Grunt Life (14 page)

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

W
E ALMOST FROZE
on the last seven hours of the trip. If we weren’t close before, we were close now. Huddled together, rotating one person to exercise in the hall to heat his or her body, then welcoming them back within our flesh-on-flesh huddle. There was no place for shyness during the cold, and we kept ourselves warm as best we could.

I’d say we arrived in the middle of the night, but I wasn’t sure if this was real night or the middle of the Alaskan winter. I just didn’t know. Whatever the time, it was dark and frigid as we rushed single file down a street from the railhead to a large concrete bunker. Crossing the door felt like passing through the threshold between Heaven and Hell. My knees almost buckled as I entered, a blast of warm moist heat engulfing me from several blowers at waist and head level. I might have fallen, but we were packed so close together going down the metal stairs that I was held upright by the others. We’d left everything on the train by order, so it was just us, gripping the metal rail as we descended eleven flights, putting us more than two hundred feet beneath the surface.

The stairwell opened into a room that dwarfed our previous space, a huge natural cavern that may have been carved out of the rock by a subterranean lake. The ceiling was more than a hundred feet above the floor, which was itself at least a mile long. The walls were roughhewn in places, showing the marks where man-made tools had perfected what nature had already created.

A team of TF OMBRA officials in black military fatigues awaited us at a set of tables labeled with the initials of our last names. I got into the
M
line with several hundred other people. It reminded me of the cattle call when I’d first signed up at Fort Jackson, South Carolina—the shouting, the orders, the fumbling, and the carefully choreographed confusion.

Soon I found myself at the front of the line. A well-built woman with red hair in a buzz cut asked my name and I gave it to her. After a moment consulting her laptop, she shouted out a string of letters and numbers. A young man with acne scars and a flattened nose, his chest straining at his black T-shirt, began shoving things into a duffel bag. I watched as two pairs of tan boots, four pairs of desert-colored multicams, brown underwear, socks and t-shirts, and two wrapped packages were stuffed into the bag. Then he selected an already prepared rucksack and passed both to me.

“Report to Tin 22,” the woman said, pointing off to the right, where I saw a line of men and women snaking towards the far wall.

I put my arms through the duffel so that I carried it on my chest, then shrugged into the rucksack. That done, I joined the line of folks with their gear. The procession moved slowly, but eventually we got close enough for me to see the cargo containers stacked from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. There must have been hundreds of them, stacked twelve high. Ladders provided access to the higher levels and I could see men and women climbing up and down them. Here and there members of TF OMBRA were standing and changing into their new uniforms in full view of everyone. Nakedness didn’t mean the same as it had before the invasion.

I arrived at the base of the stacks and looked around for Tin 22. I spied Ohirra first, already dressed in her new uniform and waving at me from six containers up and over to my left. I shuffled my feet past several men trying to find their own tins. One stopped me.

“Know where Tin 24 is?” he asked.

I was prepared to tell him no, then I realized the numbering convention. His was two to the right of ours. The numbers were painted in black paint on the underside of the ceilings just inside each container’s open end. In the shadows of the entrances, they were easy to miss.

“There,” I said, pointing.

His grimace of frustration changed to a relieved smile. He hurried to his ladder as I headed to mine.

Climbing with packs on the back and front was a precarious gamble. With my arms completely outstretched, they could only bend a few inches. I had to make sure I got a good grip, because the ground was dropping farther away with each rung I ascended.

Ohirra reached down the last few feet, grabbed my duffel and hauled it up, and I came with it. I stumbled into the container.

Olivares stood inside, already in uniform. Of course he was. He nodded in my direction, then turned back to folding his remaining kit and placing it in his rucksack in something more orderly than a shoved-in pile.

The container was wide enough for us to lay our sleeping bags perpendicular to one wall with a walking space at our feet. The rear was taken up by a table and chairs, as well as a couch and built-in closet. A door in the far right corner marked the water closet.

Ohirra had taken the space nearest the door. I looked inside, wondering if I wanted closer to the bathroom or closer to the exit. With no ventilation, the container, or our
tin
as they called it, would begin stinking in no time. I decided to unload my gear next to Ohirra.

I fished my fatigues out of my bag, and was soon wearing the new gear. I struggled into the boots, not willing to sit, then I found the rank. I held it and stared at it. Twin chevrons. Corporal. The back was covered with Velcro. I took the rank and applied it to the square on the front of my fatigues.

Ohirra had a rocker and a chevron. Private first class.

Olivares had three chevrons and a rocker. Staff sergeant.

I’d most recently been a staff sergeant. I’d been a corporal twice before, and could be one again. I just wished I’d gone back to being a staff sergeant.

Thompson and Aquinas made their way up the ladders next. Thompson found a place next to me. Aquinas took the spot on the other side of him, which left a space for Frakess between her and Olivares.

“Oy! Is this 22?” came a voice with a distinct Scottish accent.

We all turned to see a wide-shouldered middle-aged man with a shock of blonde hair and 1970s sideburns standing on the lip of our tin.

“I’m PFC Ohirra,” said our welcoming committee. “And yeah, this is Tin 22.”

“Then I have the right place. Where’s the sergeant?”

Olivares stepped forward and the new guy dropped his gear.

“Staff sergeant, Lance Corporal James V. MacKenzie, British Royal Marines, reporting for duty, sir.” The Scotsman saluted, palm out, and brought his heels together.

“Lance corporal. We call that private first class here.” Olivares shot me a glance.

“If you will, please, I’d prefer to be called lance corporal,” MacKenzie said, eyeing everyone nervously.

“Fine, if you’re going to be so fucking polite about it.” Olivares pointed next to his bag. “Put your stuff there.”

MacKenzie shouldered his way gently through us, excusing himself each time.

“Wait, where’s Frakess?” Ohirra asked Olivares.

“He’s been reassigned,” Olivares said. “By his request.”

“You can do that?” Thompson asked. “You can just ask to be reassigned? Really?”

“Thinking of a change, drummer boy?” I asked.

“No. I was just wondering why he’d want to leave us.”

I gave Olivares a look and he nodded. “Must have been something we said,” I commented. It had been clear the man was pissed at not having been chosen to leave the base during Phase I. Had I been given the choice, he could have taken my trip. Getting angry about something like that, something over which we’d had no control, was idiotic. Good riddance.

Thompson made his way to MacKenzie’s area and watched as the newcomer inventoried his things.

I thought it was awkward the way he stood there, but I didn’t want to say anything that might hurt the boy’s pride.

But Aquinas didn’t have that concern. “This isn’t a zoo, Thompson. Stop staring at him.”

Thompson turned. “Huh? Oh. I was just looking.”

“
Look at the Scotsman in his native habitat,
” said MacKenzie in the voice of a TV announcer. “
Dangerous when not fed, the Scotsman can be seen rooting in bogs for whiskey seeds and chicken fingers.
” He turned and grinned.

Thompson laughed. “He’s funny.”

“He’s also right there,” Ohirra said. “You don’t have to talk about him in the third person.”

Thompson nodded but didn’t say anything. Finally he asked MacKenzie, “What’s the V for?”

“Victory,” MacKenzie announced proudly.

I shook my head. “No, it’s not.”

“You think you know better? It’s my name after all, mate.”

“Might be your name, but we know you aren’t being truthful. Shame on you,” I said, shaking my head. “The V is your scarlet letter you have to wear, so we know where you’ve been, what you got, and why you have to scratch so often.”

Thompson gave me a questioning look, then his eyes shot wide. “Oh, shit! Is it true?” Thompson made a face and turned to MacKenzie.

I grinned from ear to ear. My work here was done. MacKenzie gave me a dirty look, but there was a smile behind it.

How much time did we spend fighting amongst ourselves instead of preparing to fight an alien invasion? Sophists would argue that we didn’t know we were going to be invaded, so it really wasn’t our fault. To this I drop the bullshit flag. The very idea that we are alone in the universe is like a child closing his eyes and thinking he’s alone in
his
universe.

Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,

Night Stalker Monologue #921

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
S IT TURNED
out, Lance Corporal Jim MacKenzie of the Royal Marines might have been the best thing to happen to us during this end-of-the-world alien invasion. Ohirra clearly had a thing for him. Thompson treated him like a new puppy. Both Olivares and I found ourselves cracking up at his war stories. Even Aquinas smiled every now and then. Not that there’d been anything wrong with Frakess, but MacKenzie seemed to be the piece that had been missing from Team 19, or Tin 22, or whatever they were calling us today.

There was a lot of conversation about what was going to happen next. What kind of unit would we form? Would we be some elite special operations element, sneaking behind enemy lines? Did enemy lines even exist? We didn’t know anything about what was going to happen, and damned little more about the aliens.

Luckily, word was sent around that there was going to be a briefing. We prepared our uniforms until they were STRAC, then queued with everyone else as they made their way to the main area.

A raised stage was set against a section of cavern wall painted white. We’d been stood waitingfor about half an hour when a video image appeared on the white wall. First it was of a family visiting the Empire State Building. A woman and a little girl smiled into the video and waved, then the camera panned Central Park.

Then the image went black.

There wasn’t a sound in the entire place.

The image came back on, shakily. We watched as a half-mile long spike, pointy end towards the sky, thick end alive with thrusters that seemed to be controlling its descent, landed in the middle of Central Park. The ground shook, causing the camera operator to lose his balance for a moment. When the view was once again still, we saw the entire length of the creature. Now it looked less like a spike and more like a slender mountain, or a galactic-sized termite mound, like I’d seen on television shows about Africa. I could make out shadowy depressions along its entire length, but I couldn’t imagine what they could be used for.

Then creatures began to soar from them, whirling into an angry cloud near the pinnacle of the spike. From the camera’s viewpoint, each of the creatures seemed tiny, no larger than an insect. But their size was skewed by distance.

The whirling mass increased in size until there were tens of thousands of the creatures, intertwining in a cloud that itself began to twist and turn like a tornado.

The tornado spun towards the camera. Before the person holding the camera could turn and run, a flash of light burst from the onrushing creatures. The image pixelated, then went black.

The lights came back on. Everyone was still staring at the wall. This was what we had to fight? Those things? Us? I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t imagine how. I felt hollow inside; my heart filled with despair. I began to drift towards the version of myself who’d wanted to end it all, to find a place where this wasn’t reality.

But Mr. Pink had something else in mind. He waved at a guy, who pushed forward something draped under a tarp. When it was in front of the crowd, he motioned for everyone to be silent. Then he grabbed one edge of the tarp and jerked the cover free.

The collective intake of breath was so loud it seemed to fill the cavern. I couldn’t stop staring at the legs and arms and wings, each joint knobbed with a spike, arms ending in claws several feet long. It was seven feet tall, but looked as if it could stand much taller. Three pairs of wings arched behind its back, ready to send it skyward. Its head, triangular like that of a praying mantis, was tilted at an angle as if it was appraising the assembled mass of TF OMBRA. Its eyes were clustered in the centre of its head, like a spider’s.

“Those creatures you saw exiting the mound in the video are this,” Mr. Pink said.