Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story)

by Laurence Dahners

  Phil drifted off to sleep pondering the question.

  Over the next couple of days he wondered occasionally about what had happened, and then tried to forget it. He’d never see that bitch again anyway!

  For her part Ell was horrified. She knew that when something stimulated her “fight or flight” reaction, she consistently moved into what she now referred to as “the zone.” It had happened with the man who had been going to rape her mother. It had happened with Jake when he tried to slap her. Both times someone had been badly hurt. She desperately wanted to get better control of herself when she was in this “zone.” A milder version occurred sometimes during sports but she’d never hurt anyone when she played sports. She had once broken a volleyball with a hard spike but everyone simply assumed the ball had been worn out or flawed, and she had such great control in the mild zone she got into when playing that she didn’t worry that she might spike a ball into someone’s face. Even though she didn’t worry about hurting anyone playing sports she had learned to “pull” her spikes so that ball speed and bounce height after her spikes didn’t “spook” people. Pitching softball she worked hard to stay completely out of the zone after a couple of pitches that had really hurt the catcher’s hand even through the mitt. She thought that what happened with her had to be the same as that eerie effect of being “in the zone” that other athletes experience fleetingly. Most athletes want it to happen all the time, because everything seems to decelerate to move in slow motion and the athlete’s coordination becomes supernatural. That was exactly how Ell felt when it happened to her. Most athletes have been there on occasion—you’re playing someone that usually beats you when suddenly things slow down so that you have what seems like minutes to line up and execute. In the zone you simply destroy your previously dominating opponent. For Ell, her normal quickness became exceptional speed; speed so phenomenal that other people usually just didn’t believe what they’d just seen. She didn’t want to be thought a freak so she worked hard to slow down when she felt the zone coming on. But when she was truly frightened, she couldn’t slow it down completely, any more than she could still her own beating heart. She knew her struggle with Zabrisk had been recorded on both of their AIs and she was beside herself worrying that the police would review the record carefully enough to recognize that something bizarrely abnormal had happened.

  Ell agonized over it the entire ride home but to her great relief the car’s AI delivered her back to Morehead City and she found her Gram waiting for her without any messages from the Police. None came over the next few days and Ell gradually relaxed.

  ***

  Tucson was hot. Everyone said so. Jamal agreed it was hot, though not unbearably so when compared to his homeland. Amazing to him was the profligate use of air conditioning. Air conditioning that, to him, rendered the indoors downright chilly. He lived in a small apartment in a complex just off of Speedway, only a few blocks from his classes at the University of Arizona. He studied Civil Engineering. Engineering was not his best subject by any means. Rather it was the subject that his masters believed held the most promise for use in their war against America.

  Jamal, when he thought about it, felt both surprise and respect for his masters’ remarkable patience in deploying him against their enemy. If there were other young men, studying as he was for a future strike against the Americans, he had never to his knowledge met one. If there was a definite plan for Jamal’s own strike, he had not been made aware of it. If a time for that strike had been set, that time had been hidden from him.

  Sometimes Jamal almost forgot that he stood ready, a weapon in the arsenal of justice against the Americans. This became especially easy to forget after he had spent a couple of years at the University. Though he did not drink or party with his classmates, he found that many of them had become his friends. He struggled in some classes and joined study groups. They drank coffee and joked together in ways that at first he could not comprehend but later came to enjoy. Because there were many international students at the U, Jamal tended to assume that his friends were also from other countries.

  Jamal was stunned when he found that Inad, whom Jamal had believed to be on a student visa from Jordan, proved to be a second generation American and fiercely proud of his family’s adopted country. Inad produced diatribes against American policy in the student e-paper. Jamal asked him one day, “Inad, how can be so critical of this country, yet say you are so proud of it?”

  “Because, my dim bulb, of just that.” Inad said, sipping at his coffee. They sat in a small, overly cooled café on the edge of campus. “Because even I, a student, am allowed to tell many people through my column, what is wrong with this country so that it might be made better. My father had to flee Jordan after he criticized the government. Even if I had not been accepted as a columnist by the student e-news I could still publish on the internet without being arrested – I just wouldn’t have as many readers.”

  “But Inad, nothing changes. Your columns fall on deaf ears. No one cares. No one believes!”

  “Ah, my simple friend, that is not true. Much does not change. My columns are not read or understood by most. Few care or believe. But! Some change occurs, occasionally someone listens, a few do believe. And, my friend, it is my responsibility to convince them. To write so powerfully that they must take heed. If my argument is so weak that no one is swayed, then that is my fault, not theirs, eh?”

  Jamal said nothing for a moment, then grinned, “Well then, it is your fault. As far as I can tell, no one has been swayed, none whatsoever!”

  Inad looked startled. Then a wry grin crossed his face and he struck his friend on the shoulder. “Jamal, I think you tried to say something funny! Have you been partaking of the evil American alcohol?”

  Chapter Two

  Phil wasn’t looking forward to his “Doolie” year at the Academy, but excitement coursed through him as they were hustled through the induction. Everyone got their hair cut really short and had their uniform fitting. Head molds were taken to fit their military AIs. They got some basic instruction in military and cadet rank, and then were shown to dorm rooms. Phil ogled the female Doolies. Some were pretty cute, some were nothing to write home about, but it was certainly better than all guys. The upperclassmen that shepherded them around were polite and nothing like the hell on wheels that he’d been expecting from his Dad’s stories of the “old days.” They taught the Doolies the rudiments of marching and how their uniforms were supposed to be kept up.

  His roommate disabused him of the notion that things might be getting softer at the Academy. “Sheeit, man. They have toughened up, not softened up, the past ten, twenty years. There was some time a few decades back, probably after your dad was here, when they tried to ‘civilize’ the Academy experience and stop the humiliation and harassment, but not any more.” His roommate’s brother had just graduated and had filled him in. The first couple of days they go easy because it’s too hard to process us when we’re scared shitless like real Doolies.” Phil lay down to sleep thinking his roommate was full of crap.

  The next morning a klaxon blasted them out of bed at 0500 and the upperclassmen that’d been shepherding them around slammed open their doors. They were unsmiling as they told the Doolies to get into their athletic gear and herded them out onto the parade ground. The eastern Colorado sky was just turning a delicate pink as they were lined up in a formation with different files in it than they had been in the day before. The upperclassmen who’d been working with them so far formed up with great military precision and silently marched away to a distant drumbeat. Phil was standing there gawking around and wondering what the hell was happening. He started admiring the babe just ahead of him in the file to his left. Strawberry blond hair, great looking legs – then she looked to the right and he saw her face almost in profile. Holy shit! It’s that bitch, Ell Donsaii!

  Surprise and goose bumps washed over him. He simply could not believe she was here. He had been absolutely convinced that she could not h
ave what it took to get in. Even if she did get in, surely it would have been to one of the other academies.

  Anger and rage boiled through him so he didn’t even notice as a new set of upperclassmen marched up and took their place at the front of their formation. Then there was a loud pop from off over near the drummer and a sputtering trail arced through the sky. The firework detonated high over the parade ground and the new upperclassmen shouldered back through the Doolies’ ranks to begin screaming at their charges. The Doolies’ posture, their bearing, the way their t-shirts were tucked into their shorts, the way their shoes were tied, and the way they were formed up. All of this was grist for the upperclassmen’s dismay at having “been saddled with such worthless ‘scum.’” Phil had snapped to attention as soon as it started and so for a minute or so they ignored him. Delight coursed through him when a short squatty upperclasswoman stopped on Ell’s right front quarter and leaned up into her face, bellowing so loudly that the Cadet’s face turned red and spittle flew from her lips. Ell jerked up into better posture, head back, chin tucked in, and hands rigidly at her side.

  Suddenly the upperclasswoman caught a view of Phil’s smirk out of the corner of her eye. She wheeled and stalked a pace back to lean into his face, a dangerous and loathing look in her eye. “And you, smack. Just what are you smirkin’ about, huh?” She no longer screamed at the top of her lungs but seemed all the more menacing for her low tone. “You think it’s funny that one of your classmates is in a world of shit? You think you’re better than her?”

  She paused. “I’M TALKIN’ TO YOU SMACK!” She exploded.

  “Uh, n-n-no…”

  “NO! No, what?”

  “Uh, No sir, I mean Ma’am.”

  “You’d better not ‘sir’ me squat!”

  “No Ma’am.”

  “Now one thing you, and the rest of the squatwads around you that can hear me, better learn, and learn fast, is that if somethin’ causes one of your classmates pain, it causes you pain. You DO NOT laugh ‘cause one of your classmates is in trouble. You will do everything in your power to help your classmates stay out of trouble and to get out of trouble if they’re in it. GOT ME?”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

  “YES MA’AM.”

  “Why the hell is your chin stickin’ way the hell out here? You tryin’ to keep the rain off your shoes or didn’t anyone ever teach you how to stand at attention?” She criticized Phil’s posture a few minutes longer, then took on the Doolie to his right.

  The screaming went on for what seemed like forever but probably was no more than fifteen minutes, then another firework popped off and the upperclassmen filed back out of their formation to stand at the front. The short female cadet who’d been in Phil’s face earlier took two steps towards them and bellowed, “Listen up scuzzbuckets! I’m cadet captain Andrews and I have the unfortunate task of trying to whip G squadron, that’s your squadron of dipweeds, into some kind of military shape. First thing we’re gonna do is go for a little mornin’ run to whet your appetites and start getting’ you lardbuckets up to minimal physical specs. To do this we’re divvyin’ up into five squads of twenty. Each squad is gonna head out for a short little run with its cadet lieutenant and sergeants and then we’ll all meet back here to march in for breakfast. G Squadron, Ten-Hut!” This last seemed superfluous as they were already straining at attention. “Squad leaders break ‘em out.”

  The upperclassmen milled around and a pimply faced redhead strode up to stand between the front of the column Phil was in and the front of the column to their left. Then he bellowed at a volume Phil would not have believed possible for such a dweeby looking guy, “You tew columns! You ahr ‘C’ squad. Ah’m Caydet Lieutenant Johnson and the two Caydet Sergeants behind me ah Smith and Zymonds. Yoah asses are ours! Let’s see if you miserable excuses can march off the parade grounds. Forward—Harch!” Amazing! A southern accent thicker than Phil’d ever heard, even back in North Carolina?

  Of course, despite their brief instruction in marching over the past few days, they started off all higgledy-piggledy. Phil expected Johnson to scream at them but instead he started bellowing time. “Layft, layft, laaayft-rayht-layft. Yer other layft Donsaii, fer chrys sake! Layft, layft, layft-rayght-layft. Layft turn… Harch!” Of course they blew the turn too but Johnson and the two sergeants bellowed and shoved to get them back into formation, at least into a good enough formation to get off the parade grounds. “Column… Halt!” They came to a staggered stop.

  “Hoolllly sheeit! Thet has to be the worst excuse for a marching foahmation Ah have evah seen. Smith! Zymonds! Do you think we’ll ever be able to whip their sorry asses into shape?”

  “No, Sir!” They bellowed in unison.

  The southern accent disappeared, “Well, right now they’re here to run, not march. Forward… March! On the double… Ho! Left, left, left, left.”

  The squad headed out between some athletic fields at an easy jog. Though he didn’t let it show on his face, Phil was sneering inside at the thought that running with Johnson was going to give him any exercise. Phil was in great shape, lots better shape than that dweeb. Or so Phil thought. Pretty soon, the mile high altitude started to tell and Phil’s breathing started to come a little harder. After a while, it came a lot harder. Before he really had a chance to worry about his own stamina though, he noticed gaps developing in their formation where some of the weaker Dools were having a hard time keeping up. Smith and Zymonds were right there on the gaps, bawling at the slackers. The yelling amazed Phil, He sure didn’t feel like he had enough breath left over to yell at anyone!

  “You!” Zymonds was bellowing in his ear. She looked up at his name on Phil’s t-shirt, “Zabrisk! Help your classmate!” She waved a hand at the Doolie in front of Phil who was falling back. “Like this!” She grabbed the cadet’s hand and pulled it up onto her shoulder, running a few steps in tandem with her, towing her along. “Now you, Zabrisk!”

  Furious, Phil pulled up beside the Cadet and dragged her limp hand up onto his shoulder. Why did he have to pick up this bitch’s slack? He saw up ahead that Donsaii was being pulled along by another of the stronger Doolies. It surprised him because she looked more physically fit than a lot of the other Doolies, but apparently she was weaker than she looked. The squad leaders kept them going ‘til they all felt like they were dying. Then they kept them going ‘til they all wished they’d already died. The strong ones were dying just as much as the weak ‘cause the strong ones were hauling the weaker Dools along ‘til they were on their last legs too. Ell and one of the guys finished the run practically being carried by Doolies on either side of them. When the Cadet Sergeants finally called a halt, a couple of the Doolies fell to their knees but Johnson, Smith and Zymonds were right in their faces yelling at them to, “get up and walk it out.”

  Phil saw Donsaii bend over, grab her knees and puke. That brought a weak grin to his face. Unfortunately, Cadet Captain Andrews chose that moment to hove into view. “What are you grinnin’ about” she looked down at his nametag, “Zabrisk? Maybe you’re hopin’ to run a little farther? I know you’re not laughin’ at one of your classmates!”

  “No Ma’am.”

  “Stand at attention when you speak to me!”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Now, don’t smirk, help your classmates who’re in trouble walk around. You don’t want them to cramp up do you?”

  “No Ma’am.”

  “You smacks! Lissen up! This chain is only as strong as its weakest squat! Got that?”

  A weak chorus, “Yes Ma’am.”

  “What?!”

  Stronger, “Yes Ma’am.”

  “That means, if you’re a weak link, you better try harder. If you’re a strong link, you better help those weak links hold it together! Got it?”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “You weak links, better get in shape! If you can’t run a six minute mile by the end of the summer you’re outta here. Got that too?�
�

  “Yes Ma’am.” They chorused again. Ell, dispiritedly, worrying because her terrible endurance made just the thought of running a mile painful. The possibility that she might get drummed out of the Academy if she couldn’t run a mile under six minutes after enduring this kind of torture all summer horrified her.

  They started marching back toward the parade ground. The Doolie in front of Phil started staggering, so he grabbed her and threw her arm over his shoulder. They were doing OK but then Ell just fell over, right in their path. Phil stepped over her.

  “Column… Halt. What the HELL ‘re you doin’ squat?” it was Zymonds, in Phil’s face again.

  “Ma’am, I’m helping this cadet, Ma’am.”

  “What about the one you just stepped over, smack?”

  “Ma’am, I… I thought someone else would help her, Ma’am.” He couldn’t tell Zymonds that Hell would freeze over before he helped that particular classmate. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that someone had bent over and was trying to bring her around. She seemed to be out cold though. Eventually they marched back up to the parade ground and into the cafeteria, leaving her out there with Cadet Sergeant Smith. Smith dragged Ell in a few minutes into breakfast and sat her in the empty chair across from Phil.

  Ell didn’t seem too much the worse for the wear and as soon as she sat down her eyes widened as she saw Phil sitting there. Astonishment coursed over him as she gave him a crooked smile and a one finger wave—as if he were some kind of long lost friend! Breakfast was eaten at attention and so no words passed between them. In fact, the whole morning passed with no words spoken among the Doolies. They marched, they ran, they attended a class on military ethics, they marched and then they got a little break out under the trees before they marched back in to lunch.