The Monkey Boy Warrior

Training

Chapter 2

Monk woke.

What happened? Where am I?

He set up. The movement caused a bomb to explode in his head, or so it felt. Then the pain turned to a throbbing ache like someone was inside his head, pounding it with a hammer. His blurry eyes slowly focused. Feeling cold metal against his butt, he glanced down. He was sitting on a raised metal slab. Glancing around, he saw a room filled with metal slabs. On each slab lay an unconscious boy or girl about his age. Each wore a yellow tunic. Looking down again, he realized that he also wore the same yellow tunic that reached down to his knees.

Memories flooded his mind.

The spaceship. Aliens! An invasion!

He suddenly felt sick in his stomach, like he was going to vomit. He took several deep breaths. His squeezy stomach settled down. The threat of upchucking passed. Despite the terrible pounding in his head, Monk forced himself to stand up. Curious if any of his school classmates were in the room, he walked from slab to slab.

Tommy Lee Bradly's fat body lay unmoving as though dead on a slab five down from Monk's. Near the fat bully lay John Peters and Bobby Blunt. The three had bullied him and the rest of his class whenever they found the opportunity. Monk glanced at the three lying on their metal slabs, knowing he should hate them. But he didn't. This disturbed him. Did he have normal feelings? Did he hate or love anyone? Was something wrong with him?

Near them lay a scrawny girl that Monk barely knew, name Becky Murphy, a dark-haired girl that always had a frown on her face at school. He had never spoken to her inside the classroom or outside. She always hung around John Peters even though he made fun of her calling her Shifty Eyes because she was constantly glancing around, seeming unable to focus on any one person or object for more than a moment. The rest of the children in the room were strangers to Monk.

Suddenly an ear-splitting blaring of a horn echoed off the metal walls of the room. The jarring sound rattled Monk's teeth. He placed his hands over his ears. His head felt as though it was going to split open. The high-pitched sound snatched everyone in the room back to consciousness. Everywhere Monk looked, children were sitting up on their metal slabs. Most like him had placed their hands over their ears, hoping to shut out the painful sound, and from the painful looks on their faces, they were failing.

Abruptly the air shimmered along the far wall of the room, and through the flickering wall out stepped one of the hairy ape-like creatures. Again Monk thought the alien looked like a baboon head stuck on an orange-haired gorilla's body. His snout had bands of green and blue running from the bridge of his snout across its high cheekbones. Although the creature's fur was orange, its face was black, as were its hands and feet. It had monkey feet just like Monk!

"Wake up, yellow cadets!" the alien shouted in mechanical sounding Basic as though a computer was generating the words. "When you hear the horn, you will instantly get off your sleeping platforms and stand at attention beside it. Those still lying on their sleeping platforms when the panel opens will be subjected to discipline. You will receive a level one punishment from the implant in your right arm."

The hairy ape-like alien lifted a round disk hanging from a chain around his neck like a necklace. "I will demonstrate a level one punishment," the alien said.

He pressed the button on the disk.

Monk dropped to his knees as severe pain shot throughout his body. Never in his life had Monk even imagined there could be such terrible pain in the world. It was as though a knife hat pierced every molecule in his body.

The pain receded as quickly as it struck. The aftermath of the level one punishment left Monk weak-kneed and shaken. At first, he thought he was the only one that had felt the pain from the alien's device. As his senses returned, he smelled the acidy stench of urine. Glancing at Tommy, he saw a big yellow puddle on the floor between the boy's bare feet. Tears were running down the fat boy's cheeks.