Afterland (11 page)

“Sorry,” I mutter triumphantly.

              “But that was good. Never forget who the enemy is. Try kicking Bob again.”

              I kick Bob, at the same time ducking to avoid the hand I know it coming. Bob vibrates and I remain standing. Mike nods in approval.

              “Keep in mind that in real life, the target fights back. Never forget that, either.”

__              __              __              __              __              __              __              __              __              __ 

              After lunch, I continue my weapons training with Emily. She keeps correcting my technique and telling me to practice.

              “Once your muscles remember every detail of the shot, you won’t have to think. You have time to think now, but in the heat of battle, you have only the instincts that power your hand. It’s those instincts that you need to develop. The sharpness of your instincts determines whether you live or die. You have to practice your instincts until their brightness blinds the enemy. You don’t think, only act. Act fast, act hard, act right. That’s how you win a battle.”

              I shoot continuously for the next several hours. My accuracy level doesn’t visibly improve, which frustrates me more than I care to admit, even though I logically know that my skills won’t change in only a few hours. Still, I put so much effort into each shot that I want the gratification of success. All I’m getting are the thunks against the side of the boards.

              “Don’t rush,” Emily scolds me. “You have the time. Aim now. Take half a moment more to make sure you’re doing it right. Your hand will begin to remember eventually. And remember to practice in your free time,” she adds.

              “I will,” I swear.

              “EVERYONE, IT’S TIME FOR DINNER!” Big Sal’s voice shouts. “GET YOUR KNIVES. WE’RE HAVING STEAK!” Everyone immediately drops what they’re doing, pulls out knives from various hiding places, and runs towards the center.

              “Not bad for your second day,” Emily says, pulling a knife from her breast pocket. “Practice enough and you could be able to get relative accuracy within the week. Eat up.”

              I rush toward the line, pulling out my food knife from my bag. I spear a piece of meat and end up sitting next to Nathan again.

“Hey, Molly.

“Um. Hi.”             

“How’s your training going?” he asks.

              “Great,” I say.

              “Learned anything useful yet?”

              “Sure.”

              “Did Mike do the balance spiel?”

              “Oh. Yes.Is that a thing that he usually does?”

              “Yeah, he’s done it to everyone he’s trained on their first day. but Mike’s a nut, so don’t worry about it.”

              “Oh, all right.”

I feel that I should continue the conversation, but I’m not sure what to say next, so I only continue eating, hoping that I don’t seem cold and aloof.

              “So, what are you doing after dinner?”

“Practicing, I guess, so that Emily isn’t after my neck.”

Nathan laughs.

“Of course, I should have known. You want help?”

“Help? Oh, um...sure.” I prefer solitude, but if I accept this invitation, I hope that I’ll come off as a warmer person. “I mean, if it isn’t too much trouble, or…”

“Nah, I don’t have much to do anyway. I’d be glad to help you out.”

“Oh. Thanks then,” I smile.

“I know I’m not Emily, but it can’t hurt you.”

“No, I guess it can’t. Thank you. Um. Really.”

After we eat, we go back out to the Field of the Fallen.

“Alright, show me how you shoot.”

I aim the crossbow at Bob’s chest. I never realized how strange it is to be watched, or even just to be with another human being. I had gotten accustomed to the company of waves and empty wine bottles.

I aim carefully and let the bolt go, but to my disappointment, the bolt completely misses him and lands off to the side.

“I swear I usually shoot better than this,” I say in a statement that is so unbased, I almost feel guilty for it. I pull out a second bolt and shoot it with the same result. To my disgust, my cheeks redden as I pull out a third one, thinking,
this one better land.
It only hits the edge of the board.

“Well, you’ve only had these for two days, so it’s perfectly fine. I couldn’t hit the board at all for almost two weeks.”

I’m pretty sure that he’s lying to make me feel better, and as much as I resent that, I tell enough lies myself to not question it.

Nathan pulls out his own crossbow.

“Watch how I keep my hand.”

He kneels and cocks the crossbow. His technique differs slightly from Emily’s, primarily in the curve of his hand. The bolt buries itself where the heart would have been. He nods at my crossbow.

“Your turn.”

I shoot. It skims the side again.

“You’re overthinking it. Step back a little and focus on the target,” Nathan says. I shoot again. The bolt lands in the board, around where the knee would be.

“Yes, exactly. You’re already getting better.”

It was just a lucky shot
, I think, but I keep silent. I can see how hard Nahan is trying to make a connection, and with my personality, this might be my only chance at friendship,

We spend the remaining daylight hours practicing, stopping only because the sun sets. Nathan tells me that, eventually, I’ll be able to shoot with my eyes closed, but for now, it is better not to attempt that.

“We should do this again tomorrow,” Nathan says. “If you want to, of course.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. If it’s not a problem for you.”

“Of course not,” he smiles. We walk back to camp where most people are packing their weapons and getting into small groups, discussing the week. Nathan and I are joined by Smaller Sally and Mike, who walk with their arms around each other. In his free hand, Mike holds a cigarette.

“How are you doing?” Smaller Sally asks.

“Good,” Nathan and I say in unison.

“Good!” She replies with sincere happiness.

“You tired?” Mike asks.

“Me?”

He nods.

“A little,” I admit.

“Yeah, the first days are the worst,” Mike says. “But once you settle into the rhythm of it-”

“It becomes completely natural,” Smaller Sally finishes.

“I was going to say that it becomes syncopated,” Mike says with the first smile I’ve seen him show. “But if the rest of you want to be optimistic and...things like that, go ahead.”

“Oh my god, Mike, you make it sound like optimists are taking over the world and burning all you pessimists at the stake.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.”

We all laugh. Mike’s eyes sparkle a little when he looks at Smaller Sally, and I can’t help but smile myself.

The conversation continues without a particular direction as the darkness intensifies and the air chills. I stay quiet, occasionally throwing in an
um
or a
uhum
, when prompted. Eventually, we say our goodnights and separate to our tents.

I stay awake for several more hours developing all the thoughts that flew through my mind during the conversation, specifically about how different the Rebellion is from Hopetown.

I don’t miss Hopetown. Only two days have passed and all the memories I have of it have already begun to blur into one image, as if time was static there. As if none of it ever mattered and ever will matter. It’s just a blink on reality. Nothing more. Thirteen years of my life, wasted. I wonder if it was better for me, that I barely remember what the world was like before the Blast. Was it harder for my parents? They had lives established before the world was destroyed. Lives that they had worked for years to build. They must have had dreams and goals, and all of it went down the drain with the Blast.

And we were all so afraid. We couldn’t trust the world and we could barely trust ourselves. I was so afraid. I never realized how afraid I was because I had never known anything different. I was afraid of the outside, because I didn’t know what was there. Afraid of the inside, because I did. Afraid of everyone else, because I couldn’t read their eyes. Afraid of my own reflection, because I saw a person so radically different from whom I wanted to be. Afraid to fail. Afraid to succeed. Afraid to die.

And absolutely terrified to live.

Terrified of the only faded future I saw for myself.

Terrified that I would disappear without a trace and nobody would remember me.

Now, I can see the path I want to take. I can see the bright outline of my future.

Now, I’m not afraid that I won’t matter.

And it’ll be alright.

CHAPTER 6

The following weeks fly by quickly. Every day is similar in structure. In the mornings, I help Big Sal make breakfast. After that, I either train with Mike or take more hikes around the woods with Rebekah. After lunch, I am at the mercy of Emily. At the end of the day, Nathan and I train in the Field of the Fallen. I find Nathan’s continuous efforts at friendship sweet, and I try to receive them as best as I can. In my spare free moments, I continue to read
Les Miserables
, often with the light of a candle that I balance precariously on my lap in my uncomfortably flammable tent.

By the end of the first week, I can get the bolt to stick in the board consistently, sometimes even near the middle, but I can’t figure figure out any correlation between my technique and my accuracy. Whether or not the bolt hits seems completely random to me. Everyone says that the only way to learn how to shoot properly regularly is through developing instinct, but I can’t help but feel that all of my hits are based only on luck.

Throughout the week, I get the know all the members of the Rebellion. Most of them don’t speak about their pasts, but those who do give me enough material for a mental collage of their stories. Through covert references, I find out that Hannah and Matt joined the Rebellion together when they were exiled from their town. They were part of a local gang that pulled a really big heist. When they were discovered, and all of them were forced to leave the town, they scattered. Hannah speaks of it wistfully, saying, “Those were the days” often. Matt avoids talking about it altogether, cringing every time it is mentioned.

              All that Rebekah tells me is that she joined seven years ago, when the Rebellion was still on the move. Smaller Sally tells me that Rebekah managed to follow them and steal their supplies for two weeks before anyone noticed and decided that they needed a person like that on their team.

              Kristina spent an entire year looking for the Rebellion, approximately five years ago. That was the first year that the tax raises became a problem for many people and the threat of execution started to hang over our heads. Nobody was ready for a tax raise or a punishment of that scale and many people died. That was nothing to the CGB, and they only continued raising the taxes year after year. That was the last straw for Kristina, and she decided to stand up against it. There was a mass migration of people out of cities that year, looking for places where they could escape CGB control. Kristina ran away and travelled with various caravans of townless people hoping to find better lives. She spent a year listening to whispers and stories until she found the Rebellion. In the process, she discovered that she had an uncanny knack for survival. Some caravans she left because they went in a directions opposing her’s. Some she left because she was the last survivor.

“It didn’t really matter if I survived,” she said. “The way I saw it, if I did, I might as well do something with my life. If I died, then so be it.”

All of these stories give me a newfound respect for the members of the Rebellion. It’s a tribute to how much they can do. They also make me feel wildly incompetent. It seems that everybody had to prove their worth, while I just stumbled in. They came in having already proven that they deserve to be in the Rebellion. I have yet to do so.

              Another thing strikes me: throughout all of the stories, the beginning of the Rebellion is never mentioned. All that is said is that the founders of the Rebellion were Mike and Nathan’s parents.
The Kerman couple
as they are called. But there are no stories telling what happened then. What happened to the Kerman couple, how the Rebellion actually came to be, or what they were doing in the years before it became a major threat to the CGB. The stories that are told about that time period are about other people’s individual towns. Everyone who was part of the Rebellion then only shrugs and says “I was here for a long time.” It is a dark spot in everyone’s combined history. Nobody speaks of the first five years, almost as if there is a secret taboo on it. I don’t have the courage to ask about it. It seems as if the Rebellion never actually had a beginning. Only that one day, Mike became its leader, and then everything just tumbled into place.