Wasteland Survivor – Reasons - ch3
#4 of Wasteland Survivor
Back again, can't seem to stop these from flowing, ideas are pouring out, having to keep a notepad at work now.
Thanks to Crazy One for how to link all these.
Note: all measuring is done in metric, like it or not, thats how I think of the world, meters, grams and centigrade.
I woke a little too hot, a nice fourtey plus degree day was dawning and I was in a sleeping roll in a fur coat cuddled up to a furnace. Yet it would have taken the jaws of life to break me away from her before I could look into her eyes.
"Well aren't you just a hot little thing this morning" came a murmur from Crystal, then she pulled her head back a little so she could see me and stole my soul for another day. A few tears escaped my eyes before I could stop them and I was snuggled into a tighter embrace.
"Tell me we will never be apart, Crys." I implore of her, almost sobbing.
"Your mine, and I am yours, lover." and we drew back, tried a rather awkward kiss that left us both giggling, then something hit us both at the same time. "I don't mean to ruin a great morning, but uh, B, we smell!"
A soldier overheard us and pointed us in the direction of the shower block, and warned us not to use up too much water. Sharing a shower is conserving water right? In that spirit we were the preventing all kinds of draught.
After that, and trying to work out how to dry off, I laughed and said "Tank top and shorts and in this heat we will be dry in five minutes!". And if you predicted we got some stares doing that, your right, Crys practically preened under the attention, I on the other hand, was almost embarrassed.
At that point the man we would come to know as 'Sir!' but also as Sergeant Nicols, stalked quietly over and yelled, "What are you all lolly gagging at, back to work soldiers!". "And don't think you two miscreants will be getting the easy road, its been dumped in my lap to train enough so that you won't kill anyone with your weapon!"
"Uh, thanks." I replied. I suppose I was thankful, but I was a little distracted by the wolf wearing only two pieces of clothing beside me.
"There are two ways I can train you, one way would involve you learning to use a knife and hiding behind soldiers, you would likely end up peeling a lot of potatoes with that knife. The other is one where I teach you both how to actually carry and care for a gun, and if you impress me doing that, I may even teach you how to shoot it, oh, and you would need to call me Sir. Understand?"
I stole a little glance at Crys, she had a grin that, if not for the wolfs muzzle, would bear a strong resemblance to the one she got when a local yob would try to drag off her VW. She stole a quick look at me, nodded and we both turned back to the Sergeant. "Sir!" we chorused.
After he showed us where meals were served, Nicols retrieved two of the hard plastic cases marked 'Steyr AUG F88' and placed them in front of us on the bench we were at, "This, is the Austeyr F88, one of the best tools for an infantryman on the battlefield, and this, is how they work..."
The first few days of this, saw us assembling the rifles, handing them to Nicols, only to have to disassemble them and have him explain what we did wrong, after we could do three assembles in a row without a single issue, he counted not using the exact amount of oil in the right places a major issue, he moved onto how to carry the thing, or more to the point, how not to carry it.
By the end of the week we had assembled some fifty or more of the damn things and carried them around to various soldiers to have them disassemble them, critique our work, then hand them back to use to assemble again. In hindsight I can see Nicols was introducing us to each and every soldier and vice versa.
It was the next day we came to find something new, a trio of really long knives on the bench, we had seen those strapped to the sides of the soldiers, and had wondered what they were for.
"Today, I will teach you how to make a mess of someone close up." With that he picked up his assembled steyr and attached the knife to a clip on the end, "This is a bayonet, we use this when things get too close to shoot or shooting would put your fellow soldiers at risk of, " and he made a grimace, " 'friendly fire', which never is, I can assure you."
He had us running at various things, mostly piles of tires stacked up, he expected us to be able to jam the bayonet into a tyre and yank it back out, I was fine with the first bit, just had to get my body behind it, but on the reverse he kept chewing me out for not getting the weapon 'back under control' quickly enough. I tried harder but my upper body strength just wasn't there to do it and Nicols told me so, and showed me some basic items we could start working on as 'weights' to fix that.
The next day, I was working on those weights just before we were due to meet with Nicols for another day of killing things, when a roar and shouts registered on my hearing. I spun in the direction I had heard the shouts to see two of the 'pony sized dingos' ripping into some soldiers just as another knocked down a guard tower, the two soldiers jumped from it to safety but it didn't stop some metal bending and snapping out from its impact with the ground to clip Crystal in the head. She dropped like a stone,
-
I was about to yell out to that red furred miscreant who was just finishing her improvised exercises I had assigned her when the shouts registered and I reached for the steyr at my side, the other hand automatically removing an ammo clip from a pouch and reversing it to seat it in the back of the rifle.
I turned and saw the huge beasts ripping into some soldiers as another brought down a security point, the shrapnel from which lanced out and clipped the top of my other trainees head felling her instantly.
Then a new sound broke over the wave of growling and snarling and I witnessed a glow of light pouring from the eyes of that fox as she grabbed a fallen soldiers rifle, reached out and tore the bayonet from his sheath and drive the spear into the head of the beast that had almost reached her mate, then wrenched it free and charged into the teeth of the other two monsters, beheading one, amazing considering the bayonet was barely long enough to get through the beasts neck and sinking the rifle up to the hand guard into the chest of the last one.
-
A voice intruded on my world then, "Its all right babe, I was just dazed, you can put the gun down now, its all right..."
I looked to my hands, they weren't their usual black at the moment, I was painted red nearly muzzle to tail. "You... your ok? I thought I had lost you..." I dropped the gun and fell into her shaky arms. Hearing the story later apparently Sergeant Nicols practically carried us both back to the showers, somehow got us both clean and dry and tucked us into an air conditioned truck, that we would later find out was called a 'bushman'.
We both got up the next day, and got back to our routine just as normal, only now, I could call on strength and speed as the need arose, and seeing Nicols face as I jerked the bayonet free quickly and with little fuss was almost worth all the drama, almost.
"So, how about tomorrow we give your weapon assembling skills the ultimate test and see if you can fire them without hitting anyone?"
"Sir, yes Sir!" was our enthusiastic duet.
I think I had finally found the one thing I would fight, and, as has now been proven, kill for.
-
"Yes sir, I believe the 'fox', I still can't understand her reluctance at telling us her name, has quickened her own ability into a general physical boost. She can increase her reflexes, her strength and I believe her resilience, she not only took down all three of those dingos with just a bayonet, but I saw her take two hits from one and if she noticed it, she never registered it." The Sergeant reported, finishing up with, "I plan to take their training all the way, with Crystal's 'kinesis and Fox's 'fight', I don't know of anything that could stop them in a fair, or unfair fight if they were fully trained."
"Good work Nicols, those two were a god-send when they delivered that ammo cache to us, and I can see them being very useful assets in helping us survive and rebuild. You have my permission to train them not only to the extent of a normal infantryman, but any extra training as you see fit..." I grinned to take the bite out of the next bit, "... not that lack of permission would ever stop you training a soldier YOU thought was worth the work.". Nicols was known as a bit of a wild one, but as one of the best senior trainers in the SAS training centre, he was unmatched for his dedication to a good student and maximising their abilities.
"Sir, with pleasure Sir!", he snapped as crisp a salute as you could hope for, but undermined it with a self-satisfied grin.
"Dismissed" I replied, sending the wolf out to train the sheep.