disgusting lessons for the last of us. I'm sure that staking and beheading corpses was practical training, but I believed that the main reason we did this was to weed out the trainees who couldn't handle the sheer nastiness of lopping off a human head.
It probably would have been more efficient to do the horrific stuff first, as it really took out anyone with a weak stomach. According to Milo the reason we saved it for this late in the training was that it was hard to get a good supply of medical school leftover bodies. By saving this part until most of the trainees had washed out he had to scrounge up fewer corpses. Milo was a pretty efficient guy.
'Next team. Newcastle and Mead,' Sam said to Holly and Chuck, the next people in line, as Milo used a hose to spray down the floor. Several of the other Newbies had lost their lunch on this exercise. Mingled fluids coagulated around the central drain.
Placing the gore-splattered knife on the table, I stumbled away to wash my hands. They were shaking badly and I felt a strong urge to vomit. Trip was already at the sink scrubbing furiously.
'Dude, that sucked,' he hissed.
'Next time I stake, you chop,' I replied.
'Hey, you called heads. Not my fault.'
'At least it wasn't the Gut Crawl.'
He frowned at me. 'Come on, man, I'm already trying not to barf as it is, don't bring that up.'
The Gut Crawl had consisted of a single Newbie wiggling through a long section of pipe filled with cow entrails. Between the dark, the smell, the heat of the pipe and the horrible squishiness of it all, it was probably the worst experience of my life, up to and including actually dying. Supposedly it had been a test of our ability to deal with disturbing surroundings and still keep our wits. Personally I thought it was Harbinger torturing us. Two of our class had quit rather than do it, and when I had been stuck halfway down that dark pipe, covered in slime and feces and intestines, I had envied them. One other trainee had made it halfway down the pipe, only to suffer a panic attack and lock up. All three of them had been given fat severance checks and sent home.
There were only a dozen of us left. Judging by the standards of our instructors, it was no surprise that MHI was currently short-handed. Harbinger had been very up-front about it though. He was a firm believer that the harder we sweated in practice, the less we would bleed when it was for real.
Holly finished her staking and came over to wash up. She seemed unperturbed by the minor fact that she had just used a hammer to drive a sharpened wooden shaft through what had once been a real live person's rib cage. I had been surprised by our former stripper. Nothing ever seemed to faze her, and she attacked every job with a vengeance. We still had not learned her story, but it was obvious that she well and truly hated the other team, and she was looking forward to exacting some payback. If that required crawling through guts, or chopping off limbs, no problem.
'That wasn't so bad. Chuck got stuck with the head. Poor guy, he brought it on himself though,' she said, flashing us with a wicked grin.
'How?' asked Trip, still washing his hands. I had news for him, no amount of water was going to make us feel clean after what we had just done.
'He always goes rock. Never paper or scissors. Dumb ass.' She examined the old blood staining her nails. 'By the way, I overheard Dorcas talking to Milo. Harbinger's pretty happy with how we're doing. We're going to get the whole weekend off.'
'Awesome,' I exclaimed. We had been training hard for a solid month. I'd be more than ready for a break this weekend. With the prospect of an actual couple of days off, I suddenly didn't mind so much being covered in gore. 'It'll be good to get out of here.'
'No kidding,' she replied, then turned toward Trip who was adding more soap and giving it another try. 'Dude, Trip, you need to hurry up, the rest of us need a turn too.'
'Ugh, you have no idea what kind of bacteria is in something like this,' he said. 'You've got to do a good job sanitizing.'
'Weren't you a science teacher?' Holly asked.
'Chemistry, and I subbed band, and I was the assistant football coach. It was a small school.' Being his roommate, I knew his story well. Having to cave in some students' heads once they had joined the ranks of the undead really tended to mess up a teaching career.
'I figured with all of the frog dissecting you wouldn't be so damn squeamish. Hey, you have some blood or snot or something in your dreads.' As he reached up in disgust, Holly cut in front of him to wash her hands. 'Sucker.'
With a thwacking noise and a flourish Chuck took his cadaver's head off, and Sam bellowed at us the fact that we did not do too bad for a bunch of derelicts, thus ending another day of training.
My breath came in ragged gasps. I had long since passed the point where I could control it. The muscles in my legs were on fire, especially where Huffman's talons had pierced me, and my feet and knees ached with each footfall. Blinking away the sweat in my eyes, I pushed on, trying to once again find that point of oblivion where the pain didn't matter. I hate running. All big men hate running. Sure, I could sprint, but you don't see very many three-hundred-pound marathoners for good reason. Only crazy people run for fun.
The last mile of forest trail was the worst. It had the steepest hills and the most rutted path of the whole trek. But I took comfort as I made my way up the red dirt road, as we were almost done for the day. It had started just after dawn, with hours of physical training, tactics, armed and unarmed combat practice, monster class, and now the sun was down and we were limping in from a six-mile run from hell. Finally the trees thinned, and I even managed to smile as we passed the kudzu-covered chain link fence to enter the compound. Most of the Newbies had already arrived and were crashing out on the available benches or stretching on the grass. The good runners like Trip, Lee, and Mead looked almost relaxed and refreshed from the little jaunt. Trip's good natured thumbs-up made me want to beat him to death.
'About time, Pitt,' Grant Jefferson shouted. He glanced at his stopwatch in disgust. 'Pathetic. Just pathetic.' He had led the run and had made most of the rest of us look bad. Of course, some of us came out looking worse than others. One of the other Newbies stumbled off to the side to puke. Grant just smirked. 'All right. We're done for now. Stretch out tonight, because we're doing this twice tomorrow.' Everyone groaned.
I sat on one of the empty benches and put my head in my hands. I knew that I was supposed to walk around and gradually let my heart rate subside to avoid muscle soreness, but man, I just needed a break. I excelled at everything physical except for this. Gradually my panting turned to normal breathing, and my heart was no longer pounding away. The other Newbies began to wander off toward the barracks for some much-needed sleep. I stayed on the bench to enjoy the cool twilight.
'Hi.' A lovely voice spoke from behind me. 'Mind if I have a seat?' It was Julie.
'No. Yes. I mean, of course,' I stammered, sliding over so she could fit. She dropped down next to me with a smile. She was wearing shorts and looked like she had been working out. I tried not to stare at her well-muscled legs. I was suddenly very self-conscious about my sweat-soaked T-shirt. I bet I stunk.
'So how's everything going?' she asked.
'Fine, I'm doing okay. Except for that.' I jerked my thumb toward the cross-country track. 'That sucks.'
She laughed, hopefully with me, and not at me. 'I know it. I hate it too. Not all of us are like Grant.' She pointed across the field. A lone figure stood a hundred yards away, throwing punches at invisible foes under the lights of the obstacle course.
Grant Jefferson had stuck around after the Newbies had left. He had stripped off his shirt and was practicing what appeared to be some extremely difficult martial exercises. I hated to admit it, but the man was a near-perfect physical specimen. If monster hunting didn't work out for him, I was sure he could get a gig as an underwear model.
'So… how long have you guys been dating?' I asked, trying not to sound jealous. I don't know if I succeeded.
'A couple months,' she answered as she looked at me suspiciously. 'Why?'
'Oh… I don't know. He just seems a little…'
'Arrogant?'
I paused, not quite sure how to answer that. 'Uh, yeah, I guess. He just doesn't strike me as your type is all.'
