In the Valley Read Online Free PDF Page A

oversized and apparently in his face.
    It irritated Paul that something as trivial as icon location had to be done the forces way, too. He preferred that they be lined up on the left, not in the middle of his view—the view that now held his assistant drill instructor, a prick named Staff Sergeant Garlock. Paul secretly admired and tried to emulate him, but not at that moment.
    “You bitches, get the fuck out of your cozy racks—on your feet!” Garlock’s icon screamed.
    Paul’s eyes popped open; his legs swung off the edge of the plastic, indelibly stained rack. His torso, with head attached, snapped upright. In two seconds, wide awake, he was out of bed and standing on the edge of a polished“death strip”—a meter-wide strip of polished plastic. No force recruit was allowed to defile it with his feet.
    That mistake had been made earlier, and everyone had been harshly punished. No one had stepped on it in weeks. There was nothing like rolling around and doing calisthenics in a sand pit in the middle of the night for perceived infractions. Such exercise tended to sharpen the senses and strengthen the body—and keep people’s damn feet off the death strip.
    In classic form, the recruits’ beds touched the edge of the mirror-smooth strip. Their meager possessions were open to instant inspection by the training cadre. Of course, the cadre didn’t have to be present for inspections; they could review the state of a recruit’s gear by toggling his halo and seeing it through the aspiring and woefully inadequate recruit’s eyes.
    Twelve weeks of misery had strengthened, quickened, and brutalized Paul into a soldier-shaped mold. Basic had been everything Paul had imagined and read about, and then some. However, much like losing one’s virginity, a person had to go through basic to know how bad it sucked.
    But today was different. Today was the Big Day, the day they officially became force infantry. In a fancy ceremony, the recruits would become soldiers and infantrymen. Their drill instructors would officially pin the crossed rifles of the infantry on their dress browns. With new respect, their drill instructors would congratulate each one of them and welcome the recruits into the brotherhood. They would shine and admire each other’s new and improved soldierly look.
    Or so they thought.
    Paul stood there shivering in his underwear and wondered what the fuck was going on. This was just like the so-called red phase, when each and every day and hour was filled with horrible, demeaning punishments and brutal training lessons—lessons such as “Don’t Step on the Death Strip.”
    From what he had heard, they would be treated like gentlemen after completing infantry basic. After all, just yesterday they had completed the final march and graduation exercise of their training. The graduation gut check had been a twenty-kilometer timed hike in full kit with a deliberate attack at the end. There were three little treats during the walk: a hasty ambush and then near and far ambushes. There was lots of movement.
    So much misery could be packed into that one word—
movement
. Paul hated to look at a training schedule and see something like “movement to the field” or “movement to chow.” Poorly executed “movements” tended to be accompanied by more calisthenics, strengthening exercises, and frank encouragement by their instructor cadre. Movement.
    In short, the final exercise had been a bad experience. When Paul had completed the field problem and culminating event, however, he felt like he had really accomplished something. He felt like a man among men (and some girls).
    But standing there by the head of his bunk in his underwear, he felt like a bitch.
    Braced at the position of “attention,” he saw his chief drill instructor, an icy woman named Sergeant First Henderson, parading in front of them with scorn-filled eyes. She looked each recruit up and down while walking the death strip down the ranks, thirty men