Free Grunt Traitor by Weston Ochse

once been the Greater Los Angeles area.
    Then I saw her.
    She was on foot and sliding down the embankment we’d just come down. I saw her reach down to examine the gravel, probably noting where we’d disturbed it. Then she looked up... a hunter.
    I glanced at Dupree and put my finger to my lips. When I looked back, she was gone.
    Damn!
    There was a trick an old sergeant had taught me when I was on guard duty one slick Fort Bragg evening. If you look at a single thing, you tend to miss a lot of what’s going on around you. Instead, look at nothing at all, and you’ll have a better chance at seeing everything. Now, fifteen years and an apocalypse away, I did just that. I stared at nothing, my gaze everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
    One minute passed.
    Then another.
    Then I saw movement.
    Miniscule, but it was unnatural, the round shape sliding around a tree near ground level. I snapped to the shape and made out the left side of a head. The ear. The chin. The nose. The singular optic from the NVGs pointing directly at me.
    She had me, just as I had her.
    How much time had passed? I suddenly became aware of our vulnerability. There’d been two others, right? So where were they? I know where I’d be if I were them.
    “Dupree,” I whispered. “Watch our six.”
    No response.
    “Dupree.”
    Still no response.
    I turned six inches and felt a barrel touch the back of my head. I didn’t feel fear. I didn’t feel despair. I felt angry that I’d let myself get into this mess. I let go of my rifle and slowly rolled onto my back. Someone ripped my NVDs free. The world went black for a moment until my eyes adjusted to the night gloom.
    One man stood above me with an M16; another pointed an MAC-10 with a sound suppressor at Dupree.
    The man above me whistled.
    Fifteen seconds later Mohawk stood above me.
    “Did you frisk them?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    She squatted next to me. “Easy there, soldier. No funny stuff.”
    She moved me into a sitting position, then frisked me, removing all of my weapons and throwing my pack into a pile. When she was done, she flexicuffed my wrists and ankles. Then she did the same to Dupree. They went through our packs, separating the weapons into one pile, communications gear into another, and what was left into the final pile. When they came to the biker jacket, they stopped cold.
    The one with the MAC-10 held it up for her to see.
    She nodded, then turned to me. “Which one of you killed Lou?”
    “Me,” I said.
    She appraised me with cold, unreadable eyes.
    She had a nice three-inch scar on the right side of her face. A knife, maybe. Or shrapnel.
    “Why’d you kill him?”
    “So he wouldn’t kill my partner,” I said, telling the truth.
    “What is he?” she asked.
    I glanced at Dupree, who sat facing me, flexicuffed just like me. “He’s a scientist. An ethnobotanist. We’re here to figure out what’s coming out of the area around the Twin Hives.”
    She exchanged looks with the other two.
    “What do you know?”
    I nodded towards Dupree.
    He said, “You have animals exhibiting some alien strain of Cordyceps ignota . We saw humans with fungal growths much like those you’d find with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis , which seem to not only cause the host to serve as a vector, but to also create violent autonomous functions.”
    “The fungees,” she said flatly.
    He nodded. “Yes, the fungees.”
    She turned to me. “Who are you with?”
    “OMBRA.”
    She raised an eyebrow. “For how long?”
    “Since the beginning.”
    Her eyes widened. “I know you.” She inhaled. “Hero of the Mound.”
    Now it was my turn to be surprised. The only way she could have known was if she was there. Mr. Pink needed a hero. We were being defeated at every turn and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’d saved Thompson, who’d frozen, and fought off and killed dozens of Cray, all recorded through our EXO suit cams to be rebroadcast on the plasma TVs in the