Free Grunt Traitor by Weston Ochse Page B

and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern: a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.
Agent Smith, The Matrix
     
     
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
    I RODE BEHIND Sandi, and Dupree behind Phil. We hugged the mountains as we headed west. Twice we saw groups of human scavengers, but they were going from house to house, filling wheelbarrows full of canned and boxed food. Eventually all of that would run out, and then what? If there was anyone left who wasn’t a fungee, what would they eat? Remembering all of the movies they’d had us watch as a primer for our role at the end of the world, I found fault that they’d left out zombie films. At the very least The Walking Dead should have been something we were forced to watch and be tested on. I can just see some of the questions those silly scholars over at pre-invasion OMBRA would have come up with:
    Did Rick shoot Shane because Shane had an affair with his wife, or because he was worried that Shane would ally the others against him and take over leadership of the group? What does this say about Rick’s humanity? What does that say about his leadership?
    Or:
    Merle and Rick seem to be the antithesis of each other, but explain how they are really the same character assigned to different circumstances.
    I almost laughed as I realized that I’d just done OMBRA’s work for them. They’d never had to assign it to us. Those of us who had completed the training and survived were apparently capable of philosophy on the fly.
    We eventually headed up Bonita towards Big Cienega Spring. At about a thousand feet, we turned down a lane and came to a wall of sandbags. A man came out with a headlamp and a shotgun. Another came out from the scrub to our left, carrying an AK-47. Once they saw who we were, we went in on foot, with Sandi and the others pushing their bikes through a break in the sandbags and around two switchbacks. Inside they had a motor pool consisting of nothing but motorcycles and a four-by-four, three sheds, a barn, and a two-story house of about twenty-five hundred square feet.
    We were shown to one of the sheds, which looked like it had been set aside for guests or new recruits. We deposited our things, then went into the main house where a woman who looked eerily like the actress Kathy Bates awaited us in a very suburban-looking, shag-carpeted family room. She wore a housedress and sat in a La-Z-Boy rocking chair. A lamp rested on the table next to her. She drank tea from a blue mug that said ‘I ♥ Cats.’ She greeted us and asked us to sit.
    “Sandi tells me you’re a scientist,” she said to Dupree without preamble.
    “Doctor Norman Dupree, ethnobotanist at the University of Georgia.” He glanced at me. “I’m now assigned to Task Force OMBRA at Fort Irwin.”
    “Who assigned you?”
    “Acting Vice President Calhoun, Ma’am.”
    She arched an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware we had a government any longer.”
    “Most people aren’t.” He shrugged. “I’m not so sure it matters anyway. OMBRA seems to have the most resources, though, so it seems fair that I lend my efforts to theirs.”
    She glanced my way, then back at Dupree. “You’re sure OMBRA has everyone’s best interests at heart?”
    Dupree nodded. “They want to survive, and they’ll do everything in their power to do it. Sure, that includes being underhanded and unscrupulous, but then that’s human nature, isn’t it?”
    She took a sip from her mug and examined us through the steam. I felt awkward standing in front of her. I thought we’d settled all of this outside, but then that had been with Sandi and her reconnaissance crew.
    “Some would say that there’s little chance to retain our humanity after this. What would you say to that?”
    I stepped in. “We’ve been savage before. We’ll