Drill Sergeant

Chapter 2

AVA's

"Listen up, as soon as you get off this bus, you'll be entering Gate 2. When you're off, you'll go through reception which will take a couple of hours. You'll get one final call to family and will get vaccination, eye exams and dental care." Yelled the man standing in the isle of the bus.

I tried looking at him, but all I saw were the backs of heads. Men and women. They were dead silent their vision focused on the figure talking, all their attention drawn to him.

"Once all males get their cut and everyone had their uniform, name plates, and other essential uniform items. You'll be meeting your Drill Sergeants and attending a mandatory informative meeting. Any questions?"

Everyones' faces was blank. Expressionless. Until the guy sitting in front of me raised his hand. I couldn't see his face, all I saw were his long strands of dark blonde hair that ran to his shoulders, covering his neck.

"Yes?" I heard the now-familiar deep voice ask.

"What do you mean 'cut'?" The blonde asked. His voice sounding small compared to the man that spoke in front of us.

"What I mean by 'cut' is that every male will be getting his hair trimmed completely." The man answered with total confidence.

The guy in front of me let his hand fall.

"Any further questions?" The man asked.

Now that the guy in front of me put his hand down,the man that spoke in front moved, giving me a clear view of his face from where I sat in the massive crowd.

He was tall- very tall. He had a bureau over his brown trimmed hair and he stood straight, with his arms folded over his chest. He looked serious- dead serious. His tag read, Cortez.

"Good." He said plainly and made eyes contact with me briefly, before racking his gaze over the rest of the crowd. Not once did he looked fazed.

The bus came to a sudden stop and I look around to see what the matter is, I look out the window to see tall barb-wired fences. You couldn't see anything but trees. No looking inside and no looking outside, and definitely no going back.

"Alright, before we can go in I need a full head count. So When I point to you sound off with the number that corresponds to you." He pointed at the first person that sat the first right seat.

There sat a girl with long curly hair, and tanned skin. When Cortez first pointed at her she looked like that one quiet and shy student in the class that gets called on the spot to answer a question. I don't blame her, Cortez was scary intimidating.

In a mid-whisper so low that I nearly didn't hear she said, "One."

"Let's try this again, this time loud and clear." He said looking up at everyone to make sure everybody understood. He pointed at the girl again.

"One." She said again this time more confident.

"Two." I heard the person that sat next to her say, as he got pointed on.

When it was my turn I said, "forty-nine." and he kept pointing onward.

Once we were done he counted seventy-six people, not including himself and the driver.

He instructed the driver to continue and we stopped once more, this time at a guard post. The guard looked young and had ginger-red hair. After a couple of question from the guard and a couple of answer from Cortez, the mechanic arm swung open and the bus proceeded.

Once we were past the layer of trees that obstructed our vision from the inside, I saw an opened field. Displaying all kinds of items, they had climbing walls, rubble, tunnels, parallel walls, low ropes, ditches, terraces, balancing bridges, apex ladders and a bunch of other obstacles that I didn't want to start figuring out the names of.