This is the second part to what's happened to Bella. Hope it answers some more questions.

Again we know who owns this and makes all the money for it. I appreciate getting to play with the characters! See you at the end!

Chapter 2

Still in the desert...

I could smell it before my eyes could wholly open and to fully register my own personal misery. It was so real and I could only pray that I was still coming out of the darkest state of my nightmare that I had been in. All had been okay when the blackness took over but then the noises, the screams, and then silence that I continued to hear haunted me all the same. I can handle the dark, but it's when there are voices without faces that you can't place and the knowledge that they could do anything they wanted to you while you lay unconscious, well that was my breaking point.

The metallic smell was of blood, a lot of blood and it was everywhere. Some people say that blood itself doesn't have a distinct smell but I have to disagree passionately. From childhood for me it has always smelled metallic. Not really like a piece of metal but more like a penny. That's the only way I can describe it for someone to understand. I used to even pass out from the smell; I'm still not sure what convinced me to become an Army Medic. Yeah I do, I can't lie. It was that hefty bonus they waved in front of my face and the promise of not being deployed with the Reserves during a time that we weren't at war. If I had only known that war was only a couple years away, it would changed things immensely.

I definitely should have listened to Charlie and Renee. I may have been an adult, but at the time that I signed my second contract I wasn't acting as such. I'd say I had made my way back to about sixteen years old as I sat and pounded my fists on the dinner table one Sunday night like a petulant child who wasn't getting that all important shiny, new toy that they wanted. in any case, I wouldn't be here right now not knowing if I was going to go home and walk off a plane of my own cognizance or if I would be carried off in my own casket, only if I had shut my mouth for a minute and listened to Jacob and not signed another contract. He was so pissed at me about the whole ordeal, but I had to go and sign it after he tried to tell me that as the woman of the house it wasn't my place to serve my country. Basically every thing I had done up until then had been done in vain and he held no pride to what I had accomplished. I told him to fuck off and essentially stuck my tongue out at him, such a mature action, and went and signed my new six year contract. Look at me now one year in on that contract and staring at a long, painful and without doubt an incredibly bloody death in my near future.

I knew if I could smell the blood so strongly that the source had to be close. Immeasurably too close to me. Burnt or burning flesh is a completely different story, though. That's a smell that you will never put out of your mind after you come into contact with it for the first time in your life. It is an action that I wish had never happened to me, but as luck would have it my first experience with it still haunted my dreams. It had only been two weeks since we had been in country and one of our convoys struck an IED that in reality looked like a rock. They told us in all those classes we took before arriving that we could run into these types of IED explosives, I just never thought it would not stand out along the side of the rode. I am a believer now. I was up in front driving Captain Pentley's Humvee and the rocking explosion was towards the back of our convoy line. The two guys weren't from our Company, but they had been convoying with us and about twenty members from their group.

The poor, unsuspecting men didn't have a chance in hell to make it out of their burnt out vehicle and even if they had climbed out of the crumbled mess, they wouldn't have survived the night, probably not even an hour. The driver was undistinguishable by the time I got to the Humvee. You wouldn't have even been able to tell he was an actual man that had been sitting there probably talking about the weather or fucking for that matter just a few minutes or seconds before the explosion. The IED had been on his side, obviously, because of the extensive detonation damage done to his side of the vehicle. We did end up finding a part of that unfortunate soldier, resting on the far side of the road when the other members of the convoy were running perimeter for us. All the while Captain Pentley and I were trying to save them. It was one of those times where it was so shocking that the bodies didn't look real. They looked like props created for a movie. I'll never understand the shock value when something like this happens, but I'm very thankful for it otherwise, I'm pretty sure that the MRE I had just eaten not two hours before would have shown itself again in it's entirety. The other guy didn't die instantly regrettably. I could hear his heart wrenching screams as I tried to make my way to them with the stark white Captain at my side. She may have been a nurse in the civilian world, but this was by far the worst thing we both had ever seen and sadly, heard. By the time we reached them he heart had been silenced for the last time. You would think that bodies just burnt up when they begin, but that's not actually the truth. Your skin will char initially, but then your fat will melt around you, in turn leading to your muscle cooking itself kind of like meat in the oven. And finally after that is all said it done it will eventually char completely and all that is left is the smell and possibly your bones, but that is never a for sure thing depending on how hot the fire that has consumed your body has become.

Laying here on the ground still I realize that I could recognize the smell of burning flesh, but it didn't seem to be close by. In our hospital that we worked in when we were inside the perimeter, the metallic smell was always around because you couldn't ever get it fully cleaned before the next bleeding or severely wounded soldier would take their turn at life or death. Around there though, it was mainly death, even though, there were some miraculous recoveries that were brought into the hospital. Generally the men and women that could be saved would be patched up just enough to get there condition to where they could survive on a flight into Germany. They'd be fixed up some more in Germany and brought up to stable condition and then were flown to the states for the rest of their recovery either in Washington, D.C. at Walter Reed or in Texas at Fort Hood.

One man comes to mind because his life and recovery was a miracle in and by itself. He had lost three of his limbs, two arms and a leg, in a Humvee accident and died on me twice before I could even get him to the OR in our hospital at Camp. While there, he died again on the table and luckily was brought back. No one began to believe that he could possibly survive and hour, but he made it through the night. When Captain Pentley came through the door the next morning after her shift, she informed us that he would definitely be getting onto a flight to Germany within the next several hours. We received a letter from him two weeks ago thanking us for what we had done to help him. He was currently recovering at Walter Reed with his wife and children by his side.

The fear that I now felt from my toes to the disheveled hair on my head paralyzed me completely. I didn't want to open my eyes to see where all of these horrifying smells in the air were wafting in from. I know it's too close to where I was currently laying, though.

As I rest here in a semi catatonic state, I know that I need to get up and do something, anything. I need to save those that I can and find my girls. I realize all of this, but here I lay stationary on the ground like it is my only lifeline. Thoughts of Jack ran through my mind as I tried to find some sliver of my inner strength that I needed to rely on. It was all I had at the moment. Jack has dark hair just like his daddy; I finally talked Jake into getting it cut. He had my chocolate eyes, however with eyelashes to kill for. He even actually looked like he had a tan all year round, which was funny looking next to my powdery, translucent skin. All in all he was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and was the best thing to ever happen in my short life. I carry a picture of him, his Kindergarten mug shot at all times in my flak jacket just to remind me of what I have to make it home to. The picture is bent and frayed around the edges, but he is still beautiful. Gently pulling the corner of my vest back I see my handsome little man smirking back at me and I find the strength to stand up and carry on.

Okay, now that my semi emotional break down is over I need some sort of a mental checklist before I can make my big move. I know that there are fifty total soldiers in my Company. There are four girls and forty-six men. Twenty-five of us are currently in the next town. Now I wonder if anyone even had the time or mental capacity to radio them to make them aware of what was happening back here. I wonder if they could even help us or if we were all too far gone. I couldn't keep thinking like that and wondering about everything. I had to take action and get out of here breathing and back home to my family. I needed to get as many people from here back home alive to their families. I had to make them safe; this was something I could not fail to do. I'd failed at many things in life, but this wasn't going to be one of them to add to my ever growing list.

I have my 9 Mil still attached to my leg and my clip is still full. I can't believe I didn't shoot the dirty bastard who just stared at me so intently. I can't believe I froze, again. Of all times for good old Bella to join me and come back into my life, it just had to be now when I didn't need her help to fuck this all up. I knew when I enlisted in the Army it went against everything that I was, but I was tired of just being shy, blushing and clumsy Bella. I wanted to be something more. I wanted to give back to something that I thought was bigger than me and here I am almost giving my life to a cause that I didn't know if I even believed in anymore. I should have just joined the damn Peace Corp or volunteered at the homeless shelter down the street from my apartment. Now it wasn't just about the cause, though. It's about all of these individuals that I have lived with for the past 6 months whether they wronged me or not, that mattered.

I know I have four extra clips on my belt, my flak is on and I don't think I myself am physically hurt anywhere. Hell I could be bleeding to death and I don't think I'd be feeling it at this very moment. Everything was still just so numb. I do know it's not my blood that I smell. Speaking of which, I think my med bag is still on my back, so I should be ready to get up and go. But where do I go? Question of the day Bella! Think about it, what the hell happened to me after that creepy man was here? I think I blacked out but for how damn long? Why can't I hear anyone anymore? Where are they? So many questions remain unanswered in my mind, but I can't seem to convince my body to get up and get the answers myself.

Shit.

I finally remember Karen, Captain Pentley, being dragged away by the man in rags and I remember the blood curdling screams, but where are those screams now. It's too still for them to be around and too damn quiet.

Alright on the count of five I'm opening my eyes. I'm not a chicken shit. I am a soldier in the United States Army and my friends have been attacked and possibly killed. That's a positive face. I can do this. Not such a positive fact.

One, two, three, oh hell who am I kidding? Five!

I open my tear stained eyes and look around until I find the source of the metallic smell. Oh my God. How could this be fucking happening? I think I'm going to fucking puke.

"Oh Schoonover, what the hell did they do to you?", I ask the corpse as I expelled everything in my stomach on the dirty wall of the building beside me.

She never answered and I didn't for once expect her to. Her throat was slit from ear to ear and her head was barely hanging on as she had just been thrown callously across the ground. I don't know what they could have used to do this to her and why. There's no one else around this area that I can see so I gently start to cover her body up with a ripped up blanket that has found its way outside of our room all the while trying to lose my shit again. She doesn't deserve to be left alone like this. No one deserves to be left alone. I've got to find someone else and hopefully they will still be breathing at least. I start to quietly sob as nothing is coming out. There's a lump in my throat the size of California and I'm not even sure if I can breathe still. Wiping my eyes on my blood stained uniform sleeve I gradually begin making out my grand plan that's probably going to get me killed or worse. There are worse things than being killed like tortured, raped multiple times and then possibly killed.

I can run or I can low crawl across the sandy terrain. I'm going to low crawl across the way just in case those heartless bastards are still lurking around here. I silently chuckled to myself as I thought back to our heroes, the vamps and werewolves. If only they were here now to help me. I really must be losing my grip on reality if this is where my mind is currently.

"Why couldn't I have worked on this skill more? I guess I never thought I would be doing this further than what I did in Basic Training. Stupid, stupid, stupid Bella," I berate myself.

Eventually I make it over to the guy's portion of the sleeping arrangements. All of the buildings are connected somehow, but they are on one side of camp and we are in like a damn broom closet all the way across the expansive area. Creeping around the building is hard when you can only hear your battered heartbeat in your ears and not hear if there is someone around the darkened corner. They are sneaky little bastards, I give them that. I couldn't let someone come up on me again without knowing about it. That's only setting myself up for immediate death and I definitely can't let that shit happen.

And then I hear them. They're screaming at someone. It sounds like there may be four of them or so. I think I could take them if I had to, maybe. So much for my stunted growth in self confidence that I thought had occurred. I do quickly recognize some Arabic words from our pre-deployment training. They made us take all of those classes assuming that we'd learn the entire language in two days and actually have the brain capacity remember it along with every other thing they shoving down our throats at the time. I thought it was bullshit of course, but certainly at the time I was rather pissed about the predicament that I found myself in. Now I wished I had paid more attention because I think he said to kill him.

Oh God, he DID just say to kill him, but it was an order to kill them all. I take a quick glance around the corner and I found the entire group of males in my Company that were here. They were all kneeling in front of these fuckers. Most of them are still clothed in nothing but their boxer briefs. If it were any other situation I would have found it humorous and may have felt sorry for the kid with SpongeBob writhing around on his ass. As it is now, they look just like they are in a cheaply filmed execution scene. I quickly count and come up with twenty one. That means that my other girls aren't here and they are no where to be seen. What I wouldn't give to have them with me right now. Strength in numbers and all that shit.

Shots begin ripping through the cold night air. Not just one round but multiple gun shots ring out into the too quiet atmosphere. I jump up quickly and fortunately I didn't dare make a noise and then more shots begin going off.

What the hell are they doing?

My brain is just now realizing that these people are actually executing my men. It seems so surreal like it can't be true. None of this is supposed to happen at a hospital site.

This isn't real.

This is just a nightmare. I've got to wake up from this nightmare!

They just keep shooting and screaming louder and louder and I have no fucking clue as to what to do. They are all lying there dead and more are of them are dying because I can't get the fuck over there or make my god forsaken boots move.

I'm supposed to lay down my life for my country, for my husband, for my child, for my future grandchildren and look at me, I'm cowering and crying all because I don't want to die. This is why women are told they shouldn't be in combat. I give women soldiers a bad name.

Fuck!

I still don't see my women, where are my girls? We were just talking about faking orgasms and telling Private Shannon just to get go her self off, so what happened? Where did they go? Where's my perfect life that I had? It sure as fuck isn't in the desert, not in hell.

That's when I saw that man again. He was the same one who had stared me down into oblivion earlier in the night. I must not have been quiet enough and with my sobbing gradually growing louder he had heard me. I thought he would have killed me by now or does he know that I'm already dead inside after everything I have just been witness to tonight? And silently I pray for God to make him go away or just to get death over with and out of the way. I want it quickly. I want it painless. I just want to be gone.

"Please Lord, let him take me now or just make him go away. I know I am not the Christian my dad raised me to be, but who is completely in this world? Please, I will never beg for anything again. "

I continued chanting, "Please Lord, please Lord, please Lord" over and over again to myself and whoever else could hear me.

And go away he did. He left me lying here face down in the sand and God only knows what else. For the second time tonight I slowly slip away and let the darkness over take me again, the whole time thinking of how I could add another failure to my list.

I just wanted to take a minute to thank those of you who have been reading this. Please let me know what you think even if it is to tell me to give it up on this story. Things will move along, but again we have to see what Bella's been through to fully understand what mindset she's in. If you feel the need please review! It'll make me very, very happy!

Jen