The Gender Game by Bella Forrest (historical books to read txt) 📗

My heart skipped a beat. "Red flies?" I whispered.

"Sounds like it, doesn't it?" she murmured grimly.

Ms. Dale began scanning the ground around us. She darted with me through the trees until she located a hollow trunk. She pulled out another object from her backpack, an aerosol container, and sprayed the hollow. Shiny black centipedes the length of my hair squirmed out, worming themselves into the brushwood. Then Ms. Dale pushed me inside. I cramped my body up as small as I could to make room for her to crawl in next to me. There was enough room for us to sit side by side while still having a view of the outside.

The buzzing was hard to miss now. It thrummed in my ears.

Ms. Dale sprayed the aerosol again, through the opening of the trunk and into the forest's atmosphere. She acted just in time. A few seconds later, a blur of brown zoomed through the undergrowth with a dense red cloud moving at an alarming speed close behind. It was a wild boar, running for its life from a swarm of huge blood-colored flies. It darted out of sight, the flies maintaining their close pursuit.

I could only be grateful that it was the animal they were chasing, rather than us.

Ms. Dale and I waited stiffly until the buzzing faded, then climbed out of the hollow and straightened.

"So, Violet," Ms. Dale muttered, brushing off her pants. "Now you've seen it for yourself. The flies do exist."

"Yeah," I said, my throat hoarse. Those flies were supposed to be vampiric. They attacked in swarms and if there were enough of them, they could drain an animal or even a person to the point of death. But I was already facing certain death by execution if I failed this mission, and I trusted that Ms. Dale was trained to deal with this environment.

"Let's continue," she said curtly. She handed me the aerosol can. "You carry this for now."

During the next stretch of our journey, the occasional squawk of a bird made me jump, and I was introduced to yet more insects—jumper bugs and rope leeches—as well as a silver python that looked large enough to swallow me whole. But Ms. Dale deftly guided me onward.

She stopped again as we arrived at the first clearing we had come across since entering The Green. Taking the aerosol container from me, she roamed its perimeter and sprayed generously. It was some kind of pest repellent, evidently, but it also had a side effect of clearing the mist, making our vision a little clearer.

Then she moved over to a fallen tree whose carcass was thriving with new life. She scraped away the weeds and moss from its surface, then placed her gun atop it, along with her backpack, opening the bag's zipper.

"Come here, Violet," she said.

I approached and stood next to her as she began to empty the bag's compartment of… more weapons. Guns—large and small. By the time she'd finished, her backpack had shrunk to a fraction of its previous size.

My eyes met hers. "You're going to train me to use… weapons?" I whispered.

"Yes," she replied. "At the request of Mr. Jenks."

My eyes trailed over the assortment of guns. Only wardens, authorized warden trainees, or professionals like Ms. Dale were allowed to handle weaponry. All of my defense training to date had consisted solely of physical contact.

Now I couldn't help but suspect that putting me into a "high-stress" situation wasn't the scientist's main motivation for wanting me to train in The Green. He probably wanted to keep all this undercover as much as possible, and the primary appeal of this location was its isolation.

"So I have just three days to perfect my skills?" I asked.

"I don't expect you to be perfect," Ms. Dale replied. "But I do expect you to become proficient. Once you're in Patrus, as a woman, it's highly unlikely you'll find an opportunity to train or practice… You'll be lucky to get hold of a gun at all.”

“Then what's the point of training?”

“Because it will push your comfort zone—something you need to get used to for your time in Patrus. Moreover, it's what Mr. Jenks wants, so let's start."

She set up a target—a rotting log—before picking up the nearest weapon to her, a handgun. She began demonstrating how to stand, aim and fire. She hit the target dead in the center, several times over, before passing the gun to me. It felt cold and heavy in my gloved hand. And so very foreign.

I spread my feet apart as she instructed, assuming a firm stance before taking my aim. I missed wildly.

She made me try again and again, until I got closer to the target. It took me all of two hours to hit the exact center.

"Good," Ms. Dale said. "Let's move on to something larger."

Great. Larger and probably noisier.

I had been on edge the whole time, constantly glancing around the clearing, afraid that our noise would draw unwanted attention from the creatures of The Green.

Ms. Dale picked up the gun with the longest barrel and handed it to me after a brief explanation of the differing mechanisms between this and the previous firearm. Then she allowed me to fire. It didn't take me nearly as long to succeed in hitting the target with this. I was warming up, I supposed.

She made me try out a third gun, and then a fourth. By the time three p.m. struck, I was famished.

"We'll continue practice after lunch," she said, taking my gun from me and resting it on the dead trunk along with the others. "Let's head back. There's food in the trunk."

As she placed the backpack on her shoulders without the guns, I frowned.

"You're just going to leave those here?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "They'll be here when we return. It's not like there are thieves roaming around in this place."

We traipsed back the way we'd come and returned to the truck. The wardens looked thoroughly bored. Judging from