Time/Date Error (Damned of the 2/19th-Book Six) - Done

What Does It Want?

I coughed and spat blood on the floor.

"Holy Mary Mother of God," one said softly.

"Did everyone else see that?" Another asked.

A pair of boots moved in front of my face and the woman squatted in front of me, her legs on either side of my head. She reached down and cradled my chin in her palm, lifting my face to look me in the eyes.

"Sergeant, how badly are you wounded?" She asked.

"Stabbed," I told her. "Chest. Three times." I coughed again and felt blood drool down my chin.

"Do you know what just happened to you?" She asked, her voice slightly timid.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember. Just flashes. Men screaming and dying. Splitting a man's face in half with the axe and wrenching it free in a spray of blood, bone splinters, and brains.

I shook my head. "Just flashes. I was... angry," I said.

"Do you know why your eye is glowing red?" She asked me, touching under my left eye with two fingers. "There's no white to it, is that normal?"

"No to the first, yes to the second," I said, then coughed again. More blood. I tilted my head and spit it on the floor. "Think someone got a piece of me."

"Let's get you up, sit you down," She said, standing up, her fingertips still on my chin. She put light pressure and I struggled to my feet.

"Are we sure this a good idea? That shit wasn't normal," one whispered.

"I don't give a shit. Bremmer and Callington were about to kill me and fuck my corpse," another hissed. "Shut up, Wellton."

"Shit ain't been normal in a month," Another whispered. "If the Army sent some kind of super-soldier here, I'd rather he didn't do to us what it sounded like he was doing to them."

Dizziness washed over me and I groaned, putting one hand on the chair before sitting down.

"Notice now that the killing's over, he's smaller?" Wellton whispered. "Oh, God, you don't think he's going to rape us too?"

"Shut. Up. Bitch," the one who had almost been an unwilling necrophilia participant hissed.

The one in front of me shined a light into my eyes.

"If he's gonna, you think you're gonna stop a bigass monster like he was? I'll just hope he doesn't gut me like a fucking fish, you fight him, you heard how well it turned out for everyone else who wanted to fight," Necro-Girl kept saying.

She snapped off the light. "Your left eye doesn't react to light, is that normal?"

I nodded and coughed again, bringing up more blood. Not as much as before, but enough I could taste it.

"All right, take off your shirt," She said, her voice crisp and dispassionate. I knew that training and having something to do had slotted in between her and the horrors she had endured, creating a steel bulwark that her instructors had hammered into her brain.

Taking off my T-shirt brought out a groan, same as the woolen longjohns top. I was panting by the time she was done.

"Jesus," one of them said.

"If you bitches can't find anything else to do but gossip, start getting a med-pack together or see if you can rustle up some weapons," the one squatting down in front of me said. She reached out and touched my chest. "These stab wounds are mostly healed, just new scars. How old are they?"

"What's today?" I chuckled, then reached down and grabbed my top. In my pocket I found my smokes and a lighter and lit one.

When I looked up and snapped the Zippo closed I saw the raven haired medic was frowning at me.