Grunt Traitor (18 page)

When I awoke I was in the back of the pickup, inside of a suit. My wrists had been ziptied together in front of me. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize Sandi had drugged me. Even as I cursed her, I realized that I probably would have done the same thing. When I turned into a fungee, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would, I didn’t want to infect anyone else.

I rolled to a sitting position, trying to keep my balance as the truck roared along a residential street.

“Pretty tricky back there,” I said through the open back window.

Steve was driving. Sandi sat in the passenger seat. “I had to do what I had to do.”

“Why didn’t you just leave me?”

“I thought about it. But then I also knew that I owed you. What you did back there at Kilimanjaro saved us all, me included.”

“What now?”

“I used your radio to contact Mother. She wants me to get you back to your rendezvous point. We’ve already put in a call to Fort Irwin. They’re prepared to take you in. They definitely want Dupree’s notes and his field samples.”

I could just see the glee in Mr. Pink’s eyes when he discovered that he had a live test subject to poke and prod. Being a guinea pig was the last thing I wanted. Then again, maybe I’d get a chance to take down Mr. Pink himself. Spread a little spore into him. I wonder how his Royal Smugness would appreciate being a fungee. Then they could test
him
.

“You know they’re going to use me as a test subject, right?”

“Someone has to be the first. Might as well be the Hero of the Mound. Just think, if they find a way to cure you, then you can be the Hero of the Spore.”

“Very funny. Being the Hero of the Mound was just propaganda. Enough people did enough great things fighting the Cray that day that it could have been anyone. And look at all the people we lost.” I pictured McKenzie being carried into the air and dropped from hundreds of feet, his insides turned liquid by the impact. “If we ever figure out how to defeat the spore, there’s the alien vine to consider, then the moths, then the hives, then the Cray, then whatever is controlling everything.”

I turned around and stared back at Los Angeles. I could see the Hollywood hive far in the distance. What I’d give to take that sucker down. It was like a middle finger to everything we knew and loved.

We made it to the Marshall Canyon Golf Course with relatively little action, except for running down a group of fungees who tried to win a game of chicken against a metal-enhanced American-made pickup truck. Then it was the back roads to Mount Baldy. The problem was that by the time we hit the golf course I couldn’t keep my hands and legs from twitching. I felt superheated in my suit and knew I was running a fever. Though I could no longer speak, my thoughts were working fine. My mind was clear.

When the helicopter was inbound and I couldn’t get my body to stop spasming, Sandi said to me, “Fight this, Benjamin Carter Mason. Fight it like you’ve never fought anything in your life. It hasn’t won yet.”

I looked at her and tried to tell her to
fuck off,
but nothing happened.

Her face fell a moment, like she knew I couldn’t respond. Seeing her reaction made it even worse. Still, she persevered. She reached through the rear window and grabbed my suited shoulder. “When next I see you, it’s going to be so we can take down those fucking hives. Got it?”

Got it!
I wanted to scream, but my body and brain were locked in a battle against the spore and clearly had no time for mere words.

The Blackhawk landed. Four soldiers in positive pressure suits exited the chopper. When Steve unlocked the back of the cage, they dragged me out. Then one of them put a black bag over my head. I felt myself being carried into the chopper, where they chained me to the deck, before it lifted off.

It wasn’t that I let them do all of this. I had no choice. My body was no longer my own. I was effectively possessed. Michelle had been terribly afraid of possession; it had been her worst fear. Look at her now.

And then it struck me.

We’d argued about God. She believed in God and I didn’t. She’d even spent time in a convent to try and deal with her own PTSD.

“Look at where we are,”
I’d said
. “The aliens attacked and took our planet. Do you think a God would allow that?”

“Do not presume to know the will of God. For all you know, this could be the next Great Flood. It happened once. Why not again?”

“How can you believe in God after all this?”

“How can you not? Just because you can’t fathom why this happened doesn’t mean there isn’t a God. It doesn’t mean
He
doesn’t have a plan.”

I think I’d actually laughed at her.
“A plan. Fate. The idea that everything bad, everything good, everything
period
has been figured out ahead of time, is impossible to believe.”
Even though I’d known I was making her angry, I hadn’t been able to stop myself.
“That the Inquisition, the Black Plague, 9/11, pedophiles and the Cray are part of God’s plan is ludicrous.”

I could still see her pitying expression as she’d said,
“I didn’t say they were part of His plan, smartass. I said just because we don’t know what’s going on doesn’t mean
He
doesn’t have a plan. Is it
all
part of His plan? I don’t think so. Maybe events happen, then His plan goes into effect.”
Then she’d stood.
“Here’s what I’ve learned. Just because you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t believe in you.”

Then she’d stepped quickly away.
“What does that even mean?”
I’d called after her.

She’d flipped me off.

“Not very God-like,”
I’d shouted.

Her single finger salute changed into a double-finger salute. Then she was gone.

I’d been so full of myself back then, at the base of Kilimanjaro, so sure I was right and everyone else was wrong; particularly someone who wanted to believe in God. Now, re-living the words we’d exchanged, I saw what a self-assured ass I’d been.

And I couldn’t help but note that God had had the last word, for here I was, as possessed as Michelle, no chance to get away, and destined to become a monster.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of it all. So I did. I laughed loud, long and hard, even though the only audience I would ever have was me.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

William Shakespeare

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
AWOKE IN
a cage in the center of a white room. My head turned, looking for what I didn’t know. I had zero control. Four cameras faced me, mounted on tripods. Against one wall were two long tables supporting computers. Scientific equipment lined the other walls. The inside of my cage was Spartan, to say the least. In one corner they’d affixed a water dispenser that looked like a giant sized version of the ones you see in hamster cages. Beside this was a bowl. Both were affixed to a small door that could open only from the outside. The floor held no bed or furniture. I fleetingly noticed that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Only an adult diaper kept me from being on complete display. Awesome. I’d gone from being The Hero of the Mound to The Lieutenant Who Poops In His Pants.

I realized my head hurt. I wanted to reach up and feel it, but my arms refused to listen.

The door of the white room opened and a bald older man wearing a white laboratory jacket entered.

My body propelled itself forward toward the figure, until the cage stopped me, my head slamming into the bars.

Yep. That was it.
Ouch
.

I watched as my arms extended through the bars, fists wanting to bash.

The figure approached and stayed just out of arm’s length. He held a clipboard and was making annotations. I tried to tell him I’d like a double cheeseburger with fries, but I couldn’t speak. He jotted something down then walked across the room to the computers. His nametag said
Phillips.

My head turned to follow him, and my arms shoved themselves through the cage towards him. This was going to get old real quick. I sure hoped they had a cure for this or had plans to kill me, because the sheer boredom of playing
Let’s See What Mason Will Do Next
was already old.

Two assistants came in. One was a pretty blonde who reminded me of a girl I’d spent the night with in an off-limits area by Fort Bragg, and the other was a redhead.

On the off-limits list they’d had a notation that no one should go to ‘the trailer at the end of Pike Ferry Road.’ I’m not sure what they were thinking, but it was a menu for guys like me, and that was the first place I went. Turned out it was a low rent, soon-to-be-meth-den home for newly frocked hookers, only the girl who called herself Margret forgot to charge me. It had been fun and she’d been pretty hot, but I’d sweated the next few weeks, hoping that my pee wasn’t going to burn and I’d have to go to the Smoke Bomb Hill clinic to get a silver bullet. I’d never gotten Margret’s last name, but this fine young lady had a nametag which read
Westlake.

For a while I reveled in my newfound skills at observation. I suppose when you aren’t actively participating in what your body is doing, your mind compensates and allows you to notice more things. Like when Mr. Pink finally showed his ugly mug. I did my thing trying to get to him through the bars. He pointed at me and asked whether or not they’d found value in the specimens I’d brought back. I noted how tired he seemed.

Exhausted, even.

It’s funny how I’d always painted him as the bad guy. It was a classic grunt move. If there’s someone in charge of you making you do things you don’t want to, then pillory them. After all, they were out to get you. They didn’t know how awesome you were and refused to listen, so that’s why you were made to do KP eight days in a row. In fact, very little you do is your fault; it’s always the fault of the brainiac who thought up your mission.

For a moment, as I watched Mr. Pink watching me, I felt empathy, but then he pointed at me. Someone said something I couldn’t make out that made him chuckle.

Dude! Laughing at a guy when he’s down? Fucking classy.

I wasn’t sure what he was laughing at but in the ensuing ten seconds I experienced something absolutely terrible. As I stood staring at them and unable to do anything I felt myself fill my adult diaper in an awful back-bending butt-clenching exercise in adult poopage.

Just fucking great.

They ignored me for the most part. For a long time they worked at their stations. All the while I just stood there with a full diaper, unable to do anything but try and reach lamely through the bars. Then an MP came in with a rifle. He aimed it at my chest and fired.

I felt the impact and looked down. I saw the dart about two seconds before everything went black.

When I later woke, I realized that they’d changed me.

They’d turned off all the lights, so I gathered it was night. The only thing I could see were the blinking red lights of the video cameras. I stood there, doing nothing, my body waiting. Eventually it moved over and sucked down some water. Then my face shoved itself into the food. I couldn’t see it but it tasted like a combination of cold noodles, lettuce and ground beef. It was both wonderful and disgusting at the same time.

Seconds, minutes, hours later, someone came in and turned the light on.

My body did what it always did and slammed into the bars as I reached for non-infected humans. The two women, Robinson and Westlake, turned on their computers and got to work. Phillips came in a time later. They spent all day doing something with blood samples.

Then I pooped my pants.

Then they shot me with a dart.

Then all was dark.

Awake, rinse, repeat.

I’m not sure how many days passed with this routine, but at some point during that time I began to notice a buzz in the back of my mind, almost like I was hearing someone talk but just couldn’t make out the words. Then one day I began to understand.

Possessed Girl calling Infected Asshole, come in.

Possessed Girl calling Infected Asshole, come in.

She repeated the sentence over and over, as if she were talking on a radio and waiting for me to hear her missive on the other end. Sometimes she changed the words around, calling me
Infected Boy
or
Spore Man
, but the message was essentially the same. She wanted to talk. So after about the nine-hundreth time she said it, I concentrated on a single thought.

Infected Asshole calling Possessed Girl, I hear you Lima Charlie.

Inside the room, the scientist and his techs continued to work. My hands were waggling though the bars. There was no way to tell them I was somehow communicating with my long-lost girlfriend who’d become one of Mr. Pink’s secret black box projects.

So they got you.

What could I say to that? What should I say? Of course they got me. Wait a minute... who was
they
?