Grunt Life

by Weston Ochse

  “Come on, gather around. Find a seat,” he said.

  He sat on the seat of a Nautilus machine.

  “By now you know the Cray have launched their attack. That they’ve been successful is no surprise. We all knew that in the first days of the invasion they’d have the upper hand. After all, they were able to learn about us for years. They were prepared.”

  Murmurs of speculation and outrage began to build, but he held up his hand for silence.

  “There’s nothing we could do about it. There’s nothing we could have done to better prepare. We didn’t know what we didn’t know.” He let the words sink in for a moment, then continued. “But now here we are. We have enough information to begin formulating a plan of action.”

  “What is it?” someone shouted.

  “Yeah, what’s the plan?” came another voice.

  “How’d they do it?” someone else shouted.

  Mr. Pink turned towards the last voice. “They seem to be completely biological in origin. Even their ships are biological. They also evidently have the ability to project EMP pulses. Although our satellites were shielded, the continual assault of EMPs knocked them out, along with most everything the militaries brought against them. Our planes literally fell from the sky as they came in for attack. Basically, the entire grid has been blacked out. The only reason we know anything is because of our remaining ground-based communication systems and that won’t last for long.”

  That silenced everyone. It took a moment to digest the idea of a world without electricity. I tried to remember what I knew about electromagnetic pulses. We were once concerned with them as a side-effect of nuclear explosions; the blast and radiation would decimate a target, while the EMP would render all electronic equipment unusable. Is that what happened? Was everything now broken? If so, then how could we hope to win?

  The murmur of conversation had risen again and Mr. Pink, waved it back down. “I see you all working through the problem. That’s good. Also know that we have TF OMBRA’s R&D Department working on it as well. In fact, we’ll meet with them shortly.”

  This got my attention. What was he talking about?

  “We’re going to evacuate this facility in two hours. We’re too close to Denver and don’t want to lose you to whatever happened there, or whatever may be coming.

  “Your team leads have their orders. You need to pack your own things, and we need to prepare food stores for the trip. Look to your leads and be ready. We may have to leave sooner.”

  “Where are we going?” someone asked, but Mr. Pink was already up and moving. Then voices crashed into each other as everyone began asking questions at once.

  We all turned to Olivares. He grinned, but now, up close, I could see it wasn’t a grin. It was a grimace, or a snarl, or halfway between both. He gestured for us to follow him, moving through the crowd like an ice breaker until he came to his room. We entered and gathered around as he sat on his bed. It was immediately much quieter.

  “Where we going?” Frakess and Ohirra asked at the same time.

  “Alaska. Make sure you get enough blankets, because it’s going to be cold as hell. Now listen up. Here’s the plan.”

  We need to invent new words to describe our fear. Scared and terrified can’t aptly describe how we felt when our Earth was taken away from us. We used to fear the power of the government taking away money from taxes. We were truly a pathetic species.

  Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,

  Night Stalker Monologue #1023

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  FEAR SMELLS LIKE vinegar, vomit, and body odor, or at least it did inside the Amtrak train we were on, heading north in the middle of the Wyoming night. We’d packed in such a hurry, I didn’t really even know what was in the bag I was carrying. We were each given surplus duffel bags, which we stuffed with our few clothes and blankets, adding whatever food Rodney delivered, much of it wrapped in foil.

  Then we ran down a tunnel we’d never been down before, lugging our duffels like we were first-time privates being screamed at by drill sergeants. But it was worse than that. Denver had been destroyed. A Cray craft of some sort had landed in the middle of the city and had taken root there like a living skyscraper. Casper was less than three hundred miles north of the once-great Rocky Mountain capital, and there was no telling if or when Cray foot soldiers would arrive. Already there were reports of power losses in Cheyenne. Casper would be next. And if Casper, then—

  The tunnel took us to a light rail that ran seventeen miles and dead-ended at a blank wall. Stairs ran more than a hundred feet to the surface. We hustled upward, arriving up top huffing and puffing. We’d been working out, but the stresses of combat and fear were completely different on the human body. As we exited the stairs, we stopped and gasped, gripping our knees and our sides, clustered around the entrance.

  Mr. Pink and his crew were already there, yelling at us to keep moving. A real train awaited us this time and most of us stumbled towards it. But I couldn’t breathe. I stopped. Thompson was beside me. As I fought for air, leaning my head back, it felt as if I was on the surface of another planet. I didn’t recognize the stars or the moon. Devils Tower loomed in the distance across a flat black plain. Humans had been here for millions of years; whether we stayed here beyond the next few months was up to us.

  Thompson and I boarded, eventually finding the other members of Nineteen. We were crowded into our own coach room, sitting on two cloth benches facing each other. It didn’t take long for the train to get underway. I’d never been on a train before, unless you counted the New York City subway system.

  It smelled of vinegar. Ohirra claimed it had been wiped down with it. However the smell had gotten there, the inside of the train reeked of it. We opened the windows, but soon found the air getting too cold. Except for the moonlight shining through, the cabin was dark. Whether by design or not, the electricity had been shut off.

  We sat in silence for the first hour until another recruit came down the hall, calling for all leaders to meet in the dining car, which was back near the caboose. Olivares got up and left without a word, leaving us to speculate on what was happening.

  “Smells like vomit underneath the vinegar,” Frakess said, his nose wrinkling as he pulled a blanket to his chin.

  I sat between Thompson and Ohirra, who was next to the window.

  Olivares had been sitting beside Aquinas. Frakess was on the other side, also by the window.

  “Wonder what it was used for,” Thompson mused in a barely audible voice. “Wonder how TF OMBRA got its own train.”

  “Same way it got its own underground facility,” I said. “They probably bought it. My guess is it was probably a party train, traveling to Atlantic City or Vegas. I had an uncle who used to go on those. The casinos would pay their way and give them free booze, just so they’d come spend money.”

  “They liked all the money your uncle lost?”

  “Hell, no. Listen to him tell it, he won every time.”

  “Then why?”

  “Word of mouth. Everyone wanted to get his treatment.”

  “Will you stop it!” Ohirra spun towards me. “Don’t you get it? Atlantic City, Las Vegas, San Francisco, they’re probably all gone!”

  I blinked at her, unable to respond.

  “Did you think that all of the reading they made us do and all of the movies they made us watch was just for fun? Is all of this a joke to you?”

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen her this angry. “I never said or thought it was a joke, Ohirra. Take it easy. We were just talking.”

  “He didn’t mean anything,” Thompson said, coming to my aid.

  Ohirra slammed back into her seat, pulled her blanket up and crossed her arms over it.

  “We’ll know what’s going on when Olivares gets back.” Frakess smiled, trying to defuse the tension.

  “If he tells us,” I heard myself saying. I didn’t know it was going to come out, but since it did, I stood by it.

  “Oh, knock it off,
” Aquinas said, each word a dagger.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you didn’t like him when we first met him.”

  “I didn’t like you, either. I didn’t much like myself. I didn’t like anyone.” Her eyes flicked to me, then back to the floor. “But you have got to get over yourself.”

  “What?” I didn’t get it. I hadn’t done anything to her. There was no mystery that I had my differences with Olivares. I’d been stationed with men like him before and knew their kind. I just didn’t like them.

  “Maybe she’s talking about the way you look at him,” Ohirra said.

  I turned to her. When had this become a let’s fuck with Mason intervention? “The way I look at him?”

  “Like he did something to you.” Thompson said.

  “You too, Thompson?”

  He couldn’t meet my gaze and instead stared at the window.

  “I need to get some air,” I said, getting up and exiting the cabin.

  The corridor outside the room was barely as wide as a man’s shoulders. For some reason there was traffic, and I immediately had to press my back against the wall to let someone pass. I moved to the rear of the car and found a little breathing room by the door to the next car.

  The door opened and shut as someone moved past. I smoldered as the draft stole through my thin garments. I was aware that we needed winter gear to go with our cammies, but I had more serious problems than creature comforts to deal with. Somehow, in my effort to be the good guy, I’d become the bad guy. How the hell had that happened? And how had Olivares become the good guy?

  I breathed deeply, trying to bleed the stress from my system.

  In Iraq, I’d had friendly rivalries with the other squad leaders, but I’d never hated any of them. So what was it about Olivares that set me off? I thought back to that moment when I first saw him, remembering the leering smile, and the predatory gaze when he’d looked at Aquinas.

  I remember getting immediately angry, which in retrospect, seemed crazy. Why had I reacted that way? It wasn’t as if me and Aquinas were together. She’d just said she hadn’t even liked me—which demonstrated how skewed my point of view had become. I hadn’t detected that vibe at all from her.

  No. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed as if I’d taken on a responsibility I never should have. Olivares’s predatory look had switched my protective instincts to DEFCON 1. Not that Aquinas needed protection. She was as messed up as the rest of us. At that time, what had made me think I had the capacity to protect her anyway? Just because I was a man? Just because I was a sergeant? I’d abrogated that role when I’d bailed on my unit.

  Ultimately, Olivares was okay. Now I needed to figure out if I should say something. I could handle this one of two ways—either find a moment to pull him aside or do nothing at—

  “Aren’t you cold, Mason?”

  I blinked into the cold wind flowing through the open door. Olivares stood there, a tablet in one hand, holding the door open with the other.

  “Freezing,” I said, after a few too many seconds. “You get us any coats?”

  “Won’t be any until we get to our destination.”

  “All the way to Alaska?”

  “We’re hoping we can turn on the electricity once we get into Canada, but that’s seven hours away.”

  “We could freeze by then,” I said.

  “Not if we get friendly.” He let the door close and clapped me on the back. “Come on. Let’s brief the rest of the team.”

  He moved down the corridor ahead of me. I hesitated for a moment, then hustled after him.

  Back in the cabin, everyone wanted to know what was going on. He told them what he’d told me and got the same reaction.

  “Fact is,” he began, “I think TF OMBRA, for all of its fancy training and techniques, was surprised. They didn’t know where or when the attacks were going to be. They didn’t know much of anything.”

  “I thought they had recon information,” Frakess said.

  Olivares shrugged. “They did, but what they saw weren’t the warriors.” He took a moment to let this set in.

  “Not warriors?” Thompson repeated.

  “Like ants,” Ohirra said suddenly. “Or bees.”

  Olivares nodded. “The insect kingdom is all they have for an analogy. The brains of TF OMBRA—who we haven’t met yet, mind you—are thinking along the same lines. They call it task-organized hierarchy.”

  “So there’s a queen?” I asked.

  “No. Yes. Maybe.” Olivares shrugged. “We don’t know. I doubt it’s anything like we think it is.” He turned to me. “Did you tell them what you saw in Alabama?”

  I stared at him. Mr. Pink must have told him. Why wouldn’t he have, after all? Olivares was the team leader.

  “Mr. Pink took me to Alabama during Phase I,” I said.

  “You left?” Aquinas shot me a look.

  “Mr. Pink wanted me to come with him. We went to Dothan, Alabama. There was a mass shooting and—”

  “Wait.” Frakess’s face was a mask of rage. I’d never seen him angry before. “You mean you went on a field trip while we were locked up in the cells?”

  “As I said, Mr. Pink took me.”

  “His name is Wilson,” Olivares corrected me, as if it mattered.

  “Fine.” I fought my own anger. “Whatever.” I wasn’t about to tell them how close I’d been to killing myself. “He woke me up and took me.” Everyone was quiet as I related what I’d seen. I could see the anger and confusion in their eyes, but they let me talk. I described the chaos of the scene at the school where the children had been killed. I told them about the house and the family of four at the dinner table. I even described the expression on the boy’s face as he stared through dead eyes at his father, both of them turned into some sort of alien antenna by the monster one floor below them. Then I told them about the basement. I left out the reaction to the sounds and how I had tried to kill Mr. Pink and he’d tried to kill himself. But I described the polymorphic mass as best I could, to the point where everyone except for Olivares and me had looks of extreme disgust on their faces.

  “Then he brought me back.”

  Everyone was silent as they let it sink in.

  Olivares made eye contact with me and smiled slightly.

  “What were we doing when you left?” Aquinas asked.

  “Sleeping. All of you were sleeping and there were people taking care of you.” I glanced at Olivares, who was now staring at our reflections in the window.

  “What do you mean, taking care of us?”

  Olivares turned and raised a hand. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, we’re on the subject of the Cray.” He glanced at me. “Before you all begin getting pissy with Mason, let me tell you that I was taken out of here during Phase I as well.”

  This got my interest. I’d been staring at my hands, trying to deflect everyone’s attention, but when Olivares said this, my head snapped around. Was he telling the truth? Had he really been taken out?

  “I went to Bemidji, Minnesota. A disabled war vet with a plate in his head stormed into a Wal-Mart and shot seventeen people before he was taken out. Mr. Pink, as you call him, went with me. We found the vet’s home. His wife and adult daughter were sitting in chairs in front of the television, much like Mason described the family at the dinner table. It was like roots had grown through the floor and skewered them to the chairs.”

  Olivares paused to lick his lips. All eyes were on him.

  “Downstairs we found some sort of reconnaissance alien. I don’t know what it was. I’m not even sure it was the same species as the Cray.”

  Our assigned readings had been filled with the ideas that one species could conquer another and make it do its bidding. But where did it end? It was easy for humans to anthropomorphize aliens in their own image, with their own thoughts and ideas, but that was a road to nowhere. This wasn’t an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, where a soldier could find people to agree with on Mars. Humans had
trouble agreeing with their own kind across a body of water, much less across an ocean of space. This was real life. In fact, it was much less about why and more about how to stop them. For whatever reason, aliens from across the galaxy had decided to raid our little piece of heaven and remove us from it. In order to save ourselves, we’d have to be able to understand the threat and figure out a way to counteract it.

  “Why’d he pick you two?” Frakess glared at us.

  Both Olivares and I shrugged, but Olivares was the first to speak. “Have no idea. I wish he hadn’t.”

  But Frakess wasn’t happy. It was clear he felt left out. He scooted into the corner and stared out the window.

  “If he took two from each team,” Thompson said thoughtfully, “and if each time there was a mass murder of some sort, then how many aliens are there doing reconnaissance?”

  “And how many mass murders did that make?” Aquinas asked. Then she added, “Not that it matters in the face of an all-out invasion.”

  We found ourselves contemplating our own version of darkness. I began to try and imagine what the invasion looked like. Was it massive spaceships? Was it like in the movies? I wondered which author had come closest to the truth.

  But Olivares brought us around. “All right, you nervous Nellies. Stop being so damned cheerful. We got a long, cold ride ahead of us. You want to talk about something, let’s start talking about how we’re going to survive this thing. I don’t know about you, but I got a date with a senorita and a cerveza when this is all done.”

  A small smile pushed past my frown. He’d said what I’d expect most any sergeant to say, distracting us from thoughts of our mortality. Sex, alcohol and freedom were big sellers. Maybe Olivares really was okay after all.

  Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

  Douglas MacArthur

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN