Grunt Traitor (15 page)

“Come on,” Sandi said. “Let’s get out of here.”

I took one last look at the woman, wondering briefly where she came from, where her family was, and if there was anyone she could go to. Then we left, Phil in front again as we descended the overpass. We’d gotten perhaps a block further when we heard a single gunshot.

No one turned around, not even Dupree.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, ‘it is the quality which guarantees all others.’

Sir Winston Churchill

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

W
E PASSED THE
Northrop Grumman parking lot and reached a construction gravel pit at the end of the road. We looked across the pit and saw the black alien vine in person for the first time, a vegetative thickness on the horizon. Not so far off in the distance rose one of the Twin Hives. A few sentry Cray soared above it. There’d be more at night. Every step closer to the hives put the party in even greater danger. Fighting a Cray with an armored EXO was hard enough; they’d tear through the hazmat suits like they were made of paper. I checked my watch. We had six hours to get there and back. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the alien vine in the dark.

The pit was clearly over a thousand feet wide. Skirting it would take too long, so we decided to go through it. Down below, in the center of the pit, rested two trailers, several pick-ups, and a large front loader. There was no sign of occupation, but we were wary.

I holstered my pistol and unslung my HK416. Distance was now more important than silence.

The uneven ground was tricky to traverse. I let Phil get well ahead of us; the last thing Dupree or I needed was for him to slip and fall and blow us all up. Even so, the grade was steep enough that we all fell at least once, Phil and me on our butts, Dupree on his side. Each time we checked the suits for rips or tears, but they remained sealed.

We made the bottom of the pit breathing heavily. My legs felt the stress of the descent. I couldn’t imagine how Dupree felt. My face was hot and wet beneath the helmet. An itch had found a home at the base of my nose. I would’ve loved to scratch it away, but the suit wouldn’t allow it. For a brief moment, I considered taking it off, but I’d seen enough of the fungees and the spikers to know that that’s not how I wanted to end up. If it came to that, I’d do what that poor Asian women had done and end it myself.

Sandi and Phil decided they were going to clear the trailers, but I insisted on replacing Phil. Close Quarters Combat, or CQB, was a skill that required a lot of practice and trust between its practitioners. I knew that Sandi had that training from her association with OMBRA. Since we’d had much the same training, our level of trust in each other’s ability would be greater.

The trailers were the same white single-wides I’d seen at construction sites the world over. Several of the mesh-covered windows had been broken. Doors hung ajar. They were arrayed in an L-shape, each with a set of faded wooden steps.

We were about thirty feet away when I held up my fist and we halted. There was no reason to rush. We needed to get a feel for the place. Observe it. Watch for motion.

I spoke low to pass the time. “So what’s Phil’s story?” I asked Sandi.

“He’s Mother’s nephew.”

“So that’s why he walks around like he has a stick up his butt.”

“That and he’s a piece of shit.”

I glanced at her to see if she was joking, but there was no smile, no laugh. She was concentrating on the trailers.

“Well, at least he’s our piece of shit,” I said by way of a joke. After a moment I asked, “Why exactly is he a piece of shit?”

“He was a meth-head before the alien invasion. Lived in his parents’ basement. Lit up one night and burned the whole place down. Killed his mother, father and little brother.”

The alien invasion had leveled the playing field and given everyone a second chance. I’d met plenty of folks who’d done vile things. But when the fate of the Earth was at stake, they’d cast aside their selfishness and become brand new people.

There had to be something more here.

So I asked.

“Then what? Didn’t he learn his lesson?”

Now she did turn to me. “He learned his lesson all right. Mother sent us after him. When we found him, he was at a convent up in the woods past Lake Arrowhead. He’d addicted fourteen women to meth and was exchanging the drug for sexual favors.”

I turned to look at Phil. He could have been a grumpy neighbor. He could have been the guy who changes your oil. He could have been anybody.

She continued. “Two were grandmothers. Three were sisters. One was a double amputee from the Iraq War who’d gone to the convent pre-invasion to get her head straight. He tried to fight us, but we took him, tied him to a tree, and beat him for two days, then we took him back to Mother.”

I realized that I’d been holding my breath. “What happened to the women? How are they?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t my business.”

“But they were addicted. They needed help.”

“Didn’t you hear me back there?” she snapped. “There is no more welfare. There are no more clinics. The world doesn’t have those things anymore. The world as we knew it doesn’t exist. We had nice things, but the aliens broke them.”

I don’t know what’s worse. Knowing and doing nothing or not knowing at all. At least if you knew someone had a problem there was the opportunity to fix it. I stared at Sandi; her PTSD was front and center. Her method of dealing with stress was to push it away. How ironic that OMBRA’s methods were to force everyone to deal with their stress, then help others deal with theirs. It was probably the reason she was no longer with the organization.

“Then why do you keep him around?”

“Because it’s what Mother wants.”

I got that eerie culty feeling again that I didn’t like. It was time to get back to business.

“Which one do you want to take first? Left or right?”

“Let’s do left.”

The windows were too high to peek in, so our first look at the interior would have to be through the door. I didn’t like the fact that the other door was so close and would be to our backs. It was a threat, and if this had been anywhere else, I would have thrown a grenade inside and be done with it. But this wasn’t anyplace else. There could be friendlies inside. And I didn’t have a grenade anyway.

“Let’s move in quick.”

We stacked at the base of the stairs. Three wooden steps into the trailer.

“Ready. Steady.
Move.
”

I surged up the steps, my rifle sunk into my right shoulder, grip tight, elbows in. I swung into the room, traversed from left to right.

Sandi came with me, dropping to a knee as she aimed her rifle on a lower level, traversing from right to left.

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

From our vantage we could see everything. The trailer was a large office with metal desks and chairs scattered around the room. The ground was covered with papers, maps and cardboard. At the far end was a bathroom.

I headed for it, taking small steps so I wouldn’t slip on anything beneath my feet. Behind me, Sandi entered the trailer and put her back to the wall. She’d shoot anyone who came in the door. Towards the back I slowed. I thought I’d detected a sound coming from the bathroom, but the suit had a muffling effect and I couldn’t be certain.

I brought the barrel low and curled it around the door frame. A black mass of hair stirred in the corner of the shower. Was it a dog? A cat? Then it shifted and I saw the white stripe.

I found myself in the awkward position of wishing it was a spiker.

Then it saw me.

Then it sprayed.

I realized that I was in a suit; not only could the vile liquid not get on me, but I couldn’t smell it either.

It turned and glared at me with eyes colored red from my laser targeting light. No ascocarps. No fungus. It was just pissed that I’d barged into its barrow.

I turned and headed back towards the door. There were too many things dead out there to kill something for killing’s sake. This one I’d let live.

As we exited the trailer we saw a pack of kids on top of the slope right above Dupree and Phil. They looked to be between five and fifteen. I counted roughly twenty of them. We were probably in their playground. With no construction workers and as out of sight as this place was, it would be the perfect place to do anything.

I was about to wave at them when something made me hesitate. I raised my sniper rifle to have a closer look and saw what I’d most feared: ascocarps.

They came bounding down the slope behind Phil and Dupree, who were oblivious to the threat. I began running towards them. Sandi opened fire behind me, which caused Phil to turn. As Dupree stared at me, still not knowing what was happening, Phil let loose with a great gout of flame that immediately engulfed a black-haired teenage boy and a red-headed girl who could have passed for Little Orphan Annie.

I cried out for them to stop, but knew they couldn’t.

A fat kid fell, knocking two more kids off their feet. They rolled down the hill gathering speed, arms and legs flailing as gravity jerked them to its bosom.

Phil opened fire again, burning them even as they fell. But then he saw his mistake and he was too late. He scrambled to run, but the burning fat kid bounced and hit Phil in the face, carrying him ass over flame thrower.

The other burning kids came close to knocking Dupree down, but in the lucky drunken stumble I’d seen in professional winos, he somehow managed to come out unscathed as a burning kid rolled past on either side of him.

He saw me running for him and grinned his appreciation.

Then he went down.

A girl punched him in the groin and kept punching. As he hit back, another girl came and began to hit him in the head. He kicked the first girl away and tried to punch the girl hitting his head, but he couldn’t find her. Somehow his helmet had gotten turned so the viewport wasn’t near his eyes. So he did the only thing he could think of to protect himself, which was to roll into a ball like a giant pill bug.

All the while, Sandi had been firing. Most of the kids were down; if not dead, at least wounded.

I arrived at Dupree and butt-stroked the girl on top of him. Then I straddled him and began to fire.

Blam.

I killed a kid.

Blam.

I shot a girl through the head.

Blam.

I sent a bullet into the brain of a slender young man with a
Star Wars
T-shirt. Fucking
Star Wars
. Fucking Darth Vader. Fucking Princess Leia. If only we could have some civilized fucking aliens instead of the ones who wanted to terraform and destroy our children. Check that; to make the
survivors
kill the children.

They came at me and I took them out.

Sandi was doing the same near Phil.

Tears stung my eyes as I killed the last infected child. He was maybe five years old. The reason he was last was because his tiny legs couldn’t keep up with the larger children. Blond hair and blue eyes—he should have been watching reruns of
Barney
or
Sesame Street
or whatever fucking shows kids watched before the alien invasion, not running at us infected with alien spores trying to spread the sickness. He got within five feet of me and I sent my final bullet into his head. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see. I heard him fall. I felt him roll at my feet. I pushed him away without even looking. Then I counted to ten, breathed deep, hitched up my big boy pants, and blinked the traitorous tears away.

I stepped aside and reached down for Dupree.

“Dupree! You okay?”

I turned him and saw that his viewport had been pierced by something sharp that had left a gaping hole four inches across.

He stared back at me more scared than I’d ever seen him. This was worse than a death sentence. Seeing the bodies of the children all around, some still smoldering, all I could think of was that if this was a movie, it certainly wasn’t a science fiction movie. No, this was a horror film. All you had to see was the smoldering ruins of our future to prove it.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Carl Sagan

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
HELPED
D
UPREE
to a sitting position. “It’s going to be okay, man. We’ll get this fixed and Charlie Mike,” I said.
Continue mission
.

The scientist felt carefully around the lip of the broken plastic with his gloved hands. Dust had gathered inside and on his face. He pinched it between two fingers, then closed his eyes and sighed. He sat there for a moment, then looked at me. “Help me get out of this, will you?”