Grunt Traitor

by Weston Ochse

  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 DUPREE 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?”

  “Are you crazy? You need this.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s too late.” He held up his black-gloved hands, covered in gray powder. “This is spore. It’s already all over me.”

  My eyes widened. “But how? It’s just a little break.”

  He gestured to a dead young girl lying not five feet away. Her face was dirty, but placid. Long red hair clung to her skin, partially covering the left side of her face. Dozens of round tuberous ascocarps covered her shoulders and neck. Each and every one had burst like a puff mushroom.

  “It’s all inside my mask.” He got to a knee, then stood a little shakily as he began to fumble at the helmet.

  I reached around behind him and pressed the locking mechanism. Then I twisted and lifted. The helmet came away easily.

  His dark brown hair lay flat against his head. Gray powder made a rectangular shape on his face. He concentrated as he removed his gloves, then peeled the suit down and stepped out of it. “Now I know where the term monkey suit comes from.” He shook his head and tsked. “Last time I was this uncomfortable was at my senior prom.”

  “Because you took your mom?”

  He glanced at me. “Because Rebecca said she’d let me into her pants that night and I’d gone out and bought my first condom. It was in my pocket the whole time and I could have sworn every teacher knew it was there.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face as clean as he could. Then he sighed heavily. His shoulders sagged. His arms fell straight to his sides as he stared morosely at the ground.

  “Do you want to go back?” I asked.

  He took a moment to look at the dead children and shook his head. “They turned these children into vectors. If it’s up to them, they’ll turn the entire planet into a vector. No, let’s Charlie Mike while I’m able. I was sent here to see the locus of the fungus, and by God I want to see it.”

  I grinned and squeezed his shoulder. “Okay, then.”

  I went over to where Sandi squatted by Phil. “How is he?”

  “Dead. Neck’s broken.”

  His head was turned at an impossible angle.

  “I see you’re broken up about it.”

  She stood. “Piece of shit should have suffered more.” Her eyes flicked in Dupree’s direction. “What about him?”

  “His helmet broke. He’s a walking vector. Do we know how long he has?”

  Sandi shrugged. “We’re going to find out.”

  I glanced to where Dupree was taking inventory of his remaining equipment. “What about the flame thrower?”

  “I’m not going to carry that heavy-ass thing.” She pushed by me. “You want it, you carry it.”

  I watched her go and wondered what was going on inside her mind. I’d seen tough girls before. Some were authentically tough, a product of the streets. But others—most others, I’d found—used their toughness as a shield. It was far easier to hate things than it was to love things. Hatred required no nurturing. Hatred allowed no disappointment.

  I followed and soon the three of us were heading up the other side of the pit, without Phil and without the flame thrower. I was better with my weapons than that monstrosity. Next time I had to fight something, I wanted to be able to do it with a weapon I was familiar with. I was first. Dupree walked in the middle, constantly scribbling in his notebook, and Sandi brought up the rear.

  Over the lip of the pit it was only a few hundred feet of empty ground to Irwindale Avenue. There wasn’t a soul in sight, which suited me just fine. We crossed the empty roadway and into the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area. We could make out the encroaching alien vine over the tops of the trees. I guessed that the vine was topping out about a hundred feet off the ground. Where it wasn’t clinging to something, it had trunks the size of hundred year old trees. We were less than a mile from the leading edge, which seemed to be seeking the water of the dammed lake.

  Bodies of dead animals and a few people littered the ground. Fungal growths had sprouted from every one of them, creating an other-worldly terrain of skeletal alien bushes. After Dupree took a moment to inspect one coming out of what had once been a large raccoon, we avoided them.

  A path rimmed the entirety of the lake. We took the northern arm. I was hyperaware, looking from the water to the sky to the ground. This close to the alien flora I didn’t know what to expect.

  Twice I saw something moving through the woods, but it wasn’t letting us see it fully. The third time I saw it, I called our little party to a halt, then knelt and examined the forest through my scope. I took a full minute, then another. I was about to quit when I saw the slightest of movements. It turned out to be a tail. Long and tan, it was attached to the large body of a mountain lion, placidly staring back at me. I’d heard of them carrying hikers and bikers away, higher in the mountains. I guess with the population decline, they were getting bolder. With a touch of black on its face and an undercoating of white fur, it looked magnificent. I played my forefinger over the trigger, knowing I couldn’t let this creature dog us. If we had to leave in a hurry, it could pick one of us off. It might just try and do the same as we approached the alien vine. Still, it broke my heart to kill something so imperious.

  It growled, the sound reverberating over the water.

  I watched as it leaped, not towards us, but away from something in the woods. It clawed and spat as it reared back and away from... a squirrel. Check that; not one squirrel, but dozens, and each marked with spiky fungal growths.

  The mountain lion swatted one away, but another landed on its back and bit down. Still another was crushed by a paw, but two more latched onto its side. In a world without alien spore the mountain lion would’ve killed every one of them. But this wasn’t that world. The infected squirrels had already done what the fungus had programmed them to do. It was only a matter of time before the mountain lion became a spiker, too. I couldn’t let that happen. It seemed sacrilegious somehow, and I didn’t want to have to face a mountain lion who wasn’t capable of showing fear or running away because of the silent demands of an alien fungus.

  So I fired, catching it in the side of the head, sending it hard to the earth. I watched the confused squirrels gather themselves, searching for a new source to attack, then climb once more into the tree. Had they seen us, I had no doubt they’d have come for us.

  “You could do that to me, too,” Dupree said. “I know you could.”

  “But I won’t,” I said, almost believing the lie.

  He made a sad face. “Maybe you should.”

  I clasped him on the back. “Where’s that happy guy who couldn’t wait to see the aliens? Look.” I pointed across the lake. “They’re right there.”

  He sighed. “Migh
t as well, I suppose,” he said reluctantly. “We’ve come all this way.”

  We finally came to the leading edge of the alien vine. I’d seen pictures of it and seen the actual plant from afar, but this was the first time I was able to get a close-up look. The leaves were a deep black, even the undersides.

  “Look there.” Dupree pointed. “You can actually see the stolons moving.”

  I watched as an arm-thick length of vine snaked along the ground toward us. I glanced left and right and saw hundreds of the runners, slowly pushing forward along the ground. Here and there one would halt as it knotted, sending feelers into the ground. Then it would continue outward from the knot.

  Additional runners hung from the vines overhead, grabbing trees, wrapping themselves around trunks. Further in I could see where they’d actually penetrated the sides of the trees and the foliage was already wilting and falling away.

  Dupree stepped over the stolons and beneath the canopy.

  Sandi followed him. Seeing I wasn’t moving, she turned and raised her eyebrows.

  “All right, all right.” Slow as it moved, I was sure I could flee if needed. But the fact that I could see it moving at all left me ill at ease. I held my rifle at high ready, prepared to shoot if necessary—as if shooting the alien vine would do anything at all. Still, it made me feel better.

  Once underneath the alien vine, I felt immediately cool. The canopy almost completely blocked out the light. I stepped carefully.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” I asked, drawing even with Dupree. It was odd seeing him without the hazmat suit. He seemed just fine.

  “Looking for?” His grin had returned full beam. “Anything. Everything.” He knelt and touched one of the runners. “Realize that I’m touching something that was created on another planet.” He held up the runner to show tiny hair-like filaments extending from it. “Look at these rhizomes. They’re very active. I bet if I continued to hold this, they’d bore into my skin.” When he put the runner down, the filaments sunk into the earth.

  “This is a botanical wonder,” he continued. “Our own alien vine, kudzu, is an invasive species. We used to say that the way you can tell where the American South began and ended was to look for the alien vine. That old don’t stand still joke is for real with this stuff.”