Grunt Life (3 page)

Which was good enough for Mr. Pink.

I’m not insane, sir. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.

John Scalzi,
Old Man’s War

CHAPTER THREE

C
HEYENNE
A
IRPORT WASN’T
exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it was in the same zip code. Flat land surrounded us on three sides. The Rockies rose into the clouds to the West. I could see where the city of Cheyenne started, but not where it ended. The city was so flat that there wasn’t enough terrain to see it all.

A cowboy wearing a denim shirt, pants, and weathered silver-tipped boots met me at baggage claim, with a cardboard sign that read simply
TF OMBRA
, in an uneven scrawl. His face wore the seasons like an almanac. Somewhere between forty and seventy, he had a stare that promised he’d seen it all, and if he hadn’t, what was left to be seen wasn’t important enough to matter.

I approached him. “That’s me,” I said, pointing to the sign.

“Waiting on one more,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows. Another? On my flight? I turned around and stood beside him, watching the passengers come down the gangway. Eventually, a slim muscular girl stopped and looked around. Her long hair hung in a waterfall of black. Her eyes were almond-shaped. Her nose held the memory of Spanish conquistadors. Her skin was the color of leaves just starting to turn. And beneath her dark eyes were full lips that looked as if they’d never smiled.

Her eyes finally rested on the sign. She came over, gave me a
who are you staring at
look, then stuck out her hand to the cowboy.

He took it.

“Michelle Aquinas,” she said. As she shook his hand, her shirt sleeve pulled back, revealing white gauze wrapping her wrist. I glanced at the other wrist, but she saw me and shoved her hand in the back pocket of her jeans.

“Follow me,” the man said. He folded up the sign and slid it into the back of his pants. He walked straight as a fencepost. We followed him out the door into the dry, hot air of the plains.

He took us to an old pickup truck parked at the curb in clear violation of the law. A police officer glanced at us, but gave us no further attention. The cowboy got in and motioned us to do likewise. There was only the long bench seat. Aquinas and I appraised it.

I saw immediate relief on her face when I said, “I’ll get in back.”

The cowboy shook his head. “We’re going on the highway. Don’t want to get pulled over.”

I looked at her to let her decide. She frowned, but then shrugged and got in the middle. I climbed in beside her. As I did, I brushed against her and she flinched. Jesus. We were already packed in so tight. How could I keep from making her uncomfortable? I strapped on the old-fashioned lap belt, and scooted all the way to the door, allowing her about four inches of space. I caught her looking at it. When she looked up at me, I smiled. She turned away. Yep. This was going to be a long ride.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Middle of the state,” said the Cowboy.

I wasn’t up-to-date on my U. S. geography, but I thought I remembered that Cheyenne was in the southeastern corner.

I attempted to get him talking. “Pretty far, isn’t it?”

It took a moment as he stared out the window to consider the philosophical implications of my question. Finally he said, “It’s a piece.” Then he put the truck in gear and headed out. Within minutes, we were cruising north on I-25. If I’d expected a briefing about who he was, where we were going, and when we’d get there, I was disappointed; we found ourselves listening to farm futures reports on the AM dial. I never knew you could say so much about corn.

Two and a half hours later we reached Casper. By then I knew all about the price of beef on the hoof and barley futures. I’d tried to open a conversation with Michelle, but she feigned sleep both times. So I passed the trip in silence, watching antelope and prairie dogs scamper about the plains, wondering what they’d think about a few roadside explosions in their neighborhood as images of similar drives in Iraq and Afghanistan superimposed themselves on reality.

We drove through Casper and up a dirt road, then eventually stopped in a field about three miles west of the city.

“Get out,” the cowboy said, looking straight ahead.

“Here?” I asked, looking around.

He nodded. “They’ll be along shortly.”

I glanced at Michelle. The doubt in her eyes mirrored my own, but she nodded in grudging acceptance of the order. She was right. No use arguing with the old man.

We got out and the truck sped away.

We stood there for a few minutes, observing the terrain.

“Looks a lot like Afghanistan,” I finally said.

She looked at me sharply.

“Have you been?”

She nodded.

“Two tours. One in Helmand and one in Logar,” I offered. “You?”

“Nangarhar,” she said, looking away.

I stared at her. Nangarhar was in the middle of the shit. It was right in the teeth of the fighters pouring across the border during the fighting season. I’d seen more than my share in Helmand and Logar, but Nangarhar was the place we threatened to send people if they began acting up.

I was about to ask her more when we heard the sound of a helicopter. It came in low over the hill to our west, a Black Hawk. It sat down fifty yards away, whipping up dirt and sand. We shielded our faces with our arms and joined the beckoning soldier in the helicopter.

We lifted off and turned west.

Above the sounds of the helicopter I heard the crewman who’d let us in say into his microphone, “Two more for TF OMBRA.”

We spent the rest of the ride listening to the rumble of the engine.

It is human nature to start taking things for granted again when danger isn’t banging loudly on the door.

Col David Hackworth

CHAPTER FOUR

I
AM FIVE
years old and King of the Universe, or at least Count of the Cul-de-sac. I race my red, yellow and blue Big Wheel machine around and around in circles, the sound of the road against my plastic wheels a white static I leave in my wake to confuse the zombies. Ever since I saw
Army of Darkness
when my babysitter let me stay up instead of making me go to bed, I’ve had them following me when I’m on my Big Wheel. And I’m fast. They can’t catch me. They can’t even come close to me, trailing me like the tin cans we tied on my cousin Ronnie’s car when he got married to that ugly girl, Susan.

Ernie and Ben come out with their bikes, all shiny and new. Ben still has trainers on his, but Ernie has barely a wobble as he pedals hard. He looks good and part of me wishes I could have the same thing, but I know my parents can’t ’
ford
it, so I love my Big Wheel even more.

They wave.

I wave.

Then an explosion makes Ben evaporate, pieces of him and his bike and his trainers firing off in all directions at a billion miles an hour, becoming part of the land and sky. It rains Ben parts, the sound like M&Ms hitting the pavement. I raise my head and open my mouth and Ben tastes like raisins and bacon. I kind of knew he would taste like that. Everyone tastes like bacon eventually.

My mom comes out and high fives the zombies as they rush by. She carries a basket, and begins to pick up Ben’s M&M body pieces. I know she’s going to stuff it into the chicken. I love it when she does that.

Suddenly, Ernie races up to my mom. He turns to wave at me, then they both explode. But instead of pieces, I’m showered with blood. Cold and wet and hot at the same time, it covers me and the Big Wheel completely. I have a vision of Carrie, covered in blood onstage before she kills everyone, except I have no special power except to pedal, but I can’t pedal fast enough with the slickness of the blood making my feet slip and slide. The zombies catch up and grab me, and throw me down on the ground in a pool of my mother’s and Ernie’s blood, and they begin to eat me.

They begin to eat me.

I
JERKED AWAKE
as we began to descend, my hands scrabbling frantically at my sides. I’d twisted my shirt into knots. I glanced over at Michelle, who was watching me from the other side of the helicopter, cool and collected, as if she were an expert at extracting herself from her own nightmares and mine was nothing special. I let my gaze drift to her wrists and she crossed her arms and stared outside the window. We were coming up on a single story building in a wide parking lot with a smaller building next to it.

If I’d thought Cheyenne was the middle of nowhere, I was terribly mistaken. Cheyenne was definitely a
somewhere
compared to this place. No roads led to it. No cars were parked in the spaces. Surrounding it, for as far as the eye could see in any direction, there was no sign of humans or human habitation, just lonely plains, antelope, and the occasional curious prairie dog.

“Jesus,” I said.

We landed with a jolt. The crew chief slid the door open and gestured us out. Michelle slid to the ground first. She grabbed her bag and started walking, then looked back for me. I grinned. Not exactly love at first sight, but at least she’d thought of me. A voice inside me explained it was probably because she was scared shitless and wanted me to be there in case she needed to kick me in the shin and run, leaving me victim to whatever monsters were going to run out of the small building. Still, when I stepped onto the tarmac with my own bag, I was smiling.

She turned and shook her head.

The door slammed behind us and the helicopter began to rise.

We watched it leave, shielding our eyes with our hands. When it was about three hundred feet up, it turned a one-eighty and roared back the way we’d come, as if there was much to do in Casper and they didn’t want to miss it. More likely that they just didn’t want to hang around this place any longer.

We looked at each other, then at the building.

“I don’t think zombies are going to come out of there and get us,” I said. “If that’s what you’re worrying about.”

She grinned for the first time. It brightened her Filipina features, transforming her face into someone who didn’t slash her wrists and end up signing up for TF OMBRA, which was quickly becoming the clearing house for the poor, downtrodden, and those unable to kill themselves. I reminded myself I was one of them.

“Shall we?” I lifted my chin towards the building.

As she began to walk, I fell in beside her, careful of her space.

As we approached, there was a simple sign on the door that read
ENTER
in computer block type. I lifted the lever and the door opened outwards. We went into a spartan room covered in fake wood paneling. A single desk sat directly in front of us. An Air Force airman sat behind it, a laptop in front of him.

“Wallets and IDs, please.” He held out a tray.

“Excuse me?” I said. “You want my wallet?”

“TF OMBRA will be caring for your needs from now on.”

I shook my head. “I might want to buy a gift or something. Maybe for my mother.”

“Your mother is dead. As is your father. Wallets and IDs,” he said, giving the basket a jiggle.

I didn’t like him. His chin was too small, his eyes were too narrow. And where did he get off talking about my dead parents like that? Still, I jerked out my ID, handed it to him, then tossed my wallet in the basket. For a moment, I lamented the loss of the condom, the picture of a Scottish girl named Wren I fucked six ways to Sunday during R&R in Dubai, and a photo of my family when I was thirteen and we were at the lake. Then I wiped them from my mind. If I was willing to forget about them when I jumped off a bridge, it should be easy now.

Michelle followed suit, not seeming to care one way or the other.

“Against the wall, please,” he said, pointing to our left.

I watched as he upended the basket into a large box behind him, already filled with wallets and purses, then I joined Michelle on the wall.

“What now?” I asked.

The airman grinned and pressed a remote.

The wall opened behind us, and we turned and saw an elevator. I entered. Michelle did too. We stood facing the airman, who seemed to be enjoying our discomfort. Probably the only excitement he got except for pulling at his own pud.

He pressed the remote one more time.

The doors closed in front of us.

There were no buttons, but I could feel us descending. I glanced at Michelle, who had her eyes closed. I did the same. A short time later we stopped.

As I opened my eyes, the doors parted, revealing a painted red concrete floor, shined to a glossy finish. In front of us was a lean black man in black fatigues. On his head was a red beret, with a red flash with the black letters OMBRA stitched to the inside of a triangle.

“Aquinas and Mason, I presume.”

We nodded and stepped off the elevator. I felt humidity. The air smelled of old socks and food.

“I’m Proctor Todd. You’re the last of them. We only have a few minutes until lights out, and the initiation of Phase I. We held the kitchen open for you.”

“You do know that it’s only late afternoon and that it’s light outside, right?” I asked, trying not to sound too smart-assed.

Proctor Todd smiled patiently. “We are no longer concerned with the rise and fall of the sun. It has nothing to do with our cycles here in the Complex. What happens up there is for the people up there.”

“Okay,” I said, sorry I’d mentioned it.

Proctor Todd turned and began to walk down a hall to our right, and we fell in behind him.

Twice we came to intersections, and twice we continued through. A pair of blast doors slid open and, beyond, the hallway opened into an immense room, easily the size of a football field. We were immediately assaulted by the roar of conversation from hundreds of people. But when we entered, most of the talking ceased. Men and women sat or stood at tables, on chairs, in corners, in knots or alone. All shapes, sizes and ethnicities, I could feel their gaze like an itch against my skin. Most wore street clothes, although some had on pink or blue surgical scrubs, worn by both men and women without reference to gender. I caught several of their gazes and offered a friendly nod. Some smiled back; others merely stared. All of them, at least all the ones I saw, had the same stare as everyone in my platoon, whether it be Iraq or Afghanistan, and in those gazes I could see the far horizon where death and life didn’t matter.