Grunt Traitor Read online

  She whirled on him. “We talked about this when he left. What if he came against us? Would you give him your neck?”

  He jerked his head towards me. “But he just stuck a knife in him.”

  “Steve! What would you have done if Lou had me in a corner? Wait for him to turn around?”

  His shoulders sagged. “I liked Lou.”

  “Me too.” She walked up to him and squeezed his arm. “But he chose them over us. Phil, help them put their gear away. We’re bringing them back to the farm.”

  Phil was about my height and I now noticed by the hang of the pants that he had a prosthetic left leg—something I’d become familiar with, after all the roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. His face was pocked with what I recognized as scars from embedded concrete. Another victim of an IED.

  “Sure that’s a good idea?” he asked evenly.

  “I’m sure.”

  He nodded and began redistributing the gear they’d confiscated back to us. Once Dupree and I repacked everything, they gave us back our weapons and we were on our way. As we climbed back up the embankment to the gravel pit, I was completely aware that this was not how I thought this episode would end. Goes to show that life still had a few surprises left in it.

  I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern: a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

  Agent Smith, The Matrix

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I RODE BEHIND Sandi, and Dupree behind Phil. We hugged the mountains as we headed west. Twice we saw groups of human scavengers, but they were going from house to house, filling wheelbarrows full of canned and boxed food. Eventually all of that would run out, and then what? If there was anyone left who wasn’t a fungee, what would they eat? Remembering all of the movies they’d had us watch as a primer for our role at the end of the world, I found fault that they’d left out zombie films. At the very least The Walking Dead should have been something we were forced to watch and be tested on. I can just see some of the questions those silly scholars over at pre-invasion OMBRA would have come up with:

  Did Rick shoot Shane because Shane had an affair with his wife, or because he was worried that Shane would ally the others against him and take over leadership of the group? What does this say about Rick’s humanity? What does that say about his leadership?

  Or:

  Merle and Rick seem to be the antithesis of each other, but explain how they are really the same character assigned to different circumstances.

  I almost laughed as I realized that I’d just done OMBRA’s work for them. They’d never had to assign it to us. Those of us who had completed the training and survived were apparently capable of philosophy on the fly.

  We eventually headed up Bonita towards Big Cienega Spring. At about a thousand feet, we turned down a lane and came to a wall of sandbags. A man came out with a headlamp and a shotgun. Another came out from the scrub to our left, carrying an AK-47. Once they saw who we were, we went in on foot, with Sandi and the others pushing their bikes through a break in the sandbags and around two switchbacks. Inside they had a motor pool consisting of nothing but motorcycles and a four-by-four, three sheds, a barn, and a two-story house of about twenty-five hundred square feet.

  We were shown to one of the sheds, which looked like it had been set aside for guests or new recruits. We deposited our things, then went into the main house where a woman who looked eerily like the actress Kathy Bates awaited us in a very suburban-looking, shag-carpeted family room. She wore a housedress and sat in a La-Z-Boy rocking chair. A lamp rested on the table next to her. She drank tea from a blue mug that said ‘I ♥ Cats.’ She greeted us and asked us to sit.

  “Sandi tells me you’re a scientist,” she said to Dupree without preamble.

  “Doctor Norman Dupree, ethnobotanist at the University of Georgia.” He glanced at me. “I’m now assigned to Task Force OMBRA at Fort Irwin.”

  “Who assigned you?”

  “Acting Vice President Calhoun, Ma’am.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware we had a government any longer.”

  “Most people aren’t.” He shrugged. “I’m not so sure it matters anyway. OMBRA seems to have the most resources, though, so it seems fair that I lend my efforts to theirs.”

  She glanced my way, then back at Dupree. “You’re sure OMBRA has everyone’s best interests at heart?”

  Dupree nodded. “They want to survive, and they’ll do everything in their power to do it. Sure, that includes being underhanded and unscrupulous, but then that’s human nature, isn’t it?”

  She took a sip from her mug and examined us through the steam. I felt awkward standing in front of her. I thought we’d settled all of this outside, but then that had been with Sandi and her reconnaissance crew.

  “Some would say that there’s little chance to retain our humanity after this. What would you say to that?”

  I stepped in. “We’ve been savage before. We’ll be savage again. This is how we survive. We—”

  “But at what cost? Should we survive if it means losing our humanity?”

  I was about to answer, but I saw the subtle gesture from Dupree, so I let him.

  “We have it in our very nature to survive,” he said. “We can’t not survive. Survival has been bred into us. Those of us who couldn’t adapt to the savagery were eradicated from the gene pool eons ago.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.” She smiled. “I asked if we should survive, if it means losing our humanity. What’s your answer to that question, gentlemen?”

  “Humanity as a word is merely the condition of being human. Humanity as a virtue,” Dupree continued, “is associated with love, kindness, and social intelligence. You offering us a place to stay or sharing your tea is a sign of that virtue. So here we are at the end, and you’re showing your humanity.”

  “Is that your answer?”

  Dupree nodded.

  “What if I was to say that I’m doing this out of selfish reasons... reasons wholly unknown to you that are completely my own? What if I was to say I was using you? Does that make me humane?”

  Dupree nodded slowly as he spoke. “I think so. You chose these techniques to get your way. You could just as easily have chosen to torture us. This is the social intelligence aspect of the virtue.”

  “Interesting. What about you, Mr. Hero?” she said, addressing me. At my reaction to her choice of address, she added, “Sandi briefed me on your work in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. Very noteworthy. Are you aware of your juxtaposition in this tale with Hemingway’s character Harry in The Snows of Kilimanjaro?”

  “My juxtaposition?”

  “Yes, how you and Hemingway’s character both approached death.”

  “If I remember right, Harry died. I didn’t.”

  “Is it as simple as that?”

  Throughout Dupree’s conversation, and now my own, I’d kept wondering what the point of this question-and-answer session was; whether, if we answered incorrectly, we’d end up killed. Sitting there in her lounger, drinking from her ‘I ♥ Cats’ mug, this woman could be a post-apocalyptic sphinx.

  “Not quite that simple,” I began slowly, recalling some of the conversations I’d both had and overheard in Phase I, back when we were locked up. “I approach death as an inevitability. I will die, therefore I’m not afraid of it. Hemingway’s fascination with death is well-documented. Not only the way a man faced death in his fiction, but in his love for bullfighting. A friend of mine once said that Death in the Afternoon was Hemingway’s love
sonnet to bullfighting.”

  “And how did Harry approach death?”

  “Selfishly.”

  “How so?”

  “He cared only for what he was leaving behind and leaving undone. He had little concern for Helen, except to be contemptuous of her help.” I shrugged. “I read the story several times and each time felt contempt for Harry. I didn’t find him sympathetic at all.”

  “No compassion?”

  “No. Not really.”

  She put her mug down, got up, and went to the kitchen. I noticed she wore pink furry slippers. I also noticed she carried a 9mm in a shoulder holster. Talk about juxtaposition. She came back with two plates and two warm diet sodas. She gave us each one. “Peanut butter and jelly. You two must be starving.”

  I grabbed mine and took several huge bites.

  Dupree was a little less aggressive, but it was obvious he relished the extravagance. It was certainly better than our MREs.

  She sat down heavily and watched us. When we were done she said, “Remember what you said about Harry?”

  I nodded, washing the sticky peanut butter away from my teeth with soda.

  “The Snows of Kilimanjaro could be a metaphor for our lives today.”

  “How so?”

  “Harry is the population. Angry. Looking towards the past. Selfish. Grabbing for anything to survive. Not caring who they hurt. And you are Helen, Mr. Hero. You have to help them despite themselves. Remember in the story when Harry kept asking for things and she refused to give them?”

  “Like the whiskey soda.”

  “Yes. Tough love is what we call it today. Social intelligence, as Dr. Dupree so eloquently provided, is your contract with saving them. It informs you on how you must interact with them. Sometimes to save something you have to cut away the dead or dying parts. Sometimes you have to let it figure its own way out. And then sometimes you have to step in to stop it from doing something terrible. Can you do that?”

  “Sounds like an awful lot for one man.”

  She smiled quickly. “I mean the metaphorical you. I mean the heroes of the end days. People like you.”

  “I do that anyway.” I shrugged again. “It’s who I am.”

  “Yes, it is.” She smiled and grabbed a remote control. She flipped it on and the television behind us came on, showing a documentary about Ancient Egypt. A DVD; for a second I thought that there might have been a live broadcast, but then I remembered how impossible that was.

  Dupree and I glanced at each other quizzically. Then Sandi came into the room and beckoned us to follow her out. Once outside she turned to us, grinning so widely that her scar pulled at the corner of her mouth.

  “Did she ask you a bunch of questions about humanity and the end times?” Sandi asked.

  “I felt like I was part of a philosophy lecture,” Dupree said, running a hand through his hair. “The peanut butter was scrumptious, though, so I guess it was all right.”

  I shook my head. “What was that all about?”

  Dupree caught my eye. “You know who she looks like, right?”

  “Kathy Bates, right? The one who sawed James Caan’s feet off.”

  “That was a damn scary movie,” he said.

  “We get that a lot,” Sandi said. “She definitely has that look, but she’s not her.” She shrugged. “Even if she was, it wouldn’t matter. She’s sort of our spiritual leader. This was her place. When we found it, she was being held by some thugs. We took it back from them and then fortified it. She only wants good people to stay here. Looks like you passed.”

  Me as a good person. Somehow I thought she might have made a mistake. No one who’s killed as many people as I have, or done the things to others that I have, deserves to be called a good person.

  As if she was reading my mind, Sandi squeezed my arm and said, “Trust in her. If she says you’re good, then you are.” She changed the subject. “We’ll see you in the morning. I have to run a couple more patrols, then we’ll talk about helping you get to the 605.”

  And she left us.

  I turned to Dupree. “That was the strangest conversation I’ve ever fucking had.”

  “Wasn’t so bad. Say, how’d you know so much about Hemingway?” He grinned. “Not to insult you, but I didn’t know you were that well educated.”

  “Something Mr. Pink made us do.”

  He chuckled. “That Mr. Pink. He changes everything.”

  I agreed, but I’d be damned if I was going to say so out loud.

  War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DREAMLAND FOUND ME soon after my head hit the pillow on the military cot they’d provided.

  The sound of drumming returned. In my dreams, I was sitting in Point Fermin Park in San Pedro, overlooking the green-and-blue Pacific Ocean as it crashed eternally into the palisades. People moved around me and I should have heard their conversation, but their words had no sound. A terrier at the end of a leash barked silently. I couldn’t even hear the waves as six thousand miles of momentum slammed them against the rocks at the base of the cliffs. I couldn’t hear the hoary rustle of the palms as the winds shook them. The only sound was the rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum. I watched the horizon and listened for a time, the martial insistence of the rhythm making me want to march, to do something. I just didn’t know what.

  When I awoke, Dupree was standing over me, giving me a sidelong look.

  I stifled a yawn. I felt exhausted. “What is it?”

  “You were having a conversation.”

  I pushed up on an elbow and tried to remember, even as the wisps of the dream disappeared. “I remember the sea. I remember the drumming. But that’s all.”

  “Well, news flash. You were actually talking to someone.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, searching his face. He nodded. “What was it I was saying?”

  “You said that you’d come back for him. That you wouldn’t leave him behind.”

  “Did I use a name?”

  “You called him Thompson.”

  Cold shock lanced through me. “Are you sure you got the name right?”

  “You used the name twice.”

  “What else did I say?”

  “Your last words were, What do you mean, you’re nearby?”

  “You’re certain I said that?”

  “As certain as I am that we’re having this conversation. Who is this guy Thompson?”

  “We were in Romeo Three Recon together back at Kilimanjaro Base.”

  “I read the mission report. That was a rough battle.”

  “They all are.” I ran my hand through my hair, trying to fully recall the dream, but it was no use.

  Dupree cocked his head and seemed to want to say something. Then he turned away, evidently changing his mind.

  I sat up fully. “What is it?”

  “You called him a drummer boy. I think you said, You’re our little drummer boy. Does that ring any bells?”

  “He played in the Army band. He was undersized, too. I think there’s an old Norman Rockwell painting of a young drummer leading an army. I can almost picture it. Whenever I saw Thompson, I’d think of that painting.” I shook my head. “We left Africa without him. Mr. Pink said he was dead, but I knew better. I should have trusted my instincts.”

  “Do you often hear drums in your dreams?”

  I jerked my head towards him, wondering how he knew. “Sometimes,” I said carefully.

  “Me too.” He rubbed his forehead. “Ever since the mission started I’ve been hearing them.”

  What’s worse than one person hallucinating? Everyone around him hallucinating the same thing. “What kind of drums do you hear?” I asked.

  “Like the one you described.”

  And there it was. “You know, I always thought that was his way of communicating on a subconscious level. Several times during the Battle of Kilimanjaro I’d hear the drumming right before something
bad happened. I got to where I’d trust it, believing without a doubt that Thompson somehow knew what was coming and was trying to warn me. Sounds crazy.” I laughed. “I probably am crazy. Talking in my sleep. The sounds of a drum. What’s next?”

  “Don’t doubt yourself too quickly. It could be true.”

  “That I’m crazy? No kidding.”

  “No, about him being nearby.”

  I stopped cold and turned to him slowly. “What are you talking about, Dupree?”

  “It’s not my specialty, but I know that the plan was to place an HMID near every active hive in order to interdict communications.”

  I shot to my feet and double-fisted his shirt. “How long have you known about this?”

  “Weeks—months.” He gulped. “I don’t know.”

  “Did Mr. Pink tell you about Michelle, too? Did he give you the whole story? Did he explain to you that I totally fucking failed her... that I couldn’t pull the trigger? Was he laughing when he told you? I bet he was laughing, wasn’t he?”

  He struggled in my grasp, his eyes wide. I let go and backed away, my arms and hands shaking with adrenaline. What was I doing? Jesus.

  I turned and balled my fists, watching them shake. I clasped my hands together and tried to ease my breathing. It’d been a long time since I’d had a PTSD episode. I flashed to the Mariachi band at Ports of Call in San Pedro and how I’d torn into them the day before I’d unsuccessfully tried to kill myself, foiled by the ubiquitous Mr. Pink. The three Mexicans in their over-the-top costumes hadn’t deserved my anger. I can still remember grabbing one of their guitars and smashing it repeatedly over a table until it was nothing more than toothpicks, while yelling over and over “I fucking hate Mariachis!”

  “No one ever told me about Michelle,” Dupree said slowly from behind me. “I take it she was something special to you.”

  I didn’t trust myself, so I didn’t turn as I responded, “I loved her. She loved me. It’s why she did what she did. Then when she asked me to set her free, I couldn’t do it.”