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Prologue
Julissa | One Year Ago
Dustwhipsmeacrossmy face, trying to tear into my eyes but I won’t let it. I stand on top of the mountain overlooking viva Las motherfucking Vegas. Up here, we’re like ants to those below. Bush keeps us hidden from their satellites. I brought my recruits here so that we could train in private and also because in order to be the best, you have to survive the worst. Living in these dry, hot and humid mountains aren’t for the faint of heart. If they can’t hack it, I’ll send them packing.
I want them to know what they’ve signed up for. Our mission is no easy task and we need to be willing to risk it all. Dark-green tents litter sun-bleached dirt and frail grass. The trees around us are dehydrated. We’ve learned to survive on less drinking water than we’re used to.
“Okay, I want you to lock eyes with the spot on that cardboard on a stick. I want you to focus. Don’t let anything distract you,” I say before walking up to one of my recruits and clapping in her ears as she points her carbine at the marked X. She manages to stop herself from flinching. I move on from her, walking behind all the recruits who are similarly dressed in dark green pants, cream tank tops and black boots. They don’t have ear protection on because they won’t be using those in real life.
“Out there, when you’re aiming your gun at your enemy, a lot will happen around you. This isn’t a fun day at the shooting range, when you shoot, you’re shooting to kill because I promise you…they won’t hesitate to shoot you first,” I shout as their guns click. “Fire!”
Gunshots ring out, tearing through the board as smoke from the bullet sizzles off the spot it pierces. Only a few of them, including Jaya and Selena, hit the “X” exactly, the others come pretty close. For only a couple of months, they’ve improved but we’ve still got a lot of work left to do.
Jaya has come a long way from the frail, closed off girl who couldn’t hold eye contact and tried to make herself as small as possible. The results of combat training and life in the mountains have given her slight muscle definition and a sun-burn that just became a tan instead as her body adapted to the heat.
Selena has also changed a lot. She holds her posture firm and her face is less soft, less gentle, though her compassion is still hard to hide, since she’s the one who nurses any wounds on site.
“Not good enough!” I yell. “Tell me, do you want to be killed? Do you want the last couple months to count for nothing as soon as you’re standing face to face with your opponents? We’ll be going for people in positions of authority with highly trained security. They’ll hear you before they see you and by the time they spot you, you’re already dead. Is that what you want?! Or do you want to get them before they get you?!” I shout.
“We want to beat them,” one recruit says.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“We want to beat them!” she shouts.
“Then act like it! Do I need to remind you who your enemies are? Do you want me to remind you of foster care or your creepy parents? Being beaten by a pimp because you weren’t ready to be used in the ways you were or because you didn’t make them enough money that night as if your body is theirs to own and sell? Being impregnated by these pimps, so they could sell your babies?!
What about being born into a life of sexual trauma and abuse that you never thought you’d be able to escape? The fucking train?! That was recent! Traveling for days in a metal box with no windows, no air conditioning and several of you piled into one carriage while grown adults point their weapons at you, threatening you, warning you not to do anything ‘stupid’ or they’ll kill you or maybe they’ll kill your baby brother or they’ll find your parents and they’ll kill them. These are the people that litter Las Vegas streets and they’re who we’re going after so that they’ll never hurt another soul again! When you shoot that cardboard, that’s who you’re shooting!” I yell.
Jaya also yells, spraying the cardboard with bullets. Well, damn. That’s what I like to see.
I continue, “Think about the babies you couldn’t save. Think even about the sick, twisted things you’ve been forced to witness happening to babies. Think about them passing through your hospitals, your foster homes, your schools, your nurseries, snatched out of your hands! Think about that. What do you want to do to the people who harmed those babies?!”
“I want to see them soak the earth with their blood, I want to see them being ripped apart, limb by limb by an animal they can’t defeat, I want them to die the most horrific, painful death!” Selena screams.
“Don’t tell me! Show me! Become that animal! Aim and shoot!” I instruct her and the others, and they become killing machines. The pieces of cardboard positioned on the sticks are shredded. The incense of sulfur and metal fills the air.
“You can have a one-minute water break, then I want you to follow me,” I tell them as I walk over to a more open space so that I can stand in front of my recruits and see all one hundred of their faces.
I do a few stretches, some jumps, punches and kicks to get myself pumped. As they gather before me, I smile. “Okay! It’s time for combat training!” This gets me excited. “I learned to fight from as long as I can remember but I wasn’t very good at it. I certainly wasn’t very skilled. But once I knew I was trapped, I thought of ways to get out. So as I got older, they sent me out to the streets and there was a martial arts studio just a block away from the corner I worked on. I’d fuck the trainer for some free lessons. I’d get my ass beaten when I didn’t make it back with my quota and I still couldn’t fight them back but I felt I was learning something that could help me later. It wasn’t until I finally left with the power I felt after I killed my pimp that I really took what I learned seriously. I started to train myself from what I could remember and my favorite style has always been the snake.”
I call over one of my recruits and I keep eye contact with them. “The snake is about fluidity and swiftness.”
I start rotating my shoulder in an undulating motion. I close my eyes as I feel the waves in my body loosening up the tension in my shoulders and causing blood and oxygen to pass through every open space now freed up. “Just as the snake slithers, I want to see your movements flow.”
I bend my knees. “The fluid movements create a distraction,” I say as I start walking around with bent knees, my arms and legs swaying as if in a dance. “It puts your opponent off guard, they don’t know where to look or what to focus on and that’s when you strike.” My arm bent at the elbow, the wrist and the knuckles with my thumb pressed up against the rest of my fingers pointing outwards darts out, lashing my recruit within an inch of her eye.
“Just like that, I could’ve taken your eye out. Because if you’ve ever encountered a snake, if you pay too much attention to the shuffling of its body trying to hop out of its way and you pay less attention to its head, it gets the chance to kill you before you even have the opportunity to stop it. I want you to become the snake.” I crouch down and wait for them to imitate my stance.
“The looseness of your body allows you to strike faster, landing several blows in quick succession, targeting sensitive areas, such as the eyes, nose, and throat. It sounds simple but a blow to the throat can knock your opponent to the ground instantly.” I send my recruit back to base and demonstrate without a partner feeling the air push and pull along my arms and legs. “Now, let’s see you try it.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve trained the snake-style Kung-Fu. I walk around watching them, pleased with their improvements and excited with how close we’re getting to actually carrying out our revenge.
After training, we go back to our large tent where we eat and prepare for our meeting. Chatter fills the tent and you can hear spoons scraping against pans, mouths chewing, forks clashing against plates and the teenagers connecting with each other. I watch them while I chew on a piece of dry bread, wondering if they’re ready for the next phase. I haven’t told them about it yet because I still don’t know if I can trust that they won’t go around talking about it with strangers.
I’ve kept them isolated for the past couple months to work on their physical and mental strength.
The most they know is that we’re planning an attack. That on its own is way too much information to have that can accidentally slip to someone else. But I’m not planning on us staying in these mountains forever. I know I’m trying to condition them but it doesn’t mean that I want to punish them. I don’t know if these kids have ever led normal lives and I want them to experience that too, so that if we succeed and we manage to defeat these assholes, they won’t just be scavengers when they enter society. What I want for us all is justice and what I want for them is their protection. I want them to be able to live a normal life as well as never be made a victim again. It’s going to take a lot of commitment and it’ll be a while until they can actually have that but until then, we’ll take baby steps and the next step is getting out of these mountains and if we’re going to do that, I need them to prove their loyalty to me and this cause.
