them. Part of me wondered if it was paranoia. I'd done medical checks on them, bloodwork, everything. Except their injuries, there wasn't anything I could put my finger on.

But part of me wondered.

"The '16 is under the bed, ammo is in the med-bag, just in case," I told her, then straightened up. "I'll be back."

I stared at the motorpool tunnel, screwed my courage to the sticking place, and headed into the tunnel. The tunnel was cold, and halfway down I could smell the stench of old blood, cooked human flesh, and the rest of the smells I remembered from the year before.