The pathway Zed walked had more sand than most of the walkways around the town. Or at least it did, but it had rained last night and so he walked with a frown, bare feet stepping on mud. It got between his toes, staining more parts of his feet than he had been willing to let it stain.
Him and Oliver had gone on their morning run alone today, and in Ash’s absence Zed realized they’d been taking it easy on him. With the speed Oliver required from him, he was knackered before his record of three hours. While he was panting and begging for shade, Oliver told him about the mage that was going to train him.
Apparently the man was an old friend of Heimdall and existed outside the stoic man’s hierarchy of command. They deliberated amongst themselves often, making decisions that were best for the town, and he had more say over hunter tasks than Heimdall did, though he rarely spoke on the subject. There were examiners that decided who was a good fit to be a hunter, and this guy was the one who examined those examiners.
His name was Ivan and Zed was hoping the rumors about Russians having flat accents and intimidating personalities wouldn’t apply to him.
Unlike Festus, Zed’s meeting with Ivan wasn’t going to be at his home. Instead it was at the edge of one side of town, slipped beyond from a path between two houses. Zed walked the journey, cleaning his feet on any patch of grass he had the pleasure of passing by. He didn’t use Gregory’s map since he already had the layout of most of the town memorized. It took him well over an hour from his walk from the house to the building.
Staring at the rundown building, it didn’t take him much to realize that if the town had a school when the second awakening happened, this would be it. It was a wide amalgamation of small buildings, coupled together to form one wide squared single building. It was also more rundown than any of the houses he’d seen in town. Since it had a flat roof, it was impossible to tell if it still had a roof at all.
Zed ignored the wide space where a double door should’ve once been and stepped in through one of the massive holes in the wall and paused.
“Okay,” he muttered, staring at the wall in front of him. “A dead end. Not a nice way to start, Zed.”
He stepped out of it and sought out another hole in the wall. He found one smaller than the last but wide enough to accommodate him and peered inside. He found no dead ends.
“This should work.”
He walked into the building, stepping around arranged chairs, some broken so horribly they were stacked together against one side of the room. There was a broken board on the opposite side of the wall where the chairs faced but no table.
A school then, he decided. I wonder how often they use it.
He slipped out of the classroom, deeper into the building, to find more signs to justify his decision, not that he needed any more. Some rooms were in more disarray than the classroom he’d been in. There was a room that looked more like a lab, with tables of wood and concrete built into the floor, broken and smashed with pipettes and broken glass cylinders and other tiny glass equipment he assumed had held chemicals once upon a time before the roof had caved in.
The rooms varied but most of them were obvious classrooms for learning if he could look past the destruction and abandonment. Zed walked down a hall lined with lockers on both sides, rusted from disuse with signs of grass growth likely recently pulled out.
He walked through a single door where there should have been a double door, pushing it aside when there was more than enough space to go through where the other door should’ve been. The hinges groaned at his touch and the door fell from them with an echoing clatter. It stopped Zed in his tracks and he listened for a response.
Hearing nothing, he continued on his way.
The floor here was cleaned as best as some could, its broken surface arranged as best it could be. What had once been a well-organized arraignment of tiles was now a half-assed shit-show of cracked tiles and empty concrete. Someone, or some people, had taken the effort of clearing out any broken tile that could harm someone. There was no way the town wasn’t using the building anymore. Zed suspected they might be seeking some level of normalcy and holding school days every now and again.
He understood the adults’ need for it but wondered if the children were happy to indulge them. He had a feeling one of the selling points of the apocalypse for them had been no school days. He’d definitely hated school as a kid.
He paused at the knowledge, certain he hadn’t known that a week ago, before continuing on his way.
Finally, he came to a wide space in a room of its own. It took out an entire section of the school and there was no doubt what its purpose was. Its floor, starting from the entrance, was made of wood he knew had once been polished to a shine but was now dull and cracking. There were damp spots and rays of sunlight streaming in from holes in the ceiling where the rain had gotten in some time last night.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Zed stepped into the room proper, making his way to its center. He was flanked on two sides by bleachers and ignored the two bent hoops on both sides of the room indicating what had once been a basketball court.
Zed ignored everything else as he walked, keeping his eyes on the only important part of the room.
At the center of the room where every basketball game started with a tip off was a man in camo pants and a loose fitting black shirt. He had his arms folded over a broad chest and stood with a military precision despite how casual he was supposed to look. He sported a simple moustache and had a head of overgrown brown hair that rested just above his shoulders. The hair looked more like something that was that long simply because he hadn’t gotten around to a haircut rather than something he’d groomed and intended. Still, he wore a dusty colored face cap over it that held it together.
The closer Zed got, the more he realized the man’s hair was actually on the blonde side, it was simply darker than it was blond and he wore a belt with a massive buckle head that somehow seemed out of place with his stoic disposition. The man watched him with hooded eyes and a blank face until Zed was standing in front of him.
“I expected a Russian,” Zed said, “not gonna lie. Kind of strange hearing the name Ivan and meeting a redneck. No offense.”
The only sign the man had heard him was in a mild twitch of his left eye.
“You are Ivan, aren’t you?” Zed asked. “I was told to meet someone called Ivan over here around this time.”
The man’s nod was slow.
“Yes, you’re Ivan?” Zed asked, “or yes, I’m supposed to meet Ivan here? Because I’m still kinda holding out on him being some big Russian dude that looks like a mob enforcer gone rogue, considering he’s kinda like the Chuck Norris of this place.”
The man’s lips twitched at that ever so slightly, but he didn’t say a thing.
“You sure I’m in the right room?” Zed went on, his gaze roaming the room now. “I might’ve taken a wrong turn at some point. I’m still kinda new in town and I didn’t bring my map along—it’s rather unnecessarily massive—so I could’ve walked into the wrong rundown school. Just out of curiosity, is there perhaps another rundown school nearby; maybe one with a brooding Russian in it?”
The man remained motionless, arms folded and eyes staring.
“Kind of feels like I’m talking to myself now,” Zed muttered. “I’ll just give you time to actually take your turn. Maybe the ones you’ve been getting haven’t been enough for you.”
Zed stayed silent after that, teetering back and forth on his feet like a child who didn’t have much to do but wasn’t permitted to leave his spot.
“Are you done?” the man asked.
Zed’s lips widened in a smile. “So you just needed more time. I’m glad I took the initiative even if you didn’t tell me.”
The man’s eyelids narrowed and Zed nodded like a scolded child.
“I’m done,” he said more seriously.
“Good,” the man said. “One hundred and seventy-three. Do you know what that is?”
“No idea.”
“That’s how many words you’ve said since meeting me. And we haven’t even met for more than five minutes.”
Zed shrugged. “I’m a talker.”
“No,” the man disagreed. “You’re a rambler. And I’m not a fan of ramblers. What happened to your shoes?”
“I have feet claustrophobia,” Zed said. “That’s four words. Just wanted to let you know we’re starting afresh on the counting thing.”
“That’s twenty words,” the man corrected. “And I’ve never heard of feet claustrophobia before.”
“Many people haven’t. But it’s a thing. I used to have a doctor’s note for it but I lost it in the apocalypse.”
The man grunted in displeasure, then took a calming breath.
“I’m Ivan,” he said. “And four things you should know are that I’m not a nice or happy person, no one has ever made the mistake of thinking I am one, I don’t like being called a redneck, I don’t like people who talk too much, and while I’ve been warned of your unique personality and wouldn’t normally spare you the time of day, I’m only doing this as a favor to Jason.”
Zed nodded. “Got it. And sorry about the whole redneck thing. Won't happen again.”
“Good.”
Ivan took a step from where he stood, the only real action he’d taken since Zed got here. He stood at least ten paces away from Zed then held his arms in a gesture that somehow encompassed the entire court and bleachers.
“For the next one week,” he said, “I will teach you how to be a decent hunter in this place. Seven days of me showing you how to fight, and if you have no promise by the end of seven days, I’ll drop you.”
“And if I do?”
“Chances are I’ll still drop you.” That said, Ivan dropped his arms. “Now, the first thing you will learn, perhaps the only thing you will learn, is—”
“Please don’t say how to take a beating,” Zed groaned. “I’ve been doing that since I got here and between you and I, I’m really tired of it. Just the other day someone stabbed my heart with all my ribs.”
“You’ve been taking a beating since you got here,” Ivan scowled, “because you don’t know how to take a beating. Once you learn how to take a beating you’ll take it less.”
Then Ivan took a single step forward.
“Learn how to fall,” he said into Zed’s ear.
Zed lost his composure at the man’s voice in his ear. The heat of another person so close to him so suddenly. He hadn’t even seen Ivan move or cover the distance between them. His mind went for the possibility of teleportation or some advanced magic he knew nothing about but the ambient mana hadn’t even swayed.
Ivan placed a hand on Zed’s chest and pushed.
Zed’s body righted itself as he fell back. He felt his torso sway in the smallest shift, noticed his body absorb its surroundings like a gymnast standing on a tight rope in search of balance. He felt his feet move, the cold wooden floor beneath it steadying to accommodate its readjustment as his body righted itself without his command.
The back of his leg hit something as solid as iron and he fell back.
Zed hit the ground harder than he had any right to from simply being pushed, and the force of it knocked the air from his lungs. He remained there, motionless and confused on the ground. When Jason had done something similar to him, he had been frantic and confused, his mind all over the place. His body had failed to react then. But his body had reacted now, he had had a moment to right himself.
So how did he hit the ground so painfully?
“I guess they were right,” Ivan said, looking down at him, “you do have something that helps with your balance. If it’s going to be useful or not, though, is another question.”