Scout

Part 1: Outside

Chapter 1:

My heart races as I bite the inside of my cheek, hoping the sharp sensation will steady me. The tips of my nails cut into my palms. I remind myself: Breathe in. Breathe out. I unclench my fists and stretch my fingers, thankful I didn’t draw blood.

I’m standing in a small hallway that’s been retrofitted into a cramped storehouse, dressing in what will be my uniform for the next six months. First, I wear a black shirt, stained with decades of dirt that no amount of scrubbing could fix. Then a pair of black denim pants, two sizes too big, made tight with an old belt that I’ve had since I was a kid. I pause and stare at the black belt in the mirror. Its leather is ripped and torn, the metal old and brittle. I remember how excited I was to receive it, gifted by my mother for my twelfth birthday. The memory lingers before a gnawing in my stomach pulls me back to my task.

I slip my arms into a thin coat that fits snug around my frame. The jacket’s sleeves stop halfway down my forearms and its zipper sits on the left rather than the right. It’s evident that the coat was made for a woman, but when I stretch my arms above my head, I find that it moves easily with me so I shrug and keep dressing. Finally, I don the strangest piece of the uniform, a dark green utility vest, lined with loops and pockets for gear.

I fuss with the straps of the vest, staring at myself in the warped and chipped wall-length mirror in front of me. I can’t help but feel like a kid wearing his parents’ clothes. Even clothes that fit seem to swallow me whole. My messy brown hair, falling to my shoulders across my eyes, only makes me look even younger.

I brush my hair out of my eyes and take a steady breath, trying to quiet the mix of excitement and nerves twisting in my stomach. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get the outfit to look right on me. I focus so hard on my reflection that I barely notice the sound of boots and the loud voices of the Scavs coming down the hall.

“Hey, kid. Aren’t you a little old to be playing dress up?” an older man in his mid forties says behind me. His frame is cut by glasses that seem too small for his head. the long hair and beard, both going below his shoulders, both pitch black with streaks of gray revealing his age.

I watch his reflection in the mirror as he pulls on his gear with careful precision, setting each piece in place before folding his old clothes into a neat stack on the shelf. I glance down at my own discarded pile and bend to pick it up, but a tall, lean man in his mid twenties steps between me and my clothes, blocking my path.

“Oh wait,” the younger guy says, eyeing me with a crooked smile. “Aren’t we supposed to be getting help this run?”

He holds his hand flat at eye level and sweeps it over my head. “Damn. Was I this small when I started, or are the top hats sending workers out younger now? What are you, twelve?” He turns to the older Scav and asks, “Are we that desperate now?”

Heat rushes to my cheeks as my eyes narrow. I search for the right words to defend myself, but nothing comes. Before I can correct him with a quiet, resigned “I’m fourteen,” the third member of their group interrupts. She has short, cropped black hair and sharp eyes, and her voice is cool but firm.

“Leave him alone. You know New Gens didn’t grow as well underground.”

New Gens like me were born in the bunker, after the collapse. The oldest were only a few years older than I was.

The teenage girl continues her one-sided argument with the younger man, firing words at him as if she has been saving them for this exact moment. I study her face while she talks, sure that I recognize her but unable to place where from, until her attention suddenly snaps to me.

“What? You get a kick out of watching me change?”

Her comment startles me. Before I can think of anything to respond, my eyes flick down to her hands as she unabashedly zips up her jacket over her black undershirt. I wrench my eyes away, trying to meet her eyes, but end up staring at the floor instead. Heat rushes to my ears.

“What? No… I wasn’t… I was just... I was trying to…” My voice cracks.

“You’re gonna give the poor guy a heart attack,” another man says. He looks to be somewhere between the other two men in age, early thirties maybe, with dark skin and curly black hair poking out from under a green ballcap with a fish logo I do not recognize.

“I wasn’t trying to look at you,” I mumble.

I have never been great at meeting new people, but this is worse than anything I imagined. I start to weigh what would happen if I walked away, when a firm grip cuts the thought short.

The older man claps my shoulder and gives me a brief shake. “Relax, guys, this is Dean, our new teammate.” He introduces me, and I let out a slow breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. “And don’t fret. We have all snuck a peek or two at Anna.”

Anna rolls her eyes and tilts her head back toward me, a smirk tugging at her lips. She studies me for a moment. “Lesson one, noob. Do not take anything we say to heart. Lesson two, do not get in my way.” She grins. “Follow those rules and we will be all right.”

Without waiting for my response, she turns to the graying man. “I’m goin’ up. Let me know when you’ve caught him up, all right?”

She strides forward and lifts a long rifle from the rack without hesitation. Unlike the other weapons still lying on the rack, her rifle is streaked with neon green and purple paint, worn thin along the edges. It looks like something she painted herself, loud and unapologetic. My eyebrows knit slightly as I watch her walk, the familiarity of her gait, the way her hair flicks against her shoulders as she moves down the hall.

I realize I am staring again and force my eyes away before anyone can notice. She disappears down the corridor.

“Oh, and hurry up,” she calls from just out of sight. “Don’t waste the morning air.”

My heart flutters unexpectedly. My father used to tell me stories about the world outside, and now I am finally going to see it for myself. Not only that, but I will finally be away from her eyes that seem to track my every movement.

My imagination runs wild until the older man turns toward me and gives me a slap on the back that’s a little too hard. “All right, kid, let’s get a good look at you.”

He eyes me up, tightening a strap on the back of the vest. “All right, kid, don’t worry about the gear. You’ll grow into it.” He grabs a foot-long rod and presses a button on it, extending the baton to twice its original length. “You know what this is right?”

I nod, “Of course, sir, I studied and-” He cuts me off.

“Drop the sirs. I am not that old.” After a beat, he adds, “I guess I am a bit older than you now, huh?”

The guy with the fish hat replies before I can say anything, “You tell that same joke to every person you train.”

“Well, it used to be true. At least when you started.”

My gaze flicks between the two and I realize just how long they have been working together.

“Like I was saying, just call me Hans.” He gestures with the baton at each of the other two men still gearing up.

“That’s Lee,” he says, pointing to the guy in the fish hat. “And that one is Daniel.” He gestures toward the younger man. “You already met Anna.”

He presses the metal baton into my hands, the cold steel sending a sharp tingle through my skin. “But this, this is your life out here.”

He turns back to the stockpile and tosses me a couple of spare battery packs without looking. I fumble to catch them, the baton still clutched in my left hand.

The stun baton runs on the one resource that the bunker had to spare, electricity.

I look down at it and can see years of wear etched into every inch. The grip has been smoothed by countless hands rubbing against the rubber. The metal rods are bent back into place again and again, the stress causing creases in the metal. The battery packs are taped together at various places, bare wires visible through cracks in the molding.

I hold it tightly, unable to stop a wide grin from tugging at my face as I look at the treasure in my hand.

“Thank you.”

“Uh huh,” he says, continuing without ceremony. “Each team gets one gunner for emergencies. Ours is Anna. She is a beast with that rifle, but it’s for life or death only.” He fixes a look at me, not a drop of humor remaining in his face. “And like she said, stay out of her firing line, or the round may go through you before it hits the ant.”

I nod, doing my best to listen as he runs through his rules and guidelines. I catch the gist at least. Stay behind him. Stay quiet. Do not fight unless we have to. The rest blurs together as my thoughts drift back to the stories my father used to tell me.

We follow Anna into the hallway, her footsteps echoing ahead of us. My heart picks up again, sweat dampening my palms. I wipe them on my pants before starting up the ladder, Hans climbing ahead of me and Lee close behind.

The ladder is taller than I expected. My legs burn as I climb, breath coming harder with each rung. Then Hans reaches the top and steps aside, and a blinding light pours down into the narrow shaft. I raise a hand to shield my eyes, squinting against the sudden brightness.

As I climb out of the tunnel, I step into a small room. The walls are the same thick concrete as below, built to last forever.

Here, a bright beam pours through an open steel doorway, cutting across the room with a force I’ve never seen before. The light is sharp and focused, nothing like the wide glow of the bulbs below.

I know what it is, of course. I have seen diagrams and videos, lessons broken down into clean explanations. All of that is meaningless as I watch a speck of dust drift through the beam, suspended in an invisible pool of water.

Something bumps my leg, then a pressure on my shoulder gently nudges me to the side as Lee lifts himself from the ladder, moving me away from my position.

“Is that…” I mumble, unable to avert my eyes.

Hans gives me a big grin as he claps me hard on the back. “Your first time up, right?”

I nod as he steps into the light. His clothes flare bright as he passes through the doorway, forcing me to shield my eyes from the blinding flash. By the time I can reopen them, I cannot see him at all. The glare is far too intense to peer through. Daniel follows right behind him, ignoring me.

Lee looks at me and asks, “Need help?”

I shake my head as I tentatively step a foot into the light. I pull it back a moment later, stunned. “It’s warm.”

Daniel responds harshly from a few feet away. “Yeah, the sun is hot. Didn’t they teach you that?”

I do not answer. I did not expect it to feel so enveloping, the heat spreading across every place the light touches.

I step forward into the brightness, lifting my hands to shield my face as the warmth presses in around me. When I dare to look again, I leave only a narrow gap between my fingers, squinting as my vision slowly begins to adjust.

“How long does it take to see?” I ask quietly, hoping that only Hans hears the question.

That hope is crushed by a snort, followed by light laughter. “Oh, I dunno,” Anna says. “Took me maybe an hour to open my eyes all the way. Another few weeks before I didn’t need these.”

Something wiry and plastic brushes my face, and I flinch back.

“Hey, stop that,” she orders, amused, brushing the frames against my face again. “It isn’t going to hurt.”

The dark brown tint of the glasses dulls the painful light around me, the objects around me finally settling into shape. The colors deepen. When I finally open my eyes fully, I realize how close Anna is to me. Her face, only a few inches from my own.

My cheeks burn red as she asks, “Can you see better now?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, blinking a few times as my vision continues to settle. The light no longer burns, but Anna is still far too close. My heart hammers in my chest, loud enough that I am sure she can hear it.

I force my eyes up to meet hers and keep them there.

“Where did…” I trail off, losing the rest of the question somewhere between her face and my own.

Without warning, Anna steps back, spinning around and gesturing ahead. I try to listen to what she is saying but my attention snags on the way the sunlight bounces off her curly black hair, turning it bright at the edges. I realize I’m staring at the light caught in her hair and quickly drop my gaze to the floor.

“When my dad found out I was going to be a Scav like him, he found a box of them and brought me this pair as a present,” she shrugs. “I figured we couldn’t have our new team member crashing into every tree we passed, so I thought you could use them,” she flashes a smile at me. “Call it a loan until your eyes adjust, kay?”

I hesitate to respond. Instead, my thoughts wander to my mother’s farewell after she learned about my decision. She ignored it for days after she got the news. But this morning she finally acknowledged it, pausing at the doorway just long enough to say, “Don’t get hurt.” Then she walked away without looking back, her heels clicking sharply against the floor.

I am snapped back to attention by Anna who quickly and abruptly turns away from me, walking over to Daniel who is staring intently at a map.

I watch her walk away for a moment, still trying to place her, when something else finally steals my attention entirely.

The colors of the world are far richer than I ever imagined, even through the dark tint of the glasses. The deep brown of the earth stands in sharp contrast to the glowing green of the grass and trees around us. No picture or painting could have prepared me for the subtle variations in color. Even my own shoes look different, the blue laces bright and almost unnatural against the tans and browns of the ground.

The sounds hit next. A cacophony of noise surrounds me, all of it blending together. Some of it I recognize from old videos. Birdsongs scattered and sharp. Other sounds make no sense at all. The trees themselves seem to whisper as the wind moves through their leaves, brushing them together in a way that feels strange and beautiful. The breeze is cool against my skin, a sharp contrast to the warmth of the light.

Then there is the smell. Dozens of scents flood in at once, most of them impossible to differentiate. Something damp, but clean, nothing like the stale wetness below. Something sweet drifts through the air as well. Not sugary, but warm and familiar, reminding me of the baked goods we would sometimes get in the canteen.

Hans’ voice pulls me back to the discussion happening in front of me. “Let’s see what Dean wants for his first run. Dean, come here.”

I step over and peer at the map. A grid of neat lines overlays a satellite image taken some time before the fall. The northern areas are outlined with a green highlight. Below that, a wide stretch marked with yellow. Furthest south, the map bleeds into red, pronounced by a large red dot on the bottom of the map. The map is dense with hand-drawn scribbles that I cannot make sense of.

“The green zones been picked pretty clean” Hans says, pointing to a cluster of houses to the west. “But who knows, we may find something hiding away.” His finger slides to the southeast, a couple of squares into the yellow zone. “Or there is this warehouse in the yellow. Higher risk, higher reward. What do you think?”

Before I can answer, Daniel scowls. “So, we a letting an untested kid decide if we risk our lives? Great.”

Anna snaps back before he can finish. “I went way deeper into the yellow on my first run, and you didn’t complain then.” Her eyes flick to me, sharp and unyielding. “It’s pointless to waste a full day combing the same ground we always do just to come back with a single can of peas like last time.”

All eyes turn toward me.

Daniel glares at me, undeserved disdain for me evident on every crease of his face. Anna watches me closely, her usual demeanor cracking slightly to reveal a hopeful plea. Lee leans against a tree, arms folded behind his head, looking bored but still tracking my reaction. Hans meets my gaze with a small, steady smile, something unreadable glinting behind it.

My hands feel slick. I notice my nails digging into my palms and force my fingers to relax as I think it through. “I, uh…” The words catch in my throat.

A shaft of sunlight slips past the edge of my borrowed glasses, warm against my cheek. I lift my head, feeling resolve settle in my chest. I hesitate another moment, second-guessing myself, before I force the words out so I can’t take them back. “Let’s try the yellow one.”