Cold Hatred (Book 2 & 3 of the Damned of the 2/19th) -Updated and Rewritten

Cold Hatred Part: 3

"Four things were my constant companions in Alfenwehr.

Fear. Rage. Pain. Hatred. They kept me going, kept me on my

feet, and kept me warm. Survival may not be living to

some people, but when it was that or death...

We chose survival. At all costs."

Chapter Three

2/19th Special Weapons Group

Restricted Area, Western Germany

Late Winter- January 1986

Day 9 of Repairs

Day 1 of the Second Incident

Night

I stood there for a moment, thinking, while Nancy picked up the standard issue bayonet and played with it. Bomber was busy clipping the K-Bar to the back of his belt, hiding it under his BDU top, his face serious. Outside the door little feet ran by, heading toward the front end of the barracks, and a little girl's giggle drifted over to us.

"All right, I'm going to go down and we need to figure out how to ask the LT to give us a list of people in the barracks," I told them. "We'll compare it to the people in the barracks, and see who wasn't in formation."

"I'll go with you, I'll claim I'll need the names to make a chart to keep track of the inspections I do." Nancy told me, standing up and putting the bayonet under her BDU top at her back. I knew she was hiding it the same place I was tucking my Gerber and John had hid his K-Bar.

"Good idea," I said.

"I'll go too. I'm not really into staying in here by myself," John told us. As if to punctuate his words, a low pain filled moan drifted out of the dark bathroom. He shivered at the sound. "God, I hate this place."

"It hates us too," I reminded him, heading for the door. "The whole damn mountain hates us and wants us dead."

Above us was the sound of boots crashing to the floor in the room above us and I flinched slightly. The room was empty, except for the bare bones barracks furniture.

"It's getting worse," Nancy said.

The barracks always made noises like that. The explanations ranged from bad plumbing and heating to the barracks was haunted to the mountain was haunted. Personally, I believed that the mountain in general and the barracks in particular hated everything living and wanted it dead.

Which was why it had brought back Tandy.

Private Tandy had went into the bathroom one evening and never come out. The bathroom had one door in or out and no windows, and the door had been in full view of over a dozen people for the entire time between Tandy entering the bathroom and someone bringing up he'd been in there for over an hour. Only his shaving kit and dogtags had been found. The next spring his dead body had appeared, over five miles from the barracks. The Army had officially listed his cause of death as exposure, and claimed that the melting snowpack had carried him 1200 vertical feet as well as bringing him all the way around the mountain.

Except as soon as the snow had fallen in September of this very winter, he'd shown back up. Very much kind of alive. Very much malevolent. He'd killed four people that we knew of. Despite the Army's claims that those people died from "misadventure", we sure as hell knew that something had first taken Tandy, then possessed him and sent him to torment and kill us.

We moved into the hallway, Bomber locking the door behind us. Our breath steamed out in front of us as the three of us moved down the passage, pushing through the double doors that divided the block long hallway into halves.