A couple of days later, Nell finally gets to shoot a gun. It's a small one, but it's a gun nonetheless.
She grips the pistol in two hands, like she was told, and shuts her left eye to focus on the stack of cans on the table.

Nell takes a deep breath to calm down. She can't shoot a gun if she's shaking.
Nell slightly adjusts her pistol, aiming for the can on the right.
And then, she takes a deep breath and squeezes the trigger.

The gunshot is loud, hurting Nell's ears. The shot is accompanied by a sharp, explosive crack, which echoes throughout the training room.

Nell presses her eyes shut, flinching in reaction to the gunshot.
When she opens them, all three cans on the table remain standing, mocking her. Her eyebrows crinkle up in a mix of sadness and anger.

"Try again." Her instructor says.

Nell nods. She really wants to knock down a can, but she doesn't want to humiliate herself in front of the rest of her group.
Most of the kids shot down a can on their first try.
And so, Nell aims her gun once again, at the can in the middle this time. She closes one eye to focus and then squeezes the trigger, slightly harder than before.

Another bullet goes flying out of her pistol, echoing through the room just like before. This time, Nell didn't flinch. She keeps her eyes on the target the entire time.
To her surprise, the can in the middle flies back against the wall and tumbles onto the ground, a bullet hole through the middle of it.

I did it!!

Nell smirks proudly and stands tall, wanting people to notice what she just did.
The instructor comes around, clapping his hands.
The instructor is tall and muscular with dark skin and little hair. He frightens Nell.

"Well done, well done, you knocked down a can. Good luck when you have to shoot a moving target!" He laughs coldly.

Nell frowns and looks down. He is right. Shooting a can is nothing, especially when it takes her two tries to do so. She won't last a day on whatever mission they might send her on.

The next part of training is Nell's favorite part. Well, second favorite. Her first is shooting a gun.
Now is when she learns survival tactics like scavenging for resources, finding shelter, purifying water, starting a fire, and everything Nell needs to know to survive. That's why she loves it. It makes her feel more independent and badass.

The army of kids must be really powerful if they are teaching us all of these things.

That was the point. To build a strong army to go out and defend the base, find supplies, and fight the enemies. Not the dead enemies. The human enemies.
And no soldier can leave unless they have a death wish, so none of the kids will ever think to betray the compound. It's ingenious.

Today, Nell is going to learn how to set up animal traps in case she ever needs to find her own food.
Nell and her group of twelve-year-olds sit down at a long table, not as long as the one in the cafeteria, but still pretty lengthy. In front of every kid are chunks of tree bark and two shoelaces.

"First, you're gonna have to find a tree. Then, knot your shoelace around it, like this." A new instructor says, demonstrating the knotted shoelace.

"Now. You try." He says to the group of kids.

Nell looks down at what she was given. She is ahead of everyone else when it comes to things like this, thanks to her dad.
'Make yerself useful and get me some dinner, won't ya?'

Nell finished the entire trap within a few minutes. It was muscle memory.
"Wow, Grace that's really good." Says the instructor.

Nell smiles as everyone at the table stares in awe at her creation. No one else seems to have figured it out. Everyone's struggling.

The lunch announcement cuts their lesson short. Nell stands and runs to the front of one of the lines. She is getting the hang of this whole military thing.
She marches in sync with the rest of the soldiers until they make it to the cafeteria.

When she gets there, Nell immediately looks for Zara. The past few days, she has spent every meal with her.
Maybe you could even call her a friend.
Nell never had many friends at school. She was always known as 'the kid whose mom died.'

Is Zara a friend? Or am I just bothering her?

Despite her thoughts, Nell runs over to the table Zara is always at and sits down next to her.

"Hey, Gracie!" Zara says happily.

"Hi, Zara. How was trainin'?" Nell says, grabbing a helping of vegetables and beans.

Nell became more comfortable with Zara once she realized that she was nothing like her father. She's quite the opposite.

"It was alright. I got to throw a grenade and learned to disarm someone with a machine gun." She says with a shrug.

Zara hates it here and Nell can't find out why. She would give everything to be able to throw a grenade!
Maybe it's because she's been here since almost the beginning of the apocalypse.

"Grace..." Zara says quietly, changing the mood. "I'm leaving. Tonight."

Nell's jaw drops, but she quickly closes it to say, "What? You can't."
It was true, she can't. She will get killed.

"Well, I'm gonna try. You should come." She says nonchalantly.

"We'll get killed!" Nell can't help but yell.

"Shush!" Zara puts two fingers over her mouth and looks around to see if anyone heard. All good.

"I know you probably don't understand," Zara says. "But my group and I are being sent on a mission tomorrow. And that means death, a whole lot of it. I have a better chance at escaping than I will at coming back after that mission."

Nell is speechless. She can't leave her here! Who will she sit with at meals?

"The missions aren't easy," Zara continues. "It's not like any simple supply run to a pharmacy. These people who run the compound— they aren't good people. They send us out to do their dirty work, not caring how many of us die because we are all replaceable. Tomorrow, my group and I will have to invade a nearby town. A town heavily armed with strong weapons and even stronger people. It's a suicide mission. And I'm not dying any time soon, so that's why I'm escaping. Tonight."

Nell's jaw drops once more.
"Will I ever have to go on a mission?"

"Yes. It could be in a week, it could be in a month, hell, it could be in a year, but you will be sent on a mission too.
Because that's why you're here. That's why all of us are here."

"You can't leave me here," Nell says, her voice breaking.

"Then come with me."