by Martha Adele
Bram and I sit at a table together as we finish our lunches. He had to have shots when we first arrived in order to fight off any disease he may have gotten from the tree foxes, and he hasn’t taken the bandages off his arm since.
The first few days of us being here, he stayed in the hospital section of the bunker and remained medicated. He was so extremely worried that he was infected with something that the doctors have decided to keep him on a vial schedule. He has begun to wean off the vials, but as of right now, he still takes them at least twice a day.
Neither Bram nor I say anything as we slowly eat what’s left on our trays. The food certainly tasted better in Bergland, but I am not going to complain. Not about the food anyways.
I have many things to complain about. Many things I want to whine about. One of which is my chest. It hurts. It’s sore. Not in a way that makes me think my muscles are being overworked, but more in a way that feels as if sandbags are weighing me down. Another thing I want to complain about is the weariness that I feel. It has hit me this week how exhausted I really am. In order to try to cure that, I eat. Food is supposed to be energy, right? I am hungry most of the time anyways, so I assume that is why I am tired. I’m not eating enough.
Grayson Andrews walks by my table and gives me a small smile and a nod. He was brought down here last week by a special request of “Mrs. Ludley.” When he first came down, I was more shocked than he was. It turns out that he had been spreading the word up in Frieden about what was really happening, and it was no longer safe for him to stay there.
His first words to me were, “It’s nice to see you again, Mavis.”
I told him, “You too.”
Those were the only real things we have said to each other since his arrival. I want to ask him what all he has been doing. I want to ask him if he knows where Caine is. I want to ask him so many different things, but I don’t want to speak to him enough to actually do it.
Janice comes over to our table and takes a seat. She folds her hands in front of her and looks at both of us. “Good afternoon, you two. How are you doing?”
She hasn’t really spoken to me in a week. Not really since Grayson arrived, and now she wants to speak?
Bram shrugs. “I’m good, I guess. How’s Samantha? Is she still, you know?”
Janice nods. “Yes. They are taking her off the medicines right now to see how she will react. If she shows no sign of improvement, they will put her back on.”
“And if she does?” I say. “Show signs of improvement?”
Janice twiddles her thumbs. After a moment of silence between us, she says, “I don’t know. The doctors don’t think she will.”
Bram nods and takes another bite of his food. “Can I go and visit her? Are we allowed yet?”
Janice slightly winces. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t suggest that you do. You may not like what you see.”
“I don’t care,” he tells her. “I got scratched. She got bit. It could have been the other way around.” He swallows what was left of his food. “I’d like to see her.”
The sound of the dozens of others filing into and out of the room becomes more apparent with this pause. I can hear three different conversations going on around us, which all happen to be about their new schedules. Apparently, one of the girls behind me doesn’t like the janitor job she received.
Looking around the room, Janice nods. “Once you finish your food, I can take you to see her. Just this once.”
He nods back as I speak up. “May I come too?”
Janice releases a sigh, as if she now wishes she had not agreed to let Bram go. “Are you sure you want to?”
I clear my plate with one last bite. “Yes.”
Janice rises to her feet. “Just don’t tell anyone I let you guys come. Okay? This is not to leave the three of us.”
We nod, put away our trays, and follow her out of the room, down the halls, up the stairs, and to the outside of a completely sealed-off room with one window. Janice heads over to a man in scrubs and whispers something to him, causing him to exit the hallway.
She waves us over to the window with a worried and sympathetic look on her face. Bram and I quickly see the cause of her expression lying lifeless on a white hospital bed. What used to be a slightly chunky woman who may have been a little older than me is now almost a skeleton. Her body is as thin as it could possibly get and looking worse than a starved Bloot. Her hair has gotten so thin that it is almost completely gone, and her eyes have become bloodshot. It seems that the only thing that is keeping her alive is an IV cord that is connected to her wrist from the ceiling of the room.
As soon as we step into her line of sight, her whole body jerks to life with more power than I expected. I watch as she thrashes to get out of the bed, only to reveal her wrists and waist tied down. She screams and shouts at the three of us nothing that I can understand and causes Bram to have to take a step back. We watch as she becomes uncontrollably angry, followed by the descent of a blue liquid down the IV.
“The doctors just administered her more medication,” Janice tells us. My eyes flicker up to the IV as we watch Samantha slowly return to a comatose state. “I doubt she will get any better.”
“What are they going to do?” Bram asks, obviously shaken. “Are they just going to let her continue to be eaten by whatever those animals gave her? She is obviously in pain and discomfort.” He gestures to her and stammers, “I-I mean, look! In the last four weeks, she must have lost over one hundred pounds.”
Janice sighs and turns back to the two of us. “I don’t know what they’re going to do. They may choose to euthanize her, but I don’t know.”
Bram nods. The three of us fall quiet as Janice walks back to where the man went a few minutes ago, leaving Bram and I alone.
This wouldn’t have happened if Frieden wouldn’t have been so corrupt. This wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have to flee for our lives again.
If there is a plan to bring Frieden down, if there is a way to restore order and bring peace into our lives, I want to be the one to do it. I want to help.
Janice walks back from one of the rooms and ushers us out of the halls. I am the first one of us to speak. “What exactly is the plan to bring down the government?”
“Bring it down?” Janice chuckles. “We aren’t going to bring it down. We are going to be fixing it.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” I ask with extreme skepticism.
She turns and looks over her shoulder to me. “Why?”
Bram’s eyes follow hers, and they both wait for me to answer. The only thing I can really think to say slips out. “I want to help.”
Janice gives a little chuckle. “Oh. How do you want to help? Do you want to help out and make the food again? It really tasted so much better when you actually were doing it.”
I shake my head as we continue. “No. I want to help.” I shoot her a look, trying to get her to understand I actually want to do something. I want to go out and help.
Janice pauses as we reach the commons area. She turns to Bram. “You know your way around from here, right?”
He nods and heads off, leaving Janice and I alone.
“What exactly do you mean?”
The more I think about it, the more I realize how stupid my request is. How am I supposed to ask to go on missions?
She sees that I am having second thoughts about asking and squints at me with amusement. “Do you want to help plan? Or what?”
I take a breath and look at her. “I want to go back to Frieden. I want to help there rather than sit in the bunker and watch everyone else help.”
Janice slowly nods her head, allowing my request to sink in. The silence between us makes me almost regret asking.
Almost.
She clears her throat hesitantly. “I can take you down to the gun range and the training room. Before I send you to do
anything, I need to assess your skills.”
I can’t help but allow a smile to rise on my face. “Thank you,” I tell her.
She nods and takes me down a few flights of stairs, showing me to a large concrete room with a table of weapons, a few people shooting, and Grayson with a clipboard.
“Mrs. Ludley.” With a shocked expression, his eyes fall upon me. “Mavis?”
I give him a little nod as Janice walks me over to the table. “Mr. Andrews, would you please load up 3A for Ms. Wamsley?”
He gives us a small chuckle. “Is she training for something?”
I look around the room to see that most of the eyes have fallen upon me. I am not a regular in here, and my presence has definitely gotten the others’ attention.
“I guess you could say that,” Janice tells Grayson as she hands me a small rectangular pistol. “Would you please have everyone exit the room for a few minutes?”
Grayson nods and presses a button on the wall, causing the lights to flicker on and off slowly. Everyone takes off their headphones and sets their guns down on their table. After looking me up and down, they all leave the room and head through the hallway.
Grayson takes notice of my confused look and smiles at me. “They’ll be in the training room until I give them the signal to come back. This way, you’ll be able to shoot without anyone else in here.”
I follow Grayson over to a marked-off spot for me to stand. He shows me how to hold the gun, how to load it, and tells me what to expect. “This is one of the easiest shooting pistols you will ever deal with. Don’t worry, but keep a tight grip. Got it?”
I nod once more as he backs away. I aim the gun and place the sight accordingly. Everything is all lined up with the metal body-shaped target at the end of the range when I pull the trigger.
I lower the gun and squint to see that I hit the target on the top-right corner.
“Good job, Mavis,” Grayson tells me. Before he can get his next instructions out, I bring the gun back up and shoot again, this time hitting the center of the target, right where I was aiming. Quickly, I empty the clip, hitting every target I aim for but one and feeling very good about myself.
I clear the pistol and turn around to Janice and Grayson to see them whispering something to each other. I pull the headphones off and ask them, “What?” I know they weren’t speaking to me, but I still want to know.
“That was excellent, Mavis.” Janice gives me a confident smile. “Do you want to try a moving target?”
I shrug. “I guess so.”
Yes, I do want to try it. I am pretty good with moving targets according to my last hunt.
Grayson steps behind his desk and tells me to get ready. I place the headphones back on and aim the pistol. Moments pass by with nothing moving. I wait and wait until the metal man in front of me slowly moves toward me. I pull the trigger, and it slides through the floor, disappearing. Immediately after, another one of the targets begins moving, this time to the side. I shoot, forcing it to the ground as well. As time goes on, the targets pop back up and begin moving faster. We continue until I use up three full clips.
“Well, well.” Grayson walks over to Janice and me with a hologram board and shows the two of us my results. First, he shows me a page with the targets that were still, showing us where exactly on the target I hit. “When they are still, you seem to be able to hit them perfectly.”
He swipes the page and shows me the targets that were moving. I hit only about a third of them on the marked areas on the head and chest. Most of my shots hit them in the shoulders, hips, and arms. “It looks like you may need to work on the moving targets though.”
“Still,” Janice says, “this is much better than what I was expecting.” She smiles at me and looks at Grayson. “It seems to me that you have another soldier to train.”
Werner
I sip my tea as I wait for Mac. The Marvelous Cafe’s cold air makes me appreciate the drink’s warmth even more than I already do. I take a deep breath through my nose and enjoy the soft scent of my surroundings. The cookies and small cakes they serve coupled with the large variety of teas makes this my favorite shop in Kern. Half of the shop is a cafe, a place for people to sit and do their business with their drinks and such, while the other half of the floor is a “lend and lease” library. If you buy a pass at the counter where you order, you can go back and read any books you want for as long as you want; you just can’t take them out of the store. The book pass is only one dollar, so it isn’t much. The only reason they charge is so that they don’t lose money on people coming in to read and to read only.
I had bought a year’s pass when I first discovered this place, and I’ve been coming in at least four times a week ever since.
I have just finished a futuristic novel about a utopian state and found that I am not a fan. I don’t know whether it is the utopian state that I don’t like or the futuristic portions where we are surrounded by machines and robots. I just find it too unrealistic to enjoy.
As I walk through the shelves to find where I originally pulled it from, a small teenage girl looks at me and smiles. “How’d you like it?”
I hold the book up and look at the starry-filled cover. “It wasn’t my favorite.”
“Aw well, that’s too bad. What didn’t you like about it?”
I shrug. “I guess I’m more of an action type of guy, and I don’t really like make-believe. I find it too unrealistic.”
A small smile grows on her face. “So you want the exact opposite of that?”
I nod with a chuckle as I slide the book back into its spot. “Yeah.”
She scurries out of sight, behind one of the bookshelves. After one moment of muttering from her, she emerges with an excited grin. “Here.”
She hands me a book with a brown cover. The picture is of a woman dressed in older clothes, walking down the road with a gun in her hand. “I feel like you’d like this.”
I nod. “Thank you.” The girl watches me head back to my table and pressures me into opening it. I skim over the words at the front and find that this is a series of letters written hundreds of years ago. My eyes skim through the first few pages to the first journal entry.
I read and read, feeling as if I have become the woman who is writing. Every gun she shoots, I feel is in my hands. Every word she says, I feel comes out of my mouth. Every sight she sees, breeze she feels, rock she steps on, I feel happening to me. I can tell by the end of the first journal entry that this book will be one of my favorites. I close the cover after finishing the first portion and look around to find an entire new crowd in the cafe.
After waiting over thirty minutes for Mac’s arrival and filling it with the exciting life of this woman, I assume Mac isn’t coming and order myself a plate of sugar cookies to enjoy with my tea and new storybook. Just as my waitress brings the plate out, Mac comes in the front door and makes her way over.
She snickers and takes a seat across from me. “You couldn’t wait on me, I see.”
I shrug and take one last glance over the book. “You were late. Naturally, I assumed you got caught up with something.”
“I did.” She picks up the tea bag I ordered for her and shakes it back and forth before ripping the paper covering off. “I was busy learning about something I feel you would be very interested in.” Mac pours the water from the pot into her cup and dips the tea bag.
I take a bite of one of the cookies, feeling its warmth and ooey gooeyness melt in my mouth while remaining sweet and chewy. After a moment of letting my eyes roll back into my head, I ask her, “What do you mean?”
She takes some milk and adds a splash of it into her cup. “Let’s just say that one of the rumors I heard is true.”
“Which one?” I ask, taking another bite of the cookie.
She stirs her tea and stares for a moment. I wait on her to say something, but she just blows
on her drink.
“Mac?”
She takes a sip and speaks into the mug. “There was speculation that people were being taken.”
“Taken?” I eat the rest of the cookie and swallow too soon to allow myself to enjoy it.
“Taken. Taken somewhere downtown. I think in the training center.”
“Taken for what?”
Mac looks up from her tea and swallows. “Torture.”
“Torture?” I whisper back to her. “People are being tortured? For what?”
“Answers.”
“How do you know?”
She looks around the room and takes another sip. “I can’t tell you. Just trust me, all right?”
I sigh and take a sip of my tea. Our eyes lock as we finish with our drinks and place them on the table. “We were told when we first signed up that no one was being tortured,” I say.
“I know.”
“They told us that they believe torturing is inhumane,” I reiterate. “They lied.”
“I know.”
“And if they would lie about that …” I pause, not wanting to finish the thought. Mac and I stare at each other, realizing we may be in the business of killing innocents. I take another cookie and slide the plate over to her. After I finish my treat, I set cash down on the table to cover my order and leave Mac with the rest of the cookies. “I have to go,” I tell her.
She nods and picks up the pot to refill her cup. “I will see you later.”
I head out of the shop and begin my walk to the capitol building. When I finally arrive, I am scanned in through multiple security areas and head through. Down the halls, up some stairs, scanning into other security areas, I scope out the building.
After about twenty minutes of searching, I finally find my way to the “command station” Burris was speaking of. I enter the locked hallway and walk down, looking through each doorway until I find a large file room. Each file drawer is black steel, lined with a luminescent blue paint, forcing the entire room to look quite odd and dreamish without the lights on. A large touch screen table that matches the file cabinets rests in the middle of the room and lights up when I walk in. The entire room comes to life with a click and a whirring noise as my hand finds its way onto the table tablet.