Texas Nights - Book 13 of the Damned of the 2/19th

Whispers

Point Alpha-Four
Undisclosed Location - SECRET (OMAHA)
New Mexico, United States of America
27 September, 1991
1300

The sun hammered on me as I did a slow shuffling 360 turn to get everything fixed in my mind. The gears in my mind spun, and I let my neural wiring process everything, using the programming laid down by extensive training and a little bit of genetic lottery.

Cliff walls to the east and west. West cliff approximately 175 feet high. East cliff approximately 150 feet. Sandstone, heavy in mica, silicate, and iron. It had a glittering red look to it, with ocher spread through it.

No wind inside the canyon, estimated wind speed at 0-5 mph hour, going north to south, outside the canyon.

According to my suit the external temperature was at 92 degrees standing in the sunlight.

River to my right. Sandbar on the right, approximately 50 meter wide, extending along the corner for 250m. My brain filled in how the river swept against the soft rock, eroding more on the east side than the west. Approximate river depth of fifteen feet. Hard drop on the east side, slow slope on my side, the west side.

Both bodies were stripped to their underwear. A BDU top was crumpled against a rock. Both looked sunburned, the skin blistered and liquid looking. One was facedown in the water, three feet from the shore. The other was curled up in the sand, a foot or so from the water, one hand in the water.

They'd become delirious from the radiation cooking their brains. Their blood had become toxic, and they'd stripped naked. Radiation induced dehydration kicked in at one point, and all the water in the river, that toxic radioactive water, couldn't quench that thirst.

I moved up on them pulling them away from the water.

They're skin sloughed off in my hands, but I ignored it.

I walked back to Fox-One, opening one of the compartments, and pulled out the shielded body bags. I'd need two. Both bodies had soaked up so many rads the bodies themselves were probably radioactive.

I bagged both bodies dispassionately, refusing to look too deeply.

...it is only meat, no soul or intellect remains, I am merely handling biological waste...

Part of me wondered if we'd be ordered to destroy the remains on site.

I started gathering up the gear, putting it on the shielded Mylar bags.

"Let's go, Fox-One," I said, heading toward the next curve. That would put us less than a thousand meters from the wreck, with only a single switchback between us and the wreck to shield us. It was a hundred meter stretch with a fairly large beach on both sides.

I stopped twice to catch my breath, my hips flaring pain from the backpack, and the suit's monitors were telling me that outside it was bad enough to kill a man in seconds.

There were three dead men on the sand on the west side, two on the far side.

Their flesh was spongy and slid off the bone as I rolled them into the body bags and zipped them up. The ones on the far side would have to stay until we could do an excursion on that side.

I started gathering up gear.

There was a rifle and battle rattle by a shadowed part of the cliff.

"What do you think happened?" Three asked. I knew she was asking one of the people inside the Fox.

"Clear the damn net, Three," I snapped.

The net went silent again.

When I got close I thought I heard something, and I tilted my head so I could hit the button inside my helmet with the point of my chin to turn on my external microphone.