Chapter 18

Two Hours of Living Hell

It seemed as if I was asleep for all of ten minutes when the fire alarm sounded. The sound was piercing in the quiet of the night. It was enough to startle the dead, a sound akin to fingernails running across a chalkboard, only constant and twice as loud.

I opened my eyes, disoriented by the sudden noise, and pulled the covers down from my eyes. I could see that the lights were on and the bedroom door was still shut. I looked across at the room at Julio, only to find him still sound asleep.

“Dude, wake the hell up.”

“Oh, I’m awake. What is going on? I just got to sleep?”

“My guess is that the instructors are fixing to get a couple of hours of payback for last night’s festivities.”

“Great, I can’t wait to visit with our wonderful instructors. What time is it anyway?”

“I don’t have any idea, and really, does it matter?” I asked.

“Well I guess not. Apparently, two bad apples have screwed up Friday for everyone.”

“Yep, well I guess we should get dressed and get downstairs with the rest of the class.”

I grabbed my uniform and began to dress when a loud raspy voice, one could only recognize as Sergeant Martinez, blasted through the intercom system.

“All recruits will notice that we have politely turned on all the lights and set off the fire alarms in your building. You will now garb your PT gear, get dressed, and report down to the muster area. You have five minutes. I suggest you move your asses.”

I figured I would take the sergeant up on his advice to move my ass, and I quickly removed my daily uniform and donned my PT gear. I like wearing shorts and a T-shirt more than my regular uniform anyway. However, I don’t think I will like it much by the time this morning is over with.

After dressing, our class hauled our collective asses down the stairs at either end of the hall. As we stomped and stumbled, hurriedly down the stairs, we sounded a bit like a herd of buffalo migrating through the plains of Montana. We spilled out into the hallway, directly adjacent to the muster area and formed into two single file lines, one from each of the stairwells.

We marched through the hallways and down the steps into the muster area where we formed into our squads. We stood there at attention, panting heavily, our chests heaving as we tried in vain to catch our breath.

From around one corner of the brick wall, that ran adjacent to the muster area, appeared four very pissed off instructors. My guess is that they did not like the idea of getting awakened to news of two of our classmates remodeling the third floor hallway with their bodies.

As we stood there in formation panting and sweating like pigs, we looked and watched as the instructors walked down each row of recruits. They looked us up and down in silence. No one spoke and the only sounds that could be heard were the sounds of our hearts beating and the sounds of the instructor’s footsteps.

After several minutes, the instructors walked to the front of the formation and turned to look at all of us.

Lt. Hudson spoke first and his voice was surprisingly mellow compared to the look on his face.

“Okay, so I am sure you know why we have you up so early this fine morning. As you know, someone put a hole in the wall on the third floor. No one has come forward as of yet so all of you will be punished. This is a serious offense. It is called destruction of government property. You can be disqualified and thrown out of this academy and right out of a job for this offense, not to mention the fact that you have failed to come forward and claim responsibility. Now we will find out who the culprit is and you will be punished and you will have to fix the wall. For now, though we are going to go for a little run and then maybe we will let you go back to bed.”

Sergeant Martinez followed up with, “Fall out and form up outside. Dismissed.”

We lined up in formation out in the courtyard as we always did on mornings that we ran. The only difference was that this run was going to be nothing more than brutal punishment.

“Left face,” Sergeant Martinez stated.

We turned and then the command to march was given. We started off at a slow pace and began to leave the academy out into the dark night. This night we had only one patrol car following us and four instructors present. We typically had two patrol cars and two instructors, so this was a bit strange, but we accepted the change and moved on from there.

This particular morning was exceptionally cool. It felt as if summer was turning to autumn before our very eyes. Under any other circumstances, this morning would have been an exceptionally good morning for a run. This morning, however, was not feeling like a great morning for a run. Most of us were most assuredly wondering how far and how fast we were going to run.

As if on cue, the next words we heard were, “Double time march.”

We took off slowly but progressed rapidly into a full sprint. We maintained this rapid pace for several minutes, and I must admit that I was in complete pain and struggling to breathe. My chest ached and my lungs felt as if they had collapsed. I was sweating profusely and my legs felt like Jell-O. As if on cue, or maybe the wonderful instructors knew we were about to have a heart attack, either way we were given an order to slow in to a regular march.

After catching my breath, I looked around. I did not recognize the scenery. So, I obviously deduced, as did my classmates, that we were not running the same route that we normally did. This route was well lit in this particular area. The roadway was very wide, maybe thirty feet across with a bicycle lane running each direction. The edge of the roadway was six-inch raised concrete curb. The shoulders of the road were grass, which expanded into large grass fields full of wild flowers. The view was actually quite beautiful under the moonlight.

As we stood in the roadway, in formation, I looked at Julio.

“I really don’t like the looks of this,” I whispered to Julio.

“Yeah, not feeling to good, and I have this sinking sensation that this is just the beginning.”

“I know the feeling. This is definitely going to be a long day.”

“Yeah, I am definitely sharing that sentiment right about now.”

Just then, Sergeant Martinez broke in with more instructions and more yelling, “Does anyone want to come forward and admit to tearing up our building? If not, that’s just fine We have all day. You will learn, class 100. I promise you that you will get with the program.”

It wasn’t long after that, that we found ourselves on our backs going through the same routine of flutter kicks, leg lifts, push-ups, sit-ups, and side-straddle hops until we could not feel our legs. Then it was off for more running.

After an hour and a half of running and stopping for calisthenics over and over, we finally saw the silhouette of the academy coming over the horizon.

As we fell from a run into a march, a great sigh of relief left my mouth. I had never been happier to see the academy than I was at this particular moment.

We stopped in front of the academy dormitory and listened to several minutes of lecture about how we don’t listen and we had better shape up or we won’t make it through the academy. After this, we were released to go back to bed.

Unlike most mornings, we did not hustle through the front doors of the dorm. No, this morning we struggled to walk up the front steps to the glass doors. Even once we were through the doors and into the building, we struggled to climb the three flights of stairs to our floor. After several minutes, I was resting soundly in my bed. I looked over at the alarm clock before closing my eyes, and it showed that it was 2:45 in the morning. Well, I guess a little sleep is better than no sleep.