was awfully nervous of what was to come. I finally dozed off sometime in the middle of the night. By the time I got up I hardly felt like I slept at all.
“Wake up, shooting time.” Filn called from the door at dawn.
We trudged out into the muddy morning. It was obvious that I wasn’t the only one who had a hard time sleeping. We all looked tired.
Once in the fence Filn handed us guns that resembled the ones Milton and I found. They had been used many times and had dents and scratches all over. We got in a line and began to shoot at small round targets twenty yards away. Giant mounds of dirt were right behind the targets in case we missed. And we missed. I thought I would be the only one to miss but we all managed it well. The mound exploded over and over with small lumps of dirt constantly being shot into the air. The resulting cloud of dust made it impossible to see and we missed even worse. No one wanted to stop, each of us were certain that the next try would get the target. Finally Filn stepped in and stopped us. We waited for a minute until the cloud dissipated and we continued.
Billus was the first to hit his target. I was surprised at how long it took him. He was the only one of us to do this before. I assumed he was originally put into the Finder group.
I was the last to hit mine. Some five minutes later I finally did and we were able to move on to harder targets. They continually got smaller until we had each hit five. It took me the longest but they all waited patiently for me to finish.
“That’s enough.” Filn said when I finished. He sounded put out at our inaccuracy. “The next group has to come in now. Billus take them back to the room and tell them what’s in store for the next few days.”
“What is in store?” Billus asked.
“We are going straight to the final training.”
“Yes sir.”
There was a note waiting for us when we got back to the room.
“We have our pairings.” Billus announced half-heartedly. “Hardin, you’re with me as Finders. And you two will learn how to fly the Nawings and shoot more. That means that me and Hardin will go into the woods and look for something hidden.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“No idea; could be anything. It was a gold watch last time.”
“Is that it? Are we done after that?” Zurrel asked hopefully.
“Only dark room training after that.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to tell us about it?”
“Yes.”
We went to the cafeteria and had more soup. That’s all they seemed to make. Billus went to bed early and instructed me to as well since we had to get up early to get to the forest. I wasn’t tired yet and so followed Theen and Zurrel outside for a walk. The usual stillness of the dome was present, but knowing I was surrounded by people made it a little less scary, which was interesting because I was surrounded by the ones I usually would fear in there.
“You know, I can’t tell if his is exciting or not.” Zurrel whispered in the quiet night.
“I can’t believe this has all been kept secret.” Theen whispered back.
She sighed contently. “Every country has its secrets.”
“But not like this. What’s the final goal here?”
“You heard it, to take over this land. And why not, nobody is using it.”
I jumped into the conversation. “The Humurom’s are.”
“They’re all but dead. Besides I hear they can get out now anyway.” She said.
“Where did you hear that?”
“It’s a rumor.”
“How did they even get out?” Theen asked, staring at the dark starless sky of the dome.
“I don’t know.” Zurrel said. “Maybe the whole thing was a lie by the Azurelanders. There is too much politics for the wall to ever come down so I don’t see what’s so bad about letting everyone in and dividing up the place.”
“Watch what you say around here.” Theen warned. “They seem to want the whole thing.”
A scream rose up from the forest. We stopped and listened. We strained our ears to hear more.
“That must be the Finders.” Zurrel whispered.
“Just when you think that you can relax, you can’t.” Theen said nervously.
There wouldn’t be any more screams or noises at all. A little unnerved, we made it back to the room and tried to get to sleep. And once again I couldn’t.
XIV
Billus and I left early, too early. We dragged ourselves out of the castle and to Filn, who was waiting near the gated shooting area. He nodded slowly and turned to the forest.
“Better get in there.” He said. “And Stay close. There are others in there that haven’t found what they are looking for and don’t care if they take yours. They can get aggressive.”
Billus took the lead and I reluctantly followed. The trees blocked the little light available at the castle and plunged us into a darkness that seemed just a tad darker than anything I had ever seen. In this darkness was the sense of amazement at everything that had transpired. I tried to look back at the last few days and piece together how I ended up there. It was baffling that I could end up in the very place I was trying to form a plan against. I was inside the enemy camp and couldn’t find a way to bring it down. I couldn’t do it by myself, or even with one hundred others. It would take much more. In fact it would take an entire country, and that’s why I made a promise to myself in those first few minutes of darkness and brush. I promised that I would only get the Humuroms out and leave it at that. Not that I ever really wanted to go to war with Dizuria. It was too risky and would cause too many deaths. Now the only thing to do was to get Humurom out and leave it. And that was final. I had talked about it for a while but this was the first time that I actually believed that it was the only way. As long as there were no guards near the wall we would be fine. But why were there no guards near the wall? That still puzzled me.
The first few hours went by incredible slow. The sun rose and lit up the dome enough to see where we were going. That only made me more scared; now others could see us.
“Do we have any food?” I asked after a while of watching the ground to make sure I didn’t trip on a tree root.
“Filn gave me a bag with some food in it, and that’s all we get.”
“What if we leave the trees and quit?”
“Usually we would be thrown out, but since they need so many people I would guess they might keep us anyway and send us back in.”
Getting thrown out sounded like a good plan for when I met up with Theen. I was afraid we were going to be stuck in that place. I didn’t know what they did with people once training was over. I asked Billus. He didn’t know what they did with them now, before they would just send them on to whatever job they wanted them to do.
Billus checked every tree for holes and every clear patch of ground for something buried. As the day approached afternoon we still had no leads on what we were looking for. He sat down beside a tree in defeat. I sat with my back to another tree close by.
“This whole thing baffles me.” I said. I wanted to inch closer to what I really wanted to know but didn’t want to come out and say it.
“What part?”
“I just never thought that I would be in here going through training to do . . . I don’t even know what.”
He nodded, staring absentmindedly at a bush nearby. “That’s what I thought my first time in here. You are taking it pretty well though, for your first time.”
He gave me yet another strange look at “for the first time”. I looked past that.
“What’s it like out there, when you are doing your job?”
“Quiet. Occasionally something happens that you have to be prepared for, but those are few and far between.”
“Did you ever see the Humurom bunker?” My voice grew stern unintentionally.
“A few times.”
“Was it big?” My voice lowered, my eyes searched the side of his face
suspiciously.
“Yes.”
“Did you know there were people in it?” I asked accusingly.
“Yes.” His whisper was barely audible.
I felt that I was getting too serious for someone who wasn’t supposed to even know about it until two days before.
“Wow!” I said stupidly. “That must have been crazy.”
He looked startled at my sudden change but didn’t say anything or even look my way. Instead he looked up at the sky.
“It might rain.”
“It just might.” I said calmly.
The bag Filn gave us was filled with fresh fruit, a few pieces of bread, and dried meat. We saved the bread and meat and started on the oranges. And then it was time to continue in our search for the object.
I wasn’t much help. I spent the evening in my head and only came out to look around to show that I was at least trying. My head buzzed with the usual garble that ended in fantasies where I either killed Leric or was killed by a falling tree branch. I wondered what Leric thought of our leaving early. Did Mama and the others miss me? They probably didn’t have any idea as to what was going on. I worried for her. I had no way of contacting her. But she was tough; she made it through my supposed death once so I suppose she could go through this.
Night came before we found even the slightest hint of a hidden object. Billus thought it best to set up some sort of camp. We gathered leaves and brush to put down on a couple of soft spots we found. Just as it was getting too dark to see we finished. It didn’t look like much, but it was more comfortable than just the hard ground. I tried to find a comfortable position when
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