Tap Sapiens, page 4
part #1 of Reign of Sapiens' Evil Series
In that way, even the volatile relationship of pushing and pulling that Brandi had been developing with Cate and the other girls around her, was meant to change. The turning point was the rivalry between both of them. They were analogous to that of the insides of a volcano. If two flows of fiery hot lavas of different compositions gushing towards the surface, then the eruption was guaranteed to generate unpredictable changes and possibly, irreversible effects as well.
The outburst came in slow spurs. For example, the morning runs were getting longer, Brandi and Cate fighting for the lead, pushing each other to their limits and to the ground if necessary. Being the shorter one, Brandi was used to ending up in the mud as Cate took the lead. The other exercises were getting more complex and sabotage was a temptation they didn’t have the strength to resist. Brandi found her radio without batteries, her first aid kit empty and her climbing rope irreversibly tangled. Bruises were all over, laughs were constant, bitter remarks were part of their routine and being called out was something to be expected in that instance.
“One more! One more of you Gomers, goes down because of the other and I’ll personally throw you both Turtle-Heads out!” that was the final sentence of a long speech spoken by Colonel Evans.
He was one of the more respected figures at the fort. His eyes were cold and his manners were strong and precise. At that moment, he had Brandi and Cate punished under the rain, the meanest storm since they had arrived while standing and holding their salutes firmly. Brandi could picture his face, red with anger, veins popping out with all his shouts. Beside her, Cate visualized the man stoic and heartless, his eyes void of emotion and the words uttered like violent thunder from his lips in an effortless manner. It was all imagination, though; the rain was falling down so heavily that they couldn’t actually make out his features.
“Private Williams, at ease. Back to your quarters, Blue Falcon.” he spoke with finality.
With Cate gone and once Brandi stood freezing for another second, he got closer to her and lowered his voice, even though they were completely alone and the rain was sure to drown any sound. In fact, Brandi would wonder a long time if she had heard him correctly.
“You’re a ballsy one, soldier. I’ll give you that but be smart and stay in your lane as long as possible.” Colonel Evans said and after a pause, he raised his voice again and moved a step back.
“Private Perry, at ease. Back to your quarters.”
The day, tiresome and hanging heavy on Brandi’s shoulder, was far from over. When she was rounding the building where her dorm was, Brandi was caught by the shoulders and pushed to the wall. It wasn’t totally done by brute force but she didn’t expect it anyways. She was just so tired that it took the breath away from her and powerless even to retaliate. Even so, thanks to a slight edge of the roof, she was finally safe from the torrential rain and able to notice the wicked smile of Cate right in front of her, still pressing her against the wall and beside her, the clueless stares of Abby and Mary.
“Now, this is taking things too far. Your obsession with me is getting a little out of hand …” Brandi said with dullness in her voice.
She did somewhat whisper but the downpour was still loud, so perhaps Cate simply decided to ignore her.
“Your little games are either coming to an end or you’re going to stop playing alone, Perry. Humor me, please! I pretty much snigger whenever the values, honor or anything about the military is brought up by you. I’m no longer eating up your act of the perfect little soldier, not when you keep sneaking out every chance you get. Whatever …” Cate’s hostility got interrupted by Brandi.
“You don’t get to grill me, Williams!” she pushed Cate’s hands away from her shoulder and being feisty straight off to stand up to her.
“Just stay out of my way! Whatever I’m doing and why I’m doing it are none of your concern, alright? It doesn’t matter why I’m here. Why are you here? Why is anybody even here anyways?” Brandi questioned Cate, the blonde gave her a warning glare; she was obviously not going to answer.
A brief moment passed and Brandi’s words were carried away by the noise of the storm. While the questions were still lingering in their minds, Mary spoke.
“I’m here because it’s safe, I guess?” Mary said and although her answer was accompanied by a shrug, there was vehemence in her words that she simply couldn’t downplay.
”You join the military, there’s a roof, there’s food, there’s a ladder actually possible to climb, there’s somewhere to belong and things to achieve. Perhaps, I could work in the Intelligence if I stay here long enough, I suppose.” she added, with no time was there to ponder the desperate past that could hinder the first words rising up in her throat or the defensive nonchalance that coated the last sentence.
Abby began talking next, with eyes fixed on the floor and a spell of heaviness that chilled them all to their bones, so unlike her, only being consistent with her favorite hand gestures.
“I’ve been a coward. I’ve run away from places where I was needed the most and I didn’t fight when I should have. I’m not sure where this path may lead to but I thought hey, at least here I’ll learn how to fight.” Abby looked up with a timid smile and for the first time since Brandi had met her, she realized that the depth of her lovely brown eyes was not of warmth but carried a sense of regret alongside swirls of secrets that remained locked away.
“And you think I was going to let you get ahead of me?” Cate was trying to get on Brandi’s nerves and hoping to daunt her as much as she could.
“Alright, I just wanted to wear a uniform … What? I bet I’ll look my best when I put on one of those fancy officer’s suits.” Cate playfully used her right hand to comb her wild blonde hair that was sort of damp from the rain. Even so, it looked remarkable, something awe-inspiring. Although she made the three other women all smile, still she owed them a real answer.
“Look, Perry. We’ve all seen, experienced some darkness out there. I know you have, or else you would’ve arrived here with a full stomach and not looking as hungry as the rest of us. I got tired of getting into trouble out there, it’s not pretty but I just couldn’t care less. It teaches me how to be gutsy while still being legal to some extent. Frankly, it is the only option for people like us to …”
“Survive.”
It was the word the four of them spoke together. It was out in the open, now it was Brandi’s turn. She started smiling and guiding the other three towards the entry.
“That’s nice and all, Williams but I have a new word for you. Defiance. I highly recommend it. It’s just not enough to be aware of the darkness; you have to wonder, to question, to fight. Have you ever tried it?” Brandi made a special emphasis on the word “fight” while looking back at the others. Their silence was enough to let her continue.
“Well, follow my lead.”
She was a mess, strands of hair oddly sticking to her face, raindrops still racing down her cheeks and her uniform in chaos. Perhaps those were the reasons that in the eyes of her company, she resembled the reincarnation of an ancient heroine, who had lost a legendary war and now back to lead once more. However, there was nothing easy about the mythological position.
“Hold on there. I’ve the lead here. This is my group. You’re just a nuisance that has a small fraction of my attention right now.” Cate said when she walked beside Brandi and put a hand on her shoulder while squeezing with an unnecessary pressure, then simply walked away.
Abby followed behind, leaving only a big smile and waving at Brandi, who was left massaging her own shoulder.
“Why does everybody say I look hungry?” she wondered out loud.
“Because you do. We’re all famished, Brandi. That’s the easy part to figure out but you have something different, a hunger for something else. Be careful with those eyes, you’re showing too much. Don’t let everybody else see what you’re after.” Mary explained technically but her speech barely registered in Brandi’s mind. Mary just had that way with words, dropping too much information right away and then, moving on.
“We have your back; it’s going to be great. Stay with us, it’s the smart thing to do.”
Mary patted Brandi’s back when she walked past. Brandi was left confused, lost in revelations, whispered counsels, unexpected alliances and the bitter taste of a past tainted by the shadows of the present.
♠ ♥ ♣ ♦
After two endless days of cruel, heartless rain, the first rays of sunshine were delicious in ways that a six-year-old girl was unable to put into words. Brandi was small and fragile but she was an unstoppable little girl, that was what the adults used to call her. She loved running under the weak sunrays among the dark clouds and through deep, dark puddles on the ground. Her mother, sick since the rain had begun, couldn’t go after her. Her father, working an inhumane amount of hours just to bring them clean water and canned food in order to get them through the week, was nowhere to be seen. Later, Brandi rushed through the neighboring houses, passing by a growing number of abandoned ones and gathering kids around her age from the rest.
The children followed her lead, jumping in the puddles with arms stretched widely, innocently receiving the sun like a friend – the upcoming droughts of the summer, not even a ghost in their young heads. For whole days, the kids would follow her around. If they got home too tired, they would be fast asleep without dinner and that was the best-case scenario for everybody. They loved Brandi’s enthusiasm, her initiative, the way she held all their hands without distinction and smiled always, embracing their ignorance of the world with childlike excitement.
Here and there, one of the adults would shout down the street and the kids would dash into any house because that was what they were used to. Many of them would never find out any of the dangers the adults were trying to keep them from, but most of them wouldn’t get to turn twenty years old. There were the hunger, the illnesses, the unsanitary homes and the pain of growing up dying, some kids would just mix that with the temptation of giving up.
Brandi was tired of losing friends, not knowing where they had gone. She started paying attention to details, curious and anxious of one day, leaving her neighborhood of small, broken homes and never returning. While growing up, many times she would regret having learned to observe those details. It began with changes in the weather and interest in tiny insects. Next, she analyzed the routines of each one around her. Later on, Brandi started noticing the people with big, round bodies that never got close to her house while she observed them from a distance. Their otherness was what made her begin to wonder, to question things. Was she expecting one day, ready to take on the world as it was?
CHAPTER
4
“I came here to risk it all.”
A BBY’S TIMID VOICE WAVERED as she held back tears. She was holding an ice pack to her right eye which looked bruised and was starting to acquire diverse shades of purple.
“It’s fine, you know what they say … FTA, right?”
“Well, I have a few ideas of what I want to do to that cocksure, dumb Brown Hat.” Cate replied.
The blonde woman’s tone vacillated between untamable rage against the injustice she had just witnessed and the irrepressible tenderness that the other woman had been inspiring her. Earlier that day, clumsy as usual, Abby managed to use her – luckily unloaded – handgun to hit the Drill Sergeant on her head. The tall and muscular woman, that Brandi had remembered from her registration day, reacted instinctively and immediately threw a punch at Abby’s face.
“Calm down, Friendly Fire. It was an accident, right?” Mary intervened.
While Abby was resting on her bed, her friends were surrounding her with genuine concern in their eyes. Actually, every girl that shared the dormitory had stopped by to ask about Abby because she really was the friendliest girl at the entire fort. It was well appreciated and kindly reciprocated.
“Accident? Maybe. But have you seen that woman? Clearly, she has something against Abby. I say she’s just jealous of our Abby being an absolute angel while she’s a pure devil. She’s been making your life a living hell since the first day, hasn’t she, honey?” Brandi addressed Abby, who with all the attention only ended up allowing the tears to overflow as she snuggled close to Cate.
“We’re not going to let her get away with this, right?”
For a few seconds, Brandi’s words received only silence. She was a gritty spark and it seemed that she had finally found a group to set them on fire. Abby’s cries quieted although her head remained comfortably buried in Cate’s torso. Mary had a peculiar smile on her face, it was knowing and mischievous. Cate, on the other hand, was staring at Brandi as if she wanted to rip her head off but Brandi wasn’t worried because that anger wasn’t really aimed at her.
“You will follow my lead, now. Try not to let me kill her, okay?” Cate asserted with finality.
The four women reached an accord. Every time their squad was put under the charge of the Sergeant that had Abby targeted. All their shoulders were tense, waiting for a moment to react, waiting for Cate’s signal. The impatience, of course, could only result in things getting out of hand.
“Are you even listening to me, shitbird?!” the Sergeant was yelling at an uncomfortably close distance to Abby’s face.
“You’re not getting anything right! Go down and beat your face!”
It was their last practice of the day, everybody was tired and on edge. Abby was shaking and frustrated at herself for being unable to complete the obstacle course, not without falling at least once. Her body was fatigued and when she was going down to do the push-ups as ordered after taking the derogatory remarks and ruthless speech, she ended up again being hurled to the ground. This time though, it was the Sergeant who pushed her deliberately. The smug smile on the face of the senior soldier lasted barely few seconds that it took Cate to jump on her and bring them both to the ground.
The entire group lost control then. Fellow military officers rushed towards the scene when it was obvious that they were restraining Cate just so the other Sergeants could hit her, then Brandi and Mary decided to join in the brawl. It was all a clash of fists and kicks along with the pandemonium of the onlookers until a heavy body fell to the ground, out cold. The odious Sergeant had blood running from her nose. Abby was staring at her with wide eyes and her bruised fists still impossibly tight.
♠ ♥ ♣ ♦
As if in a déjà vu, Brandi was again staring at the furious face of Colonel Evans as he finished a tedious speech that incredibly so, was good news while the four women had to stand still in silence and hold their salutes for half an hour. The women were mostly relieved to hear that the despicable Sergeant was getting well in the infirmary and they weren’t going to be kicked out of the army.
“Dishonor, insolence, disgrace! Forget about your bunks tonight, Gomers. Middle of the running track, in your fart sacks, until tomorrow!” Colonel Evans was really fuming over their mutiny.
Their brains struggled to comprehend the harsh punishment for a second. But after an hour later, when they were lying on their backs inside the sleeping bags on the rough ground, it became clear.
“I’m sorry.” Abby whispered.
“I’m not! That was awesome. Though, this military pecking order is sure tougher than it seems. It doesn’t look good.” Mary replied in a contemplative tone, coating the last sentence.
Brandi’s heart sped up with the feel of recognizing a hint of discontent that she had been experiencing in the expression of her friend’s words.
“Actually, I bet it’s even worse than it seems. A lot of things around here are. In fact, I could show you a few things …”
“Do you really want to get us in even more troubles, Perry? Have you realized that if it were to rain tonight, we’ll most likely drown here?” Cate retorted though she couldn’t hide certain amusement in her voice.
“What? Are you scared now? You didn’t enjoy the fight today?”
Brandi’s teasing tone wasn’t well received, however. In an instant, Cate was halfway through the distance from her sleeping bag to Brandi’s and ready to fight again. She was only stopped by the pain in her ribs from the earlier fight and of course, by Abby who had thrown herself on top of the tall blonde to avoid more needless confrontations. The result was hysterical but unlike Brandi, Mary didn’t contain her laughter.
“Alright, let’s see what you have up your sleeve, Brandi. But I say first, we teach baby face here how to fight.”
“Excuse me? I was the one who knocked out an officer, mind you.”
Abby defied Mary and effortlessly defused the tension so that the four women could settle down comfortably for the rest of the night save Cate who would toss pebbles randomly at Brandi just for the sake of it.
♠ ♥ ♣ ♦
Mary’s suggestion blossomed into a new, interesting dynamic for the four of them. Every breathing minute of free time they had, was transformed into private hand-to-hand combat practice. The first few days were absolutely worn out as they were obviously overworking their bodies while being affected by emotional strain. Letting off steam during physical fights was apparently not enough to quell the ferocious rivalry between Brandi and Cate. If anything, their competitiveness was more pronounced than ever. Brandi would find herself frustrated by the fact that Cate was evidently taller, stronger and in more control of her own body. In the event of Brandi prevailing over Cate, the latter would lose her mind and soldier on with no regards to rules and safety measures as the fight progressed.
