All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

49: Sleep

"Aw, well would ya look at us?" Luz declared as soon as he'd jumped out of the truck. "All dressed up with nowhere to go."

Posey didn't reply, simply focused on disembarking the truck without hurting herself or anyone around her. Once she was back on solid ground, she let out a sigh. Her eyelids drooped and the eyes beneath them burned with lethargy.

"I'm goin' back to bed," Bill mumbled, rubbing at his eyes.

"We haven't been dismissed yet," Posey reminded him. She couldn't help but wonder what was taking the officers so long; the jump had been cancelled and it was still dark outside, what need was there for three platoons worth of men to stand about and fill up empty roads?

"Second Platoon, on me," Compton called out as though reading her thoughts.

Posey followed after Bill, trusting him to take her where she needed to be; she was much too tired to bother looking for herself.

"There's a training exercise been scheduled for 1300 but for now you can go back to bed," Compton told them, sounding about as tired as they all felt. He offered the crowd a nod before turning to Bill, to whom he said, "I'll update you as soon as I know anything else."

Bill nodded. "Yeah, Buck, I got ya." The pair shared a nod before Compton departed and Bill turned back to Second Platoon. "You heard the man, head back to barracks."

Posey shifted her rifle in her hands and made to follow after the others before a thought halted her in place. She looked down at her gun and considered it for a moment, nodding to herself once her mind had been made up.

"Bill!" she called out, watching as he turned and furrowed his eyebrows at her through the darkness. "I'm going to go practise shooting at the rifle range. I need to get better at using the scope in the dark."

"And you gotta do it right now?" Bill demanded, walking a few paces back towards her. "Wells, ya look like you're about to drop dead."

Posey shrugged. "I don't want to feel so unprepared next time we get told we're jumping last minute, and you know it doesn't get dark until about 2300."

"How long are you gonna take?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"As long as it takes to feel confident, I suppose." She shook her head. "Look, if we get told we're jumping tomorrow I won't have time to practise unless I do it at the crack of dawn before the trucks leave. I'm already up, I might as well just do it now."

"Fine. But be back before breakfast, otherwise I'll come lookin' for ya and I won't be happy about it."

Posey grinned. "Noted. Thank you!"

"You're a pain in my ass, Wells," Bill told her as she turned on her heel.

She laughed. "Likewise!"

When she got to the rifle range it was eerily deserted. Posey had taken to spending a lot of time there now that she was working with a rifle she hadn't used in combat yet, and during the day there was generally at least one other person entering or leaving at intervals. In the dark of the morning, however, and in the wake of the cancelled jump, she found herself utterly alone. Likely, she'd have the place to herself for hours until the sun came up, which didn't tend to happen until much later in the day with the double daylight savings that Britain had in place to accommodate for power savings in wartime.

It didn't take her very long to prepare her weapon, as she'd been ready to jump with it not two hours before, but shedding her webbing seemed to be her biggest obstacle. By the time that was sorted, she found she was no longer alone. She turned to find Shifty making his way onto the range, his rifle clutched in both hands as he squinted up into the dark of the sky.