by Weston Ochse
“Mason?” Ohirra’s voice came from somewhere past Saturn.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run away from the image. What I was witnessing was the rape of a person, on a fundamental level. They wanted all of her and took it. Seeing it, even if it was my fucking crazy mind’s version of what had actually happened, made me want to track down every single member of GNA and OMBRA and rip them apart with my own hands.
“Mason!” Ohirra shouted over the coms.
The image dissolved in a rain of electronic confetti and I was once again in the alien vine gloom of the new Los Angeles.
“Sorry,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’m back.”
“What happened?”
Fucking PTSD, I wanted to say, but some questions were better left unanswered. I searched for the Chinook, but it was no longer there. What had happened to it?
As if sensing my confusion, Ohirra said, “It traveled west. We lost it through the vine.”
“What do you think it was doing?” I asked.
“I think they were searching for us.”
“Yeah, me too. Let’s get going. We need to be careful.”
We traveled ever westward. The hive wasn’t visible but we knew where it was. I’d thought about traversing Burbank, then trying to sneak up on the Cray by way of Laurel Canyon or Coldwater Canyon, but time was flying away from me and we had to make as direct a route as possible. In a strange way, the black alien vine canopy was going to be our most useful tactical asset. Just as it concealed the denizens of the sky from us, it would also block the Cray’s view, which should enable us to get closer to the hive without raising contact sooner than we would want to deal with it.
We hit the L.A. river as night fell on the city. Climbing up the embankment and onto the reclaimed ground of Piggyback Yard, we spied several hundred fungees. They stood still, facing in all directions, the trunks of their bodies moving together in an invisible breeze, as if they were all weeds in a wide, fallow field. I saw a red halo around each of their necks.
“I don’t like this,” Sula said.
What’s the worst that could happen? I wanted to ask, but knew better. The only question was whether to go around or through them. There looked to be thousands of them.
I drew my harmonic blade. “We’re going through.”
“We’re just going to kill them?” Sula said.
“They’re not human. They won’t ever be human again,” I said, knowing that wasn’t exactly the truth.
“But let’s not kill unless we have to.”
“Ohirra, I have lead, you have rear. Stranz, you’re behind me, then Sula. Let’s move.”
I strode forward. When I encountered the first fungee—a young man who could have been, should have been, in high school learning algebra or staring at the girls and their budding beauty—I pushed gently past him. He stood next to a woman who reminded me of a cashier I used to see at a grocery store in San Pedro.
I worked straight through the infected masses, moving as steadily but as lightly as I could. Ohirra had been right. This wasn’t a field to be harvested. They were people. I’d use my blade only if I felt it necessary.
We were perhaps halfway through when Sula started to cry.
“Maintain composure,” I growled. I could understand her feeling. The sheer number of the fungees was something else. The question was, why had they been placed here?
“They’re moving. They’re getting closer together, but slowly.”
“They’re closing in?”
“Projection says we’ll all be tightly packed in less than thirty seconds.”
Was this pocket of infected humanity an early warning device for the hive, or had I blindly led the team into a living minefield?
“Bring about your blades,” I said. “I’m cutting a path through.”
Suddenly the entire field was alive with hands searching for purchase on our EXOs. They gripped and grabbed the others, but left me alone. It was as if a command had been given, something was directing them. Then I remembered what Michelle had said, that the Hypocrealiacs were using the fungees to watch us. I grabbed one of the fungees in my EXO hands and stared into its mad eyes, concentrating, trying to make a connection, trying to open a doorway so I could somehow communicate with it or with what was behind it. Was a Hypocrealiac staring back at me through this poor man? Was it studying me, watching me, trying to figure out what I was doing? The fungee’s hands scrabbled at my face plate, nails breaking and fingers leaving bloody trails as it tried to push away from me and get at the others. Its mouth moved silently.
There was just no way. Even if the Hypocrealiacs were using the fungees to conduct their own reconnaissance or as early warning devices I couldn’t bring myself to do them harm. I hurled myself away from the creature, sheathed my blade, and pushed through. I couldn’t cut them. I couldn’t kill them. I’d been one of them.
I made it to the other side of Piggyback Yard and into the street. When the others joined me, we stared back at the figures. None followed, but they watched us as we moved on.
We were in Chinatown. The dragon gate had been ripped down and all the colorful signs had been used to board up doors and windows on the lower floors, while the upper floor windows had been covered in plastic. Most of the cars had been pushed to the sides of the street. We felt eyes on us as we strode down vine-shadowed Hill Street. My HUD detected heat signatures on the second and third floors of the buildings lining the street.
“Ohirra,” I began.
“I see them.”
“Be on the watch, Tarantulas,” I warned.
“Look at the windows covered in plastic,” Stranz said. “Notice the people behind them?”
It looked as if the residents of Chinatown had created their own hermetically-sealed environments, creating their own barrier to the spore, which would allow them to survive it until the next threat emerged. The problem for them was that we were that next threat. They were well within the destruction radius of the bomb. If what OMBRA techs said was true, Chinatown would be hit with a blast of radiation so severe that nothing would survive.
“Should we tell them?” Ohirra asked.
I nodded. “We owe it to them. Ohirra, why don’t you go knock on a door and see if someone answers? The rest of you, to me.”
Sula, Stranz and I went back to back. They brought their miniguns to bear and I readied my Hydra in the event there was an attack. Not that I thought the people in the buildings meant any harm, but I wasn’t about to put my people in danger if I could help it.
Meanwhile Ohirra went to first one door, then another. I toggled her feed so I could see what she saw. Finally one of the doors opened, revealing an elderly Chinese man standing in a hazmat suit.
“Please leave,” he said. “We don’t want any trouble.”
My HUD detected movement at virtually all the windows surrounding us. I had no doubt that we had more than a dozen weapons trained on us.
“You don’t understand,” Ohirra said. “We’re here to help.”
“We don’t need your help,” the man said, trying to push the door closed.
But Ohirra wouldn’t let him close it. “Listen. In less than seven hours we’re going to detonate a nuclear bomb at the hive. This area is too close. The radiation will kill you.”
The man stared at her through his plastic faceplate. I’d seen a movie once with John Wayne, or Robert Mitchum, or one of the other old movie stars. The movie took place on the Great Plains, and I remembered a scene where a family of settlers were told that the Indians were going to come and wipe them out. The settlers didn’t seem to care. They insisted on staying, believing that they would figure out how to get along.
“Thank you for the information,” the man said, and started to close the door.
“You do understand that you’re going to die?” Ohirra said. “There’s nothing you can do except escape.”
“We understand,” the man said. He offered her a serene smile.
“There’s a group of f
ungees near Piggyback Yard. I’d be careful of them when you evacuate,” she said.
“We’re not leaving. This is our home.”
“But don’t you get it? If you stay, you’ll die.”
“We’ve been told that before. This is our home. We’re staying here.”
And with that he shut the door.
Ohirra stood, staring at it for several seconds.
“Come on back,” I said.
“But they need to know...”
“They know. You told them. If they want to stay, then let them.”
“But they’re all going to die.”
“It’s their choice.” I turned to continue down the street. “Stranz, take point.”
He ran forward fifty meters.
Ohirra rejoined us and I had her take the rear.
The 110 had once carried drivers from the Valley into the city, and city folks into the Valley. We met the 101 just south of our position near Chavez Ravine, which had once been a great L.A. meeting place called Dodger Stadium. The tall, elevated highway was already crumbling beneath the insistent knots of black vine. We were forced to climb over the larger chunks of rubble.
We eventually crossed under the 110 and were skirting Dodger Stadium when our telemetry began to scream as a rocket streaked from the upper deck of the stadium. I shouted for Stranz to get out of the way. A moment later, he was thrown through the air, slamming into the side of the buttress holding up the freeway.
I got a word of warning for all you would-be warriors. When you join my command, you take on a debt. A debt you owe me personally. Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis. Or you will die tryin’.
Lt. Aldo Raine, Inglourious Basterds
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“OHIRRA! FIND THAT sniper!” I yelled, running to Stranz.
Sula took shelter behind a giant concrete slab that had fallen from the highway. Her Hydra was up and waiting for telemetry to give her a target.
I got to Stranz just in time to pull him ten meters out of the kill zone before another RPG impacted. I staggered from the force of the explosion. Concrete rained down on us.
Sula fired two missiles at the same time Ohirra unzipped the sky, sending a hundred rounds in five seconds into the upper deck of the stadium.
My telemetry was for shit under the ensuing cloud of concrete dust, but I’d let them sort it out. I checked Stranz’s vitals and they were all over the place. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing... probably just unconscious from the impact. He hadn’t taken a direct hit, but even in an EXO, shrapnel could be a deadly thing if it was big enough and hit just right. I checked the integrity of his suit and didn’t see any broken seals or rips.
“Sula, with me,” Ohirra said over the net.
I watched for a moment as they moved in sprinting overwatch up an embankment, then across an immense parking lot toward the stadium. The black alien vine had yet to overtake the stadium, which sat high on a hill. I’d noted that the vine seemed to want to maintain its own level and tended not to climb higher. Even the Hollywood Sign was free from its clutches... for now.
“Wait for me,” I ordered.
“I can take him,” Ohirra said.
“Negative. Wait.”
Using my command switch, I powered down Stranz’s suit, then powered it back up. As advanced as the technology was, I was using the same methods I would have used on an old desktop PC. After thirty seconds, his vitals returned to normal.
I shook him until his eyes fluttered open.
“Eggs and bacy, time to wakey! Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”
He brought a hand to his head. “What hit me?”
“Close call,” I said, standing, then offering a hand. “RPG just missed.”
He accepted my hand and I helped him up. Then I turned and ran towards the stadium. It was nothing more than a giant hunching shadow of darkness in the overcast night, but my EXO was capable of rendering it in perfect clarity with Starlight technology.
Another RPG round arced toward me, but without any seeking technology, it was easy to avoid. By the time Stranz and I had joined the others, Ohirra was virtually dancing with impatience to take down the sniper.
“What’s our plan?” I asked.
“Go in there and fuck them up,” Sula said.
“Nice. But I was looking for something a little more detailed, because the minute one of us goes through that entrance to the field,” I said, pointing, “we’re going to be a target.”
I could see Ohirra working through the problem, then her shoulders sagged. “You’re right. It’s a trap.”
“Either that or some wannabe sniper taking potshots at us from extreme range. Here’s what we do. Let’s stick together and go up internally. I’ve been to a hundred games at the park; I know this place inside and out.”
We moved two-by-two through the ground floor, past kiosks that once sold souvenirs and food stalls. An elote cart had been all but demolished. I paused before it and gave a silent eulogy for what had been my childhood treat during the seventh-inning stretch.
We kept moving around the inside of the stadium until we were even with the center field wall. We climbed a staircase, which got us to the mezzanine level. The blue and red Dodgers symbol was everywhere, as a reminder of what fifty-six thousand people once did two hundred days out of the year. The silence, followed by the crack of the bat, then the roar of the crowd used to electrify me.
We passed a kiosk that used to serve Doyer Dogs. I could still make out the menu, which showed a picture of the hot dog smothered in nacho cheese, chili, jalapeños and pico de gallo. As I’d gotten older, these gut bombs had replaced the elote as my cuisine of choice. I remember polishing off seven of them one fall Saturday afternoon, only to pay for it later, lying crumpled on the bathroom floor with my stomach a hurricane of what the hell did you put in me!
I sent Ohirra and Sula towards the first base foul ball seats.
Stranz and I went to the third-base foul ball seats.
When both teams were in place, we climbed up one more level and headed towards the seating areas through a tall, wide tunnel. After seeing the first hint of green on the field, I spied the blades of the helicopter.
“Careful,” I said. “Now we know where the Chinook landed.” I thought for a moment. “Let me pop my head out first and draw their attention. When they fire, both of you take them out.”
I motioned Stranz to hang back, then I took three steps forward and peeked around the corner. My HUD went crazy as it counted targets in five locations, including directly above me. I spun just in time to see a man in a hazmat suit and body armor putting an old fashioned LAW rocket launcher to his shoulder. He was close enough to the opening that I was able to jump and grab his leg. I jerked it, the ankle breaking as his leg folded towards me. The rocket launcher clattered to the ground at about the same time three RPGs shot toward me. Instead of diving back in the tunnel, I ran to my right, towards the seats behind home plate and the press boxes from where most of the fire was coming.
The RPGs hit, obliterating the entrance to my rear.
I ordered Stranz to mirror my movements from the inside and shortly saw his ammo numbers tick down as he opened fire.
I brought out my harmonic blade and swung it over my head as I screamed, “Take me out to the ball game...”
Sula and Ohirra’s rockets found homes in three of the ten press boxes, blowing them to smithereens.
“Take me out with the crowd...”
Another hazmat-suited target swung around, aimed his RPG at me and fired.
“Give me some peanuts and apple jacks...”
I saw the round coming towards me in slow motion and twisted my body to let it fly harmlessly past.
“I don’t care if I never get back...”
I was on him as he tried to reload. I separated his upper and lower halves wi
th one great swing of the blade. I spied another man behind him and started to swing, until a great explosion blew me clear out of the press area. I tumbled backwards, leaving a trail of broken seats in my path, coming to a halt upside down against the cage behind home plate.
“What was that?” Ohirra said over the net.
I righted myself, exchanging my dizzy upside-down view of the universe for a dizzy right-side-up. My vitals said I was fine, except that my heart rate was through the roof. Stranz’s vitals, on the other hand, were black—which could only mean two things: either his suit was offline or he was dead.
“Ohirra...” My torso felt like Mike Tyson had done a round on it. I lumbered forward and pulled myself up, retracing my path of destruction. “You and Sula, to me.”
She ran toward what was once the press box. We’d destroyed three of the boxes; now they all ten were nothing but a black smoking hole. We met at the start of the rubble. Ohirra wasn’t even breathing hard. She’d left Sula back to cover us, which was a better idea than my command. I arrived huffing and puffing like I’d just run a marathon after smoking a carton of Pall Malls.
“What was that?” she asked.
I shook my head as much to clear the ringing as in answer. “And where’s Stranz?”
I waded into the wreckage, pulling aside wood and concrete. I found one hazmat-suited body which had been blown in half. Deeper in I found three more, all in various states of dismemberment. A fourth was lying beneath a collapsed desk. He was still alive... until I planted an EXO foot on his face and pushed. I didn’t care for these men at all. They’d earned their fate when they’d tried to kill us. I was more concerned for Stranz.
I found him at the back of the press area, in what would have been the access tunnel; it had partially collapsed on top of him. His suit was dark. It looked as if Thor, Loki and every Frost Giant in the pantheon had hammered on it until it was as dimpled as a bowling ball. His hands were claws at his neck and he wasn’t moving.
