small still quiet
"...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.
small still quiet
"...elastic on my bra band has stretched again. I gotta tighten the tourniquet again..."
small still quiet
"...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.
small still quiet
"...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...."
small still quiet
"...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..."
small still quiet
"...going to loosen your tourniquet, Franky. Looks like the elastic's at max stretch..."
small still quiet
"...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..."
small still quiet
"...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..."
small still quiet
"...forward, just like that. It'll only take a second," ...hissssss... "There, can you breathe better, Franky? Let me get you straightened back up..."
small still quiet
"...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..."
small still quiet
"Franky?"
small still quiet
"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.
small still quiet
"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...
"I'm awake," I said, opening my eyes and licking my lips. I could see the fallen rounds in front of me through the shattered windshield. "Thirsty."
I heard a canteen glug and she whetted my lips with a cravat. "You went out on me, Franky," she told me.
"How's the smoke?" I asked her.
There was quiet for a moment. "It's out."
"How many HCMT's we thrown?" I asked.
"Just one," She said.
"Bottom of the other bandoleer. I pack mirrored loads," I told her.
"OK, getting it," She told me.
Combat Talon roared by, heading north to south, maybe a hundred meters off the deck. If Combat Talon was up, that meant someone was running protocols. I wasn't sure who's protocols though. There was 7th Army, V Corps, Chemical Corps, III COSCOM, 15th Ordnance Battalion, then 2/19th Group, then Mag Operations, then it could be Mag Platoon or my protocols that Bomber, Foster and I had designed, or the Captain could be running his own.
Or worse, 5/19 Special Weapons Group could be running their own out of date and completely inappropriate protocols.
"Franky!" Carol's voice yanked me out of the logic chain the lizard was running.
"On line on time," I muttered.
"It's out, by the trailer again," She told me.
"Good," I told her. "OK, get my mask carrier."
"Why?" She asked me.
"Just do it," I told her. "And I need my canteen. I need water. I'm dehydrated from blood loss."
"All right," She said. I heard her fumble. "What first?"
"Gimme the canteen. I'm gonna drink the last of my water while you get out the autoinjectors from the back of my carrier," I told her.
She handed me the canteen and I fumbled at to unscrew it. My vision was going, my heart pounding, hard to breathe. Felt like a steel band across my chest.
I needed her to release the pressure again.
"OK, got it out," she said.
"Before we do this, you need to release the pressure in my chest," I told her. "Let me drink the water first. I need my body to convert it to plasma before my blood gets too fucked up."
"I'm not sure that's how it works, Franky," She told me.
"That's how it's gonna work and if my body don't like it can just fucking rough it," I told her. I guzzled down about half the water in my canteen then capped it. "All right, let's do the air release first."
She was quiet for a second, undoing the knots in the strap holding me upright in the seat.
"Why aren't you screaming, Franky?" She asked me. "Doesn't it hurt?"
"It hurts. I'm just ignoring it," I told her.
"Franky, pain doesn't work that way," she said. I felt the first strap go slack.
"The body is a meat machine ruled by the mind. It does what you tell it to. If you have the will, have the strength, you run the body," I told her. "Pain is weakness leaving the body and it can be controlled. I learned to control it when I was a kid and I've only gotten better at it."
"Franky," she said softly. "That doesn't sound right to me."
The other strap went slag and my muscles took the slack. My core muscles tensed, some trying to contract and tighten with muscle severed or abraded by the Plexiglass impaling me through the torso. The pain signals flared but the lizard just shunted them off.
I leaned forward slightly, giving a small groan of pain.
"OK, I can get at it. Christ, you've got blood all around it and your starting to stick to the seat," Carol said. I felt the blade move around, shift slightly, the honed edge slicing the clotted blood around it. "You ready?"
"Do it," I told her.
The blade shifted, sliced at cells around it, sliced the tissues, but the needle tip levered against the Plexiglass, pulled away from it, and created enough of a gap for the air to hiss through. The steel band went slack and I inhaled my first deep breath in a while. She moved out from behind me and I leaned back.
She tied the straps back to keep me up while I drank out of my canteen, the concentrated lemon juice I put it in it helping to cut the dry mouth.
"Done," she told me.
I waited a few seconds, then held out my hand. "Give me the injectors."
"Um, Franky, you know what this stuff does, right?" She said.
"Yeah," I told her. "Field Warfare, Carol. I know what 2PamChloride and atropine do."
"Just checking," She said softly.
I tapped the 2PamChloride autoinjector. "This is to combat organophosphate poisoning. That's most of your Soviet and Siam nerve agents, most modern nerve and blood stuff. It has other uses, but if you use it when you aren't poisoned it might kill you."
I tapped the smaller injector. "Atropine. You have to take it with the 2PamChloride unless you know what the hell you're doing. It decreses saliva output, stops muscle tremors, interrupts ATP production, among other things."
I held out my hand. "Give me the 151," I told her. She handed it to me and I took a long drink off of the canteen, the booze burning going down.
"Grab one of the MRE's," I told her.
"You're actually hungry?" She asked me.
"No," I told her. "That doesn't matter."
"Got it. Ew, chicken and rice," she said. She tore it open. "Fruit cocktail, peanut butter, apple jelly, chocolate covered brownie," She shook her head. "God, this stuff tastes like garbage."
"Crush the fruit cocktail up. Open the fruit cocktail, break it up, give it to me," I told her.
It took a few minutes for me to eat everything. Most of it had been reduced to flavorful powder and I just gulped it down, washing it down with water and 151.
"Gimme the salt and sugar packets," I told her.
"Ew," she said, watching me eat them and wash it down with water. After that I squeezed the apple jelly directly into my mouth, took a drink of 151, swished it all around in my mouth, and swallowed it. She winced at that. "Why aren't you eating the main meal?"
"I need it all fast," I told her. "Iodine, potassium, sugar, all of it. I don't have time or energy to let my stomach do the rolling digestion bit, I need it to all pass directly into the small intestine as well as be absorbed by my stomach lining."
"I'm not sure it works like that, Franky," Carol said, her voice full of doubt. "I mean, I get it, you're in charge of your body, but I think basic human biology has rules."
"It's that or nothing, Carol. If I had it available, I'd be guzzling down raw animal blood and eating raw meat," I told her. "I don't care how it's supposed to work, this works for me."
She made a doubting noise but didn't say anything else as I slid the smaller injector out, pulling it from the protective casing.
"Blood loss is lowering my blood pressure," I told her. "We don't have an IV to help get my blood pressure up. That means my heart is working harder to pump a diminished capacity of blood through a compromised cardiovascular system."
Carol giggled and I looked at her, ignoring the flare of pain when something ground between the vertebrae in my neck. Combat Talon roared by again, heading south.
"Damn, you look like Frankenstein and you told me you dropped out of High School, but you throw around terms you hear on PBS shows," she giggled.
"Frankenstein's Monster wasn't the lumbering creature depicted in movies," I said, feeling that pet peeve rear its little head. "He was a genius, eloquent and articulate."
I stared her right in the eyes as I slammed the atropine injector into my thigh.
The needle stabbed deep into the muscle, the injector kicked in, and pumped a full chemical warfare load of atropine into the muscle.
"Franky, you didn't," she said.
I held her eyes, nodding as I yanked the needle out.
"Give me my BDU top," I told her. She nodded, biting her lower lip, and handed me the sliced apart top. I put the needle through the flap of the right breast pocket and bent the needle to leave it on there. I took out the Sharpie and handed it to her. "Mark a T on my forehead, put the time on it, then an A and the time."
She nodded, following directions.
"How can you stay so calm?" She asked me.
My heart stuttered, tried to speed up, then slowed.
The lizard watched his monitors closely.
"Training," I told her. I sighed and make a weak motion at the ammunition outside of the forklift. "Part of our training, in a place nicknamed Mad House, is overcoming pain and fear, using it as fuel to keep yourself going. To take it and forge it into part of your arsenal as a living weapon."
"Christ, Franky, that's inhuman," She said softly.
I opened my mouth to reply when I heard it.
"Stillwater, Calhoun, either of you alive?" Foster called out.
"Yes! Oh, God, yes! We're in here!" Carol yelled. "Don't come in, there's mines everywhere."
"Yeah, I kind of noticed," Foster's voice was devoid of any humor. "You guys are trapped, aren't you?"
"Yes! The stacks collapsed and the FASCAMs broke open. There's live mines everywhere! But that's not the big problem!" Carol yelled.
"Let me guess, Stillwater has a mine stuck up his nose, or he's impaled on something, or somehow he's got an entire eight inch FASCAM up his ass," Foster sighed.
"He's impaled on broken Plexiglass," Carol yelled. "It's real bad. Can you help us?"
"No. But I'll go get Henley, he'll know what to do," Foster said. "Stay right there, I'll be back."
"Where else does that asshole think we're gonna go?" I groaned.
"We're gonna get out of here, Franky, just hang on," Carol said, rubbing my leg.
I coughed, tasting blood, and started to shake my head, stopping when the pain between the two vertebrae flared up.
"No, we're not," I told her. I sighed, feeling a gurgle in my lung.
"Why not?" Carol asked, squinting her eyes.
"Because now we have to wait for EOD to clear the mines between us and the door. They can't just blow them in place," I told her.
"Shit," Carol said.
yeah