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

Wound Shock (Updated 12-12-14)

        Kong vanished into the dust behind us as we kept heading down the road. Each bunker was a hundred and fifty feet wide, had up to fifty feet of dirt piled on each side, and had a minimum of two hundred feet between them. That kind of distance stacked up. My legs throbbed with pain as the four of us moved deeper into the blast zone. Out of habit I checked my radiation detection pen, but everything was still clear.

        I was worried that the explosions might have torn apart the nuclear artillery shells and added enriched, weapon's grade radioactive material in the MX-805 W-78 eight inch (203mm) weapons. That would have spiked the radiation, and contaminated hundreds of square miles of Western Germany just as well as if we'd dusted the entire region.

        The others glanced at me when I slid the detector back into the pen-slot of my pocket and I smiled and shook my head. They all looked relieved, and we kept moving into the wind whipped dust that howled around with us. Once in awhile hot coals or burning debris was whipped by us by the storm's wind sheer, and once Foster smacked his arm to put out the burning debris that had lodged on his BDU sleeve.

        Behind us, from somewhere, there was another massive explosion, the shockwave slapping at us at virtually the same time as we heard the shattering detonation. I wondered if it was more artillery rounds, or something else.

        We found Five Ton 62 next. It was on its side, and I could tell by the crushed cab and the shattered ribs that normally held up the cloth bed cover that it had rolled at least once. I signalled for the others to stop, and looked in the back.

        And promptly projectile vomited between my boots.

        I wiped off my mouth and stepped in, shifting my boot back and forth to get the spilled intestines out of my way. At least three people had been disemboweled. Probably from the shattered ribbing. Limbs were bent wrong, torsos crushed, backs broken, and in some case, body parts severed.

        The first four I checked were dead. I took the dog tag from each of them and tried to ignore the images going through my head of how they were when they were alive. I was numb now, beyond even feeling anything, and part of me felt ashamed that I was glad that my fellow soldiers were nothing more than meat at that moment.

        I knew that they'd be back in my nightmares for years to come. I was already very aware of the open and staring eyes of the people who had been alive and joking with me less than a few hours before. The empty eye sockets in Grady's face, blood having run from the empty sockets and down the side of his face, would probably be starring for several nights.

        PV2 Baker, from Cromwell's squad, was alive, but unconscious. Her jaw was broken, her chin badly abraded from where her helmet had been torn free, and I pushed aside a dead man's thigh to get better access to her. The only reason she had been downrange is that she had had her ovaries removed last year. Her nose was bleeding freely, she was bleeding from both ears freely, and her uniform was soaked with blood. There was so much blood from the dead I couldn't tell what was hers and what was theirs.

        There was just so much blood.

        I sliced off her uniform and underwear, not caring that I was exposing her to the world. She had blood leaking from her vagina and I checked her underwear to see if for some reason she was on her period, forgetting for a moment that her ovaries were gone.

        Her abdomen wasn't rigid, and I hoped that whatever internal injuries she had weren't extensive. I pulled the Sharpie pen from my pocket, wrote the date, time, her pulse, her blood type (from her dogtag), and the fact she was unconscious and I couldn't find any additional injuries across her breasts.