“OK, they’re clear,” said the corporal of the ExxonMobil military division, who’d just finished testing Peter and Michelle. “Neither of them are carriers. Get ’em in the van.”
Peter and Michelle, frowning the whole time, got in a van to take them to an airfield just a few miles outside of Puerto Ayacucho, where they understood they’d be flown back to the city-states of Toronto and Mississauga. A private sat near them, sneering at them.
“Can we watch videos on our phones of what’s going on?” Peter asked.
“Sure,” the private said. “You’re harmless now, traitors to the human race that you are.”
“Fuck you, ya mindless army grunt,” Peter growled.
“You wanna go, fuck-head?” the private said, looking Peter hard in the eyes with his fists ready to swing.
Peter stood up, staring down the private. “C’mon!”
“Peter, stop,” she said. “You don’t have to prove anything to this asshole.”
Peter sat back down.
“That’s it, pussy-boy,” the private said. “Obey your girlfriend.”
“Suck my dick!” Peter shouted.
“Well, c’mon then!” the private said, standing up.
“Will both of you sit down and shut up!” a corporal, the driver, shouted from the front of the van.
Peter and Michelle got out their cellphones and found video of the fighting between the armies and the Bolshivarians. It took little more than a minute for them to find something that widened their eyes. Peter’s video showed a nuke dropped on Santiago. It was noted that there was no evacuation of the population. Michelle’s video showed the same atrocity happening in Lagos. Again, the maker of the video emphasized that there was no evacuation of the city. Furthermore, neither video showed there to be any Bolshivarians floating and glowing anywhere in either area. The only deaths had been human ones…and many of them.
“I think we know who the real traitors to the human race are,” Peter said, scowling at the private.
“You murdering bastards,” Michelle hissed.
“What?” the private said.
“Your militaries aren’t targeting Bolshivarians,” Peter said. “There are no concentrations of Bolshivarians in Santiago. We know from what they told us.”
“There are no large Bolshivarian populations in Lagos, either,” Michelle said.
“Stop calling them ‘Bullshit-varians’,” the private said. “Call them alien cockroaches, like everybody else.”
“Your armies are targeting civilian populations!” she shouted. “You’re killing millions of innocent people, you bastards!”
“They’re a necessary sacrifice,” said a captain sitting in the passenger seat at the front. “We’re drawing the glowing cockroaches out into the open with the nukes. We’ve tested radiation on them; it doesn’t kill them. Bug spray toxins kill them, but not radiation–the weirdest thing. That’s why we call ’em cockroaches.”
“Should we be telling them that, sir?” the driver asked.
“Don’t worry, corporal,” the captain said. “There’s no way they could use this information to stop us.”
“The Bolshivarians naturally will come out in maximum numbers, to use their technology to undo the effects of the fallout,” Peter said. “Their natural empathy for all life will compel them to.”
“Exactly,” the captain said, looking back at Peter and Michelle with a cruel smirk.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped.
“Their compassion will be their undoing,” the captain said. “All of them will come out of their hiding spots in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia in an effort to reverse the effects of the fallout. We’ll let them do that, of course. Then…”
“When the reversing is all more of less completed, you’ll send out bug spray drones in the thousands,” Peter said.
“Yep,” the captain said. “Drones, like Raid. They kill Bolshivarian bugs dead.”
“You bastards,” Peter hissed. “With all they’ve done to help the world, and you…”
“They killed our soldiers!” the captain shouted.
“Exactly!” Peter shouted back with a smile imitating the captain’s.
“I oughta punch you out,” the private said.
“I’d like to see you try it,” Peter said.
Peter and the private got up, balling their fists.
“Stop it, both of you!” Michelle shouted.
“Oh, shut up, bitch,” the private said. “I’ll put my cock in your mouth. That’ll quieten ya.”
Peter punched him in the jaw, making him fly into the wall of the van.
“Knock it off, you two!” the captain yelled. “Jones, cool it!” he told the private. “The traitors are gonna get theirs, don’t you worry about that.”
“What are you talking about?” Michelle asked. “We’re going back to Canada to head our parents’ companies.”
“Yeah, that’s the bullshit we promised your alien cockroach leaders we’d let you do,” the captain said. “They’re either really gullible, or they don’t care about you at all. Why would we let you two traitors walk the streets freely? You’re in jail, for the rest of your sorry-ass lives.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Peter said.
Michelle’s head dropped into her hands.
“Watch your cellphone videos,” the captain said. “That’s all you’ll ever get to do…in your cells.”
The private rubbed his jaw with his left hand, gave Peter the finger with his right, and grinned at him.
END OF BOOK III
Infinite Ocean 