Chapter 15 – Training
“Halle!” My body shook. “We’re here!” I looked up out of the car seeing the bright sun beaming down at me.
“Christopher!” I called out jumping up out of the vehicle. He had to be here, I turned in a full circle, there wasn’t anything. Turning back around the vehicle disappeared as well. I backed against the walls of the building beside me. I looked up towards the sky again, why wasn’t he there? He just woke me up and told me we arrived at the destination. I raised my fist and hit the wall behind myself.
“Ouch, shit!”
I blinked. It was just a dream. I turned over in my bed, I was still half hanging off the bed, I must have cried myself to sleep. I wiped the sleep from my eyes, opening them again, I saw Bernie standing above me.
“Dang, Girl, you sleep like a rock!” he exclaimed.
“I was dreaming,” I said with a husky and tired voice.
“Great excuse. Oh, and thanks for hitting me.” Bernie took a few steps back until he stood right in front of the door. “Come on, we have to get going, we’re late.”
I pushed myself up into a sitting position. My neck was stiff from sleeping in the position that I did all night last night, I knew it would be affecting me through the entire day; it always did when I slept in awkward positions. I stretched my arms up towards the ceiling in an attempt to stretch my sleeping muscles.
“Come on, let’s go, we’re late!” Bernie crossed his arms and gave me a look full of his impatience.
I looked at him crossly. “You don’t like to be late, do you?”
Bernie gave a fake laugh. “They don’t tolerate tardiness around here, Girly, you’re not on time they lock you out of the program for the day. You’ll see. It’s not pleasant.”
I gave a small “yeah right” laugh. “Something worse than school? I can’t imagine that.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, well you don’t have to imagine that, you get to live it. Now up, up, up,” he said clapping his hands together.
I rolled out of bed without any enthusiasm and stood in front of Bernie waiting for further instructions. If he wasn’t going to leave me alone, I might as well go and see what was out there for me.
“Now that’s what I like to see!”
Bernie turned and headed out the door, I followed not even caring what I looked like or anything. My hair could have looked like a clown’s hair and I would not have known or cared. It was just me, there for everyone to look at, I didn’t care.
I ran into Bernie as he stopped suddenly. I started to fall back from the unexpected force of it all. He turned and grabbed my shoulders to keep me from toppling over.
“Whoa, Girl, watch where you’re walking.” I regained my balance and he let go of me slowly like I was some sort of glass doll. He pointed down the hall to the left, “That is the indoor training room. Usually we just train outside, but when the weather is bad we just come in here to train—but training is never, ever cancelled.”
I nodded. Okay, to my left was the training room, to my right was the dining room; I took that information and stored it in my mind mentally. I was glad for the simple layout.
Bernie continued to the right down the hall, and then to the left, where he pointed to a door without even stopping, “That’s Gloria’s office, but you probably already know all about that.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly paying attention. “Is she always so rude?”
Bernie glanced at me while continuing down the hall. “Why, was she rude to you?”
I replayed the meeting with her again in my mind and chose my words carefully. “She wasn’t particularly nice.”
Bernie clicked his tongue. “Gloria likes her position of authority, and she has a reason to be the way she is: she is the only werewolf here who actually had to learn from her own experiences. She transformed alone.” He looked at me, I think he wanted to see my reaction, but I just kept a straight face.
“But, I thought we didn’t let our kind transform alone.”
He let out a chuckle, which surprised me. “Christopher tell you that?” We turned another corner and at the very end of the hall was a miniature lobby type of place. “Fact is, it is impossible to know which person got bitten by a werewolf and who didn’t, even if you do find their hospital records that say they have Hyperglyocious it doesn’t mean their address is listed, or even the patent’s last name—you’d be amazed at how sloppy doctors’ work is getting. This isn’t even to talk about those who don’t even go into the hospital when they feel ill thinking they’ll recover—no way to trace those dudes.”
This bit of information shocked me, if what Chris told me was a lie, what else did he say that was false? I shook the thoughts of him out of my mind and focused on the task at hand. I noticed this place was practically built out of doors there were so many of them.
Bernie stopped. I almost ran into him again, but this time I managed keep myself from doing that. He pulled open a door near the end of the hall. “This is the lounge, most of us go here to hang out like ninety-nine percent of the free time that we have. You got your cable TV, couch, fridge, books, you don’t need anything else.” He continued walking but stopped short again. “Oh yeah, we have a library, but I never go to the place, so I don’t know where it is… you might ask Max though, he goes there all the time…” he continued walking. “No idea what he sees in the place,” he said with a shrug.
We continued down the hall and into the miniature lobby type of place. It was L shaped. It was nicely decorated and had a little bench against a wall, and at the end of the room was a door. Bernie pulled the door open. I threw my hand up in front of my eyes as bright sun light burst through the open doors, it would not have been such a big deal, but it was so unexpected.
Stepping out into the grassy field beyond, Bernie raised his hands towards the sky, and turned in a full circle. “This is outside.” He lowered his arms. “Definitely has to be one of the best parts about this place.” I stumbled outside closing the door behind myself and feeling the cool grass beneath my feet.
“Where’d all this grass come from?” I asked. It was the middle of the desert, grass wasn’t supposed to grow there.
“Good question,” Bernie said. I expected him to continue, but he kept walking towards a bunch of bushes. He stopped and pointed to some bushes and plants in the distance. “That’s the farm, that’s where you’ll be working.”
“Working?” I wasn’t going to work out in a field like some sort of pilgrim, that was just outrageous.
Bernie looked at me to be sure I was questioning the word seriously. “Uh, yeah, you have to earn your stay somehow. You do get paid for your hard labor though.”
I hugged myself softly rubbing my shoulder. I was beside myself with anger, but I made sure not to show it. “I suppose that’s good,” I said biting my tongue.
I stared out into the torturous field beyond. Was it even possible for anyone in their right mind to have a farm in New Mexico? Could the soil even sustain any sort of life forms? I would not even call it soil; it was more like tiny chips of rock.
“Where do you work?” I asked knowing the answer would be some thing better than where I was going to work.
Bernie laughed. “I’m in the DID.”
I cocked my head and stared at him strangely. “The did?”
He jumped up with great enthusiasm. “I love it when people ask me that!” Turning towards me completely and away from the field. “It stands for the Department of Illness Discovery. Which would be the process of searching for those infected with Hyperglyocious,” Bernie said with fervor covering his voice.
“So…” I said choosing my words carefully. “You get to work in the DID, and I get to work in… a field?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Uh, yeah, you’re a newbie. Newbies work in the field. After a little while, you can work somewhere else if you want. But that will be Gloria’s call if you’re ready or not.”
“Oh… then I could be here for ever.
” I let out a long sigh.
“Nah, Gloria doesn’t judge by whom she doesn’t like or even by rudeness or anything, she’s a fair woman. She keeps her feelings to herself and doesn’t mix them with business.”
I nodded. “Oh.” Sounded great to me. Hopefully Bernie was right about that. I had confidence that he was, I didn’t know why, but I trusted these people. They felt like family to me. Maybe even more like family than my own. It was almost like this little sanctuary of nice, trustworthy people… or should I say werewolves.
Maybe it was the knowing that all of these people had been through the same thing that I had been through and being taken care of here and not abandoned had allowed their kindness to show through, rather than reluctance towards the world. I couldn’t say for sure, but I was determined to be like these kind hearted people. To say the least, they certainly were an inspiration, all of them were.
Bernie wore a stud’s smile as his started walking around the corner of the building. Beyond was a large grassy area. Plenty of people both sat and stood around, some talking to each other simply enjoying the view. Most of the grassy area was shaded by the building blocking the sun. I thought it was a brilliant area; it was positioned just perfectly to get a good amount of shade. Plus with how sunny it was here the shade was more than welcome to help cool down the area.
We both stopped in the middle of the area, Bernie motioned towards some girl with short caramel brown colored hair. Before he caught her attention, she was talking to a group of people. She came running over faithfully.
Bernie turned towards me. “Lynn, this is Rachael. She is going to help you get your uniforms fitted.” He turned and walked back the way we just came from.
Rachael stuck out her hand towards me. I shook it without hesitating. “Nice to meet you, Lynn,” she said confidently.
“You as well,” I said lowering my hand.
“Follow me,” Rachael said motioning over her shoulder for me to follow. She seemed like more of a down to business type of person rather than how Bernie was, he struck me as the type of person to have fun and work later, and it seemed as if he only followed the rules because he had no other choice.
I followed Rachael through another door besides the one that Bernie and I walked through.
“Typically you can mostly wear what you want to wear, but Bethy requires that we wear uniforms for our battle training. But, a tip for the newbie,” Rachael turned around towards me and walked backwards. “If you think you’re going to be a smart ass and wear your uniform all day—don’t. You’ll be working in the field and any speck of dirt on it and Bethy will be on your tail like a piranha.”
I let out a little laugh at the mental picture that her words gave me. She turned back around walking the proper way again and headed through an already gapped door.
“This is where all of the clothes and uniforms are made; we have a cotton field so all of the clothing is one hundred percent cotton.” She pointed towards a sketch on the wall. “This gives you the basic gist of what the uniforms look like, you can basically pick your colors, mix and match—you know that type of thing.” Rachael handed me a large bundle of different colored cloths. “These are all you have to choose from. After you pick you can head out to the field and… we’ll put you on cotton duty for now. So just head on out there and I’ll have your uniform delivered to your room so it’ll be ready for later today.”
I nodded. Looking down at the clothes, I saw black… that was classic, it was a classic color. Then I found a light baby pink color. I picked out those two. “How about these?” I asked handing those two to Rachael.
“Good colors, I’ll have them made for you then,” she said taking them from me and walking over to a desk.
I took that as a dismissal and headed back down the hall where I came from before. This was going to be a long day, I could tell already. But I was glad to be kept busy; I figured it would be good for me. I didn’t regret my decision to stay here and not go with Chris, the way I looked at it, all of them were probably better off without me anyways. My family had probably forgotten about me completely, and Christopher would eventually too, I was probably nothing more than another mission to him anyways.
Going back outside, I had to blink a couple of times to get my eyes adjusted to the major change in lighting. I didn’t know how it could be so dark inside and so bright outside, a cloudy day would have been nice. Although I had the feeling that even if it was cloudy it would still be too bright for my likings. I stopped suddenly as I looked around for a clear path through to the fields. I found an exceedingly small foot path and headed that way careful not to touch any cacti or other sharp plants.
I stumbled and almost fell head first into a cactus due to the downward slope of the land, but I caught myself just before hitting it and continued on. Soon enough, I reached the bottom of the slope and was able to walk in cleared land. The type of dirt changed dramatically from stones and pebbles to actual dirt. I did have faith that some thing could actually be grown in this dry, deserted land after all.
Spotting the white cotton stalks, I headed over towards them passing by small gardens filled with various vegetables and other plants that I couldn’t even begin to figure out what type of plant species they were.
When I reached the cotton fields, there were many people there collecting cotton. I stopped, trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing here.
“A newbie!” An airy voice squealed behind me.
I turned toward the voice to see a lively red head. I forced a smile and nodded. “Yeah, that would be me.”
She patted my arm. “Welcome. Just pick up a bag over there—” She pointed toward a pile of potato-sack type bags lying on the ground. “—and you can put the cotton there.” Her voice was so light and airy; I wonder if it portrayed what was going on inside her mind. Judging by her instructions, which somehow managed to be both vague and overly instructive, I would say she was a bit of an idealist.
“Okay,” I muttered, and snatched the bag off the ground. It felt dusty and dirty in my hands. I hated it.
I stood beside a woman who looked to be in her early 30s. She looked like she knew what she was doing, so I watched for a moment, and then got busy collecting the cotton. All the while, my mind flooded with thoughts of thoughts of when I used to play Oregon Trail on the computer with my brother and reading the Little House on the Prairie books. I never thought I’d be actually doing things like this, and especially not at seventeen-years-old.
When lunchtime rolled around, we all headed into the cafeteria for a brief meal, and then I followed Bernie to training. I was the first to sit down, glad to have something supporting me besides my sore feet. My table quickly filled up with familiar faces, including Bernie, Max, and Elisa.
I poked a lettuce leaf and lifted the fork to my mouth, noticing my spoon shaking in front of my face. Every single muscle in my body was physically spent from today’s rough activities that I wasn’t used to doing. Part of me was glad for the physical challenge, the other part of me was tired and just wanted to go to sleep right here in the middle of the dining room.
Looking around the table I stole a silent glance at Elisa, Max, Bernie all of whom were present on the training grounds. I couldn’t believe that all of them looked as perky and lively as they did while I felt so physically spent. None of them showed the slightest sign of fatigue or wear. They all acted as if they didn’t even do all of that work. Then again, I guess they did this type of activity every day for however long they had been here, which could have been years—or like Bethy decades. Most of them appeared as though they had only been there a couple of years.
A lot of the people were around their early twenties, though there was the occasional teen—like myself—or that occasional person that never actually left this place and was in his or her late thirties.
“So, Lynn, how’s your first day?” Elisa asked playfully.
I stabbed at my salad absently. “You know th
e answer to that.”
“Don’t get too tired,” Bernie picked up on the conversation. “We get to do this all over again tomorrow.”
I shoved a lettuce leaf into my mouth, and was reminded of the leaves of the cotton plants. I’d seen so many today I think I had the image of the white, puffy things embedded into my eye sockets. “I’m not tired,” I lied.
“No?” Elisa curled a lock of her pale hair around her right index finger. “You aren’t dying to roll to your room so you can pass out on your bed?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Roll to my room?”
Elisa nodded. “Yeah, roll, ‘cause your limbs are too busy trying to regain consciousness.” She tilted her head sharply. “Can’t crawl if your limbs aren’t working.”
Max leaned left, toward me. “Don’t listen to them, they just think exercise for them is the equivalent of throwing water on the wicked witch.” He sat straight up in his seat again.
Some form of a smile touched the left corner of my lips.