The Newcommers

Three new guys get a tour around the specialized school for shooters.

After asking some more details about accommodation and studying hours, the three of them were told everything they wanted to know for now. Well, they were actually asked to leave, since Professor received an important call and had to answer so they had no choice. After leaving they went straight to the dorms; as all of them had a great sense of direction it wasn’t hard to locate the briefly showed building. They found the designated room quite easily since it was the only room section on the top floor. Behind the door with the number they found other four doors just like the headmaster had told. They each had a number: 666, 667, 668 and 669. There was also one more door which was leading to the bathroom.

“Well, for now let’s put our stuff and meet in my room five minutes from now,” said Zack and entered the room No.669.

Alex had No.667 and Edward No.668.

After the five minutes had passed, like Zack said, they gathered in his room. The room was small and accommodated only the necessary utilities one bed, one table with a chair, a shelve for books and a wardrobe. Enough for a student. Zack was leaning on the wardrobe while Alex and Edward were sitting on his bed.

“So, what do you think?” Zack inquired nonchalantly.

“I don’t know, man. It all seems like some fresh bullshit. I mean, what permissions? And why the hell would anyone found this kind of school in the first place? That’s what military is for.”

“Most of the graduates from “Archer” are accepted more frequently and rise quicker than those who had no such training,” said Alex. “The same is with police force and other institutions. Some of the graduates are well known body guards of public authorities.”

“Someone forgot to do their homework…”

“Shut up!” Edward flared.

“Right, back to the point. You think this whole mess is really from here? I kind of think it’s all good in here. No signs of illegal business going on.”

“How can you be so sure? I haven’t seen anyone yet, except those two and that Packu guy.”

“Chill, Edward. Just observe for now. And choose different things to learn. We need to check everything. I’ll be taking sniper rifles.”

“I’ll take knives and shotguns,” said Edward. “You take hand guns.”

Alex nodded.

“Hey, you gonna be all right on your own?” Edward inspected the other boy’s face with intensity of a parent.

“Yes. Don’t worry. I am not a child, Edward,” Alex answered calmly, but his hands were trembling slightly.

After a further discussion of what is the course of action they heard a knock on the door and all three of them froze in the spot. Zack then cautiously opened the door to reveal the strange girl that walked them around.

“I was told to tell you it’s time to eat. If you miss it, you won’t be getting any later.”

“Ah, yeah, thanks,” Zack replied and closed the door. “She was here. And the room 666 door was open, which means she’s our neighbor.”

All three men felt tension of a danger creeping behind them, but they tried to ignore it and keep it as if it’s a minor difficulty.

Without waiting long they left for the dining hall. They took the trays with already prepared food and sat down after finding a free table. Now they saw at least fifty or so men sitting at the tables eating the food and chatting lively with each other. Some of them were admiring their guns or boasting about the scores of the training. But every one of them, without exception, carried some kind of weapon �" be it a simple dagger, or a regular hand gun, all of them were armed.

The three of them, however, instead being intimidated by the weapons they were astounded by the number of students. None of them expected it to be so high. And as the girl said, the range of age went from as low as barely out of adolescence and to maturity of max forty years.

“She is not here,” Alex whispered.

“What? Speak louder, will you?” Edward was annoyed.

“Max is not here.”

“Now that you mention it…” Zack looked around. “Maybe she’s done already?”

After they had their meal they went to the administration office and registered their preferred subjects. Then they were given permission to pick up a gun from the stock and given detailed explanation on how to care for them and how to maintain their good functionality and quality.

***

Alex was not able to sleep. He kept having the same nightmare over and over for the last eleven years and now the same rewinding tragedy was disturbing his night at this unfamiliar place. On top of that, he was afraid of the dark and this room had no night light, not even the moon helped since it was heavily clouded with a certain prospect of heavy snow falling.

The boy couldn’t take it anymore so he kicked off his comforter and sat up in his bed trying to calm his speeding heart. He gripped his sweatpants and his muscles tensed up. He got startled by a loud thud that reminded of the sound of closing door. His overdriven nerves were destroyed and a single tear betraying his strength rolled down his face leaving a trace right down to the prominent pale collarbone.

After a minute of complete silence he heard faint thuds behind the right wall. It was coming from the room No.666. The short thudding sounds made him even more nervous and he started to pace forth and back, to no avail to keep his emotions at bay. It did not help him. After a while he heard the girl swearing in the most horrible way he ever heard a girl swear. Alex being weak to this kind of tension left his room and knocked on Edward’s door. No one answered. He knocked again. This time he heard a loud groan as the man left his warm and cozy bed.

“The hell?” he grumbled opening the door.

He saw Alex trembling, nervously clenching his arms into his sweats and losing his composure so he let his steam down and pulled the boy into his room.

“Whatever. It’s narrow so it’ll be cramped. Can you deal with it?”

“Can you?”

“God damn it. Just get in the damned bed.”

It seemed that Alex felt better while sleeping next to someone, even more so on nights like these. Edward, for an outsider, might have been a cold and uncaring person, hot-headed and inpatient, but to this slender boy with trembling shoulders and thudding heart he was so kind, and consoling, he seemed like a completely different person.

On the other side of the wall, where Alex heard unnerving sounds coming off, there was a person having her own difficulties.

“Why won’t these fit? I can’t believe this. That idiotic c**k waffle had to do that. It was not enough, I should have gone a bit more out…” Max was rambling to herself while punching a wall in her room. This was the sound that made Alex anxious. “Well, whatever, as long as I did well. Good night to me.”

The patch of the wall where her fist collided with paint had red stains smeared into the cracks of falling off paint. The girl herself ignored the bleeding of her knuckles and snuggled under her cold blanket. She shivered slightly but did not move to close the ajar window or pick up the quilt of the floor �" it was useless anyways, all tattered and torn apart.

The next morning after they all ate breakfast, students gathered at the main building where the theory classes were held. Our three newcomers were shocked to find out that they had to be in the same auditorium as the other students. They thought at first that they made the wrong place, but everything was cleared out when a man stood in front of them and started talking. The man was about forty years old, had a bit of grey mixed with the thick brown hair. He wore a suit and had a small case which he placed on top of a small table on the low stage.

The man’s name was Thomas Brown, and he was a man to talk about the way how to handle guns. A lot of men in the room looked bored, but it seemed that they had no other choice but to stay. So the man started to talk about today’s business. It was basic theory about how to hold the fire arm, how to load different types of guns and other things like that. Then he talked a bit about knives, the types and sizes and ways of handling them.

After about forty five minutes the door to the auditorium slammed open and Max barged in. She had a large leather bag with her and the same wide smile on her face. Her lose shoulder-length hair looked messy and her clothes were untidy as well as her shoe laces were untied.

“Sorry, I overslept,” she exclaimed and placed the bag near the man who now looked furious.

“I have the stuff, where do I begin?”

“Well, then, we can start with knives,” Mr. Brown said to the students.

Max opened the bag and took out a set of various knives. She was demonstrating the way of holding them and the stance while throwing. At that time Mr. Brown was talking about them and explaining. The same was done with other guns. Max knew her way to handle shotguns, sniper rifles, hand guns, other kind of firepower. After the demonstration, the man asked her to dismantle every one of them and she did. It took her about four minutes to dismantle all of them.

While Thomas Brown was talking about important parts of fire arms, the girl was putting them back together without any difficulty. Her short fingers were moving fast and precise. All the time that honest smile as if a child given a candy never left her face. Only when the man asked her to load the guns with bullets she lost the smile for a short while. Then her brows got so close to each other that it looked like one line. She was lost.

Max tilted her head to the auditorium and saw Alex quietly moving his lips. Apparently he was telling what kind of bullets to use for each gun. Max was happy to know that he knows something about guns and that he actually was so kind as to help her with the difficulty of remembering the calibers. With Alex’s help the demonstration was successful and Max had the smile back.

After this the theory was over and they had an hour long break until the shooting practice. Max rushed to the exit and waited patiently for red haired boy to come closer.

“Red, thanks for just now! I thought I’ll make a fool of myself.”

“I am happy to help,” he replied in low voice.

“Hey, what are you learning? Which gun? Knives?”

“Hand guns.”

“Yay! Then we’re together. Come. Later losers!” the last remark was meant for Zack and Edward.

The two of them only exchanged glances with silent conversation and walked in silence to the dining hall. They were quite hungry after sitting in one place for about three hours. The dining hall was open from six in the morning to ten in the evening so it was no problem for them to hang out there. And they needed to find some activity to pass the hour.

Zack and Edward separated after picking up the trays with food. Both of them sat down in different sides of the hall and started their own conversations with other students.

“Hey, what’s up?” Edward greeted couple of boys.

“Hey. You’re new here, right?” answered one of them with a kind expression.

“Yeah. Say, who was the girl this morning?”

“Triple six,” answered a bulky man with a sniper rifle near his leg. “She’s the top here. No one likes her, though. She’s kinda creepy.”

“Yeah. She can easily shoot with any gun. The creepy thing is that smile of hers. She’s always smiling.”

“Haha. I noticed that. Anyway, why was she the one doing that stuff on the stage?”

“Because Thomas has no idea how to use a gun. He only knows the basic theory. And we need to see how it’s done to be able to do it ourselves.”

“So, how long have you been here?”

“Half a year,” said the kind faced man.

“About nine months.”

“Then why the same theory?”

“We repeat it every two months. It’s annoying as hell, but that’s the policy. And every time though, we hear something new. Or they introduce some new models and guns.”

“The most annoying part is when we have to talk about the theory. It makes up a part of our mark.”

Edward listened about the theory for a while and found out some of the things that were not mentioned in the rules. At the same time, Zack was talking with one man who introduced himself as Colt.

“Yeah, sniper rifles are quite tiring. You have to find a good location and then wait for the target. But it’s good when the situation gets out of hand, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” Zack answered with a smile. “Say, do you know that girl? The one from this morning.”

“You mean, Devil? Who doesn’t? She’s the top dog in here. Oh boy, if you’d see her shoot. That girl is amazing. Sort of nuts, but brilliant.”

“Devil? It’s because of her room number?”

“Well, there’s that, but it’s more connected to the manner of her shooting.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s not able to graduate because she keeps breaking the rules. You know, one of the rules is not to shoot outside the training grounds. Well, she shoots whenever she wants.”

Zack looked a bit conflicted. He was thinking about things which were not exactly connected to the matter they were discussing.

“I mean, we call her Devil because she keeps shooting birds and other little creatures which wander in the territory.”

“Even dogs?”

“She was about to shoot one the other day, but that guy at the back, James,” Colt showed all the way to the table where Edward was sitting with other two men, “stopped her. She was pissed and nearly shot him, but it ended up okay,” the man laughed.

They talked for some time more and the hour passed. After that Zack and Edward met on the way to the training building. Edward looked infuriated and Zack figured why.

“They said she’s impossible?” Zack was grinning.

“To begin with, she’s creepy. And she can shoot with every gun possible. She can even throw knives, but her aim is a bit off.”

“I was told she shoots birds. Without mercy,” Zack thought it was funny.

Edward looked around as if looking for something.

“I don’t think you need to worry that much. She doesn’t shoot people.”

“Shut up.”

Author's Note

reviews and comments would be appreciated