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

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"...then we went to the county fair together. It was pretty magical to me. I was fifteen at the time, and the midway lights just made everything incredible. I know, I know, it sounds creepy, he was twenty-three at the time, but I'd been chasing him since I'd been about twelve," Carol was telling me, holding my hand and staring at the collapsed pile of ammo in front of us.

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"...elastic on my bra band has stretched again. I gotta tighten the tourniquet again..."

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"...wasn't like most relationships, you know. He wasn't trying to get into my bra or panties, he wanted to hold hands and do the romantic stuff, not the sex stuff," Carol said. She had her brown t-shirt back on, missing her right sleeve, with her Kevlar vest and battle-rattle over that.

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"...wasn't as bad as I thought it would be once I got to Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Two of the girls from my Basic Training went with me, and we were the first women through the course. It wasn't easy at all, especially the full chemical suit part but...."

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"...one of the guys from my class ended up suddenly gone and some of the other guys in class said he'd got selected for special training. Learned later it was that Special Weapons training you guys sometimes get into. He wasn't Field Warfare, he was just Warfare, which is apparently lab work..."

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"...going to loosen your tourniquet, Franky. Looks like the elastic's at max stretch..."

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"...got home everything seemed fine. He knew I wasn't cheating on him because he didn't let me use birth control and he said he had ways of telling if I cheated on him. I hadn't, because I was still madly and crazily in love with him and I wanted everything to work..."

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"...sister had her baby and I kept quiet even though I wanted one so bad my uterus hurt. When she had her second baby it just got worse because my sister needed me to babysit both of her children while she went to work because her husband ran off with..."

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"...forward, just like that. It'll only take a second," ...hissssss... "There, can you breathe better, Franky? Let me get you straightened back up..."

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"...was asleep when we got the activation call through the phone tree. I mean, I didn't even really recognize what it was at first. I asked if my husband was there and was told no, and he'd been telling me that he was at the Armory on weekends and it turns out that he..."

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"Franky?"

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"Franky!"

Pain lashed through my thigh but I let it pass through me, tasted it, embraced it, took it to me like a lover, then reluctantly let it go.

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"Franky!"

It was Carol. Carol was screaming at me.

"FRANKY!"

We were in a bunker full of deployed FASCAM munitions, trapped in a forklift and I was...