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

Alone

Room 275
15th FSB Barracks
Fort Hood, Texas
CONUS
Saturday
21 December, 1991
2300

I slid the window open, standing in front of it.

"Ma'am, please put on some clothes," AG1 said.

"No," I told him. The snowflakes blew against my skin, stinging slightly, and the wind was cold and cutting. It felt refreshing against my skin. It was dark in my room and outside, the lamp-posts in the quad providing enough illumination for me to see clearly. There was nobody out there, nobody wandering around, but I'd woken up from a nightmare I was back in the barracks on Alfenwehr in the dark and cold again.

"Ma'am, people can see you," he tried.

"Let them," I said, my voice soft. "If they can see me in the darkness, let them."

I didn't care. They were just tits, scarred up and fat, but nothing amazing.

You seen one set of tits you seen them all. Same with any other human body part.

"Ma'am, you're going to catch a chill," He tried again.

"No, I won't," I told him.

He stepped up next to me, looking out the window. "What's wrong, ma'am?"

A long sigh and I told him the truth. "I'm just feeling lonely."

Chuck had left at 2100 back to his own barracks. He had CQ in the morning, which was 24 hours of making sure the barracks was secure and nothing bad went down, as well as answering the phones and buffing the hallway floors, Day Room floor, cleaning out the laundry room.

But you knew that.

It didn't change the fact that I was feeling lonely.

"Sorry," Alpha-Guy-One said. "I'm still here, if it's a help."

I nodded. "It helps," I sighed.

"Still wish you'd put clothes on," he said.

The snow blew in with another gust of wind. "It's my room. I want to be naked. I don't get to be naked enough."

"You feeling OK? A resurge of the the BZ?" He asked me.

Oh, right, he was a 55B, an ammunition specialist. He probably had a lot of training on it.

I shook my head. "No. I've felt like this quite often since Desert Storm."

He just nodded, standing next to me. "I get it. I miss my old friends from my last unit too. They were some great guys."

"More than that," I told him. "I lived with these guys for five long years. We didn't sleep in the male and female rooms, we slept in the common area because it physically hurt to be away from each other."

"Then you PCS'd," he said.

I nodded, watching the snow dance.

"I get it. After you arrive at your new unit you swear you won't make friends, so it doesn't hurt when you have to leave or they leave," he said quietly. "But you do. You don't want to, but you do. Then the pain goes away, and you wonder if there's something wrong with you because you're happy again."

I just nodded, watching the snowflakes dance.

"You bled with those guys, took care of them, for years, so it's probably worse for you," he said. "I'm sorry."

He moved away, back into the darkness of the room.

I stared at the snow for a long time.

"I know they took my knives," I said suddenly. "Captain Jane and Sergeant Prager came in and searched my room while I was drugged out and asleep. Took my weapons."