The Wild Ones, page 4
Tobias collapsed to the floor gripping his groin and groaning in agony.
“What the hell was that?” Rob asked.
“You said to think fast. I did.”
“No, you were meant to use the arm blocks I taught you.”
“No offense, Rob, but I hardly think that’s going to work on three Zs when they’re trying to take a chunk out of my neck. I used my longest limb to keep them at bay.”
“Are you the martial arts expert?” Rob asked.
I shrugged. “No.”
“Have you ever done MMA?”
“Actually, yeah.”
“Professionally?” he spat back.
“Well, I mean I’ve played the UFC on the PS4.”
Jamal covered up a chuckle with a cough.
Rob shook his head as he told everyone to regroup in the middle. Over the course of the next hour, the class didn’t get much better. The expression on Rob’s face spoke volumes. I figured it was the fact that I’d raised a valid point, which was you don’t attempt to wrestle someone when a swift kick to the nuts or a bullet to the head would suffice.
Next up was field tactics. This was one activity I was not looking forward to. Sean Telle was in a clearing of the forest tapping his watch as we came jogging in.
“You’re thirty seconds late. Do you know what that means?”
We all looked dumbfounded. I mean, was the guy’s watch even correct? I looked at mine and then back at him as he walked right up to me and got in my face. “Thirty seconds late. Thirty seconds early. It means the difference between you living and dying but you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
He seemed to thrive on belittling people.
Sean moved down to Jamal and then stepped back. Okay, this guy was taking things a little too seriously. His mouth looked like a puckered-up cat’s ass as he scowled at us.
“Right, get in line.”
Up close I could see the gnarly cut. A nice purple bruise had already made its way to the surface of the lip. It was swollen and made him look as if he’d just suffered a stroke. That had to hurt.
“Okay, can anyone tell me what is the biggest downfall humans would have in a Z apocalypse?”
The others might have had ideas but none of them said anything.
“It’s being too damn noisy. What I’m going to teach you about is the art of stealth, evasion, communicating with each other and coordinating a team when you need to remain quiet in the field. Now imagine for a second you are about to head into a town where at any turn you could be faced with a potential threat. How do you communicate?”
When no one said anything he grabbed Eli and told him to go about ten yards away.
“Right, you have been scouting out the way ahead, you now need to tell the others it’s all clear. How do you do it?”
Eli cleared his throat. “Hey guys, over here.”
“No! No, no,” Sean said marching over to him. “You are now dead and so is your entire team. Do you know what you did wrong?”
He shrugged. Sean shook his head and turned back to everyone else. “Does anyone want to help him out?”
Tobias stuck his hand up.
“Except Tobias. How about you — Scott?”
“He used words.”
“And?”
“He made a noise.”
“And?”
“He waved?”
“And?”
I had a feeling it didn’t matter what I said, he was going to repeat the same damn thing, so I shrugged. Wrong answer. He charged over with a look of glee in his eye. “Is everyone in the Evans family as stupid as you are? Actually, don’t answer that. That’s already been established.”
He turned back towards everyone and I spoke up. “What did you say?”
Sean glanced over his shoulder and smirked. “Tactical hand signals. You are going to need to learn them if you want to survive out there.” He raised his hand and went through a process of showing multiple signals, starting with the basics. “And this one means cover me.” He put a finger up and twirled it around. “Anyone care to tell me what this is?”
“Regroup,” I added trying to vindicate myself.
“Oh, so you do know something.”
The next hour was spent stalking around the forest, ducking down and using different hand signals to communicate. It all seemed a bit retarded really being as we would never use the skills and the chance of anyone remembering all the hand signals was next to none. Once he’d pissed us off enough with a bunch of asinine hand signals he whipped out a map and a compass.
“Okay, being as Evans here seemed to show the most promise, how about you lead the group back to camp? Now camp is north of here, so step forward and lead us out.”
I trudged over and went to take the map and compass and he pulled his hand back. “Oh, I didn’t say you were going to use that.”
“Then how do you expect me to find my way out of here?”
Tobias’s hand shot up and Sean waved him off. “No, Tobias, he’s not getting anyone’s help.” I glared at him. Whatever beef he had with Nick he was taking it out on me. It was pretty obvious. He seemed to enjoy making people look like idiots.
“Come on, tell us how you’re going to lead us out of here.”
I shrugged. I had no clue which was the way out. He’d led us so deep in the forest it didn’t matter which way I turned, it all looked the same. There was no sound of the lake’s water to indicate where we were, just birds squawking and the odd tree frog. We stood there for ten agonizing minutes in the afternoon sun before Sean stepped forward.
“What’s that in the sky?”
He pointed up towards the sun.
“And?” I asked.
“Well, did no one ever show you which way is north using the sun?” He waited for a reply. Instead of just telling me, he wanted me to stew. I glanced at Alexa and her chin dropped. They all looked a little frustrated by Sean’s antics, even Tobias who was eager to help if only to prove that he knew more about surviving than anyone else.
“The earth rotates eastward, and that’s why the sun rises in the east and makes its way west. With that knowledge, what else do you need?”
“Nothing.” I looked up towards the sun and then pointed in the direction of what I believed was north.
“And what if you’re wrong? Huh? It could mean hours of wandering around and your team starving. No, go find me a stick around three feet long and another about three and a half feet.”
I turned and walked a few feet away and rooted around for some sticks. I had to break them until I had the right length. I returned and handed them over. He walked into a clearing and stuck the three-foot stick in the ground.
“Tobias, go find me five smaller sticks.”
Tobias gathered a few more together, about the size of his index fingers.
“Now, you see the shadow coming off this three-foot stick?” Sean stuck one of the tiny sticks into the ground at the end of the shadow. “That’s our first marker and because we know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that first marker is our west point. Now what we do is wait ten minutes and once the shadow shifts, do exactly the same thing again and mark it off, and the last smaller stick will be our east point. And I want you to keep doing this every ten minutes until you have four or five of these smaller markers in place. Also remember that the clearing that you do this in should be nice and flat. You attempt to do this in an area where there are a lot of ripples on the ground and the shadow is going to be messed up.”
He then took the larger three-and-a-half-foot stick from me and placed it along the edge of the smaller sticks. In the dirt he marked off west on one end and east on the other. “Okay, now we lay another stick across the larger stick and that is going to give us north and south, roughly.”
Once he had it all set up, and he pointed to where north was, it pretty much matched up with where I’d pointed.
Sean got down on his knees, then lifted his head to us. “See. That’s north.”
“Like I said, that way,” I pointed and oh, the look of fury in his eyes. Sean moved towards me and grabbed me by the collar.
“You know you’re a lot like your brother. Mouthy. Perhaps I should—”
He was just about to say something when Joe Wheeler came bursting out of the trees, out of breath. “Sean. Sean! You need to come quick. We’ve got a problem.”
Outbreak
Ivy Middleton, aka the Healer, looked terrible, but that could have been from the lunch. She was doubled over and clutching her stomach and shivering. Ivy was about Nick's age. She was short, athletic and only a few hours ago had been the perfect picture of health. There was a caring look to her. Her hair was curly, and she was still wearing her dark instructor clothes. Her skin was now a pasty white and beads of sweat had formed on her brow. It was red around her eyes and there were several kids from her group hovering nearby. One of them was in the process of placing a blanket over her when we all came rushing over. Sean was the first in, but he stepped back at the sight of her. He began talking to Joe about what to do. She wasn’t the only one that looked awful. One of the teens, a boy who was rail thin, was clutching his stomach and moaning. “It hurts. Oh God, it hurts so bad.”
His eyes were bloodshot and one of the other campers touched his head and said that he was burning up. “We need to get him to the hospital.”
“Best of luck, the closest is one and a half hours away,” someone else replied.
“What is it, food poisoning?” Eli asked.
“If it was, we would have got it, numbnuts,” Tobias said.
“Looks like flu to me,” Jamal said.
I got a little closer to hear what Sean was saying. “I don't understand. Are you saying she was fine when she left to go see Angela?”
“Yeah,” Joe replied.
He had his arms folded and one hand on his chin “So it wasn’t the food?”
“Sean, she didn’t stay for lunch. Ivy said she was going to head over to Angela’s home to check in on her,” Joe said looking concerned. “Apparently she’s been real sick.”
“And the other?”
“The kid went with her.”
“Great, now we have to explain this to his parents. Tom is gonna go mad.” Sean cast his eyes over the crowd. “Has anyone phoned him yet?”
“I tried but I couldn’t get any response. He’s probably got it shut off.”
“Alright, let’s call an ambulance.”
Sean brought a hand up to his forehead and looked back at us. “You can all go to your next activity. Nothing to see here!”
Eli stepped forward. “But what have we got next?”
“Didn’t you get an agenda?” he spat back with venom.
Alexa grabbed a hold of Eli and pulled him away. “I have one.”
As we walked off casting glances over our shoulders, I had to ask. “Who’s Angela?”
“Tactical yoga instructor. You remember, Brooke said she was at home ill. She doesn’t live far from here,” Jamal replied. “Ivy must have gone over to see if she could help.”
“She lives three streets over from me,” Alexa said.
The next two activities on the list for the day were wilderness survival and weapons. The campsite had been set up with different signposts that pointed in the direction of where activities would take place. We followed a trail for wilderness survival and ventured back into the heart of the forest. When we made our way to Adam, aka the Bushmaster, he was sitting on a log near a creek with his boots and socks off. He was swigging from a small Budweiser can and had a joint in the other hand. Upon hearing us approach he tossed the can into the creek, dropped the joint on his crotch and stumbled as he tried to get his socks and boots on.
“Well look at that. Doesn’t time fly,” he said as his face went a deep shade of red. “I didn’t think the next group was coming for another half an hour.”
Jamal stifled a laugh and Ryland scooped up the joint to take a hit on it before Adam saw.
“Schedule got shifted ahead because Sean had to go deal with Ivy. She’s ill.”
“Oh really?” he muttered breathing heavy as he tried to get his oversized foot back into the boot. “That’s too bad. Too bad,” he repeated until he rose and breathed out hard. I figured a man like him would be one of the first to die in an apocalypse. Here he was teaching about surviving in the wilderness and yet he looked like he couldn’t run half a mile without curling over and having an asthma attack.
“So I guess we will press on with the class then. Right,” he said trying to act professional but failing miserably. “Okay, there are three things you need to know before we get started, if you don’t remember anything about what I teach you, and it’s very possible you won’t, remember these three things.” He counted them off with his fingers. “You can go three weeks without food, three days without water but only three hours without shelter in a harsh environment. Now I’ll repeat that again.” And he did, four more times until he had us repeating it verbatim. “So it’s critical that if you are stuck in the wilderness or you are forced to live out here, you need to get that shelter built immediately as you never know when the weather is going to turn nasty. So let’s do that. Follow me.”
He guided us a little farther into the forest.
“Now there are all types of shelters you can build. In fact, I could reel off fifteen but it would only confuse the heck out of you, so that’s why we are going to look at building one a day over the next fourteen days. Today we are going to focus on the most basic called the lean-to. This is by far the simplest and quickest shelter to assemble so that’s why I’m going to show you this first. All it requires is some poles, branches, tarp and brush. You are going to heap leaves, grass or other types of underbrush on top to provide insulation and protection from the elements. Now bear in mind that this shelter really doesn’t hold the heat in well so if you get a sudden change in wind or rain, it’s no longer going to shelter you as it’s a one-sided design. So you might be asking yourself, Adam, why on earth would you show us that? Because here’s the thing about surviving, guys, sometimes you don’t have the luxury of time or building material available to you. When you’re in a crunch and you just need to deflect wind or rain, this works.”
He then began looking around on the ground for a few minutes before returning with a branch that was about five inches thick. “Okay, so the first step is to find your backbone. This needs to be fastened between two upright trees. Ideally if you can find two trees that are close together you can just lay one end on either side. But chances are you will need to find some vine for tying it to a tree if you don’t have any rope on you. Remember, work with what Mother Nature provides. Everything you need is out here, you just need to use your head and look for it. Sometimes you will need to take an axe or knife to a branch to cut off limbs so you can get your straight branches. Just do whatever you need to. Now let me show you.”
Over the course of the next fifteen minutes he constructed a lean-to shelter using nothing more than branches leaned up against the one that was fastened between trees. Then he used foliage like leaves and moss to fill in the gaps. Sure it wasn’t ideal but it would work in a bind.
Once he had taken us through that, he moved on to showing us different types of wild edible plants that were good to consume and those that were poisonous.
“Now I don’t expect you to remember this. For some of you this is the first time you have ever been taught this,” he said looking at me, “and for others it’s the second and then of course,” he looked at Tobias and smiled. Tobias puffed out his chest as if he was about to be awarded some medal.
I wouldn’t have minded, but he used every chance to flaunt it. “You’re not doing it right. This is how you do it,” he would say even if Adam came by and corrected him. It didn’t matter. He still thought he knew better.
“There is so much out here that you can live on and I could spend an entire year showing you different varieties of plants but for now I’m only going to focus on what is easy to identify and easy to find. Okay, so follow me.”
Despite my disdain for being there, I would have been lying to say that I wasn’t getting something out of this. Even if an apocalypse never happened, there were things that Adam was teaching us that could be applied in many scenarios.
“I know it might seem daunting right now but in time learning to survive will become second nature,” Adam said. “Over the next fourteen days we will go through compiling a bug-out bag, the kind of tools that you want to have and things you can do with them, along with how to use rope, webbing and several ways to make it work to your advantage. I’ll cover containers and cooking tools, ways to stay dry, and how to start a fire, then we will move on to navigation, trees, and trapping and processing game.”
“Can you show us how to start a fire?” Eli asked.
“You are jumping ahead. But I like to see someone who is eager.”
Tobias gave Eli a slap around the back of the head when Adam turned away. I don’t know what the hell his problem was, but he certainly didn’t like anyone stealing attention away from him.
“I won’t go into creating the fire today but I will mention a few things to bear in mind if you need to start one. There are a number of ways. Lighters, ferrocerium rods, a magnification lens, knife and axe blades, friction sticks and charring tins. Now usually I wouldn’t do this but I’m interested to see what you’ve remembered. Tobias, do you want to take us through a few of these?”
Tobias shuffled to the front of the line while we were following Adam through the forest. “Sure thing. If you are going to use a lighter, carry at least three: one for your pocket, another for your belt pouch and the last one for your main pack. It should only take five seconds to ignite tinder… and…”
He continued to rattle on, going through each of the different methods Adam would eventually show us.
