Feral Recruit (Calm Act Book 5)

by Ginger Booth

  Clearly Zapple didn’t like what she was trying to say. The afternoon was looking up already.

  “Please answer this survey as truthfully and thoroughly as possible. Um, you cannot incriminate yourselves. Remember, Governor-General Cullen granted amnesty for all acts committed in the Apple Zone before mid-July. If you participated in any crimes since then, well, just don’t mention the date. I, and the other sergeants, will not read your answers. We are to seal them in an envelope and return the papers unread. To…whoever. Pass these out for me please?”

  Dying of curiosity, a dozen leapt to help pass out the questionnaires faster, Ava among them. Slight miscalculation. She didn’t get to read hers until she finished handing out her sheaf. But in a few minutes she sank back to her seat and skimmed the multi-page survey in disbelief.

  Attach additional sheets as needed. Label each page with your citizen ID number.

  How many people have you killed?

  Which weapons did you use? How did you accomplish these killings?

  Why did you kill them? Would you do it again? What would you do differently?

  Which languages do you speak? Please indicate fluency.

  Which states and countries have you visited?

  Which cities, states, and countries have you lived in? For how many months and years?

  Briefly describe how many times and ways you have engaged in rape.

  Briefly describe how many times and ways you have engaged in sex work.

  What is your opinion of Hudson’s military dictatorship with local direct democracy?

  How do you feel about the defunct United States of America?

  The class, usually clumped toward the front of the lecture hall, spread out behind Ava. She could see why. She thoughtfully shifted to the end of her row, away from the prying eyes of Fox.

  “Class,” Zapple announced from the lectern. “When you’ve completed the questionnaire, today’s essay topic is, ‘Who are you?’ A fun one for today.” Zapple smiled hopefully.

  Ava couldn’t imagine how Zapple thought that topic was fun.

  The questionnaire, on the other hand, was fascinating. For instance, she’d never actually counted up her kills. And it was clear, for once, the questioner wanted the simple bald truth. She found it kind of relaxing to just dump it all out objectively, with zero concern for how the reader would feel. Like Zapple said, Ava’s crimes and misdemeanors were all wiped clean by the amnesty. Ava was forgiven whether she confessed or not. But it felt liberating to own up to it all.

  She enjoyed listing her languages, and remembering all the places she’d lived. Most city kids never left the city, but she had wide experience. And the opinion questions were just plain fun.

  Ava was one of the last half dozen to finish. At a table well away from Zapple’s lectern, Ava stapled on her five extra sheets, and tucked the survey into one of the fat envelopes. Zapple was staring at her.

  Ava smiled back. “I’ve moved around a lot.” This was true.

  Zapple’s return smile was pinched. “You still have time to do an essay planner on today’s topic.”

  Ava sighed and returned to her seat. She dutifully scribbled Who am I? on a fresh sheet of paper. Obviously, she was the person who did everything she itemized on the questionnaire. I am a fighter and protector. I express this through martial arts and civic activity… Fortunately there were only 15 minutes left until afternoon circuit training. For once, though, it might have made a good essay.

  Naturally, Ava asked around at dinner about the questionnaire. Oddly, aside from Ava’s classmate Sauce, only Puño and Marquis had seen it. After dinner, Marquis drew her and Sauce aside for a word.

  “About that crazy survey. They only gave it to the smartest around here. I asked around, people with high school diplomas. Nah. Only if they went on to college. And your quiz-kid class. Might want to keep quiet about it, you know? Puño and I were talking. Like, who’d want to know. We’re thinking Gestapo.”

  Technically, the organization was still named Homeland Security, or HomeSec. But the nickname Gestapo was clear enough. Outside the Apple borders, people had long since grown resigned to their intrusive ways. In fact, the domestic spying had relaxed since the early days of the Calm. Talking privately was rarely a capital crime anymore, no matter what you said, and disappearances were way down. But an odd side-effect of the epidemic borders was that the apples inside had never submitted to HomeSec. They had little food, but they kept their freedom and privacy, and didn’t surrender them lightly.

  Oddly, HomeSec was OK with that. Apples could say whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, inside the Zone. If an apple incited a riot, it was their Resco’s problem, not the ‘Gestapo.’

  Ava’s eyes widened. “Like recruiting? What apple would join the Gestapo?”

  Marquis tilted his head. “Maybe recruiting, maybe just a dossier. Who knows. I mean, prosecution is one thing, profiling is another.”

  “Sergeant Zapple’s guess was military intelligence,” Ava said.

  Sauce asked, “Were you two honest?”

  “Hell yeah. Puño too. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke, right?” The trio traded first-bops all around. “Whatever. Maybe we’ll all get recruited together, right? Some nasty brainy outfit. Lose the dimwits and skip garrison duty. That’s got to be dull.”

  “No lie,” Sauce and Ava agreed.

  Ava figured that was the end of it. But the next day Daneel sought her out at the quiz-kid lunch tables. Throughout MFT Captain Stevens’ best efforts to shut them down, Daneel and the other meshnet interns kept the student network running smoothly.

  “Hey Panic. Got a few?” He drew her to an empty table. There were many. The Zapplets had this wing of the dining hall to themselves at lunch.

  “Need something sent, Daneel?” They didn’t often need Ava’s superior bandwidth to the Apple meshnets, but it happened a few times. The student bridge only allowed them to attach a postcard or other URL, and a max 250-character text message. But Ava could even send video attachments if she wanted to charge them to Guzman. She didn’t abuse his account, but occasionally she could offer a useful back door.

  “Look at this. I tried to mesh Chas – the meshnet boss on LI – about that crazy survey.”

  CENSORED. Your mesh contains secure information, and will not be sent.

  “Wild, huh? We never installed auto-censors on this meshnet. So who did?”

  “You’re over my head, Daneel,” Ava admitted.

  He smiled. Daneel was kinda cute, with a cafe-au-lait complexion and a mop of red-brown ringlets. He had a much more compact, well-knit build than Frosty. Ava was finding such things increasingly distracting when a guy smiled at her.

  “I just want to get a message through to Chas,” Daneel said. He pressed his hands together in an adorable prayer pose. “Pretty please?”

  Ava reached into a cargo pocket and produced her phone. “Sure, anything for you. Just, you address it.” She barely understood Daneel’s arcane meshnet routing addresses. He liked to jump his messages to Chas from West Point, across into the New England Internet to Amenac HQ, and from there across Long Island Sound, doing an end-run around the Apple Core meshnets. He’d explained all this to her at length. But without any grounding in network protocols, the addresses still looked like gibberish to Ava.

  Daneel had a collection of messages already typed out, the ones the censor bounced. He forwarded them to Ava’s phone, and then sent them. “Perfect! No censor on your access.” He gave Ava’s cheek a brief kiss in his enthusiasm.

  “Don’t you need to tell Chas how you got around the blockage?” Ava asked.

  Daneel beamed at her. “No need. He can read that for himself. From the routing headers. You want me to explain that again?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Thank you, pretty Panic!”

  “Sure, no problem. You can kiss me anytime.” She hopped off the table while his mouth opened round, like a fish. “Seeya, Daneel.” She walked away.<
br />
  “I didn’t, um, mean anything by it,” he called behind her softly. “Sorry.”

  She just grinned and waved.

  A couple days later, Gever, the new aide from Long Island, summoned a couple dozen recruits from across the company to an after-dinner meeting in Ava’s favorite martial arts gym. She had them strip down to their workout layers as usual. Fitness camp in winter was handy that way – they could wear the entire day’s wardrobe at once.

  “You are ‘resistant to meditation,’” Gever explained. “Tonight, we’ll have an extra workout. Cardio kick-boxing to music. Then we’ll meditate.”

  Ava and Puño laughed in delight. For once, the Army’s prescription was perfectly suited to them. The other company recruits seemed just as enthusiastic. They didn’t often mingle between the company’s five platoons and ten squads. Their fellow bag-kickers and punch-throwers were familiar faces, but strangers.

  Gever wasn’t a professional dance instructor like Dwayne Perard. She just played an exercise video on a big screen TV, and wandered around the gym giving pointers. For a kick-boxing class, it was a fairly short video, only a half hour, including a thorough cool-down sequence with stretches. Which was fine with them. They’d already done four hours of circuit training today, and bed-time loomed.

  “Feeling good?” Gever called out. She patted a hand down to order them to stay down on the mats.

  “Yes, Gever!”

  That had taken some getting used to, not replying ‘Yes, sergeant!’ to her. Their aide was Long Island militia, not an Army sergeant. She preferred to be addressed by her first name.

  “Good. Now we’re going to master two yoga postures. Well, three. This is the meditation part. So pay attention to your muscles.” She got down on the mat and demonstrated how to get into a contortion called ‘downward-facing dog.’ Basically, an inverted V-shape with hips in the air, supported by the balls of the feet and heels of the hands.

  “Focus on your body, and only your body. If your mind starts to drift, try to feel each individual part of you. Your toes. The arches of your feet. The muscles holding your knees straight. If you start to shake, relax down from the posture, rest a minute, then try again. Breathe into your muscles.”

  After she stopped talking, she gave them about five minutes to work the pose. She wandered around, quietly correcting their form. Ava found it relaxing to breathe into her muscles, feeling each muscle group. With her endorphins pumped up from the cardio, it was no trouble at all to focus on what she was doing.

  “OK, relax. Now I’ll demonstrate child pose.” Gever got down on all fours, then sank back until her rump was on her heels, her arms out in front of her. Then with her body resting on her folded legs, she folded her arms and laid her forehead on them. “Relax, and breathe into the muscle stretch. Your turn.”

  Ava enjoyed a quiet five minutes, nothing to do but breathe into her muscles. Her back enjoyed the stretch, but her thighs whined about the strain. She mostly breathed into them.

  “Alright, roll over onto your backs. Stretch, your fingers to one wall and your toes to the other. Stretch as far as you can. Close your eyes. And – relax. Focus on your breathing.”

  Ava wasn’t an instant win on this one. She had to check in on everyone else’s breathing around her before she could focus on her own. Then she quit fighting the distraction and focused on everyone’s breathing. Just as she was starting to feel cold, Gever told them to get up and get dressed.

  “The lesson here,” she called out. “You can meditate, through your bodies. Your body is always there for you. Your body is your friend and your constant companion. You’re physical people. So do some stretches, some push-ups, kick a tree, whatever. Then do a calm posture, and breathe into it. Now, you’ve successfully meditated. Give yourself a round of applause. Tomorrow we’ll do this again, and build a new habit.”

  Approached through her body instead of her head, Ava learned meditation after all. She’d been breathing out into the problem to soothe herself all along. And as Gever advised, once she had the knack, she didn’t need all the exercise beforehand. These days her body just felt good. Ava could take a break from anything that aggravated her, and just enjoy the way her muscles felt. And breathe out into them. Her lungs breathed in by themselves.

  25

  Interesting fact: The subjects on the GED exam, for a high school equivalency diploma, were Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies.

  Suddenly, the final days of fitness camp were upon them. Rumor had it that the Rescos tried to delay Basic two weeks, past mid-January, on the grounds that fitness camp withheld medical attention too long. General Houston, commanding the Hudson Army, was furious. He agreed to throw more doctors at the problem. He agreed to belay the minimum weight requirements until two weeks into boot camp. But he would not tolerate the schedule slipping beyond one week.

  There was some speculation that the commandant, Lt. Col. Newsome, would lose the training camp over General Houston’s ire. Alas, he did not.

  On Monday of the final week, Calderon and Awalo ran the squad through the ‘1-1-1’ fitness level test, sit-ups and push-ups in the morning, and the timed 1-mile run in the afternoon. Ava passed with room to spare, as did everyone at home table except Yoda. He and Fox both failed the running standard, but by less than a minute. Fox was also one push-up shy of the required three in a minute. Her Jersey squad had more shortfalls than Ava’s squad.

  Calderon gave everyone a pep talk after the running. They weren’t required to continue circuit training twice a day if they’d already passed 1-1-1 for Basic. But he encouraged them to continue.

  At supper, Ava started with a toast. “To all of us who passed to get into Basic!” Poor Yoda toasted them as well. “And to Yoda! Who’ll be there right beside us! I say it’s not good enough to get in ourselves. Yoda has to come, too. And Fox.”

  “Hear, hear!” Marquis agreed, pounding a glass on the table. They all thumped their glasses in solidarity. At the noise, Calderon drifted over to observe, but didn’t interrupt. “LES and Soho all passed. Midtown needs help. Jersey needs help.”

  “Hear, hear!” Puño agreed, glass thumping again. “Chelsea is safe. Us three, bring along Midtown?” Three in Midtown hadn’t made standard on the first testing.

  “Hear, hear!” Doc and Fakhir agreed in kind. “For Midtown!”

  “Hear, hear!” Sauce joined in. “Tribeca needs Yoda! You’re mine, little man!”

  Yoda grinned and thumped back. “Hear, hear! I won’t let you down!”

  With great reluctance, Fang double-thumped his glass, too. “Hear, hear! Panic has Fox. I’ll help with Jersey.”

  Marquis pointed a finger at each of them, around the table. “Make it march! Fang and Ava and I need more help on Jersey! So get your chosen buddy past the test fast, and pile onto the other squad!”

  “Hear, hear!”

  Calderon finally stepped up to the table. “If you’re serious – and I think you are – you have my permission to visit other tables. Spread the word.”

  “I dunno, sarge,” Puño teased. “We’ve been told leadership is your job.”

  “I’m willing to look the other way, smart-ass,” Calderon assured him. “Go.”

  Ava spoke briefly to Fox, then took advantage of Calderon’s tolerance to go spread the word to her LI classmates from the other wings. Pretty soon LI tables were adopting Jersey and Apple borough tables.

  The gavis never thought they were better than the gang rats. They knew they’d just been fed better longer. Someone gave them a hand up when they were laid flat, and they were eager to pay it forward.

  As the movement spread through the wings of the dining hall, sergeants waded in to help their at-risk recruits secure a workout buddy.

  It wasn’t exactly circuit training after that. Everyone who’d already passed 1-1-1 worked with someone who hadn’t. The goal this week wasn’t overall strength, but whatever strength and technique their buddy recruit needed to pass his weak spots. Midtown
told Chelsea Free to get lost, they took care of their own. So the Chelsea trio were among the first to join Ava helping to make sure every single Jersey recruit in their platoon passed the test.

  Yoda passed on Wednesday. By the skin of her teeth, with Ava and two other girls right there on the mat pacing her, Fox finally managed three push-ups in a minute by Friday morning. She ran a mile in under ten and a half minutes neck and neck with Ava and twenty other girls, running at exactly the speed needed to pass the test.

  One girl from Fox’s squad was two seconds too slow on the run. Two guys needed to prune seven and four more seconds to meet the men’s more aggressive eight and a half minute standard. Friday was technically the last chance to pass, but Sergeant Singh informed them that he would submit the paperwork at 09:00 the next morning. And he could be found right here at the track at 08:00. The entire platoon turned out for that last timed run, and three more recruits passed into Basic.

  Those were the last three at risk. Everyone in Ava’s platoon who made it to that final week, passed the 1-1-1 standard and won a place in Basic Combat Training. Across the entire fitness camp, less than 2% failed to pass.

  Ava failed the weight guideline, still two pounds shy of 100. But she only had to gain one more pound a week to make it before the delayed deadline. Fox still needed three more pounds. But for now, they were in.

  “I have fantastic news!” Sergeant Weinzapfel announced to Ava’s GED prep class, that same Monday morning Ava passed her three-push-up hurdle to secure a place in Basic. “Governor-General Cullen has decided that throughout Hudson, the GED exam can be taken piecemeal!”

  Zapple beamed. Ava and her closest cronies applauded. Most of the class looked puzzled.

  “That means you can pass one section at a time,” Zapple clarified. “You don’t have to study for the whole thing and sit through a seven hour test all at once.”

  That got through. The lecture hall broke out cheering.