Rule Three - Callahan

"What happened, soldiers?" Cecil, the warden for the DITs, barked, when the door to the rec hall slammed closed.

When we stayed silent, Cecil growled, "Someone better fucking speak. We have a Daddy dead and a DIT missing. What the fuck happened out there?"

Silence.

"Well then. If no one is going to explain, then we"ll just have to deal with the consequences. There"ll be no more alcohol, cigarettes, and no excursions until we get some answers."

Lewis bolted up. "Sir, we had nothing to do with the crawlie attack. We did our best out there. I need my smokes."

Cecil clicked his tongue. "I see, now we know something. It was a crawlie attack?"

"Yes, sir," Lewis responded. My jaw tightened, and I fought back the urge to kick the back of his calf and knock him to his knees. Fucking rat bastard.

"And where were all of you?" Cecil paced as he interrogated us. The warden was one of the first children in the bunker. He still remembered what it was like before the bombs, and he never let us forget it. "Because it looks like you just let Dale get murdered in cold blood by one of those pumped-up, radiation-filled monsters, and our best and brightest DIT was taken. How many were there?"

"Too many for us to fight off. We barely got the girls back to the bus," Russel said. "I don"t know where they came from. I"ve never seen that many in one place."

"Did you deviate from the approved plans?" Cecil demanded. All of us tightened our lips. If the warden found out that we"d found a way to turn the power back on, he"d whip our bare asses until one of us closed our eyes for good. I kicked Lewis, still standing.

"No, sir. Everything was going just as planned," he answered.

"And no one knows where Milton went?" Cecil shook his head. While we weren"t allowed to know who our biological parents were, it was suspected that Milton and Cecil were related. Not only was he undeservedly at the top of our class, but the physical resemblances were too many to not draw conclusions. Any of us could have died and it wouldn"t have been a big deal, but it wasn"t just anyone. It was Milton.

"What"s going to happen now?" Russell asked. "We"re sorry, sir."

"Sorry doesn"t bring back Dale or Milton," Cecil barked. "Sorry doesn"t fix the fact that we now have a Young Lady without a Daddy, and there"s none left from that group to replace him. Eleanor is the best collector, you fucking idiots!" Spit flew out of his mouth and his face grew red with fury.

He went on for hours, screaming and demanding that we go through everything we did tonight, starting with me and Milton going up first to get the bus and secure the park.

"We did everything by the book, sir," I said. "There wasn"t a creepie in sight."

It wasn"t until Dorothy, the den mother for the Young Ladies, came in, that Cecil finally let us go.

"Back to your rooms, soldiers. Get some rest. Tomorrow, we start search-and-rescue missions. We"re not stopping until we have a body. Alive or dead." The room was silent until Cecil and Dorothy left. Then, the room erupted.

"Search and rescue? He wants us to go into a creepie den? Or worse, a crawlie cave?" Harold shuddered. "I can"t do it, man. I vowed to serve, but I"m not going to get myself killed."

"Milton might as well be dead if he ain"t already," Carl added. "A search-and-rescue mission is ridiculous at this point."

"Can"t we just tell them the truth?" Sam asked. All of us turned to him and he shrunk into his seat.

"No," I said firmly. "We are all going to do exactly as we"d discussed on the way back. We"re going to keep our fucking mouths shut, go about our business, and move on. It"ll pass, and they"ll figure things out. This isn"t the first Daddy to get lost above."

"And Eleanor, what are they going to do with her? What about Milton's Young Lady-in-Training? Now, she has no one when she comes of age," Russell said.

"She just won"t be picked. Sorry about her luck." I shrugged. The little tyke, whoever it may be, was better off being put in Gen Pop anyway. Being picked to be a Young Lady or a Daddy wasn"t all it cracked up to be. My last conversation with Eleanor before the gunshots echoed in my mind.

She didn"t want to be a Young Lady anymore. Now, she was free.

I looked back at the men whom I"d known since childhood. All of us were just indoctrinated bodies to be thrown against the wars waging above. Despite being told we were the elite, the best of the best, we weren"t shit to them. Cecil, Dorothy, and all the other leaders were just as brainwashed as everyone else. I refused to let myself be one of them.

"Come on, let"s go to bed. It"s been a long fucking night," I told my fellow DITs.

With our shoulders slumped and eyes heavy, we marched back to our floor and then to our rooms.

I showered and went to bed, and as much as I tried to sleep, my mind kept drifting back to Eleanor. The birthday girl.

I"d been reluctant to put all this shit on tonight. In fact, I was downright against it all. Eleanor was a spoiled brat, worse than all the other Young Ladies. She was one of the best collectors, and she knew it. Her better-than-me attitude drove me nuts, and I promised myself that whatever Young Lady was assigned to me in a few years would never act like that.

I hated her, and let her know it. But Milton, my best friend, didn"t think like I did. He saw a cute face and a slender yet curvy frame. Sure, she was gorgeous, but she was spoiled. I couldn't look past that. He"d been crushing on Eleanor for years, and he"d begged me to help him declare those feelings today.

And what did that get him?

Lost.

Left for dead.

Probably dead.

Hopefully dead.

Milton was just another run-of-the-mill Daddy. Not a unique thought in his head. He didn"t need one. He was Cecil"s grandson, probably. He didn"t need to figure a way out of this place.

As my body finally gave in to sleep, my last thoughts were of Eleanor, and how she would take the news tomorrow. She and the other Young Ladies had been taken back long before we climbed down into the bunker tonight. Did she know that both her Daddy and her boyfriend were gone? What would she do?