Sixth - Prequel to Oleander: One of Us Series

by Faulks, Kim

  “Sit down!”

  “Aye, Ma’am!” My ass hit the seat before she roared once more.

  “Stand up! Sit down…stand up! Get your sorry asses off my bus!”

  “Aye, Ma’am!” we yelled.

  Noise.

  It made the others flinch.

  It made them cower.

  The recruit in front of me hugged her backpack and burst into tears. Still the Master Sergeant leaned forward to bark in our face as we scrambled off the bus into the cold, foggy morning air.

  We were here, Marine training center in Conner Island…the last place I wanted to be, and yet in this moment, it was everything. My last hope. My last chance to have something…normal. I shivered and raced with the others to stand on painted yellow markers.

  “Bailey,” the guy next to me muttered and shoved out a fist.

  Knuckles smacked knuckles as I answered, “Jaydin.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” snarled the jackass in front. He turned his head and shot a glare over his shoulder. “Not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”

  “Recruit!” The Master Sergeant worked her way along the row of seats and stopped at the asshole. “What is your name?”

  The asshole flinched and then roared. “Jason Gready, Ma’am!”

  “Then recruit Gready, you will speak when I tell you to speak. You will run when I tell you to run. You will eat when I tell you to eat. Do I make myself clear?”

  Red flared in his cheeks as he stared straight ahead and answered. “Aye, Ma’am!”

  She stared at him for a hard second and then cast her gaze along the rest of us. “You have now taken the first steps to becoming a member of the world's finest fighting force! When I give you the instruction you will file through those doors. Do I make myself clear?”

  We roared, “Aye Ma’am.”

  “Move it recruits! Faster, faster, faster!” she screamed.

  I lunged with the others, backpacks smacked backpacks, someone tripped, another caught their fall, and we scurried one by one through the thick double doors. But Gready was waiting. Gready with his stony gaze just for me.

  I knew then, knew I’d made myself an enemy—just like I always did.

  I slid into the seat, grasped a pen, and then scrawled my name. Platoons were assigned and then barracks, and then the last of our civilian life was stripped away.

  Ripped jeans and hoodies were replaced by Marine greens. I lined up with the others while the barber clipped brown locks close to my scalp.

  I reached up, fingers skimmed the short bristle. The old me was gone just like that. Mark Jaydin, the freak was now recruit Jaydin…and for a moment I could almost breathe.

  The next few days were a blur. There was shouting and more shouting, followed by early mornings and late nights as we settled into routine.

  I hustled to keep up, running, eating, more running…and then came the drills.

  Day and night. Night and day.

  I ran until my legs felt like lead. I marched until my mind wandered. And I stared down that damn range and fired bullet after bullet until there was nothing but that small black center at the end of the field.

  But no one crossed the street here to get away from me. No one gave me a second glance. I was just another guy sweating, just another guy giving it my all.

  Still the nightmares descended.

  They moved in like a hunter the moment I closed my eyes. I whimpered and thrashed, fighting men in white coats until I woke with screams trapped in my throat.

  And then the white walls seeped into my reality.

  At first the vision was a flicker, a snatch of the past stabbed into my present. And then the music came, flooding my ears, filling my head. My steps faltered mid-march. I glanced right, and then left. No one else heard it. No one else made a sound.

  Only the thud of boots, muffled under the thunderous boom…boom…boom inside my head.

  “Recruit Jaydin!”

  “Sir, yes Sir!” I roared.

  “Do you have a stick up your ass?”

  My mind scrambled to think. “Sir, no Sir!”

  “Then why the Hell are you marching like you do?”

  “Sir…I don’t know Sir!”

  “Then get moving recruit!”

  I clawed hold of reality as Gready and Mossman sniggered behind me. The slam of boots. The boom of my heart. The sweat-soaked shirt of the guy in front of me. And the savage aches that sank fangs deep.

  We walked for hours, marching to the top of the hill and then all the way down again until we reached the compound.

  But there was no rest. There was only rifle practice.

  “You good, Jaydin?”

  I lifted my gaze from the wide timber bench to Bailey as he gulped the air and gasped. Even under the cover of the range sweat trickled from our brows. “You’re looking bad, brother.”

  “Line up, Recruits!” Master Sergeant screamed.

  I gave a slow shake of my head and grasped my rifle.

  “Today you will be trained as Scout Snipers!”

  I stared at the instructors perfectly trimmed mustache and yelled, “Sir, yes Sir!”

  “Snipers do not work alone. They work as part of a team, and therefore, you will work as part of a team. You’ll be grouped into teams of two. One, the shooter, the other a spotter. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Sir, yes Sir!”

  “Once you are grouped into your teams, you’ll get your sorry asses to the line and you will commence practice!”

  “Sir, yes Sir!”

  The Master Sergeant made his way along the line. Spotter…shooter…spotter…shooter until he came to Bailey and me.

  I glanced toward Staff Sergeant Huckle. He hated me…I could see it in the way he stared at me. See it in his eyes—like a prey sees a predator. Cold, dark gaze that never…ever flinched…not even as I met his gaze.

  “Spotter…” Master Sergeant pointed to Bailey. “Shooter,” and then stabbed his finger at me before moving on.

  There was a twitch in Staff Sergeant Huckle’s face, a tiny smirk before he lifted his hand and pointed at me. “You two, over there.” He stabbed the air at the shooters line.

  Come on, the rifle trembled in my grip.

  I stepped up to the line and sank to my knees. My eyes burned, blurring the markers at the end of the field. I swiped the salt and grit from my face and tried to focus. The target was just a damn blur.

  You can do this…you have to.

  There’s no going back from here…nothing to go back to.

  “Shooters ready?” Master Sergeant Searle roared.

  “Sir, yes Sir!” I closed one eye and centered the sight.

  Wind kicked up dust at the edge of the field, still I shifted my weight and slid my finger around the trigger.

  “Fire…fire…fire…” Bailey called at my side.

  One slow breath and I squeezed. The shot kicked the riffle snug against my shoulder.

  “Miss.”

  My heart hammered as I stared down the sight. The target was unmarked. Dust still kicked up at the end of the field. I caught the shift of stance at my right. Huckle was there sniggering under his breath.

  I was failing…failing. White walls flared inside my head. A woman screaming. Not now…please not now.

  Boom…boom…boom! The deafening roar speared pain through my head. My skin crawled, like a thousand ants biting along the nape of my neck.

  “Fire…fire…” Bailey called, his voice perforating the pain.

  Sweat dripped down my temple…neon red filled my mind. Blood. A woman screaming…and the sound…the sound.

  The target narrowed in, and my heartbeat slowed.

  And then everything else slowed with it.

  “Fiiirrrreee,” Bailey called.

  It was this one shot. This one chance. This one moment as my fingers stilled against the trigger, and I shifted my sight a hairs width to the right.

  And then squeezed.

  The stock smashed my shoulder as I took the r
ecoil.

  “Hit,” the call came. I sucked in a breath as the world rushed back in.

  Hit? It was a damn hit? The torn edges in the center of the target flapped in the breeze.

  There was a shift of stance at my right. Anger flared. Something else now…something more. My senses were changing, morphing into an energy I could feel, and see as Master Sergeant neared. “Nice work, Jaydin. Keep it up.”

  “Sir, yes Sir.” The murmur slipped from my lips as I focused back on the target.

  “Fire…fire…fire…”

  But I was no longer looking at the target—no longer seeing just one tiny thing at the end of the field.

  I was feeling it…

  The terrain in front of me.

  The wind in my face and the dust in my sights…

  I felt the men beside me…and the one at my right.

  The one who stared at me…just like Jamie stared at his cheese sandwich in the school cafeteria all those years ago…sit somewhere else.

  The words consumed me as a tiny whirr came from the Huckle’s hand.

  The target shifted at the end of my scope. The movement so damn small I would’ve missed it before. But not now…now I was seeing things differently. Now I was seeing with a different sight.

  I checked my scope, watching the wind, the men…and Huckle.

  “Fire…fire…fire…”

  Finger squeezed against the trigger. And power flowed over me in a wave and rippled out into the air.

  “Hit.”

  Again and again the target shifted, right, and then left. And the more it moved the sharper my senses, sensing the variation before it even moved.

  “Hit.”

  “Hit.”

  “Hit.”

  Time after time, until I lost the feel of the rifle—until I lost the feel of me.

  I was everything. The ground under my body, the wind in the air.

  White walls closed in, burning a hole through my senses. And the images followed. A woman screaming…and blood…so much blood.

  “Miss.”

  A tremor raced along my spine. Huckle sniggered as I centered the sight again. But I’d lost it…lost that sixth sense.

  “Spotters and shooters rotate!” Master Sergeant roared behind us. I rested the rifle against the mat and shoved backwards. My pulse was pounding like a drum inside my ears.

  I swapped the rifle for the binoculars, giving the call…fire…fire…fire…

  But there was no shift of the target this time. No smirk of Huckle from behind. Just his laser stare at the back of my head.

  And as the days slipped into weeks it became worse.

  Huckle was out to prove a point…making me run harder, pulling me out for even flinching, to hit the ground and do push ups in the rain.

  “Keep your head down,” Bailey leaned in to whisper. “Word is Huckle’s after your ass.”

  I ground my jaw and felt the sting of anger.

  “Hey,” Bailey snarled, low and quiet, eyes blazing as he grasped my arm. “It’s not just Huckle you need to watch out for…you feel me?”

  Movement crowded in…others turned their heads toward me. It was like Jackknife all over again, but instead of crossing the street these bastards watched my every move.

  Gready, Fletch and Mossman were Huckle’s boys now, staying behind whenever the Staff Sergeant was around. Fucking kiss-asses.

  The harder I tried to be invisible, the more savage the punishments became.

  I was singled out time and time again. Missed meals, and twenty mile marches in the dark.

  Huckle wanted to break me. He wanted me to ring that bell.

  But I wasn’t so easily broken.

  Not when I was a kid…and not now.

  When he said run…I ran. When he screamed drop…I ate the dirt, I roared into the wind…but I never, ever, gave up.

  But there was always that one place he had me—the one place he was king…and it all came down to the shooters line.

  He pushed that little button and my future became that much closer to failing out. Over and over the targets shifted—right and then left, sometimes a fraction, and sometimes the width of the entire target.

  But the more he pushed that button…the sharper my senses became.

  “Fire…fire…Fire…” Bailey murmured as I squeezed the trigger. “Hit.”

  The targets were pushed back, first three hundred meters and then three fifty…then four. I lost count of the round. Lost count of everything. The further Huckle moved the target, the better I became.

  “Hot damn, Jaydin,” Master Sergeant growled behind me. “I do believe we have ourselves a sniper.”

  “Push back!” Huckle roared.

  There was no smirking now. Round after round. Huckle’s thumb pushed the device in his hand, and the target moved. But I was already adjusting the scope, staying one step ahead.

  White walls…white walls…a woman screaming…blood…so much blood.

  Sit somewhere else…

  ‘Coulda had car trouble…

  The van was a piece of shit.

  Purple hair…purple hair…purple hair…

  I squeezed the trigger.

  “Hit.”

  “Push back!” Huckle roared.

  But I had her now…had that perfect connection.

  Five hundred and fifty meters.

  “Hit.”

  “That’s enough,” Master Sergeant growled. “Recruits, get cleaned up and well rested. Tomorrow’s Family Day and I want you looking spit-shined and California rested. I will have no damn parent coming after my ass about the bags under your eyes. Am I clear?”

  But no one answered.

  There was no Sir, yes Sir!

  I sucked in the dust and the grit as purple hair slipped through my fingers. There was only silence…cold, hostile silence as every single one of the recruits on the line stared at me.

  “Attention!” Master Sergeant roared. “Do I make myself goddamn clear?”

  I shoved from the ground and scrambled to stand. “Sir, yes Sir!”

  The words echoed across the line. But the tone had lost its bite. I could feel it, like the northern wind that howled through the trees back home.

  I broke the line alone, striding to the racks to dismantle and clean the rifle. The others stared, even Bailey. My hands worked on their own, breaking the weapon into parts before I cleaned and oiled and then re-built the rifle once more.

  “Hey,” Bailey growled and eased down onto the wooden seats across from me. “What the Hell was that bullshit back there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing. They’re fucking looking at you, they’re looking at us. If you’re taking anything, they’re gonna know about it. Don’t be taking me down with your damn mess.”

  It always started with disbelief, and then the anger would come…and the hate. People hate what they couldn’t understand—and I hadn’t met anyone who could understand me.

  The girl with the purple hair hovered in the back of my mind. I didn’t stop…didn’t look up—didn’t want to see the change in the eyes of the only friend I had.

  “Jaydin,” Master Sergeant called. “Over here, son.”

  I sat the rifle against the counter as the other recruits filed in, breaking down and cleaning before stowing the sniper’s rifle away.

  “I got this,” Bailey muttered placing his hand on the stock as I started to rise.

  I left him there and made my way to stand at attention in front of Master Sergeant Searle. Echoes of boots filled the space around me as the rest of my platoon cleaned up and shipped out.

  Master Sergeant glanced at the others before speaking. “Mighty fine shooting out there, son. Your daddy taught you to shoot like that?”

  Heat raced. I scrambled for a lie. “Uncle. My father wasn’t around, Sir.”

  He gave a slow nod and leaned in. “With skills like yours we could get a handle on any point of contact before trouble even began. I hope you’re understanding what I
’m saying to you, son. Got my eye on you. I can see a lot of damn potential.”

  I swallowed hard and gave a nod. I understood all too well. More eyes would follow me now. More eyes to watch my every move as Master Sergeant gave a curt nod and jerked his head toward the empty space.

  The others were already gone, hustling toward the mess. There was an air of excitement, like the faint smell of ozone in the air before a storm.

  Family day was a special occasion, so why did I carry the weight like a rock in the pit of my stomach? I headed for the mess hall alone and tried to shake the nerves.

  Mom was coming. There was no way she’d miss it. She knew how important this was for me. But the call home had gone unanswered, and so far, my message hadn’t been returned.

  I strode along the trail, and then climbed the stairs. The low drone of the others reached my ears as I pushed through the doors and made for the bank of phones.

  I remember calling home that morning. Remember the frantic one way call to Mom announcing I was here as the Master Sergeants screamed in my ear.

  They screamed at all of us. Now I barely heard the screams. Now I just acted. I picked up the phone and dialed home, listening to the ringing on the other end before the machine answered.

  “Hey, it’s just me. I wanted to make sure you’re coming tomorrow, being Family day and all.” The past came back in a rush. Shhhh, Mark. Deep breaths. That’s good…that’s the way…my beautiful boy…my sweet beautiful boy. I closed my eyes and spoke. “I…I hope everything is good there. I just…just wanted to hear your voice. I…I miss you, Mom. Okay, you’re out. I’ll umm. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  The black handle slipped in my palm as I eased the handset back into the cradle. Please be here Mom, that’s all I’m asking is just be here.

  A harsh bark of laughter filtered down the hall. My stomach tightened with the thought of food, still, I made my way along the hall and into the mess.

  Voices softened, conversations dulled as I stepped up to the counter and heaped food onto my plate and then turned.

  The place where we sat was empty. I flinched and scanned the rest of the platoon finding Bailey on the opposite side of the hall.

  Almost three months….three fucking months we’d sat together—three months we had each other’s back.