Lightning Strike (Damned of the 2/19th Short Story) - FINISHED

A Stroke of Bad Luck (Updated 12-12-14)

        I was urinating when it happened. One moment I was crouched in the bushes, my pants around my ankles, relieving my over-full bladder into the weeds behind the vehicle shed, the next I was flat on my back with my ears ringing. There was a high pitched ringing in my ears, and I was staring up at the cloud filled sky, raindrops hitting my face. My XM-16 was digging into my back, and I was aware that I hadn't stopped urinating even though I was sprawled out on my back.

        Debris started falling, the smaller stuff, pebbles and small chunks of concrete pattering around me. Once piece bounced off my nose, only the size of a dime, but enough to make my eyes water. Another chunk, this one the size of a half dollar or so, bounced off my Kevlar helmet.

        Get up get up Get Up!

        The explosion echoed off of something, loud enough to make my ringing ears pop as I rolled over and pushed myself up, quickly yanking my BDU pants up. I just strapped down the belt instead of taking the time to button up the fly and the waist, turning to look downrange where the majority of the crew was.

        A huge cloud, shaped like a mushroom, was rising from the middle of the site. FSTS-317 was a massive ammunition dump, full of conventional, chemical, and nuclear weaponry in clear defiance of treaties. I cross referenced where the cloud was with my mental map of the sight, and my blood ran cold.

        Row Two, middle. The boys had been down there, pulling unstable ammunition out of Bunker-45 so they could destroy it in the blast pit, readying the tactical nuclear artillery rounds for storage, and preparing to put six hundred 11" MRLS rocket pods into Bunker 42.

        And that's where the cloud was rising from.

        I ignored the urine dribbling down my leg as I ran for the vehicle storage shed where I had been doing PMCS (Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services) on the crappy vehicles the military had saddled us with. I needed to get under cover, and fast. Not to avoid the rain, but for what was going to come next as soon as the heavier pieces expended the amount of kinetic energy.

        What goes up, must come down.

        PFC Cromwell was lying sprawled out in the road, face down, and I ran toward her, my LBE and gear jingling with each step. I bent forward and scooped up my aid bag as I passed the truck I had been PMCSing. We didn't have much time, and my brain was already counting off flight time seconds.

        By the time I got to the other female soldier, she was rolling over and groaning, pushing herself up. Her helmet had fallen off and her short brown hair was in disarray. She had blood running from her left ear, and her nose was bleeding.

        "Are you injured?" I shouted. If she was anything like me, her hearing was almost gone.

        The other woman shook her head. "Don't think so?" She sounded unsure.

        "Get up, we gotta move." I yelled at her, grabbing the back of her LBE and yanking her to her feet.

        I could hear whistling and my blood ran cold.

        "Move, move, move!" I yelled, dragging her behind me. She was still groggy from being knocked face first into the dirt road by the blast wave.

        Less than five feet away from me the ground exploded, dirt fountaining up, but there was no accompanying explosion. We staggered by and I could see an artillery shell bottom down in the three foot wide crater.

        "INCOMING!" I yelled, slinging her toward the crater made by the artillery shell. I wouldn't be much help, but it was better than standing out in the open. Law of averages said that the chances of another round landing in the same spot were extremely low.