“I’ll tell him what’s going on Mike.” Tracy said with a soft almost ghost of a smile. “Just hurry up and get back here, both of you.” I gave her a small kiss. She gripped my hand before I could turn to leave. “I’m not kidding Mike, get your’s and Justin’s asses back here soon.”
I nodded. I was not going to verbally promise something that I wasn’t sure we could deliver on.
“Not even a false promise Mike?” Tracy asked.
“Get your shit Justin, let’s go.” I didn’t turn back to face her, I might not have left. Inaction can be as deadly as a poorly executed action.
CHAPTER TWENTY - JOURNAL ENTRY 14 - 
Outside of the barracks it was eerily quiet, like we were in the eye of a hurricane. The housing area was located nearly dead center in the camp. Fierce fighting was still raging to the front of camp and sporadic fighting was coming from the rear but for the time being nothing was blessedly happening here. Some people milled about, lost in confusion, indecision; some just plain scared out of their minds.
“Sir, sir.” An older balding man came huffing and puffing up to me. When he got closer I realized he might actually be younger than me, he had just led a soft life and his unconditioned body showed it. How had he made it this long? “Sir, what is going on, what should we do?”
Up close, how the hell he figured me for military I don’t know. First off I had a very unstandard goatee and my cammies which weren’t meant to be worn over my civvies, couldn’t have been any more ill fitting if I had tried. My drill instructor would have beat me into the dirt if I had ever showed up to revelry looking like this. That got me smiling. I think it might have looked more like a sneer though the way the roly-poly man backed up a step.
That didn’t stop him completely from marshaling himself. He grabbed my cuff as I began to walk off. “Sir, what should we do?” He said pointing back to the small throng of people looking nervously around.
“Fine, you want to know what I think you should do?” I said addressing the crowd. I got some nods and a general consensus of ‘Yes’s’ “This is for ALL of you. I don’t care if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, or into Buddhism, Hinduism, a Jehovah’s Witness or better yet an atheist or agnostic. First thing you should do is pray, because even if you don’t believe in a God or a higher power, what do you have to lose? If I’m wrong and there is no God you only lost a few seconds comforting yourselves and each other, but if I’m right?” I left that one unanswered. It was self-explanatory.
“The second thing all of you should do is get indoors and arm yourselves.” Roly looked like he might protest. “There are no pacifists or atheists in a fox hole. We are all about to be in a fight for our very lives, do you want to meet your maker knowing you went down meekly or you did everything in your power to eradicate all evil on this planet?” Most took the majority of my words to heart and would at least go down swinging after their one sided correspondence with a higher entity. Others, like Roly, still wandered around aimlessly looking for someone or something to get them out of this jam. They would be among the first to be ground to dust under the wheels of the war machine.
“Justin you stay behind me, anything happens, you head back. Got it?”
“Sure something happens to you, I go back alone and tell mom I left you behind. Got it.”
“That’s not what I meant smart ass.”
“I’ve got your genes.”
“Lucky you.” I said, not as a compliment.
After a moment’s thought, I headed towards the rear of the base and Lake Michigan. More enemy humans to scope out towards the front but that also meant more fighting. More fighting meant more bullets and more explosions, more of an opportunity to get killed. I had checked my itinerary earlier in the day. Nowhere on it did it say anything about dying. We hadn’t gone more than a block when we began to run into wounded soldiers who were being medevacked out of the hot areas. The shell shocked look of defeat shone through their eyes. Hastily made bandages were soaked through with blood. More than one unlucky soul screamed for their mother, most gripping what remained of a slightly tethered leg or arm. One poor bastard's entire lower half had been compressed to a third of its former size, how he was still alive was proof to me that God had turned a blind eye towards his children. His glassy shock-tainted stare was having an unnerving effect on Justin. To be fair, Justin’s illness had kept him largely out of all the battles we had thus far been in. Unfortunately for him, he’d be able to get some much needed experience today.
Justin was having a difficult time compartmentalizing the sights all around him. He kept stumbling into me, so intent was he on looking around at the human carnage and subsequent debris. I’d seen it before, happens all the time in combat. Some guys, no matter how much training they’ve received, can’t cope with the sensory overload. We used to call them ‘freezers’, more times than not these ‘freezers’ would get their buddies killed because the friend would go out to save them and usually take the bullet.
“Justin, you have got to stop walking up my heels.”
“Sorry Dad, I’ve just never seen so much…”
“Death.'
'I was gonna say blood, but whatever.'
'I know, but you’ve got to move on. We’ve got to concentrate on what we need to do. These men and women were brave. They died for us and have given us this chance to save ourselves. The best way we can remember and honor them is to succeed.”
My words seemed to have the desired effect. Justin stopped ramming into my back and his gazed stayed to the front. More likely his stomach was right now rivaling his sister’s and he didn’t need any more fodder for his stomach canon. The barrage of injured began to slough off to a trickle and then to nothing. As good as that was visually, it was that bad in terms of the direction the battle had taken. No more casualties being taken off the field of battle meant that there weren’t enough healthy soldiers to do the task. That fact was punctuated when at the very next block we began to encounter soldiers in full on retreat. As if they were dragging it behind them, came the pustulous smell of the dead. Justin volleyed forth a greenish-yellow bile that seemed nearly incandescent in its hue.
“Feeling better?” I asked him without turning around.
“Worlds.”
“That sarcasm?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“You really are going to need to get away from me when you get your first chance. A few years more with me, you’ll be my clone,” I said swatting his shoulder, his hunched over form getting a closer look at his refuse from the impact.
He stood straight up, eyes wide with fear. “She’s here.” He whispered.
“Like here, here?” I asked pointing to our general vicinity. “Or here in the camp?” I asked. I wanted to push him away from what was looking like a good place to dispose of any undigested food and maybe some twice churned stomach soup, I might possess.
“Close but not here.”
The worst passed, it was looking more and more like I might get to finish the processing of the omelet I had eaten earlier in the day.
'Can she tell that you're here?' I asked concerned. She could have us rounded up and served on a platter in under twenty minutes if she could locate us.
Justin was concentrating hard, a thick vein stood out on his forehead. Was he fighting for control of his mind, or was he trying to break through Doc's vaccine and back into the cold embrace of his dark mistress? Both were disturbing thoughts and I was getting nervous just standing here. If an errant patrol were to come around the corner of the building and they were of the ilk to shoot first and kick our bodies second, well that would just be shitty.
'Justin we gotta go.' I said shaking his shoulder, I could hear movement and it was getting closer. It wasn't the haphazard flight of the retreating either. This was the stealthy approach of the nearly victorious. Justin was coming back from whatever depths he had ventured but as a snail's pace. If he hadn't been joined to my side for the last 20 minutes I would have sworn he had just got stoned, and then I'd really be pissed because he hadn't shared. No matter how much I wanted it to be, we were not on a movie set as extras for some Alfred Hitchcock horror flick. This was proved to me when I looked up and down the side of the building and there was no super
