Atlas Reloaded - Book Five of the Damned of the 2/19th

Start with a Bang

"When's the last time you ran a fork, Red?" I asked, pulling open the garage door to the forklift shed.

Red shrugged. "Last week. We moved the ammo from 38 back to 52 two days after we moved it in the first place."

I nodded. "All right. We'll grab two of the fucktards from the reserve component to act as groundguides for us and start this shit up."

Red lit a cigarette, leaning against the 55 gallon drums of hydraulic fluid. "Have I told you how much they offend me?"

I let off the chain for the door, letting it rattle the rest of the way on inertia. "Really? What about them?"

"The Company isn't too bad," He said, using the name everyone else had started using for 2/19th. "I mean, even when we referred to it as 'Group' it didn't bother me that bad. Hard fucking job, nasty work conditions, dangerous as fuck. It didn't jangle my nerves."

I nodded at that.

"Then to add insult to injury, they're 5th Group?" Red bitched, slamming the bottom of his fist against the side of the drum next to him. "When I think of Group, I think of SF Groups, man, not a bunch of ate up fat fuck Inactive Reserve faggots."

I nodded. "Yeah, I get it."

"Doesn't it bother you they're part of your regiment?" He asked me, pushing off the barrels and heading toward the idling forklift.

"Hadn't thought about it, but naw. It's more offensive they think they're my fucking equal," I said. I slapped my XM16E3 into the gap behind the seat, adjusted my gear, and climbed in the seat of the little of six thousand pounds max lift forklift. I turned the key that was glued into the ignition, the motor wheezing a little when I cranked it. It caught, stuttered, then fired up. I kneed the gear stick, throwing the automatic into forward, and idled it out of the metal shack. I dropped the forks till they slammed against the dirt, threw it in neutral, then jumped out, walking back to the shed. I waited till Red idled by, then grabbed the chain and pulled the door down.

He wasn't wrong. They offended me for some reason I just couldn't put my finger on. It was more than the "I've been a civilian scumbag for ten years sucking dick behind Burger King but you'll give me the same respect you give someone who's been eating shit in the dirt like you for the last two years!" attitude they'd been spreading around.

More than half of them had never done a day's active duty after AIT. Hell, half of the rest hadn't done more than a weekend a month and two weeks a year, and most of those had been just calling it in from what I'd gathered listening to them babble.

I'd heard one of them brag about how nobody had been required to actually show up since about 1979, that it was just phone tree call in to make sure everyone was there. Well, less bragging and more complaining because they all got deployed to a radiation soaked shit-hole in Europe.

I got back in the fork, lifted the forks, and threw it in forward, inching past Red, and drove around the stack of bags of cement. I reached down and shifted my pistol to keep it from rubbing against my side.

Speaking of useless fuckers...

Two of the guys from the sister unit were waiting on the other side. A fat chick and a guy who looked like he was somehow melting. I'd pulled Cromwell aside and asked her if that guy had suffered jaw cancer or something.

Nope, just didn't have a chin.

I pulled up next to them. "The tractors go by?" I asked, throwing it into neutral.

The guy shrugged and the female gave me the stink-eye.

"Did the semis go by?" I tried again.

Both of them just ignored me.