by Sam Clark
Practice went well. Czarina had been slightly nervous that she might have lost her touch after her week off, but she shouldn’t have worried. She was still the best. A week couldn’t change that. She only had one bad shot the entire session, her second to last, when she got distracted by the arrival of Marisa and her cohort at the range for their shooting session. Czarina took her eye off the target and missed it completely. She did, however, manage to regain her composure and put her last shot dead center.
***
Czarina felt her eyelids closing. She tried to resist, but the dim lights and the white noise of Corporal Vance’s monotone voice, reading from his too-detailed lecture notes, proved too much. She was vaguely aware of her head sliding forward from its resting place atop her hand. Then it jerked back up of its own accord, and her eyes snapped open.
“Did I wake you, St. John?” Corporal Vance asked.
No, sir. You’re the one who put me to sleep. Czarina blinked her eyes a few times. She considered pointing out that Steve was snoring, and then following up with a rousing speech about the perils of nepotism on esprit de corps. No, not today. Besides, Vance is one of the few instructors who isn’t openly hostile to me.
“Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t.”
As soon as Vance returned to his lecture, Czarina felt her eyelids sliding shut again. She bit down on the inside of her cheek hard enough to wake herself up, and then kept the soft flesh pinched between her molars to make sure the desire to sleep didn’t return.
I couldn’t sleep at all for a week, and now I can’t keep my eyes open.
Survival training tended to be hit or miss. Some of the lessons were clearly useful and a great deal more active, like CPR, mechanical training, and basic explosives training. Others, like Corporal Vance’s treatises on useful plant life to be found in the woods of South Dakota, were a definite miss. Aside from being inherently boring, she wondered how useful the information was. Seeing a picture of a plant was one thing; actually recognizing it in the wild was another. And if you’re wrong, you might just shit yourself to death. Wonderful.
It wasn’t like Vance had ever actually seen any of these plants—he was only ten years older than she was. Bunker-born and raised, like she was. They might as well let me read the notes to the class. Who even knows if any of these plants still exist, or if they’ve been altered by radiation, or if new species have developed? Not anybody in this place, that’s for damn sure.
She felt her head growing heavy again, so she bit down harder on the inside of her cheek and then squeezed her eyes tightly shut before forcing them back open. Come on, Czarina, pay attention. It might be useful for when you get out of here. Or if.
An impossible goal.
***
Czarina jumped up and down, the thin rubber mat squishing ever so slightly under her bare feet with each landing. She needed to wake up before hand-to-hand training started. While she might have been the best at archery, she was average at best in hand-to-hand. Monday meant grappling, a mix of judo, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu. She was hard to beat, but her offensive skills were lacking. What success she had came from her instincts. She always knew what her opponents were going to do. She might not always be able to stop it, but she always knew what was coming.
Fortunately, the movement coupled with the smell of the room—an odd combination of body odor and disinfectant—was having the desired effect. She could feel her energy levels start to pick up.
As always, she stood by herself, observing her peers, who clustered together in groups of three or four. The closest group to her consisted of Steve, Tom and Tim, and Winston. Normally, she didn’t like to be so close to Steve, but she’d gotten there first, and she wouldn’t move for anyone.
At five-nine, Steve was about an inch taller than Czarina. He had to weigh at least a buck eighty-five, which gave him sixty-five pounds on her, just about all of which was muscle. Aside from that, he was an ugly fucker. Everything about his face made her want to punch him. His beady, soulless gray eyes. The stupid cleft in his chin. And especially his broad, flat nose. It just screamed ‘Hit me!’ While everyone in the bunker had pale skin, Steve’s seemed sickly and gross to her. Even his red hair was offensive to her aesthetic sensibilities. Funny how it looks so good on his sister and so bad on him.
Steve and his two cronies were entertaining themselves at Winston’s expense. She could never remember which one was Tom and which was Tim, so she just called them both Tim-Tom. They were basically the same person anyway; same height, weight, and short dusty brown hair. They were cousins or something—after nearly forty-five years in a self-contained community, almost everyone was related somehow. And they thought whatever Steve wanted them to think.
Currently, the Tim-Toms were taking turns repeating Steve’s insults using slightly different words and laughing uncontrollably. The insults were all of a similar theme: God had run out of brains when it came time to make Winston, so he just shoved some extra muscle in there instead. None of it struck Czarina as particularly clever, but it was clearly affecting Winston. His nostrils were flaring, and his hands were balled tightly.
Before it could go any further, Fegan walked into the room. It took him about three seconds to start bellowing, which was about two seconds longer than normal. “First up,” he said, turning around the room to look at each of the cadets. “Czarina and… Winston.”
Of fucking course.
Czarina moved to the center of the mat, and Winston took up a position across from her. Winston’s nickname was China Shop, as in ‘bull in a.’ While she had never been in a china shop, or seen an actual bull, it seemed apt. Winston was bigger and stronger than any of the other cadets, and he knew how to make the best use of his advantages. In fact, since Major Peters’s accident and subsequent suicide, Winston was probably the second strongest militiaman, behind only Fegan in terms of raw power. And to top it all off, he was pissed.
Czarina knew how this was going to go, and her best bet was to lose with dignity. The key was to avoid the initial charge. Then, maybe she’d get lucky and be able to work her way behind him and take his back, setting up an opportunity to lock him in a rear naked chokehold. Czarina readied herself, setting her feet shoulder-width apart, right foot slightly in front of the left, knees bent, hands up by her face.
“Begin!” Fegan said.
It was over before she knew what had happened, and there was nothing dignified about it. Winston surprised her with finesse—he shot in and grabbed her forward ankle with his left hand while pushing her back with his right. It was completely unexpected, and she went sprawling to the ground. Winston held on to her ankle as she fell, quickly wrapping his left arm around it. A dull throbbing emanated from her Achilles tendon as he ground his wrist into it, and a sharp pain shot through the top of her foot as Winston arched his back. A textbook ankle-lock.
The joints in her foot screamed at the strain of having her toes bent down to the very edge of their range of motion. At any moment, she expected to hear them pop. She had two options: She could try to leverage her body against the ground enough to push her foot through the hold, momentarily relieving the pressure, or she could submit. Just as she was about to submit, a third option forced its way into her head: Just let him break it. The thought terrified her, and she began rapidly tapping the mat with her left hand, and yelped a high-pitched, “Tap!” for good measure.
Winston let go.
So much for my instincts. So much for tough to beat.
Someone let out a loud, appreciative whoop, while a voice she recognized as Steve’s said, none too quietly, “Surprise, surprise. She taps the second a man puts her on her back. Gee, I wonder why.” The comment was accompanied by a burst of laughter from those standing near him. Laughter, the soundtrack of my life.
Winston was smiling ear to ear as he extended a hand to help her up.
She took it and allowed Winston to pull her to her feet. She
patted him on the shoulder. “Pretty delicate, for a bull in a china shop.”
Before Winston could say anything, he was knocked out of the way by the hulking Sergeant Fegan. Fegan looked like a drill sergeant, from the flat-top haircut to the intense, dark eyes and strong, square jaw covered by a perpetual five o’clock shadow, through his barrel chest and the tree-trunk arms attached to it, all the way down to the way he set his feet, wide apart as if prepared to receive a blow. He also had the deep bass voice you’d expect from a drill sergeant. And the complete disrespect for personal space.
“Holy shit, St. John! That was piss-poor, even for you. Maybe if you didn’t always have that egghead of yours in a book”—to emphasis his point, he tapped her on the side of the head with a stubby index finger—“and got your lazy ass to class, maybe you wouldn’t be an embarrassment to yourself, that senile old fuck you call a grandfather, your poor, departed mother, and most of all this militia!”
She should have been used to it by now. Bringing up her mother was one of Fegan’s go-to moves. Yet, she felt her face heat as anger and sadness grew inside her. She felt an overwhelming desire to turn inward, to disassociate from Fegan’s words by letting her mind wander to another time, another place, another world—a world where she was in control, and men like Fegan cowered before her, a world where she had options regarding how her life would unfold.
No, Czarina! Control yourself. Fegan is nothing. His words are nothing.
It was hard, but she managed to listen to every single hate-filled word. She visualized them flying from Fegan’s mouth like arrows and bouncing harmlessly off her. The whole time, her face remained a mask: upper and lower teeth not quite touching, forehead relaxed, eyes staring straight through Fegan to the wall beyond.
When Fegan finally ran out of curse words, he said, “Get out of my sight, St. John. I can’t stand to look at you anymore. Dismissed!”
As Czarina jogged from the training room back to her family’s quarters, she alternated between insulting herself for failing to anticipate Winston’s move—with insults far more stinging than any of Fegan’s—and praising herself for her ability to withstand Fegan’s onslaught without showing a hint of emotion. She’d seen that Winston was angry going into the fight, but had failed to anticipate what it meant. She had made the same assumptions about Winston as everybody else, and had figured he would just try to smash her harder. I should have known he would try to do something clever to prove Steve wrong. Humph. If I was half as smart as I thought I was, I would’ve seen it coming. Instead, my assumptions just made me look like an ass. At least I didn’t give Fegan any added satisfaction by cracking.
The one thing she refused to think about was where the impulse to let Winston snap the bones in her foot like twigs had come from.
SEVEN
Location: Underground
Date: 8-15-61
One advantage of being kicked out of class was that it allowed Czarina to get an early start on reading for her grandfather. With any luck, she could take a big enough chunk out of the Republic to make James happy and still have some time left to pursue her own studies.
Her jog of shame ended as she entered the safety of her family’s quarters. The book stacks, the pictures and maps on the walls, and the worlds they all evoked produced a feeling of gentle warmth in her. It was the siren song of escape, and almost as soon as the flimsy plastic partition door shut behind her, the troubles that awaited her beyond it began to fade away. She felt her mood improve further as the first musky whiff of old paper hit her nose. So familiar. So comforting.
It also helped that the place was empty. Alone time was important to her and exceptionally hard to come by in a bunker, even a massive complex like the one she lived in. Maintaining control over her emotions and expressions while constantly anticipating how others would react to them required a tremendous amount of will. It all left her drained, especially when she couldn’t sleep. When she was alone, she didn’t have to keep up appearances. She could relax and recharge for the next battle.
She didn’t know where James was. She’d noticed, during her latest convalescence, that he had started spending most of his day outside their quarters. She found it curious because he didn’t have any real responsibilities in the bunker, and he didn’t interact with any of its inhabitants unless he absolutely had to. When she had asked him about it, he had been non-committal, saying “I have been here and there,” then changing the subject. She supposed it wasn’t important where her grandfather went, so long as it meant she got some alone time.
She walked over to the desk and found a well-worn paperback copy of Plato’s Republic sitting in the middle of it, just as she’d known she would. The desk, compared to the rest of the room, was relatively clutter-free. The only thing on it besides Plato was an old laptop computer on which her family watched old movies and TV shows, and three coffee mugs, neatly aligned along the far edge. As James always said, ‘a clear desk for a clear mind.’
She picked up the book and began flipping through the pages, many of which had passages highlighted in vibrant neon green or orange ink, with the rare pink mixed in for good measure. This color palette was to be found in just about every book James had read. Czarina was sure there was some method as to which highlighter color he used and when, but she had never discerned it. She could have asked him what it was, but she knew that whether there was a pattern or not, he would say, “Can’t you figure it out, girl?” She had no intention of giving him the satisfaction. She got to the last page of text and noted the number in the upper left-hand corner—322. A lot shorter than Hobbes, a lot longer than Locke.
With a sigh, she slid into the hard, wooden desk chair, flipped back to the beginning of the book, and began to read.
Socrates – GLAUCON
I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.
I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.
Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.
“Holy shit, that’s boring,” she said aloud as she flipped the book over and set it down on the desk. She vigorously rubbed her eyes, the lids of which had grown heavier with each passing word.
When she reopened them, they were drawn up to the print hanging over the desk, of Napoleon riding a horse. It wasn’t a conscious decision on her part. Her eyes were drawn to it like metal to a magnet. She could not resist, and she lost herself in that image. She loved everything about the painting. She loved the striking beauty of Napoleon’s uniform, the dark blue jacket and hat, each adorned with gold trim that perfectly matched the color of his riding pants, his scabbard, and the cape that flowed around him. She loved the pristine white of Napoleon’s mount, the way its mane blew in the wind as it reared onto its hind legs. She loved the mountain landscape and how small the mighty Alps appeared in the background compared to the greatness of Napoleon in the fore. However, what she loved most about the painting was Napoleon’s bearing. The way his hand pointed the way forward. The look of stone in his eyes, and the confidence it conveyed. There was no trace of fear anywhere in the emperor’s expression, and it was this expression she tried to reproduce in the mirror each morning.
When the Bastille was stormed in 1789, Napoleon had been just shy of twenty, not much older than she was now—a mere second lieutenant in the artillery, serving on garrison duty. Four years later, he was distinguishing himself at the Siege of Toulon. His exploits there would see him promoted first to major, then to brigadier general when the city was finally recaptured by the French.
Would she have given the Royalists a ‘whiff of grapeshot’ as Napoleon had in defense of Paris and the Republic? Would she have been unfazed being outnumbered five to one? What about after having had her horse shot out from under her? Napoleon’s bold, decisive actions in Paris earned him command of the Italian Army. It also won him his first ‘title of glory’ from a defeated enemy, in 1795, barely twenty-six years old. From there, several successes in Italy and Austria, which he used as leverage to get the Directory to sign off on his plan for an Egyptian campaign.
Of course Egypt hadn’t gone well for him. It had started out well enough but ended in failure. She was almost certain she could have done better. She would have avoided the whole thing and gone for Ireland instead. The indigenous population would have been a great deal more welcoming of the French presence there than in Egypt, and it would have put far more pressure on the British government to make peace with the revolutionary regime. Yet as Egypt was starting to go sideways, Napoleon didn’t sulk in his room, bemoaning his fate, bitching about the lack of reinforcements from France; he seized control of his own destiny, returned to France and took control of the country. A gutsy move for someone experiencing their greatest professional setback to date. That was the lesson to draw from Napoleon: He suffered his share of setbacks, such as Egypt and Russia, but he always kept going forward, confident his superior skills would win out in the end.