Grunt Life (7 page)

Rodney turned around on its tracks and headed out of the room by its usual route.

I guess they’d seen what they wanted to see.

I guess they’d had enough.

I staggered back to my bunk and curled up, my hands between my thighs, facing the wall. I let my nose bleed, the cold wetness the only thing that reminded me I was alive, a dull ache in the very center of my soul.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Sir Winston Churchill

CHAPTER TEN

“B
ETWEEN FEELING SORRY
for oneself and pure hatred is a chasm of responsibility few cross. Feeling sorry is the easiest of emotions, allowing a person to believe that it was the enemy, the victims, and the universe that had conspired to cause an action, rather than something they did. To get through to the purity of self-loathing, however, one must tread the treacherous path through realization and truth, reliving and recounting what it was they’d done that had caused the actions to be true. And it is only through this journey that a man or woman can truly find themselves. Although they’ll face self-hatred, it is a mirror which can be broken, and once shattered, provides a path through self-realization, allowing the person to live free of the action with an understanding of their own limitations.”

I awoke and sat up, wondering who’d been speaking. Then the voice came again.

“Between feeling sorry for oneself and pure hatred...”

I reached up and grabbed at my ear, only to find that the earpiece had been replaced. I snatched it away and stared at it, wondering how I’d come to be wearing it. My eyes darted to the shelf where I’d left it. Of course it wasn’t there. I checked the bed and saw that it was perfectly made. Then I remembered my bloody nose. There should have been a stain on the sheet. I felt at my face, but there was no blood. I got up, ignoring the stiff complaints from my legs, and padded to the mirror. My face was clean. In fact, it had been shaved. I felt at my nose. It still felt tender, which gave me some relief. At least I wasn’t imagining the whole event. But I knew someone had been in my cell without me knowing. To clean me up meant they’d have to have used drugs. I rubbed my hand across my face and stared at the eyes in my metal reflection. They looked clear. I felt good, actually.

Then the full memory of what I’d almost done came back to me. I closed my mouth and gritted my teeth. I ran the water, putting my hands under it just as they began to shake. I held them beneath the flow as I stared into the mirror and met my own gaze, the words coming back to me.

“Although they’ll face self-hatred, it is a mirror which can be broken, and once shattered, provides a path through self-realization, allowing the person to live free of the action with an understanding of their own limitations.”

I realized I could recount the entire passage. It was part of me now. How many times had it played while I was unconscious? What other things had they fed me—fed us—unconsciously?

“Mr. Mason. I’d like you to come with me, please.”

My gaze shifted to where Mr. Pink stood outside my cell. As I watched, the bars disappeared into the floor and ceiling. He regarded me for a moment, then turned and walked away. I hurriedly dried my hands and followed him. Instead of turning to my right, which would have been the way I came in, we turned to the left, heading for a door at the far end of the great room. Mr. Pink moved at a fast clip, his wingtips ticking quickly across the floor. I tried to keep up as best I could, but my mind was still trying to come to terms with the sudden change. My universe had grown from the size of a cell, to the size of this big room, and would soon explode to the size of total freedom. Check that. While I might be allowed out in the world, I was pretty certain my leash would be on, perhaps tightly wrapped around Mr. Pink’s fist.

I glanced at my neighbors, seeing them for the first time. They were all asleep on their beds. Some on their backs, with an arm thrown across their foreheads, some on their stomachs, some on their sides, curled like they were children. The rooms were identical, the only difference the occupants.

I paused when I saw Michelle. With her arms no longer covered, I saw the complete topography of her agony. The cuts at her wrists were only the latest she’d inflicted upon herself. I could hear my own breathing as I counted the scars, arrayed like tick marks from her elbows to just below where a watch would go. Each cut had been made with such precision that once healed, they were geometrically perfect representations of her pain? Why were some people cutters and some not?

It was as if Mr. Pink could read my thoughts.

“Some are unable to put into words the emotions they are feeling. The responsibility you feel for eleven of your fellow soldiers dying is something you can grasp. Not everyone can understand so clearly why they want to kill themselves, or why they’re so depressed.”

I glanced at him sharply, but his attention was solely on the sleeping form of Michelle. I drew my gaze up her arms and let it caress the curve of her jaw. She appeared to be so peaceful in her sleep.

“You’re able to compartmentalize your pain and anguish and bring it out when you need to. It’s more common with male soldiers than it is females. Female soldiers often feel the need to redeem themselves for what they view as their faults. Most often that comes in the form of pain. Whether it be as simple as a rubber band they continually snap against their wrist, or something more dedicated, like young Private Aquinas.

“The physical pain also provides a brief respite from their self-loathing. With the pain comes momentary forgetfulness, and also, interestingly enough, endorphins, which can become quite addictive.” Mr. Pink turned to me. “Good thing you decided to jump off a bridge. Imagine deciding to jump off the bridge a hundred times and actually doing it.” He turned back to Michelle. “That’s what she felt every time she hurt herself.”

He looked at me, his face implacable with his dead, expressionless eyes. “Cut, cut, cut,” he said, miming slicing his forearm with a razor blade. “All the pain in her little overwhelming universe lined up in a row.”

He turned and continued toward the door.

I hastened to follow, noting that I passed two cells with no one in them.

The successes.

Or failures.

I guess it depended on one’s point of view.

In the second-to-last cell, two men dressed in yellow jumpsuits had a young man sitting on the bed, clearly unconscious. One of the men helped him upright, while the other used an electric shaver to remove beard growth.

I felt my own face and remembered realizing that I’d been shaved before I’d awoke. How had they done this to me? To all of us?

Then it hit me.

I followed Mr. Pink through the door.

“You’re gassing us,” I said to his back.

“Makes it easier for the therapy to work. Don’t feel so worried. We’re not exactly making this up as we go along, you know.”

This stopped me. “Really? So you have
another
underground bunker with a thousand messed-up soldiers to fuck around with?”

This made him pause. He turned and pointed to a door to his right. “Go through there. Get changed. We’re airborne in twenty mikes.”

“Where we going?”

“Dothan, Alabama.”

“What for?”

“A young man who scrubbed floors on the night shift at a local supermarket decided to take all of his weapons into an elementary school and kill twenty-three children and five teachers before turning his guns on himself.”

Oh, Jesus.
“And what does it have to do with us?”

“The invasion has already begun. I want to show you. I want you to understand.”

“Why me? Why spend this time on me?”

He turned and walked down the hall. “We’ll be airborne in eighteen mikes. You need to hurry.”

Live for something rather than die for nothing.

General George S. Patton

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
F THERE’S ANYTHING
worse than the site of a school massacre I’m not aware of it, and I’d seen man-created misery at its very finest. We’d landed in Fort Rucker in a TF OMBRA jet. Two dark green Suburbans were waiting for us. I got into the second one with Mr. Pink. The first carried three men who looked like they spent their lives playing video games. The glance I got of their hi-tech equipment made me wonder if that was what they were doing even now, as their SUV made concentric circles around the event site.

I did as I was told. I stood tall, silent and still, wearing army boots, 5.11 tactical camouflage pants, a black TF OMBRA polo shirt, a P229 on my right hip, and dark glasses. They’d given me a comms unit that fit into the back of my belt and had a wire to my ear, much like a Secret Service agent. And everyone left me alone. I stood a few feet back from Mr. Pink, following him as he processed through the authorities, his TF OMBRA badge as effective as anyone else’s.

Miss Anne Cloverfield Elementary School was founded in 1928 as an all-black school for the children of field laborers. Named after the suffragist who turned her fight to help the plight of poor children everywhere, it was through guilt, guile, and manipulation that she convinced the plantation owners to pony up enough money for what had been in the day the best school for black children in the county. Fast forward past Governor Wallace and Selma and America’s decision to have a black president and Miss Anne’s, as the community came to know it, had become a magnet school, bringing the best and brightest of all races through its doors.

Which is why the entire world watched, stunned, not understanding the capriciousness of a universe that would allow a lone gunman to walk into the school and kill so many innocent children. That this same crime had been replicated in different states over the years made it beyond tragic. It should have been stopped. Some wanted to arm the teachers. Some wanted to post guards at every school. Some wanted to pull their children out and home school them. The only thing everyone could agree on was that they were sure it wouldn’t happen to
their
children.

Although the shooting was past and the families had been notified, news reporters and concerned citizens still filled the school’s parking lot.

“What exactly are we doing here?” I asked, leaning forward to engage Mr. Pink before I remembered I wore comm gear.

“Waiting, actually,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear.

“For what?”

“You’ll know when it happens.” He turned to me. “Can you feel anything?”

“Feel? I feel sad to fucking be here.”

“No. Like a buzz or a vibration.”

I shook my head. “I don’t feel anything except for a lot of anger at how fucked up all this is.”

Mr. Pink looked disappointed, but he quickly recovered. It was the first show of emotion he’d let slip.

“What are we waiting on?” I remembered him mentioning that the
invasion had already begun
. I might be able to buy that, but what did it have to do with this?

I watched as a policeman, standing with his arms crossed on the other side of the police line, said something to one of the reporters. I was too far away to hear it, but I didn’t need to. It was all variations on a tragedy. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the breeze and the coming and going of cars.

“You called me Mr. Pink.” Mr. Pink had turned and was facing me, blocking my view.

“What?”

“Back at Phase I, when you almost killed yourself. You called me Mr. Pink.”

“What of it? It’s not like I know your real name.”

He nodded slowly. I was aware of a Warrant Officer and his wife on the ground behind him, arm in arm, sobbing together. I refocused on him.

“I’ve never been called that before. Out of curiosity, why Mr. Pink?”

I explained about his likeness to the actor Steve Buscemi, and about the character in the Quentin Tarantino movie.

“I liked that movie. Who was the one who cut off the man’s ear?”

“That was Michael Madsen. He was Mr. Blonde.”

“Oh. Any chance you could switch to Mr. Blonde?”

We were interrupted by a voice in our earpieces. “We have positive vector.”

Mr. Pink moved and I was right behind him. “Report locus,” he said, as he strode past a dozen vehicles to our own.

“Two blocks west. Yellow house. Picket fence.”

We got in our SUV. Our driver took us around the long way to bypass the local media. Mr. Pink pulled out a tablet, much like the one I’d left back in my cell, and had the other team relay a satellite image of the area. I watched as his tablet synced with theirs, then zoomed in. The street looked normal except for a red flashing box around one house.

“How far away is it from the perp’s?” Mr. Pink asked.

“Less than fifty meters. Next street over and down. Light green house.”

Mr. Pink placed his finger on the red blinking house, then traced a route through backyards. He tapped the image of the house with the tip of his nail. “Do we have dragonflies on station?”

“Roger.”

“Show me a view through the windows of the subject house.”

The screen went blank and was replaced by a whirling, sickening view from something that seemed to be flying through the air. I watched the view change as it came up to the house, then hovered first by the living room window, then a bedroom window, then the dining room window. It paused there as we took in the scene. It looked like a family of four was sitting at the table, but no one was moving.

“Switch to IR,” Mr. Pink said.

The image switched to grays and greens. Each of the bodies had an orange core, with yellow trailing down and through the floor.
Strange
.

“Team two, secure the perimeter. Team three enter and locate, but do not engage. Team four, wait for me.” To the driver. “Faster.”

The driver stepped on it as we carved through the streets towards the home.

“We discovered them accidentally,” Mr. Pink told me. “A local cop in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho was canvassing homes after a similar incident six years ago and found a family in their living room. The Huyck family was alive, but no longer human.” He paused, as if expecting me to ask what he meant by
no longer human
, but he continued before I could ask the obvious. “You’ll see when we get in there. Don’t touch anything and let me know immediately if you feel your thoughts are no longer your own.” This time he did look at me.