The girl who haunts her dreams stands, mesmerized, in the monster's grip. Agatha has never wanted to kill anyone more than this yellow-eyed, bat-eared thing. Cruel fangs sink into her jugular. Blood trickles down the girl's neck to stain the lovely white dress she wears beneath her leather jacket. The girl's crossbow lies at her feet. She sways while the monster drinks her heart's blood.
Hazel eyes open.
"They're coming," she says. "Are you ready?"
The camp gathered on the parade deck, defying the storm, to mourn their dead. Agatha refused to shed tears as the dusty wind bore into her eyes. I will not cry, she told herself. I won't disgrace this uniform any more than I have. In the center of the formation was the Ranger company. The assembled men stood before two sets of empty boots. Between each pair was an M16 set muzzle down. K-pot helmets balanced on the stocks and dog tags clinked against the barrels. The Ranger captain called out roll call. Here, said one man. Here, said another. Twice, there was silence. A firing party marched out with bayonets fixed. A volley rang out, then another, then a third. She jerked with each one. She forced herself to ramrod attention when the bugler played "Taps".
With a single "Dismiss", the lieutenant-colonel who commanded the base set them free. Agatha quietly escaped to the shelter of a building to weep. Stupid, she cursed herself. Stupid. You knew. You knew and you let them die. Wiping her eyes, she gathered herself together. Today wasn't time for a pity party. It was for the two dead men she had failed. This was different than any other memorial. Death had come to Camp Iwo before. The Marine shot by the sniper, a sergeant who died from an IED attack on a convoy. Never, though, had death reached into the heart of the camp. Everyone seemed more aware of its threat. Hands stayed a bit closer to weapons. People edged past shadows even in the daytime. A lot more crosses were worn in defiance of theater rules about openly showing Christian symbols.
In the distance, she saw Dixie kneeling by the helicopter hangar wall. Nothing on earth could have made Agatha go near that spot. It was all too reminiscent of a patch of desert ground several thousand miles to the east and months back in time. Dix is taking it hard, she thought. Must have known Schmidt and Moran. I'll probably end up with a new bunkmate. If anyone will have me. Tugging up her collar against the wind, she went into the motor pool. It was deserted. Most people on base had gone to the messes to chat and deal with the loss. Truth to tell, sociability wasn't high on her list right now. There was a Hummer waiting for an overhaul. A few hours up to her wrists in grease and sweat would do her some--
"Hi, Lance-Corporal," Capelli said by the open hood of the Humvee. "Thought you might need a hand."
Damn.
"Alright, Private." She dragged the toolchest close. "Let's get in here and see-- Whoa there! What've you been eating? Your breath's stronger than Dixie's after one of her kimchi binges."
"Oh, yeah." Capelli cupped his mouth with a hand. He waved a small water bottle. "It's a new health drink. Um, garlic. Well, garlic powder I got from the mess. Garlic is very healthy and organic."
"There ain't a bug that would stick around that, for sure." Agatha pinched her nose. "Mind pointing that somewhere else downrange? 'Least until we have to degrease the engine block."
"Sure." Capelli got a socket wrench. "So, how did it go with the skipper?"
"Don't want to talk about it," Agatha replied curtly. She bent to her work.
"That bad, huh?" Capelli winced in sympathy.
"Private, two men are dead." Will not cry, will not cry. "They're dead because I didn't tell the officer in charge that night. Marched right in and took full responsibility. No sense in Dix getting the splash from my screw up."
"That's just not fair!" Capelli exclaimed. "It was the guards on perimeter who let it...I mean, the haji through. And you didn't actually see anything or really hear--"
"I knew." Agatha closed her eyes. "Even a case of the williwaws, you report. Skipper was kind, though. I'm still in the Corps."
"So, how bad?"
"Month of standing night watch guard in the wire." Agatha shrugged. "Fair enough. Skipper asked what'd be a proper punishment be. I chose it. Might even do some good, since I was the only one who even knew someone was around. "
"You're going to be dog tired after a week!"
"I'll be fine. Need a lot less sleep these days," she said. "Now, you gonna work or jaw?"
"Yeah, yeah." Metal clinked on metal. "Say, you're going to need a partner for guard duty. Mind if I put in for it the first few watches?"
"Be still my beating heart," Agatha said. "You're volunteering?"
"I know, I skate enough I should have my own rink." Capelli grinned. "Figured that if the haji comes back, you might need some back up."
"Well, you'd make a dandy meat shield." Agatha laughed. "C'mon, let's get this finished. We both got a long night ahead of us."
May have screwed up, Agatha decided, but at least Capelli and Dixie have my back. Why people fight. Not for country or for the uniform, but for their foxhole buddies. Although she hoped he got off this weird health kick. A month of close company with the nasal equivalent of the bottom of an Italian restaurant's cook pot was more punishment than she deserved. She continued the overhaul when Capelli excused himself for a trip[to the heads. When he left, she spotted a thick wad of papers by his workbench. The greasy thumbprints and curled edges told her it had seen a lot of reading. There was a second of amused disgust. Capelli leaving his porn lying around? Then she spotted the title on the top of one sheet. A familiar word: "Sunnydale".
Curious, she took the papers. Print outs, by the look, from the Internet. Access to sites not on the NMCI or the Milnet was restricted at Camp Iwo. Email was fine. So was accessing military education sites or the occasional news site. He must have used the public net terminals at the mess, provided by the civilian contractors who ran the place. Must have paid a fair bit, since access fees were high. She raised her eyebrows at the stories he'd collected. A lot of woo-woo stuff, like the maniacs saying the Sunnydale Collapse was a weapons test of the sonic cannon Bush used to collapse the Towers. Although Sunnydale didn't exactly need help in the weirdness department. Engrossed, she read through reports about a death rate high as downtown Mogadishu. Epidemics of wild animal and barbecue fork attacks. The school had blown up at Graduation one year, for crissakes. How had people missed this for years?
Near the bottom were news stories about the mass evacuation before the sinkhole. In one picture was one late-arriving refugee party, the supposed last out of town. Shellshocked young men and women limped off a school bus while a reporter pestered them. Agatha's heart skipped. Right at the edge of the frame, in the protective embrace of a tall brunette and a distinguished man wearing glasses. Her. That was her. The printout was in black and white. The woman was nearly out of frame. Yet it was unmistakably the woman who had haunted her dreams for over a week. And hiding in the bus--a familiar profile seen through a bus window. Dark hair and sultry features. Agatha flipped back through the stack. There she was again, in a copy of a yearbook page taken from the late Sunnydale High's archives. Buffy Anne Summers, just another blonde California girl. Nothing special.
So why was the caption beneath her photo "Class Protector"?
Agatha and Capelli huddled in the shelter of the north wall of the mess. The night-vision goggles hanging around their necks were useless against the dust storm that had enveloped the base. Over the wind's howl and Capelli's moans, she listened to the muted chatter of the communications net through the radio at her belt. The storm had reduced visibility to nigh-zero. Forget a Taliban attack. They wouldn't have seen or heard a brass band and ten juggling elephants passing through the wire. Braving the fury of the storm, the pair had patrolled as best they could. No-one responded to the challenge of "Chesty" with the countersign of "Puller" aside from the other security patrols. No need for a curfew, Agatha realized. Nobody else is stupid enough to be out here besides us.
A dust-devil swirled past them like a haunt from an old mountain tale. Startled, Capelli thrust something on a chain at it. Agatha couldn't help a little laugh. The crucifix he wore was the biggest and gaudiest she had ever seen. She half-expected him to mount it on the bayonet lug of his rifle. Minister back home would have the vapours over that kind of popery! Supporting him against the gales, she half-dragged him along the route assigned for the night's patrol area. They passed the refrigerated trailers behind the mess. She shivered as she passed by the third in line. The severity of the storm prevented choppers from flying. All Recon and Ranger missions had been canceled until the weather improved. It also meant Schmidt and Moran's bodies could not be transported to Bagram. One of the trailers had been emptied and turned into a temporary morgue. Creepy. Enough to make spiders run up and down your--
She snapped the carbine stock to her shoulder. Out there it, it's out there. She squelched the radio mike transmit button several times in a pre-arranged alert signal. Alright you bastard, show yourself.
"Lance-Corporal!" screamed Capelli, in her ear. "There! Someone's under there!"
"What?" she screamed back. In horror, she spotted the two pairs of boots protruding beneath the trailer. Not fast enough, never fast enough. "Shit, let's get him--Oh God! Dix!"
"Aggs?" Dixie moaned, her hand pressed to her neck. "G--get out, run, he...hungry, so hungry..."
"Shhhh." Agatha scrabbled for a pressure dressing from the medic kit Dixie always carried. "Don't move, you'll make it worse. You just lie there. Iwo One, do you read? We have a woman down, lost a lot of blood. Confirmed intruder in the wire."
"Look look at that!" Capelli said, horror in his face, at the twin puncture wounds on Dixie's neck. "Putnam, we have to get the hell out of here. Those are just like those on Schmidt and Moran."
"Pipe down and keep watch!" Agatha ordered. "Iwo One, repeat, we need a stretcher party and corpsman here like yesterday. It's Private First Class Dik Soon Jae, stab wounds to the neck, just missed the artery. Bleeding like a stuck pig!"
"Why--" Dixie coughed, eyes fluttering. "Not enough blood where they were. Too little left there, would have bled too much. Stupid, Aggs, I am sorry, I came here alone to see, did not believe even me--"
"Where's that fucking evac?" Agatha screamed into the radio, any sense of decorum lost. "Repeat, we have a--"
The horrifying sensation of insects scurrying beneath her skin changed became a rush of cold that chilled her to the core. It was the only warning she had before it came out of the storm. Shrieking, Capelli loosed a half-magazine's worth into the charging figure. An almost solid stream of red--tracer, Agatha realized, he loaded his mag with all tracer, why?--tore into him. It. Snarling, the thing cringed against a burst that should have cut a man in half. A fist sent Capelli flying. For all his chowhounding, Capelli still had the build and much of the muscle of the linebacker he had been in high school. The punche knocked him into the trailer's side hard enough to leave a Marine-shaped dent. I'm going to die, Agatha thought in dreamy horror as it came. I am going to die and Dix is going to die and it's all wrong.
Moran. Impossible. He's dead. This is wrong. His face is all wrong.
Twisted. Bumpy.
Fangs.
Agatha, said a voice deep within her, are you ready?
Her answer came with a buttstroke to the attacker's jaw that didn't just shatter the M4's stock. It vaporized it almost down to its component atoms. The thing flew almost twenty feet before crumpling in pain. It cursed in English through a broken jaw. From the hip, she hosed it down from the hip with all thirty rounds from her rifle. Only the strike of the one-in-four tracer rounds she had loaded as standard practise had any noticeable effect. There was a sickening sizzle of burning flesh when those hit. Lurching, it staggered away. Agatha snarled. Oh no you don't, you son-of-a-bitch! Her Ka-Bar cleared its sheath in a second. Moran--this insane, the last rational fragment of her mind said through the red haze of rage--shrieked when the blade tore into his back.
He struck back with a ferocity that should have terrified her. His blows were sledgehammers made flesh. A single one should have cracked ribs, torn out her spine, sent daggers of bone shards through her body. Agatha repaid the thing that wore the face of a compatriot with strikes of equal force. There was no fear. There was no anger. There was only the urge to remove this abomination from Hell from the face of the earth. Ducking a roundhouse punch, she side-kicked into its knee. The joint folded with a crack of snapping ligaments and bone. An outflung arm provided her the leverage to throw it to the ground. The earth shook when Moran slammed into the deck. Assuming the high mount, she pinned the writhing creature-that-had-once-been-man beneath her. Kill it, goddamn it, DIE!
Liquid splashed into its face. Moran uttered a keening wail as flesh bubbled and burned. Wobbly, Capelli stood beside her with the empty garlic health-drink bottle in hand. He looked down on Moran with horror...but not surprise. He knew, Agatha realized. Capelli knew. Sickened, he held out a long piece of wood to her. The end had been sharpened to a fine point. A hilt of 550 cord wrapped around the lower third and secured with a monkey's fist knot steadied her sweaty grip. She held the...the stake with a strange familiarity. Vaguely, she heard others running through the storm. Some of the voices were recognizable as Rangers who had backslapped her yesterday on the range. The now-pitiable figure beneath her muttered obscenities through a mouth filled with blood and loose teeth.
What had been Moran exploded to dust when the stake punched into its heart.