Free Grunt Life by Weston Ochse

table.”
    Mr. Pink glanced at me once, then tapped the last man on the shoulder.
    The first man placed a device into the lock and pressed a trigger, and within five seconds the door was open. The team stacked inside, connected and close. Mr. Pink and I allowed them room to maneuver, aware that if there was any firing coming from inside the house, the closer to the action we were, the more liable we were to get hit.
    They cleared the living room, then moved into the dining room, where they fanned out.
    Mr. Pink and I followed them. A stench hit me, causing me to bring my hand to my face. Rot and feces and something else. I’d pulled out my pistol and held it ready. As I walked through the living room with pictures of a family vacation to Yosemite prominently displayed on a wall, I felt like I was trespassing.
    As we turned into the dining room I saw what had happened. How this all-American family had been chosen or how they’d become what they’d become was something I might never learn. But for now I was transfixed, my jaw fallen open, the pistol dipping dangerously as I observed father, mother, son, daughter, held in place with pink and white filaments.
    The father was bald, had a tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil on his right arm, and had creases around his mouth and the corners of his eyes as if he liked to smile.
    The mother wore blonde hair in a bun, although judging by her tan lines she usually wore it down. Ample breasts pressed against a bright orange-and-yellow paisley tank top.
    The girl was a miniature version of her mother, including the way she wore her hair, although hers seemed more an affectation than utilitarian necessity. Probably trying desperately to grow up and be like her mother, even while wearing a sparkly My Little Pony T-shirt.
    I could barely look at the boy. While the others seemed to have been caught unawares, he’d known what was going on. His face was twisted in horror. His vacant milky eyes twisted towards his father, as if to warn him, or beg for help, or merely so he could watch him succumb to the same raw beast that had them all breathing and shitting and pissing themselves on what had once passed as high-end dining furniture.
    Plates of rotting food sat in front of each of them. Worms crawled through something that had once been a casserole. Flies swirled above the family’s last meal.
    “Look but don’t touch, Mason,” Mr. Pink said. He eyed my pistol. “You’re not going to need that.”
    “It makes me feel comfortable,” I whispered, unable to take my eyes off the scene.
    The filaments held the family in place, affixing their wrists, arms, legs and ankles to the chairs, and disappeared into the floor. I bent to see a circular orange growth pulsing with light beneath the table, several thick orange trunks running right into each of their abdomens. The surfaces of the trunks held millions of fine white cilia.
    Then I saw it. As the growth pulsed, the family breathed, in unison, their chests rising and falling in a mockery of life.
    I found myself taking aim at the orange growth. I didn’t know what sort of damage my bullets would do. They might not do anything. But firing at the damn thing would surely make me feel better.
    “Not here. Let’s go downstairs,” Mr. Pink said.
    “What about them?” I asked.
    I’ll give the man credit. He could have said any number of one-liners, but instead he told me the truth. “It’s too late for them. We don’t know what they’re doing or what’s been done to them. Best guess from the experts is their brains are being used to transmit data on a frequency we don’t normally use.”
    “Are you talking telepathy?” I asked.
    “One man’s radio is another man’s telepathy. There’s too much of the brain we don’t understand.”
    “The aliens sure seem to have figured the shit out.”
    Mr. Pink grudgingly nodded. “If we could communicate with them, maybe we could ask them.”
    “How many have you found like this?”
    “With