Red Zone Son

Chapter 6

Two weeks into boot camp, Solomon decided it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. It was worse.

He’d never done so many push-ups in his life. If he never scoured a pot clean of potato starch again, it would be too soon. But what he hated most of all were the inspections. His fourth night there, he’d been jolted awake by the piercing shriek of a patched-up firewatch drone. Hovering in the center of the barracks with its red lights flashing, the clearly repurposed bot had barked at the recruits to rise and prepare for their footlockers to be examined.

Solomon might have had the presence of mind to get out of bed quickly under normal circumstances, but sleep deprivation and a general inability to get used to his new environment meant a certain amount of delay. Unfortunately, giving his superiors anything slower than an instant, reflexive reaction meant he’d spent the rest of the night running up and down every hill in the base camp with his rifle, shouting about he was a slow, slow inchworm, inching his way through life.

Later that day, the lack of sleep caught up with him. During a customs and courtesies class, whose slides had been sloppily edited from some old pre-Splintering U.S. military lecture, he’d nodded off. When Sergeant Jones caught him, he’d made Solomon stand for the rest of the class with a twenty-two pound jamming rod laid across his shoulders.

Everything Solomon did was somehow wrong. Everything he did was punished. He was beginning to realize the only way he was going to make it was to do exactly what they said to do exactly when they said to do it, with no variation from the literal meaning of their instructions no matter how stupid they might seem to him.

The bedsheets and the 45-degree hospital corners were killing him, though. He couldn’t get them right. And they didn’t make sense! Fitted sheets were ancient technology, so why were they making them act like they didn’t exist? The militia had enough money to pay them, but apparently not enough to buy some stupid fitted sheets?

The only thing at the training camp Solomon was thankful for was Sunday service. The base was about ten miles northwest of downtown Pittsburgh, and while they weren’t allowed to leave it during basic training to attend the civilian church, one of the church’s pastors would come to give a sermon in a makeshift chapel in one of the Quonset huts. It was the only time nobody bothered him if he nodded off. It was also the only time he got to use a private bathroom, which he appreciated most of all.

He was also grateful that Sergeant Jones wasn’t a member of the All-White faction. Jones was a Black guy, a Cultural Nationalist like most of the recruits. Even though he was the meanest person Solomon had ever met, he didn’t have to worry that Jones was making him do something because he actively wanted him to die. No, Jones just didn’t care whether Solomon died or not.

Solomon cared, though. At this point, surviving was becoming the only thing he cared about. They weren’t going to keep sending money to Adah’s account if all they had was his dead body. And she wouldn’t have a legal guardian anymore if he died. Which he had managed to become, finally.

While the judge hadn’t been too keen on him having custody over her at first, his attitude had changed after Solomon had told him he was entering into militia service. He was really pleased to hear it, the judge had said. After a moment of reflection, Solomon had decided not to reveal that he hadn’t volunteered.

It’s all working out, Adah had written to him. His phone had been the first thing ripped out of his hand when he arrived, so he and Adah wrote historical-style letters to each other instead of texting and calling. And I finally found out your address so I’ll write to you every day from now on.

Solomon was looking forward to getting her letters during mail call. Right now, though, he and the other recruits were on the concrete parade ground for their morning marching drill. The wind was brutal, cutting through everything, including the budget-brand exoboots, cover, gloves and field jacket kit they issued to less-valuable, Solomon-level personnel.

Whoever shoveled the parade ground last had done a terrible job, which meant all of them were probably about to re-shovel it. Why they couldn’t just use melting mats was beyond him. Even he owned one back home. Solomon was beginning to think that the Westsylvania Zone Militia couldn’t make up its mind whether to use boot camp to recreate some old-school, tough-guy America, or to actually train soldiers at the technology level available to them. So they ended up using high-tech sensor-equipped toothbrushes to manually scrub the barracks floor, and civilian-issue kitty litter to sop moisture out of a multi-million dollar jet. Which was crazy, in his humble opinion. Not that Solomon let any of his thoughts reach his face; he knew better than that by now. He stood perfectly still, his rifle slung over his left shoulder, waiting along with the rest of his platoon.

And then he saw WhiteFunk1492. No, Sam. Standing in front, facing them. With a drill instructor’s hat on his head.

Solomon couldn’t help it. His eyes widened. Sam wasn’t looking at him, thank God, although he would see him soon. Solomon was in the back because he was tall, much taller than his battle buddy Rithvik who was standing in the first row ahead of him. Quickly, he stared straight ahead with his chin up and his eyes focused on the snow lining the grayish-brown trees on the far side of the parade ground. He hoped Sam wouldn’t recognize him. Two weeks in and he already knew nothing good came from standing out to a drill sergeant.

His body only got more tense as Sam began to speak. He introduced himself as Sergeant Wilson, explained that Sergeant Jones had to leave for medical reasons, and that he was there to pick up where he left off. Solomon saw him looking over the recruits. He wondered whether Sam could tell that most of the platoon were guys like him, inexperienced teenagers who got drafted by the lottery and were there only to avoid prison labor camp. Then Sam’s eyes met Solomon’s, and the newly minted drill sergeant grinned.

Solomon swallowed hard. He was just a recruit, and Sam was in a position of power. He was completely vulnerable if Sam wanted to hurt him. He’d been nice enough the last time they met, but the meeting had happened only because of Solomon’s deception. What if Sam harbored a grudge and chose to make an example out of him here? It wasn’t like he knew much about the man, or anything about what he was capable of. All he had was Sam’s admission of having killed someone. That alone was enough to convince Solomon he might be in real trouble.

“Forward, march!” he heard Sam bark. But even as they started to move, Solomon could feel the weight of Sam’s gaze fixed on his face.

***

Solomon was unhappy but not surprised when Sergeant Sam “Whitefunk” Wilson pulled him aside on the way to breakfast. He resisted the urge to look longingly at everyone else heading to the mess hall, where even recruits got to enjoy an abundance of food.

Protocol dictated that he not speak unless spoken to first, so he stood at attention outside the mess hall door and waited, his nerves on edge, hoping Wilson wouldn’t hit him for some minute error in his uniform or stance. In just two weeks, he’d been tripped, slapped, and choked more times than he could count. He was less than eager to add another tick to that particular tally.

“Solomon,” Wilson said. “Solooomon.” He was grinning again. “You’re the reason I’m here, you know that?”

Solomon tried to decide whether to respond with “yes, sir,” or “no, sir.” He settled on the latter. “No, sir, I didn’t know that. Sir.”

“Well, after what you told me, I decided that yeaaah, they’ll probably get tired of feeding my defector ass eventually. Might as well show them that I mean it by signing up.”

Wilson was standing much closer to Solomon than he had been under the Schenley Oval Tent. That was another part of boot camp Solomon hated. You couldn’t pull away, no matter how much a drill instructor got in your face. From this close, he could see that Wilson’s close-cropped hair was a uniform golden blond. He also noticed Wilson’s teeth were crooked, as if he’d never worn a light therapy retainer. The smell of his breath was noticeable too. And why was he stretching out his words so much?

Maybe I should ask him if he joined the All-White faction, Solomon thought. Especially since he’s now the person in charge of every detail of my life. He didn’t say anything, though, until Wilson looked at him pointedly. “Which faction did you sign up for, sir?”

Wilson barked out a laugh. “You want to know if I turned racist since I last met you.”

Two weeks ago, Solomon might have shrugged, because there was really no way he could say, yep, that’s right, or even yes, sir. It was pretty taboo in red zones to accuse anyone of racism. In fact, it was one of the worst things you could accuse someone of, to the point of being considered an anti-White slur. So Solomon was relieved when Wilson didn’t demand a response and instead kept on talking. “No, I joined the Cultural Nationalists. Just like you.”

Solomon didn’t ask him how he knew. Maybe Wilson had looked at his file or something. And anyway, he was still speaking. “But don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because we’re in the same faction. You’re going to hate me by the time your training is done.”

There was nothing Solomon could say to that. “Yes, sir,” he replied.

Wilson waved him toward the mess hall. “Go eat.”

Solomon couldn’t move fast enough. But even as he was booking it to make it to the ladelers before breakfast closed, he knew he couldn’t let his guard down. Just because Wilson hadn’t said anything about getting back at Solomon didn’t mean he wouldn’t take the opportunity to do so, now that he could.