Lara had just finished explaining the drama that surrounded her attempts to scout the outer areas of their county. Bob could tell that she was quite shaken up, despite putting on a brave face to the group.
The British are good at brushing things under the rug thought Wren as she carefully watched the dynamics between Lara, Bob, Maureen and Archie.
Bob’s giant paw gently placed itself on Lara’s shoulder as she sipped a hot cup of tea. “I’m glad you are ok, Lara. You won’t have to go out there alone ever again. We’re here for you.”
“It’s ok Bob. I can do it” Lara said. With that she stood up and made her way towards the bathroom “I’m going to take a shower and then I want to hear all about the adventure of Archie and Wren”.
“Don’t worry about them telling you, Lara. I’ve got it all on tape.” Chirped Bob.
“Can you teach us to fight too?” Wren candidly asked Bob
“Sure. Let’s start with some boxing. How to throw a punch and some defence will be the most important. But with all these powers people are getting, what I know will likely become outdated.”
Bob made his way over to the gym area of their bunker, with ease he lifted the punching bag and attached it on to a discrete hook in the ceiling. Archie and Wren helped Bob move some of the weight lifting equipment and rowing Machine to the side and they took their place as Bob’s students for the next hour.
They learned how to stand, position themselves, how to move their feet according to the situation. They learned that the power of a punch was actually generated from the ground up and not just from their arms. It was all the basics but Archie and Wren were hungry to learn. Spurred on by the story from Lara.
After their lesson, Bob got them to put away the equipment and put the area back to its usual set-up. The rowing machine and free weight equipment retook their place at the centre of the black padded mats, which dominated a corner of their bunker.
As Lara watched on with Maureen they were both surprised when Archie and Wren moved onto the cardio portion of their day. Archie on the rower and Wren on the treadmill. They each took thirty minutes at a moderate pace and then switched places. They were both focussed and dedicated to becoming better; a shift in the happy-go-lucky attitude of Wren and the casual, relaxed and playful attitude of Archie.
“You know… Their fitness and cardio is improving strangely quickly. Archie could barely run five kilometres four days ago. Now he can do it after an hour of learning how to box?” Bob pondered to the group.
“Very strange indeed” mused Maureen “Lara. What is your Personal Best for a five kilometre run?”
“About twenty-five minutes and a few seconds”
“Fancy hopping on the treadmill and going for a new one, once they’re done?” Asked Maureen.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Once Archie and Wren finished, covered in sweat, gasping for breath and exhausted, Lara jumped onto the treadmill, curious she set the pace to complete her five km in twenty three minutes. A tough new challenge. There’s that fire again Lara thought as she took her first few steps.
As Wren emerged from the bathroom, white towel wrapped around her head. She was greeted to the gruesome sight of Lara vomiting into a bright orange bucket. Bob gently patting her back as she carried on.
“Oh my god, what’s happened?!” shouted Wren
“I guess Lara being Lara?” Archie said, pinching his nose as he made his way by Wren and headed into the bathroom for his turn in the shower.
“She pushed herself beyond her limits” Maureen told her “Two minutes beyond her limit to be precise… She did it though. Very interesting”. She muttered as she shuffled off with her green cane towards the office, likely to write some notes, review the CCTV and listen out for any more information on the radio.
Maureen and Bob had been trying to tune their various radios and make contact with other outposts, but it had been sporadic at best. Maureen was desperate for more information. What she would do with that information, Archie and Wren had no idea.
Once everyone was cleaned up. Bob set-up the board game Risk at the centre of the table and convinced everyone, except Maureen, to play. Maureen stayed at her monitors.
“So, Maureen reckons these abilities go beyond what you and everyone so far has described. Lara, you just knocked two minutes off your personal best time. Archie, Wren you are both exponentially fitter than you were four days ago. The kinds of improvements we are seeing are beyond the boundaries of human performance enhancement in such a short time scale”
“I know what you mean Bob. I mean… that two minutes took literally everything I had, but there is no way I could have done that before all of this. Annoyingly my improvements haven’t been leaps and bounds like these two” she mocked pointing across the Risk board to Archie and Wren.
“We had a pretty bad baseline, though” Archie shrugged
“We had a very bad baseline” Wren interjected
After a couple of hours, various tea breaks,and mocking Wren for being too much of a pacifist for the board game, they had to pause for dinner.
Maureen had pulled out a Turkey from her chest freezer earlier in the day and it had slowly been cooking for a number of hours. The smell coming from their kitchen had the group salivating. Bob had been scurrying to and from the kitchen to check on their potatoes and greens was an obscure, but very welcomed sight. Archie, Wren and Lara were not the best chefs and had usually opted for convenience in their former lives.
“Maureeeeeeen. Dinners ready” Bob called out towards the office. A few gentle taps of her cane and Maureen was on her way over.
The five of them carefully moved their game of Risk to the far side of the table and tucked themselves in, ready for dinner. A family-style, full roast dinner brought them all even closer together. They ate, hungrily, the first proper meal they had had since the event. What they had been eating was nutritious and filling, but they had been keeping their meals to a minimum, afraid to utilise their air filtration system too often and Maureen had banned the cookers extractor fan; too afraid any smells could give their positions away to the troops above them.
Now that their campsite had the ‘all clear’ from Archie and Wren and the CCTV showed that the troops had left and not returned for more than twenty four hours, the extractor fan ban was over; everyone was delighted.
“This is amaaaaazinnnnnggg” cooed Wren. The group laughed and joked, doing their best to help Lara forget about the trauma of her day. After a while, as the group began to clear up, Maureen slipped off back to her own personal command centre.
As the day drew to a close, the young trio crept off to bed whilst Bob and Maureen settled in for their third night shift in the command centre.
Deep into the night, they were both startled by the crackle of their radio.