Third Person - Complete

Gearing Up

Roberts and Lewis followed the one eyed Sergeant into the building, looking at the massive structure. There were two rectangular lawns, with a door in the middle of the building connected to the road by a path separating them. The lawns had short white picket fences around the. Up by the walk that led into where everyone was heading toward there was a wide path that led to steps and an alcove. The path had a set of short, quasi-decorative street lamps at the street end. The hug building was concrete, four rows of windows. Lewis counted, twenty five windows, then what looked like stairwell windows, then twenty-five more windows, and finally a stairwell at the far end. The end they were going to had what looked like double doors with glass on either side, the next three stories all had windows for what looked like an office.

She did the math real quick, coming up with a hundred rooms a floor, four floors, for a total of four hundred rooms.

Lewis wondered how many units the big building housed. Even with two man rooms, that meant nearly a thousand people.

"Wondering how many of us are here?" The taller blonde, Sawmoth, asked Lewis.

"Yes, um," Lewis started.

The woman gave a rueful chuckle. "Specialist, for my sins. Yeah, barracks could be home to twelve-hundred people easy, sixteen hundred if they went to four man rooms," She shrugged, blowing smoke from her cigarette. "There's two-hundred and ninety of us right now. We'll probably lose another ten due to injuries in the next week. Nobody rooms alone, CO's orders."

Lewis nodded.

"That means the majority of that the rooms are empty," Sawmoth said. "Sounds better than it is. The entire fourth floor is abandoned except a handful of officers. We're supposed to get a platoon of Rangers this summer but we'll see."

Sawmoth paused to roll the cherry off her cigarette and Lewis kept walking, following the people in front of her.

The double doors, with glass on either side of them, were just the first of two sets, both of them needing pulled outward.

Roberts noticed the heat as soon as he went through the second set, just glad to be out of the rain.

"Gimme my poncho back," Patch growled at Lewis.

Lewis quickly pulled it off, rolling it up and handing to the big NCO.

"Mine too," The black haired short girl said, holding her hand out to Roberts, who quickly pulled it off, rolling it up.

The Marine was silently handing the poncho to Sawmoth, who'd just come in.

"You'll be at Atlas, Marine," Sawmoth told him. "I like you. You do good in combat, maybe I'll let you fuck Groom."

The Marine blushed as the black haired girl showed the blonde Sawmoth. "Don't make me slap your milk jugs off, whore."

Both of them walked away laughing, heading through a set of double doors. Beside the doors was a training bra hanging on a sign that read: YOU MUST BE THIS BIG TO BE IN THIS HALL! TITTY TERRITORY

"You'll be living there," The Texan told Lewis, who looked down then flushed. The Texan laughed. "Aw, don't be worrying none, for a ravening pack of she-wolves, they're OK people. You'll be fine, Lewis."

The soldiers that had been in the van were filing in.

"All right!" Patch yelled. "Once everyone's in here, we'll head down to the CO's office, he'll polish your ass about how great it is here, then we'll start drawing gear. Line up, lowest ranking first."

"Why?" A Captain asked.

"Enlisted draw gear first. Officers and NCO's will be getting a second briefing from the Colonel, mainly about how this is not like any command you will have previously had. Officers have to meet with S-2 before the enlisted," Patch said. He looked at the four men standing behind the chest high counter that had three phones sitting on it. "There's too many  to log normally. Call down to supply, we managed to snag forty-three, so we'll need complete kits for all of them."