Afterland (9 page)

              “Okay. I usually start people off with a crossbow. They’re my favorite weapons.”

She directs me over to a table stacked with them. Her hand hovers over the weapons, as if she is feeling for the perfect one. Finally, she chooses a simple black crossbow made of a material I don’t recognize that extends just above my knee.

              “Try this one. We’ll shoot at the board outside.”

“Don’t forget the-” Rebekah begins.

“What? Do, you want something from me too?
Das ist ein
weapon.
Das ist nicht
your weapon.”

“
Deine Deutsch ist fuchtbar,
” Rebekah responds, smiling into her sleeve. “And I meant the bolts.”

“I wouldn’t forget the bolts,” Emily says, grabbing a bundle and giving Rebekah a friendly pinch. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. My German is perfect. Anyway, let’s go.”

She leads me into the woods where a ragged old board several centimeters thick leans against a tree approximately seventy meters away. In the center, a target is drawn in red paint. Emily pulls one of the bolts out of the bundle.

              “First, you have to cock it. This one has a draw weight of fifty kilograms. That’s pretty heavy to cock manually, but most of ours have a lever. Watch.” She takes the lever at the back and pulls it toward herself. “As simple as that. You shoot like this.” She kneels, putting the elbow supporting the crossbow on her knee, props the back of the crossbow against her shoulder, breathes in, and releases the bolt on her breath out. It whistles through the air and lands smack in the center of the target.

“Now you try. Cock it first.”

I take the crossbow and pull the lever back.

“Like this?”

“Yep. take the bolt and put it here. Yeah, just like that. Now take a deep breath and press the trigger.”

I prop the crossbow against my shoulder, trying to mimic Emily’s position, breath in and release. In the blink of an eye, the bolt crosses the distance and skims the right of the board. I am surprised at the power behind the shot. Even though Emily told me that it has a draw weight of fifty kilograms, I didn’t expect to feel all of them.              

“It takes a lot of practice,” Emily says. “Try again. Keep your elbows at right angles.”

I draw out another bolt, breathe in, and shoot again. My mind fills with dreams of hitting the board smack in the center and impressing everyone, but this time, it just barely lands on the right side of the board.

“Not bad for the first time,” Emily reassures me. “We’ll work on it tomorrow. Keep this. I think it’ll be good for you. Remember to take the bolts out of the board.”

              “Uhuh. Thank you,” I say.

              “Thank you, Emily,” Rebekah says and then addresses me again. “We’re taking the snowshoes. You brought your own, I remember, yes? Get them now. And take the bolts out on the way into the woods. Go.
Schnell
, we do not have all day.”

I go to get my snowshoes from my tent while Rebekah ducks into her own.

              “This is your survival bag,” Rebekah says once we regroup. She shakes the small bag meaningfully. “You will need this. Be careful with it. Now get ready for the most important walk in your entire life.”

I pull my snowshoes off of my backpack and Rebekah hands me the pouch.

“Look inside. It has a fire-maker, three meters of rope, dry bark, a bottle and water-cleaner, a fishing hook and string, some basic medicine things, and a flare, for signaling.  Do not lose it and do not use anything that you can not reuse unless you have to. Keep it on you at all times. You never know when you will need it.” She leads me to the edge of the woods. “Follow me.”

              We walk up to the board first. I pick up the bolt that missed the board and pull out the two that hit. They are surprisingly hard to pull out. I can see that they went almost all the way through.

              “Impressive, yeah?” Rebekah says. “You can keep them in your backpack. Let us go.”

Rebekah walks as if the snowshoes are an extension of her own legs. I trod awkwardly along behind her. I never considered myself too ungraceful nor did I realize how awkward I am in snowshoes, but I guess I just never saw elegance like Rebekah’s.

The pine trees look even more massive from down here, standing in between them and looking up. They block out large patches of the sky, casting dark shadows across the snow covered ground. The snow absorbs most of the sound and everything is muffled. The wind sends hundreds of whispers through the pine needles. My breath forms little clouds in front of me. After we walk several minutes, Rebekah turns around and begins talking.

              “If you ever get lost here for any reason, you should know that our camp is to the West of these woods. I hope you are not too much
ein Dummkopf
and know directions.” She raises her eyebrows and looks at me.

“Um, yeah. I know directions.”

“Good. What do you think is the first rule of the wild?”

“Um...Don’t die?”

“Yes. Correct. Number one rule of the wild: stay alive. To stay alive, you must stay healthy.
Gesundheit
ü
ber alles.
Do not get cold, drink water, eat food, but only nonpoisonous food, and do not get infections. Most of the year, you can use snow as water. Make sure to heat it up first. Eating cold snow is bad for you. Water from running streams is better than still sources, because moving water has less chances of infection. If you do not know where the nearest water source is, follow animal tracks downhill. They almost always will end up at a water hole. If none of these sources are available, you can collect water as dew in the morning. I hope it never comes to this for you, but if it does, never drink seawater or your own urine. You can evaporate either of those and collect the steam, however. In all likelihood, you will never need to do either of those, though,” she reassures me. “You getting it so far?” I nod and although I know most of what she’s telling me, her didactic mannerism make me wish that I had some way to take notes instead of trying to remember all this.

“Alright, that is it for water. Now food.” She points to a small orange mushroom growing at the base of a tree. “That is edible. In this region, it is the only one that looks like that and they are fairly common. Collect as many of them as you can. Protein is important. Earthworms and bird eggs are good protein sources. We will practice getting them today. Hopefully, that way, you will never starve. After lunch, Emily will start teaching you how to use you how to use your crossbow properly. Once you can hit the target enough times, I will teach you how to hunt.” Just as I begin to think that Rebekah isn’t actually human, she pauses and laughs.

“What?” I ask dumbly.

“Your face.”

“What’s wrong with my face?” I ask, touching my hand to my cheek involuntarily.

“Nothing is wrong with it. You have a very nice face. You’re just looking at me in a funny way.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No, no. It’s all good. I know I can be like a robot sometimes. Emily tells me sometimes that I never smile.”

After the sentence, her expression immediately hardens again and her voice returns to the metallic monotone it was before. “But keep in mind that in the wild, things are not human, and being human is a weakness. Where were we?.. Ah, yes. Poisons. In terms of plants and mushrooms, there is not a common sign of poisons, so avoid eating anything you do not know is good to eat. Do not eat anything with a white sap or white berries. Those plants are almost always poison. Most tree bark is edible. Aspen, birch, willow, maple, and pine bark is all edible. Eat the inner layer. In my opinion, the best way to eat it is to boil it.” She looks at me. “You understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Time for you to prove it.” She points to a tall oak tree. “See on that tree is a bird’s nest? Go get an egg. Do not bring it down,” she adds, “because you do not need it and we should not give unnecessary disturbance to the birds.”

I look up. Near the very top, I can make out a little cluster of sticks. I walk around the tree, looking for a good foothold. There are none.
That’s not gonna be easy to get,
I think and swallow nervously. I didn’t climb trees much in Hopetown, so I don’t really even have a benchmark for how well I climb.

I appraise the tree. The lowest branch is several meters up and not low enough to reach, at least not with my climbing skills. But I must have something… My survival pack.
Right.
I pull out my rope. I unroll it and tie several knots at the end to weight it, making it easier to control. I throw it over the closest branch so that I hold one end in each hand. I tug; it is firm, so I undo my snowshoes and begin to climb up. My boots don’t have the best friction, so they slide several times, but I make it to the branch unharmed. I look down at Rebekah. She nods at me and I continue climbing. From here, it’s easier, since the branches are closer together. I still have to use caution climbing on the slippery snow-covered bark, but my hands quickly fall into the rhythm of climbing. When I finally reach the top and hold the blue egg in my hand, a sense of triumph fills me.

Down below on the ground, Rebekah nods in approval and shouts “Very good. Now get down.”

This isn’t actually that hard,
I think, climbing down.
Maybe I’m so worried about nothing.

Of course, the climb down is harder than the climb up, but it, too, passes uneventfully.

“Not bad,” Rebekah says, when I climb back down. “Put your snowshoes back on and we will keep going.”

We spend the next several hours hiking around the woods while Rebekah explains how to collect a full canteen of water from morning dew, build an optimal shelter, and not get myself killed. She points out the tree that hold the main lookout post, invisible from the ground. She has me do several more survival exercises and boil bark to keep in my survival pack. After approximately two hours, we walk up to the bank of a river.

“This is where we stop for today. Remember how we get back. Also, in case you get lost, you can almost always follow your footsteps back.” As we walk back, Rebekah says, “It might all look the same to you the first time, and there are no paths, but we will walk around more times so that you will develop and instinct for the forest. You should know at least where camp, the lookout post, and the river are. This river is how you stay clean, so please,
please
remember how to get here. Training makes you filthy. And remember the lookout post, because you’ll have lookout duty soon, so learn fast and don’t die.
Fast
is an important word in the wild.
Schnell, Schnell, Schnell.
You live fast, you die faster. You have to outrun death if you want to survive. Let’s review: What’s the number one rule of the wild?”

“Stay alive?”

“Yes. Stay alive and don’t be a fool.” She looks at the sun. “All right, if we move fast, we will make it back in time for lunch.”

We follow our footsteps back. I suddenly become grateful for the snow. The forest does look like a repeated stretch of the same several trees to me.

When we return, Big Sal is just starting to distribute lunch. Rebekah and I quickly take off our snowshoes, get our plates, and get into line.

“You did well today,” she tells me. “After lunch, find Emily. She will teach you how to use your crossbow. We will go into the woods together again in several days.”

“Uhuh. Thanks.”

I eat quickly, eager to learn how to hit the target as effortlessly as Emily does. I know of course that I won’t learn in one day, but the satisfaction of the bolt against the board is alluring. After the break, we start. Emily corrects my grip and walks me through the step by step process of how to shoot.

“The main problem you’ll run into that requires a weapon like this is bandits. There are more bandits on the road from here to our raid sites than you would expect. They’ve bothered us less in the last several years because they’ve begun to recognize us. But some of them are fools and expect defenseless travelers. Exiles who couldn’t pay their taxes because they were too poor, old, or weak. People who left their towns looking for a better life that they will never find. You are neither of those things. You are stronger than them. Your goal is to
not
be the defenseless traveler that they are expecting.” She walks around me in circles and moves her fingers emphatically as she talks. I move my head back and forth so that I can see her at all times without having to spin in circles.

“So,” she continues, “I’m going to teach you three main shooting positions. All three have their benefits and downsides. They don’t have any special names, so we’ll call them standing, kneeling, and ground. The first one I’ll teach you is the one I showed you. It’s kneeling, as you might have guessed, if you’re not a total dimwit. This one is a compromise between standing and ground. It’s more supported than standing, but less than ground. Same goes for your vulnerability: more vulnerable than standing, less than ground. You can’t start running without jumping up first. The downside of the standing is that it’s unsupported, so you need to have a steady arm, but you can basically shoot on the go. The ground shot is the exact opposite: It’s the most supported, but it makes you a sitting duck. It also requires a slightly different aiming technique. We’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages some more later. The point is, you need to know them all. You’ll develop the eye for where to aim as you practice.