Chapter Two
A tall, muscular man with broad shoulders gave Marcus a smile. “Don’t you want to swim?” he asked him.
Marcus smiled in reply and immediately went inside the house to get his bathing suit on. He walked into his nice, carpeted room. He felt the carpet on his feet and smiled some more. Smiling didn’t seem to happen very often.
He got his bathing suit on and then ran outside to join the man. He dove in, splashing the lady in the beach chair. She didn’t get mad, rather just gave him a smile and laughed. Marcus and this man spent a while playing Marco Polo and then the lady said it was time for dinner. Another smile spread across his face as he went inside to get dressed and wash up.
They sat at the dinner table, talking amongst each other. Marcus looked down at his delicious dinner of steak, the food he had always wanted to try but never got the chance. He picked it up, enjoying the look and feel of it before the taste. His parents just smiled at him some more as he started to eat it. They were actually starting to give him the creeps.
He put the meat into his mouth and tried to savor the taste. But instead of tasting what he thought would be steak he tasted old, hard food. He gagged and then threw the stake down.
His parents gave him a troubled look. He took his plate and chucked it across the room, clearly upset. His parents once again just smiled from this, causing him to get even angrier. Weren’t they going to say anything at all? Even ask why he did it?
He sat back down in his chair and started to cry. He cried his eyes out. Slowly his parents started to disappear from view, still smiling. He wanted to throw something at them. Yes, he desperately wanted to throw something at a bunch of made up parents. He only wished he had some real parents…
He woke up to the sound of pounding. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. “Come on boys, everyone better be up and ready to work in half an hour! Get moving!”
He sighed as he watched the other boys get up. This was nothing new. Waking up to the sound of the boss one pounding, quickly getting dressed, and then running to the breakfast tent to get something in his system before a long day’s work. He had grown used to it.
He got up out of bed and followed the line that was slowly moving out of their tent. He came out into the darkness. Of course the sun wasn’t up at four in the morning. It never was. He hugged himself, a bit cold. He had a light jacket that was given to him by one of the older boys many years ago that had felt bad that he was very thankful for. Most of the boys here didn’t have one and they were all freezing. Hypothermia was very common. But it’s not like any of the bosses cared. Boss one was on watching duty today. He wasn’t as bad as some of the bosses. Box six was his least favorite. If you even sneezed you were in trouble.
“Get a move on!” boss one said rudely. No one ever called the bosses by their actual names. No one knew their actual names for that matter. Everyone here got the low down of what went on the second they arrived, and the bosses told every single one of them they didn’t need to know their names and they better memorize what number they were really fast. All the bosses had to be called by sir and you could only speak to them if spoken to. Anyone who broke that rule had major consequences. They showed no mercy, not even to children. Marcus had gotten in trouble multiple times for trying to help someone that was being punished. If it was an older kid he walked by and acted like it was none of his business, but he couldn’t stand it when they did that to a little kid. That’s where most of the scars on his back came from.
His feet hurt as he walked over the hard and rocky ground. This was also nothing new. The only people that were lucky enough to have shoes here were those that had just arrived, and most of them were very young so they didn’t understand the significance of actually having them. He had really old, holey work pants on, a practically shredded shirt, and a really old, light jacket. Still, he had it better than most here.
He ran to the food tent and grabbed a tray. He held it out as the serving lady plopped a big glob of oatmeal on his tray. They had cold oatmeal every morning, but it was food so Marcus never found reason to complain. He went to a table and quickly scarfed down his food, realizing he was already late as it was and if he didn’t get out to the stations soon he would be punished. The cafeteria was almost cleared, although there were still some last minute people like himself trying to scarf everything down. Once he was finished he didn’t even think about it as he ran out of the tent. He really didn’t want to be punished today. He was determined to fulfill this, but usually when the said that the total opposite happened…
After that it was the normal daily routine. He did whatever was required of him, which involved a lot of manual labor and such. But before all that were roll call, warm-ups, and the start of the day pep talk.
The day started with a five mile run around the track, which was basically a dirt road that curved around. No one was even sure how much five miles was, so they just ran around it ten times. Marcus didn’t know much about numbers, but heard from other boys it was less than what they had to do. Marcus never knew what to think about what some of the other boys said. He was one of the youngest when he came here, so he relied on what he heard a lot.
The run wasn’t much of a sweat to him. He ran around the track with ease and met up with the other boys, who were already getting orders yelled at them from boss number four. He always felt lucky he was pretty healthy. Any sign of weakness would be destroyed. He had heard that since before he could remember. He got off a little bit when he was younger, but once you hit the age of eight you were expected the same amount as even the teenagers. Marcus was already nine now, so he could show no weakness. Once one hit eighteen they disappeared. Marcus had lost a lot of good friends that way. He never knew where they went, but he wanted more than anything to find out. There were rumors floating around about them getting to see the outside world. Marcus wasn’t sure if he believed it, but anywhere had to be better than here. He was sure of that.
They all lined up in formation, always in the same order: youngest to oldest. The four year olds were on one side, the seventeen year olds on the other. Marcus was right smack in the middle, next to some other boys his age who he didn’t associate with much. Those few that were younger than four got a special place to go where they weren’t required to do work because the boss had said they were useless until at least the age of four. He had only seen two younger than four in his life. They didn’t come here very often. Most were at least five or six. Marcus had been one of the younger ones. He heard that story from the older boys all the time.
They all stood up perfectly straight as boss number four came around and looked at them all, looking for any sign of movement or weakness. They were divided into groups. No one was for sure what made someone in what group, but each group had a mixture of different ages and personalities. The group they were in also shared a tent with each other and each boss chose a group to work with for that day. Today was boss number four for Marcus’s group. He knew some people outside of their group but he preferred to talk to the boys within his group because it was so much easier than someone from another group. The only time he saw the other groups were during the run, breakfast, and dinner. They ate lunch and did all their daily routines as groups, so he saw the people in his group ten times more. Once role call came around everyone was expected to stay within their groups until dinner.
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