GWOT Night Terror

[drewkitty]

GWOT Night Terror


It is 2300, 11 PM for those who don't live by a 24 hour clock. It's dark out, "dark as a yard up a hog's ass." The moon is a sliver; this is an important detail.

I am in the trash room of B dock, down the hall from our Security Office. There have been two sets of lights in this room for a couple days now. One is the usual room lighting. The other is a set of battery powered lights covered in red plastic from biohazard bags. There is a sign on the light switch outside - "AFTER 1500 KNOCK AND GET OK BEFORE TURNING ON LIGHT INSIDE!" Right now the room is lit only by an eerie red from the battery lights.

There is now a small table in here against the wall. Not only is trash actually sorted for things we can use prior to discarding, but we need a place to gear up.

Tonight it is George and myself. We both have our gear bags. I transfer my radio and handgun to my patrol belt from my duty belt. A second handgun is already on the patrol belt, in an enclosed wrap-over holster that looks like it eloped from a Wild West cowboy outfit.

I am carrying a third handgun in an ankle holster, no need to transfer anything as I take off vest, uniform shirt and pants to replace them with ugly oversize black sweatshirt and black jeans, closed with a nylon strap and a plastic buckle. I strap the patrol belt over it.

I check my gear by touch. I need to know the contents of every pocket, quick, in the dark. Because this will be in the dark.

I despise knives. I am carrying four.

One is a heavy thick blade that looks like it escaped instead from the back pages of a men's magazine. Its very size challenges most men's virility. It is extremely sharp on one side only; the other is a saw blade. It hangs from the left side of my belt.

Two more are tucked in pockets on my body. The last is on a lanyard around my neck that is not a break-away. This is risky, but being without a knife could be deadly.

The patrol belt has zip ties dangling from it, but no handcuffs. I have two handcuff keys concealed on my body, but those are for emergencies and escape. In the unlikely event I take a prisoner and choose to release them, I can cut a zip tie.

Medical supplies, check. High adhesion duct tape, check. EMS shears, check. Hand held wire cutters, check. Tiny pen lights, check. Powerful but suicidal to use hand light, check. Weapon light, attached to barrel of handgun, also suicidal to use, check. Distraction device, possibly the most suicidal item of all to use, check. Grenade, explosive, concussion, offensive type, check. Flare pistol, unloaded, with one white and one red star shell. Check.

White: "We are under attack. Alert One Right Now."

Red: "We are under attack by a superior, overwhelming force! Alert One, batten down the hatches and save what you can!"

I've only fired a red shell once. That was the night my client was killed. The red shell has a quarter taped over the primer. The white shell has a dime taped over the primer. Recognition in the dark, when I can't look.

Last of all, I am wearing a pair of blue nitrile gloves. George however chooses to be bare handed. He has a natural advantage I do not.

George is not carrying a radio. He is however carrying a cut down shovel, lovingly sharpened, with a sling. Amazing things, shovels. You can kill your enemies and bury your friends, too.

Neither of us has a rifle. Some schools of thought have it that even carrying a handgun is too much of a risk. You might be tempted to use it, you see.

There is another, darker reason to be sure to carry a handgun and to never, ever use your last round. We have heard the screams on the other side of the wire. Hasn't been one of ours, dragged off. Yet.

I check his gear. He checks mine. We are groovy.

I open the trash door after turning off the switch that holds it closed from the outside. George and I go out, taking care not to look at the limited area lights.

A third guard closes the door behind us and turns on the door switch. We are locked out - there is no access card that overrides that electromagnet.

I walk calmly and briskly towards the perimeter and George is a pace behind and to my right.

We soon reach Perimeter Post 14A. Just before I am about to call out (and chew some ass), a voice says in the dark:

"Halt. Identify yourself."

"Echo 18," I say aloud. "Golf 5," adds George.

"With empty hands advance to be recognized."

We do. But I am very ready to draw. I give the password. The perimeter guard gives the countersign. Both words are correct - we do not kill each other.

"Pass, friend."

I do not. Instead I ask the guards what they've seen. Overlapping two hour shifts means that every hour, one is relieved by another, and each guard only has two hours here. A short enough time span to stay very alert, as their lives - and all of ours - depend on it tonight.

One has a digital video camera on a tripod set to night vision mode. A piece of electronic waste on sale at a thrift store before the Firecracker, it is a pearl beyond price tonight. But it is an active IR - meaning that its position is betrayed to any similar equipment.

No observations. But about forty minutes ago, a piece of rock fell on the other side of the creek. Maybe natural. Maybe wildlife. Maybe disturbed by a footfall, or thrown by an enemy scout.

Only one way to find out.

George and I move out, parallel to the perimeter for a bit, closing up on the poles we have in place of wire, then back up the draw we had crews trim the vegetation from this afternoon.

We walk slowly, in arm's length of each other. We breathe evenly and pay attention to where we put our footsteps. There is an art to this; George is an apprentice. I am a rank novice. If he is an elephant, I am a freight train.

I reach back and touch George to stop him. We crouch on one side of the draw for a minute, then two, then three. Letting the natural noises adjust, letting ourselves adjust. I sit, slowly so as not to make noise. George stays crouching, stretching his legs every few minutes.

So when the two intruders clank noisily over the top of the draw a half hour later, he is able to move and I have to turn sideways to let my numb leg get some blood back in it.

My radio is turned all the way down with the "TX/RX" lights taped over. Nonetheless, I can see the very faint glow of the RX light. Someone is talking on the radio.

I hold the handset up to my hear and ease the volume up very slightly. The radio traffic is not for us. I turn it back down.

My legs work well now, so I crouch, moving slowly so as not to draw anyone's eyes.

The two intruders are half walking half sliding down the draw. They are not really paying that much attention. One stops the other when he sees the line of poles, not yet connected, and the barbed wire fence across the center.

The other shakes off a hand and walks forward. For a moment, I can see the silhouette against the sky. He's armed - a rifle. He's a player.

They're not carrying much stuff. But they both have long arms, and they are approaching the site.

George slowly, hardly moving, unslings his shovel.

I draw the steer-butchering knife.

We have our night vision. They have been looking down the draw at our site and its lights.

We can see; they are blind. It is that simple.

I will take the one on my side; George will take the one on his side. That means I have to move across the line of fire of both, but it is what it is.

We lope forward in a terrible silent rush, not breathing and letting our lungs burn for that horrible ten seconds until our bodies crash into theirs and our sharp tools stab down, down, down, spraying us both with hot arterial blood and filling the night with coppery salt smell.

While they are stunned, I cut my victim's throat as George is chopping his blade into a helpless neck.

We freeze, listening, breathing open mouthed and daring not spit or gasp.

What we have done, can be done to us. I would drop my knife and transition to handgun, but even that would not be enough. I am just paranoid enough to think that these two clumsy fools were a sacrifice, that the real killers were using them as a decoy ... but the night is crisp and quiet, quiet enough to hear the air stop whistling through the new windpipe of one of our victims.

I check a pulse. None. I search the corpse. One of my pockets has a sandbag in it, to which I transfer the items I find in pockets and on his belt. One is a radio. The little LED light is glowing a number. "11" I risk my pen light. There is no little number next to it. No 'privacy code,' which is a sick joke the FCC and manufacturers played on consumers of these radios.

Oh, really. Oh really?

I finish searching. I check with George, talking very quietly which carries less far than whispering.

"Mine has a radio. Yours?"

"No. Notepad and pencils."

"Cover me."

I set my radio to a frequency set it has but don't really use.

I key up on their radio and say quietly.

"Thanks for the radio. Two down is the best score you're going to have tonight. It only gets worse from here. Go home."

I turn it off while listening on my radio, mike held next to my ear as before.

"Fuck you asshole!" I hear someone shout, overmodulated, into their radio.

I hear the echo of it from the top of the draw.

Big. Fucking. Mistake.

In instants I turn the radio frequency dial back to the first position and transmit openly.

"Echo 18, H5, top of the draw, weapons free, kill them all."

George and I have flattened to the ground.

Sharp rifle cracks from the top of H5. I hear a gasping cough and a scream from above us. Then I hear a faint pop well behind us and shield our eyes.

Illumination flare, fired on command from somewhere between H and here.

Lights up the draw nicely. I see two frozen shapes halfway up the draw. Then they move, running away.

I transition to handgun but do not fire.

H5 fires twice. They both fall.

I see no point to advancing further tonight. I order weapons hold while we move back to Perimeter 14A, where both guards are very alert with unfired rifles.

"Sweep?" one asks, rather bravely.

"In the morning," I offer, as we climb into the foxhole and settle in for a long night. We can nap because we have guards to cover us. I have no pillow, no blanket, and bloodied hands.

I fall asleep at once, propped against the edge of the foxhole.

I hope I do not dream.

But in this as in so much else, my hopes are shattered. Because even in apocalypse there are nightmares.

George and I are two of them.