Grunt Traitor (17 page)

I saw it now. Their wings weren’t like a bird’s, but rather an oversized butterfly, which had given them a leaf-like appearance. I also saw the needle-shaped beak, much like what I’d seen on hummingbirds, only much longer. As I watched, several more landed on his shoulders, another on the top of his head.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“They seem to be observing. Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“They presented themselves when I began to manipulate a flower, almost as if they were protecting it. I’m not touching the flower now, so they’re not doing anything to me.”

I knew what was coming. “Then whatever you do, don’t touch the flower.”

“What? Do we have time for experiments and clinical trials?” He disappeared from sight for a brief second.

He screamed. I could hear him fighting with something above. He rolled off the roof and onto the ground. The air left him in a
whoomf
and he remained still. Clutched in his right hand was long piece of vine with red flowers.

No sooner had he hit the ground than the moths came after him. The first one flew like a dart, embedding its beak into his stomach. A second impaled his hand.

I grabbed my knife and waded in, kicking and stabbing and stomping. The one on his stomach went flying, but the beak remained in his skin. I caught one in the air and stabbed it. Even as I stomped on one, another landed on my shoulder. I dropped my rifle and swatted after it, slamming my back into the wall of the building to crush it.

I stayed there to keep the creatures in front of me. My motions were more akin to “spiderweb kung fu”—the wild flailing I invented when coming in contact with a spiderweb—than anything I was trained in.

Dupree began to move. He shoved his hands against his stomach and rolled into a ball.

The moths were clearly trying to get at the flower still in his hand. By my count, I’d killed four of them. Two landed next to him and I left my position and hammered them into the ground with the butt of my rifle. I turned just in time to see the final moth. It sat on the roof. One of its wings was broken. In one smooth move, I sheathed my knife, leveled my rifle, and blew it to kingdom come.

I knelt beside Dupree and gently rolled him over.

He’d taken beaks in the face. One eye was swollen shut. One cheek had two spots that were already swollen and inflamed like a wasp sting. He was out of it.

I removed the flower from his hand and laid it aside. His breathing was rapid, but weak. He had all the symptoms of anaphylactic shock. Either he was allergic to whatever was in the beaks, or it was causing his body to send out more chemicals in response to it than he could handle.

His good eye fluttered open. It took a moment for him to focus, but he eventually found me. He tried to grin, but the swelling wouldn’t let him. “Here,” he whispered hoarsely. “Come here.”

I leaned in close.

“Malrimple,” he managed to say.

Why was he even bringing up the man’s name? “What about him?”

“He knows.”

“What does he know? Come on, Dupree. What does he know?”

“It’s why he was an asshole to you. He’s in charge... in charge of... Michelle.”

I gaped at him. “What are you saying?”

“He knows... he knows. He feels...”

Dupree’s body jerked several times. His breathing hitched.

I shook him gently. “What does he feel? What are you saying?”

His eye snapped into focus once more. “Guilty. He feels guilty.” His body spasmed again. “They’re not...” he started, but that’s all there would ever be.

He’d stopped breathing. I immediately began pumping his chest. I couldn’t breathe for him because of the suit, but I pumped for all I was worth. I worked for a feverish minute before I realized that it was futile. Whatever those damn moths were, they’d killed him.

I sat there and let my own adrenaline settle, my racing heart subside. In the stillness of that moment, I felt a breeze against my back, a breeze where none should exist.

Desolation is something we must fight against. I hear it from those who manage to communicate with me. I can see it in the way people behave. We must fight against this desolation. Don’t give into the bleakness. And no, this isn’t just about a glass half empty or half full. This is about survival. There are no halves in survival. We either survive or we don’t, and the only way we’re even going to have a chance at surviving is if the whole lot of us picks ourselves off the floor, dusts off our britches, and then commands us to go out there and survive. Desolation is nothing but a word to describe
I Quit!
It’s a unit of measure for giving up. Don’t give into it. Don’t believe in it. Don’t even pay attention to it. Let it rot in the corner feeling sorry for itself while you make a new life for yourself. Fuck desolation. That’s right, here at the end of the world we can now say
fuck
on the radio and I’m joyful for it. Desolation my ass.

Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,

Night Stalker Monologue #1366

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth—look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity—and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

Soren Kierkegaard

CHAPTER NINETEEN

F
UCK A DUCK
!

Panic surged through me. My arms and hands began to shake. I couldn’t catch my breath. I began to reason with myself, promising that everything would be okay, that I wasn’t infected and that I wasn’t going to go screaming into the night as I became one of the zombie-like fungees. Panic took over, shouting that all was lost, there was nothing I could do, and that I was royally and truly fucked.

Back and forth.

Hope and doom.

Doom and hope.

Everything was going to be all right.

Nothing would ever be all right.

I took a deep breath and squeezed my fists. I remembered one of my soldiers who’d been the victim of a roadside bomb north of Haditha Dam. I could still see Mike 1 laying in the field triage unit, third in line for emergency surgery, bleeding out, his legs disintegrated and the realization that he had no chance to survive dawning on him. I’d tried to console him, be there for him, but he’d shaken me off. His last words had been
Fuck Dylan Thomas
, and then the light had died in his eyes.

I hadn’t known who Dylan Thomas was at the time, and I probably never would have cared except that the vehemence with which Mike 1 had said those final three words stuck with me. After rotation back to the Land of the Big PX, I looked up the old dead poet and it wasn’t long before I’d figured out the reason why Mike 1 had been so upset.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Mike 1 hadn’t wanted to rage. He hadn’t wanted to fight the inevitability of his own death. He embraced the dying of his light. I felt the lure of that—the ability to fold into oneself and just give up was the easier road to take. In fact, to quote another poet, raging against the light
was
the road less traveled.

I inhaled deeply, feeling my entire body as if for the very first time. Every hair, every muscle, the roadmap of my skin, alive, alive, alive, yet on the icy downslope of death. Dylan Thomas’s command to
do not go gentle into that good night
rung in my mind like the Liberty Bell that had sounded so long ago as a call for America’s independence.

Be free,
it demanded.

Don’t go gentle,
Dylan Thomas ordered.

Fuck Dylan Thomas,
Mike 1 whined.

And then it was as if both Dylan Thomas and Mike 1 looked at me, their expectations clear in their eyes. Which road? What the fuck are you going to do, Mason? Seeing Mike 1’s life dripping onto the floor and the pathetic acceptance of someone else’s decision to end his life pissed me off. It was at that moment that I knew that I couldn’t go skipping happily into the dying of my light, nor could I lay down and jam a thumb in my mouth, roll into a fetal position and whine until the last breath left me. Fuck no. If I was going to die, and it seemed absolutely certain that sometime within the next forty-eight hours that would happen, then I was going to do it with purpose.

I rifled through Dupree’s pack and found several collection boxes. Three had already been used for the fungus; I put the flower in a fourth, and the moths in the others. Then I put the collection boxes back into the pack, along with Dupree’s notebook. I grabbed my rifle and turned to go.

Sandi stood watching me.

There was too much I wanted to say to her, so I shook my head, pointed myself towards the way out, and began to put one foot in front of the other. I was aware of moth activity in the canopy, but they remained above us. Twice Sandi fired at something. I didn’t know what it was, nor did I care. I just wanted to put distance between us and that damned vine.

Twenty minutes later we were back at the trailers. Dead children still littered the pit. I dropped the pack, lowered my rifle onto it, took off my holster and my knife sheath, and peeled myself out of the suit. Once out of it, I examined the back. Three holes, beside a five inch tear, probably the result of the moth that had landed on my back and which I’d crushed against the side of the concrete building. I had killed my killer.

My clothes stuck to my skin and my hair and face were covered in sweat. I pulled at my shirt to get air beneath it, then wiped my face and pushed my hair back. Then I turned to Sandi.

“What the fuck was that all about?”

“What do you mean?”

“When the moths attacked. You just stood there.”

She shrugged. “They didn’t attack me.”

It took every ounce of control to keep me from closing the distance between us and slapping the smile off her face. “They didn’t attack me either. They attacked Dupree. Our job was to keep him safe. Remember?”

She sighed and shifted her stance. “What would you have me do? Both of you were twirling and stabbing and firing. There was no room for me.”

As she said it, I realized she was right. I’d swung blindly with my knife. I could have stabbed her as easily as not. My anger was misplaced.

“I saw your back and knew what had happened,” she continued. “I wasn’t sure how fast acting the spores were, so I was waiting to see how you were.”

“I’m fucking mad.”

“Then you’re still human.” She nodded to the pack. “Let me know when you’re not mad anymore.” She turned and began walking away.

“What will you do if I’m not?” I called after her as I grabbed the pack and the rifle and hustled to follow her.

“Shoot you,” she said without turning around.

I thought about that for a second as I caught up to her. Then I said, “Just make sure you don’t miss.”

Whomever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Albert Einstein

CHAPTER TWENTY

B
Y THE TIME
we got back to the church, I was feeling twitchy. Sandi decided not to tell the others about me. She’d taken her own suit off three blocks from the church, so we both arrived looking the same.

Steve was pissed that Phil hadn’t survived and didn’t really care about Dupree. Why should he? We sat down and had a quick dinner of rice and ramen, all boiled from packets. I ate greedily, not realizing until that moment just how famished I’d been. Once done, I felt sluggish. My arms began to weigh so much I couldn’t lift them off the table; my head grew heavy, as did my eyelids, and I gave in to it.