First car was Grady, Schuyler, Smith. Smith was new, so Grady picked Schuyler for his shooter on his side. It had been that way for a few years and nothing had gone wrong yet. Grady thought about riding in the back with the payload to keep the grabass dipshits away from Brunsen, but frankly if they knocked him around a little he didn’t care. No one would do anything too stupid, because they knew Grady would fuck their entire world up if things got out of hand.
They were driving to old Brookside near the center of the town. It was a small towncenter-esque environment. Old buildings destroyed by the bombs, parks that hadn’t seen a kid in years, churches with half a steeple. Just a god damn treasure trove of nooks and crannies for would-be attackers to hide in, all overlooking open spaces for you to stand around and get shot. It was ideal place for shit that gave him nightmares: ambushes, buildings falling in around you, piles of that awful death shit that you couldn’t see. The GPS said there was some special bit of the black death shit the science teams had identified and that’s what they needed. Grady had hated dealing with it since he started this deal. The bad mission, the mission they lost a lot of guys, that crap got into one of the Humvees. Team started de-garbing in the car and it gets splattered everywhere. Whole truck died. No telling whether it was the flaming crash or everyone touching that death shit. No point in worrying about it now.
These trips were supposed to be silent affairs. Everyone shuts up and focuses. He loved Schuyler like a brother but he always wanted to talk. Today was no exception. “Grady why we doing this? This shit is fucking up the planet. We should burn it all. I think.”
Grady grumbled. “You think. That ever done you any good before? Don’t we pay you not to think? I am almost fucking sure, that it says in your contract somewhere. ‘Mr. Schuyler agrees not to think because he recognizes he has the brains of a god damn donkey and thinking will not do him, nor anyone else any good.’ You breaking contract on me Schuyler? Is that what this is? Can ship you back to Boston if you want and you go back to soft-dicking chubby red heads from U Mass after too many beers.”
“Fuuuuuuuck youuuuuuu Grady,” Schuyler drug out the u sound in the first two words.
Grady continued. “News said the God damn Chinese are planning on fucking dropping this shit on Chicago and you think we just give it away? You gone soft on me soldier? They got it too, ya know? How do you expect to win a war when the enemy is shooting fireballs of liquid death and you’re shooting blanks?”
Smith jumped in. The new guys always want to jump in. “You’re impotent Schuyler? Damn. Sucks dude. I got 5 kids. Can’t fucking miss. Bitch has been pregnant for most of our marriage.”
“The term would be sterile dumbshit, but no, I am not sterile.” Schuyler laughed it off. Good rib from the rookie. Grady approved.
Schuyler was quiet for a few seconds, mounting courage it seemed. “We dropped it on them too Grady. Beijing. Right in the middle of town they said. Thousands dead. It’s not like it don’t kill them too.”
Grady knew that was bullshit. Mainstream media crap. “Schuyler after all these years if I find out you are some kind of god damn Liberal I am not going to be able to control myself. I will personally find the largest pile of that nasty shit out here and chuck you face first and naked as a jaybird squarely into the middle of it and video tape it for your retarded sister to watch.” Everyone in the truck laughed. The boys could talk this way. This was how things were supposed to be. He owed Schuyler his life more times than he could count. They were brothers. If someone on the outside had same the same thing it would be a different story but here, in the truck, this was Sanctuary. This was home.
Schuyler was unmoved though. “I ain’t saying we give up and give the whole thing to them. I’m just saying, why am I out here risking my ass for this god damn evil shit. This stuff ain’t right man. It’s been getting worse too. Why are we out here getting this for BIMPT anyway?”
“Well shit for brains you ever heard of medicine? Them boys up the laboratory had this fancy idea that instead of letting the Chinese just mass murder our folks with that god damn death solution we might get wild and crazy and invent a cure? Hell, I heard they were even thinking about letting you have some if it all worked out ok.” Grady laughed to himself. “Shit watch out!” A bump in the road. He should’ve seen it. Too much grabass and not enough paying attention. “Schuyler how about you take your complaints to the Democratic National Convention and let me focus on the road before I get us all killed?”
The hummer was quiet again. As it should be.
Kansas City wasn’t like it had been. Grady spent a few weekends here before everything was destroyed. Years before. He was an E3 on leave from Leavenworth. It was a city. There were people, bars, concerts. He’d took a date to a movie. Paid his respects at the WWI museum. Soldier shit. He couldn’t even remember those times now. He looked out into what is. Buildings leveled, houses gone, park empty, parking lots full of 20 year old cars. Some of them were worth money. Maybe he’d come back one day. Claim squatters right or something. There had to be a fortune laying around here. What was a 20 year old Corvette with no miles worth? Radioactive or not it had to be something right?
Smith finally spoke up. “Grady are there really people out there?” The old guard couldn’t help themselves and the new recruits ate it up.
“What do you mean?” Grady said.
“Back at base. The boys were talking about ghosts. About people that live here. Fucking ghost people that can move through walls and shit. Said you were haunted by a ghost.”
Grady grunted. “Son, you will see some shit out here. But if you see an actual ghost you will be the first amongst us.”
“They said there are people though. Like normal folks that live out here.”
“Think about it Smith. You and I got all this fancy anti-radioactivity equipment shit on just to be out there for a few hours. How are people going to survive out here? They ain’t. Now point your face towards the window, shut your mouth, and do your job.”
Better if they didn’t know he thought. Better if they just believed him. He hadn’t seen The Ghost in years anyway.
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“We’re here. Get Brunsen moving.” Grady was ready to be out of here as fast as possible. The whole area was dangerous. Grady hit his comms broadcast “I want a perimeter. Brunsen and his gear in the middle, I want a man every 20 feet around this place. Guns up. This is the halfway points gentlemen. We got about 30 minutes here, and then we head home. Nobody get near Brusen or any of that black shit and make sure he goes in the back. Strap the barrel down first and if you have extra maybe even throw him one.”
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Grady looked around. The men were spaced equally, 12 odd-looking and poorly wrapped assassins like a mummy hit squad with their rifles up. Mission was a go, except one problem.
Grady pulled the face slit on his helmet so he could talk. “Brunsen, what the fuck are you doing? Go get the fucking barrel and put that shit in it.” It was like owning a robot. If you didn’t program him, he didn’t work.
“Okay.” Brunsen started moving.
“Brunsen, BRUNSEN! Listen to me. I want you to get those barrels off the truck and then fill them with that pile of black shit over there.” He pointed towards the area located on the GPS tracker, it was a small glob about 10x10 and 3-6ft high. It pulsated, oozed, contracted, expanded and did it all over again in an arhythmic fashion. “After you are done filling the containers, I want you to go grab that flamethrower over there and blast that shit until it’s gone. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to use the flamethrower.”
“No.”
“Then you don’t fucking understand, now do you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes you understand or… you know what? Let’s just go over it anyway. This is the igniter.” Grady pointed towards a switch on the front. “Don’t push that until you are ready to shoot. This is the liquid nozzle,” Grady pointed towards a valve. “Turn that all the way open or you’ll end up blowing yourself up. This is the trigger.” Grady pointed to the trigger. “If you pull that after the other two switches are on, it will work. DO NOT point the flamethrower at me or my crew, or I will happily shoot you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Great. Get to work.”
Grady watched him drag the barrels off the back of the truck. They were laden with that black shit. You can’t wash it off either. It just stays. Anything that touches it is basically poisonous forever. He’d had guys unwittingly bump into barrels and then just watched them melt. He’d lost friends to that shit.
Brunsen worked systematically and efficiently. Grady had done this same sort of thing before so he knew the job. The black shit was too viscous and inconsistent to pump it through anything efficiently. Half of it was like water, the other half was like semi-dry concrete. The only way you could really move bulk amounts of it was to grab a shovel and start dumping it in. This inevitably resulted in sloshing all over the place, and the first guy that got tired and decided to wipe his brow or got some on his suit and didn’t decontaminate right, or the first guy that threw the shovel in the back of the truck instead of back in the pile of black goo ended up getting people killed. He was happy to have Brusen along for this period, but the idea of having someone walking around with that crap all over his body was disgusting.
He watched Brunsen while the rest of the team scattered about in short patrols in a circle. Recently half the damn planet had been trying to send teams in to nab this shit. He’d heard it was twice as bad on the island they nuked a decade or whatever back. This was always coming he thought. You can’t put Pandora back in the box.
Brunsen was fast. Ten minutes later and he was nearly done gathering. That was good. They had enough for a few barrels of this crap. Might mean they could do this in one go. No need to come back. Payment to be accepted upon receipt so pay the fuck up and me and the boys get out of here for good.
Grady walked over to Brunsen and handed him the flamethrower. “Listen to me very closely. This thing is incredibly dangerous. If I see you point at me, I am going to be extremely angry. You are only going to point it at that pile of black shit over there and you are going to incinerate it all, do you understand? I don’t care how big a fire you make, just make sure it’s gone, got it?”
“I do got it.” Brunsen said.
Grady was going to clap him on the back but remembered better. “Good. You’re a weird fucking guy Brunsen, but you do good work.”
Grady watched Brunsen turn on the flamethrower and start cooking off the black shit. No one knew if it was alive, but Grady thought it was. Alive or not, it seemed to be getting torched. That’s one of the perks of the job he thought. Cooking this evil fucking shit off the planet.
Comms erupted with “what the fuck was that’s” and “I fucking told you so’s.”
“God dammit, things never go as planned.” Grady said aloud to himself.
Harrison on the intercom. “Grady we got…Grady come look at this.”
“Is it alive? Shoot it. If not, stay off coms.” Grady never understood why soldiers just couldn’t follow orders.
“It’s alive. I…I can’t shoot it. C’mere.” His voice trembled.
“It’s not like there is fucking deer season out here Harrison. Just aim your rifle and pull the trigger. Whatever it is, if it’s out here and it’s alive, you don’t want it around.”
“Boss. Come.” Harrison was serious.
Grady hustled over to his position. Whatever it was, he was going to shoot it and they were going to leave. What others wouldn’t do, he would be happy to accomplish. When he arrived shortly at Harrison’s position he understood the dilemma.
"Look Grady, I’m a fucking soldier and all, but…no. You can’t ask me to do this. That’s a fucking person. A civilian. Or worse maybe, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with them.” Harrison had his gun pointed at three people. A man, older, maybe late 50 and what was presumably his children, two younger women, maybe early 20s. They were aimless shuffling through the area, largely emaciated and seemed to be foraging. They didn’t seem to notice the soldiers and failed to respond when spoken to. “I’m not fucking doing this Grady. You understand. Take my pay. I can’t fucking do this. I don’t know what is wrong them with but they don’t even respond. Hey! Lady! Ladies!”
Unflinching, Grady raised his gun. “Waste ‘em.”
Harrison turned and leveled his gun at Grady’s head. “Stop. You aren’t fucking doing this man. That’s a child. Maybe not in age but certainly in brain capacity. I don’t know what this is, but we aren’t killing a child man. Her brain is all fucked up or something”
"Harrison, I know you are upset but what you see before you is not a child, those aren’t even people. I swear to shit, any second this is going to go extremely badly. This shit ruins people. Go look at Brunsen over there. Put your gun down and pull it off my head right now or things are going to get weird out here.”
Schuyler came in over the headsets. “Harrison, I am staring at you through my ACOG. If you do it, you live two seconds you understand. If you pull that trigger I will reciprocate.”
Grady tried to talk him down. “How about we all cool our jets a bit huh? How about we put some guns away.”
“You’ve seen this shit before, haven’t you?” Harrison said.
A shot fired out from the distance and hit Harrison in his left temple. The entire team spun out in a fan.
"HEY! WHOA!” Grady knew the sound of the rifle. He knew what had happened. “Everyone chill your fucking nuts, you hear me? Schuyler, tell em what happened.”
“This was all explained to you before you all came in. You cannot disobey orders here. There are no tribunals, there is no brig, there is live and dead. I killed Harrison, and I would do it again. Boss’ orders are what they are. This is your chance, right here, right now, to get out of what you are in. If anyone wants out, you just raise your hand and I got a .308 for you. We are not playing kiddy games out here folks.” Schuyler was dead serious.
Grady looked over towards the three aimless foraging creatures.
"Just.” Bang.
“Follow.” Bang.
“Orders.” Bang.
Three bodies lay lifeless on the ground.
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“Holy shit, what was that?” I said.
“It was not important,” it said
“FUCK YES. FUUUUUUUUCK YESSSSSSSSSSS,” my brain screamed.
“I think it might be important, what was that?” I said.
“It was nothing,” it said.
“What just happened to my brain then?” I asked.
“The dopamine kick,” it said.
“More more more more more more more,” my brain said.
“This is not what we talked about,” it said.
"Hey, I think I got this now,” I said.
“See you soon,” it said.