by J B Cantwell
With Alex by my side, none of that would have mattered.
Without him I was out here on my own. Exposed. And now with a nagging, and somehow terrifying question on my mind.
Why were our two training groups separated?
Chapter Four
I ducked my head low and made for my bed. Hannah was all over me before I even sat down.
“Who was that?” she asked, her eyes wide. Her tattoos caught the dim light, making her look even more skeletal than she was.
I slid onto my mattress. She was already sitting there, expectant.
“Just a friend from home,” I admitted.
“He must be some friend,” she said, indicating the tears I was still unsuccessfully trying to wipe away.
He had made it through. All of those times we had talked about it. All the times we had each tried to convince the other not to join. And now here we were.
I stared at Hannah. Maybe it was stupid to trust my instincts, but I felt like I could talk to her. I gulped down the last of my tears. I hadn’t been oblivious to the stares I had been getting from the others around the room. It seemed everyone but Holt had realized the exchange we’d had.
“He’s a friend from home, yes,” I said. “We hung out a lot before we were old enough to join.”
I slouched.
“Well, what’s the problem then?” she asked.
“I … I just wasn’t expecting to see him here. When he didn’t show up in our group, I thought maybe he hadn’t joined after all.”
And that he had left me behind.
But he hadn’t. He had followed me in, even though the risk to his life was just as serious as the risk to my own.
“Hmm,” Hannah said.
Three beds over, I could see Lydia watching us out of the corner of her eye. When she saw me notice, she smirked.
Everyone had seen. Would I be in trouble for making a connection outside of our main training group? Maybe not. Maybe not if we were just friends.
But were we?
In the months leading up to my birthday, Alex had grown more and more protective of me. There had never been anything decidedly romantic between us, but I found him suddenly talking about his future, our future, more and more. And his words were urgent. I think he felt like he had to make his escape from his family soon, or else he might find himself trapped there for a lifetime.
I could relate.
I tried to imagine the two of us together. He was my favorite person in all the world; that, I knew. But was there room for him in the fantasy I had created for myself? In those windowed rooms in the city, high above the acid haze?
“Why do you think their group isn’t mixed in with ours?” I asked Hannah in a whisper.
She moved over to sit closer.
“I’ve heard,” she murmured, “that some recruits are designated as specialty before they even start training.”
“But you’re already in Specialty Infantry. Why aren’t you over there with the other group?”
Her face fell.
“Here you have to earn Special Infantry. Last time I was in Infantry. Just Infantry.
“So you were here before. You were a Red,” I hissed.
“That’s not the point,” she said. “The point is that they’re above us. They’re getting different training than we are. We’re the ones to go in first.” Her eyes stared into space, remembering her experiences from before. She looked scared, which was unusual to see on the face of someone usually so outwardly confident.
My eyes kept falling on Lydia. She had made her bed with the precision of one who had done it hundreds of times. The blanket was so smooth across the mattress that it looked more like a piece of concrete than a bed. Lydia had completed a tour here, too, I reminded myself. The only way to be designated Orange was to work your way through a Red conviction first. I wondered what her designation had been the last time she had come through this place. Did they even allow a Black designate to work off a sentence?
“Hey,” I said, elbowing Hannah. “You made it through the first tour, right? I bet the second one will be a breeze. Especially if you stay in Specialty Infantry. You’ll be ok.”
She looked up at me, seeming to shake her new fear off.
“I will be ok,” she said, the familiar edge returning to her voice.
As the bell gave the ten minute warning until lights out, I climbed into my bed and nestled inside. I didn’t know this place. Everything was strange. The blanket was scratchy and thin. The hum of low voices made me nervous.
Then, finally, the exterior door was closed with a sharp clang. There was an echoing latch of a lock, and the lights went out.
Chapter Five
A blaring sound ripped me from sleep. The entire room sat up in their cots at the same time to find red emergency lights flashing and the incessant, ear-piercing noise of an alarm. I put my hands over my ears and jumped out of my bed, my socked feet sliding on the polished concrete floors. The sound continued until nearly everyone was upright from their beds.
“Good morning, recruits!” Holt bellowed, pulling hard on a switch at the front of the room, stifling the noise. “Clean yourselves and your cots. Be ready for inspection at 0700.”
I looked at the clock. It read 0630. Hannah had just stood from her bed as the sergeant left the room. Her face was still half asleep, and as she scratched her scalp, I noticed several long lines tattooed to the skin that I hadn’t seen before. She really was covered in them.
“I’ll never get used to them doing that,” she said.
“Is it every day?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“No. Just on special occasions.”
I guess our first day of training was considered just that.
I was waiting for the rush at the bathroom to die down and grabbed for my fatigues. I glanced around the room nervously, not wanting to be seen without my clothes on. I saw several other girls doing the same. Some of the boys’ eyes were glued to the female forms, others focused on their own preparations.
As I took my shirt off, I pretended to be alone in my bedroom back in Brooklyn. No eyes there. I quickly put on my undershirt and tried to change my underwear as discretely as possible.
Hannah went through the motions of changing, her eyes barely open. I doubted she would have cared if she had noticed the boys watching her undress.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“What?” She stifled a yawn.
“Just strip down like that,” I said.
She laughed, and for the first time since leaving her bed she seemed to be fully awake.
“We’re going to have way bigger problems than showing our bodies to these idiots.” She removed her shirt and shook her chest back and forth for all the room to see, gaining several wolf whistles in the process.
“Shut it, you imbeciles!” she bellowed. “We’re not the only ones with exposed parts.”
I snorted as a couple young men grabbed for towels to cover themselves.
“Don’t worry about them,” she said. “After today they’ll be so tired they won’t have the energy to look anywhere past their fluffy little Service pillows.”
I made my way to the bathroom, which was utilitarian and clean. It felt weird using the toilet with so many male strangers milling about, but I remembered what Hannah had said. We weren’t the only ones who were exposed.
When I was finished, I headed for the sink to wash my face and hands. My cheek had turned a greenish blue shade. When I looked up into the mirror I found Lydia staring at me from behind. The look on her face was creepy, like she was deciding how best to attack me next. Then her face changed, and her snarl returned. She approached the sink next to mine and turned on the tap.
“Little Pink,” she said, her voice just a touch louder than it needed to be. “How did your first day go, princess?”
“You know as well as I do,” I answered, grabbing a paper towel. I recited her own designation back to her.
“Lydia Davis
D
esignation: Infantry
59
“Maybe we both should’ve tried a little harder yesterday,” I said.
Yesterday had been terrible, for most of us I thought. But not so terrible that I was unable to face another. Alex’s presence here had boosted my confidence and made me more nervous at the same time. But it was enough that I wasn’t going to take any more heat from Lydia. I knew now that she couldn’t lay a finger on me without facing repercussions. No matter how likely it was that we might die on the field, we were still all the Service had. Precious. Not everyone was eager to join, and only the money had overcome the threat of death for those of us who did. But we were valuable to the government, too valuable to be allowed to beat on each other. At least physically.
She laid both hands on the sink and glared at me, letting the tap run as she watched me. It bothered me, the tap. It would have bothered most anyone, given that the country’s water resources were so low. Since I was a young child it had been drilled into me to save water, to drink every last drop, to never leave a tap running.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Does that bother you?”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked.
“Lots of things bother me.” She raised one eyebrow.
I felt heat rise up the back of my neck. I nearly took the bait.
“Well, it seems to me I’m not much weaker than you are,” I said. “Just two steps up from little Pink, aren’t you?”
I rubbed my face with the paper towel and tossed it into the garbage.
She was on me in a second, her hand pinning my own to the counter.
“You’d better watch it,” she snarled.
“And why’s that?” I said. She was crushing my hand inside her grip.
“Because those of us who’ve been here before know how to handle the new kids,” she said. “Why is it, do you think, that half of new recruits die in the first year? Do you think it’s Reds out there on the field? They’re already hardened from their crimes. Oranges? We’ve all done this before. But Greens …” she leaned in and whispered. “The Greens are the ones who go first. Don’t be fooled from the lack of information in your lens. We know who you are.”
I was speechless as she released my hand and turned away. I resisted the urge to flex my fingers. Her grip had been painful.
As she left the bathroom, I fumed. I stared in the mirror again, and I was amazed by how my reflection was changing from day to day. I was practically unrecognizable from just yesterday. It wasn’t just the bruise, it wasn’t just the shorn pink hair. It was my eyes. Determined. Unquestioning.
Angry.
Maybe that was the ingredient we all needed in order to survive here. Lydia certainly already had it.
The hesitancy I had felt in Grand Central Station was gone. This was the route I had chosen, no matter who I had to fight to get to the end of the journey.
Chapter Six
I went back to the bunk room and made my bed as best I could. When it was done, I leaned down to lace up my boots. I tied them tight and doubled the knots.
Hannah had been oblivious to my interaction with Lydia. I followed her lead as the seconds ticked down to 0700. She smoothed her blankets out one more time and then stood at the foot of her bed and waited.
The door slammed open and Sergeant Holt stormed into the room.
I straightened my posture immediately.
I expected him to shout, but instead he snarled. He sounded oddly like Lydia.
“Recruits! This is what we call inspection time. You’ve had thirty minutes to clean yourselves and your beds. Each morning when I walk through here, I will expect you to be standing at attention, waiting for me.” He lowered his voice. “And you’d better be ready.”
He began walking up and down the rows of cots. It didn’t take him long to find his first target.
Recruit Elijah Green
Designation: Infantry
65
Elijah’s bed was still unmade, and he was just finishing tying his boots. I couldn’t tell if he had been a Green and was just clueless, or if he had somehow failed to follow the procedure on purpose.
Holt stopped, the look on his face furious.
BANG. BANG. BANG. He drummed his baton again and again on the railing.
Elijah looked up, and the glint in his eyes told me his actions were deliberate. He stood up to face the sergeant. It was like two male peacocks facing off against each other.
“Well,” Holt said. “What do we have here, Elijah Green?” The sergeant laughed. “If only it were true. If only you were a Green like your name implies.”
Holt stepped closer to Elijah until they were so close they could’ve touched their noses together.
“It seems that maybe you’ve forgotten about how the system works.”
The sergeant pointed up to the board on the wall with each of our names, a new addition that mirrored the one in the chow hall.
“As the day goes on, you are each awarded points based on your performance,” he went on. “That performance begins the moment you wake up in the morning and ends the moment your head hits the pillow at night.” He turned back to face the rest of us. “Now, as much as it would bring me joy to beat you to get my message across, after your arrival on base I have no permission to do so. And neither do you; any recruit caught laying a hand on a fellow recruit will lose considerable points on the board. The power I do have, in some ways, is better. Instead of a smack across your face, all I need to do is choose a number of points to take away. Each day you may gain up to one hundred points. But with just a subtle flick of my lens,” he turned to the viewscreen again, and I watched Elijah’s face, horrified, as his 65 fell like a thud to just an 11.
Designation: Burn
Holt turned back to the rest of the group, holding his arms wide as if he meant to embrace each of us in turn.
“It really is so easy these days,” he cocked his head in Elijah’s direction. “The wonder of these technologies. Sometimes they surpass our imaginations, do they not?”
Elijah stared, dazed.
Holt moved on.
Only two others lost points, but the number was insignificant enough to not change their ranking. In their cases, the general lack of organization of their beds and spaces were their crimes. Crimes, I was sure, that would never be committed again. More than one set of eyes flicked up at the viewscreen after Holt had walked past, each followed by a sigh of relief upon seeing that their numbers had stayed the same.
There were two others, though, that had gained points. I watched, shocked, as Lydia’s number climbed from a 59 to a 69, just a few points away from breaking her into the Specialty Infantry devision. She smirked in my direction and puckered her lips, sending me an invisible kiss.
The other that had gained points was Hannah. I wasn’t surprised by this. Her bed was as flat as the concrete beneath our feet. Her score went from a 78 to 88, enough to knock someone I didn’t know down into the plain infantry devision.
When Holt had made it down the entire aisle of recruits, he turned back to address us one last time.
“Now that you’re learning how our system works, perhaps I will see some different behavior from you all as the day goes on. But no matter to me, of course. You’re either up … or you burn. Your choice.”
Chills ran down my spine at these words.
“Excused!” he cried. He turned on his heel and left the room.
I crumpled onto my bed, my energy drained. How was I going to keep up with this for six long weeks? The little confidence I had felt in the bathroom seemed to be draining away.
I felt a sharp kick on my shin, and looked up to find Hannah pelting me with her tiny feet.
“Get up, you idiot!” she whispered.
I sat up, barely able to hold myself upright.
“They’re all going to see you,” she said, sitting down on her bed across from me. “And what do you think will happen then? Do you think they’re going to want you on their team when the time comes?
”
My eyes snapped open and I looked quickly around the room.
“Save your weakness for lights out,” she whispered.
I stood then. It took everything I had to just stand under the weight of fear that held me down. The points could be given so freely, and then taken away in an instant. Based on simply the mood of the sergeant, our futures could change on just the one man’s whim.
But I stayed up, flattening out the wrinkles in my blanket to make sure it would look perfect should anyone come to check it again. I turned to face Hannah, who stood with her arms folded, waiting.
“Breakfast?”
The thought of food made my stomach turn.
“Breakfast,” I said.
“Good, Pink,” she said, as if she were speaking to a puppy. “Come on back to us now.”
As we passed Joshua’s bunk, we found him sitting on his bed, staring.
Hannah kicked the bed frame with her boot. “Come on, Josh. The fun’s just starting.”
I saw his eyes flutter, just barely realizing who it was that had spoken.
She walked right by his bunk, me following behind her, trying not to look lost. I tried to stand straighter. To look tougher.
It was going to be all about appearances, not with the sergeant, but with the recruits. I stuck my chin out and walked on.
Play this game.
I wasn’t sure who, if anyone, watched us as we filed by the row of cots, but in that moment it no longer seemed to matter.
Chapter Seven
Six weeks. That was all the time they had to mold us into soldiers. One boy bragged at breakfast that boot camp had once been twelve weeks. He puffed up his chest as if knowing this information somehow gave him credibility.
It wasn’t twelve weeks anymore, that was all I knew.
“Is that guy right?” I whispered across the table to Hannah.
“Who cares? The sooner we get out of here the better.”
“How can you say that?” I was becoming more and more nervous about the battles we would face after training was through.
