Grunt Hero

by Weston Ochse

  “What do you think now, Stranz?”

  He looked at me for a moment. “I think it might have been cool to have kids with her.”

  “Yeah, and I bet you would have made a good dad.”

  We made it down to the ground floor and were out the door. The more I walked, the harder it was to put one foot in front of the other. I was going to have to relinquish my EXO and have myself looked at before I passed out. I told Stranz to go get his right arm rig out of his EXO.

  Earl showed up. Instead of the cocksure EXO driver he’d been, his face was sheet white and his eyes wouldn’t stop moving. His arms were crossed over his chest like they could shield him from a stray round. He walked hunched as if he was afraid of being hit any second. Inside the suit he’d been a totally different person. Video Game Syndrome.

  I ordered him to my side, then had his sister scavenge ammo from Stranz’s downed EXO. While she scurried around the corner of the building, Ohirra and Mr. Pink came up. I stumbled and Ohirra caught me under my elbow.

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Once we get inside, I’ll see how bad it is.”

  “Was there only one of the EXOs?” she asked. “I followed the battle through your feed.”

  I glanced at Mr. Pink, who nodded. Evidently everyone had access to my feed.

  I shook my head. “As far as we know. They could have stationed some inside. We won’t know until we get there. Did you see that monster? It wasn’t made to battle Cray. It was made to battle us.”

  She smiled grimly. “NUSNA has always had a personal agenda.”

  “They begrudge the fact that they turned down our help before the invasion,” Mr. Pink said.

  “You did ask them to pay you, though. It was a sort of blackmail,” I explained.

  “It was nothing of the sort. They weren’t forced to do anything.”

  “By the way, what was it you asked for?” When he looked blankly at me, I added, “For OMBRA’s assistance?”

  “Alaska. After all, it was bought for $7.2 million. I figured the old USA could sell it to help us save the world, especially their cities.”

  “Why didn’t they do it?”

  “You know, I don’t think it’s because they didn’t want to negotiate, they just didn’t believe in the threat. They were so concerned with what women were doing with their bodies and who owned what guns that they just couldn’t come to a consensus.”

  “And here we are,” I said.

  Stranz came back around, as did Pearl.

  To him I said, “When we get inside, you’re going to wear my suit. I want you to be able to do damage in case there’s something we need damaged. Understand?”

  “WILCO.”

  Olivares, Chance, and Charlemagne approached in loose formation. Charlemagne’s left arm hung loose at his side.

  Merlin walked behind them, no sign of his spidertank.

  I looked to Charlemagne first. “What happened?”

  “Explosion threw me into the side of a building,” he said. “I think I broke it.”

  The wound might impede the function of the Hydra rocket deployment system, but it wouldn’t affect anything else. He was walking wounded and could still fight. Good.

  Then I turned to Merlin. “And you? Where’d you park your spidertank?”

  Merlin’s face was covered in soot and he walked with a slight limp. He used his father’s aangruyak for support. “Afraid it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. One of those metal dogs blew up right beneath it.”

  I nodded. Too bad we lost the spidertank. The acoustic disk would have definitely been a handy defense, but there was nothing to be done with it now.

  “Did anyone do a sweep of the complex to see if there are any more lying in wait?”

  Olivares stared at me, then cursed. “I was so glad the things we were fighting were suddenly turned off that I didn’t check. My bad.”

  “Why don’t you organize the EXOs and have them take a quick look. Don’t want something trapping us. Meanwhile, Mr. Pink and I will stand here with our thumbs up our asses.”

  Olivares shot me a glare, then nodded. “I earned that one.”

  He rounded everyone up and sent out two teams. He led Charlemagne, Chance, and Merlin, while Ohirra led Pearl, and Liebl.

  Stranz started to follow, and I called out to him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He stopped and turned, naked except for his Kevlar skivvies, one arm half gone. “What is it, sir?” he asked, like a kid stopped from joining the others.

  “Don’t you think you ought to sit this one out until we get you in my EXO?”

  He grinned. “Nah, I don’t need no EXO.”

  The kid was serious. I thought about telling him to stay put, but instead I said, “Go on then. Don’t want you to miss any of the fun.”

  He turned to run, then stopped after a few steps. He rendered an awkward salute, then turned and ran again, looking like a child chasing after giant storm troopers.

  Earl was still standing beside me and made no move to join Stranz. I spared Earl a quick look. The kid was almost hyperventilating. He was definitely shaking.

  Mr. Pink didn’t even seem to notice.

  I stayed silent, mainly because I didn’t have much to say. I was having a hard enough time trying to stand, so that’s where my concentration was going. We had stopped in front of a building with a sign that said it was a dispensary. Entrance to the UGF was reported to be directly below. Personally, I was just hoping that they had something in there that would keep me from dying. At least, that was my first priority.

  But it seemed that Mr. Pink needed to have a conversation.

  “You know, I meant well when I recruited you,” he said as if each word cost him a pint of blood. For whatever reason, Mr. Pink wanted to get sentimental.

  “Doesn’t make up for some of the shit you pulled with me,” I said, not giving him a chance to sugarcoat things.

  “No,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t.”

  But now that I had him alone, something was actually bothering me. “What happened to the people who owned the company?”

  “You mean the heads of OMBRA?”

  “Yeah, those guys who wanted to sell their services to the world. Those guys.”

  “They got killed shortly after the first wave. They were in a plane that was intercepted by a squadron of Cray. They attacked with an EMP burst and the plane crashed.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “They all died?”

  “Every last one of them.”

  “Why’d you keep on going?”

  “I had military forces all over the world to control and a chance to defeat the aliens.” He shrugged. “What else was there to do?”

  I turned to look at him. “Well, son of a bitch.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You acted like a soldier instead of a businessman.”

  “I’m not exactly philanthropic.”

  “But you did the right thing for the right reason.”

  “I suppose,” he said.

  I felt light-headed and staggered.

  He caught me, then leaned me against the side of the building.

  My HUD flashed red.

  Mr. Pink’s must have too, because he turned to engage the target. I couldn’t move, so I gaze-flicked into his feed and saw that it was one of the mechanical canines. This one had a square-shaped object strapped to its back.

  Earl followed our gaze, screamed, then scrambled to get behind me.

  “I got this one,” Mr. Pink said, and began moving toward it.

  “Just shoot the damn thing,” I said.

  “I will, I just want to… damn, I was right. These were part of DARPAs Big Dog program.” He chuckled, then the machine leaped towards him and exploded.

  When the teams finally returned, I was on the ground, holding Mr. Pink’s body in my arms. The explosion had ripped through the entire front of his EXO and had turned his torso and pelvis into one long, red smudge
. His surprised eyes were wide in his helmet, still so alive even in death.

  Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.

  Albert Pike

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I NEVER SPENT any real time thinking about my parents. It’s not that they were bad parents, it’s just that they sort of gave up on parenting when I turned thirteen. I mean, who can blame them? My mother worked two jobs. My father worked ten hour days. They never saw me, and when they did, I was either in trouble or about to be in trouble. They called me a latchkey kid. Whatever. I was raised by the streets, fed dinner by my friend’s parents, and found shelter by hanging out in convenience stores. When I was twelve, I saw my first fight—not a fight where two kids turtle up on the ground like in school, but a real one—in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven® when two winos from the Halfway House fought over a cigarette. I swear they would have killed themselves if it hadn’t been for the Korean next door, who brought out a hose and wet them down like they were dogs. When I was thirteen, I saw my first death in that same parking lot when one of the 8th Street Angels flashed gang signs at a passing car filled with MS 13. Two months later, I saw my second dead body wash up on the rocks of Carbrillo Beach, and was sickened that so many of the families there with kids thought it was a cool thing to bring everyone over and look at the body.

  My parents never knew I’d witnessed these things. I wasn’t about to tell them. Not only would they figure out a way to limit my freedom, but it also might have made them feel bad about the way they were raising me. They worked so hard and were so tired all the time. Hell, the last thing I wanted was for them to have to deal with one more thing.

  Things changed when I turned fifteen. We found out that my dad had been catting it with one of the other real estate agents. He told my mom he wanted a divorce, she told him to fuck off, and for the next year it was like two tired Dobermans trying to fight each other and asking me to be referee. My dad eventually left. I got one birthday card with a twenty dollar bill and a late Christmas present before he finally realized that he could still live his life and forget about me. My mother stopped working, went on welfare, and collected child support and alimony. I’d judge the quality of her day by how early she started drinking gin.

  When I joined the Army, she barely noticed. I went through Basic Training at Fort Benning and then had follow-on Infantry Training. Then I went to Jump School. I’d gone from a teenage jerk to a certified red, white and blue teenage jerk, and I wanted to come home and visit. Thanksgiving was coming up and I sent her a letter asking her if I could. I’d sent it with the idea that I could turn her back into a mother. Evidently it worked. She read it, thought about what she’d turned into, became upset, then killed herself by tying a bag over her head and handcuffing her wrists to her feet.

  Not exactly an image I want to keep remembering—the woman who gave birth to me, loved me, taught me how to ride a bike, then got so overwhelmed with life she gave up on everything. So drill sergeants became my parents instead. Then it was my platoon sergeants, and my sergeants major. Every unit I went to I’d get a new set of parents. Some were better than others. They were all tough as nails. They ‘raised’ me, teaching me things I never knew about other people, teaching me things I never knew about myself.

  When I was promoted to sergeant, it started happening to me. I saw the looks in some of my soldiers’ eyes, the adoration, the hero worship, thepuppy dog I will follow you into battle and the ends of the earth look I must have given to my sergeants. And I took my role seriously. I led by example and did the right things, even when they were hard to do.

  And then they started dying… those soldiers who were not only my subordinates, but my friends, my comrades, my confidants. Brian, Jim, Frank, Steve, Lashonne, Mike, Mike 2, Isaiah, Jesus, Todd, and Nathan died all across the face of the Middle East. Some died in my arms, like Mike, heart attack bringing him down, and some were shot through the face, like Lashonne, or blown into human confetti, like Jim, or caught in a fire like D’Ambrosio. Then there was Isaiah, who fell asleep under a track only to have it roll back over his face. Shoveling what was left of his head into the bag had been my responsibility.

  Then came the invasion and I lost most of the world. McKenzie, fucking Jimmy McKenzie, the laughter to my horror. Later Michelle and Thompson. Malcolm, dead saving Sula’s life from an RPG only so she could die of a fucking burst appendix months later.

  I stared through tears at the man in my arms. My Steve Buscemi look alike. The singular asshole who had put me on this track and was absolutely responsible for me being here at this very moment, holding him, making me feel sorry for him, and absolutely pissed that I was. Even now I felt manipulated by him. Then again, maybe that’s how parents operate. Maybe that’s what they do best—getting a child to do something without them knowing he or she is actually doing it. Even Mr. Pink had been a father to me, a mother to me. In fact, he was maybe the best of them, because he gave me a chance to do things I’d never have been able to do had he not stopped me from killing myself.

  I strained to remember what his first words to me had been.

  What were they? Oh, yeah. Something that should have been in a movie. This could be a beginning instead of an end, you know? So dramatic, those words would have made Tony Scott proud. Then he’d unsuccessfully tried to get me not to kill myself. If it hadn’t been for the net he’d strung below me, I wouldn’t even be here to witness the end of what had turned out to be a great man. Instead, I’d be cloaked in the cold, oil-polluted waters of Los Angeles Harbor, my body home to schools of fish and Dungeness crab, unaware and unconcerned that we were being planet-jacked by drive-by aliens.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up—Ohirra. Beside her stood Olivares. They’d been there at the beginning too, all of us locked in cells beneath the Wyoming plains in an old Strategic Air Command complex built back when the only enemy the world had was the threat of mutually assured destruction and an eternal nuclear winter. Then Olivares put his hand on my other shoulder. We were connected, the four of us, possibly by more than any four people in the history of the planet.

  And now we were three.

  But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

  Exodus 21:23-25

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  WHEN I WAS ready to stand, I found I couldn’t. They helped me up and leaned me against the wall. I was so weak, I could barely hold myself up. They got Jackson’s EXO and paired it with Mr. Pink’s helmet for a full suit. Oliveras was about to give it to Stranz when I called him on private chat.

  “Give it to Earl instead.”

  “Stranz is a better fighter, plus I trust him.”

  “Stranz can function fine outside the suit. Earl can barely breathe. The kid’s terrified. We’re going to lose him if we don’t get him suited up.”

  “But I thought he was a crack fighter.”

  “He is when he’s in his suit. Outside it, he’s just a civilian, just a kid. He has Video Game Syndrome. As long as he can pretend it’s not real, he can function.”

  Oliveras relented and gave the suit to Earl, who all but pissed himself climbing inside. Stranz looked a little hurt but didn’t say anything. Instead he stood, holding his arm extender, looking around at all the huge EXOs.

  “Okay, Wonder Twins,” Olivares said. “Check the perimeter.”

  They checked the perimeter of the building, then Liebl climbed up on the roof.

  “No access up here,” he said.

  “Can’t see inside,” Pearl said.

  “We’re going to have to breach then,” Olivares said.

  They broke into two teams. One took the back, the other took the front.

  When they simultaneously breached, all hell broke loose.
The open doors triggered sentry gun fire but Hero Squad was up for it. They kept the guns firing until they were out of ammo, then poured inside the building.

  Outside and away from the action, I wondered off-handedly if one of the mechanical canines was going to rise and blow me to pieces. I hastily coded an app that tied my minigun into my HUD radar. Any movement that wasn’t a friendly EXO would be targeted and fired upon.

  Inside were two more of the super EXOs, but even as massive and dangerous as they were, they were no match for a complete team. Where I’d struggled to defeat one singlehandedly, the Super EXOs couldn’t defend themselves against an organized attack.

  I used alternating feeds to watch what was going on.

  Olivares and Chance worked a high low maneuver, forcing the beast to choose its poison. It chose to block high and lost its legs as Chance hacked at them with the violence of the damned.

  Ohirra forced the other super EXO into a corner and had it surrender. It slowly removed its suit. First the helmet, revealing the pock-marked face of a teenager. Then the rest came off, shoved into a pile for us to look at later.