Apocalypse Wow, Pt. 17

"I guess."

"I just think you should keep an open mind with the module, that's all. I think you might be surprised what you could learn."

Jake could tell from Penny's raised eyebrow that she remained skeptical, and he smiled warmly at her.

"Look Penny," he said, focusing his attention on her clearly, "I know you're really good at Scouting, how successful your training's been, how ready you feel to go out there. Just remember this, OK? Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat it."

Penny broke into a smile. It wasn't the first time Jake had used the well worn phrase on her, although the knowledge of who exactly from the Old World it should be attributed to was lost.

"I'll remember," she said.

"As if I'd let you forget."

Sam's house was further up Haven's gentle slope and, as usual, he was waiting outside for her when Penny stepped out of her own house the next morning.

"Mornin' Sam."

"Hey Pen, how you doin'?"

"I'm good. Not sure how I feel about the new module for the morning session though."

"I don't know, I think it's interesting, all that old stuff. Not sure what I'm supposed to learn about Scouting from it, but it's still interesting."

"I guess, yeah."

"But this afternoon should be fun, right? The guest instructor?"

"Oh yeah, shit. I almost forgot about that. Maybe this won't be such a dull day after all."

Well into their third year of training, Penny and Sam along with the other members of their class were well used to the structure of their days at this point.

Morning sessions were classroom based and focused on a wide variety of topics, mostly delivered by experienced Scouts, although there were a few where experts in other fields were brought in. Penny had been surprised at just how much she'd enjoyed the modules on botany and agriculture, for example.

Afternoons were for physical training or practical work. Sometimes, this meant going out into the field to get practical experience of some of the things they learned about during the morning sessions, sometimes there were sessions focused on learning and practicing with the equipment Scouts used most commonly, or practical lessons on map reading and navigation. There were plenty of afternoons spent at the firing range too. Every person in Haven received extensive training in gun use and safety in school, but Scouts were expected to be expert marksmen, the best of the best.

Most of the time though, or at least that's how it seemed to most of the trainees, afternoons were for the intense physical work that was designed to ensure they were in outstanding shape. There was plenty of sprinting and long-distance running, there were obstacle courses, there was swimming and cycling and lots of weight training. The guest instructor that day, the one Sam had reminded Penny about, was in Haven for some sessions in one of Penny's favorite areas: hand to hand combat.

"Morning Penny, morning Sam," Toni said as they entered the classroom.

Toni Beecher was an experienced Scout and Penny spent a lot of time in her company, as much as she could, even outside training, listening to stories about her time on Exploration Teams. Truth be told, there may not have been anyone in the entire Network that Penny more aspired to be like than Toni.

She was one of the youngest to survive the First Day, just three years old when the rag tag group of which she was a part, fleeing the carnage of the First Day in the nearby town of Durden, made their way to the gated and fenced private housing development that would become the community of Haven.

So she was something of a link between the Old World and the New, a contemporary of the first children born after the First Day while still connected to the past in a way they never could be. Growing up in those early years, she'd shown an irrepressible passion for exploration, often to the consternation of the adults of the community, but she'd persevered and now, though not quite forty, she was one of the Network's most experienced Scouts. A veteran of three long-range Exploration missions, the most recent of which she'd only returned from a couple of months earlier, and a renowned instructor, Penny marveled at how Toni had still found the time to be successfully Serviced three times and was especially glad that the first of these, when Toni was just nineteen, had produced her former room mate Luke.

She'd travelled further beyond the boundaries of the Network than anyone Penny had ever met. She was strong, lean and beautiful. She was kind, thoughtful and wise. In short, she was everything Penny wanted to be.

"Hey Toni, morning guys," Penny replied as she and Sam took their seats, the last to arrive. The other three members of their training group were already seated and smiled in greeting.

"So," Toni began, "now that we're all here, let's get started. As you know, our new module this morning aims to look at what lessons for modern Scouting we can garner from Scouting in the past, in particular, the very early years of Scouting, when the Network as we know it today had not even been formed. We'll be learning about what Scouting was like in those first days, about First Contacts, about how successful Scouting let to the formation of the Network. And we'll be learning about some of the many dangers that early Scouts had to face, dangers that we still learn about and learn to defend ourselves from, though we haven't faced them for many years. Any questions before we get started?"

Penny did her best to look engaged. She remained skeptical in general, although as they always had a habit of doing, Toni's introduction had somewhat piqued her interest. Besides, there was no way she wanted Toni to be able to see that she wasn't one hundred per cent switched on.

"Good," Toni said, smiling, as she turned to uncover the object on the easel that was standing behind her. Penny recognized it immediately, as she was sure all her fellow trainees did. To Haveners, it was as familiar an image as there could be. The original, Penny knew, was a digital photo taken by a camera with a timer so that, as it was then, the entire population of the newly formed community of Haven could be in the same picture, all ten of them. What they were looking at now was an incredibly life life representation of that original photo, painted by Jodi Weir, one of the founders of The Glen, and presented to the people of Haven as a gift on the tenth anniversary of First Contact with that community. Ordinarily, it hung near the main entrance of the Meeting Place, the central hub of life in Haven, as its counterparts were in all the communities of the Network.

It was one of those objects that was so much a part of the fabric of one's life, Penny realized looking at it now, that it had been years since she'd really looked at it, really taken it in. She knew all ten of the figures represented, knew them well. Her own mother Pam was among them.

"You all know this picture, right?" Toni observed, smiling as she noted how intensely her trainees were inspecting the image.

"Isn't that... you?" Sam ventured, leaning forward in his seat. He was pointing at the small, pale child clutching the hand of Luna Gonzalez as if her life depended on it.

"You know it is Sam," Toni replied, smirking. "But of course, you know everyone in this picture. Thankfully, all are still with us. We're starting today with their story because, when you think about it, these ten women, the founders of this community, were also the first Scouts, and their story can tell us so much about how Scouting developed in those early years. So why is that? Why do I call the Founders of Haven the first Scouts?"

"Because... because... they had to find Haven," Rosa Gonzalez observed from her seat, a little nervously, "they... they weren't here on the First Day."

"That's right Rosa," Toni agreed. "Danny, what can you tell me about the founding group on the First Day?"

"Well, um..." Danny Larsson hesitated and Penny knew why. Although the story of the Founders of Haven was well known to everyone who'd grown up there, it was a difficult story to tell, especially to one who'd been there.

"It's OK Danny," Toni said reassuringly, "go ahead." She too knew that her own involvement in the answer to the question she'd asked him was the cause of Danny's reluctance.

"Well, ah... the founding group came together in Durden on the First Day, organically..."

"What do you mean organically?"

"I mean, like, it wasn't an organized group or anything. Everyone was doing lots of different things. Like, my mom and... and Rosa's mom and Penny's mom just happened to be waiting for the same bus, and Anh's mom and Mai were walking to the big box store..."

"Right," Toni said, "and my mom and dad and I were out having breakfast. So there was no initial link between the founding group. Anh, do we know how many made up the founding group when they escaped Durden on the First Day?"

"Not... not for sure," Anh Pham replied. She rounded out the Scouting Trainee group that Penny was a part of, and it wasn't until she'd spoken that Penny realized that the entire group, with the exception of Sam, were the children of Founders. Anh's mother Linh was the other child in the picture, standing near the opposite side to Toni, wedged between her mother Mai and Danny's mother Harper, holding their hands. "The... the surviving Founders couldn't be totally sure, everything was so chaotic as they made their escape but the... the History Team believes it was somewhere between 25 and 35."

"25 to 35 people. And this image was captured six days after the First Day with only ten. If we take the median value for the estimate of the original size of the group, that's an attrition rate of 66%. In six days. So Penny," Toni said, turning her now hard gaze to Penny, "what do you think the first lesson is?"

"It... it was... it was really dangerous." Penny replied solemnly, her eyes focused on the painting, on the child Toni had been, and she couldn't help think about what that child, three years old, her parents dead, must have experienced, must have felt, in those six days and, for the first time, the value of their new module started to hit home.

"Yes it was," Toni agreed.

The rest of the morning session took on much the same style, with Toni using the trainee's own knowledge to help them reach conclusions on the lessons they could learn from Haven's Founders. They talked about how, two days after the First Day, the survivors had arrived at the gated and fenced off private housing development that would become Haven. Anh's grandmother Mai had worked in one of the houses as a cleaner and it was at her suggestion that the group made their way there. They'd found the gates and the fence intact and almost all the inhabitants dead, as everyone else they'd encountered on their journey had been. Everyone but the red-eyes.

They'd learned on their two-day trek, after numerous encounters with red-eyes at the cost of many lives, that their new and terrifying enemies, who had once been their friends and loved ones, were very difficult to kill. So when they arrived at Haven at last, their first priority was locating the means to defend themselves. They found some guns in a couple of the houses and were able to secure the entire compound in a matter of hours, killing the handful of red-eyes who remained inside the fence.

They talked about how, as the original group made their first tentative forays outside the security of their new community in the days and weeks that followed, more survivors began to coalesce around it, as had happened in the other communities of the Network, though they remained unknown to each other at that time. Within a year of the First Day, as the first First Contacts happened with Harbourtown and then Simonia, and they finally began to learn more about what had ended the world thanks to the research of Dr Caroline Wong and others, Haven's population had swelled to nearly forty, including it's first male resident, Alex Smiley.

As the session concluded, Penny silently accepted that Jake had been right. Even after just one morning of the module, it was clear to her how much modern Scouting owed to those initial months and years and she found herself looking forward immensely to the rest of it. Toni had teased some of the topics; the first supply runs to Durden and elsewhere, encounters with red-eyes and of course, First Contacts. At the end, Danny asked if they'd be covering the Daughters of Destiny.

"Well, that depends Danny," Toni said. "Do you think there are things we can learn from that part of our history?"

"Well... um... I mean, yeah... of course."

"Like what?"

"Oh... ah... well..."

"What do you think Penny? Do you think the lessons from our encounter with the Dees-oh-Dee are still relevant?" Toni asked, trying to help Danny from the hole he'd dug for himself.

"Yes, absolutely," Penny replied confidently.

"In what way?"

"Well... it may have been decades since we've encountered any survivors outside the Network but, that doesn't mean we never will. The more we expand the boundaries of our knowledge of the world, the greater the chances we'll find someone, or groups of people, maybe even communities like our own. And when we do, we need to be ready. We need to make sure what happened with the Dees never happens again, ever."

"Very good," Toni noted, smiling proudly in Penny's direction. "I couldn't agree more. That answer your question Danny?"

"Uh... yeah... yeah... thanks... um... thanks Pen."

"No sweat Danny."

"OK, listen, well done this morning everybody. Good session. We're in the gym this afternoon. I trust you're all looking forward to learning from our visitor from La Plage. I can tell you from experience that he is one of if not the very best instructor in hand to hand combat in the entire Network and we're lucky to have him with us, even if it is just for a few days. So rest up, make sure you're ready. This is gonna be tough."

Penny thought Toni looked almost excited as she spoke about the afternoon session and she felt her own excitement grow. She knew Pierre Trudeau only by reputation and she was looking forward to testing her skills against the best.

With that thought in her head all the way through lunch, she was actually a little deflated the moment she stepped into the gym and laid eyes on their visitor. She knew why her understanding of his reputation had led her to a particular image of him, one she had created all by herself, and chided herself for it, for being disappointed, for making judgements now based on his appearance and how different it was from her expectation. In her mind, he was a giant, literally, huge and imposing, his muscled and chiseled body straining the bonds of his clothes. His face was a wizened mask of power and strength, his features brutal, his head shaved, his eyes black, piercing and raw.

In reality, for a start, she was taller than him. He stood around five feet seven or eight she guessed. In either case, she was confident she had at least two inches on him. He had long, dark hair, tied into a thick ponytail. As he chatted to Toni while the trainees entered, Penny could see that, far from the brutal power of his features, he was smiling amiably, even laughing, and when he looked over at them she was almost disappointed to register the calm, welcoming softness in his blue eyes. Though she knew him to be about thirty, his face, his whole demeanor really, seemed ageless. And as he moved in the trainee's direction, his arms spread wide in welcome, she struggled to read anything of the muscle bound frame she'd imagined through his loose fitting linen garments.

"Welcome trainees!" he said, his smile broadening. People from La Plage visited or passed through Haven all the time and Penny had met many of them, but the strange twang of the accent always caught her off guard and she had to remind herself that, for most residents of that community, on the shores of the St Lawrence river not far from what had once been the city of Montréal, English was a second language to them. "It is good to meet you all."

Still, she did her best to be polite as he shook hands and greeted them one by one. She noted, she thought, something slightly different from her first impression in his eyes as he locked them on hers when he greeted her.

"And you are Penny, no?" he said, his eyes boring into her. "I have heard so much about you Penny. I am looking forward to working with you."

"Th... thank you, of course, me too," she replied, uncertainly, as she tried to smile. How in the world had he, the celebrated Scout and instructor Pierre Trudeau, heard anything about her, a lowly trainee? And if he had, what exactly had he heard? And why had he singled her out? Why had he not said the same to the others as he greeted them?

As he turned his back to her, returning to the center of the room, she offered questioning looks to Sam, Rosa and the others but received only shrugs and smirks in response. As they moved forward towards the center to join Pierre and Toni, she felt Anh's diminutive frame press gently against her and looked at her fellow trainee to see that familiar, easy smile of unflinching optimism.

"Don't worry about it Pen," Ahn whispered, "it'll be fine. You're amazing. Of course Toni told him about you."

Penny did her best to offer Ahn a smile of thanks for her comradeship, but she still felt ill at ease, on the wrong foot in a way that was alien to her in this space, a place that had become like a second home to her.

"Good afternoon everyone," Toni said as they gathered. "On behalf of the Scouting Team and of everyone in Haven," she went on, smiling generously at Pierre and resting a familiar hand on his shoulder, "I'd like to formally welcome Pierre. We're very fortunate to have the benefit of his expertise for our trainees for the next couple of days. Trainees, with Pierre's kind permission, I'm going to hang around and observe the session, you're never to old to learn, but he'll be in charge. I know you'll give him your undivided attention. Pierre, they're all yours."

"Thank you Toni," he said, returning her smile before turning his attention to the trainees. "So, trainees, I am very happy to be here, to be working with you. I know you are already very skilled fighters, very skilled Scouts and I hope that I will be able to teach you some things and that, maybe, you will teach me also. So, let us not waste time, no? Penny, you first."

For a moment, Penny was taken aback and immediately chided herself for her lack of attention. Still, it only took a couple of seconds for her to catch on. Pierre was barefoot and, as Toni moved away to the side of the room, he moved closer to the center, adopting a fighting stance, his knees bent slightly, one foot placed in front of the other. She felt the eyes of her fellow trainees on her as they took a couple of steps back, creating a space in the center.

"Sh... sure," she said eventually. Moving to take off the loose top she'd had on at lunch was instinctive, but the moment she'd done it, she felt her confidence grow. The tight fitting training top she wore underneath was her favorite, not least because it gave a very easy view of the sculpted muscles of her shoulders and abdomen. She felt her anxiety lessen as she took up a fighting stance of her own opposite Pierre, shaking her arms loose, stretching her neck. As she stepped forward quite suddenly to attack, she actually said, in her mind at least: let's see if you've heard of this.

The very next thing she was aware of was the impact of her entire body onto the ground, her whole back slamming against it with significant force, all in the same instant, so that all the breath was completely knocked out of her. She heaved, lifting her knees instinctively as her body turned onto its side automatically, trying to find some air. She blinked hard, dazed, and almost didn't register Pierre's soft, sing-song voice.