by K A Riley
“Oh, yes. The greatest of all presidents is so inspiring,” I reply in my best dramatic voice. “So presidential.”
In 2028, President Krug declared martial law after the Eastern Order invaded. Four years after that, the war found its way to the Valta. Word spread from place to place after the phones and Internet went down. People drove through towns, using the last of their fuel as they shouted the news. Some came through in jeeps or on ATVs or even on horseback to give us updates.
The only sign of power now comes from the smiling Casters and the constant reports scrolling along on the flashy viz-screens. For some reason, the Execs are more than happy to provide enough electricity to run the news feed, but none to power refrigerators or appliances to help us cook our food.
“Krug’s been in charge for the better part of two decades, while our country wallows in a state of war,” Brohn says in a bitter tone, before muttering, “Don’t tell Karmine and Kella I said that, by the way.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Those two are so patriotic, I think they probably piss red, white, and blue.”
That makes me laugh, but a glimpse of Brohn’s sister standing quietly over by the bonfire brings me back down to earth.
Brohn and I go quiet for a minute before I speak again. “So, who’s going to take care of Wisp?”
“There are some responsible Juvens around,” he says, his shoulders slumping a little. I detect a faint quiver in his voice, but I don’t say anything. “Sophie’s been really good to her. She’s a natural leader. And I know Trent can be a jerk sometimes, but he’s got a good protective instinct. Anyway, she’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, she will,” I assure him. I pull my eyes into the distance. “Truth is, it’s us I’m worried about.”
Brohn nudges his shoulder against mine. It’s the most contact we’ve ever had, and it feels a little better than it probably should. “Of course you are,” he says. “You were always the worrier of our Cohort.”
Okay, that doesn’t feel so good.
“I’m not a worrier. I’m just cautious,” I growl through a pout. “Besides, you said you’re worried, too. It’s not like I’m the only one.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that…” he says, chuckling. “Jeez, you’re a sensitive one, aren’t you?”
That just cheeses me off even more. I hate being called sensitive. Which I suppose only proves his point.
“I guess I am,” I announce, thrusting my shoulders back to yank my body away from his. Okay. Yes, I’m sensitive. Who can blame me? My entire world is going to come crashing down around me in less than twenty-four hours. Sensitive should definitely be considered the new sane.
Brohn leans over and elbows me gently in the ribs, which melts the ice a little. “Lighten up,” he says. “We’re supposed to be having a good time tonight.” He nods toward the fire, where some of the Sixteens and a bunch of the Juvens are quibbling over how long to leave the deer over the hot coals.
“It’s hard to have a good time when you don’t really know what’s about to happen to you,” I say. I look over and study his profile. I don’t remember exactly when it happened but one day, a couple of years ago, Brohn magically transformed from a gangly boy into an athletic man—all shoulders, stubble, and testosterone. He looks like he could lead an army right now, a strange, determined expression setting itself on his face.
A sudden pang of regret hits me square in the chest. I wish I hadn’t avoided him all these years. If I hadn’t been so shy or intimidated or embarrassed, I could have gotten to know him. Hung out, like teenagers used to do in the days before the attacks and the blackout. Instead, I withdrew and told myself there was no point in getting close to anyone since we all knew death could be advancing on us from over the horizon at any time.
“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and do the things I’m supposed to do,” he murmurs, as if he’s reading my thoughts. Once again, he looks over at me. “I’d want you to stay, too. I would have liked to spend more time with you. Maybe if we’d just—”
A shriek in the distance cuts him off. Great. The Juvens’ argument about how to properly roast a deer has heated up to a fever pitch.
“Oh, crap,” Brohn grumbles, jerking himself to his feet and striding through the shallow dunes of dry sand toward the fire. “Guys, that’s not how I showed you!” he yells at two inept Juvens who are struggling to re-position our dinner, which has started sliding off the skewer.
Brohn pulls off his black hoodie and wraps it around his hand as an impromptu oven-mitt. He grabs hold of the steel bar that’s impaling the animal and heaves it up to reset the skewer. With the help of Talia and Cici, he manages to reposition the carcass over the flame. Someone clever has rigged a foot-pedal to the crank on one end of the spit so they can more easily turn the meat for an even roast. Brohn assigns Cici the job of pumping the crank while he slices off a piece of meat and samples it.
Since it looks like he’s lost interest in our conversation, I debate whether to disappear back up to the school or join the others at the fire. On any other evening, I’d probably opt for the former and go out to explore some of the more dangerous parts of the mountains with an old crank flashlight my father gave me.
Instead, I take a deep breath and walk through the sand toward Brohn and the others.
“Maybe they won’t come this year,” Terk is saying when I walk up. He towers over the rest of us, but his voice has gone uncharacteristically high, and even I can tell he’s holding back a flood of fear.
“They’ll be here,” Brohn replies. “Trust me.”
I can’t help but notice how many sets of eyes are trained on Brohn. His calm sense of authority has always garnered him respect, but it’s not just that. It’s also the way he speaks. It’s his confidence, the rich, round baritone of his voice.
“The Militia still has a war to fight,” Kella says in support of him. “They’re building an army. They won’t stop until they’ve achieved their goal.”
Brohn nods. “She’s right. The Execs say we’re winning the war, but they’re worried about something. That’s why they…” He stops talking, his gaze shifting toward the woods.
“Why they what?” I ask, my voice piercing through the silence.
Our eyes meet for a moment. “Okay. Here’s the thing. They re-jigged their whole training protocol,” he says. It sounds like a confession.
“Wait, what?” Card asks. “How do you know that?”
Brohn lets out a sigh and looks around at each of us in turn. “Look, I wasn’t going to tell you guys any of this, but I guess it doesn’t matter. There’s not much we can do about it now anyway.”
“You weren’t going to tell us what?” I ask. So, it turns out I was right about him keeping secrets.
“I ran into some military guys a while back,” he says. “Last year, just a few months after the last batch of Recruits got taken away. Remember that time I told you guys how I nearly caught that huge rabbit in the woods down by the old ski hill?”
“Sure,” Card says. “The one that none of us ever actually saw, you mean?”
A few of the others laugh.
“Well, I actually did catch it. I ran into two soldiers who’d gotten lost out on patrol way over on the south ridge, that part with the big drop-off. They were hungry, so I offered to cook the rabbit for them in exchange for information about the outside. They told me a bit about what happens to the people they take.”
“Marvie!” Karmine exclaims. “So tell us! What happens?” He’s bubbling over with excitement. He’s always looked forward to Recruitment, always spoken about it like it would be the day when he comes into his own. For him, any news gets him one step closer to combat.
“Now, remember,” Brohn says. “These guys could have been lying or just repeating what they think they heard. They didn’t seem a hundred percent right in the head. Which is partly why I didn’t say anything before.”
“We get it,” Karmine says. “So…?”
“Okay. So, according to the soldiers, the Recruits were originally taken to a special facility for training, like a kind of boot camp. They learned to shoot, drive transport rigs, whatever they were needed for. Some of them were selected to go around and collect fuel. Others were trusted with weapons, guard duty, things like that. But now they’ve changed things. With no end to the war in sight, the testing and training have gotten much harder. At least, that’s what the two soldiers told me. They said the Recruits get put through a series of tests. Physical, mental, you name it. It’s become this really specific selection process.”
“Tests? What kinds of tests?” I ask. My mind goes to Render, and all I can think is that if they’d just let me bring him, he could help me work my way to the top. Maybe if I got into Special Ops, I could find my way to Micah, to my father. Maybe I could have a family again.
“Not sure,” Brohn says, a sympathetic look on his face. “They just said they were glad they never had to do it themselves. They told me it breaks some of the Recruits.”
“It won’t break me,” Karmine says, seemingly oblivious to the portentous tone in Brohn’s voice. “I’m so ready for this.” With that, he high-fives Kella, who’s standing close by.
“Don’t be so sure. From the sounds of it, the testing facilities aren’t something any of us can prepare for.”
“Do any of the Recruits ever try to leave?” Rain asks.
Brohn shakes his head. “The one thing the men told me, the one thing I find it easy to believe, is that they hunt down deserters.”
“What happens to them?”
Brohn stares at Rain, grinding his jaw. “I don’t know,” he says. He turns my way and our eyes meet again. Like everyone else, he knows about Micah’s forbidden visit, about how he got away from the Recruitment Center and found his way back to the woods just outside of town. I have no idea if my brother was considered a deserter or not, but I can tell that Brohn doesn’t want to destroy any shred any hope I have of seeing him again.
All I can do is hope Micah found his way back to his training facility, apologized to his commanding officers, and was spared any harsh punishment.
“I don’t like the sounds of any of this,” Sophie says, her voice quivering. She’s a Juven, safe for another year, but she looks terrified. “We should leave this place tonight and not look back. If we go somewhere they can’t find us…”
Brohn shuts her down. “There’s nowhere to go and nowhere they can’t find us. Besides, even if any of us managed to make it over the mountains, I’m sure we’d discover there are far worse things out there than the Recruiters.”
“The Order, you mean,” Karmine says, holding up his hands like he’s grasping and aiming a rifle.
Brohn nods. “Our choices are get killed, or get trained to kill,” he reminds us. “Face it, those are the only two options. All I know is that we have to win this war. We need to make this world a better place. Because right now, it pretty much sucks.”
He looks over at his little sister, who’s talking to a bunch of Neos and younger Juvens on the far side of the big fire.
She’s safe in the Valta, I think. Way safer than we are.
For now, at least.
4
The morning after Final Feast, I wake up anxious, edgy, and sad.
I’m disoriented at first. I usually sleep upstairs. But in the time leading up to Recruitment, I’ve given in to Cardyn’s badgering and have joined the others in the gym. Even Amaranthine, usually squirreled away in some broken-down corner of the school, has joined us these past few nights.
I swing my legs down from my cot and pad over to the Bunker, which is the cave of concrete blocks that used to serve as the girls’ locker room in the high school’s basement. It’s filled with chipped and bent lockers, their metal doors slanted and warped from the old drone raids and rusty from disuse. A decade ago, this room would have been filled with girls jostling around, plodding in and out of gym class, getting ready for some big soccer or basketball game, sneaking a smoke, talking trash about a teacher, or giggling over some boy they all liked.
Now it’s a quiet chamber where all the Sixteens hang our clothes and start our days. Chipped porcelain sinks offer us apologetic trickles of rusty water, which we use in a vain effort to wash the night’s sleep out of our eyes. The old cracked benches still invite us to sit and pull on a dry pair of socks at the end of a sweaty day.
In addition to acting as our makeshift dressing room, the Bunker doubles as a bomb-shelter. It’s the best place in town to be if and when the drones ever strike again.
This morning I seem to be the first one up. It wasn’t exactly a hard feat to accomplish. I just never really fell asleep. Instead, I spent the night listening to the thrum of my fellow Sixteens breathing deeply into the cold night air while I stared up at the broken and stained acoustical tiles of the ceiling high above and wondered if I’d miss quiet moments like this, if I’d ever even have another quiet moment like this.
In the Bunker I shed my oversized t-shirt and shorts and slide into a pair of too-big khaki cargo pants, a clean white shirt, and my age-softened jean jacket. After rinsing my mouth with the concoction of baking soda and essential peppermint oils we keep in a plastic jug by the sink, I start to feel slightly refreshed. I head back into the gym, where the light of morning is just beginning to shine down through the small windows way up on the walls and through the various holes in the ceiling that reappear as fast as we can patch them.
Brohn kicks his tattered wool blanket to the floor and swings his muscular legs around. He smacks his hands to his knees and thrusts himself to his feet before declaring, “Well, no sense prolonging the inevitable.”
I find myself avoiding his eyes this morning. I had a dream about him last night and am slightly embarrassed at the impossible idea that he might somehow find out. I don’t know if our conversation last night at Final Feast actually meant anything to him. It was strange to open up to him like that—both good and bad at once. I can’t help hoping we’ll find ourselves staying together, regardless of where the Recruiters take us. Maybe we’ll train together, and we can finally get to know each other better after years of avoiding each other’s company.
But part of me knows it’s probably a bad idea. If I really want to make it into Special Ops, I’ll have to focus. And not on the king of our Cohort, either. I’ll need to keep my mind on the prize, which will mean keeping to myself for a little while longer.
Of course, all of this depends on where we are when the sun goes down tonight. For all I know, Brohn will be taken to some special training camp exclusively for boys, while I’m led off to culinary school.
Kella yawns, stretches her hands to the sky, and pulls herself off her cot. “Brohn’s right. Sitting here isn’t going to change anything or stop the world from spinning. I say we head out and show the Recruiters and all those hot-shot Execs what the new Seventeens of 2042 are made of!”
While I don’t exactly share Brohn’s composure or Kella’s rah-rah enthusiasm, I nod my meager agreement and do some morning stretches while the others plod into the Bunker to change. Cardyn, the first one back out, joins me in some yoga moves in the center of the room.
“I don’t know about you,” he says, his back curved into a smooth arc as he touches his fingertips to his toes, “but I’m suddenly super excited.”
“Then you’re also suddenly super crazy,” I mutter. My stomach’s in knots right now, and I have zero idea how anyone can be looking forward to a bunch of strangers herding us into trucks.
“Hardly!” Card protests. “Like Brohn said, it’s inevitable now. There’s something comforting and energizing about that. Like once you don’t have a choice anymore, the stars kind of align, you know? Your mission, your future, everything becomes focused and clear.”
“I’m happy for you and your new clarity,” I say with a snide grunt as I shift positions and roll onto my back to stretch out my hamstrings. “But there’s nothing good about not having a choice.”
<
br /> Card answers me with a smirk as the rest of the new Seventeens file one by one out of the Bunker. As soon as everyone’s up and about, we head upstairs to the front door and take our final steps out of Shoshone High School. When we’re clear of the building I spin around to take in a last glance of the beaten down, blasted out husk of a structure we’ve called home for so many years.
I can’t help but feel a pang of affection for the school. It may be ugly and decrepit, but it’s been home. We set up our mock school house on the second floor, where the Sixteens taught the Juvens who in turn taught the Neos. Shoshone’s where we developed our simple educational philosophy: share your talents, teach others what you know, learn from others what you don’t know, and ask as many questions as you can. Those words kind of became the school’s unfortunately-long slogan over time. Simple enough in theory, but it could be challenging in practice.
There was so much to know, so many half-burned books gathered from ruined houses throughout the town to be sorted through and salvaged. So many personalities, abilities, and talents to figure out. But somehow, we made it work.
I look up at the broken building’s windows one last time and give it a mental Thanks.
Today, we graduate from the place where we grew up. More than once, it was the place that saved our lives. I owe it a lot.
As I take my last steps away from the building, I see Render waiting for me on the black handrail leading to the path that will take us to the square in the center of town for our official Recruitment. As I walk out onto the concrete landing, Render flicks his head around and flaps over to perch on my shoulder. The other Seventeens take a step back amid the flurry of black feathers and the cloud of dust and debris Render kicks up into the chilly morning air with his powerful wings.
“You need to teach that bird of yours about personal space,” Rain jokes. The truth is, she likes Render nearly as much as I do, although she sometimes seems a bit scared of him.
“I’ve been trying,” I assure her. “But what can I say? He has a mind of his own.”