by C. S. Nelson
Anthony woke up still screaming. Both Kevin and Annie jumped up and ran for him. “Anth, it’s okay.” Annie stroked his hair as the lights came up. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”
Kevin began ripping the wires off him. “Annie…” He nudged her gently and motioned towards Anthony’s lap. His pants were soaked. “Can you take him to clean himself up?” he whispered quietly so that none of the other new recruits could hear him. Anthony was still sobbing, looking around disoriented. It broke Annie’s heart.
Annie pulled him out of the chair and wrapped his arm over her shoulder. As soon as the others could see the state that Anthony was in, there was more muffled laughter from some of the boys. “Don’t you dare,” Annie hissed at them. She felt a sudden urge to hit them, which she didn’t feel often. But Anthony needed her at that moment more than the new recruits needed to be punished.
“Justin, Ethan, you’ll run laps tomorrow,” Kevin ordered. The smiles quickly disappeared from their faces. “You don’t mock your fellow rangers.” He shot her a sympathetic smile.
Annie dragged her friend out of the dark room and placed him gently on the floor. She watched as Allison, the last of the new rangers, was lead into the dark room mumbling and slumped over to complete her test. Annie wiped the tears from Anthony’s face. “You’re okay, Anthony.” He locked eyes with her but said nothing. “Just calm down. Breathe.”
He blinked a few times and Annie could see that he was back in reality, out of his panicked state. She had seen him this upset once before, when they had been younger. He had failed the major exam at the end of their penultimate schooling year. He burst into tears in the middle of the examination room upon seeing his results. Annie and Dustan had carried him out and reassured him while he cried believing that he no longer had a chance for administrator and would be a ranger for sure. Annie had laughed at him. You’re too talented for ranger, she had told him, and you’re going to do great things.
“What happened?” Anthony asked, wiping snot dripping from his nose. He sat up and looked down at his lap. “Oh hell, did I piss myself?”
“Don’t worry about it. You were in a simulator. You had a bad reaction.”
He sighed. “The soul sucker wasn’t real?” he asked, but didn’t look Annie in the eyes.
Annie laughed. “Don’t worry, I panicked too. And everyone got killed. You weren’t the only one.” Now was definitely not the time to tell Anthony about her success. Maybe she was born to be a ranger, but her best friend wasn’t. He had a long way to go.
“I’m gonna go change.” He sniffed the last of his tears away and stood up, his legs still shaking. “Thanks, Annie.” He sounded mortified.
She stood up with him and watched her friend as he left the facility. He wasn’t built for this, for going out there and facing the monsters. She had never thought as they grew up together that Anthony would become a ranger. He was too small, one of the smallest boys in their year. He had zero chance of winning a wrestling match against an alien twice his size. Was it possible for the test to misplace people? To make a mistake? She had been so sure that Anthony would have become an administrator. She couldn't imagine how he must have done on the tests to end up here.
Annie re-entered the dark room just in time to watch Allison get mauled by the girl. She woke up screaming, and Kevin ran to her side to calm her down. This method of training was absolutely barbaric.
The lights went up. Allison’s screams turned into soft whimpers while Kevin released her from the restraints. She ran over to Mia and began sobbing into her shoulder. They were going to need to come up with new ways of coping if they wanted to survive the next two years. Kevin stood in front of them all with a face impossible to read, his mouth a flat line. “Honestly, I expected more,” he said. “It shouldn’t take me telling you that everyone is dangerous for you to know this. The world as our ancestors knew it has ended. Trust no one. Not even the girl begging for your help.”
“You took away our memory,” Ethan argued. “If we took away your memory, you wouldn’t know what to do out there either.”
“I took away your short-term memory. It should be ingrained into you that outside the Shield is dangerous.” He pointed to the screen, where the soul sucker sat frozen after the wires had been pulled from Allison’s skin. “You think you’re going to remember training when you’re out there, deciding between saving a friend or saving yourself? Deciding whether to trust someone or to leave them behind? You won’t remember any of it. You’ll have to be able to think quickly, or you’ll be the one who is killed.” Annie watched everyone on the bench from the door. Fear on everyone’s faces. Allison and Mia hadn’t let go of each other. “I expect you all to do better next time. You’re dismissed for today. Except you, Annie.”
Everyone stood up and pushed past her out the door. “Bitch,” Ethan hissed at her as he pushed past. Annie was confused. Was it because she had survived in the simulator that now the other new rangers were angry with her? Nobody was comfortable in their new position. It was jealousy.
Annie watched Kevin as the last of the rangers left, the door closing behind them. The room was silent. “Are you okay?” Annie asked, as though Kevin were the one needing comforting in this situation. They had all disappointed him.
He shook his head. “I’m not supposed to be teaching you. We had someone who loved doing this. She knew how to get the point across. She taught me everything I know. And now she’s dead.” Kevin was looking down at the floor with an empty stare. “I’m rambling…how’s Anthony?”
Annie shrugged. “He was okay when he calmed down. Embarrassed more than anything.” Kevin nodded thoughtfully. “Is that all?” she asked after a few seconds. She wanted to get back to the other rangers before rumors began circulating that she was the favorite or the most successful. It had been blind luck that she had made it through the simulation, just a lucky stab into a major artery.
“No. No one that I’ve known of has completed the simulation on their first attempt. No one in my year, and no one that I’ve sat in on and watched.” He motioned to the mirror above the bench where Annie assumed other rangers had been watching from. “You have a lot of potential.”
“Potential or luck,” Annie said. She didn’t want him to get the wrong idea and think that she was ready to leave the Shield in a couple of weeks. She wanted to stay safe as long as possible. She flexed for him, poking her own muscle. “I’m the weakest person I know.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna throw you out there to the suckers. I’m just letting you know I want the commander to work with you soon. You’re doing great. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you aced.”
“Thank you.” Annie smiled. Maybe she was going to make it through the next two years.
“Try to keep spirit up with your classmates, okay?” Kevin said, stepping towards her and opening the door for both of them. “I remember how shocking it was to hear that I was a ranger. It’s hard to wrap your head around it. I didn’t think I would last a month. But look at me, I’m still kicking.”
“When did you get placed with the rangers?” Annie asked.
“Three years ago, now. We have something that the soul suckers do not when they’re hunting. We have logic and reason. They will do anything they can do to get to you. They’re starving. They’ve already killed us all.”
“How did they survive before we arrived?”
“I assume on other animals…or maybe they were vegetarians.” He grinned and Annie giggled. “All I know is that they feel stronger every time they kill one of us. They crave our souls desperately.”
They walked out the front doors of the building and back towards the sleeping quarters. Kevin was smart, really smart. She could see that he knew how to carry himself. She wondered what he had screwed up on testing day to end up here. “How many have you killed?” Annie asked, after a few long moments of silence.
“Three,” Kevin said. “The first one almost got me. The second and third were quicker. But n
one will ever be easy. They’re stronger than us, Annie. Humans were once at the top of the food chain, before the monsters showed themselves. We were never meant to fight them off. It’s like a mouse trying to take down a cat. It’s not natural.”
“Soon we won’t have to.”
“I don’t like depending on the other humans to save us. I don't believe that someone could promise rescue hundreds of years in the future. I don't believe the things that we've been told.”
“I'm sure they want to help us,” Annie said, even though she had no clue what she was talking about. But no one would willingly leave their own kind somewhere knowing they would die. “Surely they're coming to us as fast as they possibly could.”
Kevin shook his head, holding the door open for Annie. “That, or they wanted to see if we could win.”
Chapter 5: Beyond the Shield
“We go out in groups of six.” Mitch was pacing back and forth across the classroom as he spoke. “Small group, easy to keep track of everyone. But large enough to take out a couple soul suckers if you come across them. The six of you must always stick together.
“Now when a soul sucker is coming at you, they only have one goal. To get you on your back and to kill you. They like to grab and latch on. You have to be faster than them. They are also intelligent. They can see the knife or gun you’re holding and know that it will end their lives. So they will get that out of your hand before they do anything. This is why we will give you these.” He pointed to a band around his arm. “This has saved many lives. Know how to use it.”
Another ranger stepped up next to Mitch and held up a thick cut of meat, one hand holding the top and the other the bottom, stretching it out. Mitch swung the arm with the band on it into the piece of meat, and a knife swung out, piercing through the meat. “Do not let them pin down your arms,” Mitch said, pulling his knife out of the butchered slab and taking off the armband. “And you can drive this into their neck when they climb on top of you. You will not be able to overpower them with just your hands. You need to make them bleed out.”
“The suckers also heal faster than we do,” the other ranger said. “You have to kill them. Do not leave them to die. They will heal and they will come after you.”
They stepped out of the way to play a video on the screen. The video flickered on, and Annie didn’t understand what she was looking at. There was a soul sucker hunched over in the middle of what looked to be a crowd of rangers, their guns all pointed at it. Annie’s stomach turned, watching the creature cover its head as a ranger stepped towards it. The ranger took a full swing with a dagger, slicing into the creature’s arm. The scream that followed gave Annie goose bumps.
They’re torturing it, she thought. The thing’s arm was bleeding, blue blood that spurted out of the wound. It clawed frantically at its own body, trying to stop the bleeding “Watch!” Mitch yelled over the sound of the soul sucker’s cries. After a few seconds, the slice begun to close up. Then it was as if it had never been cut at all. There was no sign of the wound. The creature had stopped screaming, and was now standing and staring at someone just past the camera. The video cut out just as a ranger stepped up to the creature with their gun cocked.
Annie looked around at the other new adults, but no one seemed to be as disgusted with what they had just watched on the screen. She swallowed hard, knowing that she had just seen a living being tortured. What’s wrong with me? she thought, as she tried to shake it off and directed her attention back towards the front.
“Are we all clear on this?” Mitch asked. “Now, if for some reason they disarm you completely, you will need to be able to defend yourself with your hands.” Annie held her breath, hoping they weren’t going to show another video. “Their eyes are weak. Go for their faces. That’s all I have for you.” Mitch pulled up his sleeve to reveal long scars that ran from his shoulder down to his elbow. “They are stronger than you. Remember that. Any questions?”
They had been training for weeks. They hadn’t had a day off since the new recruits first arrived. Five more days until they got their first vacation day. Three more days until the first of the new recruits headed out on their first mission. Annie locked eyes with Anthony, who was still battered and bruised from the hand-to-hand combat training they had gotten a few days before. He wouldn’t be going out on the first trip. He wasn’t ready.
“Okay, so two of you new recruits will be coming out with us this week.” Mitch pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “We’ve got Dougie…” Annie looked at her old friend, who was grinning. They had chopped off his hair, which he had been upset about at first. But Annie was pretty sure that he had begun enjoying his time here immensely. “And Annie…” Everyone turned and looked at her. She was sure that her face wasn’t the same as Dougie’s had been. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “So if you two go talk to Kevin later today, he will set you up with your equipment.” Then Mitch signaled for everyone to disappear.
Anthony clapped Annie on the back apologetically, and then followed the other new recruits who had escaped the mission for another week. Annie and Dougie were alone in the silent classroom. “Are you excited?” Dougie asked.
“No, not really,” she said. “But they prepared us. Kevin will be with us. We’ll be fine.” But Dougie didn’t need convincing.
“I can’t wait. I want to feel the wind on my face,” he said. “And if I’m going to die, I’d rather die now than close to the ship’s arrival.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ship arrives, everyone gathers on, and your name goes down in history as the last human fatality on Earth. For the rest of time, everyone will see your name and think ‘that poor bastard’. I don’t want to be remembered that way. I want to be the one who accepted death with open arms.”
Annie’s only thought about the ship was to survive until it arrived. Death was never an option for her. “Dougie, they picked us to go out first for a reason. We’re ready, we don’t need any more training, and we aren’t going to die.” She knew as well as he did that they were nowhere near ready. It would take them years to get the training that was actually needed to go out and face the soul suckers. The simple fact was that the remaining humans did not have the time or resources to train them properly. “We’re going to be fine.”
Annie maintained that outlook until the moment they were getting suited up to go on their mission. Kevin stood behind her, tightening the shoulder strap that held the sword on her back. “What’s the call if you see a soul sucker?” he asked her for the hundredth time.
“Spotted,” Annie responded immediately.
“And where do you aim for when you see one?”
Annie rolled her eyes. “If I didn’t know that, I really shouldn’t be going out there, should I?”
Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Dougie, where do you aim when you see a soul sucker?”
Dougie stared at both of them wide-eyed. As soon as he had starting suiting up, the confidence he had on the days leading up to the mission had vanished. This had somehow made Annie calmer. “It’s the head, Doug,” Annie sighed. “He’s nervous, cut him some slack.”
Kevin grinned at her. He was surprisingly relaxed preparing to go out on his forty-third mission. He had experienced more than Annie, he had seen many of his fellow rangers die. He had barely made it back a few times himself. Yet Annie was sure if she put her hand on his chest, his heartbeat would be as slow and steady as it always was. “Best of luck to you out there, Annie,” he said, patting her on the head condescendingly. She swatted Kevin’s hand away, which made him laugh. Annie was thankful for the friendship she was slowly building with the second in command. Transitioning at basecamp had been so emotionally draining that she wasn’t sure she would have been able to be strong for both Anthony and herself without him.
“Okay, rangers. Ready for the final briefing?” Commander Matthew asked, stepping in front of the six of them. Dougie, Annie, Kevin, Mitch, and two other rangers that Annie had yet to learn t
he names of. “This is a simple food mission. You’re all carrying empty backpacks. You’re going to head over to town 4, the grocery store to the east. I want you to fill your backpacks with as much as you can to still be able to run. In and out, leave everything that isn’t food. Any questions?”
Annie looked around, but everyone other than Dougie and her seemed to be pretty confident. She was surprised there were grocery stores that still had edible food, considering the Shields had gone up two hundred years before. She knew that they wouldn’t send the rookies on a complicated mission, which made her relax a little. “I think we’re good, Commander,” Mitch said from behind Annie.
“Keep our new recruits safe, rangers,” the Commander said. “That’s an order.”
Everyone gave him a strong salute as he turned on his heel and walked towards his office, which was at the far corner of the sleeping quarters. “Okay, let’s go,” Kevin said.
The group followed him silently out of the sleeping quarters and towards the edge of the Shield. None of the other rangers were joking around like they usually did back at the camp. Annie grasped her gun more tightly as the familiar translucent edge came into view. Dougie and her slowed as the others passed through the Shield. “Are you ready?” Dougie asked, his voice a little shakier than it had been a couple of hours before.
Annie didn’t take her eyes off the others, but she nudged the boy in the shoulder gently. “As ready as I’m going to be. You?”
Dougie didn’t answer. He just stared at the Shield, wide-eyed.
“Don’t you want to feel the wind on your face?” she asked him.
Dougie smiled at her. Annie took a deep breath and stepped up to the edge. Here we go, she thought. Annie pushed herself through the thick, jelly-like substance that made up the Shield. The air got sucked out of her as she passed through, only to find herself gasping as she got to the other side.
