Grunt Hero

by Weston Ochse

  First published 2017 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-081-0

  Copyright © 2017 Weston Ochse

  Cover art by Clint Langley

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  For My Grandfather,

  James David Estes,

  My First Hero

  From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on the mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

  Carl Sagan, speaking of what

  Earth looks like from space

  People are giving up not just hope, but their lives. Reports of suicides are streaming in. Today’s zeitgeist is why even try? So is that it? Have the aliens won? Have they supplanted us as a species on this, our once great planet, Earth? Is it time to just roll over, kiss our asses goodbye, and take what they give us? Or do we fight? Someone once said that he won by merely surviving. Is that our only goal now? Just to survive? It doesn’t seem like enough, does it? We’d achieved a Golden Age here on Earth. Whatever we wanted we could find at the click of a button. If we wanted it sooner, we could have gone to a big box store. Foods from all over the world were at our disposal. We could watch movies, listen to music, and live… really live. There are those who would see a return to that. Then there are those who, like Henry David Thoreau, would see us achieve a simpler kind of life. I’m not sure which one is the loftier ideal, but I am certain that either one is better than dying. The Old Bard said it best when he said, To Be or Not To Be. So you ask me, good listeners, which one will you be? Someone who wants to die? Or someone who wants to live?

  Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,

  Night Stalker Monologue #1721

  War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

  Cormac McCarthy,

  Blood Meridian, or

  The Evening Redness in the West

  CHAPTER ONE

  NOT EVEN THE cold burn of the frigid ocean spray could scour away my sins. Yet I still embraced it, leaning into the bow of the umiak as it bucked on three foot seas, letting the water splash and sizzle against my bare skin. Summer was almost over and the warm days were already skidding into another Bering Strait winter, so this would be our last hunt until next spring. We were searching for polar bear and hunting with traditional weapons. I was invited to the expedition to learn the old ways so I could become closer with my new tribe. I stretched out my arms to embrace the moment, wind searing my face, the spray of water soothing the newest of my tattoos. I closed my eyes and let the faces of each of the men’s and women’s names I’d put on me flash past, the wind and surf washing them clean of the dirt and grime of their deaths, leaving only the inked letters.

  Mike 1 and Mike 2 killed in Iraq.

  Olivares killed in Vegas.

  McKenzie killed at Kilimanjaro.

  Macabre killed in Los Angeles.

  And the others.

  So many, too many for one person to be able to handle. I’d barely been able to deal with my own existence, much less bear the responsibility for so many dead. Mother knew this when she sent me here. I’d come to a new understanding about death. Death didn’t have to be the end. Death could be the beginning as well. I’d come trying to forget, trying to exorcise the knowledge from my psyche so I could heal. But forgetting had been the absolute wrong thing to do. I should have been remembering the lives they’d lived, the sacrifices they’d made, the moments of pure joy that we’d shared. And it took coming to this snow-blasted corner of the world for me to figure that out.

  The Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island believe in reincarnation. Whether it be a person or an animal, they revered people who died or animals they had to put down for food, careful not to destroy the spirit with the flesh. They did this because the end wasn’t the end. It was merely a transition into another state of being.

  That had been my problem for so long. I’d thought only of their shattered bodies. Their deaths had become the symbol for their lives. Mother had called it synecdoche. She’d said that my brain had created a symbol for them and I had to find a way to change the symbol. She’d told me to remember each one for something different, then think about those moments until they were imprinted upon my psyche. She’d also realized that I’d spent so much time trying to save my flesh that I’d neglected my own spirit. She’d seen that even in her collective, I was still too close to the blades that had wounded me. So she’d sent me north to the farthest length of her reach—an island north of the Bearing Strait, as close to Russia as it was Alaska.

  Merlin Apassingok laughed behind me from where he sat and steered the outboard motor. “You look like that girl from that movie about the ship and the iceberg,” he said.

  “Titanic,” I yelled back. “The movie was Titanic.”

  Truth be told, I felt like the girl from Titanic. The feeling of freedom was almost pure enough to make me think I was flying. The frigid winter and the warm friendship of Merlin’s family had nurtured the idealist young man I’d once been, causing him to return. There’d been a time before all the wars when I’d enjoyed the simple things in life. I’d had aspirations instead of obligations. Everything had seemed fresh and new and wasn’t shadowed by the things I’d done.

  “Look there,” Merlin said.

  I opened my eyes to where he was pointing. An immense bull walrus swam even with the boat. Behind it came an orca, a natural predator.

  “Hang on.”

  I immediately sat and grabbed the gunnels of the small traditional whaling boat.

  Merlin shoved the engine rudder hard, causing the umiak to curl behind the walrus. He killed the engine, grabbed a weapon and rose like a hunter of old. He’d left the harpoon in the bottom of the boat. He wasn’t about to kill the Orca. Instead, he chose the aangruyak, a lance meant to dispatch a dying walrus. Holding it with both hands, he waited until the orca rushed beneath the umiak, then slammed the lance into the water, thumping the side of the whale.

  The whale bucked in pain, lashing the hull of the umiak with its tail.

  Merlin fought for balance, then sat down and kicked the motor to life. The umiak was soon parallel with the walrus. He handed the lance to me and I stood, facing the rear, ready to deter the orca again if it got too close.

  The Yupik had been hunting walrus since before recorded time. Their favorite method was to do it by kayak, but as often as not, they’d use the umiak, especially since the advent of the outboard
engine. The walrus’s only natural predators were man, orca, and polar bears. The bears had been coming more and more since the water was warming, sending the walruses even farther north. To have a big bull on the island was no small thing. If it could make landfall, it would draw others, helping to enlarge and protect the ugly of walruses already on Savoonga. To protect it on its journey was the right thing to do. To protect the walrus meant to protect a way of life.

  The umiak suddenly lurched, sending me flying into the air. When I slammed into the water, the impact and the cold shocked me. I was unable to move for a few precious seconds. Somehow I’d kept my grip on the lance. When I opened my eyes, I saw the orca was only a few meters from me, roaring through the water like a black and white shark, its toothy mouth open and ready to bite. I pushed the point of the lance towards it, ocean water causing the wooden shaft to move so ponderously, the point barely arriving in time to spear the end of the nose. My legs suddenly began to work and I kicked out and shoved the lance with everything I had. But it wasn’t enough. I’d bloodied the whale, but it still came on. I barely managed to kick a leg free when it bit down in the space I had just been. A microsecond later, a harpoon split the surface of the water and sliced into the killer whale’s right eye, sinking through it until the barbed point pierced the inside of the mouth.

  The orca stopped thrashing as it died, blood gushing from inside the mouth and from where the harpoon rended the eye.

  I didn’t have time to consider anything other than I was out of air. I wanted desperately to gasp, but to do so would be to breathe in sea water. The surface looked to be a few feet above me. I kicked, realizing that I was only a few seconds away from drowning. But as hard as I kicked, I couldn’t gain traction. My insulated seal-skin boots and walrus-skin pants weighed too much.

  Then I felt a nudge at my back. I remembered that orcas usually hunt in packs. I couldn’t imagine a more terrible death than to be eaten alive. I fought the urge to scream as I reached upwards, trying to pull myself to safety. Then another nudge, this one pushing me towards daylight. I gasped as my face broke the surface, reveling as the cold, clear air filled my lungs. Hands grabbed me from above. I scrambled to grab the side of the boat. Within moments, Merlin had me back in the umiak.

  I glanced down at the water and saw the bull walrus. Its scarred hide. Its forearm-sized tusks. White whiskers. The bull regarded me with a liquid eye for a few long moments, then it slowly turned and was once again surging towards Savoonga.

  Merlin grabbed me and began to rip my shirt free. My feet and pants were dry, but the cold of the water was already turning my hands blue from exposure. Although the wind bit through me, it also served to dry my skin and hair. Merlin handed me a walrus-skin blanket from the boat’s stores and I draped it around my shoulders, suddenly warm for what it seemed like the first time in an eternity, although it had been less than thirty seconds.

  I sat there shaking for a few moments, before I realized that the boat wasn’t moving. I looked around. Merlin stood at the stern, doing something I couldn’t see. I got to my feet and joined him, careful to keep the balance of the umiak right.

  Tears flowed from his eyes as he tied the tail of the dead whale to a rope affixed to the back of the boat. Then I remembered. We’d only been trying to divert the whale. It was forbidden by the Yupik to kill an orca whale. They were revered and, along with the raven and the wolf, were never to be killed. The orca was believed to watch over hunters and fishermen. Now Merlin had killed one. Would it matter that he did so to save my life? The part of me that understood the traditions knew immediately that it wouldn’t matter. There’d be a price to pay, and for Merlin’s sake, I hoped it wasn’t too high.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and could feel the tremor in his body from his half-surpressed sobs. He spoke low in the singing language of the Yupik. I knew then that he wasn’t crying for himself, he was crying for the orca. He was already mourning the soul of the fish, serenading it, explaining to it that he had to kill it to save me. I couldn’t speak the language, but I understood this at a deeper level, because it’s what I would have done in his place.

  One warrior-hunter to the other.

  The past is never dead, it is not even past.

  William Faulkner

  CHAPTER TWO

  I HAD NEITHER seen nor heard from OMBRA in the eight months since I blew up the master in the Hollywood Hive. So when I saw the man in uniform standing on the dock waiting for me, it actually came as no surprise. I’d been expecting Mr. Pink to ask me back into the fold for several months now. That said, I had little use for OMBRA at the moment. Yet even as we docked, he came running, calling my name and fumbling a salute. I ignored him, my only care in the world for my new brother, Merlin. Coming back so early from our bear hunt, the other members of the tribe knew something had gone wrong and had already begun to gather. When they saw the orca tied by its tail to the stern, their collective countenance changed from curious to anxious. They didn’t have the story yet, and when they did, the worry would marshal straight to anger.

  Merlin’s father, Sebastian, was the first of the group to approach. He took a long look at me, noting that I was wearing a blanket instead of the heavy wool shirt. He looked far older than his fifty years, but his physique was well defined—shoulders and arms rock hard. He was clearly Merlin’s father. The family resemblance was unmistakable. They shared the same long black hair, his tied back with carved pieces of ivory, and the same wide open faces. Like all the Yupiak, their skin was swarthy and their epicanthic folds were slight.

  Sebastian placed a hand on my shoulder and I lowered my head. I felt shame for putting Merlin in the position where he’d had to choose between the orca and me. If I’d been more careful, none of this would have happened. I just wasn’t as well-balanced as the Yupik when it came to small boats.

  Merlin untied the orca, and brought it alongside the boat. The beast was half again as long as the vessel and would have grown larger still had it lived. Sebastian and Merlin exchanged words in Yupik. I decided to let them have their space and walked off the dock and over to where Merlin’s sister stood.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  As I told her, her face grew troubled.

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked.

  She stared at the ground. “This won’t end well.”

  “Is it that serious?” I asked, knowing immediately I shouldn’t have even opened my mouth. Instead of responding, she walked over to a group of women and began whispering. By the way they looked at me, I could tell she was telling them what I’d told her. I sighed. Soon this would be all over the small village.

  An OMBRA soldier edged up to me. A young black kid, he wore an urban camouflage uniform in blues, grays and black. Atop his head was a maroon beret with the OMBRA flash. “Is now a good time, sir?”

  I glanced at his nametape—NANCE. I couldn’t see any indication of rank, but that didn’t mean anything. He could be a private or a general for all I cared. Nance was fresh and clean. I doubted he’d been in any service before the Cray came down and EMP’d us back to the Stone Age. He’d definitely not battled a hive like the one we’d broken our teeth on at Kilimanjaro. Nor had he been part of any of our deadly forays into Los Angeles. I doubted OMBRA would send a REMF or Fobbit, as they’d become called, but one never knew. Perhaps this poor young man had just drawn the short straw.

  “Who sent you?” I held up a hand, “Wait. Let me guess? Mr. Pink sent you.”

  Nance didn’t bat an eye. “No sir, actually it was Captain Ohirra.”

  Captain, now. I remembered when I’d first met her in the old missile complex under the Wyoming plains, before the invasion. Back then we didn’t know what we didn’t know; all we did was suck up OMBRA’s training, wondering why the curriculum concentrated on alien invasion science fiction books and movies. Ohirra had seemed so small and unassuming. Little did we know she was whip smart, dedicated, and could tie someone into knots with her small circle jujitsu m
astery. “How did you find me?”

  Nance grinned. “Now that took a while. We tracked you to a place in Northern California near Mount Shasta.”

  Ahh. Memories of Mother flooded in. She’d worked so hard to help me regain some of my humanity. She’d almost done it too, but then Suzie had killed herself and it sent me over the edge. “I have a place we send those who need to find a definition for themselves that doesn’t include their past.” At the time I had no idea what she’d meant. But I’d been working on it and thought that I might have actually figured it out.

  “I was there for a few months,” I said.

  “Real crazy forests. Tallest trees I’ve ever seen. Met a woman who went only by Mother.”

  “What’d you have to trade for her to tell you where I was?”

  He grinned. “Two pallets of medicine for her people.”

  “Fair trade, I suppose,” I said, watching as two fisherman marched out to the dock and led Merlin away. As he passed by the group of men, they all turned away from him. Merlin’s eyes were fixed on the ground, or perhaps to a place where he hadn’t been forced to kill an orca to save me.

  “What’s going on?” the soldier asked, his eyes wide.

  “The orca is sacred to them and Merlin killed one.”

  “Why’d he kill one if it’s sacred?”

  “To save my life.” I saw him glance at me, confusion in his eyes. “You see, it’s like this. They have these beliefs that certain creatures should be worshipped. To kill them puts the tribe at risk. Just because I was fool enough to fall in the water isn’t a good enough reason to break this belief. Merlin should have let nature take its course.”