100 Days and Nights

Chapter 8

Maddison got us up at the crack of dawn. I didn’t mind getting up so early since I’m used to be an early bird, but everyone else wanted to sleep in. I understood how everyone felt about getting up, especially when we have spent the last twenty four days being demanded by the Japanese to get out of bed. But at least this time we weren’t going to be beaten up by Maddison for disobeying her rules.

Keeping a look out for any soldiers that could be patrolling the streets at this time of morning, we headed towards a park that was two blocks away. I wasn’t sure what Maddison was going to get us to do, but I knew it was part of our training.

The first thing she got us to do was run laps around the park. I hated the idea of running laps first thing in the morning, even though they said exercise is better in the morning. Yeah right. It’s not good if you are half asleep. Doing these laps reminded me so much when we had to train for the cross country run for PE in school. I wasn’t so athletic and doing these laps bored me.

Once we finished the laps, Maddison got us doing push ups, which I completely suck at. I also try and avoid doing them, but Maddison wouldn’t let us get out of it. She sounded like she was a commander from the army, but surprisingly she had no military training.

“Is this even necessary?” someone complained.

“It is if you want to stay fit,” Maddison replied. “Just remember that once we start fighting, there will be a lot of running involve.”

“Can we please stop?” Katelynn complained. “I don’t want to ruin my nails.”

I rolled my eyes. Is that all she even cared about at a time like this?

“Seriously?” Nelly stopped what she was doing and looked over at Katelynn who was at the other end from us. “We are going to war and all you care about is your nails? Who cares if you break one of them? Our lives are more important.”

“Nelly, get back to doing the push ups,” Maddison said.

Nelly ignored her and walked over to Katelynn, standing beside her.

“Sorry, I have an appearance to keep up,” Katelynn replied in a smart way. “Unlike your face…”

The way she said that to my friend, it reminded me of how bitchy she was to me when I tutored her in English. Right now I don’t think she was even grateful that she was even alive and she doesn’t even care what we are trying to do for the country.

Before I even knew what was happening, Nelly pulled her off the ground. I didn’t even expect her to do it. She was about to throw a punch when Kevin slipped her arms around her and pulled away.

“No, Nelly,” she replied. “She isn’t worth it.”

Maddison stepped in between them. “Hey, I understand that you may have issues between each other, but right now you need to put it aside. There can’t be any conflict between team members because then that’s going to bring the entire team down when we go to fight.” She turned to the rest of us. “And that goes the same way with the rest of you. If you have conflicts, you need to work them out.”

We stood there for a moment without saying anything, unable to give any eye contact to Maddison or even to Katelynn because we all knew that whatever Maddison was saying was true. We couldn’t have conflicts between each other and if we did, we have to quickly resolve them otherwise we will bring down the entire team and get us all killed over a stupid argument.

Maddison decided to let us take a break. She let us go and eat something for breakfast and told us that as soon we finished eating that we were going to start training how to use guns.