Rule of Four (Damned of the 2/19th Novella)

Trust

"Trust is a tough thing to come by these days."
MacReady, The Thing (1982)

The door shuddered as whoever, whatever, was on the other side hammered on it again.

"Come on, guys, it's cold out here and I think something's after me," The Staff Sergeant said. Frost was spreading at the bottom of my door.

"Don't. Open. The door," I said quietly, looking at the two living men in my room. The Private shook his head, cradling his arm. The Specialist had backed up against my bunk beds, his face gone even paler.

"I know you're in there. Open the door," The Staff Sergeant commanded. The tendrils reached further, hit the edge of the grease-paint on the floor, and began reaching out to the left and right of it, looking for any gap in the paint.

A glance at both men showed them staring, wide eyed, at the opening to the hallway that led to my door. Neither one of them looked interested in opening the door for whatever was out there.

"Sergeant, open this door! That's a direct order!" The Staff Sergeant bellowed.

"GET FUCKED!" I yelled back.

Frost glimmered on my door, but evaporated away without thickening up.

"LET ME IN!" The voice roared.

It lacked the power of the previous years and I glanced at the runes I'd drawn on the wall lockers, the door, the floor, and the ceiling.

Footsteps moved away from my door and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I moved over to the Private, dragging the chair behind me. I sat down, opened up the medical kit, and stared at his face. His cheeks had black, dead skin, surrounded by waxy looking gray skin, before going to the rich brown of his normal skin. The tip of his nose was black, the flesh peeling off it toward the rest of his nose. His earlobes were finished, black and shriveled looking, his ears gray. More thank likely he'd lose his earlobes, be like me and have scars on his cheeks. If the skin at the end of his nose split to reveal the cartilage I'd need to excise it away like Nancy and Cromwell had done for me.

"Let me see your arm," I told him. He lifted it up and I saw that the cloth looked like rotted cheesecloth, abraded through in places. I sliced through his sleeve with my Gerber, the razor honed steel parting the cloth with a whisper.

The skin was damaged, like he'd been grazed by a sand blaster. Some places it was swollen, others the first few layers were skinned away, but the bad part was where there had been little flesh between his skin and the bone of his forearm.

it was warming up, blood starting to ooze from the blackened skin. I could see yellow fat deposits, the striations in the muscle tissue.

"You want we learned in basic or you want..."

"The moss," The Private interrupted me. "Whatever white people voodoo shit those markings are, I'll fucking take it."

"Moss it is," I told him, pulling off a chunk and stretching it out. Blood was starting to coat the wound. I scooped out the salve and smeared it on the wound.

"What is that?" He asked me.

"I don't know. A witch made it for me," I told him honestly.

"Tingles," He said. "A witch, seriously?"

"The big girl, with the purple eyes, your crew's medic, right?" The Specialist asked, slurring slightly as he tried to keep from moving his mouth too much.

"Yeah," I told him. I stuck the moss to the Private's arm, then started winding the runed gauze around his arm.

"She's a witch?" The Specialist asked.