Grunt Traitor (21 page)

There are plenty of young gals here in Death Valley. I’m sure one or two might want a piece of the Hero of the Mound. And yes, I’d like to wrap my arms around you again. But what I want to know is, do you want to be a woman or a machine?

Can’t I be both?

I don’t know. You tell me. Can you?

A long silence was finally followed by a single word.

No.

Then which is it?

Why are you making me choose?

I’m not making you do anything. That’s what this is about—our own humanity. It’s about personal freedom. If we lose that, we lose everything. If we don’t worry ourselves about it, then why in the hell are we fighting?

Don’t you think that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Of course I do, Mr. Spock, but if this wasn’t something you signed up for and you want out, then you should be allowed to leave.

Even if by leaving I endanger lives?

So your argument is that it’s okay to sacrifice yourself and do something that you don’t want to do because it’s the best thing you could do?

Yes. What’s wrong with that?

I switched subjects.
Does it hurt?

Emotionally? Physically?

Yes.

Emotionally I feel a sense of loss. There’s a sense of longing I can’t define. Physically, I don’t feel any pain at all.

I channeled Jon Carte.
No pain at all? Come on, Michelle.

It’s nothing I can’t handle.

What is it?

I was about to give up on any chance of a response when she said,
Where the machine interfaces with my torso, there have been... infections. I was an early model. I’m told they’ve corrected the problem since me. I guess I’m the Model T of HMIDs.

So what happened? What’s that mean?

She laughed.
Let’s just say I’m not going to win any beauty contests.

I’m going to save you, Michelle. Just tell me where you are.

There’s nothing left to save.

There’s always something to save.

Not in this case.

Tell me where you are.

Silence.

Michelle, Goddamn it, tell me where you are.

Nothing.

I stood there for a moment, staring out at a landscape blurred by tears. I made the Herculean effort to move my feet and broke into a jog. It was a long two miles back to the hooch, long enough that I’d made a sound plan to free Michelle, even if it would mean the end of me.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

General Dwight David Eisenhower

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

B
EING A LIEUTENANT
had its bennies. I was able to walk into Facilities Maintenance Division and get a map of Fort Irwin along with the generator tasking matrix. Without an electrical grid, everything we did was subject to support by generators. The more electricity needed, the more generators were required. So it was my thesis that I could locate the black box using the tasking matrix, and then align that with the base map.

I was hunched over these documents when Olivares returned from his run.

“How far’d you go?” I asked.

“Ten miles.”

“Good for you.”

“What happened to you?”

“I had a phone call to make.”

His eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed.

“In a manner of speaking,” I added.

He waved his hand at the map as he shed his wet PT clothes. “What’s all that? Looks like a map of the fort.”

“It is. By aligning the electrical needs on this document with the locations of facilities on the map, I think I’ll be able to figure out where they’re keeping Michelle.”

He stopped in mid-undress, one arm in the shirt, the other arm out. Then he laughed and continued undressing. “Good one. Did you forget that Mr. Pink said he’d let you see her?”

“If you think he’s going to keep his bargain, then I have a Cray-Away spray to sell you that actually works.”

“So all this is backup?”

I nodded.

“Why all this interest? I thought we’d dealt with that. Didn’t Ohirra say it was Michelle’s choice?”

“Not much of a choice,” I mumbled.

“What’s that mean?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s confused.”

“Wait, how do you know what she wants?”

“We’ve been talking.”

“You’ve been talking,” he said in a disbelieving tone. “And how have you been doing that, Mr. Wizard?”

I explained to him what I’d been told about the changes in my DNA and how I could now communicate with her, and conceivably other HMIDs as long as they were in range. Then I summarized our conversations. Olivares went from incredulity to a sort of sadness. I called him on it.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, brother. I believe you. It’s probably why they put the other ex-fungee Ethridge on my team. I just didn’t know he had these abilities.”

“Then what is it?”

“Did you forget about her dissociative identity disorder?”

“Her...” I
had
forgotten. Was that it? Was she flipping back and forth through her personalities? I let my pen flop onto the map and sat back. “Jesus, what do I do?”

“Maybe nothing.” He leaned forward. “Listen, man. It was one night. One. Night.”

I knew he was right. But it had been more than that. We’d made a connection. The rarity of two people actually seeing each other, feeling each other, on the same longitude and latitude, was something I’d experienced maybe three times in my entire life. It might have just been one night, but it made all the other nights that much more bearable, and unbearable at the same time.

I grabbed both sides of my head. When next I spoke, it was like I was a million miles away. “I know it was only one night and I can’t explain it. But neither can the guy from World War II who had one night with an Italian girl right before he went to the front. Or stories we’ve all seen on TV about a man longing for the girl he dated in Saigon.”

“Those were movies, man.”

“I know they were, but they were a reflection of reality.”

“You sound crazy, you know that, right?”

I sighed heavily. “I feel crazy.” I gave him a look. “This shit has made me crazy.”

“Rest easy. Listen, you almost died. You’ve been infected for the last four months. It’s the end of the world. Fuck, dude. You have PTSD on top of PTSD. If I was a doctor, I’d say you were overcompensating and mirroring. It’s a control issue. You had a total absence of control with the spores. Michelle has a total absence of control as an HMID. By trying to save her from her problem, you’re trying to save yourself.”

I stared at Olivares for a long minute. Then I said, “That’s about the most sense you’ve ever made.”

He grinned. “What about the time I said you were a better fighter than me?”

I grinned as well. “Okay, it’s a tie for that time. But seriously, could it simply be that I’m mirroring? I know I’m being obsessive. I can feel it.”

“I can see it too.” Olivares stood. “Listen, get cleaned up and we’ll go to the chow hall. You just need to let it leach out of you. Think about other things.”

I stood. Glancing down at my plan for Operation Free Michelle, I couldn’t help but wonder how crazy the whole thing sounded. “Give me ten and I’ll be there.”

“Sounds good.”

I shed my smelly PT apparel and headed to the shower. Fifteen minutes later we were strolling across the compound to the mess hall. If I was lucky, they’d have chili mac. I’d never seen it in any restaurant, but it was a staple in the Army—the perfect merging of macaroni and chili, joined with a large amount of an unidentified government cheese.

And yes, I was lucky. They were serving great heaps of it.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

Carl von Clausewitz

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A
TEAM FROM
the intel shop debriefed me for three hours the next morning. They were led by Ohirra, who appeared relieved that I’d managed to survive the mission and its effects. Afterwards, she made a call and Mr. Pink came in with Malrimple in tow. Mr. Pink appeared as self-assured as always, while the head scientist looked as if he’d just slid into someone else’s skin. Remembering Dupree’s last words, it could only mean that Malrimple felt guilty for managing the HMIDs. I’d love to be able to get him in a position where he could tell me what was really going on. I was pretty sure given the right circumstances I could convince him to cooperate.

Mr. Pink spread his arms. “You’re a veritable miracle, Lieutenant Mason. How do you feel?”

“I feel good. Incredibly good, actually.”

“Your body is producing increased endorphins. The changes in your DNA have triggered the pituitary gland to produce more than usual. It’s like an afterexercise high.”

That was the perfect description. “Yes. That’s it.”

Ohirra, always the worrier, asked, “Can he expect any problems with too much endorphin production?”

“Euphoria is common. Mr. Mason has to be careful that he doesn’t disassociate with reality. A drop in production could cause depression, mood swings, and/or suicidal thoughts.”

“What could bring it down?”

“Too much iron in the blood stream. Blood loss.”

“So as long as I don’t get shot and lose a lot of blood, I should be okay, right?”

Malrimple gave me a stony stare.

Mr. Pink looked to Ohirra. “Are you finished?”

She nodded. “I’ll have a copy of the debrief on your desk by five.”

Mr. Pink turned towards me. “What are your impressions?”

“Of L.A.?”

He smiled as if to say,
Of course
.

“It’s nasty business,” I said. “Survival groups are popping up all over the place. It’s literally every man for himself. God’s New Army could be the worst. They fired on us—chased us and tried to stop our mission. Do I understand it right that we’re working with them?”

“We have to align ourselves with groups capable of protecting their people and territory, as well as establishing the rule of law.”

“It’s the old
we have to break a few eggs to make an omelet
excuse, right?”

Everyone in the room stopped cold. Even Mr. Pink seemed to have been startled by the remark. He laughed, immediately brightening the mood. “Glad to see that the best of you wasn’t lost to your infection, Lieutenant.”

“God’s New Army and that madman Sebring don’t have our best interests in mind.” I could have added that he’d gone after Sandi and made her into his own version of an HMID, but I wanted to keep my ability to communicate with Michelle private for the time being.

“And what are our best interests, Lieutenant Mason?” Mr. Pink asked.

What was this, a trick question? “To win back our planet and get it back to where it was before the alien invasion.”

“Malrimple, please tell our young idealist the projections.”

Speaking as if each word cost a year of his life, Malrimple intoned, “The temperature has already risen by four degrees. We have reports that ocean levels have risen by seven feet and are still rising. The increased temperature has caused permafrost to begin melting, resulting in the release of massive amounts of methane. Even before the alien invasion, craters were forming in Siberia. Now the event is global. The earth as we knew it is gone forever. The climate, the weather, the temperatures all have yet to settle.

“If we happen to take back our planet, and if we are able to survive the new climate, it will still be more than seventy-five years before we can return to pre-invasion technology.”

“And to do this,” interjected Mr. Pink, “we need assistance.” He held his arms out. “Do you believe that the men and women of OMBRA in Fort Irwin are capable of defeating all of the aliens west of the Mississippi, while also projecting worldwide without assistance? It’s just not possible.”

He put a hand on my shoulder, something he’d only done once before. “Listen, you’re our moral compass. I’d rather not work with Sebring. He’s mad as a hatter and an opportunist. But if we can make his desire for greatness meet our expectation for assistance, then we have an ugly partnership.”