The Precursors 1: The Darwinists chap 3

Chapter Three: A Little Slice of Hell
“My name’s Jason,” David’s roommate told him. “Jason Quimby. Yeah, I’m Quimby’s boy, but don’t get me wrong, I hate Dorrington.” David felt pain trying to move his mouth, so, lying on his bed with no mattress, just a hard platform, he just mumbled.
David was so tired from the day’s work that places he didn’t even no existed hurt. Everything hurt. His hands were all patched up, compliments of Joey, his supervisor, because of his blisters that had exploded and left a river of blood all over his hands. He had milked some stupid cow about a million times in a row, only to find himself getting kicked in the ass by the cow every time he tried to milk it.
So Ralph, his old supervisor, had switched him to Joey’s group, where David got to carry around eggs, back and forth, from the pen to the kitchen, back and forth, back and forth…
David summoned all his strength and spoke to Jason, who was reading a comic book on the top bunk, “Hey, Jason. I’m David Roller. From New York.” Jason gasped.
“You’ve been to the city?”
“I lived there for few months.”
“Wow. I’ve lived on Dorrington my whole life. When I was four or so, my dad, Marcus Quimby, changed his farm to a detention faculty, oops, I mean a military school. Yeah. All of this farming stuff is just like boot camp. After about three days, they’ll put you into real boot camp, like what I’m in, though, during the day I still work on the farm.”
“What do you mean, during the day?”
“At ten o’clock at night, the back of the farm transforms into real boot camp. Shooting practice, running, y’know. Real military stuff.” David was astounded.
“And after all that, we wake up an hour later and farm?”
“Exactly.”
“Shit.”

And so David endured three days of just farming, and, after a particularly blister-full day, someone started rattling at him, two minutes after he had fallen asleep.
“Whazzagoinon?” he muttered incomprehensibly, and adjusted his eyes to see Captain Joey looking down at him, arms crossed.
“Get up, noob!” the overweight supervisor yelled. “Clothes on! Now!” David rubbed his eyes, making sure he was seeing clearly, and then remembered what Jason had told him about a few days ago. With all the work and such, David had forgotten all about Jason’s explanation of the midnight training.
David got up, and got dressed in some of his mud-stained clothes. Just as he was pulling his jeans on:
“Hey, David, look a little more cheery,” Jason said as he got of bed, mockingly. David laughed and Captain Joey yelled in his ear, “Shut up, you idiotic sack of shit! Get your damn clothes on!” David noticed Joey had a particularly bad mouth, and smirked as he exchanged glances with Jason.
He followed a marching Captain Joey through the dark hallway out to the back of Dorrington, with Jason by his side.
“Get ready for a little slice of hell,” Joey said darkly.
The group began to get accompanied by other groups of three lead by captains, very quickly. Rupert, another noob like David, looked even more weirded out then David. Then David realized Rupert had absolutely no idea what was going on, and David suddenly felt grateful Jason had filled him in.
Captain Dylan, who was the lead supervisor, opened up a door and the group walked out to a dark field, and David was so surprised at what he saw he was, once again, close to woofing his cookies.
A half mile track looped around twenty targets and twenty machinegun nests, each about fifty feet away from their targets.
Next to the track was an obstacle course that consisted of ten rows of tires, then a wall, which was impossible to get around do to the barbed wire, which, like the wall, was lined up to twenty feet high. Then was a barbed wire tunnel and, lastly, a hand-held sub-machinegun that was about fifty feet away from a target.
“Well, noob, how do ya like it?” asked Captain Joey with a smirk. Trying to hide his fear and excitement, David just shrugged. Then, hearing someone barking orders behind him, he turned to see Head Captain Marcus marching in to the boot camp.
“Hello, everybody,” said Marcus, who, like his son, was tall, thin and had jet black hair. Unlike his son, Marcus had a small goatee growing on his chin, which David believed, gave him a positively menacing look. “David Roller, Rupert Maxwell, Bo Parker and Claude Shorgy, come up here,” he spoke quieter. Alarmed, David turned bright red, and even in the immense darkness, he could tell he stood out like a sore thumb. He realized it would be even more embarrassing to just sit there like he hadn’t heard Marcus’ request, so, trying to hold his head as high as he could, David walked up to Jason’s father.
David had imagined Marcus had called up the boys because they were in trouble for some reason, but on the contrary, Head Captain Marcus looked positively delighted to see them.
“M’boys, m’boys…” he said. “Wonderful to see ya. Now,” he now spoke up, his eyes straying all around looking at all of his Dorrington boys with a gleam, “David, Rupert, Bo and Claude are our newest boys to add onto the Dorrington team.” David sighed. Marcus was always talking like this, like the Dorry boys were all a big happy family. Yeah right. “I would like everyone to warmly welcome them.” And with that, he was off, back into the farm. Almost immediately after Marcus had left the scene, everyone, including the Captains, roared with laughter.
“’I would like you to warmly welcome them’,” Joey imitated particularly well in between roars of laughter.
Finally, ending the apparent party, Captain Dylan said, “Alright…alright boys. You’ve had your laugh. Now settle down, settle down. It’s time for lessons now.” It took a while, but eventually, all of the Dorry boys were silent.
David and the rest of Joey’s squad, which included twelve more than just David and Jason, making a total of fourteen boys, were filed into the shooting range first.
“C’mon, Dave,” said Jason, which he shared a target and machinegun with, “you’re up first.” David never imagined he would be so intimidated by a gun. On his V-Gamer, David would play as Ace Hardy, boy detective, and pick up X-46’s and blow the hell out of terrorists. Now, David pulled all his strength onto his hands, tried to casually flick back his hair like Ace, and shot.
It was a lot louder than he expected, and as the gun recoiled he cut his hand. There was a lot of smoke and, well….it wasn’t like the movies. And the worst part: in exchange for “coolness”…it really hurt.
And now, trying again, David was hoping he could keep the gun under his control, and make sure it didn’t get control of him: make him afraid of it, wanting to go away.

The gun controlled him.

Finally, David retired and let Jason, who had just successfully completed the obstacle course during David’s turn, go up to the gun. And David realized that meant he was up for the obstacle course.
David was more confident for this form of training. His great agility and speed countered his horrible aim, and he got through the rows of tires with no problem at all.
“Great, noob, great!” Joey shouted excitedly as David completed the first part of the obstacle course with great skill, “record time if ya do that well on the next three parts,” he finished, glancing at his stopwatch.
The wall was no different, with David’s combined agility and pretty good climbing skills, he also completed this with speed. Neither was the barbed wire tunnel. He got through like he had done it a million times before.
Then came the sub-machinegun target test. To finish, he had to hit the target in the bull’s eye.
David would have broken Dorrington’s speed record for the course if he had done the targeting a little better. That added about five minutes and six rounds to his final score, which gave him a relatively average score at the end.
And so the days came and went. Jason hadn’t been kidding: once you worked night and day, night and day….it was a little slice of hell. And David was starting not only to have blisters in every spot on his body, but he was getting bored. In the day, you work. At night, you practice. Pick up chicken eggs at day, and at night, run 500 laps, try to break your record in an obstacle course and fail over and over again as you shoot at a target, that is getting farther and farther away.
“Okay, boys!” Captain Dylan shouted as the group entered the midnight playing field. David noticed something different. A little ways from the obstacle course, a platoon of battle-robos were stationed with their plasma guns ready.
“Since the term is now nearing mid-time,” Dylan continued, “you boys will be fighting some battle-robos as practice for the real battle field.”
Cool! was David’s first thought, but then he realized it wasn’t cool. It was impossible. Battle-robos were hard to kill, except with plasma, and Dorry boys weren’t supplied with plasma, so the boys would have to take out the battle-robos with bullets.
“Are the robos’ plasma dangerous?” asked Rupert Maxwell, the nerdiest kid David knew. Why was Maxwell at Dorry anyway?
At the question, Dylan chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s undercharged plasma. It’ll give ya a little burn here or there, but no permanent damage.” After doing well on the obstacle course (David’s shooting was getting a little better) and okay on the shooting range, Captain Joey’s squadron was up to fight the robos.
David looked at the current team, Captain Emerson’s team, and nearly peed in his pants. Rupert and the other boys on Emerson’s teams were getting pasted by the robos. They’d only shot down one so far, compliments of Tyler Crane, the best shooter at Dorrington.
“Time’s up!” Emerson shouted to the team. “Your score’s one, because you hit one robo.” Then he chuckled. “Captain Joey’s team, you’re up!” Lead by Jason, the team of noobs and slackers headed up to the starting place, a long yellow line. In front of them, a mech was replacing the robo Tyler had blown to pieces with a new, shiny battle-robo.
Joey handed each of the team members an automatic rifle and one undercharged plasma grenade. “Ready, boys?” Joey asked, not like he cared. “Go!”
David ran into the battle-zone and started rapidly firing his auto-rifle on a robo. Plasma rained all over the place. Jack Magito was hit by a flurry of plasma and a medic came down and patched up his burns. David and his everlasting speed escaped a plasma attack and Jason followed up the dodge by blowing the attacker into a pile of rubbish.
David’s aim was worse than ever. In all the excitement and fear of fighting real robos, he had missed every single shot he’d fired at a battle-robo, save one that bounced off the robo’s armored leg.
Firing his auto-rifle, David jumped behind one of the cover-blocks and took a breather. He could hear shouts and the ping! of bullets clashing on metal.
“I’m down! I need a medic!” Jason’s voice sounded from the battle-zone. David ran back in. He had plasma burns all over his legs.
“Jason, you okay?” David asked.
“Yeah. David, look out!” said Jason, and, for once in his life, David was too slow. Plasma burned his back and he knew he had been hit.